Still Not Enough
There was one problem with the mana furnace.
The flames were far too bright.
The blue fire was excellent for heating metal. It also caught the eye far too well. Even with the protective face shield lowered, every flash of mana inside the furnace washed my vision white.
In my previous life I had simply wrapped mana around my eyes to block the light. I could not do that now. I had not Awakened.
“I need goggles.”
“Want me to buy you a better pair?” Grandfather asked.
“No. I’m going to make them.”
“You’re making goggles too?”
“I need them.”
If you leave a necessary tool to someone else, you never get the thing you actually want. That was a lesson I had learned thoroughly in my past life.
Making the goggles took three days.
I removed the shade lens from an old auto-darkening welding helmet. I trimmed the leather frame to fit my face and wound a thin copper wire around the edge of the lens. Onto that wire I engraved an observation circuit that converted mana into light.
If the circuit was too thick it would obstruct my view. Grandfather cut thin copper plate while I used the Strength Assist Gloves to push a small chisel. Finally I attached a dark brown leather strap.
I put on the finished goggles. They were a little large.
“Our Ihyeon will grow into them soon enough.”
“They need to fit now.”
Grandfather laughed and tightened the strap another notch. I put them on again. This time they stayed put.
When I looked at the furnace, the blue flames settled into a muted darkness. Above them, thin lines of light rose into view—the mana flowing in from the Bulssiseok, the heat running along the furnace walls, even the tiny leaks from the automatic shutoff circuit. All of it was visible.
A piece of protective gear that blocked the eyes had become a new pair of eyes for me.
“Can you see well?”
“Yeah.”
“Could Grandfather try them on just once?”
“No. They’re fitted to my face.”
“They were big a minute ago.”
I pretended not to hear and pushed the goggles up onto my forehead.
Only after finishing the goggles did I remember something important.
I still had not made a single proper weapon.
The Strength Assist Gloves. The mana furnace. The shield that returned impact. I had been so busy crafting necessary tools and handling commissions that I had forgotten my original purpose.
Cheongrye 7.
The failure I had made in my previous life. That piece of junk was still being called a divine sword. I could not leave it like that.
“I’m going to make a weapon.”
“Minseok’s shield is finished. Can’t you rest a little?”
“There’s no time for that.”
Grandfather glanced at the clock on the wall.
“It’s Sunday today.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I had to make a weapon better than that failure. At the very least I needed to show what a properly made piece of work looked like.
Materials were scarce. Fragments of ironclad boar carapace received as payment for Choi Minseok’s commission. Horn left over from the shield. A few scraps of leather. Modern tool steel. Not enough for a full sword.
“It’ll have to be a dagger.”
I sketched a short blade on paper. Overall length a little over thirty centimeters. Single-edged. The pommel rounded so no hand would slip no matter who gripped it.
Even with limited materials, there was no reason to compromise on quality. In my previous life I would have scoffed at something this size. But small weapons had their own uses.
“Ihyeon.”
Grandfather looked down at the drawing.
“This isn’t a toy, is it?”
“No.”
“It’s something that could hurt a person?”
“Yes.”
His expression grew serious.
“May I ask why you need it?”
Did making a weapon require some other reason? In my previous life I had forged better weapons simply because I wanted to. It was the same this time.
“I’m going to make a weapon better than the one on television.”
Grandfather blinked. Then the stiff look on his face softened. To him it must have sounded like the grand ambition of an eight-year-old granddaughter.
“All right. If it’s our Ihyeon, you can do it.”
He smiled and ruffled my hair.
“But Grandfather will keep the finished piece safely stored.”
“Okay.”
Where it was stored did not matter. Completing a proper weapon came first.
The ironclad boar carapace was not metal. Nor was it ordinary bone. It was a substance of fibers that had grown hard as iron while feeding on mana. Grind it straight into a blade and it would be hard yet brittle, ready to shatter.
I crushed the carapace into fine pieces, sieved the black powder to even the grain size, and spread it in a thin layer between sheets of modern tool steel.
“Looks like a sandwich,” Grandfather said.
“If you ate it you’d break a tooth.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
I stacked the two materials and welded the edges shut, sealing every tiny gap so no air could enter. A single billet with the black carapace powder trapped inside steel was complete. I placed it in the mana furnace and lowered my goggles.
Through the shade lens I could see inside the material. The mana in the tool steel flowed slow and steady. The mana in the carapace fragments jumped wildly. Two currents that refused to mix.
