Swordsman's Regression: Reawakened as a Necromancer

Chapter 183: The Blacksmith’s Home

When morning came, Percival briskly took a shower. He wondered for a moment what he had felt at night that had snapped him up from sleep, but he concluded that it must have been the strangeness of this village.

Equipping his simple leather armor, he hung the Swordcase behind him. The coffin now carried three blades: Lightpiercer, the Basilisk Blade, and the Nameless.

But only one of these was assured to have a permanent place in the box.

As he descended to the common room, the scent of burnt pine and stale grease met him. Butrick was behind the counter, his hands white-knuckled around a mug of dark broth.

The Innkeeper didn’t greet him. He simply watched Percival with a heavy, suspicious stare that followed him all the way to the door.

Percival didn’t care to greet him either. He stepped out into the biting morning air. The silence of Deathlehem was even more oppressive in the daylight.

Yesterday, he’d been unsuccessful with getting any information about Theumir Steelcane. But he knew to try again today, it wasn’t lost on him how much of a game changer having the Blacksmith/Artificer would be.

He found the trio from yesterday near a communal well. The two men were sharpening axes, the rhythmic shrr-shrr of stone against iron the only sound in the street.

Maurice was sitting on a low wall, braiding a length of hemp rope.

"Good morning," Percival greeted with a level voice.

The axe-sharpening stopped instantly. The bald man looked up, his eyes narrowing. "Still here, pretty wolf? I figured you’d be halfway to the border by now, given how the villagers treated you yesternight."

"I have one more question," Percival said, ignoring the barb. "Do you know anything about Theumir Steelcane?"

The reaction was instantaneous and violent. The second man, the handsome one, spat on the cobblestones as if the name were a mouthful of poison. The bald one’s face turned a mottled, angry red.

"You’ve got a death wish, boy," the bald man growled, standing up. "What kind of question is that, eh? Who told you that name?"

"Uh... I heard it in passing," Percival lied. "I want to meet him."

"If you know what’s good for you, stop asking about him!" the better looking one snapped. "You’re a guest here. Asking questions like that is insulting!"

They gathered their tools and walked away, their shoulders stiff with a defensive, communal rage.

Maurice, however, remained. She watched them leave, then turned her gaze back to Percival. A slow, hungry smile spread across her pink face.

Percival looked at her. "I don’t suppose you can tell me anything about him."

She shrugged, eyeing him up and down. "What are you willing to do for it?"

Percival froze.

"A girl gets lonely in a ghost town like this," she went on. "Maybe we can find somewhere private to ’exchange’ secrets?"

’Yeah, no.’ Percival thought in his mind. Nothing against the woman but he wasn’t going to lose his virginity in this timeline to an old stranger in a possibly haunted village.

He quietly reached into his pouch and pulled out two gold coins, holding them out in the palm of his hand. "Sorry, ma’am. But all I can offer is gold."

Maurice looked at the gold, then back at Percival. To his surprise, she pushed his hand away. The hunger in her eyes faded, replaced by a momentary, weary flash of honesty.

"Keep your coin, wolf," she said with a more honest voice. "I can’t tell you about the man. But... I can tell you where his house is."

Percival’s eyes lit up. "Truly?"

She pointed toward the eastern edge of the village, where the basalt walls met a jagged cliffside. "The house with the black chimney. Now go, before Butrick sees us talking."

"Thank you."

...

The house sat in a pocket of absolute desolation.

While the rest of Deathlehem was merely grey, this structure looked as if it had been charred by a fire that never ended.

The wood was blackened and brittle, and the windows were jagged holes that looked like screaming mouths.

Beside it sat a low, heavy-set building. Percival deduced that the smaller building was Theumir’s workshop.

Percival pushed open the front door of the house. With a groan of the door’s hinges, he was introduced into the old, dust filled home.

He moved through the parlor, seeing the traces of a life interrupted: a half-eaten bowl of porridge turned to stone by time, a chair knocked over in haste.

On a small side table, Percival found a framed picture. It depicted a small girl with wide eyes and a tangled mane of hair, holding a miniature wooden hammer.

Theumir had a daughter, Percival thought, his fingers tracing the edge of the frame.

His eyes narrowed. ’Why does she look so familiar?’

Pocketing the image, he stepped out and entered the workshop.

This was where the true energy of the place resided. The anvil was a massive, scarred block of dark iron. Percival could feel it humming with the mana of all the weapons it had forged over the years.

Hammers of various weights were hung with obsessive order on the walls. In the corner, massive bellows lay dormant, covered in cobwebs.

Percival walked to the center of the forge, his eyes landing on a set of blueprints pinned to a board. They were illegible now, the ink faded, but the geometric precision of the lines spoke of an Artificer’s mind.

"I knew it!"

A roar shattered the silence of the workshop. Percival turned slowly.

The doorway was crowded with figures. Butrick stood at the front, anger plastered over his old ugly face. He was flanked by the two men from earlier and a dozen other villagers armed with pitchforks, heavy logging axes, and rusted chains.

"I knew you’d come here, you meddling rat!" Butrick spat, his hand gripping a heavy iron bar. "How dare you come to our village and stir up the rot! Why are you trespassing and sticking your nose in our business!"

"What is your business in this place!" the bald man shouted, his axe trembling in his grip. "You rotten Awakeners with your greed for power! We will kill you with our bare hands! We’ve done it before!"

They began to close in, their faces tight with that same "mortal tenacity" that had once brought down a six-limbed Demonspawn.

Despite how Percival looked and what they knew he could do, they weren’t afraid of him.

Percival looked around him, his eyes sweeping through their defiant faces one after the other.

Then, unmoved, he let out a sigh.

"If you don’t want to die, do not take another step."

"You think we’re afraid of a traveler with a fancy cloak?" Butrick roared, raising the iron bar. "In Deathlehem, we break things that don’t belong!"

Percival’s hand immediately shot above his shoulder, reading his intent, the Swordcase jutted out the hilt of his three swords.

With a sound like a silk sheet tearing in the wind, he withdrew the Nameless Void-Ender.

The grey blade sang as he swung it downward, and almost instantly, the air became solid, overridden with the mana emanating from the sword.

The villagers all gasped in unison, the front line stumbling back as if they had hit an invisible wall.

Butrick’s eyes went wide, his jaw and the iron bar in his hand dropping at the same time.

"That sword..." the Innkeeper whispered with reverence. He looked up at Percival, his eyes bloodshot. "Where did you get that sword?"