Five Years of Waiting

One month ago, in Dohyeon's workshop.

From the moment he first set out to design the bracelet's enchantment, the work had refused to go smoothly.

"Haa... out of space again."

The bracelet sketched across his practice notebook was already choked with mana circuits, drawn so densely they had claimed every last bit of room.

"Was it greedy of me, trying to add four whole runes?"

The bracelet was for Byeongsu, whose health had thrown up a red flag. If he could manage it, Dohyeon wanted to make something that would actually do him some good.

"I don't want to compromise on the first thing I make."

They could call it pigheaded stubbornness if they liked. To Dohyeon, it was a matter of pride.

"On the test plate, I managed to link all four runes."

He looked down at the blueprint, inked edge to edge.

"The problem is cramming all of this into something the size of a bracelet."

Simply shrinking the design would not have been the issue. Even when he carved the runes in without a flaw, they drank in one another's mana and malfunctioned as often as not, and the moment he tried to account for the reach of that mana as well, the work stopped advancing altogether.

Linking so many runes at once was the sort of job even a high-rank enchanter would not attempt lightly. That, however, did not matter to Dohyeon.

"Scale it down even a little and it just won't run..."

It had to be a bracelet a person could wear through an ordinary day, which meant the weight had to be considered too. Standard equipment would never have forced a worry like this.

"Keep cutting it down, and a way through will show itself."

And so, like the old man who would not set down his knife until the wooden club was perfect, Dohyeon kept paring away at the circuits.

He let the brief reverie go and clamped the finished titanium band to the bench. With a ruler and a scribing needle, he marked a small rectangle onto its outer face.

Tweaking the runes was never going to be enough. The bracelet had to be built to fit the runes.

At first he had poured everything into the runes and the mana circuits, and the time had not been wasted—he had raised their efficiency by a great deal. But the more he practiced, the sharper the problem became. Carve several runes one after another into a single piece of metal, and the trace left by the first bled into the work that followed. Widening the gaps would have fixed it. Only then the bracelet grew absurdly large.

All ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠along, he could have just made the bracelet to suit the runes.

Not an object you carved an enchantment into. An object made so an enchantment could be assembled.

As a rule, the circuit and the runes were decided to suit the equipment. If they didn't fit, you enchanted a piece of gear that did. An enchanter mule-headed enough to force an enchantment onto equipment that wouldn't take it was welcome nowhere. That was simply how the trade worked.

No company to watch his step for, and he wasn't trying to turn a sale. Only now could he even think of a method like this.

The Dohyeon of Cheongeun Workshop's Enchantment Team 3 would have compromised under his teammates' eyes. The Dohyeon who had opened a workshop with Byeongsu and gone into business for himself could hardly have set commerce aside for research when his living hung on it. This was a method permitted only to the Dohyeon of the present—a young man on leave from the trade, working through the first session of the Government-Funded Crafter Training Program.

If the runes are going to interfere with each other, then split the space entirely.

Before he knew it, the inside of the bracelet held four divided voids, with circuits drawn to join them. From here on, it was real fabrication.

He set a small engraving chisel on the marked line. He did not drive it deep in a single blow. Little by little he pared the metal away, and once a proper depth had opened he took a small file to the floors and the corners until they ran true. Four grooves on the inside, one on the face—when he had them, Dohyeon looked the bracelet over from end to end.

Four spaces inside. One on the outside. The circuit layout, too. Drawn perfectly.

With the final inspection done, he carefully freed the bracelet from its clamp and lowered it into the case he had set ready. Metal chimed softly against the lining.

"Now it's Enchanter Lee Dohyeon's turn."

He gave the bench a quick clear, then laid out five small titanium plates he had cut in advance. One plate for the outer face. Four smaller ones for the inside of the bracelet.

"Let's begin."

Without a moment's hesitation, he set the engraving needle moving. The first line scored itself across the titanium—running straight, bending, running on. Mana spilling from his fingertips traveled the needle and seeped in, thread-fine. He was not merely cutting a pattern. Into every line he fed a measured quantity of mana, until the pattern itself came to carry a special charge.

Before long, the last stroke locked into the first.

A low hum, and the rune on the plate breathed out a faint light. He had cut one rune in a flash, and he did not pause; he drew the rest to completion, one after another. When the work was finished in its turn, Dohyeon looked down at the completed runes laid out on the bench.

Taken one by one, there was nothing special about them. They were enchantments any enchanter would know, or could handle well enough. What was special was the way he meant to use them.

