Preparing to Prepare
Clang—!
Clang—!
A full month had already passed since the first session of the Government-Funded Crafter Training Program began.
Clang—!
It was about the time when the early fire in most of the trainees had started to cool.
Clang—!
The lecture was over, and still one trainee remained in the practice room.
"Dohyeon. These days it's nothing but those loop things with you, huh?"
A young man who looked every bit of two meters tall, with a rough and mean-looking face, came up beside him.
"Ah, Seonggu. If you're finished, feel free to head out first."
"They say watching counts as studying, so I'm watching. And I told you to drop the polite talk. Jincheol talks to me straight. Why can't you?"
Said with that huge frame and a face all scrunched up, it came off more than a little threatening.
"I think it's the size. I keep speaking carefully without meaning to."
Clang—!
Dohyeon kept the hammer moving as if it were nothing, and the memory of how he had met Seonggu rose up in him.
Clang—!
The further the training went, the faster Dohyeon's skill climbed, and there were trainees who did not care for the look of that.
"What's he doing, showing off?"
"He knows exactly what he's doing. He's fishing for points with the instructors."
"Word is he got fired from Cheongeun Workshop."
They would be in each other's sight for six months and no longer than that. Dohyeon let talk of that sort pass him by. And it wasn't as if every trainee was of that kind.
"You fellas sure are bold, badmouthing a man right out in the open."
Seonggu set a hand on each of them — the two had been trading their gossip shoulder to shoulder — and took Dohyeon's side, working the muscle under his palms.
"Ghk— wh-what?!"
"Somebody's better than you, you watch and you learn. Tsk."
He squeezed.
"Agh!"
"I won't! Please!"
Under the strength of a man who looked two meters tall, both of them went red in the face and folded to their knees as if their legs had given out.
"Dohyeon, sir, I'm sorry! Jealousy blinded me!"
"My skills won't budge, and you're just too good — I think I lost my mind for a second!"
They were shouting the apologies as if under torture, and even Dohyeon felt a little sorry for them.
"Very well. I accept the apology. Kindly see that it doesn't happen again."
At his word, Seonggu let go of their shoulders. The two of them wheezed and fled the classroom as if the door were salvation.
"Hey. I didn't stick my nose in for nothing, did I?"
"They were grating on me anyway. Thank you."
Clang—!
"Hoo—"
Dohyeon finished the hammering, looked down at the bracelet resting on the anvil, and scratched his head.
I didn't mean for it to go this way, but I keep putting walls up.
"…Seonggu. Let's go home."
"Heh heh. About time."
And so today, as well, Dohyeon was the last one out of the practice room.
When he got home, Dohyeon did not so much as wash. He went straight to the workshop.
Inside, it was nothing like a month ago. The place was a wreck.
A Vitality rune, carved on a slant. A bracelet, snapped through the middle. Mana circuits etched so close together that they interfered with one another. Not a single sound piece among them.
Dohyeon set the bracelet he had made in the practice room down on the desk and took up his engraving tools.
"The titanium alloy arrives at the practice room tomorrow, so tonight's the last practice."
It had started the afternoon Master Choi Gwangcheol handed him the key to the practice room. Dohyeon had tried his hand at a bracelet before that day was out.
"Haa. On the iron they keep in the practice room, two enchants was the limit."
That he could lay two enchants on an ordinary ingot with nothing special about it was, in itself, proof the quality was there. It did not change what he intended. Dohyeon meant to enchant five runes onto the bracelet.
"Ten more circuits tonight, then I'm sleeping early."
The resolve did not hold. Contrary to it, the lights in Dohyeon's workshop did not go out until it was nearly dawn.
Thud—
"Hyung, what is all that?"
Dohyeon was hauling the titanium alloy he had ordered into a corner of the practice room. At Jincheol's question, he looked up.
"Whew. There's something I want to make, so I had it sent here."
"Ohhh. You mean that bracelet you keep working on?"
Jincheol already knew that Dohyeon meant to make an unusual piece of gear for his first real work.
"When it's done, you have to show me too."
"What about you? You're not making anything?"
"I'm good. Figure I'll rest a bit for the length of the course."
Jincheol had a way of sitting through most of the coursework looking thoroughly unimpressed. The only class he ever took seriously was Master Choi Gwangcheol's.
Go by rank alone, and the man was the same B-rank as the other instructors.
Think of it that way, and it landed on Dohyeon in the flesh — just how high Jincheol's rank really sat.
"What's wrong, hyung?"
"Nothing. I don't see Seonggu."
"Out drinking again, I bet. He'll be late."
Jincheol said it as if the man were hopeless, and Dohyeon thought of Byeongsu, who had declared he was quitting drink.
If this goes well, I might actually finish it today.
Tak—!
"We shall begin the lesson."
