"Hoo..."
The incident ended with me handing the unidentified woman's corpse and the sword over to the Guild and reporting what had happened.
I didn't get the details, but apparently her body had a lot in common with a monster's.
"What a strange mess..."
The sword ended up in my hands.
One of the Guild's higher-ups, Royman, took it somewhere for a while, then came back sweating coldly and handed it to me.
He said I absolutely had to keep it.
Thanks to that, I'd be able to take it apart, so from my perspective it was a good thing...
Still, something about it felt off.
Why had they given it to me, of all people?
Why hand this over to me, a blacksmith, instead of Aiz, who could use it far better right away?
"Well, I guess I'll take it apart first?"
If I disassembled it piece by piece, I should be able to figure out more about the sword.
"..."
The sound of iron striking iron rang through the forge.
And then,
something breaking echoed beyond the forge and out into the surrounding area.
"Damn it..."
And what broke wasn't the sword, but the hammer.
"Haaah... I got the magic stone out, but..."
I'd broken the multicolored magic stone loose with an awl and a hammer.
But no matter what I did, I couldn't get rid of the plant that was sticking out so brazenly.
It wouldn't catch fire, and if it had rooted itself through the whole sword, then it was fixed in place too firmly to pull out.
Even when I tried to cut it away, all I did was wreck my tools.
"Did the Dungeon somehow infect it or something..."
Even when I tried to disassemble the sword itself, all that happened was the hammer breaking.
"Tch. If I get adamantite next time, I'll have to make a hammer first."
Oddly enough, this sword wasn't made from ore like adamantite, orichalcum, or mithril.
But it wasn't made from common ore like iron or copper, either.
"It feels alive."
Even after I'd shattered the multicolored magic stone that seemed to be its source of power, the sword still gave off a faint golden glow.
And strangely enough, the light it emitted was warm.
"For something the Dungeon made... it even has a signature..."
Faint writing had been engraved near the end of the hilt.
Weapons that came out of the Dungeon didn't have signatures, so this meant someone had made it by hand long ago.
"Was it made with spirits or something...? What in the world did they do to make something like this?"
I stared at the sword for a long time, trying to understand it even a little, but I didn't get anything useful out of it.