"I spent months bringing this weapon to completion. I made the blade much longer and wider than a typical two-handed sword. I forged the blade so that the left and right sides were in perfect symmetry. And so the sword wouldn't become too heavy, I also cut a fuller down the center. By that time that was a new technique I had perfected."

Pain flashed across Berugon's face for a moment.

"When I even finished the scabbard, I gave it a name — Ironblood Soul. I wanted that sword to be a masterpiece that would remain in history for a long time."

The knight who received the sword was happy.

Because at that time Berugon was the rising new star of the Popullos weapons district.

Despite his young age, rumors already trailed behind him that his skill surpassed even the greatest masters of the era.

"And then, not long after, I heard the news. That knight used my sword on innocent people......"

Berugon drew a breath and stopped.

Like a man who had accidentally voiced words unbearable even to his own mouth.

Seeing that anguished expression, Tie immediately ran to Berugon.

And, like a kindergarten teacher soothing a crying child, she clasped his trembling hand tightly.

"Master......"

Berugon shook his head as if to say it was all right, and continued again:

"I despised myself. Because I could not even imagine that a weapon made by me, a sword born at the tips of my fingers, would be used like that."

Berugon himself knew.

Since it was a weapon, inevitably someone’s blood would one day stain that blade.

But he did not know that it would be innocent blood.

He did not know that because of a single weapon he had created a small village and a hospital would burn.

Maybe that is why?

While Berugon read the letter about that tragedy, the fields of his homeland kept swaying before his eyes.

His mother, lying on the bed after being wounded.

His father, already fallen into a coma.

Brothers and sisters who grew thinner and thinner no matter how much food he brought.

The fields of his homeland, where one by one they left, and in the end only nine lonely graves remained.

"For a while I couldn't even cross the threshold of the smelting sector. I endured as long as I could, and then on the day that devil was executed, without thinking I went to Hederdel."

Tie squeezed Berugon's hand even tighter, trembling more than before, and knitted her brows plaintively.

"He stood at one side of the scaffold and smiled. I flared up and asked him. How could a man, how could any person do such a thing, like a devil. How could he do that with my sword......"

There were many questions he poured out.

But he received only two phrases in reply.

"Smith, you are only the one who forged the sword."

"How I use it is my affair."

"I still remember clearly the road back to Popullos."

That day Berugon barely staggered away from the place of execution.

When he climbed into the cart, the square where the execution had been held was empty.

Because it was a village that had suffered too many victims, and even people who would come to watch the execution were not enough.

When the wheels scraped along the stone road, something else suddenly caught his empty gaze.

The communal cemetery, long overcrowded because of the protracted civil war.

And the graves of victims, stretching in a long row along the forest border by the road, because there was no more room for them.

The graves stretched on and on. Until Berugon, sometimes gasping with rage, sometimes weeping, finally gave up everything.

When he returned, he put forging aside for a long time.

Because weaponry no longer seemed to him a glorious instrument.

The senior smith and comrades came countless times to encourage him, but Berugon only replied that he needed time.

Day after day he sat, shut in his dwelling, tormented by thoughts again and again.

What is a weapon.

And what is the hand that grasps that weapon.

When, after a long time, he went out again, a conviction had taken root in his mind that had not existed before.

"A weapon is pure and honest."

But the hand of the person who holds it is always dirty and greedy.

Seen from one side, it could be called a thick, deep hatred of people.

After some time he began making weapons again.

But he never again gave weapons names.

When a smith gives a weapon a name, it means he has melted his soul into it.

Berugon's soul, which he might have poured into a weapon, had already been torn to pieces and disappeared.

Along with Ironblood Soul, his lost masterpiece, about the fate of which nothing else was known.

"And yet I was a smith. Since I decided to live as a smith, there are things one cannot avoid."

Berugon still had to allow someone to use the weapons he had made.

So, even if people disgusted him, he still had to face them, and he still had to keep forging.

"It really looked pitiful. Inside I was afraid whether my weapon would kill someone again. And at the same time I had to hide that and continue forging."

"......"

"Well...... maybe that was my punishment."

Just then, when Berugon had a vacant look,

a soft sniffle came from below.

Lowering his eyes, he saw that the King of the Dead was crying, her nose bright red.

She was sobbing so bitterly that tear marks were clearly visible on her knees.

"Master is not to blame in anything! That knight is plahoy!"

Berugon frowned, then thought to himself:

'......A strange creature.'

The King of the Dead was a monster who, in the brief moment when he lost consciousness, had already destroyed Krazar.

She had surely seen plenty of things on her way to this state.

And what sad thing in someone else’s past made her cry like that?

Even the fact that someone with such a soft, fragile heart led a mercenary squad seemed incredible.

But still.

His gaze dropped lower, to the small hand tightly holding his palm.

For some reason the warmth transmitted from the King of the Dead's hand was not so unpleasant to him.

"Ahem!"

Berugon jerked his head sharply.

He suddenly realized that he was receiving consolation from a mercenary he had met only today, and felt awkward because of it.

He hurriedly freed his hand from Astie's palms and added:

"Anyway! U, I simply have such a defect!"

The King of the Dead looked at Berugon with pity.

"A defect of the egg?"

"I said defect! A shortcoming!"

"A shortcoming......?"

"Yes! It's not for nothing that ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) across the continent I have the reputation of being a smith with a bad temper. Because of that cursed past I spent day and night taking it out on clients, and that's how it all turned out."

Tie opened her eyes wide, then nodded.

'So that's it.'

To be honest, even Tie until now had thought the head of the workshop was simply a very nasty person.

From the Weapon Pavilion to this moment, until they were trapped in the subspace, Berugon had almost all the time only snapped, got angry, or grumbled.

Except for when, a little while before, he had looked sad as he told of his painful past.

"But still, before it wasn't to such an extent! It's not like I drove away every client who came to me without discretion!"

Tie nodded frequently to show she was listening.

Berugon exhaled, "Ha," and continued:

"But from around the time I began keeping weapons and equipment of Krazar in my dwelling, my nerves seemed to become more and more frayed......"

At the sight of mercenaries who came to the Weapon Pavilion his mood would begin to plummet rapidly.

Even the weapons they brought in for repair, the very act of taking them in his hands brought strange thoughts to his head, again and again.

"I kept thinking that the weapon I fixed for them would harm innocent people, something like that...... ahem!"

"Why does the master have trauma?"

"Trauma?"

"Yeah!"

Berugon frowned, then nodded as if it no longer mattered.

"I don't know what that word is, but I did clearly feel that my twisted thoughts were leaning more and more toward evil."

And especially after he had nearly died, lost his mind, and even got into a scuffle with the emperor.

Tie, without realizing it, slightly opened her mouth.

She lowered her gaze and saw Ppuppu, who had already climbed into the pocket of her cloak.

From some point Ppuppu sat absolutely still, holding its breath.

Without the slightest movement, as if it itself felt plenty of that which could prick the conscience.