The Unwanted Undead Adventurer: Volume 5 Read online

  “I see. You should be able to straighten out your registration at the adventurer’s guild somehow too, so it should be okay,” Lorraine said and nodded, knowing how many holes there were in the guild’s registration process.

  I nodded back and approached Alize as she looked over the store’s equipment. “See anything you like?” I asked.

  Alize chose not to touch upon my conversation with Lorraine. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think I could use anything too heavy.”

  She looked to a hulking greatsword. It would have been rough to handle, even for me. I was strong enough to hold it at this point, and could likely even swing it, but I didn’t have the courage to use it as a solo adventurer. Alize would no doubt be crushed under its weight.

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about these enormous things. Besides, this blacksmith you’re about to meet is a veteran. I’d ask him for advice before making any decisions.”

  “Really? Will you and Professor Lorraine help me too?” Alize inquired, sounding like the disciple she was.

  I showed my approval. “Of course.”

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  “You sure you should do that?” Clope asked as he walked in. I assumed he meant to ask why I was showing my face.

  “When I’m outside, I generally cover my whole face like this,” I responded and fiddled with the mask to reshape it to cover everything, painting my face to look like a skull.

  “Never realized that mask was anything special. Hey, take it off and show it to me,” Clope demanded.

  After he mentioned it, I realized I most likely never told Clope about the mask. He was a talented blacksmith with an eye for more than weapons and armor, but I speculated this mask was too unusual for him. He might have been able to tell it was some sort of magic item, but he would never figure out its effects. I researched it myself and asked Lorraine for help to no avail, after all. I doubted anyone knew what it was.

  “Take it off if you can. Then I’ll be happy to show it to you,” I smirked. He couldn’t see my face, but my eyes showed I was smiling.

  Up to the challenge, Clope rolled up his sleeves. “What? Alright, if you insist,” he said and approached to put his hands on each side of the mask.

  Clope yanked with all his might, but it didn’t budge. All he managed to do was pull on my skin and hurt my face. As with most blacksmiths, Clope had strong arms. Creating equipment that could survive throughout adventures demanded a fair amount of power. Clope was skinny at a glance, yet muscular and tough. And this was the man tugging on an object stuck to my face, so you can imagine the agony. But I was a Vampire of sorts, so my endurance and restorative abilities were high. My skin would have been torn off otherwise. For a moment I was glad I became a monster, but after I thought about it rationally, that was also the only reason I wore this mask.

  “I think that’s enough,” I told Clope after I got fed up.

  “Huh? Oh,” he sighed and took his hands off me. “But dang, it’s really stuck on there. What the hell’s with that mask?”

  “I don’t know. I believe it was bought from a street vendor, but I haven’t been able to take it off since I put it on. At least it gives me an excuse not to remove it, and I can change its appearance, so it’s not so bad. But ideally I don’t want to have to wear this for the rest of my life.”

  Adventurers often wore masks, but I had no need for one. Besides, while I didn’t mind wearing it on adventures, the inability to take it off while sleeping or bathing was irksome. I was starting to get used to it, but if it could be removed, I would jump on the opportunity.

  “Sounds to me like it’s cursed. If it’s not too strong of a curse, a little divinity cleansing should do the trick, but you could’ve done that yourself,” Clope surmised, knowing I could use divinity.

  “I tried it. Didn’t work. Someone else even happened to do it for me, but nothing happened.” Saint Myullias had blessed my entire body with divinity, which did have a cleansing effect. But in the end, the mask stayed on. There was also Nive’s Holy Fire, but that was distinct from cleansing. In any case, it wasn’t coming off, and there was no use thinking about it.

  “So typical cleansing doesn’t work, eh?”

  “Right.”

  “Huh. Lorraine, you know a way to get it off?” Clope directed his attention to her.

  She shook her head. “If I did, I would’ve done it by now. I looked into it but didn’t find much.”

  Lorraine was also an adventurer, and while she almost always carried out requests in her robes, she did wear light armor underneath. She carried a dagger for close combat and dissection as well, so she came to this blacksmith on occasion and was acquainted with Clope.

