The Secret Within the Iron Mace
“That’s cheating.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“You started first, didn’t you?”
“And? How much difference do you think that makes? Even if you count the undead you killed, that amount of time means nothing.”
The number of undead Yoon Sang-hyuk had put down was more than double Ibrahmut’s, nearly three times as many. And even that was only because Yoon Sang-hyuk had taken on Behemoth alone in the middle of the fight with the undead, giving Ibrahmut the chance to clean up the rest. If not for that, the gap would not have been threefold, but five, maybe ten times over.
Yoon Sang-hyuk held out his hand.
Ibrahmut ignored the gesture and looked off in another direction.
“Do you want me to hit you first, or are you going to hand it over?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk smiled faintly as he spoke, and Ibrahmut gave a thin shiver.
“I’m not saying I won’t give it to you.”
Ibrahmut reached into a patch of empty air and pulled his hand back out. In it was a crude iron mace. The same mace, apparently, that Satan, the former ruler of the Demon Realm, had once used.
Even after taking it out, Ibrahmut still couldn’t quite bring himself to hand it over.
“You attached to it?”
“I’m not that petty. A bet is a bet, isn’t it?”
At last, Ibrahmut handed the iron mace to Yoon Sang-hyuk.
“Oh? You’ve got a backbone.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk gripped the end of the mace.
“Hm?”
He felt resistance from the other side.
“Why don’t you let go?”
“I did let go. Surely you’re not saying it’s too heavy for you to lift? If so, that’s unfortunate, but I suppose I can keep it a little longer.”
“Heh. Traveling with me has made you much more talkative. Let go before I cut off your wrist and take it with me.”
Ibrahmut jumped and let go of the hand still clamped around the mace.
Yoon Sang-hyuk studied the weapon from one side to the other. It was nothing more than an iron club, plain and unadorned. But appearances meant nothing when it came to what lay beneath. A strange, immense power seeped through the hand touching it. So Satan had really used this thing; it wasn’t just empty bragging. What kind of force it held could wait until later.
“Here. Take it.”
Ting-
“What is this?”
Ibrahmut stared at the small piece of metal now in his hand and asked the question, only to stiffen almost at once. For a moment, then, that expression vanished too. With a trembling gaze, he examined the metal resting on his palm.
“W-What on earth is this to carry such absurd energy?”
“Something I picked up when I went sightseeing at a volcano once.”
“Picked up? This incredible thing?”
Ibrahmut looked at Yoon Sang-hyuk as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Yoon Sang-hyuk wasn’t lying.
He really had gone to an active volcano. He really had picked it up from magma that must have been more than a hundred meters deep. The only difference was that the owner of that volcano had been a famous red dragon, and because that red dragon had poured its flames into the magma for more than ten thousand years, the gem in Ibrahmut’s hand, Flainer’s Tear, had been sleeping in magma hotter than the fires of hell itself.
For the record, Flainer was the god of craftsmanship worshiped by Lee Chul-woo of the Twilight Workshop, and also a god of fire.
The fire contained within Flainer’s Tear far surpassed the core essence of an Ifrit. Even Lee Chul-woo, hailed as the greatest blacksmith among humans, had given up on processing it. That was Flainer’s Tear.
Though its name was Flainer’s Tear, it contained no divine power. It had simply been named for the fact that it held an overwhelming heat, as though it were the tear of the god of fire. So even Ibrahmut, a being of the Demon Realm, ought to be able to digest it.
“Can you digest it?”
“H-Haha... you’re joking, right?”
“What kind of joke would that be?”
“I’m Ibrahmut. The first Balrog, and the king of all Balrogs.”
Yoon Sang-hyuk knew exactly why Ibrahmut had suddenly introduced himself. In some ways, Ibrahmut’s place in the Demon Realm was similar to Flainer’s in the divine realm. Among all the races tied to fire in the Demon Realm, the Balrogs were the finest. No one handled flame more skillfully than Ibrahmut, the king of the Balrogs and the strongest among them.
If Ibrahmut could not handle Flainer’s Tear, then no one in the Demon Realm could bear that power except Baal himself.
“Still upset about this?”
Yoon Sang-hyuk asked, shaking the iron mace Satan had used.
“N-No, of course not. No, I never was. Naturally, you should be the one using it. It isn’t something I need anyway. Haha, as expected, every object has its proper owner. Holding that thing makes your stature rise another notch, hyung-nim.”
“It just looks like an iron club to me.”
“How could it? Either way, thank you.”
Afraid Yoon Sang-hyuk might snatch it back, Ibrahmut quickly hid Flainer’s Tear away.
“Take your time with it. If you’re careless, it’ll eat you instead.”
“Would I dare?”
With a delighted grin, Ibrahmut returned to the others, who were busy cleaning up after the fight.
Left alone, Yoon Sang-hyuk looked out over the land strewn with shattered undead and muttered, “For a welcome party, that was pretty weak. Don’t disappoint someone who came expecting a proper greeting. Why not do it right?”
