Harem Training System: Every Girl I Train Makes Me Stronger!

Chapter 57: 57. Visiting Grock For Some Question. Now He’s About to Tell Me What Broke Her.

Grock’s forge was exactly as loud and as hot as William remembered it, the ring of hammer on metal greeting him from the doorway before he’d even fully stepped inside. The dwarf looked up from his work at the sound of the door, squinting through a curtain of sparks, and his weathered face split into a grin the moment he recognized who’d walked in.

"Well, well, look who it is," Grock said, setting down his hammer. "You’ve come here to tell me Aetherion already broke?"

"Because if it did, boy... I’m going to have some very pointed questions about what exactly you did to it."

"It didn’t break... but at least I’ll give you some good news that I’ve killed a tier five reaver with it." William smiled smugly.

"Wha..." Grock’s eyebrows shot up so fast they nearly disappeared into his hairline. "You did what?!"

"It’s a long story, and I don’t have the time to tell about it for now." William raised both his arms. "Well, let’s say that it handled beautifully, for the record... All five modes I’ve used just to kill that bastard."

"Of course it did... I built the damn thing." Grock wiped his hands on his apron and gestured William closer, already reaching for the sword the moment William unsheathed it, turning the blade over in his thick hands with the proprietary care of a man inspecting something he’d birthed rather than merely forged.

He ran a finger along the edge, frowned at something only he could apparently see, and shot William a look of open disapproval.

"Wait a goddamn minute..." Grock frowned. "You haven’t oiled this fucking masterpiece since I gave it to you."

"Oh yeah... I’ve been a little busy, so no time for that."

"Busy," Grock repeated, in the tone of a man who considered this an unforgivable excuse. "You know how long I spent on this blade?!"

"Four years, boy! Four years of my life, and you’re out here letting it dry out like some ceremonial wall hanger?!"

"This isn’t a decoration; this is a living weapon, so it needs care like you’re the one raising it!"

"Alright, alright, I’ll oil it tonight."

"Nahhhhh! You’ll oil it the fuck now while I watch, because I don’t trust you to actually follow through otherwise." Grock was already pulling supplies from a shelf behind him, setting William up at a nearby workbench with the brisk efficiency of a man who had clearly had this exact argument with other customers many times before and had streamlined the correction process accordingly.

William, recognizing a losing battle when he saw one, sat down and began working the oil into the blade under Grock’s watchful, critical eye and used the enforced downtime as an opening for the actual reason he’d come.

"Grock," he said, keeping his tone deliberately casual, "you’ve been making weapons for the academy a long time, right?"

"Three generations, you said."

"Longer than that if you count my grandfather’s apprenticeship, but three generations running the actual forge... yeah, that’s true."

"Mind if I ask you something?"

"Anything for Aetherion’s wielder as long as he raises that little baby like his own kid. " Grock laughed. "So... what’s this something you’ve wanted to ask, eh?"

"You ever hear of a unit called the Silverline Vanguard?"

Grock’s hands, which had been busy sorting through a box of spare fittings, went still. He didn’t look up right away, and when he finally did, the easy warmth from a moment ago had drained out of his expression entirely, replaced by something guarded and considerably older.

"Where’d you hear that name, boy?" he said.

"Around the academy, some instructors mostly gossip about it," William sighed. "Along with another name that felt like I had to know, which was... The White Sword of Astoria."

Grock set down the heavy iron-bound box with a deliberate, bone-deep thud that seemed to reverberate through the stone floor. He pulled a scarred wooden stool across the workshop, the screech of wood on stone cutting through the silence like a blade.

When he sat opposite William, the usual boisterous energy that defined the dwarf was gone. In its place was something compressed, something dense and heavy, like the air before a thunderstorm.

His eyes, usually bright with the fire of the forge, were dimmed by something ancient and unspoken.

"Let me get this straight, boy..." Grock began, his voice dropping to a gravelly register that made the hairs on William’s neck stand up. "You’re asking about Catherine... right?"

"I am," William said, meeting the dwarf’s gaze without flinching.

