As the old man, Choi Deok-su, sat before the forge and quietly examined the fruits of his labor, a faint smile spread across his lips.
‘Whether he has plenty of nerve or his liver has climbed right out of his belly… He is an interesting young man.’
He had said he would watch and learn, so Choi Deok-su should simply pretend he was not there and carry on with his work.
It was beyond ridiculous.
This was not something one could learn merely by watching.
‘He must have been desperate enough to clutch at straws, but he should still attempt something possible. He thinks he can watch, learn, and get this thing breathing again? He is ten years too early.’
Time flew, and before long, evening arrived.
The young man had reached the workshop around noon, so well over six hours had passed.
The sun had set long ago.
The task he had just completed was the last of his work for the day.
Choi Deok-su glanced at the young man beside him.
‘Sure enough, he did not get up from his seat even once except when I took a break.’
The young man had silently remained by his side for hours while Choi Deok-su devoted himself to his work.
Sitting beside the forge should have made him want to move farther away, yet he remained where he was even as sweat poured off him. The sight was rather admirable.
‘I thought having him so close would get in the way, but it has not….’
Blacksmithing did not consist solely of hammering iron in front of a forge all day.
The iron had to be cooled from time to time as needed, and the work required far more movement than one might expect.
He had therefore assumed that the young man sitting so close would be an incessant nuisance.
But to his surprise, whenever Choi Deok-su needed to move, the young man got out of the way without being told. His perceptiveness was remarkable.
‘He is clearly not entirely ignorant of the work….’
Of course, that was all.
Anyone with a keen eye could learn to do this much within a month or two.
“Well, that is all for me. Even if I wanted to show you more, there is nothing left to show. It would not be right to invent work solely for your benefit… What will you do? Will you give up and admit it?”
Now it was time for the young man to prove his claim.
The sly expression he had worn while proposing the wager was nowhere to be seen. His face utterly serious, the young man carefully accepted Choi Deok-su’s tongs and smithing hammer.
“I will try.”
And so, the two exchanged places.
“Be careful. It will be a little hot in that spot.”
“Save your concern for someone who needs it, young man.”
“That is true. Then I will begin.”
Despite his bold declaration, the young man sat before the forge without doing anything.
He was not waiting because he did not know what to do. He was waiting because he knew exactly what had to be done.
That caught Choi Deok-su’s attention.
‘That is right. He cannot put it straight into the fire I was just using.’
Suddenly subjecting cold metal to high heat could cause microscopic fractures.
That was tantamount to a death sentence for a sword.
For now, he had to wait for the heat in the forge, where the work had only just ended, to subside.
At the end of the wait, the forge had cooled sufficiently.
Choi Deok-su watched keenly for the young man’s next move.
‘He waited for the fire to cool. Then… Yes, that is exactly right.’
The young man did not rashly shove the sword into the fire.
Instead, he laid the sword at the edge of the flames.
It was the same as waiting for the forge to cool.
Preheating. It was the process of gently coaxing the iron so that a sudden temperature change would not damage it.
Once the sword had absorbed a pleasant warmth, the young man finally pushed it deep into the forge.
The furious flames greedily swallowed the steel and sent sparks flying in every direction, but he did not so much as blink.
‘Now it begins.’
Choi Deok-su silently followed the young man’s hands with his eyes.
The young man did not leave the sword in one place.
He kept his tong-bearing hand busy, flipping and turning the sword so that it heated evenly.
His touch was as delicate as if he were grilling a fish and ensuring that neither side burned or remained undercooked.
Even as he did so, the young man diligently worked the bellows, gradually raising the fire’s temperature.
‘Good.’
Each press of the bellows slowly robbed the flames of their red hue, turning them orange and then yellow.
The instant the flames turned completely yellow, the young man stopped working the bellows with uncanny precision.
It was the signal that the proper temperature had been reached.
Only an amateur would begin the work immediately.
Choi Deok-su watched the young man’s next movement with a piercing gaze.
‘Now, you have reached the temperature you wanted. What will you do?’
Could the young man somehow hear Choi Deok-su’s thoughts?
Instead of moving rashly, he once again chose to wait and carefully observed the fire.
He looked like a seasoned blacksmith who had kept watch before the flames for many long years.
Before long, the young man began working the bellows again.
This was different from when he had merely raised the temperature.
Slow, measured presses at regular intervals maintained the forge at the proper temperature.
How much time passed like that?
When the young man finally drew the sword from the forge, its blade shone a vivid scarlet, like a perfectly ripened persimmon.
‘That is it. It is the exact heat color.’
Choi Deok-su swallowed hard without realizing it.
That color signified the optimal temperature for forging.
That greenhorn had pinpointed the perfect temperature exactly.
“Whew….”
The young man placed the sword on the anvil, took a deep breath, and only then raised the smithing hammer and began striking the blade.
CLANG! CLANG—! CLANK!
‘He is clearly weak at this part….’
His hammering was clumsy compared with the flawless preparation that had come before.
It was the first moment Choi Deok-su, who until then had done nothing but marvel, felt disappointed in the young man.
‘Sharpening an edge means touching dead iron, but forging means handling living iron. They belong to completely different worlds. He was impressive, but this appears to be as far as he goes.’
Yet as if mocking Choi Deok-su’s thoughts, the young man’s hammering gradually found a rhythm of its own.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
“…!”
The irregular, precarious sounds from the beginning vanished. In no time, the young man’s hammer blows developed the pleasing resonance of iron being worked by a skilled blacksmith.
Starting was the difficult part. Maintaining it was easier.
Once the young man produced the ideal ring, he seemed to grasp the feel of it and settled more firmly into the rhythm.
‘It is not going astray anymore…! When did those occasional errant clangs stop?’
