Yard-Pound Bastards (2)
Kim Suwon was in his fourth year of graduate school.
From childhood, simply wrapping his fingers around a tool had always settled something restless inside him. The sharp, electric thrill of hammering, shaping, and watching something he had built actually work—that was what he lived for.
Yet mere handiwork was never enough. He wanted to create something special, something brilliant, something that would make people stop and stare.
That was why he had chosen graduate school, and now those years were nearly over.
There existed a material called graphene, forged from carbon. Most people thought of carbon as nothing more than charcoal or graphite, but diamond and graphite shared the same elemental structure; carbon’s potential changed completely depending on how it was arranged. Graphene, woven into a lattice of pure carbon, was the stuff of dreams—dozens or even hundreds of times stronger than steel, astonishingly flexible, and so conductive it was already used in touchscreens and countless industrial applications.
The only problem was that current technology still struggled to mass-produce it.
Kim Suwon had fixed his sights on that material. The work was brutal. He scoured foreign papers and data, ran endless experiments, and hunted for the perfect method, sleeping so little he moved through the days like a zombie. In the end he discovered a technique that, while imperfect, could make graphene commercially viable. Together with his team he prepared the decisive experiment.
Success would mean not only a doctorate but a name known around the world.
The experiment failed.
While analyzing data drawn heavily from foreign sources, the team had mixed yards and pounds with kilograms and meters. One teammate’s careless conversion contaminated the custom-ordered components. The defect triggered an explosion. A shard of metal punched through Kim Suwon’s skull, and he died on the spot.
An absurd end born of a trivial mistake. That was where Kim Suwon’s life ended.
Yet the eyelids that should never have opened again lifted once more—inside the world of Flame of Dawn.
His one small hobby had been web novels. He never lost himself in the stories; instead he took quiet pleasure in catching the unit mistakes fledgling authors made and correcting them. One day he discovered a novel titled Flame of Dawn and read it. Now his second life was beginning inside that very story.
“The place I woke up is a dwarven nation in the northern reaches of this empire. My father was a dwarf, my mother human—so I’m a half-dwarf, I guess.”
“Half-dwarf? You look completely human.”
After Louis introduced herself as a transmigrator, the two of them abandoned their meal in shock and dragged her straight to Felix’s laboratory to continue the conversation.
She called herself a half-dwarf, yet neither of them could see any real difference. No thick beard, no stocky build—just a slightly short human girl.
“Ah, they were hidden. Look—see these?”
“Wait… her ears.”
“They’re pointed.”
“Right? I don’t grow a beard, but the ears give it away.”
She brushed aside her hair, revealing the ears that had been tucked away. Only then did the two of them nod. Longer than a human’s yet nowhere near as elongated as an elf’s or goblin’s, the modestly pointed tips twitched beside her head.
“Anyway, I lived in the dwarven country until this semester, when I got special admission into the Academy. I never expected I wasn’t the only transmigrator, though. Nearly gave me a heart attack!”
“The dwarven nation is way up north… coming all this way must have been rough.”
“It wasn’t that bad, honestly. When you think fantasy blacksmiths, you think dwarves, right? Learning to work materials that don’t even exist on modern Earth with that level of skill was absolutely worth it. I studied hard.”
Waking among the dwarves had been pure luck. Her family were smiths, and no dwarf alive was ignorant of metal. Studying, researching, and forging the rare ores and materials unique to this world had been pure joy.
“Then why the sudden jump to the Academy…?”
Every time Louis’s eyes sparkled while she reminisced, the other two tilted their heads. Why leave all that behind for a distant academy?
“Everything was great… everything except—”
At Rosaria’s question Louis’s face suddenly darkened.
“Those crazy hairy bastards write every single unit however the fuck they want!!!!!!”
Most dwarves specialized in one craft—gem cutting, architecture, weapons, armor, magic tools—and they dove deep into their chosen field. The problem was that every specialty used its own measurement system.
“My own house used pounds and yards! The weaponsmith next door used feet! Then you’ve got ounces, gallons, and some of them invent completely original units just for their own work?!”
“Even when they claim to use the same unit, their body parts are different sizes, so one guy’s foot is eighty centimeters and the next guy’s is seventy-five! Total chaos!!”
“Goddamn it!!! Just standardize the fucking things!!! I screamed myself hoarse and all they said was ‘our ancestors used these since forever’! Even a species-wide standard would be better! Front house, back house, side house—every single one uses different units!!!”
“How the hell was I supposed to stay sane in a place like that?! You damn author bastard!!!!”
Louis slammed the table with a thunderous bang, howling as though a switch had been flipped. Amazingly, the table itself remained completely unharmed.
