Wandering Mercenary in an Open World
chapter-51

Ruon silently gazed at the glowing sentence that was engraved in his inner self.

[The Duermur Blessing ]

It was hard to tell what kind of power it contained just by reading it, but it was clear that it was not something trivial, given that the haughty celestial god had blatantly put his name on it.

He turned his head toward the hammer that was blazing on the furnace and muttered softly.

“Think of it as a viewing fee.”

Then, Retol, who had been restless while rubbing his bald head with his palm, said.

“I never dreamed that a warrior of the furnace would appear while I was a priest.”

Then, the party members rushed toward Ruon from behind. Kyle and Igor seemed happy that Ruon was safe, but Garan and Strabo, who knew what the trial of the furnace was, looked very surprised.

Especially, Garan’s mouth was so wide open that his jaw joint seemed to be in danger. Ruon said to the old dwarf who couldn’t help but marvel.

“It’s a bit absurd that you’re so surprised after telling me to do it.”

At that, Garan came to his senses and shouted.

“I knew my eyes weren’t wrong. It wasn’t for nothing that Ego Sword followed its master and got screwed!”

Ignoring the cackling Garan, Ruon turned his head and the party members added a word each.

“What’s that tattoo? The red one looks really cool.”

“Don’t forget, even if you received the recognition of Duermur. The one who always smiles warmly at you, Ruon, is none other than your mother…”

“Oh, Ruon. Wasn’t it all for meeting you that I ran out of the house?”

I miss Vulcan’s headbutt.

Ruon sighed deeply and shook his head at the mixed voices that made his head ring.

***

An untimely festival began in Roverduck.

It was because the temple, which had been rated as only maintaining its lineage, announced widely that a warrior who had passed the trial of the furnace had appeared.

The dwarves went crazy.

The trial of the furnace?

Wasn’t it a crazy challenge to face the fire god and the fire spirit, which were carved by Duermur himself, in the ‘Primordial Furnace’ that burned the soul?

It was enough to see how great an achievement it was just by recalling that the last warrior who passed the trial was Unggrim, who was called the ‘Giant Slayer’, a hundred years ago.

Therefore, it was only natural that the whole city was in a mess.

The dwarves threw away their work and ran to the tavern for today. And they toasted. For the warrior whose name and face they didn’t know.

“To the warrior of the furnace!”

But not everyone was like that.

Somehow they knew, quite a lot of dwarves lined up in front of Garan’s forge and knocked on the tightly closed door.

“Hey, Garan! Open the door!”

“I heard it from Retol. There’s a warrior of the furnace here, right? They say it’s a human, is that true?”

“It won’t take long! I just want to see his physique. Just his physique!”

Kyle, who peeked outside through the curtain gap, quickly backed away from the boiling dwarves.

“What’s all the fuss about?”

Garan snorted and answered.

“What do you mean, what? They want to make him wear the equipment they made.”

He pointed his index finger at Ruon as if to warn him.

“I told you before, the best blacksmith in Roverduck is me! Don’t think of hanging out with those shoddy guys. If you start accepting them, there’s no end to it.”

Ruon smiled lightly and nodded.

“Well, I won’t.”

Then Garan seemed satisfied and stroked his bushy beard and said.

“You can trust me with the repair of the sword. I swear by the name of Bolund.”

There was no need to add any unnecessary words to that promise from the prideful craftsman, so Ruon immediately drew his holy sword.

He laid the sword on the workbench and said.

“I appreciate it.”

“Of course. Who are you asking?”

He seemed moved by the gesture of trusting and leaving his equipment, which was no different from his alter ego, and coughed repeatedly. Then he turned his head and looked at Strabo.

“You bastard. I haven’t forgiven you. I don’t even have the intention to! But… I admit that you have an eye for something else. You picked a good companion.”

Strabo moistened his lips with a touched face.

“Oh, father, you finally realized the romance…”

“Shut up!”

