Refining
"You’re doing it right now?"
"Of course! What, should I wait until I’m dead and then start in front of the ancestral altar?"
"At least mind your language. Why are you spitting venom over something that should make you happy?"
Manyaja made a dumbfounded face at Gyeoksun’s words.
Well, if someone like Gyeoksun talked to him like that, it probably did sting his pride a little.
It was the classic case of one dog with mud on it barking at another dog with mud on it…
But Gyeoksun paid him no mind at all and turned to me with a calm expression.
"Child. It’ll take about five days, so you should go back to the Alliance."
"Five days? Nonsense! Three days will do!"
"You’ll collapse at that rate."
"What did you say!? Have you forgotten who this old man is!? I’m Manyaja! Manyaja! Do you want me to gild my own face or what!?"
"You already are, so what are you going on about?"
The two of them bickered back and forth, the notoriously cantankerous Manyaja refusing to lose a single word to Gyeoksun.
If these had been ordinary people, this would have been unbearably awkward.
For some reason, though, I just found it entertaining.
"Aren’t you making a sword for me? Then leaving me to go back to the Alliance alone doesn’t really feel right. If I won’t get in the way, I’d like to watch from here. May I?"
As soon as I said that, Gyeoksun’s lips curved into a faint smile.
Manyaja looked at me and burst into hearty laughter.
"Hah! Now that’s a pretty way to speak! Hey, you brat! If you were even half as polite as this girl, you’d be ten times better off than you are now!"
"And now you’re using me as the excuse again? Do I need to start a scene before you’ll quit talking about swords and nonsense?"
"Hiyo! You think I’d be scared of that!? The one who’d lose face is you, girl! Fine! Let’s see it then! I’ll watch with my own eyes and see what kind of scene you make!"
I knew they were only teasing each other. This was probably just how they always were.
And yet it still felt exhausting. Had I been wrong to say I’d stay here?
Surely they wouldn’t spend the entire time making a sword like this, would they? They weren’t going to forge it with their mouths.
Thankfully, even while talking like that, Manyaja was busily preparing for the work.
He brought charcoal, lit the forge, then went outside and returned carrying some heavy block of iron.
Was that black iron? Its color was a little strange.
Still, I was curious. Based on what I knew, black iron was a nickel-alloy steel.
It could certainly make a blade more durable than a regular iron sword, but its weight shouldn’t differ all that much from one, and the color didn’t seem quite right either. What was it?
"This is Jajungcheol. People call it black iron, but it’s a little different."
Maybe because I was staring at it full of curiosity, Manyaja answered without even being asked.
So it was different. Fair enough. Anyway, three days? Did that mean he was going to work without sleeping?
And… that was exactly what happened.
Three days after that thought crossed my mind, I had a truly astonishing experience.
I’d been wondering how Gyeoksun could possibly help in making a sword, and that question was answered very clearly.
For three straight days, Gyeoksun released a truly terrifying amount of inner energy and poured it into the metal they called Jajungcheol.
Or rather, poured it in? Transformed it? Something like that.
Either way, it was an incredibly fascinating sight.
Gyeoksun filled the Jajungcheol with inner energy, then after it spent a long time inside the forge, it was taken back out again.
Then Manyaja would lift a black hammer as big as my waist and hammer the Jajungcheol down with resounding blows.
He struck with steady, exact precision, not a single blow out of place.
Even I, someone who knew nothing, could tell at a glance that this man was a master.
The Jajungcheol changed shape only slightly. Then more inner force was poured in. Then the forge. Repeat.
Thanks to the forge roaring at full blast, the heat inside the smithy was immense.
If I’d been made to stay here in midsummer, it would have been its own form of torture.
And yet neither Manyaja nor Gyeoksun shed even a single bead of sweat.
Was this what it meant to be a master craftsman and an absolute expert? Were they immune to heat and cold or something?
Still, Gyeoksun I could understand, but it was strange that Manyaja wasn’t sweating at all.
So during one of their brief pauses, when the two of them were bickering again, I quietly asked, "Elder, why don’t you sweat?"
"Sweat? Hah! I shed all of that long ago!"
...What does that even mean? That’s ridiculous.
Since when was sweat a consumable resource? Well, I’d learned something new today, I guess?
In any case, the work continued.
And now, little by little, the Jajungcheol was beginning to look like something that could actually be called a sword.
Watching from the sidelines, I couldn’t help thinking that making something like this in just three days was absurd.
Just sitting there and watching was exhausting enough. How on earth were they doing this for three days and nights?
During every stretch when the Jajungcheol was inside the forge, Manyaja would simply sit straight-backed with his arms crossed, close his eyes for a moment, and rest.
Then, precisely when the time was right, he’d snap his eyes open, lift the tongs, pull out the Jajungcheol, and begin hammering it again with the same unwavering rhythm.
If I ever had to become a blacksmith, I’d absolutely refuse.
How the hell did anyone do this? Good grief.
But come to think of it, martial arts weren’t all that different.
The people in this world trained their martial arts in much the same way.
