Hand Over the Forge!
“Only hammering for three hundred years, huh?”
“...Park Taesu?”
Why the hell is this guy showing up here at this hour?
More importantly, how the hell did he even find me?
I must’ve shown my confusion on my face, because Park Taesu cleared his throat. “Hmph. So you know my name.”
“Oh.”
For a split second I thought I’d slipped up. I’d only ever crossed paths with him once at the Management Office. There was no way he’d remember me. I’d almost gone full sappy and tried to build some false intimacy. But honestly, it didn’t matter. I’d perfected the art of smoothly playing along long ago.
“I saw you in the lobby at the Management Office.”
“Ah, really?”
Park Taesu nodded quietly, calm as ever. “By the way, how did you even find this place? You didn’t put my address on the bulletin board.”
I leaned against the doorframe with my arms crossed. I had zero intention of treating him like a welcome guest. Sensing that, he bent at the waist. “I apologize for that. I used a bit of the guild’s information network.”
“Hmph.”
The stiff, proper guy from the Management Office. His every polite motion felt like he’d stuffed etiquette deep into his bones. But that same politeness just screamed “I’ve got plenty I want to milk from you.”
“Was the dagger you posted on the bulletin board actually made by you?”
Right to the point, no hesitation at all. “Yeah. I made it.”
He’d come all the way to the roof just to confirm. That left no room for doubt. In situations like this, admitting the truth was always smarter than clumsy denial. It let me keep the lead in the conversation.
“You’re not here to arrest me or anything. Let’s keep it simple. I’m exhausted.”
I’d already lost all sleep, so I let out a big yawn on purpose. At the same time I snuck a quick glance at his condition. “Then I’ll get straight to it. Please help us.”
He bent at the waist again, but I just ignored him and scratched my ear. “Pass.”
“Please! I’m begging you!”
Even with my icy tone, he didn’t back down. Instead he launched into a long, detailed rundown of the tower’s current state. The nightmare difficulty. The fresh-faced hunters being torn apart by monsters because they had no decent gear. He listed every pathetic story, but honestly I felt zero reaction. As a merchant I’d heard every sob story from broke people wanting discounts. Was it real suffering or just a carefully crafted script meant to hook me? And besides, who in their right mind believed a stranger’s tale on the spot?
“Hey, what if the dagger I sold on the bulletin board is actually a scam?”
I ran a hand over my chin and asked with a crooked smile. The sob story was fine. But why the hell was he out here in the middle of the night, bothering me with a complete stranger’s words? I was supposed to be suspicious of anything new. Yet he’d bought the first dagger I ever sold without blinking. A little suspicious, but he didn’t flinch. Instead he reached into his pocket and pulled out something. “That’s why I personally checked. The one I received.”
There it was, the dagger I’d sent via entrusted delivery just hours earlier. The D-grade one. “Did he buy it?”
Before I could voice the thought, Park Taesu’s stiff shoulders twitched. “Please… please help us!”
“…”
“Three people died yesterday. Because of that damn equipment. And…”
His face streaked with snot and tears as he slammed his head to the floor. His voice, murmuring the names of his fallen comrades, was genuinely heartbreaking. But watching it, I drew a cold line in my mind. Emotional manipulation. The type of people I had to watch out for most while running a business. I’d gone soft from cheap pity and ended up bleeding in the end.
“Sorry, but I’m busy…”
I was about to wave him off when he added in a sorrowful voice, “Only one week left. If we don’t conquer the thirtieth floor within seven days, a gate will erupt right in the middle of Seoul.”
My brows furrowed hard. Damn it. He should’ve said that sooner.
***
The next day. The quiet forest path on the outskirts of the city that Park Taesu had led me to. Honestly I still didn’t want to help. My nose was ten meters long. But one week from now a gate would open in Seoul’s center and I’d be helpless to stop it. Crafting or not, I had to protect the place I lived first, right?
“Ugh. This is taking forever.”
I trailed behind him grumbling the whole way. “Here we are.”
Park Taesu’s footsteps stopped. His finger pointed at a shabby forge that looked like it was one strong wind away from collapse. “This is the forge? No smoke coming out at all?”
My lukewarm reaction made Park Taesu scratch the back of his head awkwardly. The day before I’d asked him for a few things. First, show me the workspace. There was an F-grade mana-stone furnace, sure, but I had zero desire to let some random guy touch my precious one. Especially since he’d already given me an unpleasant experience. Still, since he’d brought me here, it looked like he’d found a proper spot…
“Ah, yes. He should be here any minute now.”
“Who?”
“That’s…”
Park Taesu trailed off instead of answering. At that moment a white-haired, burly old man in a sweat-stained shirt walked out of the woods, wiping his brow. “My nephew! It’s been ages!”
The booming shout echoed through the forge like a wild animal had wandered down from the mountains. My ears were ringing. Yet the old man narrowed his eyes and glared at me the whole time. Then he scanned my body from head to toe and clicked his tongue loudly. “Heard you were coming late at night. What kind of scrawny runt is this? What does something like you think you can do?”
