Prologue: The Failure
One day, towers appeared across the entire world.
Monsters came with those towers that seemed to pierce the sky, and some people awakened to special powers.
Status windows.
Classes.
Skills.
People called them Awakeners.
The Awakeners entered the towers and hunted monsters. In return, they brought back magic stones, new minerals, and equipment that Earth’s technology could never produce.
Rumors even circulated that a single weapon from the higher floors could change a nation’s fate.
People climbed the towers to seize new opportunities.
Of course, I had no interest.
I had decided to live an ordinary life this time around.
At least, that was true until I saw it.
“This is the highest-ranked piece of equipment discovered to date!”
The reporter on television spoke in an excited voice.
Beside the reporter stood a glass display case.
A blue blade.
A silver hilt.
A lightning-attribute magic stone set in the center.
At a glance, it looked fairly impressive.
Only at a glance.
The blade’s centerline was ever so slightly off, and the metal wrapping the magic stone was thicker than necessary.
They had lengthened the hilt trying to balance it, and as a result the center of gravity was a complete mess.
In short, it was a flashy failure dripping with empty style.
And they had put that thing in a display case and were broadcasting it to the world.
If the blacksmith who made it saw this, wouldn’t they start with a long, heavy sigh?
“Look at this crest!”
The camera zoomed in on the guard of the sword.
Inside it was engraved a small mark shaped like an anvil and flame.
The maker’s mark I had used in my previous life.
“Why is that here?”
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
My father, peeling a tangerine beside me, looked over.
“Ihyeon, do you know that sword?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
It was a difficult question to answer.
Would he believe me if I said I had made it in my past life?
Probably not.
When an eight-year-old daughter starts claiming past lives, most parents start looking for a shaman or a hospital.
I would have done the same.
Right now I was an eight-year-old girl named Seo Ihyeon.
In my previous life I had been a man.
And I had died as a wrinkled old man at that.
When I opened my eyes, not only was my body smaller—my gender had changed too—but after living eight years like this, I had gotten used to it.
Humans adapt better than you think.
Especially when they have no choice.
“I just saw something similar once.”
I brushed it off roughly.
Father didn’t doubt me.
Normally I might have felt a little hurt by how easily he accepted it, but right now I was just glad I didn’t have to explain.
On the television, the appraiser’s explanation continued.
“The appraisal result is at least S-class. It is presumed to be a divine sword forged by an ancient god who sealed lightning within it.”
An ancient god.
No.
In reality, it was something a seventeen-year-old apprentice blacksmith had made on a rainy day out of sheer boredom.
That apprentice blacksmith had been me.
After that I hammered countless times, failed, and made things again. I repeated that cycle my entire life, until one day the king started calling me a national treasure and the dwarves began saying it had been a mistake for me to be born human.
I thought the praise was excessive.
I had simply loved blacksmithing.
Maybe a little too much.
I spent my whole life striking the hammer, and then I died.
And I was reborn as a little girl in a modern world with neither mana nor monsters.
At first I felt regret, but you can’t live clinging to what isn’t there.
This world had its own life to live.
I had done enough blacksmithing in my previous life.
I resolved to live ordinarily this time.
I had left the blacksmith behind in my past life.
Then the appraiser’s voice rang out from the television again.
“What especially deserves attention is the perfect mana circuit. It is a masterpiece that modern technology cannot even begin to imitate.”
“Perfect?”
I echoed it without thinking.
That sword’s name was Cheongrye 7.
A test piece I had made with the simple idea that putting lightning into it would make it strong.
The problem was that it couldn’t withstand its own output.
Draw on its power more than seven times and the circuit overheats.
On the tenth use, the blade shatters.
If you’re unlucky, the wrist holding the sword goes with it.
So I had thrown it into the scrap heap.
And now they were elevating that piece of junk as humanity’s finest equipment.
“That’s weird.”
“What is?”
Father asked.
“Why is that thing S-class?”
“The news says so.”
“The news is wrong.”
Father laughed and ruffled my hair.
“Our daughter can appraise swords too, huh?”
He had taken it as a joke.
It was frustrating.
But an eight-year-old getting angry at the television only looks like cute pouting.
Even more frustrating.
I looked at the screen again.
The appraiser was still praising Cheongrye 7.
A famous sword.
A divine sword.
A perfect masterpiece.
Every single word was wrong.
No one believes you when you call a failure a failure.
In that case, the only option was to show them the real thing.
I climbed down from the sofa.
My resolve to live an ordinary life had seemed fairly solid until a moment ago.
But I simply could not tolerate a piece of trash like that wearing my name and posing as a masterpiece.
“Fine.”
I’ll make just one.
A true masterpiece that can’t even be compared to that sword.
That day.
For the first time in eight years since I quit being a blacksmith, I decided to pick up the hammer again.