Hiro made a groan, imitating slight pain and grogginess as he distorted his face before opening his eyes. Looking around, he could see Eileen standing guard, and Lily kneeling beside him, apparently having just finished applying first aid to his wounds.

“What happened?” (Hiro)

Just at this moment, he could hear Bhalrom’s voice echo throughout the castle, calling out “Assassins!” to alert all the guards to be at the ready and start searching. They would probably think the maid was abused by the assassins, but the one in the shadows would no doubt realize that someone had figured out she was an accomplice.

“You were hit by a powerful lightning spell. I’m surprised you got off with just some burns on your arms.” (Lily)

“How did you take that hit? As far as we know, you’re not a mage.” (Eileen)

While Lily was thankful the damage wasn’t more, Eileen was showing suspicions.

“I’m not a mage, no. But the reason I’ve been learning from Sir Eisenwald is to protect myself. I just didn’t expect that I’d need it so soon…” (Hiro)

With a sigh, he let out a breath and then looked around, seeing the three unconscious mages. It seemed they hadn’t managed to get away. He had partly suspected there would be one more in hiding, to make sure no information would leak. Or perhaps they were there to observe the results and report back.

Either way, it seemed the three here were not going anywhere anytime soon. The next course of action would be to go and find Max. But for that, he would need to separate from Lily and Eileen.

Before long, Bhalrom arrived and checked to see if everyone is okay. Following that, he checked on the three restrained mages. Underneath their cloaks, they were bald but middle aged, covered in tattoos. While none present could understand it, it didn’t take long for Hiro to realize it.

They were runes meant to bestow magic. Why did he know? One of the ideas he had for creating limiters was to use a rune placed on the body, sealing portions of his magic and abilities into it. He had to scrap the idea since it wouldn’t be able to hold enough, and that it would stand out. And being able to recognize and sense the mana flowing in it was more than enough information to get out of them.

Without warning, all three started to froth at the mouth, as if they had taken a poison, before dying. As they died, the chains were released, dispersing into nothingness as they returned to mana. That deals with them. Better make sure no poison remains in the air from the chains. Hiro had used the chains to release a poison for the assassin mages to inhale. Not hard to do when you know the properties of some poisons.

Bhalrom began explaining that a lot of soldiers in the guard station had been murdered, possibly before the assassination attempt took place, and they hadn’t caught sight of anyone fleeing out the cliff side, so it was likely that they were all dead.

Eileen and Lily had to accompany Bhalrom back to the King’s Study. Hiro managed to get away by saying he would stay with Syldis at the Drinking Bear, where Max had told him to go if anything happened. This managed to convince the Knight Captain, but Lily was a bit worried while Eileen remained suspicious.

Returning to his guest room first, Hiro discarded the burned noble’s attire and put on his own world’s clothing, and then a cloak on top to cover it up. Before leaving the room, he fixed the heat and cold regulating layer on his body, as well as the mana cloaking. To go a bit further, he applied a healing layer to help heal his body faster. It was good that those biology lessons finally were useful.

With those four layers applied, he was at the limit for his current seal, and wouldn’t be able to cast anything else without either releasing a limiter, or bypassing the limiters entirely.

With his hood off to not be suspected by guards, he eventually exited the castle and put his hood on again, the gray cloak matching the grey clouds above. The weather had been overcast all day, but now it was starting to rain, and quite heavily at that.

As he started to walk through the town, Hiro started formulating magic spells in his head, making several different spells and processes, and then collecting them all under a single program of sorts. As his limiters were mostly for when in the eyes of the public and during combat as himself, he didn’t mind dipping into his real mana pool for this sort of thing.

Heading to the Drinking Bear first, he entered to find people drinking again, but there were faces he hadn’t seen the first time. Some of them possibly troublesome. As he approached the counter to wait for Syldis, a man stood from his chair, blocking his path.

Without even caring, Hiro continued walking and ignored the man speaking how a child, in his eyes, shouldn’t be in such a place. Before reaching the man, Hiro quickly directed his mana and inscribed several different characters on the inside of his head-to-ankle cloak. 「瞬き (Flicker)」, 「頑丈 (Sturdy)」, and 「自己修復 (Self-Repair)」. Every material and object had a certain amount of characters or runes that could be inscribed on them.

