Chapter 213: Chapter 213
The next few days were calmer than Rayleigh expected, though after everything Orario had thrown at him recently, he no longer trusted calm at face value.
Ais followed the restrictions properly.
That alone saved Rayleigh from at least three headaches.
She came to the scheduled examinations, sat through Airmid’s questions, and accepted Riveria’s supervision without trying to sneak in another Shunpo attempt the moment nobody looked.
Riveria still watched her like a mother hawk with a staff, of course, but that was simply common sense.
Ais was honest, not harmless, and the kind of honesty she carried could become more dangerous than lying when strength was involved.
According to Riveria, there had been one moment during meditation where Ais’s breathing changed and her hand moved slightly, as if she had almost reached for the echo by instinct.
She stopped herself before Riveria needed to say anything.
When Airmid asked about it later, Ais admitted in her usual quiet way that she had felt Gonryōmaru more clearly for a few seconds and wanted to move closer.
Rayleigh had written that down carefully.
The urge itself was important. Stopping herself was more important.
The residue inside Ais had also settled a little.
When Rayleigh checked it with a thin thread of Reiryoku, the response no longer pulled so sharply toward him.
It still carried longing, and the faint thunder-like answer remained weak enough that he did not dare touch it for too long, but the jagged edge had softened.
The bond was still wounded, yet the wound had stopped bleeding every time someone looked at it.
That was enough for now.
Airmid seemed to agree, though she refused to let Rayleigh describe it in overly abstract terms.
She had taken over part of the recordkeeping after seeing his first draft and quietly deciding that his notes were useful only if one already lived inside his head.
Rayleigh had felt unfairly judged at first, then saw the phrase "unstable storm taste" in his own handwriting and decided he no longer had the moral high ground.
Welf was the strangest change.
He did not suddenly become friendly.
That would have been suspicious and honestly a little creepy!
Instead, he started showing up near Rayleigh’s workbench with excuses that grew worse each time.
A borrowed chisel.
A question about furnace temperature.
A half-finished blade that definitely did not need Rayleigh’s opinion.
Once, he stood there for several long minutes, holding a strip of folded steel while looking like he was trying to strangle the question before it escaped.
Rayleigh waited him out.
That was harder than it sounded.... the temptation to tease the brat was strong!
Eventually, Welf looked away and asked whether a weapon made for one person should be balanced around the way that person currently fought or the way the smith hoped they would grow.
That question was much too good to laugh at.
So Rayleigh answered seriously.
He told Welf that a smith could guide growth, but if the blade ignored the wielder’s current body, habits, and flaws, it would become a beautiful mistake.
A weapon made only for the future would hurt the person holding it today, and a weapon made only for the present would turn into a cage once the wielder started changing.
The real difficulty was leaving room for growth without forcing it.
Welf had listened with a stiff face, muttered that Rayleigh always made things sound annoying, and stayed near the bench for another half hour.
For him, that was progress.
On the fourth morning after Ais’s first proper examination, Rayleigh was in the workshop behind the main forge, sorting materials he was still refusing to use.
That refusal bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
Spirit-treated metal, lightning-conductive ore, binding thread, sealing ink, and a few experimental pieces from earlier Zanpakutō work sat on the table in neat trays.
His hands understood how to begin the new vessel. His mind kept reminding him that beginning too early would be a stupid way to show care.
Airmid sat at the other end of the table, copying his latest observations into cleaner medical notes.
She looked small in the forge, surrounded by heavy tools and half-finished weapons, but somehow she did not look out of place.
There was a steadiness to her that made people adjust around her rather than the other way around.
Welf stood near the furnace with his arms folded, staring at the trays as if the metal had personally insulted him.
After a while, he spoke.
"I still don’t like it."
Rayleigh glanced at him. "The materials?"
"The feeling." Welf’s voice was rough, and he clearly disliked saying this much in front of Airmid, but he kept going anyway.
