A Weapon Must Be Used
Baek Seorin came to the forge the day after they made the appointment.
She came alone.
Instead of her black combat suit she wore comfortable athletic clothes, but the dagger in question still hung at her waist.
“Welcome.”
Grandfather guided Seorin inside.
“Thank you for coming all the way out here.”
“I’m the one making the request.”
Seorin’s gaze swept once around the forge.
The mana furnace.
The Strength Assist Gloves resting on the workbench.
And it lingered a moment on the protective goggles perched on my forehead.
“You saw the cracks in my dagger with those goggles?”
“Something like that.”
“No intention of selling them?”
“None.”
They were fitted to my face.
More than that, there were still plenty of things left to test.
Seorin looked disappointed but didn’t press further.
Instead she unfastened the dagger at her waist and set it on the workbench.
“I’d like to commission the new dagger I mentioned yesterday.”
I’d expected as much.
The problem was materials.
To make a weapon for an S-class hunter, you needed metal of matching quality.
The tool steel and low-grade monster byproducts in the forge had clear limits.
Good design alone couldn’t erase the difference in materials.
“We’ll need to secure materials first.”
“Tell me what you want and I’ll obtain it.”
“It’ll take time to put the list together.”
Seorin nodded.
Then her eyes drifted to the tool rack deeper in the forge.
“Do you happen to have any daggers already finished?”
My gaze went to the tool rack of its own accord.
The highest shelf.
The wooden box Grandfather had placed there sat in that spot.
“There is one, then.”
Seorin hadn’t missed my glance.
“There isn’t.”
“You just looked at the box.”
“I never said there was a dagger.”
“Then what’s inside?”
“A failure.”
Seorin blinked.
Grandfather scratched his cheek, looking awkward.
“Our Ihyeon’s standards are a little high.”
It wasn’t a little.
The dagger in the box wasn’t a bad weapon.
The mana flow was clean, the balance precise.
It was far better made than the A-class dagger sitting on the workbench right now.
But Baek Seorin was an S-class hunter.
You could tell just from the way she moved in the shield testing room.
The placement of her feet.
The stance that kept her body hidden yet ready to draw a blade at any moment.
This was someone who had swung a dagger not thousands of times, but hundreds of thousands.
Handing someone like that a weapon made from tool steel and Ironclad Boar hide.
It didn’t fit.
Meeting a skilled user didn’t erase the limits of the materials.
It would only mean giving her a weapon that fell short of her ability.
“It’s not something worth showing.”
“Can’t I look and decide for myself?”
“No.”
I answered firmly.
Seorin didn’t ask again.
“Understood. Please contact me once the materials list is ready.”
She collected the dagger from the workbench.
That was when Grandfather spoke.
“Would you wait just a moment?”
“Grandfather?”
Grandfather offered Seorin a cup of tea, then called me deeper into the forge.
“Why?”
I kept my voice low.
“I said I didn’t want to show it.”
“I know that.”
Grandfather looked at the box on the tool rack.
“Is it really unusable?”
“It’s not.”
“Then is it dangerous?”
“Not that either.”
If anything, I’d been almost excessive about safety.
It didn’t forcibly drain the user’s mana.
I’d separated the flow so that even if the circuits failed, the blade wouldn’t shatter with them.
“It’s not enough for her.”
“That’s your opinion, Ihyeon.”
Grandfather lightly stroked my head.
“You haven’t heard the opinion of the person who’ll actually use it yet.”
“She’s not someone who doesn’t know good weapons.”
“Exactly. So she’ll judge even better.”
I had nothing to say to that.
Grandfather hesitated a moment, then continued carefully.
“I was never a great artisan.”
He slowly looked around the old forge.
“Still, I made a lot of things here. Axles that went into factories, fixed broken farm tools, straightened the dented signs of neighborhood shops.”
“I know.”
“Finishing something made me happy, but the best feeling was seeing the things I made being used properly in their place.”
Grandfather’s hand rested on my shoulder.
“In the end, doesn’t every piece of equipment only make its maker happy when it’s being used?”
I couldn’t answer.
In my past life I’d only cared about making better weapons.
When one was finished I set a price.
Once I handed it to the client I started the next job.
I almost never asked who used it, where, or how.
Anything that fell short of my standards got shoved into storage.
Cheongrye 7 had been one of those.
Yet even after the world ended, that sword remained.
Someone found the thing I’d discarded as a failure inside the Tower.
Someone was using it and calling it a divine blade.
I still didn’t like it.
Even so, that sword had probably done far more work than it ever had sitting in storage.
I thought of the dagger in the box.
I’d made it and shown it to no one.
Simply because it hadn’t surpassed Cheongrye 7.
Maybe I hadn’t been making weapons at all. Maybe I’d only been making my own pride.
“……I’ll show it once. Just once.”
Grandfather smiled.
“Good. Looking and deciding is the customer’s job.”
I brought over a small stepladder.
Grandfather took the box down before I could.
The box settled on the workbench.
Seorin stopped mid-sip of her tea and rose.
“May I look?”
“Looking only.”
“Understood.”
I unlocked it.
