The Apocalypse Forge
The sound of a hammer striking heated iron and pure steel rang out.
Clang!
To him, the world was the forge itself.
A single forge with neither entrance nor exit.
Once, he had attended school like any ordinary person. Occasionally, he had saved up money for trips.
But all of that had long since faded into faint, blurry memories.
One death. And then reincarnation.
In a forge whose name he could no longer even recall, he simply hammered iron.
There was no special reason. It was the only thing he could do here.
He struck the heated iron, cooled it, then thrust it back into the boiling lava. He repeated the process countless times.
In a span of time too vast to count, mountains of failed works had piled up in the corners of the forge.
He had forgotten how to think long ago.
Why did he make the steel sing?
He did not know.
In the forge, only the bubbling roar of crimson lava and the clash of steel echoed endlessly.
He was forging yet another failed work in solitude when the space near the furnace suddenly twisted.
It was a phenomenon he had never witnessed despite living through such an immeasurable stretch of time.
The warping, tearing space emitted a low woong—and from within it, he felt a certain heat.
It was not the heat of the furnace or the iron. It was colder than that, yet warmer. A gentle warmth.
The master of the forge set his hammer down with a soft clink and stared at the rift without blinking.
“Huff… huff…”
Lee Daon clenched her trembling hands.
The longsword in her grip, its edge already dulled, shook violently.
She glanced sideways at her status window. How much longer could this sword hold out?
Item:Longsword
Grade:Common
Type:Longsword
Condition:Blade dulled
A plain European-style longsword. Nothing but steel and a hilt. Nothing special.
Attack Power:+11
Attack Speed:-5%
“Ugh…”
The tip of her sword was pointed at a Desert Troll, a monster that usually inhabited the middle floors of the Tower.
“Why is a troll on the fourth floor…”
Her chattering teeth bit down on her tongue.
It had been roughly ten years since gates and the Tower—symbols of awakening, hunters, and climbers—had appeared all over the Earth.
Only a tiny fraction of people succeeded in awakening and became the new protagonists of the era, called hunters or climbers…
But that too was a matter of probability.
Power that could only be obtained by overcoming the most extreme odds.
“Hngh…!”
The Desert Troll’s massive fist hurtled toward Daon. She blocked it, but the sword that had already reached its limit shattered into pieces.
Daon was a D-class hunter. She was far stronger than an ordinary person, but that was all.
To her, the troll’s heavy fist was already overwhelming just to withstand.
Scraaaape.
Her feet were shoved backward by the blow, gouging deep furrows into the ground.
Burning pain flared from the soles of her worn-out boots, but the impact bought her a little distance from the troll.
There was no time to think. Daon kicked off the ground and ran.
She didn’t look back. As she fled, she wondered—how had she ended up in this situation?
“Haaah…”
Behind her ragged breathing came the heavy thud, thud of the troll’s massive weight crushing the earth.
I’m going to die.
Fear flooded Daon’s mind, quickly replaced by bitter resentment.
“Haa… haa…”
Her own party members, who had thrown her as bait to the suddenly appearing troll and fled.
The weapons and armor she had bought on loan, filled with grand dreams, only to discover they were utter trash—probably counterfeit.
And luck. The D-class label that clung to her like a curse, along with the terrible misfortune that had brought all of this about.
Everything became an object of resentment for Daon.
“Haa… cough.”
Her frantic sprint suddenly came to a halt. It wasn’t because she had given up on life or resolved to fight.
Simply because there was nowhere left to run.
“Ah…”
Before her lay a canyon. A deep, dark chasm whose bottom could not be seen.
“Kwaaaaaaaa—!”
While Daon hesitated at the edge of the canyon, the troll’s roar closed in.
“Haha…”
There was no visible way to escape death.
Above her thundering heartbeat, two choices rose.
Should I throw myself into this deep canyon and die twitching at the bottom?
Or.
Should I be torn apart and eaten alive by the troll?
Daon looked up at the sky for a moment. The beautiful blue sky. The clouds drifting far away.
“Fucking…”
Gazing endlessly at that scenery, Daon chose the former.
[Hidden Stage Entered]
As Daon fell, translucent letters flickered before her eyes.
Daon slowly opened her heavy eyelids and drew in a sharp breath.
The first thing that filled her vision the moment she opened her eyes was a majestic forge. A place that seemed both a sacred heaven and a burning hell. A sight she had never encountered before.
“Ugh… huh?”
When she twitched, the sound of clinking metal rose from where her back touched the ground.
From that sensation, she naturally realized she was lying on her back.
“Am… am I alive…?”
The brief relief that came with the confusion lasted only a moment.
Above her, beneath a ceiling dripping with chains and molten metal, letters floated into view.
Hidden Stage: -99F, Apocalypse Forge
Her heart sank the instant she read it.
Hidden stage.
A term that climbers who broke through the upper floors of the Tower would inevitably encounter.
“H-hidden…”
Everyone knew. A hidden stage meant opportunity. But it always came with tremendous danger.
To Daon, who had been staring death in the face only moments ago, those few words brought not anticipation but despair and terror.
“Haaa…”
Daon tried to stand up immediately, but her legs kept giving out and she collapsed with a thud.