“Ouch!”

He immediately kicked Strabo’s chest and waved his hand nervously.

“Now get out of here. You’re disturbing my work.”

The party members got up and dusted off their seats without a word at the sudden eviction order. They had already figured out how eccentric Garan’s personality was, even though it was a short time.

Then Ruon asked.

“Are you okay? It must be hard to touch it even if you just touch it.”

“Don’t worry. I was just too eager and touched it without any measures, but now it’s different.”

Ruon didn’t bother to ask how that was possible.

If it was possible, it was possible.

He nodded lightly and followed Strabo’s guidance up the stairs.

Strabo carefully opened the old wooden door and muttered softly.

“… The old man still left my room.”

“It’s not just left, is it?”

As Kyle said, the room of modest size was quite neat, as if it had been maintained regularly.

The party entered the room full of books related to adventure and sat down.

After a while, Strabo, who had been looking around, opened his mouth slowly.

“… Aren’t you going to ask?”

When no answer came back, he quickly added, as if he was uncomfortable with the silence.

“Why my father hates me so much.”

Kyle replied, rubbing his ears.

“You don’t want to inherit the family business, you want to go on an adventure, and you ran away. Is there anything else?”

Strabo flinched as if he had hit the mark and scratched his cheek.

“If you include the fact that I sneaked out the family heirloom…”

Ruon scanned the face of the dwarf who was making a sheepish expression. Needless to say, there was nothing special to see now.

He asked.

“Did you sell the heirloom as a condition to become a druid?”

Strabo’s eyes widened as if they were about to tear at the casual guess.

“H-how did you…”

“Just a guess, so don’t make a fuss.”

“Oh, really?”

Strabo, who had calmed down his surprised heart, continued his story.

“A long time ago, a fairy came to the forge. He was an old man named Pelic, and he asked my father for something, but he was harshly rejected.”

It was an irrelevant old story, but the party listened quietly.

“When I couldn’t get along with my father, Pellic started to tempt me. He said he would teach me his magic if I stole a ring for him. Then he suddenly turned into an eagle and flew in the sky. It was so cool…”

Igor asked.

“So you stole it?”

Strabo nodded.

“At that time, all I had in my mind was to get out of the boring forge… I thought it was my chance, so I searched my father’s workshop and found the ring that Pellic mentioned. It wasn’t a hard thing to do.”

The rest of the story was simple.

The two of them left Roverduck right away.

Pellic, although he was fond of stealing, was not a scumbag who would break his promise. He taught Strabo how to use the power of nature, and thanks to that, he became a half-baked druid.

Strabo, who was filled with a sense of accomplishment and nostalgia, went to see Garan. And he heard a shocking story. The ring he gave to Pellic was actually the heirloom of his family.

When the story reached that point, Kyle frowned and asked.

“How could you not know that?”

Strabo sniffed and protested with a wronged expression.

“I really didn’t know! I’m not a dwarf who would steal that knowing what it was!”

He added.

“…I was beaten to death that day. He chased me away and told me never to show up again. That was probably ten years ago? Well, that’s the story.”

Strabo sighed with relief after finishing the story.

Then, Ruon asked. He had something else he was really curious about.

“So what was the effect of the ring?”

Kyle and Igor also looked at Strabo’s face with curiosity.

Strabo hesitantly answered.

“It had a power that hid the wearer’s appearance when the gem on the ring was facing the palm… I don’t know for sure because I never tried it myself.”

“The One Ring?”

Ruon muttered without realizing it, and Igor tilted his head.

“Do you know of such an artifact?”

Ruon briefly recalled the movie that was a huge hit at the time. But he soon shook his head.

No, the ring in the movie and the ring that Strabo sold couldn’t be the same.

“No.”

“Hey, don’t be stingy…”

Kyle, who seemed disappointed, clapped his hands to lighten the mood. Then he looked at Ruon with a playful expression.

