The Flaw in the Blade
“That sword. May I take a look at it?”
The items scattered across the stalls were nothing short of bizarre. Pieces of animal bone turned yellow with age. Bundles of yellow talismans covered in unknown symbols drawn in red dye. Shriveled, blackened tree roots and mysterious powders sealed in glass bottles. Even the attire of the people weaving between the stalls, and the currency they exchanged while haggling, felt entirely surreal.
‘So… this all means it’s real, right?’
Any lingering suspicions about human trafficking or job scams had long since been erased from my mind. How could they not be? I had seen with my own two eyes the brick wall of a dead-end alley dissolve into a massive gate. And this vast, sprawling underground space—the endless rows of shops and the dense crowd filling the streets—it was impossible for all of this to be an elaborate performance just to trick a penniless, unemployed guy like me. No matter how I looked at it, the cost of building such a set and hiring so many extras just to fool one person wouldn't make any financial sense for them.
“This Goblin Market is the hottest place in the occult world these days,” Seo Jian said, walking beside me while glancing at my reaction. She began to explain lightly. “From the merchant guilds belonging to the major families to freelance sorcerers and even exorcists from abroad, everyone comes here to trade. They also release quite a few rare items that come through the black market.”
“Ah… I see.”
I was answering in a daze when it happened.
“Aigoo! You there, the handsome young man and the pretty lady! Don’t you need a talisman?”
A wrinkled old person sitting in the middle of the path spoke up out of the blue. “I can tell you’re heading somewhere dangerous. My stall has everything except what I don’t have! I’ll make sure no minor spirits can even get near you, so take a look!”
Seo Jian, as if accustomed to this, offered a light nod and tugged gently on my sleeve. As we followed her deeper into the market, the scenery became increasingly strange. At one stall, a jar was rattling slightly all on its own, and in the shop next to it, ores that emitted a faint blue light were displayed even in the dim interior. A little further on, I saw a stall lined with tools of unpleasant shapes, their handles wrapped tightly in animal hide.
After wandering around, mesmerized for a while, we seemed to have reached the center of the market. The cluttered stalls disappeared, and massive buildings lined the wide, paved street.
‘Wow…’
What stood before me was a commercial building that looked at least three or four stories tall. The upper part was in the style of a traditional hanok with a magnificent tiled roof, but the front was made of modern floor-to-ceiling glass, allowing a clear view of the interior. The very fact that they had built such a structure underground was an overwhelming sight.
“What is this place?”
At my question, Seo Jian smiled brightly. “Oh, this is Cheonhwadang. You’ve heard of it, right?”
“……Cheonhwadang?”
As I trailed off, Seo Jian continued, looking genuinely excited. “They’re the industry leader in making jugu (spiritual tools). It’s a workshop directly under the Hyeonmu family, one of the four great clans. The main branch is elsewhere, but this is a new branch they opened in the Goblin Market recently.”
She gestured toward the display case behind the glass. “Everything that comes in here goes through the main branch, so the quality is guaranteed. It’s just that the prices are a bit brutal.” Seo Jian shrugged playfully. “Would you like to go inside?”
Following her guidance, I stepped into the building. A luxurious gold-lettered plaque reading [Cheonhwadang] hung at the entrance.
Clink—
Soft lighting and calm classical music. The items placed on each display stand were distinctly different from the ones I had seen outside. Inside tempered glass cases set on black granite pedestals, there were swords engraved with exquisite patterns, jade beads holding a brilliant light, and belts woven from the finest silk. Even the talismans were neatly stored in high-end, matte paulownia wood boxes. Each displayed item had a small brass nameplate attached, with the creator’s name, grade, and materials used engraved in neat calligraphy. Anyone would think they had stepped into a luxury boutique or a museum.
As we entered, an employee dressed in a sharp, tailored black suit approached us.
“Welcome to Cheonhwadang. Is there anything you are looking for?”
Seo Jian handed over a business card with a practiced air. “Could we see some decent musical instruments among the Byeong-grade jugu? A jade flute would be even better.”
The employee took the card, scanned it briefly, and bowed politely. “Ah, Ms. Seo Jian. Please, wait a moment. We happen to have an item that arrived just yesterday.”
The employee headed toward the back of the counter.
‘A jade flute.’
A moment later, the employee returned with an elongated case lined with velvet.
Click—
As the case opened, a jade flute with a bluish tint was revealed.
“This is a jugu carved from nephrite mined in the Baekdu Mountain range. It uses a method that amplifies the user’s spiritual energy into sound. Among the Byeong-grade instruments you were looking for, this is the top-tier item.”
Seo Jian examined the flute from various angles. She touched the surface and held it up to the light before nodding. Then, she slid the flute toward me.
“Mr. Dohyun. Would you like to take a look?”
“…….”
I was flustered for a moment. What would I know by looking at it? Even if I could say my body remembered blacksmithing, a musical instrument made of jade was a different breed from what I used to handle at the forge.
‘Should I just nod and pass it off?’
The moment I thought that and instinctively took the jade flute, it happened.
Zzzzing—
As soon as the flute touched my fingertips, a faint vibration spread calmly from the smooth surface of the jade into my palm.
‘…Huh?’
Almost simultaneously, I felt something instinctively flowing from my fingertips. Was it warm? Or was it ticklish? Something hot was transferring from my fingertips into the jade flute.
It was a sensation I had felt countless times while playing the game. It was the technique I used when I obtained new minerals or materials, or when I needed to grasp the structure of an item made by someone else. It was the process of channeling minute amounts of mana through my hands and reading the waves that bounced back as the mana flowed through the gaps or circuits of the material.
[Mana Wave]
‘No way.’
This was reality. There was no way mana could exist here. But just like when I held the brass bells of the shrine grandmother, the invisible energy starting from my fingertips began to naturally seep into the surface of the jade flute.
