“Take back what you've said, Mister, or you're going to regret it!”
If an outsider were to see the scene, they would probably fear that the situation in the weapon shop was about to get out of hand. On one side was a nearly two-metre-tall, muscular man with an intimidating look in his eyes. On the other side of him stood a little girl, who returned his gaze, ready to take up the fight.
The state of the girl's mind, however, didn't reflect her appearance at all. 'Uwaaa... D-d-did I just threaten this man!? W-w-what are you doing stupid Rina! Just because he said those things about Clara, it didn't automatically mean was insulting her.'
Unfortunately, the blacksmith was unaware of Rina's panic attack, which was why he kept that terrifying glint in his eyes. His next words, spoken in a sharp tone, certainly didn't help the poor girl in calming down. “Come with me.” Then, he grabbed the girl's free hand, which was not holding the two weapons, and led her to the door behind the counter of the store, closely followed by his wife, who sighed in resignation.
What the couple didn't notice was that Rina was inwardly praying. Praying that her death would be a painless one. Only the gods could know how she came to the conclusion that her death was imminent, but in her mind, for some reason, Rina got the image of a pig being led to the slaughterhouse by a butcher. She couldn't shake off the feeling that this image perfectly reflected her current situation.
“So, we're here.”
“Eh?” Torn from her fantasy by the man's voice, Rina looked around to see that she, the blacksmith, and his wife were in a small courtyard at the back of the building that housed the shop and the forge.
Unbeknownst to the girl's inner confusion as to why they were here, the man walked over to a set of three wooden mannequins that were placed at the edge of the fenced courtyard. “These are training dummies, I use them to measure the sharpness and quality of the weapons that I make.”
Then he approached Rina, took the thin sword from her, drew it from its sheath, and slashed at a training puppet. The result was a cut about 15 centimetres deep in the wooden puppet's torso. “See that cut? My swords are sharp. However, it doesn't mean that everyone can cut them like that, just because they have a good weapon. Good skills and techniques are also important to achieve such a deep cut.”
The man sheathed the sword again and threw it towards Rina, who caught it easily. Seeing that, he gave the girl a satisfied nod and pointed to an undamaged mannequin. “Now it's your turn. Show me how deep you can cut it. If you can give me a satisfying result, I'll gladly lower my head and apologise for insulting your employer.”
Hearing this, Rina approached the training dummies to examine them and assess whether she would be able to complete the given task.
Meanwhile, the clerk walked over to the man and whispered to him. “What's wrong with you, dear? Don't you think you're being a bit harsh? She's just a little girl trying to make a living.”
At his wife's words, he clenched his fists and whispered back, “That's exactly why. She is a child, who might be even younger than our daughter. Can you imagine our daughter working hard for money and even being forced to train to fight monsters? All this while the nobles hide in safety?”
“...”
“Dammit, since King Thor's death, the nobles have become rotten to the core. Even the Dragonherz family... Commander Rick would be turning over in his grave if he could see the sorry state of his family, using young, clueless children as meat shields.”
“But is this really the case? I think that this girl likes her current employer. I mean, I even suspect that she might even be very fond of the Dragonherz's young Lady.” The clerk couldn't help but chuckle a little as she remembered seeing the interaction between the mistress-servant pair a few weeks ago when they came to order the weapons.
“Isn't that even worse? They manipulate this poor girl, so she would even sacrifice her life for their child.”
“Hmm, that doesn't seem to be the case to me... But how is not handing over the weapons going to help the girl? If her employers are really what you think they are, wouldn't it put the girl in an even worse position?”
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“...”
Seeing that her husband simply remained silent and avoided eye contact with her when the clerk asked the question, she could only exhale in annoyance. “No plan as usual, huh? Why did I marry such a dumb man?... Ah! Because of his jacked body...”
“H-hey, aren't you a bit too mean?”
“Um...”
Unfortunately for the man, before his wife could answer his question, Rina interrupted as she finished inspecting the training puppets. So, he turned his attention back to the red-haired girl. “So, will you do it?”
“Yes, I have to manage to make a deep cut like yours in the puppet, right?”
The man crossed his arms and nodded.
“And if I succeed, you will apologise for insulting the Dragonherz family?”
Again, the man nodded his head.
“What if I fail?”
