ACT 4
“Ugh, even in the winter, this place is always so damn hot!” Yuuto complained.
“Can it, Yuuto!” the red-haired girl shouted back. “Focus on moving your hands, not your lips!”
“I know!” Grumbling and swearing to himself, Yuuto scooped up more iron sand with the shovel he was holding and carefully deposited it into the blazing furnace.
On the opposite side of the furnace, Ingrid did the same, dripping with sweat as she dumped in a shovelful of charcoal.
Along with the two of them, there were about ten men quietly engaging themselves in their own part of the work, with everyone crammed into a workshop only ten meters long on each side. The knowledge of how to refine iron couldn’t be allowed to leak out and fall into the hands of their neighboring clans, so these men were trusted protégés that Loptr had hand-picked after several rounds of careful screening.
It had now been nearly half a year since Yuuto’s arrival in Yggdrasil.
The tatara furnace was a clay, foot-bellows furnace that had originated during Japan’s Yayoi Period, between 300 BC and 300 AD. In the modern era, one might still see the tatara method on display at a university’s cultural festival, or being used as a form of extracurricular training for students at a specialized vocational school.
Yuuto figured it was unlikely he’d be able to create the highest quality of weapons-grade Japanese steel, called tamahagane. But he’d been pretty sure he could at least produce some decent-quality iron within about a month.
Unfortunately, the results had been one failure after another, and even now, he had yet to succeed at refining iron even once.
In the end there was a huge difference between having just a smattering of knowledge and having real world experience when it came time to put the real thing into practice.
“Hey Ingrid, the fire doesn’t look strong enough,” Yuuto said. “Pump the bellows some more.”
“I’m already on it!” Ingrid called.
Ingrid and a few of the men stamped their feet on the wide bellows board, pumping air into the furnace. This accelerated the combustion of the furnace fire, making it run hotter.
If one asked why humans had historically turned to using bronze weapons first rather than the superior iron, the answer was because the processes for smelting and refining iron required far greater heat.
A hotter flame required more oxygen, but there was a limit to the amount of oxygen found naturally in the air. Thus, it was only using techniques to pump large amounts of air quickly into the furnace that made it possible to produce flames hot enough to refine iron.
“Hey, Yuuto, this should be enough, right?” Ingrid asked.
“Hm, yeah, that should do it for now.”
Checking the color and strength of the flames, Yuuto stopped to take a short breather.
At this point in time, Yuuto had finally become able to understand and speak the local language, though not completely, of course. If he couldn’t communicate, then he couldn’t get anything done. It seemed that the necessity created by this kind of forced immersion had sped up his ability to learn the language.
“Good work today, Big Brother,” Felicia praised him. “You must be tired.”
Of course, that was in large part thanks to the assistance of Felicia, who could use her Connections galldr to enable him to understand the meanings of the words as he heard them.
Yuuto shook his head at her. “We’re not done yet. This is where the work really starts, in fact. Now that we’ve got the right temperature, from here on, we have to keep this up for three whole days and nights without stopping to rest or sleep.”
“S-sir, it isn’t right to make the second-in-command do work like this...” a man objected.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Loptr said. “The fate of the Wolf Clan depends on this work. Let me do it.”
The golden-haired man took a shovel from the disconcerted worker, and began the work of scooping the iron sand to drop into the furnace.
Because of his elegant, noble figure, it looked out of place for him to be doing the kind of sweaty manual labor normally done by, for lack of a more polite term, the people at the bottom.
“What about your own work, Big Brother Loptr?” Yuuto shouted from the other side, without halting his own work.
“I blew it off to come over here.”
“Hey!”
“Ha ha ha, only joking,” Loptr snickered. “Well, it is true that I was so concerned with how things were going here that I couldn’t concentrate well on my own work.”
“No faith in me, huh?” Yuuto asked.
“If we don’t get results soon, things are going to turn ugly, after all.”
“...I understand, Big Brother.”
The two of them continued their work in silence after that.
