Having finished inspecting the hammer at the Guild warehouse, Rei walked through town together with Set.
With the Cyclops's hammer now in his possession, he was curious about how far the project of reforging Noise's Magic Sword into a spear had progressed, and so he made his way toward Pamidor's workshop.
Going directly to Asimov's workshop would have been the most logical choice, since Asimov was the one at the center of this project. But Rei figured it would be nice to stop by Pamidor's shop first by way of greeting, and headed in that direction.
"Gurururu"
Set, walking beside Rei, purred in a good mood.
The stir-fried dish of nuts and meat bought from a street stall earlier had certainly been delicious, which likely contributed to his cheerfulness. But part of that good mood also came from the anticipation of meeting Pamidor's only son, Kumito.
Set generally enjoyed playing with people, but playing with children like Kumito made him especially happy.
(Are their mental ages about the same?)
Rei found himself wondering that as he and Set continued onward. After entering a back alley and walking for a short while, the target shop came into view.
"Ah, it's Set! Yay, what's up? Long time no see! I haven't seen you around lately, have you been well?"
"Guruu!"
Kumito, who had been playing with other children in front of the shop, was the first to spot Set and ran straight toward him.
The other children chased after Kumito, running toward Set as well.
As the children swarmed Set, he watched them quietly. Before long, they flung themselves at him—no, they hugged him.
"Set, have you been well?"
"They said you came back yesterday, so you should've come to play sooner!"
"Um, Set... do you want to eat this dried meat? It's tasty!"
"Ah, then I'll give you this! Nuts!"
Watching the children pet Set and offer him food, Rei headed toward Pamidor's shop.
"Kumito, I have some things to discuss with Pamidor, so look after Set for me."
"Yeah, got it!"
Kumito replied happily to Rei's words.
Rei gave Kumito a light wave and stepped inside the shop.
However, there was no one in the shop area.
Well, to be precise, there were signs of someone in the forge at the back, but Pamidor himself was not present in the storefront.
"...Isn't it a bit careless if a thief or something comes in?"
Rei muttered this, but immediately dismissed the thought.
Anyone who knew what kind of person Pamidor was would never even think of breaking into this shop.
Pamidor was stubborn, but he didn't go around raising his hand against people for no reason.
However, his face was extremely ferocious. It bore the look of a bandit boss—and not some petty bandit leader from around here, but rather a great chieftain who commanded hundreds or even thousands of bandits. No one would find that impression strange.
Rei did have various feelings about his own current face, which sometimes got him mistaken for a woman, but he was at least thankful to Zephyle that it wasn't a vicious one like Pamidor's.
If Rei had a face as ferocious as Pamidor's, combined with his own personality, he would undoubtedly have ended up living a life embroiled in even more trouble than he already was.
...Though even now, he was plenty embroiled in trouble as it was.
"Hmph, a thief? If something like that showed up, I'd test my freshly forged weapons on them."
From the back of the shop, from the direction of the forge, a single figure appeared with that voice.
That ferocious face was, as expected, not something one could get used to so easily.
If a child who knew nothing about Pamidor had seen that face, it wouldn't have been strange for them to cry out in terror.
(Thinking about it that way, it's impressive that other children played with Kumito in front of this shop. Or could it be that Pamidor is actually popular with children?)
While thinking quite rude thoughts, Rei raised his hand toward Pamidor and opened his mouth, making sure not to let those thoughts show on his face.
"Long time no see."
"Ahh. I heard you'd been taken into some noble's service, but it seems that wasn't the case."
The matter of Maruka coming to Gilm had spread to some extent.
The fact that someone came to Gilm while snow was falling was already unusual enough on its own, but she had arrived in a carriage so expensive that an ordinary noble couldn't even use one. That was only natural.
Given that such a carriage had come to pick up Rei, it was neither strange nor surprising that a rumor had sprung up saying he'd entered a noble's service.
"Close, but not quite. I wasn't recruited into Duke Quento's House or anything. I was just temporarily hired as a mock battle instructor at the Officer Academy."
"...You, who caused that huge uproar with the King's Faction Nobles, joining the Duke Quento household, which is a prominent power even within the King's Faction?"
Pamidor had properly understood just how much of a commotion Rei had caused, and voiced his doubt.
"Well, various things happened. And yesterday I came back."
"Ahh, I know that. It became quite the talk of the town too, the kind of thing where everyone in the know was talking about it. They say you brought a woman back with you?"
"...I won't deny that, but somehow I feel like the meaning of the word 'woman' you're using is different from what I have in mind. Well, putting that aside for now. I went out today as reinforcements for the party that went to subjugate the Cyclops, but..."
The words that came from Rei's mouth brought an expression of exasperation to Pamidor's ferocious face.
"You just got back yesterday. What the hell makes you so combative already?"
"No, I didn't go fight the Cyclops on my own initiative. An acquaintance of mine took a Cyclops subjugation request and went into the forest, only to find five Cyclops that should have been acting alone all bunched together. She came asking for reinforcements."
"Cyclops bunched together? ...Well now, that's quite a rare occurrence."
"Well, as a result of that... ah, this is the shop floor so it's a bit dangerous. Sorry, but can I head into the workshop area? The floor there isn't like this one, right?"
"Huh? Ah, well, I don't mind, but..."
Pamidor, caught off guard by the abrupt remark, nonetheless guided Rei to the workshop.
The workshop at the back of the shop had earth spread over the floor, and as if to prove that forging had been taking place until recently, heat still lingered in the air.
"Whoa, it's hot. This must be rough in the summer, huh?"
"That's right. But if you're working as a blacksmith, that much is par for the course. So, what are you going to show me?"
"This, right here."
In response to Pamidor's words, Rei pulled a massive hammer out of the Misty Ring.