This time, before the man could say anything, the clerk replied, “How about you quit being a maid and work for us?”
“”EH!?”” Both Rina and the blacksmith were surprised by the clerk's suggestion.
That was why the man pulled his wife aside and whispered into her ear. “What are you saying!?”
“Well, you want to help her, right? You don't want the girl to be exploited as cannon fodder, do you? That's why you refuse to sell her the weapons, right?”
“Yes.”
“But if she loses her job because of you, she will have to survive on the streets. So we have to take responsibility for her, don't you think so?”
“...”
“And I think having a cute girl like her as our poster girl, along with our daughter, could really boost our sales, hehehe.”
At his wife's evil grin, the man couldn't help but shrink back a little. “Wow, I think that you want to exploit her more than those nobles... But are you sure? Won't the Dragonherz family see this as a challenge? I don't really want to fight against nobles...“
“Ahaha, I was only joking. I just want to see her reaction. As far as I can see, this girl won't accept this challenge, no matter what. She is easy to read, after all. By the looks of it, this girl adores her mistress, so she won't do anything that might separate them. ”
Unfortunately for the couple, the easy-to-read girl wasn't actually easy to read, as she had a somewhat strange thought process. Although the clerk had correctly guessed Rina's feelings for Clara, that didn't mean that the girl would act to make those feelings become true. Who would have guessed that the pride of the Dragonherz family was more important to Rina than her own desires? At the very least, not the clerk. That was why Rina's next words surprised and despaired the couple at the same time.
“Alright, I agree to your terms.”
“”... EHHH!?””
“Wait, wait, wait, wait. Um... what's your name?” It was the woman who asked Rina the question.
“Ah, forgive me for my late introduction.” Rina put down the sheathed dagger and sword, grabbed the hem of her skirt with her then free hands, pulled it up slightly, and bowed. “My name is Rina, I am Lady Clara's personal maid.”
“... Wow...” After saying that, the smith's wife shook her head to get rid of her fascination for the girl in front of her. There were more pressing matters to attend to, after all. “Do you know what you've just agreed on? If you lose, you might never see your mistress again.”
“Yes, the pride of my benefactors is at stake. I can't let this go.” Then, Rina turned to the smith who had challenged her. “I have to recreate a cut as deep as yours on the undamaged pupped, right?”
Upon hearing Rina's determined words, the man pushed his confusion to the back of his mind and concentrated on the situation at hand, which was his bet with the little maid. “Yes, and the stakes are as I mentioned earlier. If you win, I will bow my head and apologise for insulting your benefactors. If you lose, you will stop working as a maid for the Dragonherz and come to my shop and work here in the store as our poster girl.”
“Can I hit the dummy more than once?”
At first, the man was confused as to what Rina meant by her question. But after thinking about it for a while, he was able to understand her intention. “It's fine with me. But I didn't muster up that much strength to get this deep cut on the puppet. In fact, I think it's harder to hit the same spot multiple times to deepen the cut, but you're free to try if you want to.”
Nodding at the man's words, Rina picked up her sword from the ground, unsheathed it, placed the scabbard on the ground, and approached the undamaged, wooden puppet next to the one the man had cut earlier. Then, she assumed her stance by lowering her centre of mass slightly and pointing the end of her sword at the dummy. Afterwards, she closed her eyes to calm down her breathing.
A split second later, her red eyes shot open again and she leaped at the wooden dummy at a speed that was barely visible to an untrained eye. When she was within striking distance of the dummy she slashed at it once. But because she had only stopped her leap after hitting the puppet, it was now behind her. So, she turned around and used the momentum of her rotation to strike the dummy a second time. This was quickly followed by a third and fourth slash.
It did surprise her that she hadn't felt any resistance from the puppet so far, but that didn't stop her from going for the fifth and final attack of her combination. To do so, she jumped back two metres before plunging forward again and swinging her sword at the wooden dummy as she passed it.
Landing safely on her feet after her last attack, Rina picked up the scabbard to sheathe her sword back again. Only then, she turned around to verify whether or not she had won the bet.
“...”
When she saw the training dummy, or rather what remained of it, she could feel sweat running down her back. After all, the state, in which the puppet was, was not what she had imagined.
'H-h-h-h-have I just destroyed their training puppet?'