The next morning, a silver-haired girl popped in to the workshop for a visit.
“Yuuto, you’re working hard, I see,” Sigrún said. “I came to see how things were doing on your front.”
“Oh, hey, Sigrún,” Yuuto responded without turning to face her. “Morning.”
The success or failure of the tatara method rested entirely on control of the fire’s temperature. If it was even a little too hot or too cool, the process would fail. Yuuto hadn’t managed a success even once so far, so he couldn’t take his eyes off of the furnace for even a second.
“Heh, you’re finally starting to look a little more in shape,” Sigrún said.
“Yeah, thanks to this.” As they exchanged some light banter, Yuuto punctuated his remark by thrusting his shovel into the imposing mountain of iron sand piled up beside the furnace.
The tatara furnace method required very large volumes of charcoal and iron sand. Over these past five months, Yuuto had constantly helped out with the heavy work of chopping down trees and transporting the logs.
As for the process of smelting and refining the iron, he was working without rest for three days and nights at a time, continuously shoveling the heavy iron sand into the furnace. It was the kind of work that was exhausting just to think about. And that kind of work had put some muscle on him.
Also, by this point in time, his body was finally starting to adjust to the food of Yggdrasil, so he wasn’t suffering from abdominal pains or sickness anymore.
Yuuto was fourteen, in the middle of the prime of his growth. He’d been eating a lot and working hard, and had grown quite a bit taller over the past half a year.
“So, do you think it will work this time?” Sigrún asked.
“I’ll make it work.”
“Good answer.” She smiled slyly. “...Hey, look out!” Sigrún cried out in warning as Yuuto stumbled over his own feet.
“Whoa—?!”
His face came dangerously close to plunging into the furnace, but in an instant, Sigrún grabbed the back of his clothes and pulled him back to safety.
“Seriously, this is what I get for complimenting you.”
“S-sorry. Thanks, though. You really saved me.” Wiping off the sudden, cold sweat, Yuuto exhaled in relief.
Perhaps because of his intense focus, he’d completely blocked out any sense of fatigue, but he’d been at this work for a whole day and night without rest. Apparently, the exhaustion had gone to his legs.
“Give me that,” Sigrún ordered. “This kind of thing is just my line of work.”
“But, I can’t...”
“You have to last three days and three nights, right? I’ll take over for you for a bit, so sit down and rest your body.” Sigrún somewhat forcefully took the shovel from Yuuto.
Yuuto got a sense of déjà vu. He remembered a time when he had been trying to light a fire, and something similar had happened.
Back then, Sigrún had been completely exasperated with him. But now, despite her curt words, he could sense that she was being more considerate and respectful toward him.
Things had changed.
“All right! With that, we’re done with the bellows phase!” With his declaration, Yuuto took a few steps back on wobbly legs, and finally dropped to sit on the ground with a thud.
The walls of the clay furnace had become thin, and gouts of flame were spouting from inside. It had been three full days and nights since setting the fire, and they had finally reached the fated fourth day.
The workers pulled the ventilation pipes off of the furnace one by one, and sealed the openings with clay.
As Yuuto watched them, Ingrid came over to him.
“Not long now, huh?” she asked.
“Yeah, now we just wait for the fire to cool down a bit and then break apart the clay furnace.” Nodding to himself, Yuuto grabbed a hoe and got to his feet. His exhaustion had reached its peak, but he just couldn’t sit still.
He walked over and stood still next to the furnace for a while, inspecting the fire’s strength.
“Okay, let’s break it!”
“All right!” Ingrid cried.
Ingrid picked up a hoe and stood next to Yuuto.
The flames were still burning inside the furnace, filling the air around them with heat, but the fire had grown much weaker compared to when they had been pumping it to full strength.
Yuuto set the hoe against the upper rim of the furnace, and pulled with all his might. Ingrid followed suit next to him.
The clay furnace walls had been pretty thick when they’d first built and dried it, but after three days of exposure to the powerful flames within, the clay was now brittle and thin, and it fell apart easily with their combined strength.
