Shota's Isekai NTR Adventure - Chapter 1916

"What is this flame? Why have I never seen it before?"

That was the one thing that all of the contestants of the forging tournament said.

The first round had been a simple test of basic techniques and involved them creating a simple dagger.

But this second round...

It was already strange enough that it was a free build round, but the more surprising thing was the forges that they had been provided with. After all, the flames in these forges were flames that they had never encountered before.

These flames were far stronger than any flames that they had encountered before and at the same time, they couldn’t help feeling that there was something strange about these flames.

It was as if there was something inside of these flames that they felt inferior to, though they had no idea what this feeling was.

However, the dwarves could immediately feel something special about these flames.

Since it was a tournament about forging, this was the playing ground for the dwarves and most of those that had made it to the second round were dwarves. There were a few humans and members from the other races as well, but their skills really weren’t on the same level.

For these dwarves, they were completely dedicated to forging.

So when there was this new thing that was placed in front of them...

"I can feel all kinds of new ideas flowing into me."

"This flame...it would be strong enough to melt that thing..."

"I can actually use this flame to make the thing that I’ve wanted."

All of the dwarves were soon filled with excitement after seeing this flame that came from the forge.

It was different from the chefs, these dwarves saw this as a proper form of challenge.

That just went to show how skilled the dwarves were that they were all able to rise to the challenge when presented with this flame that was different from anything that they had worked with before.

But just their skills alone wasn’t enough.

The talent that was required to actually properly forge something was only found in certain dwarves. Those were the dwarves that were considered hero units when this world was still a game.

I already knew which dwarves these were since I had asked for a list from the Dwarven King before this. That was how convenient it was to be in laws with the king of the Dwarven Kingdom.

So those were the ones that I paid attention to.

With what I had learned about forging, I knew that the ones that didn’t have the same talent as these hero units were still able to forge something. However, it was inferior to the ones that were being forged by the hero units.

There was simply something that was lacking, even if they weren’t that bad.

It was just that when it came to forging, even a single second would be enough to cause a difference. That was just how it was between those that had the talent and those that didn’t.

It was as if there was some kind of sixth sense that allowed those hero units to know exactly when they had to take what they were making out of the flames.

It was this that allowed them to craft superior goods.

As this was happening, I couldn’t help feeling excited since I wanted to see just how they would be able to imbue the divine energy of the flames into their weapons.

When it was all over, there were glowing weapons that appeared.

The ones that weren’t hero units were still able to create glowing weapons, but it was clear what the difference was between them and those that had talent.

The glow around their weapons were far weaker than the ones made by the hero units.

It was like a glow stick versus a flashlight, that was the difference in level of light that came from these weapons.

This was a measure of just how much divine energy was captured inside of each of these weapons. So there was no way that one could be mistaken about the quality of these items.

It seemed that the glow really did make things easier for the judges.

However, they were professional judges that had been brought in and it was their job to pick out the exact details.

That was why they looked carefully at each one of the weapons that were made and did everything that they could to find any faults. Though that was hard in the first place since these were weapons that were made by dwarves.

It really wasn’t easy to find fault with these weapons.

I didn’t care about this since there was something else that I was focused on.

I was more focused on the glow that was around each weapon since that was the reason that I had provided the divine energy flames. Or it was better to say that I was focused on the speed that the glow was disappearing.

Divine energy was something that didn’t belong in the mortal world, so it would normally disappear unless there was a medium that was controlling it or containing it. That was why the divine energy only appeared when there were relics to draw them out.

But in this case, the divine energy was put into these weapons...

"They aren’t disappearing..." I couldn’t help muttering to myself as I stared intently at the weapons. I didn’t even blink out of fear that I would miss something with these weapons.

In the end, it was hard to miss the fact that there was no leaking of the divine energy.

Whether it was with my eyes or with my sharp senses for divine energy, I could tell that there wasn’t a single trace of divine energy leaking from the weapons.

Or at least the weapons that were made by the hero units.

As for the ones that were made by the other dwarves, it seemed like it was slowly leaking.

It just wasn’t enough that these things wouldn’t be useable at all.