Magical Weapon

 

They're good at doing several things at once.

Swinging a great hammer while striking with a small one,

kicking out while lashing with their tail,

smiling even as they seethe with rage.

 

"Ow, ow ow ow, ow ow ow ow ow!"

"You're a boy, aren't you? Stop making such a fuss over a little thing like this."

With that, Nina clamped her tongs around one of my scales. They were like a giant pair of pliers used to grip red-hot iron in the forge, or scissors without blades. Something along those lines.

Then she braced one foot against my chest and threw her full weight into it, yanking with all her might.

"Ow! That hurts, I said it hurts! Can't you be a little gentler?!"

"For someone with such a big body, you're awfully pathetic."

Pulling out a scale or two on my own was a bearable kind of pain, but having someone come at you with that terrifying tool and wrench them out one after another by force was another matter entirely.

"Come on, Nina, just let me do it myself."

"Absolutely not. If some amateur botches it and the wound gets infected, you'll be in real trouble."

She insisted as much while gleefully going at my scales, but if you asked me, she was hardly a professional scale-puller either. I just wished she'd examine the wounds afterward and leave the pulling to me… Ow.

"The, um, prototypes are… done…"

A lizardman girl peeked out, her voice uncertain.

"Fie. Good work, and thank you. How did they turn out?"

She was the granddaughter of Sig, the lizardman who had once attended the school of magic. By rights she ought to have been a lizardman princess, but she had no interest in inheriting the throne and spent her days devoted to smithing in Scarlet.

With scales impervious to fire and heat and four arms that could swing heavy hammers with ease, the lizardmen were natural-born smiths. Hard to believe they'd once had a strict ban on the use of weapons of any kind.

"Well, the thing is, um, your scales, Mentor… they're really, really hard… I could barely do any real processing… on them."

Despite her evident embarrassment, she produced several weapons for display.

"First, this is, um, a dragon-scale spear. I used a sharpened scale for the spearhead."

What Fie presented first was a spear with a shaft roughly two and a half meters long, fitted with a leaf-shaped blade and lugs to prevent over-penetration. Fine reinforcement incantations were carved into the shaft, lending it an elegant beauty despite its simple design.

Even my largest scales were only a few dozen centimeters across, and unlike metal, they couldn't be melted down and recast into a single mass, which made them ill-suited for crafting. Fie had taken a medium-sized scale, honed it to a razor edge, and affixed it to a steel shaft. That she'd managed to grind something that hard into such a clean shape was remarkable.

"Next, this is… a dragon-scale steel sword. I crushed some scales into powder and mixed them into the steel."

The second piece was a longsword with a vivid red blade, as if wrought from living flame. From guard to tip, it bore ornamentation evoking true fire, clearly designed for beauty without compromising function.

Woven seamlessly into the decorative patterns was an incantation: a summoning formula for a fire spirit, carefully inscribed to sheathe only the blade in flame. Steel alloyed with my scales would take no damage from the heat, and could burn through even the hardest-hided beast.

"And this is… well, um, I made it on a trial basis…"

The last piece was a longbow, assembled from multiple large scales layered together. It was clearly taller than me. The full length had to be around two meters.

"I heard that beasts' claws are even sharper and stronger than normal. So I thought… it might be better to attack from a distance."

She had a point. Armor might let you endure the blows, but you could hardly go hunting in a full suit of dragon-scale steel plate. At best, you'd wear leather armor fashioned from armored bear hide.

Which meant the old way of fighting, accepting a few hits as a matter of course, was no longer an option.

Bows had long been unpopular in Scarlet, and for good reason: reinforcement magic didn't work well with them.

Small arrowheads simply couldn't hold much magic. The amount of mana an object could contain was proportional to its size.

On top of that, unlike a sword or spear, each shot required a fresh enchantment. Compared to all that, throwing spears were preferred: easier to imbue with mana, usable in close quarters if it came to it, and simple to retrieve.

None of that would change just because the bow was made from dragon scales.

"May I try drawing it?"

Fie nodded eagerly and handed it over. I shifted to human form and took up the dragon-scale bow.

"The string is braided from armored bear hair. It's saturated with mana, so it won't snap easily."

That explained the brown color.

I raised the bow, hooked my fingers on the string, and slowly drew it back—

I couldn't draw it.

"What the?!"

It wouldn't budge an inch.

"Um, well…"

Was I doing something wrong? I flipped the bow over, readjusted my grip, checked it from every angle, but Fie spoke up with a troubled look.

"You can't draw it with normal strength. You'd need to use reinforcement magic."

"… Ah, I see."

It clicked. I raised the bow again and murmured.

"I am strong."

Reinforcement magic was tricky to calibrate. Apply it clumsily and your body's output would spike beyond what you could control, making it impossible to move properly.

There were two ways around that.

One was to grow accustomed to the enhanced strength through practice.

The other was to apply a heavy load.

With my muscles reinforced, I slowly drew the bowstring back. This time, it gave easily.

"You drew it just like that… That's amazing!"

Fie's eyes went wide and she clapped in delight. Buoyed by her reaction, I pulled the string to full draw and released, as if loosing an arrow.

"Ah."

Before Fie could even finish her gasp, there was a sharp crack as the bow snapped back. At the same instant, a searing pain tore through my arm.

"OWWWWWW?!"

I dropped the bow involuntarily and crumpled to the ground, cradling my arm.

"Let me see!"

Nina rushed over, face pale, and rolled up my coat sleeve.

"… Thank goodness, it's nothing serious. It'll leave a mark for about a week, though. You're lucky you were wearing the dragon-scale coat."

Her voice was tinged with relief, but I was anything but fine. The pain was so intense I couldn't even speak.

"I-I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I forgot to make an arm guard…!"

"It's fine. This one was just being an idiot."

Hearing Fie's half-tearful apology, I finally pieced together what had happened. The bowstring I'd released had lashed right back against the inside of my arm. With other bows I'd tried in the past it had never been a problem, but only because my coat had absorbed the impact.

Put another way, this dragon-scale bow packed enough force to overwhelm even the coat's protection.

"If you hadn't been wearing that coat, it probably would've taken your arm clean off."

Nina's quiet observation sent a chill down my spine.

"Um, s-so, if you combine this with arrows tipped with your scales… even without reinforcement magic on the weapon itself, I think they'd be effective against beasts… With it, even more so."

I see. Reinforcing your own body and fighting in close quarters was an acrobatic feat only the Swordsaints could pull off, but simply drawing a bow was something even a clumsy oaf like me could manage. An ordinary bow would snap in half under that kind of force, but this extraordinary war bow could withstand it. And if you layered reinforcement magic onto the arrows on top of that, you might bring down not just beasts but a dragon.

"Yes. Every one of these is splendidly crafted. I think they'll serve us very well."

Fie's face lit up, and she picked up the bow from the ground.

"Th-then… please allow me to present this bow to you, Mentor, as a commemorative gift."

"Oh, well, that's, um…"

I was about to say I didn't really need it, but Nina drove her elbow hard into my ribs.

"Surely there is someone more worthy of wielding it than I. Please bestow this bow upon a hero who deserves it."

"… Understood!"

Fie's expression sharpened with resolve, and she raised the bow high with all four arms.

If I were to use that bow, no number of arms would be enough.

I kept that particular thought locked away in the back of my mind and gave her a solemn nod.