In my previous life I had hammered them into alignment by feel. Now I could see exactly where they were misaligned. On one side of the billet a black hole smaller than a fingernail showed itself—air that had failed to escape during welding. If I had hammered it as is, the surface would have looked fine. After a few uses the crack would have started right there.
Before pulling the billet from the furnace I said, “Wait. We have to open it again.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Air is trapped inside.”
Grandfather cut open the welded edge again. A small gap released a rush of hot air. Without the goggles I would never have found the flaw until the piece was finished. Being able to see made a greater difference than I had expected. If my past-life self had seen these goggles, he would have paid a sack of gold coins for them. Now I could make them myself.
“Heat the right side a little more.”
Grandfather adjusted the furnace. The moment the flows met, I pulled the billet out. I tightened the Strength Assist Gloves, raised the hammer, and struck.
Clang!
Black sparks flew on the first blow. The steel took the carapace powder into itself.
Clang!
On the second blow the mana currents began to overlap. Through the goggles I found the darkest spot—the place where force would break, where a crack would begin. I struck only there.
Clang!
A black line stretched long through the entire steel. In my previous life I would have folded the material ten times. This time three was enough. Hammering more does not make better metal. Striking exactly where it is needed is better. Modern measurement and eyes that could see mana shortened the work.
The blade took shape. I left the spine thick and tapered it toward the edge. Into the center of the grip I set a slender core of horn, then wrapped the outside in monster leather.
Last came the mana circuit. Cheongrye 7 had been overloaded with them—an amplification circuit to grow lightning, a stabilization circuit to hold form, an absorption circuit that forcibly drew the user’s mana. Greed for function had made them interfere with one another.
This dagger received only one: a circuit that gathered ambient mana and sent it straight to the tip of the blade. It required none of the user’s own mana. Anyone who used it would get the same performance.
When I engraved the circuit, a thin blue line appeared on the black blade. I lifted the dagger. The balance sat just ahead of the index finger. When I moved my wrist the tip followed without lag. No mana snagged anywhere.
It was finished.
On the test stand I fixed a failed shield frame. Temporary reinforcing mana circuits were linked across it. While the circuits ran, even hammer blows would not bend it easily. Grandfather hung a heavy weight from the end of the frame. The mana circuits glowed red as they bore the load.
This was a test of how precisely I could sever the weak point of mana-flowing equipment.
I put on the goggles. The circuits on the frame appeared as red lines. The blue line of the dagger gathered at the tip.
“I’m doing it.”
“Be careful.”
Grandfather rested a hand right beside my arm. I set the tip of the dagger against the point where the red line grew thinnest.
Tuk.
There was almost no resistance. The mana flowing along the circuit cut first. The metal frame, stripped of its reinforcement, could not hold the hanging weight.
Kiiik.
The frame folded at the joint that had already failed once. The weight crashed to the floor. Grandfather’s eyes went wide.
“Did you just cut iron?”
“No.”
I drew the dagger free. Not a single nick marked the tip.
“I cut the weak point.”
I had not smashed it with raw force. I had found the flaw in the mana structure and severed it with the least effort possible. There was no flashing lightning like that failure, no gaudy decoration meant to deceive the eye. Even so, this was far better. At least it was clear what the weapon had been made for.
Through the goggles I examined the dagger again. The mana flow was clean. No unnecessary circuits tangled together. The ironclad boar carapace and the tool steel had blended better than expected. Considering the materials, it was a thoroughly good weapon.
But if someone asked whether it surpassed Cheongrye 7, the answer was no. Even as a failure that sword had been forged with rare metals from my previous life used without restraint. The design was cleaner now, yet I had not overcome the gap in materials and output.
“Not enough.”
“Even though it cuts this well?” Grandfather asked, looking at the bent frame.
“What I want to surpass isn’t something at this level.”
I would have been ashamed to show it off as finished work. Presenting something inferior to the failure on television would only be spitting in my own face. I set the dagger on the workbench.
“Don’t show this to anyone.”
“Why? To Grandfather it looks wonderful.”
“It’s still a mediocre piece.”
Grandfather looked as though he did not understand, but he did not press for reasons. He oiled the blade, wrapped it in thick cloth, found an empty wooden box, and lined the inside with soft leather.
“I’ll store it carefully.”
“Make sure no one can see it.”
“Of course. Until our Ihyeon says it’s all right to show.”
He locked the box and set it on the highest shelf of the tool cabinet. Inside lay the first weapon I had made from scratch in this world. It was not yet ready to be shown to the world.
Next time, I intended to forge a weapon that needed no hiding.