Chapter 127: Interlude – Some Things Just Overflow
After that, meaning after I was thoroughly ridiculed as a Barbarian (Barbaroi).
Now, for our real purpose, Erika, myself, and Shara—who tagged along for some reason—went to Tepe’s shop.
According to Shara, she had the day off.
I thought a Subjugation faction Sister was practically on vacation year-round when not partying with adventurers, but I kept my mouth shut.
More importantly, we had important business: making Erika’s ring.
Incidentally, when we asked Tepe to do it, her first words were, naturally, “Are you alright in the head, husband?”
Asking a Weapon Shop owner to make a ring, I suppose it can’t be helped that she’d say that.
Still, hearing it from Tepe stung quite a bit.
After all, she’s the kind of woman who sleeps sprawled out like a corpse on the shop floor and emerges screaming from under the floorboards.
She can make special swords that can channel Physical Enhancement magic, and Erika said she’d entrust Solntseri’s Sacred Sword maintenance to her if needed. Her skills are undeniable, but to put it mildly, she’s the eccentric type. To be blunt, she’s both an eccentric and an oddball.
Being Shara’s friend confirms it.
Incidentally, when I mentioned wanting to set the jewel from the Blackened Jewelhead Dragon, she asked with a straight face, “How many screws have you got loose in your head?”
That woman… saying it with a straight face. Unforgivable.
Even I understand that asking a weaponsmith to make a ring is unreasonable, that it’s out of line.
But, Erika said it. She wants to wear it all the time, even normally.
That means a normal ring is out of the question.
It’s simply a matter of durability.
It might not be a problem if her fighting style was purely magic-based, but Erika also uses a sword.
A normal ring made of silver or gold could easily break just from gripping a sword while using Physical Enhancement.
“I thought perhaps you could make such a ring,” Erika said.
Those words from Erika must have struck a chord with Tepe, because she started writhing and acting strangely, shouting, “Well, who else but me could do it! Damn it! You smooth talker!” She really is an eccentric and an oddball.
And so, Tepe gladly accepted the request to make the ring.
“As soon as possible, please,” Erika added.
Those words from Erika made Tepe turn pale.
She has no mercy when pushing her demands onto others. In moments like these, I’m reminded that Erika is also a noble.
And that’s how we ended up giving Tepe the jewel dropped by the Jewelhead Dragon and a down payment.
As we left the shop, Tepe was shouting, “Leaving something undoubtedly one-of-a-kind like this here means I won’t be able to sleep peacefully! What kind of punishment game is this?!” but we ignored her.
Only Shara looked on with eyes pitying a kindred spirit.
*
Having finished his work in the morning, he dedicated the afternoon to training.
It was still too new to be called a habit, but since making his decision, he hadn’t neglected it once.
Rank 2 adventurer, Ezz Hagrippa, carefully placed his feet on the ground and let out a huge breath.
The area before the northern exit of the Hecate Barrier, being on the Demon Realm side, had no fields or anything else—just a grassland with a road leading into the Demon Realm.
It was a perfect place for someone like Ezz trying to train their Physical Enhancement.
Ezz had raised the intensity of his Physical Enhancement to the very limit of his control, so he couldn’t let his guard down for even a moment.
When he became an adventurer and learned Physical Enhancement, he wondered why everyone didn’t try to learn it.
It would make farm work so much easier, he thought.
But now he understood well.
This could kill you. One wrong step, and you die.
Whether you try to simply walk and end up leaping to your death, or try to loosen your neck muscles and end up breaking your own neck—there were probably many ways to die, but you could die quite easily.
Ezz was grateful for the good fortune of having only ever used Physical Enhancement at the minimum strength necessary for his Magic Stone Fragment hunting until now.
While feeling conflicted about being saved by his own laziness and pathetic nature, Ezz gently wiped away the sweat beading on his skin.
He was probably truly fortunate. Those who weren’t must have died.
He flinched at the power of this magic, so different from the life magic taught in the village, permeated with a thick scent of violence.
He flinched, but Ezz had no intention of backing down.
He had already cast aside that version of himself. What surfaced in his mind was the scene he witnessed in Noel Jeun’s Forest of Fools.
The back of the human who faced the Dragon alone, Azure Flames erupting around him.
In a situation where running, retreating, abandoning others, or ignoring them would have been permissible.
He chose none of those, left no one behind, and faced the Dragon head-on—the image of the Masked hero was seared into his mind.
Ezz was aware that he harbored an aspiration far beyond his reach.
He would probably fall to his knees, falter, and give up on the path to that aspiration.
He might despair before the heights he could never reach, but so what?
Compared to never having walked the path at all, calling such despair ‘despair’ would be presumptuous.
When I fall to my knees and crawl on the ground, I will surely be proud of that despair.
No, that’s wrong.
I will become the kind of person who can think that way.
Ezz swung the sword that, until very recently, had meant nothing more to him than a mere weapon.
Now, that sword was an adventurer’s sword.
Though it was an old, worn-out, mass-produced sword.
It was the sword of an adventurer who hunted Monsters for the sake of the powerless.
＊＊＊＊＊Author’s Note＊＊＊＊＊
Thank you always for the comments, likes, stars, etc.
All of it serves as the author’s motivation.
I forcibly squeezed in parts that I couldn’t fit into the main story no matter how I tried as an interlude.