As Hiro did not have his own system of runes he could utilize, he had to use Japanese Characters which he could fit more of compared to English Characters. The cloak’s limit was 10, probably due to its size and high quality materials compared to the leather jerkin he previously bought which could only support 6.

As for his clothes from his own world? Well, he didn’t want to ruin them to find out. Not yet, anyway.

Just as it looked like Hiro was about to bump into the larger man with a lot of eyes focused on him, his figure flickered, before appearing on the other side of the man, continuing to walk towards the bar where the kitchen entrance was, taking a seat.

As the bulky man looked around confused, he saw some stupefied faces of other patrons, as well as the laughing expressions of his own group to see him get outwitted by the person he tried to pick on. Red in the face, he turned around, looking to start a fight, only to see Syldis standing there, looking down on him.

“Viktor, keep a tighter leash on your dogs. You should know better than to mess around in my place.” (Syldis)

“Yes maaa’aaam~” (Viktor)

The burly man sat down again at the table where the supposed Viktor was, while Syldis sighed, returning to behind the counter and grabbing a drink to pour for Hiro. Glancing at their table, Hiro noticed that they were equipped in a similar manner to mercenaries. Now that should be a good connection to make for the future.

“Here alone this time?” (Syldis)

“Yeah. Seems like Max has stumbled into a trap, so I’ll need to go find him. Was hoping you knew the location of someone by the name of Landgrave?” (Hiro)

Syldis’s expression darkened a little as she recalled the name. From here, she explained that the guy was a previous apprentice of Max, but had gone astray. When Hiro described the attack on the council, and how the black cloaked rune-faced guys were involved in it, Syldis’s expression darkened even more.

Feeling it was best that the youth knew, the Bear explained about the Twilight Council who those assassins were related to, and how Max was a sworn enemy of theirs. She also spoke of how she used to help him fight them, and that they were involved in many dark aspects of life. Assassination, kidnapping, slavery, magic stealing, and so on.

After learning of the location of the Landgrave estate, Hiro was about to head off when Syldis stopped him.

“Hold on. I know Max said you can take care of yourself, but still. I told Max I’d look after you, so I’m not gonna let you go alone. Viktor!” (Syldis)

Before Hiro could disagree, she had called out to the mercenary from before. Well, it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but he could figure something out. As the mercenary approached and took a seat beside the youth, they sized each other up, ending with a grin at each other.

This bastards senses are sharp. He can see I’m hiding some power. (Hiro)

Interesting… This brat just analyzed me and figured out my strength. (Viktor)

“Viktor, I got a deal for you. Protect Hiro here while he goes searching for our mutual friend. A week’s worth of booze, on top of clearing your debt. You and your best have to go with him.” (Syldis)

“That’s a lot for a simple babysitting task. What’s the catch?” (Viktor)

“Our friend may be caught up with some very dangerous people.” (Syldis)

When Viktor heard that, he stopped lazing around in his chair and leaned forward, a slight glint in his eye. Hiro sighed mentally, realizing this guy was a sort of battle maniac. Someone who enjoyed the thrill of life and death. The same would probably be applicable to his mercenary band.

“Hoh~ My kind of danger?” (Viktor)

“No… My kind of danger.” (Syldis)

With a wide grin, Viktor stood up and went back to his table, anticipating the upcoming job.

“You can take the room upstairs, furthest on the right.” (Syldis)

“Thanks. I just need to talk with Viktor for a moment.” (Hiro)

Approaching the Merc’s table, Hiro pulled up a chair for nearby and sat on it, facing the group of 5. Viktor, two that looked like brothers, the one who tried to start a fight, and a woman.

“I got a deal for you. You and your crew protect me up until the residence of Landgrave, since there’s a risk of danger, while I enter and look for our friend. As payment on top of Syldis’s payment, I’ll ask an acquaintance of mine for some weapons for you. Better grade and of better material than what those iron swords of yours are made from.” (Hiro)

Having seen the weapons of the people up until now, they were all made of Iron, and not very good forging techniques either. With the knowledge he had, he knew how to make a basic steel from iron. Intrigued, Viktor leaned forward, looking at Hiro. The mercenary knew that there was more to the youth than his appearance showed, especially after getting past his man with such ease.

“You have until tomorrow morning, before we head out. If you get those weapons before then, and depending on their quality, then we’ll have a deal.” (Viktor)

After a bit more discussions about this, they had come to an agreement. As Hiro stood up, he was about to leave the tavern when he called out to Viktor.