Sparks flew into the air, and a few blew into their faces, but they ignored those and continued.
At last, all of the tatara furnace’s walls were pulled away, and in the center lay the metal product, known as a bloom. It glowed bright orange like molten lava.
“Nice work, Yuuto!” Ingrid cried. “We did it!”
She turned to Yuuto and held up her open palm to him.
“You too, Ingrid. Thanks.” Without missing a beat, Yuuto reached up and gave her a high-five.
Both of them had expended everything of themselves, body and soul, in the work they’d just completed.
All that was left was to let the bloom cool for two hours, then get it outside and cool it further with snow and ice.
“Hey. Yuuto, why don’t you go get a bit of sleep?” she asked.
“The same goes for you, Ingrid. Go rest.”
The two of them had worked without sleep up until this point, and both had dark bags under their eyes.
However...
“I’d be too worried about how it’s going to turn out,” Ingrid said. “How the hell could I sleep?”
“The same goes for me.”
They both laughed.
For a quarter of a year, they had worked together towards the same goal, sharing the joys and sorrows that came with the task. They’d become close friends who really understood each other.
“Do you think... it’ll finally work this time?” Yuuto asked as he dropped to sit on the floor, staring ahead at the still-glowing bloom.
He’d proudly stated to Loptr and Sigrún that he would definitely succeed, but that had been when they were still midway through the work. Now that his part in it was finished and there was nothing more for him to do, Yuuto suddenly felt overcome by anxiety.
“Have faith in yourself,” Ingrid said.
“I don’t, and that’s why I’m asking you.”
“Ha ha, well, that’s fair. You really were slow and clumsy when you started out, after all.”
“You’re seriously gonna bring that up again?” Yuuto sighed dejectedly.
“You’re damn right I will. A few swings of the axe, and you hurt your back. You tried to carry the iron sand, and you spilled it everywhere. I cursed my luck at being forced to work under someone like you.”
“Yeah, real sorry about that.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Now I’m grateful to Angrboða for letting us meet.”
With that, Ingrid sat down next to Yuuto. Without looking in his direction, she continued speaking while gazing at the bloom.
“I’ll vouch for you upon my name as Ingrid, the greatest smith in Yggdrasil. These past three months, you’ve worked your butt off. If anyone tries to give you grief, I’ll whack ’em with my hammer. So have some more confidence in yourself. Besides, I’m the ‘Birther of Blades,’ remember? We can’t fail forever with me on the job. Yeah, that’s what my gut’s telling me: This time, it’ll work. Your hard work is gonna pay off. And if for some reason it doesn’t, I’ll help you again. I’ll help you out as many times as it takes. So... Hey, say something back already, Yuuto! This kind of stuff is freaking embarrassing to say right to someone’s face, you know! Hey! ...Yuuto?”
Ingrid lightly prodded Yuuto’s arm with her elbow, and his body swayed bit and then toppled over, to rest against her shoulder.
“What the hell, you fell asleep?” she exclaimed. “Geez, just after saying you wouldn’t be able to do it. You should have stayed awake and listened to me, idiot. I’m not gonna say all that stuff to you a second time.”
Ingrid gently took Yuuto’s head in her arms, and complaining all the while, moved it to rest on her lap.
She tenderly stroked his hair, and smiled. “All right, this is a reward for all your hard work. Sleep well, Yuuto.”
“Yuuto! Yuuto, come on!”
When Yuuto next came to, he felt his body being jostled. But his mind was muddy and clouded over, and he couldn’t think clearly.
He got the sense that something really important had happened, but in that moment his desire to go back to sleep won out.
Yes, sleep. Yuuto just wanted to keep sleeping.
After all, this pillow was the absolute best.
He was so fed up with the stiff pillows he’d had to use for the past half year. He was going to enjoy this one for all it had to offer; there was really no other choice.
“Wake the hell up already, Yuuto!”
