Short Story: The Mithril Cloak

I used [Modeling] to thin out a mithril ingot. First it was rolled into a rod that was about ten centimeters in diameter, then five centimeters, then one centimeter, then five millimeters, one millimeter, and eventually, it became half a millimeter, akin to steel wire.

“Is this enough?”

“Not quite, no. If it’s not thinner, it’ll be too stiff when it’s woven. If it’s not as free-flowing as cloth, then that defeats the whole purpose of doing this.”

Linze immediately shot down my question. I tried bending the mithril wire and sure enough, it was still stiff. I didn’t know how much thinner I could make it, or how long it’d take if I thinned it out too much…but if it was what she wanted, I had no choice but to go along with it. I thinned the material down to the width of a single strand of hair, then Linze began to twine it around a rod.

“Can you really make clothes out of mithril, though?”

“Mithril doesn’t suffer from metal fatigue, nor does it break or fray. Plus, if you channel magic into it, you can strengthen the material and make regular clothing with more defensive capabilities than plate armor.”

That would essentially make it like a stab-proof vest… If it was possible to mass-produce, then we’d be able to issue them to our knights. If they wore mithril clothing alongside their regular armor, they’d basically be impervious to blades.

Our knights currently wore chainmail, but that was rather heavy. Thus, a more lightweight defensive garb was exactly what we needed. It wasn’t flammable either…so maybe we could give it to our fire response squad… Though maybe not, since if it was made of metal, it’d get hot in the fire… I didn’t know enough about mithril to make a call either way, really.

“What are you doing?” Linne, who happened to be passing by the room, asked as she peeked her head in.

“We’re making mithril thread. The plan is to make blade-resistant clothing.”

“Mithril clothes? Oh! Can you make me a cloak?!”

I was a little surprised to hear her ask for that, so I asked what brought that idea on. She told me she’d seen an adventurer at the guild who had a cloak that looked cool. It was a simple enough reason… But wait, didn’t Linne pride herself on her agility? Wouldn’t a cloak just get in the way?

“If it’s just a short one that goes to her waist, it should be fine, right?”

“Yeah! Exactly! The adventurer lady had a short one!”

A short cloak sounded simple enough. It’d be good for guarding her against projectiles like arrows that otherwise might have hit her in the shoulder or something. Then again, I didn’t really think Linne could get hit by arrows, even if she wanted to. She was far too deft to fall victim to that.

“All right, I’ll make it now.”

“Wait, like right now?”

Without saying another word, Linze pulled her weaver’s loom out of the [Storage] function on her phone. Then, she began working with the mithril thread at speeds that defied human comprehension, weaving the cloth into a fashionable cloak that looked to be a perfect fit for her daughter. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Honestly, it was like watching a video at double speed.

“All done.”

“Yay! Thanks, mom!”

Linze handed the cloak over to Linne, who put it on and did a little twirl.

“I’m gonna go show everyone my cool new cloak!” Linne exclaimed before darting out of the room and down the hallway.

“We’ll need more mithril thread.”

“Huh? What for?”

“The other children are going to want clothes of their own when they see

Linne’s cloak.”

Linze was right. At the very least, Frei or Yoshino would be interested in that kind of thing. My wife and I could do little other than chuckle as I set to work thinning out more mithril.