At Master Choi Gwangcheol's voice, the trainees scattered about the practice room gathered in.
"Today, you will make nails."
"Ohh—"
Their eyes lit at his words. For a month, all they had learned was to strike an iron ingot, draw it out, and tidy the ends. Actually making something — that began today.
"A nail looks simple in its construction. It is, even so, a fine exercise."
Behind Master Choi Gwangcheol, Seonggu appeared, carrying a crate full of long iron rods.
"Dohyeon… save me."
"Why are you the one carrying that?"
"Got caught coming in late."
Seonggu's face was pitiful. Master Choi Gwangcheol spoke without a shred of mercy.
"Spare me the useless talk and set it down."
"Yes…"
Thud—!
"You will not make one unless you put everything you have learned this past month to use."
Most of them had learned the techniques and mastered none of them, and the tension showed plain on their faces.
"I will not be demonstrating today."
"What?"
The trainees were thrown.
"Draw out the point. Match the length. Cut it. Form the head."
He said it hard, and their faces set.
"Begin."
Before the word had fully left him, Dohyeon thrust an iron rod into the forge.
"Strange, that everything we learned is packed into a nail this small."
Studying the sample nail they had been given, he gauged how he would go about the work.
Draw out the tip of the heated iron first. Then turn it while I form the shank, match the length, and cut.
While he was still thinking, the rod blushed red, and Dohyeon set it straight onto the anvil.
Clang—!
Sharpen the tip.
Clang—!
He brought the hammer down on the end of the rod, and the blunt tip thinned.
Not just one side. Strike evenly, all the way around.
Clang—!
Clang—!
Leave room for the head, then cut.
With a cutter he sheared it to a suitable length, then struck the top of the piece.
Clang—!
A flat head took shape, and a nail was done. A month of work was paying off. There was not a hair of hesitation in his hands.
"Hoo—"
"Finished, I see."
"Yes. I ended up with more than I expected."
On Dohyeon's bench, some twenty nails of matching shape lay side by side.
"I know you stay late every day, beating iron."
"Ah. That's thanks to you, Instructor."
Master Choi Gwangcheol flicked a glance at the nails, then tipped his chin toward the crate kept in the corner of the practice room.
"Is that box the material for the equipment you mean to make?"
"Yes. Titanium alloy. I placed the order, and they took a full month to the day to bring it."
Somewhere in that month Master Choi Gwangcheol had grown easier to be around, and Dohyeon's answer came out in a familiar tone.
"Hmph. At your skill, making still more nails would be a joke. If it suits you, you may make your own equipment now."
"Pardon?"
"You are eager to make it, are you not? Even while you worked the nails, your eyes kept straying to that box."
So his wandering focus had shown. Dohyeon felt faintly abashed.
"I'm sorry."
"Enough of that. Craftsmen are all of that sort. When there is a thing they wish to make, they are a breed that finds no ease until they have made it."
"Then, pardon me."
Master Choi Gwangcheol nodded as if he understood perfectly. Leaving him there, Dohyeon went to fetch the crate of materials from the corner.
More of a romantic about the craft than I took him for.
Hearing words like that out of such a stony face — it had been the same when the man handed over the key — Dohyeon thought he might be quietly full of feeling after all. With that idle notion still turning, he dragged the crate back to his station.
"Then let me see you make it well."
"Thank you."
Master Choi Gwangcheol stepped aside to give him room.
"I've practiced enough."
Dohyeon set the titanium alloy he had prepared into the forge and steadied himself.
Fwoosh—
He watched the flame inside the forge swallow the alloy, and he fixed his eyes on the heart of the fire. The knowledge of the Black Iron Law, seated in his mind, picked out of its own accord the state the titanium wanted.
Leave it in the heat too long and the surface would spoil. Let the temperature fall too low, and it would not draw out into the shape he needed.
Dohyeon watched the color and the shifting skin of the metal in silence, then took up the tongs.
Form first.
He laid the red-glowing titanium on the anvil and, face careful, lifted the hammer.
Clang—!
Clang—!
Under the hammer, the square billet began to lose its shape and stretch long. The width held steady. The thickness came down a little at a time. Just as Master Choi Gwangcheol had taught him, Dohyeon kept the hammering calm and even.
Clang—!
After several trips between forge and anvil, the alloy — thick and short when he began — had become a wide, long band of metal.
"…A little thick."
He took out the ruler and the measuring tools he had ready. It sat just outside the tolerance, by a hair.
Back to the forge. Back to the hammer. Only after several corrections did he have a piece he could accept.
If all he had meant to make was an ordinary bracelet, nothing remained but to bend it to the curve of a wrist. What Dohyeon meant to make was not that.
Not the runes fitted to the bracelet.
He spread the blueprint he had drawn in advance out beside him.
The bracelet has to be fitted to the runes.
"All right. Time to do this for real."