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Around the end of the first week in January, the chicks I had been supervising finished all of their best works. The result was… well; it wasn’t bad? I’m not sure, though.

I mean, all of them were inferior by the standards of what I could make… So I should compare them with the ones sold at the workshop, right?

From that point of view, the knives forged by the two apprentices were just barely enough. It wouldn’t sell in this workshop, but they were pretty good considering that apprentices made them.

Master also gave them permission to exhibit it for the show. It should be fine.

The novice could now forge a sample sword of acceptable quality for sale. However, it didn’t mean he could ‌maintain that quality every time, so he should keep giving his efforts like this to improve. He received permission to forge a few other swords. From now on, he should be able to gain a lot of experience.

Then, there’s Ed… he forged a ‘high quality’ sword. ‘High quality’ was pretty high in the ranking of weapon quality.

Ed’s blacksmithing skill went up to level 5 under my supervision. Even so, normal people with [Blacksmith] level 5 normally wouldn’t be able to forge ‘high quality’ swords. This is why talented guys are so annoying…!

The rank of weapon quality for swords was ‘poor’, ‘lowest quality’, ‘low quality’, ‘normal’, ‘good quality’, ‘high quality’, ‘highest quality’, ‘excellent sword’, and ‘supreme sword’. Ed’s sword was the fourth rank from the top.

In addition, you could say that a blacksmith who could forge a sword of the top two ranks was exceptional. If we took those two top ranks out, his sword was ‌rank two. Ugh, this is why talented guys are so…!!

Eh? I forged a named sword in around half a year? No, it’s thanks to the racial traits of a Celestial whose skill levels grow fast, you know? It’s my ability, so this is quite different.

Well, you could say that it’s unfair how I had it easy with that kind of cheat ability, so I couldn’t really brag about it, you know? But hey, I still need to put some effort to actually achieve something, and I was planning to take it seriously, okay? Uh…

Whatever. There’s no need to humble myself too much.

Anyway, a few days after all of them completed their creation, the day of the show arrived.

I didn’t have any reason to go, but Master, Ed, and the others invited me to, so I reluctantly went to see it. Well, I had been watching Ed and the apprentices for some time. Of course, I was a bit curious about the result.

No, um… To be honest, I was pretty curious.

It’s very hard to say this, but… in the latter half of my supervising task, I neglected my own training to watch them… I guess I got too excited?

Ah… this must be how it felt to get affected by others’ fervor… You see, I watched them working on the weapon very seriously. There’s no way I could ignore that, okay? And I honestly gave them advice when they asked for it…

My first impression of Ed was the worst, but I think his current personality was honest. He was annoying when he got a little too persistent, but acting cold when he sincerely looked up to me was a bit too much, you know? …Ahhh, seriously! It’s fine, right!? It’s not like I’m bad-tempered all the time!

By the way, the venue of the show was the arena. The reason ‌they held it in that place was that the exhibited items were basically weapons. There would be a test cut to compare the quality too.

Also, not only blacksmiths but knights, adventurers, and merchants also came to see the show, and they wouldn’t fit unless they held the event in a wide venue.

A merchant would want to find their future supplier, and an adventurer would want to have dibs on a blacksmith who forged a good weapon. They all need each other in their life.

And because of that, blacksmith apprentices might get manipulated by merchants who promised them financial support to be independent. They might also get tied up in mutual aid contracts with little understanding of what they signed. Apparently, that happened a lot. The world sure was harsh, huh…

However, unless a normal person had [Appraisal] skill, it’s hard for them to know which weapon was better. And even if they had that skill, it’s fun to watch blacksmith show their skill with their own eyes. That made this event pretty popular.

But master blacksmiths, veteran adventurers, and merchants with sharp eyes could easily tell that. Yes, it’s as you imagined.

In other words, blacksmiths who had poor relationships with each other would quarrel here, trying to show that they were better. And what’s used to prevent that was the test cut.

However, the sword might break during the test cut. But anyhow, it’s the creation of young novice and apprentices. All of them had a lot of holes to improve.

Therefore, they had to accept the fact that their weapon might break when participating in the test cut.

By the way, all the craftsmen of Arnold’s workshop participated in the test cut. Everyone was very confident… I heard that they had some ‌pride to work at the popular Master Arnold’s workshop. Even if they didn’t do well, they could still compete with the neighboring countries.

Ah, right. At first, the heir of the workshop diagonally opposite to ours was reluctant to participate in the test cut. However, someone told him that no one would respect a blacksmith who said that he was the best yet wouldn’t participate in the test cut, so he unwillingly joined. Is he stupid?

Other than that, I found out ‌they served snacks at the venue. There were also eating spaces near the corner of the venue. However, it’s more like a bonus. I couldn’t even consider it as snacks. I went to peek, and… yeah, I don’t have to force myself to eat it.

After checking the snacks, I wandered around the venue. But I wasn’t alone. Kuro went together with me.

Apparently, Kuro wasn’t much help when they were scraping snow. Her movements were sluggish since she wasn’t good at cold. Cat beastfolk weren’t the strongest among all beastfolks, so she was weak with hard labor. Besides, Kuro was younger and smaller than me.

And it was ‌difficult to bring Norn in this venue since she was big, so having Kuro accompany me was very helpful. Well, Bell came with us, though. Either way, I was grateful for having thicker defense.

As was expected from the place, I couldn’t wear a hood all the time. Others would treat me as a suspicious person.

However, hiding the lower half of my face with a muffler should be fine, so I could manage somehow… By the way, there were recently more and more situations where Norn couldn’t accompany me like this, and Norn hadn’t been very happy with it.

Yeah, let’s treat her with curry next time.

I was looking around the venue while having Kuro stick to me. I saw Vector, Neil, and Gim. I asked Gim why he was here, and he apparently got hired to do the try cut.