* * *
At the hour when everyone else was asleep, Yoon Sang-hyuk sat on a chair he had pulled up onto a shipping container. A little farther away, several members of the Ariane tribe kept watch around a campfire.
If Zephyr and his brothers had been here, one of them could have stood watch alone. But the Ariane tribe wasn’t strong enough for that sort of thing, so several people had to take shifts together.
In Yoon Sang-hyuk’s hand was the iron mace he had received from Ibrahmut.
“You’re a strange one.”
He had told Ibrahmut it was nothing more than an iron club, but the energy sealed inside it was anything but ordinary. There was no doubt that Satan, the mace’s former owner, had poured his own power into it.
The reason Yoon Sang-hyuk was staring at it so intently in the middle of the night was simple: he wanted to determine exactly what sort of energy had been sealed inside.
Satan was someone he would have to fight one day. If Yoon Sang-hyuk could learn the nature of that power in advance, it would be a major advantage. After all, countless years had passed since then, and it was possible that Satan’s power had changed. Still, it was well worth trying.
With his eyes closed, Yoon Sang-hyuk poured his own energy into the mace. The sealed force responded at once, pushing back against his power. Satan’s energy was pure darkness. Compared to Yoon Sang-hyuk’s own energy, which contained some divine power mixed into it, it might as well have been its exact opposite.
The fierce tug-of-war between Yoon Sang-hyuk and the mace began.
He kept sending his energy into the weapon, endlessly, even as the force inside continued to shove it back out.
A little at a time, then a little more, slowly, then quickly...
He tried every method he could think of. But Satan’s power kept rejecting him, as if it refused to allow any energy not of its own choosing to take root inside the mace.
After investing quite a long time without making any real progress, Yoon Sang-hyuk frowned.
“A disobedient thing needs a little discipline.”
He released his energy and let it spread around him.
Then...
BOOM- KABBOOOOM-
He slammed his fist hard into the mace. It didn’t bend or break, but it quivered under the force packed into Yoon Sang-hyuk’s blow. As the violent vibration died away, he sent his energy through it once more.
The corner of Yoon Sang-hyuk’s lips twisted faintly.
“There’s a reason the old sayings survive. If you hit something, it listens.”
It still rejected his energy, but the response was clearly different from before. Again he let his energy flow for a while, then drew back a fist.
BOOM- THOOOOM-
This time he struck even harder than before.
“Keep acting up... and I’ll keep hitting you, understand?”
He murmured it as though speaking to something alive.
Then he poured his energy in again.
He repeated the pattern: let the energy flow, then hammer it with his fist.
“Good. This is how it should’ve been from the start.”
Now it no longer shoved his power away blindly. Yoon Sang-hyuk drew out his energy in a thin thread and fed it into the mace. Slowly, his force began to wrap around the Satanic energy contained within.
Where the two forces touched, a subtle resistance remained. He hadn’t yet gained complete control. But Yoon Sang-hyuk didn’t strike again. Some resistance was necessary if he wanted to understand what was inside.
“Interesting.”
Satan’s energy was complete darkness. It might even have been purer darkness than Baal’s own force. Because it was so pure, perhaps it fiercely resisted anything impure entering it.
Yoon Sang-hyuk gradually changed the nature of the energy he was sending into the mace. But soon he realized that wasn’t enough. He would have to strip away everything else mixed into his own power.
Within Yoon Sang-hyuk’s energy, countless forces were tangled together. The most obvious was divine power, and then there were the various attributes layered into it as well. One by one, he erased them, refining his power until only the purest force remained.
As he worked, Yoon Sang-hyuk felt a strange thrill. It was a pleasant, almost itchy sensation he had never experienced before.
Instinctively, he knew he was creating something similar to the realization Valender von Graus had once attained.
Focusing on the sensation, Yoon Sang-hyuk continued. As his energy became purer, the resistance he had felt from Satan’s power grew weaker.
His guess was right.
Like a serpent, Yoon Sang-hyuk’s energy coiled tightly around Satan’s, then slowly began to blend into it. The resistance flared up again. But Yoon Sang-hyuk regarded that as simply another step toward understanding.
Rather than force his way through the resistance, he tried to merge with it.
He gently lowered his energy onto Satan’s power. Once again, the resistance softened. He carefully stroked the dark force as though taming it. If he had attempted this with the power within Satan’s own body, he would have failed to get even the faintest grasp on it from the start.
Then, at some point, Yoon Sang-hyuk’s energy began to melt smoothly into Satan’s.
And in that instant, something astonishing happened.
Satan’s energy inside the mace began to move.
It followed the energy that had flowed in from outside, Yoon Sang-hyuk’s energy, which was now becoming one with it.
A tingling numbness ran through the fingertips wrapped around the mace.
Satan’s power was escaping the weapon and flowing into Yoon Sang-hyuk’s body.
An immense sense of exhilaration pounded through him from head to toe. Overwhelmed by that bliss, Yoon Sang-hyuk could no longer hold back. At last, he let out a thunderous roar.
“Aaaaaaahhhhh-!”
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