A Sword I Don't Like
The stall vendors who had been eagerly tailing me suddenly fell back, their presence vanishing entirely.
“Hmm…”
By the time I looked around, every stall that had crowded the street was gone. In their place stood the massive arched entrance of the Tower.
Hunters lined up in front of it, waiting their turn.
Some carried swords and shields, others held bows, chatting casually among themselves.
It wasn’t that their conversation interested me, nor was I particularly glad to feel the presence of so many people after so long.
What truly bothered me were the weapons in their hands.
Every single one of them was cheap junk—utterly devoid of the maker’s care, philosophy, or even basic quality.
I thought back to the endless years I had spent in my forge.
The eons of time it took to complete even one proper weapon. The countless failures I had discarded.
The equipment those hunters carried now was so pathetic I felt bad even calling it a failure.
“Tsk…”
Then, among them, I spotted a boy huddled in a lonely corner. He clutched a broken iron sword to his chest and sniffled pathetically.
“Damn it…”
E-class hunter Yu Minsung crouched alone, lamenting his situation.
Since the Tower’s appearance, the number of orphans had skyrocketed worldwide.
People swept up in the Tower’s emergence. People who challenged it without understanding its power and never returned.
When you considered the numbers, it was only natural.
Minsung was just one of those countless orphans.
The only difference was that he had a younger sister to take care of.
“I’m so sorry, sis…”
His little sister was an ordinary girl with big dreams.
As her older brother, Minsung wanted to give her everything she could ever want.
But money always held him back.
Monthly rent and living expenses. On top of that, all the academy fees.
What he earned from odd jobs was barely enough, and the gap grew tighter every day.
—Oppa, I’m fine.
The siblings who only had each other had grown up far too quickly.
It always broke Minsung’s heart.
He wished she would never understand him. He wished she would throw tantrums like any other girl her age, fresh out of elementary school.
Unlike him, who had dropped out of school, he wanted her to live chasing only the things she desired.
That was why he had to earn money.
The day after seeing his sister’s bitter smile, Minsung threw himself into the Tower.
He was a hunter, after all. He believed he could somehow clear an Easy-difficulty tutorial.
Was that naivety? Or arrogance?
He had barely managed to finish the tutorial, but all that remained in his hands were a few low-grade magic stone shards and a broken iron sword.
It was a D-class iron sword he had begged a friend to lend him.
Considering its price of five hundred thousand won, his bold challenge had ended in nothing but debt.
“Starting tomorrow… I’ll have to run two trips a day…”
He was secretly wiping his tears with his sleeve, about to stand up, when a shadow fell over him.
“Huh…?”
When he looked up, he saw a girl.
A beastperson girl.
She looked about the same age as his sister—one of the Tower’s native residents, of whom there were fewer than a hundred in all of Korea.
‘…Whoa, first time seeing a beastperson.’
Knowing it would be rude to say out loud, Minsung quickly turned his head, scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve, and gave a small wave.
“U-um, hello?”
The girl in front of him made a sullen face at his greeting.
She looked thoroughly displeased about something.
‘Did she… see me?’
Facing that expression, the memory of himself pathetically swallowing tears just moments ago flashed through his mind.
He had been trying to pull himself together because he felt too guilty to go straight home to his sister…
Apparently he had failed even at hiding.
Minsung felt a hot flush creep up his face.
“N-no… this is, um…”
“How much is that?”
He had been stuttering out an excuse when the girl spoke again.
He looked into those blue eyes once more.
Her gaze wasn’t on him at all—it was fixed solely on the broken sword in his arms.
‘Ah.’
The burning heat on his face only grew stronger.
“……This? About five hundred thousand won…”
“Hmph.”
For some reason, the girl’s tail puffed up and her pointed ears twitched at his answer.
Minsung thought to himself.
‘Ah…’
Even to a girl the same age as his sister, he must look utterly pathetic right now.
He felt like crying again, but he bit down hard on his lip and held it back.
At that moment, the girl took one step closer to him.
“Are you going to throw it away?”
“Probably… yeah.”
A sword that had already broken was now nothing more than scrap metal.
The enchantments the maker had placed on it had all shattered along with it.
The girl then reached out her hand toward Minsung.
“Then give it to me.”
“Huh?”
“Give it here.”
I thought she was a fox beastperson, but maybe she’s a crow?
Maybe it was because she looked the same age as his sister, but Minsung found it impossible to refuse her request.
Hesitantly, he handed over the broken sword.
“Here…”
“Hmm.”
The beastperson girl turned the broken blade this way and that, examining it. Then—
—Crunch.
She began chewing on the chipped edge with her sharp fangs.
“Hey… w-wait, what are you doing?!”