  He looked conflicted by her answer. “Yeah? You couldn’t do it either? I’ll try and check it out a bit more,” he concluded and then looked behind us to where Alize was hiding. “So, just something for her today?”

  Alize had concealed herself because of Clope’s somewhat aggressive appearance. He was thin but intense. Once he laid his eyes on something, he never looked away. Young girls must have found him frightening.

  “Alize, it’s okay. He’s nicer than he looks. Besides, if Rentt didn’t scare you, why this ordinary man? Isn’t that silly?” Lorraine pointed out as she pushed Alize forward. If you had to pick what was scarier between a man in dark robes and a skull mask and a loud-mouthed tough guy, it might be harder than you think. They inspired different types of fear. Not that it mattered.

  “Alize, this is Clope, a blacksmith who’s been helping me out since before I became an adventurer. Like Lorraine said, he’s not as scary as he looks. He’ll be making your equipment,” I told Alize.

  She resolved herself and stepped toward him. “I’m Alize, a kid from the Second Orphanage of Maalt and a disciple of Rentt and Professor Lorraine. Nice to meet you,” she offered. She was hospitable to me too when I first came to the orphanage, so that was nothing unexpected from her. But unlike then, she was with people she could depend on, so her behavior was a bit more shy. That must have meant when I went to the orphanage, she was pushing herself past her boundaries. When I thought about how much I must have scared her, I felt bad. It was too late for that now, however.

  “Hoh, a kid that’s not scared of me. Don’t see that often. Alright, nice to meet you too. So I just need to make equipment for you, then?” Clope said and patted Alize on the head. He was always warmhearted toward women and children. That was how he got a beautiful wife like Luka. And if you looked closer at his stern face, it was rather handsome and refined.

  People used to say I had a baby face. I wondered what they’d say now. I was paler, and I felt my eyes looked sharper, so I suspected I no longer seemed so young. As for Lorraine, she was a grown woman from any angle. Whether she looked her age was hard to say, though. You could say she was an intellectual beauty of indeterminate age. It seemed like the passage of time would have no effect on her looks. It was enough to make me jealous. Not that I would age anymore either, as far as I knew.

  “Yes!” Alize shouted back at Clope.

  “Yeah, and as for the materials, I picked some up in a dungeon. Could you start by looking at those?” I chimed in.

  Clope raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? You can actually go to those dungeons now? Color me impressed. Alright, then come with me, everyone. I’ll take you to the forge,” Clope said and walked off. We followed behind him.

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  I had been to this forge many times. It featured little I hadn’t seen before, but Alize saw it differently. Her eyes sparkled as she looked around. You wouldn’t have much reason to enter a forge if you weren’t an adventurer or a knight, so her reaction was to be expected.

  Her womanhood could’ve also been a reason for her reaction. Clope let Lorraine into the forge too, so he didn’t have any holdups about that, but some blacksmiths refused to allow women into their forges. There were a plethora of reasons, but they often said that while the Blacksmithing Deity didn’t care, the Furnace D
eity was a woman who got jealous of other women. Whether the Furnace Deity was male or female was up for debate, but it wasn’t worth disputing with people over their faith. These ideas were held by many, so women seldom had the opportunity to see a forge. When I considered that, Alize’s feelings were easy to understand.

  “Leave the goods there,” Clope said and pointed to a large table. It appeared to be a stand used for processing materials, and it looked sturdy enough to hold ingots without an issue. I took the items out of my magic pouch and set them down.

  “Mana iron? That means you went to the Labyrinth of the New Moon? Or Hamdan Mine?” Clope asked while looking at the metal. Any blacksmith in this town would have to know where materials were available in the surrounding area. His knowledge of ore was comprehensive, no doubt.

  He was right to guess the Labyrinth of the New Moon, but Hamdan Mine was a small mine about two days away from Maalt. It was abandoned long ago, so only adventurers went there anymore. There was supposed to be mana iron in there still, but monsters dwelled there as well, and the tunnels had grown old and decrepit. Most of the mine’s value had been extracted, at which point it was abandoned, as far as I had heard. Even so, the only places around Maalt where mana iron could be found were the Labyrinth of the New Moon and Hamdan Mine.