The rhythm was familiar. The stance was familiar. They unmistakably belonged to Choi Deok-su himself.
Yet something was different.
The young man was bolder and more unhesitating than he was.
He resembled Choi Deok-su so closely, yet was somehow different.
The sight was all too familiar.
Choi Deok-su had actually seen it once before.
‘Ah….’
For an instant, the young man’s figure wavering beyond the heat haze of the forge overlapped with someone else.
Someone who now belonged to another world, and who had resembled him more than anyone else in the world.
It was his son, Kang Hyeok, who had headed for the Tower as always with the words, ‘I’ll be back!’ and never returned.
The image of Si-hyeon reflected in the old man’s eyes wavered.
It was not because of the heat haze.
‘What a sentimental old fool I have become.’
Though time might rust steel, longing only grew sharper the more it was honed.
***
The first thing I did after jumping into the wager was step on his shadow.
The old gentleman smelled unbelievably delicious.
At this rate, giving up Healing Touch and imprinting a blacksmithing Skill instead would still leave me well ahead.
But nothing happened, no matter how much I stepped on the old man’s shadow.
In other words, he was not Awakened.
‘And yet he smells this delicious….’
I marveled inwardly.
That was when I learned something else.
When a person spent half a century hammering iron, even someone who was not Awakened could smell as delicious as an Awakened with a Skill.
It came as a fresh shock.
Did a technique honed to the absolute limit become no different from a Skill?
I did not know what the world would think, but my dog’s nose was certainly telling me so.
‘It might be called a Skill, but in the end, a Skill merely enhances someone’s ability to perform a particular action. This man has already created and mastered a Skill all his own.’
That closed off the easy route of stepping on his shadow, stealing the Skill, and getting it for free.
But I could not give up simply because the easy route had been blocked.
‘I managed to make a living somehow by relying on this one talent alone. Even without anything like Skills.’
From then on, I spent hours sweating profusely beside the furnace and focusing solely on the old man’s movements.
This was an opportunity to legally watch and learn the craft of a true master whose technique smelled delicious even without a Skill.
I could not afford to waste it.
‘I was prepared to clock in every day if necessary, just to learn it properly….’
Considering the difficulty of the 1st Floor, climbing one Floor a day would be no trouble for the time being, so I intended to race straight back here after finishing each climb.
I did not care if learning it took days on end.
‘So why does it feel like I can do it today?’
Somehow, I could see everything more clearly than before.
I had always had a keen eye, but this felt different.
‘The feel of regulating the fire’s temperature, the angle of the descending hammer, the force behind each blow, the timing for cooling the iron. I can sense all of it vividly.’
Was this another effect of becoming Awakened?
The vast amount of information pouring off the person I was trying to imitate in real time reached me in finer and clearer detail than before.
Just as my confidence began to brim, the old man stepped aside and handed me the smithing hammer.
‘Can I really do it? Right here, today?’
I hesitated for a moment, but decided to trust my intuition and gripped the hammer.
And so began the restoration of the sword.
The start went well.
Well enough to surprise even me.
The trouble began when I started hammering the steel myself.
‘…Damn.’
My first blow was a complete mess.
The hammer struck the wrong place, and my arm quickly began to ache.
But I could not stop.
I had entered the wager to somehow change the old man’s mind and get him to tend to the sword himself, but I had long since forgotten all about it.
All I could see was the red-hot iron before me and the hammer in my hand.
All I could hear was the steel’s song.
How long had I hammered the iron in that selfless trance?
“Whew….”
At last, the forging came to an end.
When the hammering stopped, the entire world sank into silence.
‘I’m almost there.’
But it was not over until it was over.
Until now, I had been opening the airway for a sword whose breath was fading. All that remained was the quench, sealing that breath inside cold steel.
If it succeeded, the lump of iron would finally be reborn as a sword. But a single instant’s mistake could make all that effort disappear like foam.
‘If I fail, it’s going straight to the scrap heap.’
The sword could end up too soft, bent, or warped.
Worst of all, it could shatter completely.
There might be some way to reverse those other problems, but there was truly no answer once the sword shattered.
‘It doesn’t matter how well I’ve done so far. Everything will be decided by this single final period.’
I steeled myself and placed the sword in the forge again.
This was to raise its temperature one last time.
‘It can’t be too hot or too cold.’
Then, when the sword once again turned a vivid scarlet—
‘Now!’
Speed was everything.
My body moved before my thoughts could.
Without the slightest hesitation, I pulled out the sword and plunged it straight into the cold water.
HISSSSSSS!
A violent, ear-splitting noise erupted.
The entire workshop was blanketed in white steam.
The sword vibrated violently in one last desperate struggle.
Like a newborn baby screaming at the top of its lungs, this thing thrashed and shrieked for all it was worth at the crossroads of whether or not it would be reborn.
‘I’m almost there. Please…!’
Before long, it all subsided. Once the sword regained its calm, I slowly drew it from the water.
“…It worked.”
It was the complete opposite of a moment ago, when the blade had glowed red-hot. The blade, now resembling the night sky, poured forth a blue-black light.
Beneath it, beads of water reflected the forge’s dying embers and twinkled like stars.
I could not tear my eyes away from its beautiful form.
A sword breathing? I had wondered what that was supposed to mean, but now I could feel it too.
‘It’s alive. It’s definitely alive.’
The thing that had been screaming at the top of its lungs only moments ago now lay quiet, as if nothing had happened.
As if congratulating the soundly sleeping sword on its birth, a series of System messages appeared.
[The sealed state of ‘Old and Corroded Longsword’ has been lifted.]
[External System interference detected. Reconstructing item information.]
[A unique name is required to identify the item.]
[Assign a name to access the item’s information.]
“Whew….”
The System itself had certified the restoration as a success.