It had been a mistake.
She wasn’t a fox or a crow—she must have been a mole beastperson.
Minsung grabbed the girl’s jaw to stop her bizarre behavior.
But all he felt was the soft touch of her cheek.
“Wait a shecond.”
“W-what?”
Gulp.
“I said wait.”
The next moment, the girl raised both hands.
Blinding white heat erupted from her palms.
“Ugh…!”
While Minsung squeezed his eyes shut against the light, he felt intense heat radiating from in front of him.
When he cautiously opened his eyes again, he saw the girl kneading molten iron.
A rippling liquid of white and red.
Even in the winter cold, the scorching heat made Minsung stumble backward.
“Are you okay—”
The worried words died in his throat.
The moment the girl placed her palm against the molten metal, he felt an inexplicable sense of reverence.
Her eyes burned with a sacred blue flame, completely ignoring everything else as they focused solely on the metal in her hands.
—Shhhk. Shhhk.
Every time she ran her palm over the molten iron, its shape grew longer.
It stretched and stretched until it finally took form.
A gleaming edge emerged.
Soon, a perfect blade had been created.
The girl blew on the still-glowing metal to cool it.
White steam dissipated, and from her small hands emerged a single long sword.
A taedo that reflected the sunlight with a cold gleam.
“Wow…”
It was so beautiful that just looking at it stole his breath away.
It was nothing like the broken, chipped sword from before.
It looked like a work of art.
The girl lifted the sword, examined it in the light for a moment, then slowly opened her mouth.
“I don’t like it…”
With an indifferent expression, she dropped the sword—which didn’t even have a hilt—into Minsung’s hands.
◈ Type: Taedo (Great Sword)
◈ Status: Unfinished (Production halted due to the creator’s whim)
◈ Attack Power: +104
◈ Attack Speed: +10%
A weapon crudely forged by ■■■ ■■■■ after melting scrap metal with the heat inside her mouth.
📍 Bestowed Option — Sharpness: All attacks inflict guaranteed critical hits.
📍 Bestowed Option — Lingering Heat of Incompletion: The blade always maintains a lukewarm warmth. Grants the user resistance to cold.
What fell into Minsung’s hands was a sword beyond description.
*
The experiment had been half a success.
My current body had been forged by melting down an entire smithy.
So my instinctive belief that I could create something had been correct.
But as for the quality…
“Hah.”
I really didn’t like it at all.
Since it was my first work after leaving the forge, I had tried to put in real effort.
But the more I fiddled with the molten iron, the uglier the blade became. In the end I only shaped it roughly before stopping the process.
“How annoying.”
The quality of the steel was no different from what I used to summon in the forge.
The forging process itself hadn’t changed either.
I melted the iron in the furnace inside my throat and used my palms as both anvil and hammer to forge the sword.
It should have been exactly the same as when I made April…
Yet something important was missing.
What is it…?
While I was pondering what had been lacking, hurried footsteps came from behind.
“W-wait a second…!”
It was the voice of the boy who had been crying against the Tower’s outer wall earlier.
“What?”
“This—this thing, what is it?”
“…It’s a sword.”
My head tilted in confusion.
It was exactly what it looked like.
I couldn’t understand why the boy had come back just to ask again.
“No, I mean… I know it’s a sword! But you just chewed it up. No, you spat it out… Wait, you kneaded it!”
He was babbling incoherently.
I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying.
When the boy met my narrowed gaze, he took a deep breath and tried again.
“It’s just… it seems like an incredibly good weapon for someone like me…”
His hands were trembling. His eyes were squeezed shut.
The boy bit his lip and hesitantly held out the thin tang of the sword I had just forged.
My newly sensitive senses—thanks to the long ears and tail—automatically read his true feelings.
Regret. And greed.
“Just use it however you want.”
It was going to remain unfinished junk forever anyway.
If he wanted it that badly, there was no reason to stop him. It wasn’t worth the effort.
“R-really? I can have it…?”
Instead of answering with words, I turned around and walked away, swishing my tail in reply.
I hadn’t noticed when I didn’t have one, but when talking felt like too much trouble, a tail was surprisingly convenient.
That aside…
“What should I do with the rest…?”
A small amount of molten iron still bubbled restlessly inside my body.
It was an unfamiliar yet familiar sensation.
My whole body kept itching.
“Maybe I should make something random and sell it.”
After all, money was essential if I wanted to live in this modern world.
Even if I closed my eyes and made something carelessly, it would still be better than the eight-hundred-thousand-won daggers I saw at the stalls earlier.
“Let’s see…”
I perked up my ears and listened to the chatter of the people around me.
…Having ears really is convenient.