Ainz - Better metals

But the chief of the smith shops wore a cold smile. “Trying to kill you? I guess that’s what you would think.”

Then he reached out his hand to pick up the ingot. It was standard for blacksmiths to wear gloves resistant to heat. But surprisingly, he wasn’t. And it wasn’t as if he had a magic item that would have given him that effect.

He truly grabbed the heated metal with his bare hand.

As the chief of administration goggled at this feat that made him hallucinate the sounds and smells of burning flesh, the chief of the smith shops practically spat, “It’s not even hot!”

“H-huh?”

“This thing hasn’t gotten even the slightest bit hot!”

This time he caught the tossed ingot without thinking. The momentary flash of intense heat he thought he felt must have been his mind’s misunderstanding, because it wasn’t even warm. Shockingly, it felt cool to the touch.

“Wh-what…?”

Really, he didn’t need to ask. Metal that could be heated and not get hot? There was only one thing it could be. That was why his question slipped out as a fragment.

The next words the chief of the smith shops spoke confirmed what he suspected.

“It’s the ingot that undead gave us! I’ve been heating it all day, but it won’t warm up even a little! I strike it, and it doesn’t change shape! I can’t even scratch it! How am I supposed to make armor out of this?!”

“M-maybe he gave you some metal that he couldn’t handle himself?”

“That’s what I wanted to think. But he has a dagger made of the same metal! When you strike it with that, you can make a scratch! How can I call myself the most experienced craftsman?! I’m a fool who loses his mind in the face of an unknown metal!”

***

For a moment, he wondered if a player was behind this. Maybe someone had infiltrated the dwarf kingdom. But a player probably wouldn’t want an ingot like that so badly. Ainz hardly thought it was worth enough to even a low-level player that they would want to throw away their status. There was far greater merit in staying undercover as a leader in this country.

***

Volume 11, Chapter 5.1