“…”
My brows twitched. So this family had a reputation for being rude, huh?
“Uncle, please be careful! He’s the one I worked so hard to bring!”
Park Taesu panicked, but the old man just snorted like he was still annoyed. “Hard to bring my ass. You bring some gigolo here asking to borrow a workspace? Can you even swing that hammer properly?”
It was no wonder. My body state had changed since my dwarf days. I’d only managed to make five pieces of equipment. How could I have adapted to hammering? Of course the old man would click his tongue. But I stared straight into his eyes and spoke up. “Hey, old man.”
“What? Old man?”
“I’ll light the fire myself. You go over there and watch.”
“What the— you brat!”
The old man’s face froze for a second, then he burst out laughing so hard it shook the tools hanging on the shelves. “Hahahaha! Look at this guy! No matter where he rolled out from, he’s got guts!”
He punched his own chest with his bulging arm and narrowed his eyes. The look wasn’t one of irritation. It was pure curiosity. “Alright, fine! Light the fire or hammer whatever you want with those scrawny arms of yours! Just don’t let me down. If you mess up, I’ll make you lick the forge floor!”
“Hah. As if.”
I was a master blacksmith with hundreds of years of experience. I couldn’t be shaken by the pride of some old guy who’d only swung a hammer for decades. “Alright. So if I win?”
“Hahahaha! You win? You?”
The old man clutched his belly and laughed until he could barely breathe. The tools rattled from the force of his mirth. This was definitely mockery. I had my own pride too. I couldn’t just swallow a challenge like that. “If I win, I get lifetime use of the forge. Anytime I want to work here.”
“Hah?”
His eyebrows shot up. My shameless demand for ownership of the forge looked completely outrageous to him. But I wasn’t backing down. “You scared?” Who else but a blacksmith would flinch from such a direct challenge? Blacksmiths were forged by iron and sweat. If someone told them they could be beaten, their eyes would naturally burn. This old man was no different. Asking for ownership instead of “I make better stuff than you” felt like the real insult. “Hahahaha! Good! Lifetime use or whatever! I’m happy to give it! But you have to actually be good at it!”
The old man clapped his rough palms together, teeth bared in a grin. The challenge had clearly worked. I turned to Park Taesu and jerked my chin toward the furnace. “Go get the materials right now.”
“A-ah. Y-yes!”
Watching from the side, Park Taesu looked like he might cry, but he brought the bundled materials without a word. I untied the bundle and out spilled mana stones glowing with a faint blue light. “Alright, go watch and enjoy, old man.”
***
Clang! Clang! Clang!
A scorching heat that stole my breath rushed out of the forge. The overwhelming power of the C-grade mana stones I’d fed into the furnace. “Uncle.”
“What, kid?”
“Is that good stuff?”
“How the hell would I know? I’m just an ordinary person; what do I know?”
Park Taesu’s gaze drifted toward the inside of the forge. Even a C-grade hunter’s skin would feel the hellish heat. But right in the heart of that inferno, Lee Shinwoo was sweating bullets while lost in his work. “Why the hell would you just shove mana stones into the fire? Or smash them? Hah.”
Park Taesu sighed. C-grade mana stones—rare items that started dropping at the thirtieth floor. They went for tens of millions of won. And here they were being treated like ordinary trash on the market. That was insane. “Can you even handle something like that?”
Moreover, he was hammering his own C-grade dagger made from wyvern scales with reckless force. The ultra-rare item he’d looted from the twentieth-floor boss. He’d cherished that weapon like gold, yet here he was beating it like it owed him money. The life span had to be getting chewed away. “Uncle, you don’t make stuff like that anymore?”
“It’s an old-school way, that’s for sure.”
At his nephew’s words, Park Inho nodded. “Nowadays I prefer the powder metallurgy method. Metals are ground into fine powder and stacked. That way the alloy ratio stays consistent and the hunters can actually use them.”
Park Inho’s eyes stayed fixed on the glowing red-hot sword blade in the furnace. “I don’t know if he can or can’t, but his skill is better than mine. No, scratch that. I’m not even qualified to judge.”
“What?”
Park Taesu stared blankly at his uncle’s profile. This was the kind of confession he never imagined coming from a lifetime blacksmith. A master. And an intangible cultural property sword master at that. Declaring his own skill inadequate in front of a complete stranger? Park Taesu’s gaze snapped back to the forge. “Huh?”
For a split second, Lee Shinwoo’s shoulder twitched as he adjusted the hammer. At the same moment, the air inside the forge twisted in an eerie way. Clang!
A clear, sharp strike rang out. The hellish heat that had been swirling around the forge vanished instantly. “The furnace…”
And what Park Taesu saw was a completely extinguished furnace, and in its place, the sword he’d made—burning hotter than a phoenix, flames devouring every spark and flame around it.