"Everyone starts talking about the right vessel, the right wielder, the right power, and I keep hearing the same stuff people said back home. The words are cleaner here, but the smell feels close."
Airmid’s pen slowed, though she stayed quiet.
Rayleigh set down the binding thread in his hand. He knew that tone.
Welf was not trying to pick a fight.
He was standing close to an old wound and hating the fact that he could still feel it.
"In Rakia, they saw your blood before they saw you," Rayleigh said. "That kind of thing does not disappear just because the room changes."
Welf’s mouth tightened. "My grandfather used to talk about smithing like it was something sacred. The weight of the hammer, the feel of steel, the pride of making something with your own hands... all that crap. Then the moment Magic Swords appeared, all of that became garbage to him. Suddenly, the only thing that mattered was whether I could burn a battlefield. I hated it. I still hate it."
His voice grew sharper near the end, and the shame that followed was just as obvious.
Welf was still young.
He wanted to sound like a man with firm convictions, but the anger inside him still belonged to a boy who had watched the adults around him turn greedy.
Rayleigh did not soften the subject too much. Welf would only take that as pity.
"Then don’t make Gonryōmaru’s vessel for power," he said. "Make it for Ais’s hand."
Welf looked at him.
Rayleigh continued while tapping one finger against the tray of metal.
"I’ll handle the soul side. I’m not asking you to pretend you understand Zanpakutō, and I’m definitely not asking you to make a Crozzo Magic Sword in a prettier shape. What I want is your instinct as a smith. Weight, balance, durability, grip, how the blade returns after a strike, whether it feels alive in the hand instead of impressive on a display stand. You know those things."
Welf looked away, his ears faintly red from the direct trust.
Airmid finally spoke, gentle but clear. "That sounds like the kind of work only a smith could do."
Because she said it without pressure, Welf had no easy target for his embarrassment.
He only scratched the back of his head and muttered that he would think about it, which meant he had already decided and simply needed time to pretend otherwise.
Rayleigh let him have that much.
Then the workshop door opened hard enough to make a row of tools clatter against the wall.
Tsubaki stepped in with her eyepatch, rough clothes, and broad shoulders, but her usual grin was gone.
That changed the air faster than any shouted warning.
"Rayleigh-boy, Airmid, you’re needed at Dian Cecht’s private ward," she said.
"Guild sent word through Hephaestus. Two adventurers were carried in this morning, and Eina asked for you by name."
Airmid closed the notebook at once. "How bad?"
"Bad enough that the healers sealed the room." Tsubaki’s gaze shifted briefly to Welf, then back to Rayleigh.
"Three parties have gone missing in less than a week. These two are the first ones who came back breathing. The wounds are bad, but the healers say that’s not what’s wrong with them."
Rayleigh reached for Benihime. "What did the survivors say?"
Tsubaki’s face darkened. "The conscious one keeps saying his body was late. Like he moved first and the rest of him followed after. When a mage got near him, he panicked so hard they had to clear the room."
Airmid’s expression tightened, though her voice remained calm.
"Then we should go now. If the panic is connected to the injury itself, keeping him unstable will only make treatment harder."
Welf looked between them, the earlier embarrassment gone from his face.
"I’m coming too."
Tsubaki frowned at him. "This isn’t a field trip, brat!"
"I know that." Welf’s voice rose a little, but this time it was not childish noise. "If this has anything to do with strange weapons, old Magic Sword research, Evilus trash, or whatever the hell is hiding under the city, then I’d rather hear it properly than stand here imagining worse."
Rayleigh looked at him for a moment and saw the stubbornness there
Welf had already been pulled close to the edge of these problems
Keeping him ignorant would only make him more reckless later.
"You can come as far as the ward entrance," Rayleigh said. "If Airmid says the room needs fewer people, you wait outside and don’t argue."
Welf looked like he wanted to object, then caught Airmid’s calm gaze and wisely decided against it.
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