“Ahh, shut up and lemme sleep...” Yuuto pushed away the hand that was shaking him, and tried to turn over to lay on his other side...
Squish.
As he did, he felt his hand catch on something soft.
What is this? He reflexively squeezed his hand in an attempt to identify what it was.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, you jerk?!”
Thwack!
“Gaaah!” The sudden rush of pain forced Yuuto back to the waking world, and he opened his eyes.
As his mind cleared up, he remembered where he was and what he’d been working on when he fell asleep.
“That’s right! How’s the bloom?!” he shouted.
“They already took it outside and cooled it.”
“Wha— Why didn’t you wake me up for that?!”
“Because that’s a job the workers can do fine on their own. You need to focus on the work only you can do, and it’d be an issue if you were so sleep-deprived you made a mistake inspecting the damn thing. Now come on, get up.”
With that, Ingrid pulled on Yuuto’s ear to force him to sit up.
When he did, Yuuto realized just where he’d been sleeping. “W-wait, huh?! The pillow was your lap?!”
“Y-you passed out and fell over on me all of a sudden!” Ingrid cried defensively. “I would have felt bad waking you up when you were so exhausted, so I made myself put up with it for a while. Honestly...”
“Sorry...”
With a loud “Hmph!” Ingrid stood up and quickly walked outside. Their work on the furnace had long since ended, but for some reason, her face was flushed.
“Hey, wait up,” Yuuto said, hurrying to follow her.
Outside, there were rough and unevenly-shaped grey clumps scattered about on the ground. These pieces were what remained after the brightly-glowing bloom had cooled.
“T-this is...!” Yuuto suddenly rushed over to one of the clumps.
He just stood there, his face frozen in shock, his body trembling slightly.
“H-hey, did we do it?! Yuuto, is this refined iron?!” Unable to conceal her excitement, Ingrid’s gaze shot back and forth between the chunk of metal and Yuuto’s face.
In the world of Yggdrasil, iron was an incredibly rare metal, only obtained from meteors that fell from the heavens. Ingrid was famous enough as a smith that her name was even known in the imperial capital Glaðsheimr, but even she had never seen the real thing in person.
After a moment, Yuuto answered her...
...by shaking his head.
“No, this isn’t iron,” he declared flatly.
It was, however, something very familiar to him.
Indeed, this was exactly the stuff he’d been used to seeing all his life, as far back as he could remember.
There was no way he could mistake its appearance.
It was just that he had assumed there was no way an amateur like himself would create it.
Thirteen metric tons of iron sand. Thirteen metric tons of charcoal.
That vast amount of resources was what it took to obtain a mere 200 kilograms of this material.
The metal said to be the most perfectly suited to forging a Japanese sword—
“This is... tamahagane. The highest-quality steel.”
“Congratulations on finishing, Yuu-kun!” Mitsuki cried. “It must have been really hard work.”
It was night, Yuuto was now up in the hörgr for the first time in a while.
The sanctuary at the top of the Hliðskjálf had no protection against the wind, and so it was freezing cold in there this time of year, but Yuuto was amply prepared by having wrapped himself in several layers of furs.
The theory was that he might be able to return home if he accomplished his “mission.” In other words, by creating iron weapons that could transform even a weak nation like the Wolf Clan into a strong one, perhaps he had fulfilled his destined role in this world.
And tonight just happened to be the night of the full moon, as well.
That seemed more like providence than coincidence, and he’d gotten his hopes up, but...
“I guess... it didn’t work,” Mitsuki said.
“Yeah...” Yuuto said regretfully.
It seemed it had been merely a coincidence, after all.
Yuuto had tried creating the opposing mirror effect, but there was no sign at all of that feeling like the world was wavering, the phenomenon he’d experienced when shifting between worlds.
Their heightened expectations had only made the disappointment greater.
“Well, I guess it’s ’cause I haven’t actually won their war for them,” Yuuto said at last. “They say results are what matters in the real world, after all. I guess I was just getting ahead of myself.”