  “I went to the Labyrinth of the New Moon. I picked it up on the fourth floor,” I responded.

  “The fourth floor? You were only ever able to get to maybe the second by yourself. Well, this is what makes smithing so much fun,” he said with a smile. He seemed happy about my progress. It wasn’t so much thanks to personal growth as it was a factor of me becoming a monster, but I didn’t need to mention that. It would only complicate matters.

  After I took out all the regular mana iron, I took out the metal tinged with dragon mana. Clope opened his eyes wide.

  “Is that brass? Wait, actually, Rentt, is this what I think it is?”

  “This is mana iron too. I don’t know why, but there was an earth dragon on the fourth floor. It had apparently been there so long it morphed the mana iron around it. I asked Lorraine about it, and presumably this is rare.”

  “Yeah, very rare. Dragons with enough mana to morph mana iron don’t show up too often. But you sure you want to use this as material? If you put it up for auction, it’ll fetch a high price.”

  It was only after Clope mentioned it that I considered that option. I figured I might as well ask how much money I could expect. “I have no intention of selling this, but for future reference, how much does it go for?”

  “Hm? Well, if a blacksmith who knows his craft happens to be there, he’ll probably pay a platinum coin for this one ingot.”

  A platinum coin was equal to a hundred gold coins. It was hard to say if that was expensive or cheap for this material, but it wasn’t exactly a fortune. Normal mana iron sold for about a hundredth of the price, though.

  “Meaning this metal has attributes worthy of that cost?” Lorraine asked.

  Clope pondered the question. “It’s tough to know for sure. Depends on how you use it, they say. Just hammering it into a weapon will get you somewhat better results than the standard mana iron, but that’s about it. But there’s supposedly a way to turn it into something special.”

  “That’s awfully vague. How would you do that, precisely?” Lorraine questioned Clope further.

  “Using this mana iron by itself isn’t gonna produce much of anything. You need some other materials. For example, one process I know demands a magic crystal you won’t get from anything weaker than Platinum-class monsters, and leaves from the Holy Tree. And if you’re talking materials that are nearly impossible to get, it requires Vampire blood too. That’d clearly be pretty rough, so I can’t recommend you make equipment out of this.”

  It did sound like it would be difficult, but Clope didn’t know how easily I could get Vampire blood. I only had to use my own. Whether I was a Vampire had become somewhat unclear, so maybe it wouldn’t work, but it was worth a shot.

  That only left the magic crystal and the Holy Tree leaves. Even in the worst-case scenario, I could save up enough money for the crystal. As for sacred trees, I needed more information.

  “By Holy Tree, do you mean the one in the Land of the Venerable Holy Tree?” I asked Clope.

  “Yeah, the nation of the high elves. Good luck getting those.”

  “That does sound brutal.”

  The Land of the Venerable Holy Tree was ruled by high elves, and the majority of its population was elves as well. It was considered a nation, but most of its land was surrounded by forest, and they didn’t have a government in the way human countries did. In reality, it was a group of settlements with tight connections that called themselves a country. But their borders were unclear to the point it was hard to call them a country in the conventional sense. Because they were a venerable race who protected the Holy Tree, the name of their nation had been placed upon them by the ruler of some other nation long ago. The elves at the time didn’t seem to mind the name.

  Of course, I had never been to the country because I couldn’t go if I wanted to. I didn’t know how the elves drew their borders, and if a human set foot in a forest they claimed as their territory, they would be attacked. All elves were experts with spirit magic and experienced with bows and arrows, so a human who entered with no plan would be driven off. There wouldn’t even be a fight. The Holy Tree was said to stand deep within the country, where it generated divinity at all times, so I had to wonder how many humans had ever seen it.

  This talk of a tree that gave off divinity reminded me of something. “Clope, what happened to the tree that grew from the doll I cut?”

  “Oh, that? It’s growing nicely. You’re not thinking of using that as a substitute for the Holy Tree, are you?”

  I did consider it just a bit. I looked at Clope to see if he thought it was possible, but he shook his head.