Pamidor's eyes went wide at the hammer that appeared beside Rei.
Naturally so. It was by no means a size that an ordinary human could use.
"This is..."
"It's the hammer that a Rare Species believed to have been leading the Cyclops was using. Can you tell?"
Without finishing his sentence, Rei muttered meaningfully. Pamidor reached out and touched the hammer.
Then, after a few seconds, Pamidor reflexively turned his gaze toward Rei.
What floated in his eyes was sheer astonishment.
There had been plenty of surprises in what Rei had told him today, but an astonishment even stronger than all of that was written across Pamidor's face.
"Could it be... a Magic Item!?"
"Correct. To see through it in such a short time is impressive, as expected."
"Wait a minute. What you defeated was a Cyclops, right?"
"To be precise, a Rare Species or High-ranking Species of Cyclops."
"Why are you being vague about it? Didn't you bring the corpse back?"
"The corpse itself vanished in the middle of the fight. Partly due to this Magic Item's effect, too."
Unable to grasp the meaning of Rei's words, Pamidor tilted his head.
(I suppose that's understandable. Normally, the idea of being controlled by a Magic Item isn't something anyone would even consider.)
Rei explained the hammer's abilities to Pamidor, who wore an expression somehow charming despite his ferocious face—an expression that might make one feel an unexpected sense of endearment, though perhaps not everyone would feel that way.
The ability to generate lightning at the struck location, grant high Regeneration Ability to its wielder, and ultimately spread root-like structures throughout the user's body to suppress consciousness and control the body. Those abilities.
"...How should I put it? You really went and brought back a Magic Item this powerful and malicious."
To Pamidor, who distanced himself from the hammer as if touching it was repulsive, Rei spoke in a reassuring tone.
"The abilities this Magic Item had, like controlling an opponent's body or spreading roots inside them, are already gone, so don't worry. When it tried to take over my body, it was instead swept away by my magic power and vanished."
"Overpowered it with magic power... just what kind of magic power do you have?"
"Hmm, well. So-so?"
Of course, it wasn't an amount of magic power that could be expressed with a word like "so-so," but Rei judged that mentioning he had an excessive amount would only needlessly cause a commotion, and so answered that way.
He trusted Pamidor, so even if his magic power was an abnormal quantity, Pamidor probably wouldn't care that much about it... or so he thought.
Pamidor seemed to harbor some doubt at Rei's demeanor, but since Rei deliberately chose not to elaborate, Pamidor judged there must be some kind of reason and did not press the matter further.
That sort of discretion was probably the reason Rei found Pamidor easy to deal with.
"Well, let's set aside my magic power for the time being. The job I asked you about before, reforging Noise's Magic Sword into a spear, how is that coming along?"
"The one mainly working on that is basically Asimov. I'm just helping out."
"I figured. Well, even so, I thought I'd at least drop by to greet you. And also... I was thinking about whether this hammer could be incorporated into the spear."
At Rei's words, Pamidor wore an expression that said, "What is this guy talking about?"
He tried to say something, but the words wouldn't form. He opened and closed his mouth several times, and after about ten seconds had passed, he finally managed to speak.
"Are you sane? How the hell are you going to use that hammer as a spear? What, are you thinking of attaching a spearhead to the tip of the hammer? Well, just looking at the hammer part, the offensive power would be high, and the Intimidation factor would be no laughing matter, but..."
"...Huh?"
This time, it was Rei's turn to be unable to understand what was being said, falling into momentary confusion.
Pamidor witnessed a rather rare sight of Rei with a dumbfounded expression, but Rei, without noticing Pamidor's state, hurriedly turned his gaze toward the hammer.
After carefully examining the hammer, he turned back to Pamidor.
"If you melted down a portion of this hammer and used it as material for the spear Asimov is working on, could you give that spear abilities like generating lightning, or granting Regeneration Ability to its wielder, or effects like that..."
"I don't think it can be done. Well, to be precise, I don't know for sure, but at the very least, with my knowledge, something like that is considered impossible. In the first place, what you're using as material for the spear is a Magic Sword, right? In other words, a Magic Item. Mixing yet another Magic Item into that is..."
"...You're kidding."
For Rei, since he had been unable to obtain the Magic Stone or materials from the red Cyclops, this Magic Item hammer was the greatest reward he could obtain from this whole incident.
But since a hammer of this size was impractical for Rei to use normally, he had been thinking of using it as material when reforging Noise's Magic Sword into a Magic Spear. That idea had now been fundamentally overturned.
"Is it absolutely impossible no matter what?"
"I'm not deeply versed in Alchemy, but a blacksmith's power is essential when creating weapons like a Magic Sword or a Magic Spear. In fact, I've forged several such weapons before. Judging from that experience..."
He stopped his words there and shook his head.
That gesture expressed Pamidor's thoughts more clearly than anything he could have said.
But, having noticed that his words had shocked Rei, Pamidor thought for a moment and then, with a sigh, opened his mouth.
"It's impossible for me, but Asimov might be able to manage something about that. Whatever his personality may look like, he's got real skill."
"Really!?"
"Might, I said. I can't say for certain. But you were planning to go ask how the spear was coming along after this anyway, right? Then why not ask him at that time?"
"Got it. Then I'll go right now. Come on, Pamidor, get ready too."
Pamidor tried to say something to Rei, who declared this, but apparently judged that whatever he said would be useless. He let out a sigh as if giving up and shook his head.
"Fine, I'll get ready right away so wait. I had things to bring to Asimov's place too. I was actually planning to go after closing the shop, but..."
And so, having finished preparing to temporarily close the shop, Pamidor stepped outside.
He told Kumito, who had been playing there, that he was stepping out for a bit, and then headed toward Asimov's place together with Rei and Set.