Rain or snow, clear skies or cloudy weather, they’d always be in the training grounds, swinging their weapons again and again.
That wasn’t any different from hammering metal. Maybe that was just how everything in this world worked.
And my external arts were no different.
Iron Body Weight-Adding Force and Golden Dragon Body.
I had learned them with a single click after maxing them out to 12 stars during character creation, but if I’d had to train them the hard way, it would have been brutally exhausting too.
They were external arts, but still martial arts. I knew their entire formulas, after all. I knew exactly how they were trained.
If someone told me to do it here and now… there was no way in hell I could. How was I supposed to pull that off? It’d be a circus act, pure and simple.
So whenever I used my external arts, I’d have to do so with gratitude.
Power that comes easily should never be taken lightly.
Time inside the smithy passed slowly, yet somehow quickly.
This place felt like another world entirely, almost like a sacred domain that existed for the sole purpose of creating a single sword.
The sword gradually taking shape. The steady clang of hammer on steel.
Then, when the hammering finally stopped and Manyaja tossed the blade back into the forge, Gyeoksun said,
"Elder Manya. That girl isn’t a child of the Ice Palace. And yet she can use Ice Soul Divine Art."
"What in the world are you talking about now? She’s not a child of the Ice Palace, and yet she can use Ice Soul Divine Art?"
"You don’t need to know the details. What I’m saying is that she seems to be capable of something useful."
Manyaja stroked his beard and nodded.
What? Something I could do?
"Oh? Well now, wouldn’t that be splendid? Quenching it with ice qi!? Maybe this will produce something truly astonishing!"
Then he used every facial muscle he had and broke into a wide grin.
Ugh. Why was that smile so scary? It looked downright ferocious.
Much later, the blade finally took on its complete shape. It lacked a hilt, but the blade body and cutting edge were almost fully formed.
But that was my mistake. Even after that, Manyaja kept pounding away at the sword he’d already apparently finished, hammering it mercilessly.
To my eyes, it didn’t seem all that different. Was it still incomplete? I had no idea.
Was that the difference between an ordinary person and a master?
Eventually, Manyaja called me over. Looking at the sword, red-hot from the forge, he said,
"Girl! Try cooling this down with your Ice Soul Divine Palm! Think of it as cooling every part of the sword all at once!"
"Um… I’ve never done that before. Is it really all right? What if I ruin it…"
"Ha! You worry too much! What am I, firing pottery? Do you really think a single gesture from you could ruin a sword I made?"
Wasn’t this how things usually ended when people got overconfident? Somehow, his boasting felt ominous.
Still, he told me to give it a try, so try I would. With him talking like that, he probably wouldn’t try to pin the blame on me if something went wrong.
"Use all the extreme cold you can muster! Don’t hesitate!"
At his words, I drew out every shred of inner energy I could produce and gathered it in my hand.
The fourth-star Ice Soul Divine Art. And the Ice Soul Divine Palm, carrying all of that power.
Manyaja seemed more pleased with the cold I released than he’d expected, because his eyes widened and he wore an excited expression.
So I focused all that frost on the sword without thinking about the consequences.
Shhhhhhh! came the sound as the red-hot blade cooled violently before my eyes.
"Ooooh! Good! Good! Yes! Keep going!"
So I poured in my inner energy, and after a good while, the blade was completely cooled.
Manyaja seized the sword with his bare hands and smiled in satisfaction.
Then, with a wicked grin, he tossed it back into the forge.
"Elder?"
Gyeoksun looked at him as if he couldn’t believe his ears, but Manyaja only smiled that strange smile and said,
"Let’s try it one more time! Just once more! If it’s this… heh heh heh."
Ah. I get it now. I understand why blacksmiths in games end up breaking weapons when they try to upgrade them.
So that’s how it happens? There’s enough madness in them that they’ll smash a weapon to pieces?
"Stop standing there and meditate or something! What are you doing!?"
Even while saying that, Manyaja kept grinning to himself at the sword sitting inside the forge.
Watching him, I let out a dry laugh to myself and followed his instructions, doing my breathing and circulation exercises.
Then came the second quenching. Manyaja’s eyes were full of anticipation.
"Ooooh!"
Once the quenching was finished, he lifted the sword and studied it closely, then, with a dopey little grin, glanced back at the forge again.
"Elder Manya!"
"One more time!"
And so Manyaja hurled the sword back into the forge once again.
Gyeoksun wore a thoroughly exasperated look.
And so the quenching continued seven times in all.
By the end, Manyaja’s eyes had gone completely mad.
When the seventh quenching was done, he lifted the sword, threw back his head, and laughed uproariously.
"Kwahahaha! It’s Jajungcheol Ice Qigong Seven-Refinement True Steel! Hah hah hah! Who in all the world could possibly make something like this? Hah hah hah!"
Then he stared at the sword with a blissful expression before shouting at Gyeoksun and me,
"Go! Come back at this same time tomorrow! I’ll finish it properly by then!"
At that, Gyeoksun didn’t say a word, but he led me out with a tired look hidden beneath his calm exterior.
We returned to the Alliance and slept through the entire day. Like the dead.