Back in his coffin shop, Fenmu set the greatsword on the floor and fell silent in a textbook Asian squat.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t fix it. He still had top-tier smithing knowledge in his head. He just lacked the materials and tools to put a lot of it into practice.

No matter how treasured this heirloom sword was, it still couldn’t compare to the blade blank he’d forged before leaving his settlement. A true master smith imbued a weapon with its Origin traits the moment it was forged.

Spirit runes were basically enchantment phrases, there to make up for a weapon’s lack of Origin traits. They wore off with use, and any damage to the phrase made them stop working, too.

Even so, the art of carving spirit runes was something many craftsmen dreamed of mastering.

A pair of feet as lovely as porcelain and jade suddenly appeared before Fenmu. Anastasia came over specifically to see his troubled expression.

She was amazed by her adorable disciple’s talent for practical crafts. It was rare to see him stumped by anything to do with smithing.

The last time she’d seen him brood over smithing was when she’d pretended to be a corpse. Back then, Fenmu had been agonizing over whether her coffin should have a sliding lid or a drawer-style lid…

“What’s wrong? Stumped this time?”

“Of course not. These spirit runes are pretty ordinary. I was just wondering whether I should make them stronger for her. But would she pay me for the added value?” Fenmu tapped the blade with his fingertip in a steady rhythm.

The original phrase on the greatsword probably increased its power against evil creatures by about 1.2 times. Fenmu could boost that to twice as much with just a few small changes.

The purple-haired woman looked helpless. She didn’t doubt his words at all; she was more curious about how he knew spirit runes. You had to build up a store of them in your mind. No one could just pull them out of thin air.

She’d been with the boy for so long and had never seen him read a book or stone tablet on the subject. And the settlement that raised him obviously couldn’t have had that kind of knowledge, either.

“Where did you learn all those spirit runes?”

“When I was little, a wolf brought some back from ruins deep in the mountains and forests for me to look at. And you can’t learn something by rote memorization—you have to understand it. Look at the spirit runes on this sword. Half that long string of words is nonsense. Cut it down and tweak it a bit, and it works better than the longer version.” Fenmu didn’t think it was anything worth bragging about.

Besides smithing, Anastasia knew he had an almost incomprehensible talent for other crafts, too. His woodworking and crafting skills went without saying; several of the coffins he’d made back then had been surprisingly comfortable to sleep in. He was absurdly talented at alchemy, too, and he was a great cook.

“Sigh! If only you’d put some of that talent for practical crafts and smithing into combat or magic. I could teach you martial arts or witchcraft, you know.” Anastasia pinched his cheeks and gently pulled them apart until his face was as flat as a pancake.

“But the True God doesn’t bless men. No matter how talented I am, I’d still be held back by the limits of my cultivation.” Fenmu didn’t feel strongly about it. He’d never cared much about being good at fighting. He hated killing, and he couldn’t stand seeing little animals die.

Whenever he saw a little animal dead, he’d be so sad that he’d give it a little seasoning before cremating it.

“Why not swear an oath of faith to me? Isn’t there a region where the men banded together to worship a false god and fight back against the True God’s discrimination?” she said.

He’d heard about it. The True God didn’t bless men, so their social status was lower than women’s. Eventually, things got pretty strange, and respectable young men were often abducted by force.

Still, some men weren’t willing to let women walk all over them. They turned to the faith of a false god instead, and apparently, it had actually worked.

Fenmu thought it over for one second, then immediately shook his head. His master was just trying to find another way to put him through the wringer. He liked his laid-back life as it was. He got to see Anastasia’s curvy figure every day, so what more could he want?

“No, no. Master, you’re just trying to find some way to make me suffer. That sounds exhausting.”

“You’re the most outrageous disciple I’ve ever had. Sigh…” Anastasia sounded exasperated, but her eyes were still full of affection for her male disciple.

It was already late at night. Aside from the liveliness inside the taverns, the rest of town had settled into the quiet of night.

But several female knights staying at the inn where their party was lodged still hadn’t found any peace that night.

One of their companions—the priestess—had been sent back in the middle of the night by the people at the clinic. All they’d been left with was a helpless explanation.

“It’s no use. We’ve tried everything we can, from potions to healing spells to even the most basic wound disinfection. She’s still not getting any better. There’s nothing more we can do.”

Kashalia’s expression was grim. When she’d escaped with Hanni, the priestess, she’d already tried healing her with spells and every other method she could think of. None of it had worked.

Towns filled with adventurers like this invested heavily in their clinics. They were bound to recoup the cost, and the clinics’ techniques were tailored to the local monsters. Normally, they could handle any injury someone might suffer in the area.

But now the clinic couldn’t treat Hanni’s wounds. That meant the dangers beneath the mining district were far worse than they’d expected—and completely beyond what the locals had anticipated, too.

“What are we supposed to do now?! We disinfected the wound right away, but the poison still got into her bloodstream. The Church’s support won’t arrive in time. Are we really just supposed to sit here and watch her die?!” Eva stamped her foot in frustration.

The inn’s owner was an elderly woman. She offered them a kind suggestion:

“Why don’t you go have a look at the coffin shop in town?”

Kashalia and the other female knights all turned pale. What was the old lady getting at? Was she making fun of them at a time like this? They hadn’t even tried to treat their companion, and now they were supposed to buy her a coffin?

“We’re not giving up on our companion this soon. There has to be another way!” Kashalia said firmly. “And please don’t joke about buying a coffin, ma’am. We’re not in the mood for that kind of joke right now.”

“No, no.” The old woman sighed. She always had to explain this. “There’s a very skilled apothecary at the coffin shop. A while back, a family went there to buy a coffin for their sick old man. The young apothecary gave them a dose of medicine as a free extra, and it brought the old man right back to life!”

“…” The female knights fell silent, unsure what to make of that.

“But keep in mind, the woman who runs the coffin shop doesn’t like people making a racket and disturbing them at night,” the old woman added.

There was a blacksmith in town who could repair spirit runes, and now there was a skilled apothecary, too? The idea of selling medicine in a coffin shop was hard to imagine, but for now, they could only hope there was something to it.

Kashalia picked up the unconscious priestess and said to her companions:

“I’ll take her to visit the owner of the coffin shop by myself. The rest of you stay here and stand by.”