“My apologies, sir. Most of these quests are for adventurers of a higher rank…”

“I see… And how about this one?”

“I—I already told you, sir. That’s a job listing for a noodle restaurant. That’s not a request for adventurers. You didn’t get that from in here...”

“I see…”

One Swing sighed. He had come to the Adventurers Guild in Zwieback in hope of finding a suitably long quest that would help him on his path to becoming S-Rank, but it seemed all the quests geared towards F-Rank adventurers like himself were depressingly short.

“Well, how about this one…?” As One Swing decided to go over the stack of available quests he had brought to the reception desk once again, the lady working the desk’s eye twitched.

“I told you, sir…” The woman’s forced smile was beginning to falter and her fingernails had started to dig into the wood of the desk between them. “This expedition team has requested C-Rank adventurers or higher to escort them on their trek up Mount Kyuri-Cumber. You’re not a high enough rank to—”

"E-excuse me!" A sudden voice from below the desk interrupted the woman, drawing both her and One Swing's attention.

Peering down, they found—what appeared to be—a small child, waving her coal-smudged hands up above the desk. Her hair was a messy orange, and her face was covered in the same soot stains as her hands, along with the worn-out overalls she was wearing as well. One Swing recognized her. It was the girl who had been held hostage on the street the other day.

“Ah, sorry,” the guild lady said, smiling down at the little girl. “Children shouldn’t really be in here. This is the Adventurers Guild, and adventurers can get a little rowdy in here at times. It might not be safe for you. Are your parents around?”

“I’m not a child!” she snapped back, slapping her little hands on the desk. “I’m a dwarf!”

“Wha—?!” Upon realizing the child was not a child, but a dwarf instead, One Swing immediately reached for the handle of his weapon. “D-dammit…” Palming his empty hands over his bare shoulders, he realized that he had left his sword outside along the street. As per the agreement One Swing was forced to accept in order to be let out of jail, One Swing was no longer allowed to carry his gargantuan weapon inside buildings anymore.

As One Swing turned to collect his sword so that he could strike the dwarf down, the small woman stepped in front of him, stretching her arms out to stop him.

“Wait!” she said. “I have a quest for you!”

One Swing stopped. He was about to punt the small woman out of his way, but the sudden offer of a quest intrigued him. If only because his current lack of interesting quests had been an issue that had been plaguing him for a good while now.

“… Will it involve a great deal of length?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at the woman.

“A great deal of—? I—I don’t really know what that means, but…” The dwarf pondered in thought for a moment. “You’ll be helping me with something I’ve been working on, and that’s pretty long, I guess?”

“… How long?”

The dwarf returned his question with a wide grin. “The longest!”

One Swing smirked.

“I accept!”

After their short exchange, the dwarf took a minute to argue with the woman at the desk. Pulling up a chair to stand on, she tore something off the noticeboard of quests and then slammed it down against the desk between them. With a sigh, the guild lady gave a shrug and a reluctant nod of her head, and the dwarf quickly jumped down from her chair, and continued on her way.

Already waiting outside with his one-hundred-and-sixty-four foot long blade slung over his shoulder, trailing fifty meters up into the sky, One Swing followed along behind the dwarf as she stepped out of the Adventurers Guild.

“What was that argument about?” One Swing inquired, slowing his gait so that he didn’t pass the tiny stride of the dwarf he was being led down the streets by.

“Hm? Oh, I’ve been waiting for someone at the guild to accept the quest I posted but I haven’t had any luck. Apparently they had limited it to B-Rank adventurers only. I told them you were going to take it on instead and they said it was too dangerous for an F-Rank. But you seem pretty strong, so I insisted that it was my quest, and I’ll hire whoever I want for it! And so they gave you the job! Congrats!”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“I see…”

One Swing did not like dwarves. The last and only time he had ever met one was when he was a child—twenty-four years ago—when he waited two hours to ride one of their contraptions at the fair and was told he wasn't tall enough to do so. From that moment on, One Swing harboured a deep distrust for the race of people and strived to become the longest in order to spite them.

Additionally, they were also very short. And, for reasons only comprehensible to One Swing himself, One Swing hated short things.

Continuing to follow the dwarf, the two of them soon found themselves at the town gates, strolling past the guards on duty and outside of the town.