He tried to shrug and spoke in a laid-back tone. He was trying to change his attitude, since there was no sense moping and dwelling on what had already come to pass.
“It just means that the Wolf Clan still needs my help.”
He was saying it as much to himself as he was to Mitsuki.
Yuuto had been summoned to Yggdrasil in order to bring victory to the Wolf Clan. Refining iron had created an opportunity for them, but it would certainly be premature to say they’d actually gotten out of their current crisis.
Their first successful refinement had gotten them just about two metric tons of good iron. It would take several more successful repetitions of the same process to make enough for iron weapons and gear for the whole Wolf Clan army.
Starting with Ingrid, Yuuto had taught all of the relevant information he knew to the other people working together with him on the project. But there was a problem in the absolute lack of experience among the other workers.
No doubt Yuuto, with his slight edge in knowledge and experience, would need to keep directing the project himself in order to ensure the highest chance of success.
“Yuu-kun... you’ve gotten stronger,” Mitsuki said quietly.
“Huh? Well, yeah, after all the manual labor I’ve been doing.”
Yuuto had been sending current pictures of himself to Mitsuki, so he figured she was commenting on that.
“No, that’s not what I mean. It’s like, I feel like you’ve grown up a bit. I mean, you’re not even the least bit discouraged right now. If I were in your shoes, I’d probably be so upset I’d go curl into a ball in bed and not come out for a week.”
“...Oh.” On hearing those words, Yuuto remembered how he’d been half a year earlier.
Back then, he’d lost himself in despair at not being able to go home, and had tried to shut himself off emotionally from the people around him.
At least compared to then, Yuuto did think he might have gotten a bit stronger.
His attempts to refine iron had been a series of failures. He’d nearly given up in despair several times, overwhelmed with anxiety and thinking, It’s impossible to do this just with basic knowledge gleaned from the internet. But even then, he’d continued to struggle, finally grabbing hold of success by the brute force of his determination.
He had experienced accomplishing something by giving everything of himself to the effort. And there was something in life that a person could not obtain without such an experience.
The young man’s success had planted new confidence in his heart — a true confidence that would not waver or break at every little setback, that would allow him to believe in himself come what may.
Just as Yuuto finished his phone call with Mitsuki, he heard a voice from behind him.
“So you were here, after all.”
Turning around, he saw Loptr standing there, sighing in relief.
“Seeing as you got the iron refinement process to work and all, I was worried maybe you might have already gone back to the heavens after finishing your mission here.”
“I tried, and it didn’t work,” Yuuto said.
“What, so you really did try and leave? You’re a pretty cold-hearted guy. You should have at least said a proper farewell to me and Felicia before you left.”
“The last two times, I did say my goodbyes to you two, and then I couldn’t go home. I didn’t want to jinx it, I guess. Though in the end, it didn’t really matter. Well, if it had seemed like it was working, I was planning on leaving this here, so I would have been able to say goodbye either way.” Yuuto looked down at the smartphone in his hand.
Felicia had watched him operating it several times now. She should be able to mimic his actions and answer a call if it came in.
That being said, it didn’t change the fact that it was a cold-hearted way to leave. Loptr was right about that. Even Yuuto thought as much.
“Didn’t I tell you before?” Loptr asked sharply. “I said you’d pay if you made my cute little sister cry.”
“Hey, I didn’t want to see my cute sworn little sister crying either, okay?”
“So you were going to leave me to pick up the pieces, then? Good grief, that’s cruel.” Loptr made a show of sighing and shaking his head.
It was true that if Yuuto had managed to get home, he would have been forcing the most difficult role onto Loptr.
He knew that would’ve been bad of him, but he truly loved and respected this man as an older brother, and he honestly felt like he could have trusted Loptr to handle the situation well.
“Hey, Yuuto,” the man said. “Would you be willing to give up on going back home, and take Felicia as your wife?”
