My Protect skill can take my life but it can also help me flirt and make love with cold beauties!
Chapter 21: Grassland mining date

The road Eva and I walked on was the same one I always walked with El. It stretched straight through the grasslands and led to a scenic lookout point.

We soon arrived there. As expected, there was no sign of a mine that could dig up ore.

"Yeah. It's good. The ore has been refined quite well," Eva said, looking satisfied, but I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Um, Kazuya…"

"What's up?"

"Can you pass me that bag?"

When I returned the bag of tools that I had been entrusted with from Eva, she rummaged through it and took out a sharp iron rod and a hammer. Carrying the bag on her shoulder, Eva walked towards one of the rocks that was lying on the grassland.

"This one looks good...," Eva said, placing the iron rod on the protruding part of the rock and beginning to strike it with the hammer.

Upon closer inspection, the pointed part was a slightly different color from the rock. The rock was white while the protrusion was grayish. Could it be that this rock is what they call ore?

"Huh? Is this your first time mining, Kazuya?" Eva noticed me looking at her curiously and turned her face towards me.

"Yeah. This rock, it's ore," Eva said. "More precisely, the gray stuff that seeps through this rock through underground veins is Kiganezuku."

"Kiganezuku?"

Another unfamiliar word came up. (Here, Eva is saying Kiganezuku, also known as kigane iron ore, a type of Magnetite iron ore. Or it might relate to some fictional word, but I will use Kiganezuku for a better fit.)

"Kiganezuku itself is brittle, but when mixed with ordinary iron ore, it increases its strength," Eva said.

"Really?"

"Also, it takes on magical power, so you can make weapons and armor of various attributes."

"Attributes?"

Another unfamiliar thing came up, but if I kept asking too many questions, she might get annoyed. I thought I'd better not ask any more.

"There are attributes like fire and water, and monsters have them too, so you can prepare weapons that exploit their weaknesses."

It's the same as the ones you see in games. You get double damage when you hit their weakness. However, Eva doesn't get upset when I ask her various questions. She's a good girl.

Still, if I ask her too many questions about attributes, she might think I'm annoying. I'll ask El later.

"It looks like we can take it now...okay." Eva carefully shaved off the surrounding rocks and skillfully dug out only the gray part.

"Yeah. This should be usable," Eva said, looking at the Kiganezuku in her hand and expressing her satisfaction. Then she got up and began to search for other rocks.

Looking at it again, gray protrusions were growing from the rocks scattered throughout the grassland. It wasn't true for all the rocks, but over half of them had Kiganezuku growing on them.

Whenever she found a sizable piece, Eva would dig it out.

"Do you really go out and collect the materials for the blacksmith workshop?"

"No, I usually buy them from miners or adventurers."

So the blacksmith workshop also buys ore? That

"But this place is close to the town and there are hardly any monsters around. I can come and collect it alone."

"Huh? Do you always go mining alone?"

"!!!"

Why did she specifically request me as a bodyguard? It seems like she made a formal request to the guild.

"Um, it's not like that! I mean, it's because... even though I said 'alone,' it doesn't necessarily mean just one person, you know?"

"Uh, yeah…"

I didn't understand what she meant by that, but Eva was in a panic, so I didn't press the issue.

"But even though the Kiganezuku is growing all over the place, there aren't any other adventurers around," Eva continued. I have just learned about Kiganezuku today, but I have never seen any other adventurers while hunting Orange Gelatins.

"The quality of the Kiganezuku here isn't very good, so even if you fill up a basket with it, you might only get one copper coin."

That's pretty cheap. But that only deepens the mystery of why she hired me as a bodyguard. This job pays six copper coins. And considering the introduction fee that the guild takes, she paid more.

It seems like a complete loss. But since Eva didn't seem like they wanted to be questioned about it, I decided to stay silent.

"Oh, we don't use the Kiganezuku that we get here in our blacksmithing," Eva added hastily, perhaps because she thought that the reputation of the workshop would suffer if they were seen using low-quality materials.

"This is, well, something that I use for myself." Eva looked straight at me. Her eyes were powerful. "I want to make a sword that surpasses King of Dragon Slayers Vodain's Dragon Slayer Sword."

"King of Dragon Slayers Vodain?"

"Yeah. He was the first king who founded this country. He defeated the evil dragon and the flame dragon that lived in this land. The sword that he used at that time has been passed down as a national treasure from one king to the next."

Eva looked away from me and gazed into the distance, looking up at the sky and said, "I can't get any work from my father yet, so I'm collecting materials and honing my skills like this."

"I see. Eva is also working hard towards her dream."

"Dream, huh... yeah, that's right... come to think of it, did Kazuya also become an adventurer for a dream? You came all the way from another country, right?"

"Well, that's because…" I couldn't say it. It was just a coincidence.

When I thought about it again, what was my reason for becoming an adventurer in the first place? El calls me 'Hero-sama,' but now I'm just barely scraping by to earn money for my living expenses. Hmm.

"Oh, sorry. You don't have to say it if you don't want to. That’s righy. Since you're from another country, there must be a really good reason," Eva said, accepting my silence as consent.

The really good reason in question was because I had been falsely accused of a crime, but the details of the accusation were too personal to reveal. I responded with an ambiguous smile.