“… Where are you leading me, dwarf?” One Swing asked, suspiciously eyeing the back of the woman’s orange head as she began to follow along the outside of the town’s walls.

“Hm? Ah, sorry.” The woman gave a short glance behind her, and then nudged her head forward. “We’re close, it’s just a little ways ahead.”

Following along the outside of Zwieback’s high walls, they eventually found themselves at their destination.

Right outside the town, a large area of flattened dirt was being used as some kind of building site of sorts. The area was scattered with tools, crates, as well as piles of long strips of lumber and metal. However, as One Swing could see, there were no workers around.

“What happened here?” One Swing asked, looking around the empty worksite. “Where did all the workers disappear to? And what were they building here?”

“Hah. Probably disappeared to the tavern, I’d guess!” the woman scoffed. “As for what they were building here…” Climbing atop a crate, the woman crossed her arms in front of her dirty overalls and grinned down at One Swing with a smug look. “It’s a railway!”

One Swing tilted his head to the side. “Railway? I’ve never heard of that before.”

“That’s because I haven’t finished building it yet!” Jumping down from her crate, she plodded her little legs across the dirt, gesturing for One Swing to follow behind again. Navigating her way further in, the plodding of dirt beneath their boots soon turned to the crunch of stone as they found themselves atop a floor of gravel.

“Here it is,” she said with a satisfied nod, coming to a stop at something lying across the stoney ground. “What’dya think of my railway?”

“Hm…?” One Swing looked down at the thing at his feet. “I suppose it’s… Wha—?!”

One Swing’s eyes went wide as he followed them along the tracks of wood and metal hammered into the gravelled ground. Either way he looked, the tracks seemed to stretch off into the distance for miles without end.

“W-what is this fantastic construction?” he asked. “What is its purpose?”

“Like I told you, it’s a railway, and I’m glad you like it!” The woman shot him a wide grin. “As for what it does… It’s like a road that’s supposed to take people all across the world. Right now it only goes back home— Ah, back to Mudkayek, I mean. A dwarf city. The other end is supposed to lead to Gran Torte, but… We’ve run into trouble. That’s why everybody’s taking the day off. Or, the week off, seeing as how long I’ve been waiting for the Adventurers Guild to help. That’s where you come in!”

“H-how…?”

“Hm? Ah, well, a monster appeared further up the tracks and—”

“How does it take people all across the world?!”

Still fascinated by the track of rail in front of him, One Swing turned to the dwarf, a wondrous gleam in his eyes.

“O-oh, that’s what you mean… Well, I haven’t made it yet, but I’ve already sketched up the blueprints for something I’ve called the rail engine. It’ll be like a big carriage, designed to roll across these tracks here. It’ll be a lot faster and more efficient than a horse-driven carriage though, and you’ll be able to pack a whole lot more people in it too! Hundreds of— No. Thousands of people! You can just keep adding more and more carriages to the back! It’ll be super long, and it’ll travel the whole length of the world! That’s what I hope anyway. What do you think— Huh?”

The woman turned back to the man, only to find him collapsed to his knees, tears streaming down his face. “

"W-what’s wrong?! Are you okay?!”

“… ride it?” Still on his knees, One Swing muttered back an incomprehensible response.

“W-what was that?”

“Will I… be able to ride it?” he asked, tears still streaming down his face.

“S-sure? I don’t see why not? In fact…” The woman looked up at the man’s sword, trailing high up into the air across his shoulder. “You could probably strap that sword of yours to the top if you wanted to as well.”

“…”

At that moment, One Swing had an epiphany.

Maybe dwarves aren’t so bad after all?

Little though she was, this was a woman who longed to bring length to the world. She had left the comfort of her dwarven city to lay the foundations of a system that would span the entirety of the world. A railway. And on that railway, long carriages—filled with people—would travel its great lengths atop her ‘rail engine’.

It was the most magical thing that One Swing had ever heard of, and the sheer joy and excitement it stirred within his heart caused him to weep.

Eventually standing to his feet once again, One Swing dried the tears from his face and turned back to the woman who seemed to have an awkward expression on her face for some reason.

This was a dwarf who had earned One Swing’s respect.

“Tell me, dwarf,” he began, before bowing his head low. “What is your name?”

"H-huh..?" The woman looked a little taken aback for a moment, before breaking out into another grin. “It’s Condie! Condie Mints!”