Disguise

"Sister Lans, when did this Master Hewg come to the temple?" Lucia asked quietly, gazing in the direction he had gone.

"About five years ago..." Lansseax recalled. "I remember it was a morning in December. When the knights opened the temple gates to clear the snow, they found him in a corner by the street. He was badly hurt then, beaten until he was barely breathing. When I first heard the news, I thought he was some slave thrown out by one of the city's arenas. But later we discovered the wounds on his body had already been carefully bandaged once. If not for that, he probably would have died in the snow the night before."

Lucia frowned slightly. His instincts told him there was something rather unusual about this, so he asked again, "And after that? Did he ever say who injured him, or who saved him?"

"No," Lansseax said with a soft sigh. "After his wounds had more or less healed, Priest Kallen, who was in charge of logistics in the temple, carefully asked him about his situation. But the moment those questions came up, he would fall into a long spell of daze and confusion, as if some immense terror had frightened him witless."

"Until one time, when he was moving about in the rear hall and saw the other Misbegotten masters in the weapon forge, he suddenly clung to the trouser leg of the medical priest accompanying him and said he also knew a little forging craft. He begged us to take him in and let him work here, and not to drive him away no matter what—you saw it too. We would take in some Misbegotten and Demi-humans who had fallen on hard times to begin with, and those we truly couldn't settle would be sent to the East Sea Islands under Sky City's jurisdiction, so naturally there was no reason to refuse."

"But what I didn't expect was that Master Hewg's so-called 'knowing a little forging craft' was far more than a little," Lansseax said in admiration. "He is the most skilled weaponsmith I have ever seen. Even the master smiths serving the Golden royal family can hardly be mentioned in the same breath as him. Look at this sword—"

As she spoke, she held out flat in her hand the knight's broadsword Hewg had just finished forging. Lucia focused his eyes on it, and saw that the blade, which had fused rare materials such as adamantine, cold iron, and ancient dragon scales, showed a faint sky-blue hue. Its whole body radiated a dim, cold gleam. Even beside the astonishingly hot furnace, he could still feel the bone-chilling cold coming from the edge.

"Here, try striking these two swords against each other," Lansseax said, handing both swords to Lucia. "You don't need to use too much strength."

Lucia took the knight's sword forged by Hewg in his left hand and held the ordinary knight's sword in his right. He found an empty patch of ground, crossed both hands inward, and slashed. After a clear, ringing clang, the ordinary knight's sword made of fine steel had already been split in two. The cut was as smooth as a mirror, while the one produced by the Ancient Dragon Temple showed not even the slightest nick.

"With this kind of toughness, it's almost caught up to the Dragonscale Blade made by Sky City!" Lucia said in astonishment. He had originally thought cutting a notch into it would be enough to show the difference, but who would have known these two swords were simply not weapons of the same grade? He didn't know whether to say the materials used by the Ancient Dragon Temple were too good, or Hewg's skill was simply too strong.

"The weapons forged by the other masters are basically one or two grades weaker than this sword, but they are still more than enough. I had Master Hewg take charge of teaching the other craftsmen forging techniques, and the results over the past few years have been quite good. Given time, if this entire smelting and forging system can be expanded and copied to Sky City on a large scale, the effect should be very impressive." Lansseax smiled, looking slightly pleased with herself.

After hearing this, Lucia felt sincere admiration well up in him. Only after Sister Lans said it did he realize that every detail of this forge was clearly the result of precise design—the high-temperature furnaces enhanced by magical rune arrays, the transport tracks and large tools made with the mechanical technology popular in Leyndell, the highly efficient assembly-line production model after strict training... While he was still feeling completely lost about Sky City's path forward, Sister Lans had already gathered the resources in her hands and completed a series of effective experiments for the future grand plan of increasing the Ancient Dragon Dynasty's national strength.

For this ancient dragon leader who had spent years alone in the royal capital of another nation, breaking through the limitations of Sky City's thousand-year history and embracing the tide of the times was absolutely not just empty talk. Earlier than countless of her kin, she had realized the disaster stagnation might bring, and she was doing everything in her power to push the dragon race to catch up with the Golden Dynasty.

Perhaps it was also precisely because of this that the relationship between her and Lucia had quickly grown close. In this era when the Golden Dynasty was at its zenith while Sky City declined day by day, a like-minded comrade and fellow soldier was truly too rare.

The two left the weapon forge and chatted idly all the way to the priest's sleeping hall where Lansseax lived. While he waited for her to change clothes, Lucia's mind was still lingering over the many questions concerning Hewg.

Judging from the fleeting shock and fear Hewg had shown when the three of them met, Lucia was at least seventy percent certain that he had recognized his identity. Of course, this kind of discernment was not strange for a master who would one day be able to forge a god-slaying weapon. What was truly strange was who exactly had saved him five years ago, delivered him to the Ancient Dragon Temple, and why they had left him to drift on his own for such a long time afterward.

As for the possibility that everything was just a coincidence and Hewg really was only an injured slave, Lucia did not consider it at all.

He had often heard about those arenas that organized human warriors for barbaric gladiatorial fights and occasionally set up some alien slaves for slaughter as entertainment. It was not uncommon for them to throw out slaves who were severely injured and had lost their value. But the places where slaves were abandoned were mostly in the lower districts where public order was relatively chaotic, especially in those gutter-like alleys. Who had ever seen someone dumped at the gate of the Ancient Dragon Temple or the Erdtree Cathedral?

Taking into account Hewg's ability, experiences, and all the abnormal behavior he had shown when he first arrived at the Ancient Dragon Temple, Lucia rubbed the space between his brows. Anyone with half a brain could smell the thick scent of conspiracy here, all right?

"Was it Queen Marika? But isn't the timing a little too early? And it's not like she placed him in the Golden Sanctuary, either?" He tried to combine this with the scant clues he had grasped in his previous life and make deductions, but for the moment, he had no idea at all.

Just as he was feeling troubled, Lansseax, who had finished changing, had already walked out from inside the hall. She came lightly to Lucia's front, tapped her foot, and spun quickly in place, then asked with great anticipation, "Well? This disguise is pretty clever, right?"

Lucia stared dumbfounded at the scene before him. Lansseax had changed out of that solemn and elegant white priest's robe and put on a set of black, tight-fitting leather armor, displaying her tall, graceful curves to the fullest. Looking again at the pair of deerskin long boots on her feet, the two short swords hanging diagonally at her waist, and the scarf and hood that covered most of her peerless face, she looked exactly like a female mercenary assassin, as dangerous and alluring as a rose!

"Clever... You look like a different person!" Lucia said, then lowered his head and looked at the old, embarrassingly shabby chain mail he was wearing, and couldn't help lamenting that comparison was truly the killer.

Standing next to Sister Lans, his image had swiftly fallen from "a veteran mercenary who, though young, looked experienced at a glance and not to be trifled with" to "random lackey A beside the beautiful, terrifying, and obviously super-powerful big sister"!

For some reason, even though they had not set out yet, he was already so tired that he wanted to go home and sleep...