“You know, you seem like a person from another world even when we sit together like this?”

At the words ‘another world’, Ruon made a strange expression. Kyle spread his palm and started to fold his fingers one by one.

“The troll slayer, the champion of Tivela, the warrior of the furnace, the one who killed the apostle of the great demon… You were also called a butcher in Rellyjan. Remember?”

Strabo interjected.

“You have to include killing the goat-headed monster by strangling it and taming the nightmare!”

Igor also chimed in.

“You don’t know the story of how Ruon saved a woman named Bekira, do you? It was a scene that would not be out of place in a textbook of mercy.”

Are they all crazy?

As the group started to praise his face, Ruon furrowed his brow.

“What are you trying to say?”

Then Kyle smiled faintly.

“Who would follow the tail of a mercenary who says he’s going to kill the great demon?”

The madman continued.

“But strangely, I keep thinking that it might be possible with Ruon. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

Strabo pounded his chest and said.

“There’s a lot of romance in Ruon’s journey. How can I not follow him?”

Igor also opened his mouth as if he had something to add, but Ruon quickly raised his palm.

“That’s enough.”

Seeing Igor’s sulky face, Kyle and Strabo clapped and chuckled.

Outside the window, there was still a lot of noise from the dwarves, but they didn’t care. The group exchanged trivial stories.

The long day began to fade.

***

Since it took longer than expected to repair the holy sword, the group spent some time on their own.

Igor prayed to Tivela every day with his fingers crossed to recover the divine power he had consumed too much, and Strabo wandered around the streets of his hometown and meddled in various things.

Kyle asked Ruon for a duel every day, even though he was exhausted.

A week passed like that.

“It’s done.”

As Ruon dodged the sword that Kyle thrust and kicked his ankle, a tired voice came from behind him.

He saw a dwarf who looked like he had aged twenty years standing with a pale face.

“Garan.”

Ruon approached Garan, who looked like he would collapse at any moment. Garan, who didn’t seem to care about his own condition, held out the sword in his hand and said.

“I fixed it perfectly.”

The sword in his hand looked no different from before, but Ruon grabbed the handle without any objection.

Whoo-

Then, a faint red rune lit up like a flame on the smooth blade.

“What is this?”

As Ruon looked down at the holy sword with a surprised eye, Garan answered with a tired voice.

“Even if I restored it to its original state, the sword that had been greatly influenced by you would have a chance to fall again if it tried to force its power. So I melted the power of the goddess and the demon together and widened the vessel of the sword itself. In the process, Duerumur’s blessing went in quite a bit.”

He muttered that Retol had worked as hard as he did.

“Now that sword is neither a holy sword nor a demon sword. It’s just your own ego sword with infinite potential. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Ruon nodded and spun the sword. Garan, who was fascinated by the red afterimage that the sword made, said.

“Don’t worry. The abilities that the sword had will still work.”

Ruon answered with an action instead of a word.

He quickly created a thin golden shield and tilted his head at the strange feeling he felt from the sword.

“It feels like it’s teasing me.”

Then Garan coughed hastily.

“Ahem, the three different powers got mixed up, so it became a bit chaotic. But at least it stopped cursing your parents, right?”

That’s true.

Ruon smiled faintly and swung his arm to get used to the slightly heavier sword.

Then Garan asked.

“What are you going to name it?”

“Name?”

“How long are you going to call it sword, sword? It’s an ego sword with its own ego. It should have a name that suits it!”

Ruon looked down at the sword, which had no particular action but still felt like it was playing a prank with the rune on and off.

He couldn’t think of a name right away, and Kyle sneaked up next to him and said.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a meaning? Something related to Ruon.”

Ruon thought for a while and remembered the ID ‘Ruin On’ that was the origin of his name.

He didn’t want to bother his head with it and said.

“Let’s call it Ruin.”

As if it was happy with the name, the rune on Ruin’s blade flared up.