When I peeled back the oil-soaked cloth, a black dagger revealed itself.
There was no flashy ornamentation.
A single blue line running across the black blade was all it had.
Seorin didn’t reach for it at once.
She first examined the blade and hilt with her eyes.
“May I pick it up?”
I hesitated a moment, then nodded.
Seorin lifted the dagger.
The instant her fingers touched the hilt, a system window seemed to appear.
Her pupils moved rapidly.
“This is…….”
“What’s wrong?”
Grandfather asked.
Instead of answering, Seorin shared the appraisal information to an external screen.
A blue window floated above the workbench.
Grade: B
A weapon crafted by an artisan who, after long years of honing their craft, reclaimed the skill they had lost.
◈ Mana Flow Severance Correction: 47%
◈ Does not require the user's mana.
The forge went quiet.
Grandfather looked back and forth between the system window and me.
His gaze lingered longest on the part that said “an artisan who, after long years of honing their craft.”
I pretended not to notice and stared at the blade.
I’d said I would tell him someday.
Today wasn’t that day.
“It’s B-class.”
A sigh slipped out of me.
The grade I’d expected.
Considering the materials, it had come out well.
Still, it wasn’t enough for an S-class hunter to use.
“I’ve never seen numbers like this on a B-class.”
Seorin’s reaction was different.
“Weapons with mana-severance correction usually consume a huge amount of the user’s mana. My dagger does too.”
She set the A-class dagger she’d brought down beside it.
The brilliantly glowing A-class dagger.
The quiet B-class dagger that held only a single blue line.
“But this weapon says it doesn’t need my mana at all.”
“Because it gathers ambient mana to use.”
“May I test its performance?”
“Right now, today?”
“I’m S-class.”
Seorin said it as if it were obvious.
“I have priority access to the Association testing facilities.”
Apparently rank came with that kind of privilege too.
Two hours later we were back at the Hunter Association Performance Testing Center.
It was a different room from the one where we’d tested the shield yesterday.
A dedicated dagger testing chamber.
Targets for slashing and thrusting were lined up by grade along the walls.
Once the staff confirmed Seorin’s name, they opened the innermost testing room without any waiting procedure.
“What target grade would you like?”
“B-class first, please.”
The staff member brought out a B-class target.
It was a monster hide harder than steel, layered with a mana barrier.
First the staff produced a comparison A-class dagger.
It was the same series of test equipment as the one Seorin used.
They couldn’t run impact tests with the cracked dagger.
When mana was poured in, the circuits along the spine lit up noisily.
Seorin’s form blurred.
Her stealth ability had activated.
Her body vanished, but the blue light of the dagger remained floating in midair.
It really looked like a torch drifting around by itself.
Numbers climbed on the staff’s measurement screen.
Stealth Maintenance Rate: 61%
Seorin swung the dagger in front of the target.
Clang!
The mana barrier shuddered hard.
On the second strike the barrier split.
Only on the third did the blade sink deep into the hide.
“We’ll test the next weapon.”
Seorin returned the comparison dagger and drew the black one from the box.
“Shouldn’t it have a name?”
“A failure doesn’t need a name.”
The staff member gave me a strange look.
Seorin smiled faintly, then lowered her stance.
Even the moment she gripped the dagger, almost no light leaked out.
Her form vanished.
This time the dagger vanished with her.
No footsteps.
No presence at all.
The numbers on the measurement screen climbed rapidly.
Stealth Maintenance Rate: 99%
The staff member tapped the screen.
“Measurement error?”
The next instant the space in front of the target split thinly.
A single blue line appeared and vanished.
Thud.
The upper half of the B-class target slid off at an angle.
Mana barrier and monster hide had been severed in a single stroke.
Just once.
The staff member’s mouth hung open.
Seorin released her stealth.
She looked first at the dagger in her hand rather than the sliced target.
“My mana barely dropped at all.”
I lowered my goggles.
The mana flow in the blade was stable.
With a skilled user, there was even less wasted force than when I’d tested it myself.
The balance didn’t interfere with her movement.
The mana gathered at the tip cut the barrier at the exact right moment.
It fit.
Far better than I’d expected.
“Let’s try A-class as well.”
Seorin said.
The staff member recovered enough to shake his head.
“We don’t recommend testing A-class targets with a B-class weapon. It could be damaged.”
“If it’s damaged, I’ll take responsibility.”
Seorin looked at me.
“May I try?”
If it had stayed hidden in the box, I would never have known.
How far that dagger could cut.
In whose hands it moved most properly.
I slowly nodded.
An A-class target rose into the center of the testing room.
Hide thicker than the B-class.
The mana flowing over it several times stronger.
Seorin vanished again.
Every sound in the testing room disappeared.
A single blue line brushed the A-class barrier.
Crack.
A hairline fracture appeared in the middle of the barrier.
The crack didn’t stop.
It spread like a spiderweb until it covered the entire barrier.
And then—
Shatter!
The A-class mana barrier exploded into fragments.
The measuring device slipped from the staff member’s hand.
A blue system window rose above the dagger.
Severed a higher-grade mana structure.
The equipment's unique function is now open.