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The dwarf took it from me and then gave me a pointed stare.

I met his gaze, brought my own tankard to my mouth, and drained its contents.

‘Glag glag,’

I then wiped my mouth with my sleeve in an exaggerated fashion.

‘Gulp,’ the dwarf swallowed his own drink in one go.

When I had emptied about three cups with him in a row, I made sure that the other dwarves, who had been looking at me with thirsty eyes, all got their own cup-fulls.

That was the beginning. The dwarves drank like crazy, knocking back tankard after tankard without a care in the world.

The liquor that remained quickly ran out.

I motioned for one of the wagons waiting in the distance to approach. The dwarves all deeply swallowed when they saw an entire wagon stacked with barrels. However, their desire only showed on their faces for the briefest of moments as they quickly took up their stern countenances once more,

Still, while pretending to be all serious, their eyes were constantly moving as they saw all those kegs on a carriage. While their expressions remained stern and stubborn, their body language showed the frankness of their thirst.

Four hundred years ago or now: Dwarves never change.

A smile came to my lips, reflecting the happiness dwelling within my heart.

“As you can see, there is plenty of alcohol, so you can all drink as much as you want.”3333

The dwarves glanced at one another, and then one of them stepped up and handed my tankard back to me.

That did in no way mean that they planned to stop drinking. Each of them pulled their personal wooden cup from their bags. These were not like the common wooden tankards that any prepared traveler would carry with them. They were almost uselessly large and very beautifully carven.

My small cup looked like a sickly little specimen when compared to the grandeur of theirs.

“Hmmm,” I mused as I watched them almost scurrying to the wagons and then lowering the kegs from the side, one or two at a time. Each of them claimed his personal barrel, sat down on a keg, and started drinking.

That was what happened.

* * *

During my contest, it had taken twenty men to empty ten barrels before they became too drunk to drink more. There were only five dwarves, and they had already gone through ten barrels, which equated to a single wagonload’s worth of booze. Even then, they weren’t drunk, and they weren’t entirely happy.

“Ach, there’s only twenty barrels left now!” one of them complained, bemoaning the dwindling liquor supply.

That was the first word any of the dwarves had spoken after a full day’s drinking. After that, their mouths stayed shut. Another day passed, and the dwarves started drinking slower than the previous day – as if they were afraid of depleting their source of intoxication. Even if the dwarves had slowed things down, the drinking had long since become too harsh for the humans to bear. It was so brutal that a veteran ranger, who had endured the fiercest of battles against the orcs for days on end, had slipped away from the party. He had muttered some excuse of hunting a wild beast that could prove a nuisance.

Where was the man who had been so eager to show the dwarves a real party, a ‘weeklong’ party as he had put it?

After leaving the camp, Jordan had not returned for a full day.

I completely sympathized with his cowardice. Right now, I would also run away if I could.

Foremost on my mind was my desire to run for the hills and escape from the dwarves. Escape from the king’s test and from this camp that reeked with the disgusting stench of alcohol.

The situation was no different for Gwain.

He dared not flee due to his stubborn pride, but the rate at which he was tilting his tankard was slowing down. His eyes had become unfocused.

Arwen was the only human that looked okay.

Her white face had a reddish cast to it, yet her eyes remained clear, and her posture unaffected.

“Hoh,” one of the dwarves gaped at her, for they all greatly admired her fortitude. They lifted their cups into the air in a toast, and Arwen joined them in their salute as she lifted her glass.

Another day passed in such a fashion.

Of Jordan, who had left camp hunting some beast that might not exist, there was no sign.

Gwain was loudly snoring where he had passed out on the ground, and Arwen, unlike the previous day, was getting drunk, groaning from time to them, and now having a slumped posture. 3333

There were only fives barrels of booze left, and the dwarves had begun to ration their intake desperately.

The pace had been pretty hard for me to keep up with, and I had become quite drunk in the end.

As I was fighting the drunken haze that just made me want to close my eyelids, Arwen started speaking.

‘Your Highness, do you … know something?”

I hoped that if I didn’t answer her, she wouldn’t continue talking.

“The first time I swore allegiance to Your Highness … there was only despair. I had thought then: ‘Arwen Kirgayen, your life has ended.’”

It was clear that she had, somehow, become drunk. Her speech was slurred, and she seemed to have forgotten about the dwarves that listened to her every word.

“But I don’t think that now,” she said, and my eyes took her in after such a frank expression. I felt strange inside.

I turned my head and saw the dwarves carefully sipping from their cups. Their eyes were turned toward the last remaining barrel, the night sky, or the bonfire, but I knew that their ears were focused solely on my knight and me.

‘Hoh…’

‘They are young. I once had such times as well.’

By boosting my hearing with mana, I could hear what they whispered to one another.

‘Quiet you. I can’t hear the woman and the boy’s voices.’

“If it weren’t for Your Highness, I would never have felt the brisk northern winds. If it weren’t for Your Highness, how could I ever have had the chance to stare at myself while upon the boundary between life and death? I can only be grateful and thankful.”

Arwen stared so intently at me.

Even in the mists of my drunkenness, her eyes twinkled like stars that were shining right at me.

‘Oh hoh!’ I heard a dwarf whisper again.

‘Now they’re so quiet!’

After she had stared at me for a long time, she suddenly jumped up. She staggered, almost falling forward, but rather knelt before me on her knee.

‘Your Highness, this Arwen Kirgayen gives her entire life to you…”

Arwen, her head still bowed, paused, and there were no words for a while.

Except for the dwarven whispers, of course.

‘What, her entire lifetime? And what’s a highness?’

‘Why are you even talking?’

‘Yes, be quiet, old man – we might miss the main point of their exchange.’

‘What, old man? You’re so young that you’re still blue in the face!’