“Wha—?! A-are you drunk or something?! What the hell are you saying?!” Yuuto flew into a panic, confused by how out of left field this was.
His first reaction was to think it was a joke, if one in extremely poor taste, but the look in Loptr’s eyes told a different story. It was serious and earnest in a way that would be hardly imaginable given how easygoing, lighthearted and hard-to-pin-down he usually acted.
“I haven’t had a drop,” Loptr told him. “And I’m being absolutely serious here.”
“Then that’s even worse,” Yuuto said. “I told you before, didn’t I? There’s already a girl I like back home. Didn’t you say at the river that you wouldn’t forgive any two-timing?”
“I’ll overlook it in this case. Once the snows melt, the war will start back up. That girl’s an Einherjar. As the clan’s second-in-command, I can’t let her abilities go unused.”
The Wolf Clan’s territory lay in a high area of the Bifröst Basin surrounded by mountains, and the snows ran deep at this time of year. That served as a natural defense, and right now it was preventing the Claw Clan’s further invasion. But in another two or three months, that snow would melt.
The steadily encroaching footsteps of war were already reaching their doorstep.
“I don’t have the slightest intention of letting her die out there, of course, but you never know what will happen on the battlefield,” Loptr said. “Even if it’s only for a little bit, I want her to be able to experience some of life’s happiness as a woman, while she still can. As her brother, this is the only way I can do that.”
“...I’m sorry.” Yuuto turned his head, unable to meet Loptr’s gaze. It was all he could do just to get those words out.
“Felicia likes you,” Loptr said. “You care for her too, don’t you?”
“Please stop this, Big Brother.”
“...I see,” Loptr said regretfully. “That’s too bad. I’d have no worries entrusting my little sister to you, you know. Unlike anyone else.”
“I’m sure Felicia will be able to find someone even better for her than a cold-hearted guy like me,” Yuuto retorted. Not wanting to continue this line of conversation any further, he changed the subject. “And what about you, Big Brother? Why don’t you hurry up and tie the knot already? It doesn’t look good for the second-in-command to be unmarried.”
Around the start of the new year, Loptr had mentioned that he’d turned twenty-two. In Yggdrasil, where it was normal to marry before twenty, that was old enough where it wouldn’t be odd to already have a child.
And it wasn’t like he wasn’t popular; Loptr already had three women who held feelings for him. Just by order of age, he was supposed to have gotten married way before Felicia or Yuuto.
“You said it,” Loptr said ruefully. “I am the second-in-command. Eventually I will... succeed the patriarch of the Wolf Clan. And that’s been my dream ever since I was a child.”
With a flip of his cape, Loptr turned around to gaze down upon the scenery below them.
It was the city of Iárnviðr, illuminated by the pale white light of the full moon. It was where Loptr had been born and raised.
“Right, so then that’s all the more reason you should...” Yuuto began.
“And when I do, if I’ve kept the position of ‘lawful wife’ empty, I can use it for diplomacy, right?” The corners of Loptr’s mouth turned upwards in a grin.
Around the world and throughout history, so-called political marriages were one of the fastest and easiest ways for two countries to establish friendly relations.
As a Japanese person from the 21st century, the idea made Yuuto uncomfortable, but at the same time, he also felt like he’d just been shown the gulf between the two of them.
His sworn older brother Loptr was thinking of his nation first, and having resolved himself to shoulder the burden of leading it, he was acting while thinking that far ahead.
Even though Yuuto had grown in this past half-year, even though there was only a six-year difference in age between them, Yuuto couldn’t help feeling like his older brother was unattainably far ahead of him as a person.
Yuuto admired Loptr, and had heartfelt respect for him. He had no regrets about having exchanged the Oath of the Chalice and becoming sworn siblings.
But the feeling of inadequacy as a man compared to him was unbearably frustrating.
He couldn’t suppress the urge to encourage himself with the goal that one day, he’d catch up.
However, that childish admiration would set the gears of fate in motion, and become the trigger for the tragedy that was to follow.
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