Dohyeon brought over the body of the bracelet ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and first seated the plate bearing the Rune of Vitality at the center of the outer face. Click. Then the plates went into the spaces within—Detection in the first mount, click; Designation in the second, click; Decomposition in the third, click; and last of all, Circulation. Click. All four plates had taken their places.

Now I just have to connect them.

He carved the circuit along the lines he had drawn in advance, and the mana from his fingertips followed the needle down into the grooves. The greatest process in this bracelet was neither forming its shape nor cutting its runes. Drawing the mana circuit that bound each rune plate to the next—that was the process that mattered. The mana contact at a plate's edge locked precisely into the hair-thin circuit.

A faint hum. The Rune of Detection answered, dimly, and the line ran on to the second plate. Designation. On again. Decomposition. And the last—the needle's tip touched the Rune of Circulation.

A deeper hum rose, and the four runes lit one after another. From Detection to Designation. From Designation to Decomposition. From Decomposition to Circulation. Four different runes made a single flow for the first time.

Dohyeon lifted his hand from the needle.

"...It's done."

This ought to help Byeongsu-hyung's health, shouldn't it?

What he meant to do with the five runes was nothing grand. With the Rune of Vitality, he wanted to breathe vitality into the man—just as the name said. The runes he had truly labored over were the other four. Detection would sense foreign matter inside the blood vessels. Designation would mark whatever had been found. Decomposition would break that marked matter down with mana. Circulation would carry the remnants along, so that in the ordinary course of the body's metabolism they were expelled on their own.

Because of a health checkup, Byeongsu couldn't even enjoy a single drink with an easy mind. Dohyeon at least wanted to make it so he could have the occasional glass without the weight of it.

It won't scour the inside of the vessels perfectly.

Even so, this was a bracelet that would act upon the blood vessels, among the most important structures in the body, and Dohyeon had given his utmost care to tuning every rune. Detection and Designation in particular had demanded the finest adjustment. He could not let them decide that any substance at all was waste. Over the weekend he had taken a small sample of Byeongsu's blood and calibrated the runes against it, setting the mana response peculiar to Byeongsu—still lingering in the blood—as his baseline, and excluding every component a living body needed in order to keep going. He narrowed the range until only what was unnecessary, or piled up to excess, would be designated as waste.

Which is why nobody else will be able to use it.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

He had been making it for Byeongsu alone from the start, so that was no loss. The Rune of Decomposition could damage the vessels if it went wrong, and yet the tuning had come together more easily than he had expected. Fortunately Byeongsu was a B-rank Awakened, with more than enough tolerance for mana that adjusting the output had not taken much work at all.

A faint hum. As if the runes had all settled where they belonged, the bracelet began ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to tremble.

"Hoo... Appraise."

He clenched his shaking hand and stared at the appraisal window before his eyes as though he meant to swallow it whole.

"...Huh?"

The description was exactly what he had expected. The grade was not.

"Uh..."

He hadn't expected the enchantment's rank to change, either. His eyes shot back and forth between the appraisal window and the system message that had just appeared, unable to settle. Once. Twice. Three times. He read it over and over, afraid he had seen it wrong.

"...B?"

Dohyeon murmured it, blank.

"B-rank?"

A moment later—

"Crazy."

He shoved up out of the chair without a thought for it tipping over behind him.

"Crazy! It says B-rank?!"

His voice boomed through the darkened practice room.

"No, hold on. For real? It's actually B-rank?"

Again and again he stabbed a finger at the letters hanging in empty air. They did not disappear. He had not misread them. B-rank. The word he had wanted for so long sat there, planted square in front of him.

"Whoa..."

Dohyeon clutched his head in both hands.

"It goes up now?"

Laughter broke out of him.

"Ha—hahaha! Hey! You've got no shame at all!"

He didn't even know who he was shouting at. At Cheongeun Workshop he had carved runes all day long, gone home and practiced still, and hammered away like that for years, and the skill had never so much as twitched. And then, the instant he finished a single bracelet, it had lurched up to B-rank.

"Five years! Five years!"

He jabbed a finger at the air.

"You make a man wait five years, and now you decide to rank up?!"

Even as he said it, the corners of his mouth were climbing toward his ears. He couldn't tell, himself, whether he was furious or laughing.

"This is nuts."

Dohyeon looked down at the bracelet again. B-rank equipment. A B-rank enchantment. Both of them, brought into the world just now by his own hands.

"It really happened."

Only then did it feel real.

"I'm B-rank."