‘Hah! Are you proud of being old, then?’

I tried hard to ignore the ever-noisier dwarves, finally getting from my seat as I looked pleasantly at Arwen.

She had fallen asleep – still on one knee and with her head bowed.

Still, I wanted to hold on and stay awake, but then, it seemed that I had reached my limit.

I sank down beside Arwen and hugged her with my arm, drunk and completely annoyed with myself.

“Haghum,” a dwarf coughed as he approached, pointing to one of their carriages when he realized that I wanted to make Arwen comfortable on one of the wagons we had brought from Galbaram.

“Would you ever put your mother or wife to sleep on such a wagon? How can you even think of using it? Let us put her in our carriage.”

I did not reject the dwarf’s offer. The carriages used by dwarves were no ordinary ones. No matter what the dwarven race makes, they always make it with both functional beauty and beautiful function – Even if it was only a wooden cup or a wagon.

I didn’t know for sure, but from what I knew, I believed that their carriages were comfortable, as if the dwarves were traveling in their homes.

It would be good for Arwen, drunk as she was, to rest well until she awoke.

As I lifted the flap to enter the carriage, I considered the scene before me. It looked as if an entire house had been shrunk and mounted on wheels.

I helped Arwen to a bed that stood on one side.

“Hmmm,” she groaned with a frown, for the beds of dwarves were as short as they themselves. Still, she quickly curled her legs up and found a comfortable posture.

It didn’t seem too uncomfortable a place for her to rest.

As I stared at Arwen, the realization suddenly came to me that I had never truly spoken with her. It was already a year since she had entered my service, and we had fought together on the battlefield dozens of times. The same went for Adelia, but she had actually been with me since I woke up.

However, in all that time, I have never tried to figure out what kind of persons they were, how their minds functioned. I had just taken it for granted that they stood by my side.

I watched Arwen as she slept. I took in the scars on the back of her hands, on her neck, and across her fair skin.

She had always followed me, and she had never looked back.

I had forced her into taking an oath of allegiance. At that moment, I felt truly sorry for not taking care of her properly.

“Tcha.”

I gave a last glance at Arwen and stepped from the carriage.

“Come, and sit down,” the dwarves beckoned me as I stepped outside.

I saw Gwain some distance off, sprawled across the ground. It seemed that the consideration of the dwarves to offer their beds had not been extended to him.

No one had so much as glanced at the man who had laid there – passed out.

I gave a last look at Gwain and then sank down by the fire after one of the dwarves had led me to it.

“You the first one or the second one?” one of the dwarves asked, a hint of terror creeping into his voice.

I remained silent, so he continued.

“I’m asking if you’re the one who they hail as the return of the prodigal king, or if you’re the one who grew up surrounded by precious things while doing strange things in dark corners.”

Only then did I understand and so answered his question.

“First.”

“I thought as much.”

“What do you know?” I politely demanded.

“Even if I pretend to flatter, you’ll see the lies in my worn eyes as if dirt had been smeared into them. Still, I recognized you well enough, for you have the aura of a wild dog that wanders across the plains, just like the first prince is said to be.”

I frowned at such words, not knowing whether to accept them as a compliment or an insult.

“Will you show me the sword,” the dwarf asked, caring little for courtesy as he stretched out his hand. His gaze was directed at Twilight, which was scabbarded next to my waist.

I unbuckled the sword and handed it to the dwarf, who unsheathed it.

“What is this child’s name?”

“To me, it is Twilight of Dawn, yet to its creator, Twilight of Dusk.”

An admiring light shone in the dwarf’s eyes.

‘It is a good sword, and it has a good name.”

It was very generous praise to hear from the mouth of a dwarf, for when they appraised and evaluated things, they were strict and stingy.

I felt proud – as if the dwarf had praised me personally.

The master smith had forged Twilight by giving up his very soul, and it was a very precious weapon to me.

“Please cherish this child,” the dwarf said, his voice sounding as if it welled up from the deepest depths of true emotion.

“This child’s fate will never be one of light.”

I corrected my posture and suddenly felt gloomy. Just as elves would never speak lightly of destiny, so too a dwarf was always deadly serious when he spoke of the fate of a sword.

If a dwarf such as the one before me had spoken about Twilight’s fate, it meant that he had seen something. It also meant that the dwarf was no ordinary dwarf.

There aren’t many dwarves who know how to read the fate of a sword.

Among the dwarven race, such individuals, who could glimpse the fate of a sword so quickly, were called meisters.

“Are you a meister?”

The dwarf gave me a peculiar look. Something had flashed across his face, an expression that had neither been negative nor positive.

“Surely not….” If my guess was correct, then this dwarf was far more important than a mere meister.

“No way, are you a Prima Meister?”

They were the master of the masters, rare beings who could read even the memory of swords, an ability that stretched far beyond a vague feeling of its fate. To give a better idea as to the class of a Prima Meister is to say that they are to dwarves as Elder High Elves are to the elves.

“Nice to meet you, Kingslayer.”

Kingslayer was one of my titles after I had defeated the Warlord, so as I had recognized the Prima Meister, so too did he recognize me.

I had come here to do an errand – to get a few things done.

Instead, I have met a legendary being that I have not thought I would ever meet.

“They named me Turka,” Prima Meister Turka said as he raised his glass in salute and laughed.

Oh my God!

As I watched him laugh, I sobered up quick enough, for new thoughts and feelings flashed through the drunken haze that had obscured my spirit. A moan escaped my lips as I looked at that hard face before me.

The Prima Meister was the guardian of the Furnace of Eternity, which is said to be the heart and the origin of the dwarven race.

“Why is a Prima Meister out here?” I muttered to myself, for Prima Meisters never left the Furnace of Eternity.