The question had been burning in his throat for days, a slow-acting poison that needed to be purged.

Grock’s thick eyebrows knitted together. "Why do you want to know about that? Why dig up old bones?"

William paused. He weighed the options: the deflection, the half-truth, the casual curiosity, but looking at the raw, unvarnished gravity etched into Grock’s lined face, he knew those would be worthless.

In this forge, among the embers and the steel, honesty was the only currency that would buy him the truth.

"Because something happened to her," William said quietly. "Something she’s still carrying..."

"Eight years later, she still wears it like armor she can’t take off..."

"I want to understand what it is, Grock... I want to understand so I can actually help her instead of just guessing blindly and making things worse."

The silence that followed was suffocating. Grock studied him for a long moment, his gaze assessing, weighing William’s soul against the sincerity of his words.

Finally, the dwarf exhaled a long, shuddering breath through his nose, smelling faintly of coal smoke and old regret.

"I made her sword, you know," Grock said suddenly.

His hands, calloused and stained with decades of soot, rested on his knees. "The one with the white hilt..."

"I don’t know if you’ve seen it during her drills, but it’s the best work I ever produced. Before yours, I mean and... I mean that with every drop of blood in my veins."

William nodded slowly. He had seen the blade; it was a masterpiece of balance and lethality.

"She came to me when she was what? Nineteen? Twenty?" Grock shook his head, lost in the memory. "Already faster than knights twice her age."

"Most recruits come asking for something heavy to compensate for their lack of skill, but not her... she’s built different, boy."

"She wanted a blade that could keep up with her instead of holding her back. Something that felt like an extension of her own nerves."

"You knew her personally, then," William observed. "Not just as another customer."

"Everyone at that forge knew her personally, eventually," Grock grunted. "She used to come by just to talk."

"She didn’t even need repairs half the time; she just needed to hear the hammer hitting the anvil... It reminded her she was alive."

A ghost of a smile touched the dwarf’s lips, softening his rugged features. "Bright as anything, that girl... Sharp tongue, sharper blade."

Then, the softness evaporated, replaced by a hardness that looked painful. "She used to bring her whole squad in with her sometimes."

"Especially toward the end... They were a rowdy bunch, always teasing, always pushing each other’s buttons, but you could see it the way they orbited around her."

"Like planets around a sun."

Grock’s voice grew rougher. "Not because she demanded it and not because she wore the rank on her shoulder. But because she’d earned it."

"Every inch of that respect was forged through blood and steel... That’s the kind of leadership you can’t fake."

William leaned forward, sensing the precipice approaching. "You remember the others? Her unit?"

"Some names stick... Some faces haunt you." Grock’s eyes clouded over. "There was a big fellow, Aldric."

"Always had something smart to say about her stance, even though he couldn’t have out-fenced her on his best day. He was the heart of that group."

He paused, his throat working as he swallowed. "Then there were the human twins..."

"Quick with a bow, moved like they shared a single mind... always finishing each other’s sentences."

"And there was a quiet elf woman who barely spoke unless it mattered, but when she did... when she spoke, the whole world seemed to stop and listen."

Grock’s gaze drifted past William, looking at something far away, something in the past that he clearly hadn’t visited in a long time. "Good people... All of them they are."

"The kind of people you don’t forget, even after the world moves on and pretends they never existed."

William felt a cold chill settle in his bones. "The Silverline Vanguard."

"The Silverline Vanguard," Grock confirmed, his voice hushed. "An elite royal unit."

Young knights were handpicked for a special initiative, meant to be the kingdom’s future, and Catherine led them." Grock smile proudly. "As the youngest Grand Knight candidate in the history of this realm."

The dwarf’s fists clenched on his knees. "There wasn’t a soul in that unit who wouldn’t have walked into hellfire for her."

"And from what I saw, she would’ve done the same for every one of them without a second thought."

The tension in the room became unbearable, the air thick with the unspoken horror that lay beneath the nostalgia. William could feel the weight of the question pressing against his teeth, demanding to be asked.

"What happened to them, Grock?" William asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "What happened to the Vanguard?"