Chapter 82
Bang, bang, bang.
The sound of hammering rang out without pause. The workshop was thick with heat so intense it felt as if sweat would evaporate on the skin the instant it formed.
Lee Chul-woo kept striking the metal in his hands with relentless force. The hammer he held was Flayner's Hammer, the hammer of the god of blacksmiths, an Epic-grade weapon.
Epic items were one-of-a-kind treasures that could only be obtained after clearing every story tied to a special storyline.
Lee Chul-woo had earned Flayner's Hammer only after completing every quest connected to the dwarf who had once been his master blacksmith in Eternal World.
Holding the dream hammer that every blacksmith would kill to own, Lee Chul-woo kept working without rest, utterly unaware that Yoon Sang-hyuk was watching him from a short distance away.
"Haa, haa-."
Having hammered metal for decades, from Eternal World until now, Lee Chul-woo let out a rough breath as if he were running out of steam. He pulled cold water from a refrigerator adapted from a mana circuit the basement family had built, drank it down, and straightened his back.
"Huh? Since when have you been here?"
"I've been watching for over an hour already."
"You should've made some noise."
"You were so focused on work. How could I do that?"
Yoon Sang-hyuk looked around the workshop. Scattered here and there were large masses of metal emitting a faint red glow. They were an alloy of mithril and redehaum, born after repeated research by the basement family, including Lee Chul-woo. On one side of the alloy, blue geometric patterns were shedding light.
"You're moving faster than I expected."
"Not really. Those are just the outer armor, so they go together quickly. Make the molds, pour in the molten metal, and that's it. The real work is this."
He pointed at the red-glowing metal he had been striking just moments before.
"The critical parts like the moving joints and skeleton have to go through forging like this. Armor sections are easy to repair if they break, but these aren't."
"How strong is the alloy?"
Instead of answering, Lee Chul-woo held up a thumb.
"Extremely. Not as good as mithril, but it's more than three times stronger than redehaum. Thankfully, we needed less mithril than we thought we would."
"How many can you make with what mithril we have now?"
Redehaum could be obtained if you wanted it badly enough, but mithril was different. No one knew when the White Knights would respawn.
"Three."
"More than I expected."
Just looking at the scale of the outer armor made it possible to guess the size of the golems being built. From the corpse of a White Knight, whose body was only a little larger than a human's, they could make three golems more than twice that size.
"Are the people in the workshop trustworthy?"
"They're all people who have been with me since that other world. And even among them, only the ones I can trust are working here."
There was no choice but to trust Lee Chul-woo.
"We'll reveal the golems to the world someday, but until then, please keep this secret."
"Of course. And since we're on the subject, the core techniques for the golems are all with those otaku bastards over there. The people here are just handling hunks of metal."
"What about Chul-jung?"
Lee Chul-woo seemed to recall something and gave a snort of laughter.
"You mean the kid with all that passion?"
"So he doesn't have the talent for this side of things?"
"Talent matters, sure, but what's more important in this line of work is persistence. Without persistence, even the most gifted bastard is worthless. In that sense, he's passed with room to spare."
"That's a relief. Thanks."
"I'm the one who should be thanking you. Honestly, we split off so many people for the golem workshop that the other workshop's short-handed. Right now, I'd even welcome a child's hand."
Kim Chul-jung was learning the ropes in the existing workshop that produced swords, armor, and other weapons. No one knew when the day would come that he would make weapons under his own name, but when it did, he would never have to struggle because of money again.
"Chul-jung's daughter is adorable. She came by the workshop a few days ago."
Lee Chul-woo smiled brightly as he talked about Kim Hyo-yeon.
"So go home on time once in a while and spend some good time with your sister-in-law. You've got to look at the sky if you want to catch a star, right?"
"Hey, listen to you. A guy who isn't even married has a lot to say. And I do look at the sky every day. For some reason, though, I just can't seem to see the stars. Heh heh heh. Maybe something's wrong with me? I've been around the heat too long and got warped or something."
"Say something that makes sense. What about all the families that have been blacksmiths for generations?"
"Right? Ah, I wish I had a pretty daughter too."
He was a man who lacked nothing.
He had so much money it was no longer worth counting, and his reputation was formidable.
"So look at the sky more often than you do now."
"Got it."
After leaving the Twilight Workshop, Yoon Sang-hyuk stopped by the basement family, talked with them for a while, and then stepped out of the Masked Castle. Wearing his mask, he walked through the city district. People on the street noticed him and hurried to greet him one after another.
Three players in red cloaks came from the opposite direction, spotted Yoon Sang-hyuk, and bowed politely.
They were guild members of the Jinhon Guild, which had been assigned to guard the borders of the city district and the newly constructed town areas. As a sub-guild under the Valhae Guild, the Jinhon Guild had been given a weighty mission and had taken a step closer to power.
Until not long ago, members of the Masked Mercenary Group and the Valhae Guild had taken turns patrolling and guarding the city district. But their responsibilities had become too numerous to manage the border on top of everything else, so the task had been handed over to the Jinhon Guild.
By taking on border duty for the city district, the Jinhon Guild had gained considerable benefits. The guild's elite members hunted together with the Masked Mercenary Group or the Valhae Guild, and they were given partial priority in item acquisition.
