"Oi, what are you doing?" The Dwarven King shouted after coming back to his senses.
I just said with a friendly smile, "I was just taking my turn. I don't think I did anything wrong."
The Dwarven King shook his head as he looked at me before putting his head in his hand.
He came forward and lowered his voice to say, "You're taking it too far."
I just looked back at him with the same smile on my face.
Since I had decided to do this, I would go all the way.
Drogath had been frozen in place, but he slowly defrosted when he heard the Dwarven King's voice.
Slowly, he turned to his right and looked at his hand holding the sword.
If he had moved an inch further out, he might have gotten his fingers sliced off…
The cut was a very clean cut, without leaving a single fragment behind. There was only the handle of his mithril sword left in his hand that he couldn't help dropping to the ground.
After that, he turned to look at the ground when he didn't hear the sound of the handle dropping.
Instead, it was his chin that dropped when he saw this abyss by him.
No matter how he tried, he couldn't see the bottom of it.
He could still see the handle getting further and further as it fell down into this hole.
Just how deep was this thing!
Drogath's legs went soft and he jumped away from the gash in the ground, almost as if he was afraid that he would fall into it.
As he fell on his butt, he turned to look at the sword in Zwein's hands with a look of shock and disbelief.
He didn't believe that such a sword would be able to do something like this.
After looking exasperated for a bit, the Dwarven King still said, "I think that the results are clear. The winner is…"
Before he could finish, Drogath suddenly shouted, "Wait! I want to ask the judges to check that sword before anything is declared! I suspect that they used magic to cheat!"
This was unsightly, but this was something that he could do.
Especially since this was a formal duel.
Since this was a formal and official duel, there was a council of judges that had been gathered for such an occasion.
If one of them suspected the other one of cheating, they would have an option of appealing to the judges which was what Drogath was doing now.
But of course, that was considered very unsightly, especially when the results were this clear.
But Drogath couldn't just let this duel end like this.
So no matter what it made him seem like, he would fight to the end.
The Dwarven King looked at Drogath with a complicated look, but he still gathered the judges in the end.
All of the judges that had been called were famous blacksmiths of the capital, so they were dwarves that were easily recognized by the crowd.
There were many people that even started to fangirl over these judges when they came in.
The Dwarven King didn't waste any time and brought these judges over to Zwein's sword.
He reached his hand out and I simply handed it over to him without any care.
Taking this sword, he went over to a table which he placed it on before letting the judges take a look at it.
There was a silence that filled the air as the judges leaned over the sword on the table.
But then all of a sudden…
"What is this?!"
That was the first thing that any of the judges said.
Once this was said by one of them, the others all started shouting out in shock as well.
It was as if they couldn't believe what was in front of them.
They all leaned in even more to take a closer look at this sword in front of them.
When Drogath saw them acting like this, his hopes were brought up.
They wouldn't be acting this way unless there was something very shocking or something wrong with this sword.
So he hoped that it was the latter rather than the former.
After another long silence, the judges all turned to look at me with a strange look.
It was as if they weren't certain about something and they wanted to get the answer from me.
But when Drogath saw this, he thought that it meant something completely different.
He thought that the judges had found something wrong with the sword and came forward to say something.
But all that he received was the hands of the judges as they all pushed him out of the way.
Not a single one of them cared about Drogath as they all surrounded Zwein.
"How did you make such a thing? I've never seen this kind of metal before."
"That's right! Not only is it lighter, it's even stronger than mithril."
"This kind of metal is what I've been looking for! If you can give me some, then I'll give you anything you want!"
At the same time, there were some that were complaining to the Dwarven King.
After all, it was him who had prepared the resources for this forging duel.
They assumed that he knew what kind of metal this was and that he had been keeping it secret from them the entire time.
"Your majesty, you can't do this to us."
"If you've found something good, you should share it with the rest of us."
"That's right! That's right!"
But the Dwarven King could only reveal a bitter smile.
After all, he also didn't know anything about this.
The materials that he had prepared, he had given the same set to both sides.
So there wasn't any special metal that was used.
If he had to guess, this was most likely another one of the alloys that Zwein had told him about that he had kept secret until now.
He actually wanted to complain to Zwein about this.
The sourc𝗲 of this content is free(w)ebnov(𝒆)l