  “No way will that work. I don’t know if it’s because it was made from your divinity or what, but it does seem to give off some mild divinity. I figured that out when I held a cursed item close to the tree and it got cleansed, but that’s the extent of what it can do. The real Holy Tree is supposed to vaporize any Undead that draws near it. A long while back, I saw Holy Tree leaves go up for auction, and I could feel the cleansing in the air from all the way in my seat. Your tree doesn’t have that much power.”

  ◆◇◆◇◆

  “So, what’s the tree?” Lorraine asked. At first I thought she was asking a philosophical question about what trees were, but when I thought about it more, I realized although I had told Lorraine about the effects of using spirit, mana, and divinity with my sword, I hadn’t mentioned the tree that had grown from it.

  Clope answered her before me. “Oh, Rentt here charged his sword with divinity and sliced a wooden doll, then a plant sprouted from it. I thought that was neat, so I’m taking care of the thing,” he said plainly.

  “Odd, but actually, it makes sense. Things grow wherever Rentt goes, after all. I agree, it is neat. Clope, could you show it to me?” Lorraine smiled after making an old joke about me. She wasn’t surprised to hear this because I had previously made plants grow with my wings. If my divinity could do that, then it could make plants sprout from wooden dolls.

  “Fine with me. Hold on a sec,” Clope told Lorraine.

  Some time later, he came in with a flower pot containing the tree. It had grown to around half my height. Not much time had passed since it first sprouted, so that seemed fast to me.

  “Here it is. So, feel anything from it?” Clope asked us.

  Lorraine was the first to speak. “I don’t sense any divinity. I feel like it cleaned up the air a bit, but that’s all.”

  “I think the same thing,” Alize commented after Lorraine.

  I answered last. “It does seem to give off a small amount of divinity. The same as me,” I said. My divinity gave me the ability to see other divinity to an extent, so a misty glow was visible around t
he tree. Even so, it was no great amount.

  “So it really is the same? Then maybe the divinity’s making it grow fast because it’s a plant. This flower pot is gonna be a bit tight before long, but I don’t know about planting it in the ground.”

  Clope’s store was by no means small, but all the space was used up for his smithing business. The courtyard was also used to test weapons, leaving nowhere to plant the tree. A normal tree might be able to grow around the edges of the courtyard, but this one was special. It appeared to grow at a considerable speed, so planting it without a plan could end poorly. This tree was born from my divinity, yet it was almost cursed. I felt bad about it, to be honest. But Clope was the one who wanted to care for it, so I had no sympathy for him. He should have thrown it out right away.

  “That said, it still seems to be doing all right. If it does get to the point where you can’t care for it anymore, why not go plant it on some mountain?” I suggested.

  “Might have to do that in the end, but I could get some use out of it. Maybe it won’t work as a replacement for the Holy Tree, but I’ll bet I can make some equipment out of the wood. It’ll take some experimenting to know what effects it’ll have, though.”

  “That’s a fascinating idea. It could be used for alchemy as well. Clope, will you share some with me?” Lorraine requested, her curiosity piqued.

  Materials with divinity were hard to come by. Many were highly sought after, such as the leaves and branches of the Holy Tree. More common examples included holy water sold by a church or items a saint filled with their power. The latter were easier to procure, so I thought they were better off using those. But when I asked them about it, Clope looked unsure.

  “Holy water is made with the Church’s secret techniques. Using the divinity from that for anything but its intended purpose isn’t easy.”

  Lorraine made a face much like Clope’s. “The items that saints make are the same way. They’re careful about leaks revolving around that.”

  If it were possible to utilize that divinity for anything, then selling those items might not have been so great for their religious organization. That divinity could only be produced by saints in the first place, so I didn’t think it made much of a difference, but presumably it wasn’t so simple. For example, someone like Lorraine could discover the mechanisms of that divinity and learn to mass-produce items that performed cleansing and healing without the need for a saint. It wouldn’t be as easy as that, but it wouldn’t be impossible either. Healing and cleansing items turned up in dungeons on occasion, after all. Less effective imitations of those items were also made and sold by your average magic item shops. The more effective versions required rare materials to create, so they were no replacement for saints, but they could be one day. That must have been why they kept the creation of these items a secret.