Seeing what had happened to the Jinhon Guild, the guilds connected to the Valhae Guild were all doing their best to catch its eye.
As an aside, the situation of the Goguryeo Guild, to which Yoon Sang-hyuk's cousin Yoon Sang-ho belonged, was disastrous. Goguryeo Guild had once been one of the larger sub-guilds under the Valhae Guild, but because Yoon Sang-ho had fallen out of Yoon Sang-hyuk's favor, the thread of connection that tied them to the Valhae Guild had been cut clean through.
Bad news spread fast. Rumors flew that the Goguryeo Guild had been cast out by the Valhae Guild, their situation worsened by the day, and now they had sunk to the level of an ordinary mid-sized guild.
After making a full circuit of the city district, Yoon Sang-hyuk returned to the Masked Castle. The reason he occasionally showed himself in the district was to warn those who came there with impure intentions.
The Masked Lord was right here.
* * *
Using the secret passage from the bedroom, he came to the house in the city district. Yoon Sang-min was in the middle of assaulting the Castle of Chaos. But someone had been waiting in the house, even though there should have been no one there.
"Why are you here?"
"It's been so hard to see your face lately, Oppa."
It was Lilith.
They had both been busy recently, so he hadn't had much time to spend with her.
"Sorry."
"Hmph. You don't even look sorry."
"No, I mean it. I'm really sorry."
"These days are so boring. Sending people back and forth isn't fun, and looking into other people's dreams isn't fun either."
Lilith was busy too.
It was because of the tasks Yoon Sang-hyuk had given her: sending members of the Masked Mercenary Group to the Castle of Chaos and bringing them back, and peering through the dreams of specific people Yoon Sang-hyuk had chosen to see their past and recent activities.
The reason he had been able to threaten Jey, if only indirectly, not long ago was entirely because of that. So long as Yoon Sang-hyuk could command Lilith and the succubi, there was no need to plant spies in other factions. Lilith could find out what they were plotting in their dreams.
Still, he held back as much as possible because he felt bad making Lilith do that sort of work too often.
"Let's just eat together."
"Okay."
Lilith smiled brightly and ran to the kitchen. As the ruler of the succubi, she didn't need to eat food. But she always made sure to keep regular meals.
It was something she had picked up after meeting Yoon Sang-hyuk.
Before long, Lilith had made several dishes and set them on the table. Her cooking skills were excellent. Whenever she had time, she would go to Yoon Sang-hyuk's old apartment and practice by watching cooking programs.
"This is good."
"Right? I'll make you something delicious next time too."
"Now I'm looking forward to it."
After dinner, the two of them sat side by side on the sofa and watched television. The remote-control authority belonged to Lilith. She flipped through the channels for a while, and when a music show finally came on, she set the remote down.
On the screen, a girl idol group was singing and dancing. They must have captured the hearts of countless men, but they didn't stir much in Yoon Sang-hyuk. Still, he had seen Lilith humming along to the melody and bobbing her shoulders more than once.
"Are you having fun?"
"Yes. It's fun."
He found himself wondering what it would be like if Lilith and the succubi debuted as idols. Whether he knew the industry well or not, it would create a tremendous sensation across the world.
The one problem was that succubi appeared differently depending on who was looking at them. They took the form of that person's ideal type.
"Lilith."
"Yes, Oppa."
"Want to try doing a job?"
"A job?"
Lilith's face went serious. It wasn't hard to understand that reaction, considering how much work Yoon Sang-hyuk had recently been handing her.
"Not the kind of job you're thinking of. Something very interesting."
"There isn't any job that's interesting."
"There is. It will be interesting."
Yoon Sang-hyuk pointed at the television screen.
"You may not be able to become a singer yourself, like those kids, but you can raise singers."
"Raise them?"
Yoon Sang-hyuk explained what an agency was. As she listened, Lilith's expression shifted from moment to moment. By the time he finished, she was practically buzzing with excitement.
"I'll do it. I want to do it. I want to raise singers."
She had awakened and become an adult form, but in her actions and manner of speech, there was little change from when she had been small.
"Let's look into it."
Finding her own work to do was better than pouting because he was busy and wanted him to play with her.
Lilith rested her chin on the back of her hand and stared fixedly at the TV. Perhaps because she had decided it was related to something she wanted to do, she no longer hummed along as she had a moment before.
Meanwhile, Yoon Sang-hyuk organized the tasks ahead in his head.
The immediate job was to resolve the situation in England. Now that every truth had been brought to light, it was time for England and the Cathedral Knights to pay for it. They would definitely try to deny everything and squirm out of responsibility.
But he had already prepared enough evidence to bury them. What remained was deciding what he would extract as compensation.
While Yoon Sang-hyuk was lost in thought, the music show must have ended, because Lilith was changing the channel. Watching the screen keep shifting, Yoon Sang-hyuk reached over and took the remote from her hand.
"Give me that."
"Just a second."
He kept scrolling down through the channels until he stopped at the news. As he watched, Yoon Sang-hyuk muttered under his breath.
"So this is how things are coming together?"
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