I kept following the woman, and I noticed, she still carried the sword. No scabbard or anything, just casually griping it and swaying it as she walked. I was... perplexed, to say the least.

“Umm… Are you not going to put it away?” I asked with confusion.

“This?” She lifted the sword. “Not really, it’s impossible.” She seemed somewhat sad.

“Why?” I mean, that sounds silly.

She did not seem to expect me to keep persuading and scratched her head as we walked. “Well, you see. It’s a cursed item. It’s impossible for me to get rid of it.” She dropped it on the ground. The sword twitched and then came back to her hand. “See?” I awkwardly nodded as we walked.

The sword seemed rather unique. I decided to inspect it out of boredom and seeking discovery.

[ Zeil’s Lament ⁠— Legendary (Cursed) ⁠— The prized possession of a legendary lord; assassinated and stolen from him. He swore on his soul to get it back, even if it was the last thing he did.]

‘How ironic…’ I muttered.

“Hmm?” Did she hear me? She looked at me and then thought for a second and kept walking. The lady kind of heard me? Well, whatever, that is a very interesting sword. Basically he swore to get it back, but instead, it's unretrievable. Ironic. Sadly, the skill does not provide detailed explanations and only core details. Which is good and bad. I stared fixedly at the sword trying to figure out something.

The lady noticed my increasing curiosity for her sword as we walked, for some reason she did not say anything about it. I kept looking at the sword, I noticed that even though it was a silver blade; whenever it reached a shadow it became grey, whenever it reflected light on its surface, it would display some type of fractal rune pattern. It was… pretty. I wondered if I could make something as pretty as that sword, but, I did not really know how to make such an effect happen. Would engraving the runes and then applying a special enchantment do the trick? I mean, enchanting weapons with special effects is possible. I just wonder how is it done? I mean, before it was kind of like a button press.

“This is where I leave you, girl.” She nonchalantly said as we stood in front of the unmovable pair castle guards, with the same attitude she patted me and turned back to the guards. One of them bowed and escorted her inside the castle, the other one stood in front of me to block me.

“Umm… Thanks for saving me…” I sheepishly waved at her as she walked across the bridge. She waved back and smiled at me. The guard looked at me and waited for something.

“If you don’t have business here, I need you to leave.” He firmly commanded me.

“Ah, yes… One second.” I pulled the coin or whatever the thing was.

The guard took it off my hand and examined it with a discerning eye, he gave it back and moved away as he opened the gate once again. I thanked him even though he did not reply, I went inside the castle towards the garden. First thing I noticed was, the atmosphere was somewhat tense, even though I literally saw no one, it just seemed desolate and grim. But that didn’t concern me. I walked through the garden and saw a few gardeners. They seemed confused as I strode through it, but I didn't particularly care either, I wasn't really bothering them.

Finally, I stood in front of the forge door. I heard some hammering. Not willing to wait much longer seeing someone was already working; I opened the hulking door without much problem and entered; closing it after I was inside.

“Oh, you are here!” The dwarf said with slight happiness. “Want to join the craftsmen guild?”

“Eh…” So sudden. “I don’t know…” I really didn’t know, besides, don’t I need a license for being smithing in general?

He sighed. “Whatever, you are in the guild now.” He threw something at me, it was a card. I managed to get a hold of it and inspected it. It was yet another guild card, and it also had a dog tag attached, it was black and looked to be made out of glass. I started reading the guild card and my eyes widened.

“You… W-Why did you do this?! H-How did you do this?! W-Whe—” My face was bright red.

“You don’t like it?" He interrupted with slight worry. "The silver-haired girl said you would love it.” I am going to strangle her… “Don’t worry, you are an obsidian ranked smith now. Besides, you even get to have two guild cards for separate identities, isn’t that amazing? Even though it’s kind of a shady thing... but I digress! Dan agreed, I did as well. So there you go.” I want to go poof...

My legs lost force and I dropped on the ground. ‘This is meaningless… Why would I want to be a renowned blacksmith that is known as ‘Dark shadow’. Besides, that’s not even the real meaning of my name Aizen got it wrong! It’s… Black darkness... Ahhh! Regardless of how it sounds. I want to disappear! This is shameful, too much to bear… I-I… How am I going to face Ari if she ever finds out what my name truly means… Impossible. This is impossible!’

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Oi girly, why are you looking so down? I have to say…” He flashed me a bright smile. “That name is really cool. I am jealous…”

“I-Is it?” I asked with a bitter smile.

“Yes, it is! Be proud!” You know, if I was fourteen years old, I would. But I am technically an adult at this point. Ahhhh… This is depressing... I wobbly got up and made my way to the seats from yesterday. I sat down and looked at the sky with sadness and regret.

“Are you going to look at the sky all day?” I frowned hearing the dwarf.

“It hasn’t even been a minute, shut it.” I coldly replied his question, I wasn’t really in the mood for anything like this. The dwarf did not seem to have time to bother me as he started working on weapons, I noticed that this time there was more than one anvil. Was one for me? How thoughtful. But, I did not really know how to feel about being an anonymous obsidian ranked smith. I mean, what happens now? Do I sell my work, do I just smith and think about it later? The later sounds like literally the worst way to deal with this.

