A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad (Novel) - Chapter 67

Chapter 67

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Translated by Sylph

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“Over the course of several months I completed the weapon. The blade body was much longer and wider than an ordinary greatsword. I made the left and right of the blade form perfect symmetry. I even carved a groove in the center so the sword would not become too heavy. It was a technique I had newly perfected around that time.”

Pain briefly flashed in Velugon’s eyes.

“After even completing the scabbard, I gave it the name Ironblood Soul. Because I wanted that sword to become a masterpiece that would remain in history forever.”

The knight who received the sword was delighted.

Because at the time Velugon was a rising star of the Populosa Weapons District.

Even though he was young, rumors were already following him that he had surpassed the skill of the current Factory Manager of the age.

“Then before long I heard the news. That knight, with my sword, innocent people….”

Velugon stopped breathing.

Like a person who had said something he could not bear to put into words.

At that pained expression, Tie hurried over in front of Velugon.

And just as a kindergarten teacher would soothe a crying child, he tightly held his trembling hand.

“Factory Manager….”

Velugon shook his head as if to say he was fine, then began speaking again.

“I found myself contemptible. Because I had never expected that a weapon I made, a sword born from my fingertips, would be used in that way.”

Velugon knew that too.

By the nature of a weapon, someone’s blood was bound to get on its blade.

But he had not known it would be the blood of innocent life.

He had not known that one of his weapons would burn down a small village and a hospital.

Was that why?

At that time, all through reading the letter about the massacre, in front of Velugon’s eyes shimmered the fields of his hometown.

His mother, injured and lying in bed.

His father, already in a coma.

His siblings, who only kept wasting away no matter how much food he brought.

The fields of his hometown where everyone had left one by one, and only nine graves had remained standing there.

“For a while I could not even set foot in the smelting district. After enduring and enduring it, on the day that devil’s execution was held, I went to Hederdel without any plan.”

Making a tearful face, Tie held even tighter the hand of Velugon, whose hand was trembling more than before.

“He was smiling on one side of the execution platform. I was so angry that I confronted him. I asked how a human being, a person, could do something so devilish. I asked how in the world he could do such a thing with my sword….”

There were many questions he poured out.

But the reply that came back was only two sentences.

‘Weapon-smith, you are merely the one who made the sword.’

‘How I use it is my business.’

“The road back to Populosa is vivid to me.”

That day, Velugon barely staggered out of the execution grounds.

When he got onto the carriage, the square where the execution would be held was empty.

Because it was a village with so many victims that there were not even enough people left to attend the execution.

When the wheels started rolling over the stone road, suddenly something entered his vacant field of vision.

The public cemetery that had long ago filled up due to the prolonged civil war.

And the victims’ graves stretching long along the boundary of the roadside forest because there was no more room.

The graves went on for a very long time. Until Velugon raged and wept and then gave up on everything.

After returning, he let go of smelting for a while.

Because weapons no longer felt like glorious tools.

The elder blacksmiths and his colleagues came countless times to encourage him, but Velugon only answered that he needed time.

For days upon days he shut himself up in his quarters and agonized and agonized again.

What is a weapon.

And what is the hand that grips that weapon.

When after a long time he came out of his quarters again, a conviction he had never had before had settled deeply in his mind.

“Weapons are clean and honest.”

But the hands that grip them are always filthy and greedy.

In a way, that could be called a dense hatred toward humanity.

Not long after, he began making weapons again.

But he never again gave a weapon a name.

For a blacksmith to give a weapon a name meant that he had melted his own soul into it.

The soul Velugon could have put into a weapon had already been torn to pieces and vanished.

Together with Ironblood Soul, the sword that had become his masterpiece and whose whereabouts became unknown.

“Even so, I was a weapon-smith. Once I decided to live as a weapon-smith, there were things that could not be helped.”

Velugon still had no choice but to let someone use the weapons he made.

So even if he hated people, he had to rub shoulders with them, and he had to keep smelting things.

“I looked truly ridiculous. Inside, I was afraid that my weapon might kill someone again. And yet I had to go on with smelting while hiding that.”

“….”

“Well… I suppose that was the punishment I received.”

It was when Velugon turned his gaze into empty space.

From below came the sound of someone sniffling softly.

When he lowered his gaze, the Necromancer King was crying with a nose bright red.

He was crying so sorrowfully that tear marks were clear on his knees.

“Factory Manager did nothing wrong! That knight was bad!”

Velugon narrowed his brow, then soon thought inwardly.

‘…A strange one.’

The Necromancer King was a monster who had destroyed Krazar while Velugon had briefly lost consciousness.

He must have seen every ugly and unsightly thing before things reached this point.

So why was he crying like that over another person’s past?

It was hard to believe that someone with such a soft heart was leading a mercenary company at all.

But even so.

His gaze turned lower still, to the little hand tightly holding his own.

For some reason, the warmth transmitted from the Necromancer King’s hand was not unpleasant in a strange way.

“Ahem!”

Velugon abruptly shook his head.

Because he became embarrassed upon realizing he was being comforted by a mercenary he had met for the first time today.

He quickly pulled his hand away from Astie and added,

“Anyway! I, I have a defect like that!”

The Necromancer King looked at Velugon with pity.

“A defect?”

“A defect! A shortcoming!”

“A shortcoming…?”

“Yes! Why do you think I’m infamous all over the continent as a bad-tempered weapon-smith? Because thanks to this damned past, I kept losing my temper at customers day in and day out, and it turned into this.”

Tie opened her eyes wide, then soon nodded.

‘So that was it.’

Honestly, starting with Tie herself, she had thought the Factory Manager was really an ill-tempered person.

From the armory hall to now, while trapped in the subspace, Velugon had almost always only snapped, got angry, or spoken curtly.

Except for just now, when he looked sad while revealing that painful past.

“Even so, I wasn’t like I am now back then! It wasn’t to the degree that I would just drive away customers who came looking for me!”

As a sign that she was listening, Tie nodded her head up and down vigorously.

Velugon made a tsk sound and continued speaking.

“But around the time I began keeping Krazar’s weapon in my quarters, it felt like my nerves kept growing sharper….”

Just the sight of mercenaries coming to the armory hall made his mood crash to the floor.

Even the weapons they brought for repair, once he took them in hand, strange thoughts kept circling through his head.

“It somehow felt like the weapon I repaired would go on to harm innocent people and things like that… ahem!”

“Because of your trauma, Factory Manager?”

“Trauma?”

“Yes!”

Velugon furrowed his brow, then nodded as if it did not matter.

“I do not know what that is, but in any case I certainly felt that the twisted thoughts I carried were gradually leaning in a bad direction.”

All the more after he lost his reason, argued with the Emperor himself, and almost got killed.

Tie unconsciously parted her lips slightly.

When she lowered her gaze, she saw Ppuppu, who before she knew it had crawled into the pocket of Tie’s cloak.

For a while now, Ppuppu had been completely still with his breath held.

Without the slightest movement, as if he had plenty on his conscience.