“Haa… haa… So…! I heard the Academy actually uses the metric system properly, and that’s why I came.”
“Lucky for me, people say dwarves are the best at magic-tool crafting, so I got in on special admission pretty easily. The prototype I made for the exam was more than enough!”
“Ah… haa…? I see…?”
“Speaking of which—can I take a closer look at that gun? It’s been driving me crazy since earlier.”
“Uh, sure… yeah.”
“Thanks! No need for formal speech—just talk normally!”
The moment the shouting ended she spun around, eyes glittering, and fixed on the gun. Slightly overwhelmed by her intensity, Rosaria handed it over at once.
“Ooh… so that’s how you used the magic circuits. Protective arrays along the long barrel to dampen recoil, and independent firing circuits etched right onto the bullets themselves? And inside the rounds… powdered mana stones? Aha, that explains the protective magic on the bullets too.”
“...You can tell all that just by looking?”
“Of course. Without circuits on the bullet itself the gun might survive the shot, but the projectile would never handle the force. And this material—wood, yet the mana conductivity is excellent!”
“Carving circuits this complex onto such tiny bullets… that’s no joke. The pathways are packed tight and running at peak efficiency!”
“Heh… well… it’s nothing special…?”
As Louis poured out praise after praise while examining the weapon, the shoulders of its creator, Felix, began to rise with pride.
“For the record, I designed this section specifically for stability…”
“I see… and you still managed to keep the power high.”
“Right? And also—”
“Ugh.”
Felix stood, moved beside Louis, and launched into a full technical discussion. Realizing the conversation would continue for some time, Rosaria let out a long sigh and her eyelids slowly grew heavy.
“Haa… still, it’s a bit of a shame.”
“A shame? About my masterpiece of the century?”
Felix’s brow twitched the instant he realized Louis had found fault with his gun.
“Performance is fine, but user comfort wasn’t considered much. The overall shape is similar enough, yet a lot of the fine details feel unfinished.”
“Yeah, the stock is pretty uneven when I shoulder it.”
“Ugh…! Th-that’s…! I couldn’t help it! My specialty is magic, not weapon crafting!”
Faced with a cold, accurate critique of his weak point, Felix’s lips twisted as he offered excuses. He knew perfectly well that while he was a genius with magic, his hands were less skilled at fabricating magic tools.
“This material is World Tree branch, right? I only saw it once back in the dwarven lands. Incredible stuff.”
“But while its mana conductivity and amplification are outstanding for staves or tool components, using it as the entire body isn’t ideal for a weapon that also sees close combat.”
“Looking at it, you don’t just snipe from range—you fight up close too, don’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s right. How’d you know?”
“There are faint scrapes here. Looks like you swing the stock around a lot…”
“Oh…! That’s impressive.”
This time Louis deduced Rosaria’s fighting style from the gun alone, and Rosaria’s interest sharpened in return.
“Even with protective circuits, using it like that won’t last long.”
“Ah… really? Then should I make another one? But would other materials work as well as World Tree branch?”
“I don’t know. It just looked like the most usable thing available.”
Rosaria shot Felix a troubled look after Louis pointed out both her combat habits and the gun’s flaws.
“If it were me, I’d keep the World Tree wood for the internal core and sheath the exterior in something tougher and denser. Mithril’s a bit soft—same as the branch, it’s specialized for magic. That leaves adamantium…”
“Adamantium?”
“Second- or third-hardest metal there is, but insanely expensive. Even a piece this size would cost enough to build a small mansion.”
“A m-mansion…!?”
Rosaria’s jaw dropped at the price of the alternative metal.
“Or dragon scales would work. Tough, low mana conductivity so they won’t interfere with the magic, and the core is still World Tree branch—perfect, really.”
“Dragon… scales?”
Something clicked in Rosaria’s mind at the muttered words. She and Felix locked eyes.
“But dragons aren’t exactly lying around, and scales would be even pricier than adamantium, so maybe a slightly softer metal would be—”
““That’s it!!!””
“Waaah!?”
Louis had been half-joking about dragon scales and already moving on to other ideas when the brother and sister shot to their feet on either side of her, nearly giving her a heart attack.
“We have scales!!”
“Tons of them!!”
“Wh-what…?”
Dragon scales were supposed to be impossibly rare, yet both of them clearly knew exactly where to find a supply.
“Achoo!? …Sniff… what was that?”
At that very moment, Tene—who was once again hauling laundry—sneezed without warning and tilted her head.
“Tene, where are you?!”
“Coming right away!!”
Felt like someone was talking about me… must be my imagination.
Bennet’s call snapped her back to reality. She decided it was nothing and hurried off with light steps. The sooner she finished her work, the sooner she could eat.