I looked at the sky, watching the slowly passing clouds on the nice and azure background. Air passing by, lightly brushing against my skin, refreshing and relaxing as ever. Birds chirping and flying about, rhythmic metal hammering and crackling from the furnace. It was so peaceful and so relaxing, I felt like I could stay in such a place forever. Unfortunately, I knew it wasn’t possible, but I still enjoyed it. It was nice.

I thought about the request Aizen made yesterday. Scale armor was it? I mean, doing the scales could be done with a mithril sheet or something. The problem is where to mount the scales, I am pretty sure they could always be mounted on cloth, however, Aizen is always wearing her coat. Wouldn’t just mounting them in chainmail armor achieve the same thing. I could totally see a way to pierce the scales into the chainmail rings. Hmm... I am just overthinking it, I can just make the armor out of scales connecting it with rings. The problem is making the rings for the armor… I am not looking forward to it at all. How many rings does one need? I am pretty sure it’s somewhere around from twenty-thousand to thirty-thousand… Sigh. I am already feeling lazy⁠—

BOOOM!

“W-What?!” My thought process was completely shattered by an ear-piercing explosion. Before I knew it, I was on the ground looking at the cold and fresh grass. The walls trembled, it took me a second to realize, but I was thrown off my seat by the shaking. The dwarf was somewhat startled for a second but looked my way.

“I heard that they are replacing the royal mage leader or whatever it was. Apparently they make every new mage use their strongest spell. Although… I wonder, what kind of spell we would need to make something like this…” He shrugged. “Don’t mind it too much, the king wouldn’t recruit a mage that he can’t beat.” Haha… What kind of mage would be able to cause an explosion like that?!

I got up from the ground and wiped the dirt from my face. That explosion was way too much, however, it got me off my seat. So I guess I should just make something instead. What will it be? Should I get started on the armor? Does it even need to be armor? If she wants it for the sake of looking like scales, I could just make her scale gauntlets instead. I mean, I am sure she would like them better anyway. Yeah, I will do that. It saves me time as well.

I moved back to the forge and opened the chest that had the metals inside. “Hey dwarf, can I use the mithril here?” He stopped hammering.

“Normally I would say you can’t, but honestly, it is not my mithril... So... I don’t care.” Hee shrugged.”I can just report we ran out of mithril and the chest will be refilled. So, go ahead.” How straightforward… Alright then. I paused as I lifted the mithril ingot. I had no iron wire to chain into the chainmail or rather scalemail now.

“Dwarf do you have a drawing plate?” I asked with zero hope. He stopped his hammering and looked at me with confusion.

“Well, yes. Why do you need one? We don’t even make wires here.” He had one!

“I want to make chainmail.” He became confused.

“Chainmail?” He thought for a second. “What’s that?” Eh…

Wasn’t chainmail around in medieval times? Then what do they use? Leather, or just platedr?!

“Um… What kind of armor do people use then?” I asked with slight fear.

“Well, that’s obvious!” he exclaimed. “Full plated armor!”

What?! “What do you use below the plated armor then?” I asked with confusion.

He thought and looked at me as if I was stupid. “Well, clothing of course!”

Huh?! “But, what about the connections for the legs and arms...”

“Ah, those? Well, you normally use enchanted clothes. It’s easier for the person inside to suffer from the blunt force of the hit than to bleed or get something chopped off! Of course, we are just talking about average people. If we are talking about the king, then… No amount of Rare armor or enchanted clothing will stop your arm from getting chopped off.”

So, basically... Technology is kind of stale because of enchantment? So, who needs a different type of sword to do the job when you can just enchant it to do whatever job? Is that how this happened? Sigh… What a problem. So chainmail doesn’t exist? Well, whatever. It’s not like it’s better than plated armor.

“I see… Let me just borrow your drawing plate. I am going to make chainmail anyway. It’s an armor made out of interconnected rings that tends to be rather light and is worn below plated armor.” I concisely explained the concept to the dwarf. He laughed as he looked for something near the back of the forge.

“I see. Just have fun with your silly ideas then!” He returned back to hammering. I noticed there was a hefty metal plate on the ground with a lot of holes. I mean a lot of various sized holes. It was a drawing plate, for well… Drawing metal. I wanted to make the wire for the scalemail, or chainmail… or whatever. Making the scales will be another challenge, but I will worry about it when I am done drawing the iron wire.

I made my way to the chest and started working on an iron ingot. Heating it up and slowly but surely hammering it; flattening it and making it slim and long, then hammering it on its sides over and over again, trying to get it symmetrical. It took just a few minutes to make it into a long iron rod, I just needed somewhere to anneal it, or just a place for it to slowly cool down. I noticed there was a pile of sand somewhere in the distance. I decided it would work as insulation for the metal even though it could make the sand somewhat crystalize. But, all for the sake of the armor, besides, how bad could it be?