Chapter-82: Meeting the Swordsmiths

Chapter-82: Meeting the Swordsmiths

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3rd POV |

"Welcome!" In front of a wooden village entrance. The traditional Japanese houses discreetly blending in with the mountain environment. The houses looked more like warehouses with tiled roofs.

The path in the middle of the houses wasn't made with any bricks of the sort, instead, it was a normal flattened ground with trees even sprouting in the side of the path, seemingly blending with the houses.

It looked like the town had blended in with the nature around them to hide them. The Swordsmith village was deliberately designed to be like that, to prevent the village from being discovered.

Ren's gaze then moved towards the masked man greeting him. The first thing that went into his sight was a pink hyottoko mask. The next thing that Ren noticed was the protruding white hair and beard that didn't fit the mask and also the small burly stature of the man.

"Ah, were you perhaps the one waiting for us?" Ren said first after piecing the puzzle in his mind.

"Yes, I have been informed about yer' two's arrival, come in." The gruff voice of the burly masked man came muffled. The man turned around and passed the threshold of the village entrance. Ren and Lucien looked at each other for a brief moment before they followed him.

"May I ask for your identity sir?" While walking along, Lucien asked a question to the masked man politely.

"I am an elder sworsmith, Nagatomo!" The gruff old man replied in the same voice as before.

"I wasn't gon' escort you two but Kagaya-sama requested us directly." The gruff old man continued on while leading the two into a bigger warehouse-like building in the middle of the pathway.

"Here ye' are, this the main hall." The stylish wooden doors with exquisite carvings were pushed open by Nagatomo. The light inside flooded out as Ren and Lucien finally saw the interior of the building.

The first thing that caught both of their eyes was the amount of people in the room. There were about 20 heads encircling the entrance and they all wore the same hyottoko mask but with slight different variations.

"Is it him?"

"Yeah I think so.."

"He looks so thin, they both look so thin."

The murmurs and the whispers started. Ren heard their talks and smiled, stepping in after Nagatomo.

"Quiet! The lads are 'bout to introduce themselves!" Nagatomo's firm and gruff voice silenced the whispering crowd. Nagatomo also took a wooden pipe with a golden ending out from his pocket and lit the tobacco inside.

"Haff! Go 'head lads" He took a puff by pushing his mask up partially revealing his big white mustache and beard.

Ren was the first to step up to introduce himself. "Hello everyone, I am Ren Kato." He introduced himself in a simple manner as he stepped aside to let Lucien take the stage.

"Hello, my name is Lucien Evans, nice to meet all of you" He doesn't know if it was his instinct as a transmigrator or due to the memories of the body he now inhabited, but he introduced himself as Lucien Evans, not Xia Feng.

"Now the 'troductions are done, let's move on." Nagatomo chimed in again as he led the two again, cutting in through the middle of the crowd.

"Where are we going?" Lucien asked Nagatomo. Suddenly, the scene shifted while walking through the doorway and now they are walking through a grandiose hallway. The hallway had carvings and paintins on the wall and many sliding doors littered the sides.

Their gaze moved upwards, and they came to see a velvety-red curtain hanging on the sides of the sliding door on the end of the hallway.

"Through this point, we'll be meeting the Grand Elder smith." Nagatomo said to the both of them as they neared the sliding door.

Knock! Knock! Nagatomo knocked on the wooden frame of the sliding door before shouting out to inform whoever inside that he's coming in. "We're comin' in!"

"Aye! Right ahead!" Ren and Lucien heard a strong voice filled with a tint of huskiness like an old man's. Heat suddenly pervaded the hallway coming from the room.

Then, sounds of metal clanging erupted from the room. Nagatomo opened the sliding doors to reveal the source of the noise. There stood with his back faced to them was a skinny old man still with chiseled muscles with his haori tied to his waist.

The old man also had a hyottoko mask, but this time, it had a noticeable difference to the ones before, his had a huge white mustache going to the sides and the mask was fully red, like the mempo of the samurai.

"Grand Elder, they're 'ere!" Nagatomo said to the old man who was identified to be the Grand Elder. The Grand Elder looked back after one last strike to the thing that he was forging.

"Hohoho! If it isn't the laddie I made the sword for!" The old man let out a muffled hearty laugh when he turned to look at Ren and Lucien.

"So you were the one who created my sword! It's an impressive blade!" Ren praised his sword highly. The quality was better than even the lab and forge made Varanium Tang dao that he used, that's just how good the quality was.

"Truly, it was one of the best blades I 'ave crafted in this life." The Grand Elder seemed satisfied at Ren's response. The Grand Elder crossed his arms and nodded, as if approving Ren to wield the blade.

"Heh, when that Ubayashiki brat came down here to plead for me to create a blade specifically for you, at first, I didn' agree!" The Grand Elder started narrating. "I wanted to see what you're capable of, and the very first moment I saw you, I knew I didn't make a mistake." He, as the Grand Elder, has a very seasoned eye for people, and when he saw Ren and Lucien, he did not underestimate them like the other swordsmiths, but instead saw their true power through their aura.

—(End)—

Word Count: 1023

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