She fell into a panic and began frantically looking around.
The ceiling was so high it couldn’t be seen, yet thousands of iron chains hung down from the darkness like a spiderweb.
At the ends of those chains hung swords and spears that looked freshly tempered.
Every time they swayed in the heat, the cool aura unique to cooling steel filled the space.
“Ugh… haa…”
A sharp pain pricked her hand as she groped blindly across the ground.
Daon carefully lowered her gaze to find the source of the pain.
The floor. A floor that reflected the red glow of the furnace in dizzying patterns. A massive hill of steel made from countless layers of iron shards.
Before she could even take in the overwhelming sight, an oppressive pressure that made it hard to breathe surged from behind her.
“……”
Creak.
She turned her head cautiously. A giant figure entered her vision.
A human shape made entirely of endlessly boiling, burning lava. It was staring straight at her from the peak of the iron hill.
“U-ugh…”
Just looking at it made her eyelids feel like they were burning.
“Ah.”
The bubbling lava that formed what might have been its mouth—or something like it—opened as it stared at her.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!”
At the same time, a piercing scream tore from Daon’s throat.
She scrambled backward. She tried to run.
But unfortunately, every direction was blocked.
As she desperately tried to distance herself by scrambling over the shards on her backside—
Slice.
A stinging pain shot through her palm.
“Haa… haa…”
She looked down at the floor again. Her own blood glistened on a dagger that caught the crimson light.
◈ Type: Dagger
◈ Condition: Incomplete
Found in a mountain of weapons labeled Failed Works in the corner of the Apocalypse Forge. Born from tens of thousands of hammer strikes and the question, “What am I striking for?”
Attack Power:+89
Attack Speed:+10%
Option: Armor Penetration — Ignores all of the opponent’s defenses and deals damage.
The moment her hand touched the dagger, the status window appeared naturally.
“What is that…”
The space before his eyes rippled.
It had been an immeasurably long time. It must have been.
He could not perceive the flow of time, so it was only a guess. But the countless pieces of equipment piled like mountains proved the passage of those years.
Kiiiing—
The rippling space eventually spat out a single person.
Short brown hair. Brown eyes.
‘A person…?’
A form he remembered from his memories of humanity.
It should have been a welcome sight, yet instead he felt stunned.
‘Why? So suddenly?’
The girl’s gaze, which had been darting around, finally turned toward him.
Her eyes were wide open, her lips parted.
… What emotion was that expression supposed to convey?
“Ah.”
“U-uaaaaaaaaah!!!!”
The words he had spoken for the first time in so long could not finish.
The girl’s scream drowned out his voice.
In the very next moment, the girl moved away from him.
“……”
He had no idea what he should do, so he simply watched in a daze.
The girl, who had been stumbling backward nonstop, soon reached the wall. Or rather, what might as well have been a wall—the mountain of failed works.
Her hand touched one of the more recent failures he had casually tossed aside.
‘… Oh.’
Blood immediately flowed down her palm, but she didn’t seem to feel the pain and paid it no mind.
She simply stared at the dagger with blank, wide eyes.
‘… It must still hurt, though.’
With a small flicker of concern, he took slow steps forward.
Hiss.
The iron shards beneath his feet melted on contact.
At the sound, the girl whipped her head back toward him.
“W-wait…!”
Their eyes met. Her dark brown pupils shook violently.
She quickly snatched up the dagger and pointed its blade at him.
“D-don’t… don’t come any closer…!”
Even though it was a language he had not heard in a very long time, he understood its meaning.
Korean. His mother tongue.
A person.
His chest tightened with a sharp pang, and his vision blurred.
Hot stone dust brushed his cheeks. In other words, tears were falling.
“H-huh…?”
He simply stood there in a daze, listening endlessly to that voice.
Time was like a rough whetstone, grinding even emotions dull.
Even so. Even so.
It seemed loneliness was something he could not overcome.
“A-are you… crying…?”
Tears flowed without end.
Because the warmth of a human body—different from the heat of the furnace—was something he had missed so desperately.
Because a voice with rises and falls unlike the sound of hammering an anvil was something he had longed for so painfully.
A little time passed.
Clang!
The girl was still crouched in the corner of the forge, watching him, while he hammered iron.
This time, the forging had purpose.
Because the dagger the girl clutched tightly to her chest looked far too shabby.
Even if it wasn’t perfect, he wanted to give her at least one proper gift.
Clang! Clang!
He swung the hammer again and again.
Each time molten metal splashed, the blunt lump of iron changed shape. Each time he tempered it, its strength shifted.
Soon he finished the final tempering and picked up the steaming dagger.
“Uh… um…”
Taking in the girl’s tense, shrinking posture, he swung the arm holding the dagger vertically.
Whoosh—
A gust of wind. A storm-like gale violently shook the iron chains hanging from the ceiling.
He stared quietly at the now completely cooled and hardened dagger. It still wasn’t a work he was entirely satisfied with…
‘Still, it’s better than that one.’
But unlike the iron lumps he had forged meaninglessly until now, this dagger had at least one reason for its creation.
“……”
For some reason, he threw the dagger toward the girl who was still huddled and trembling in the corner.