“You coming? Otherwise, you’ll miss out on some fun.” (Hiro)

With a raised eyebrow, Viktor stood up and followed Hiro out. After walking for a short distance in the rain, he understood what the youth had meant, giving a smirk in response. This brat knew that he was being tailed. Guess I’m already on the clock. As he thought so, Hiro spoke to him.

“They’re quite skilled. I can shake them off and leave them to you. After all, I have to go retrieve those weapons. Have fun, Merc.” (Hiro)

Like that, he transcribed two more characters on the inside of his cloak, 「隠す (Conceal)」. With this, he vanished from sight as he suppressed his movement and sound, sprinting away towards a smithy he had seen. At the same time, it looked like Viktor had started tracking the ones that had been tailing them, probably to either hunt them down, or at least learn something about them before returning.

Leaving Viktor to his own fate, Hiro headed in the direction of the smithy. Once there, he made sure there was no one around as he broke in and grabbed about three dozen ingots and twice as much coal. Ruining the blacksmith’s business? Who cares. Not Hiro, at least. Using magic to carry them, he headed to the outskirts of town where he could be in peace without people around.

Making sure he was in a wide and open space, Hiro deployed the “program” he had made earlier. One after another, several magics activated as his sight was covered in magic circles.

A soundproof and concealing barrier were placed in a five meter radius of him, as well as a recognition inhibition barrier to deter people from approaching. Next, a magic circle of blue appeared in the center, with a green and red one stacked on top of it, with a black magic circle appearing above it. Blue would supply oxygen, green would contain whatever was placed above it, red would apply heat, and the black one above was an application of force and gravity.

Floating all of the iron ingots and coal onto the magic circle, his forge, Hiro cranked up the heat and oxygen, melting all the ore within minutes, and he began to extract all the slag from it while using the coal to inject carbon into the metal. After heating the ore to temperatures that a standard forge can’t produce - in effect, creating a blast furnace - he started to produce his own huge lump of carbon steel.

Once it was all turned to carbon steel, he kept it heated on the magic circle as he bolded them into ingots, ending up with about 29 pure carbon steel after all the impurities were taken out. Activating another process to his magic program, he created a green magic circle which he left the ingots on to cool down.

Now came the trial and error. Ingot by ingot, Hiro put them into the forge and heated them, using the black magic circle above to simulate a hammer, applying pressure to the ingot in order to shape it. First it was lengthening it, folding, hammer, fold, hammer, fold, until he had gotten at least 64 layers from using the folding technique. Then it was getting the shape and edges.

After those, he started another process and brought up another red and green magic circle for tempering, and a separate green and white magic circle for quenching. Putting the blade through both processes, using some magic to speed up the process, he finished the first blade in due time. Seeing that the quality was decent enough from his own standards, he started to make a whole bunch of weapons.

6 double-edged swords, 8 daggers, 1 halberd, 1 warhammer, 1 lance, and 4 metal bucklers. Once he had made one of each, he could save that process as another program that could be run with his forging magic, storing it as if saving a file in his mind.

As for his personal weapons, he made two katanas, one odachi, two wakizashi, and then used the last of the 5 ingots to make 10 kunai with holes in them for him to use a mana string. His reason for using Japanese blades was because it was unique, and not used in this world so far as he had seen. They did have curved blades, but not like these. In addition, he used a minimum of 256 folds.

But for his personal collection, he wasn’t finished there. Sacrificing 1 of the daggers made for the mercs, he tested how many characters he could imbue on steel. With the 12 characters, he started to doubt what his cloak was made out of for it to be able to support 10. For the things he decided to inscribe, he applied 「自己修復 (Self-Repair)」, 「鋭い (Sharp)」, and 「魔法の無効化 (Magic Invalidation)」to all of his own weapons .

As he had used characters, there were more, but from what he learned, runes would have half, maybe only a third as many that could be placed on the same item, depending on the rune. An analogy would be words being runes, and syllables in a word being characters.

Having spent the last five hours doing this, it was still too early to meet Viktor. Keeping everything hidden with magic, he returned to the Drinking Bear after clearing the field of his magic. Once back, he kept his stealthy magic on and went to his room, keeping an alarm magic barrier on his room as he caught whatever sleep he could. Probably would have to get up in a few hours.