Chapter 34: Steel Sword
As the sun approached the edge of the cliff and started spilling its yellow rays across the town, Bradley and Stanley realized that it was time to return.
Stanley was going to return back to the quarters directly when he remembered something.
"Oh right, I need to get my sword," Stanley said. "Go on ahead, brother. I'll come after I get my sword."
"Hmm, oh the smithy must have opened already," Bradley noted. "Go quickly, or you'll be late."
Stanley ran to the smithy that was upstream. He didn't even have to cross the river to get back to the town's side.
The smithy was a large building with many people working in it. Even before entering, Stanley could already feel the hot air wafting out of the door as well as the sounds of many hammers hitting metal.
The clanging sounds resonated throughout the building inside Stanley now entered.
Even though it was only morning, the people working inside were hard at work. There was a significant number of absent workstations from what Stanley could see, which was most likely from the people that couldn't come to work today due to having to stay back home for the census.
Stanley walked around the smithy for a while, looking at the buff men hitting metal, before he found someone he could talk to.
"Hello sir, can you help me?" Stanley walked up to a person that wasn't working but was clearly a blacksmith.
"Hmm? What do you want?" the man asked.
"I'm here for a new sword and sheath," Stanley said while handing over the chit that allowed him to get a new sword.
"Hmm, come on over," the man said and took him away from the place, to a room that was in the corner of the room. "Choose any sword you like inside."
"Okay," Stanley nodded and walked into the room. The room was filled from top to bottom with weapons of all types, most of which were swords.
The swords were of all shapes and sizes and thus of various weights. Stanley walked by the swords, trying out the various ones.
"Hmm?" he stopped by a bigger sword that was different from all the other big swords. He picked up the sword easily and moved it around a little to test it.
After he was done, he placed it back and went to check the other big swords. After testing them a bit, he came back to the first sword to test it a bit.
"Hey, aren't you done? Just pick a damn sword," the blacksmith outside shouted.
"Oh, sorry," Stanley quickly said. "Can you help me for a second? Why does this sword look different from the other ones?"
"Huh?" the blacksmith walked in to see the sword that Stanley was holding. "You're going to choose that sword?"
"I don't mind using it," Stanley said. "It's just different from the other big ones."
"That's because this one is not an iron sword, unlike the rest," the man explained. "This is made of a new metal we recently learned to make. It's called Steel. This is a steel sword."
"A Steel sword?" Stanley looked at the blade in his hand. The silvery sword was about as wide as his palm and nearly a meter long. Unlike other swords where the blade came to be about 50 to 60 centimeters long, this one was nearly twice as long.
The weight was similarly quite high as well, but Stanley didn't mind it. He was strong enough to swing it around normally, so it wouldn't matter anyway.
"Steel is stronger than Iron, so you should take a steel sword now that you're here," the blacksmith explained.
"Oh! so, I can take this, right?" he asked.
"Are you sure? That might be too big for you. We have smaller swords made with steel too," the blacksmith said.
"I'm sure,' Stanley said.
The blacksmith had no reason to refuse. He walked into the room for a few seconds and found a sheath for the sword. Similar to the sword, the sheath was large as well.
Stanley tried to strap the sheath around his waist, but he found that the sword would hit the ground a little too often if he did that.
Instead, he strapped the sheath around his back and placed his sword in from the top.
"Thank you for the sword," Stanley said and walked away from the smithy.
Having a weight on his back made him feel slightly awkward as he wasn't used to it, but it wouldn't be very long before he was.
He returned back to his quarters quickly and changed into his trainee outfit before leaving for his work today.
After the 1st day's Census took place in the 1st and 2nd quadrants, the 2nd day's census was going to take place in the 3rd and 4th quadrants.
The other two quadrants had their people free to go back to work so the society didn't just shut down for a couple of days while the census was taking place.
This time around, the 1st years had been switched to a new group of people, while the 2nd years had remained the same. From what Stanley learned, due to the number of 1st years, multiple ones were assigned to the same Defender and would switch from one day to another.
With them, Stanley went along the 4th quadrant to help Garry with the census. He was a little worried throughout the day, wondering if he was going to be attacked once again by people that were hiding in other people's homes.
He spent the entire day, waiting for the feeling to come to him so he could be ready for it. Since it was a warning of the danger he would face, falling into his panicked state due to the trauma was something he desperately needed to avoid.
Fortunately, there neither was any danger today nor any feeling that caused him to suffer from his trauma again.
The day ended without much else happening at all. Stanley returned back to the headquarters, and after a hearty dinner, went back to his room to sleep.
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