Whoosh—
The internal structure of the blue jade flute was vividly drawn in my mind. The finishing state of the passage running through the center, the minute engravings carved to amplify sound, and the path through which the energy was meant to flow. The form of the mana circuit I used to see in the game began to reveal itself.
‘Crazy. This actually works?’
I held my breath and scoured the structure of the flute in my hands. The circuit engraved inside was clear as day. Ah, of course, since this was reality, it wouldn't be a "mana circuit" like in the game. There shouldn't be any mana. What was the term in this world… ah, they called it spiritual energy earlier, so it must be the path for that kind of energy. But regardless of the name, I could grasp the structure itself at a glance.
‘Hmm… It’s a structure that takes the energy accepted at the entrance, winds it in a spiral, and amplifies it through resonance at each stage.’
A double helix was precisely wound along the inner wall of the jade flute, and resonance chambers were carved at regular intervals. It was a circuit designed so that the amplitude would increase with every rotation of the energy. It was clean. The fundamentals were definitely well-executed. The person who laid out the main lines of the circuit must have been quite skilled.
However.
‘…Did someone else do the finishing work on this?’
Compared to the main lines, the detailed finishing was quite sloppy. It was as if the designer and the person who did the final work were two different people.
“Hmm…”
A mutter escaped my lips before I could stop it. “This structure amplifies resonance in stages using a double helix inside. The design is clean, but…”
I lightly tapped the middle of the jade flute with my fingertip.
“Here, the entrance to the third resonance chamber is slightly misaligned. Every time the energy rotates, it leaks slightly. It won’t be a big problem right now, but the moment the user puts in a bit too much mana… no, spiritual energy, the sound will crack or produce a jarring noise…”
I held the flute up to the light to peer inside once more. “The jade itself is of good quality, but there are marks where it was carved against the grain during the finishing process. If you use it like this, the durability will likely be cut in half…”
“……Excuse me?”
The face of the employee, who had been wearing a polite smile, stiffened.
“Ha, hahahaha! Mr. Dohyun, you’re quite the joker! You’re telling such a serious joke! Ha… ha…”
Seo Jian gave the employee an awkward, forced smile, then pulled my arm and whispered, “Hey, Mr. Dohyun! Let’s go over there, over there! There are lots of interesting things over there!”
“No, I mean, the finishing inside is really…”
Seo Jian gripped my arm as if to pinch it and lowered her voice sharply. “Shh! Mr. Dohyun, just! Just come this way for a second. Okay?”
“……?”
“Please.”
I didn’t know the reason, but her face was so deathly pale that I had no choice but to follow her lead. I was dragged away by Seo Jian’s forceful grip to the other side of the display stand. She wiped away cold sweat and let out a sigh of relief.
‘…What was that?’
They asked me to look at the item, so I just said what I saw. It seemed this world was particularly sensitive to feedback.
We were looking around the inside of Cheonhwadang a bit more when suddenly—
“Hey, you bastards! Get the person in charge out here right now!!”
CRASH—!
Suddenly, the sound of something shattering erupted from the entrance, followed by a rough shout. The eyes of the customers and employees in the shop all turned in that direction at once.
“C-customer. It’s difficult for us if you do this here…”
“Difficult? Should I show you what’s really difficult?!”
The man standing at the entrance was a mess. He had a bandage soaked in blood wrapped around his head and a thick cast on one arm, and he wore a menacing expression. His face was flushed red, a mix of rage and terror.
“You sold me this piece of trash for fifty million won?! I almost died because I trusted this thing!”
The man pulled something out from his coat with his uninjured hand and threw it violently onto the glass display counter.
Clatter—!
“Customer! Please calm down…”
“Do I look like I can calm down?! You said it was made by a Byeong-grade artisan! You said this alone would exorcise a 3rd-grade vengeful spirit in one hit!”
3rd-grade vengeful spirit? Byeong-grade artisan? The explanations from the internet site Seo Jian had shown me at the cafe came to mind. In this world, it seemed monsters and ghosts were managed by grade, and the artisans who made items also had ranks.
The man shouted, his veins bulging. “Look at this! It’s already cracked! No matter how much spiritual energy I poured into it, it didn’t even light up, let alone do anything. What kind of ‘Karma-Fire Sword’ is this?!”
It seemed he had paid a lot of money for that sword, but it hadn’t worked properly in a real situation, and he had barely managed to survive and return. As the commotion grew, a man with a clean-cut appearance, who looked like a manager, walked out from the back, frowning.
“What’s going on?”
The flustered employee approached him and briefly reported the situation. Hearing the story, the manager slowly stepped forward.
“Customer.”
It was a soft, pleasant voice. A smile hung on his lips. But for some reason, the air around us felt heavier at those words.
“Please refrain from any behavior that might inconvenience other guests.”
As soon as he finished speaking, several employees from the back of the shop began to approach the entrance in unison. The atmosphere turned hostile in an instant.
“D-don’t come any closer, you bastards!”
The man stepped back, flinching, and ripped open his coat. A bundle of yellow talismans, packed tightly inside his clothes, was revealed.
“T-these are all Karma-Fire Talismans! If you lay even a finger on me, I’ll blow this whole place to bits!”
The customers in the shop screamed and scattered. I stood at a distance, staring intently at the object lying on the display counter—the so-called "Karma-Fire Sword."
‘…Tsk.’
As I slowly started to walk forward, Seo Jian, who had been holding her breath beside me, grabbed my sleeve in a panic. “Dohy… Mr. Dohyun? Where are you going! That man is holding a bomb right now!”
I gently pulled her hand away and strode between the two opposing sides. Then, pointing at the old sword lying on the counter with my chin, I opened my mouth.
“That sword. May I take a look at it?”