Chapter 67
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 67
Chapter Title: The Musician Who Plays of His Hometown
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For the next week, I practically lived glued to Hestosiass.
It was a hardcore quest on the line not just for me, but for everyone connected to me—especially Atalanta, who was directly hated by Artemis, and her life hung in the balance.
Hestosiass was crafting his first-ever instrument like this, so he pestered me with endless questions about every little detail: how it should sound in different situations, whether the shaping was right, and he issued a barrage of quests for materials unavailable in the forge or the forest.
Things like fetching an entire olive tree from deep in the Taygetus Mountains outside the forest, roots intact without a single scratch.
Or retrieving the repair tools used by the musician from his house in a ruined village overrun by a herd of wild boars.
Or diving into the depths off Poseidon's coast for pearls from pearl oysters and silver ore that only grew in the abyss.
Every single quest was a massive pain, requiring no small amount of effort.
In the end, after three days of fine-tuning, the blueprint perfectly recreated the gayageum from my memories.
During the remaining time gathering materials, I skipped classes almost entirely and focused solely on Hestosiass's quests.
Yet I couldn't complain or refuse this rough-around-the-edges blacksmith's demands.
Because Hestosiass was just as serious about this as I was.
He always looked like he was about to hawk a loogie on the floor whenever he opened his mouth.
But when he planed the wood or hammered silver before his crimson flames, he faced his work with the reverence of a devout worshipper, without the slightest deviation.
It was one night in my barren house, where I'd only brought in some basic furnishings amid the desolate emptiness, and I hadn't even stepped inside because work with Hestosiass kept me too busy.
"Ah~ Instead of some pretty nymph, I have to pull an all-nighter with a grubby guy like you."
"I had to sneak past those two lovely ladies while dodging their glares, you know?"
"Oh, you mean Artemis's daughter Atalanta and the Nereid nymph?"
The blacksmith never showed his work to outsiders.
But since this was a brand-new instrument unprecedented in Greece, relying solely on my memories, he specially invited me to his workshop.
The name "disciple of the Cyclopes, sons of Hephaestus" was no exaggeration—his house-cum-workshop was a sprawling Greek mansion.
A massive garden open to the sky in the center, surrounded by a U-shaped three-story main building and various rooms.
He'd heavily modified it, turning the whole estate into one giant forge.
Anyway, before diving into the real work, we were having a light meal of wine and bread with Hestosiass.
"We're almost done now. What do you think? Looks pretty damn impressive to me."
"Honestly, with your rough talk, it's hard to believe that beauty came from those hands. It's gorgeous."
"Hey, what's wrong with my speech?"
Hestosiass pouted and grumbled, while the gayageum stacked beside him was nearly complete.
The olive tree I'd raced all the way to Taygetus Mountain to fetch, carefully so not even a root was damaged.
I'd wondered back then why he wanted the whole tree with roots intact when it'd need trimming for the gayageum anyway—not just the body section, but the entire thing root and all. It hadn't made sense.
But after watching him work, I realized why he'd insisted on bringing it live from the mountain.
"Good lord, shaping a living tree like that."
It was nothing short of magic—or a miracle.
This mad blacksmith hammered water and wood with fire and iron, bending their forms to his will.
He'd shaped the still-living tree, roots undried, into the gayageum's form while it breathed.
"How the hell is that even possible?"
"Learned it from the Cyclops triplets. This is just parlor tricks. Come to the triplets' workshop in Sicily sometime. You'll see what real wonders look like."
I praised his skill with pure awe at the bizarre sight I'd witnessed firsthand, something beyond words.
But Hestosiass just shrugged it off like it was nothing.
However, the abilities Hestosiass demonstrated upended everything I knew about crafting.
Metal conquers wood, fire conquers metal—an unchangeable principle.
Yet this man reversed it precisely: he made metal yield to wood, reshaping itself, and fire bend metal's flow.
And that was far from all.
The gayageum's strings were typically fine silk.
But ordinary strings snapped under the Twelve Pieces of Homesick Lament.
The one bestowed upon me had been thin-drawn millennium cold iron, refined by dozens of artisans into heavenly net thread.
That sharpness turned to arrows could cleave mountains in two.
Infused with the chill of that iron and the sorrow of the twelve melodies, even battle-frenzied cultists charging like flaming boars would halt, clutching their chests and weeping.
If the body was paramount for a gayageum, the strings were just as crucial.
Even granting his divine magic produced an unprecedented body, could this blacksmith craft strings of heavenly net caliber to withstand the twelve melodies' power?
I'd worried.
But he made my concerns seem foolish.
He took the pearls and abyssal silver I'd endured endless scolding and glares from Nesneria's sisters to obtain, mixed them with a few other metals, melted them in the fire,
then hauled in a spinning wheel and fed the molten metal into it, spinning away.
"Honestly, back then I thought, 'What the hell is he doing?'..."
Come on, using all that stuff I'd worked so hard for in some absurd stunt.
No way spinning molten metal on a wheel would produce thread.
That's what I'd thought too.
"Man, I couldn't figure out what you were thinking. You don't spin thread on a wheel? Where else?"
"Isn't that obvious? Spin molten metal on a wheel, and out comes thread?"
Incredibly, just as Hestosiass said, a milky-white ethereal metal thread emerged from the whirling wheel.
Those spun threads were now sorted by thickness, awaiting final assembly.
Watching him shape living wood into the body and spin molten metal into strings,
I truly felt this was the land of myths.
Honestly, I'd grown numb to Hermes or Artemis's flashy displays from seeing them too often.
"By the way, been too busy to ask till now, but your master."
"Master? Which one? You think I've got just one or two?"
"Damn, for real. Who else! The one who taught you this massive Hyperborean instrument!"
"Ah, the Homesick Ghost Musician master?"
"Miang... Kweum?"
As expected, Greek lacked the sounds for Hanja names, so Hestosiass tilted his head with a dying-rat squeak.
"Shit, hard to even pronounce."
"Homesick Ghost Musician. It means the virtuoso ghost who plays tunes of longing for home."
"Hell, what a mouthful. Anyway, that master—what was he like?"
Hestosiass's sudden question brimmed with curiosity for some reason.
I'd thought he was a one-track mind once immersed in work.
Surprisingly, he asked about all sorts of trivial things, and we'd shared quite a few stories.
"Shall we trade stories again? I've got something I'm curious about too."
"Sure. We're basically done anyway."
He picked up the near-complete gayageum and began fine-tuning.
He hammered out flaws or sound-disrupting spots with a magic-infused mallet, cauterized regrowing roots with a crimson-hot chisel to force them inward, all while asking me,
"Let's hear your story first. Knowing about the player now and before might give clues to perfecting it."
"Well, I don't know the full tale—he wasn't one to talk about himself much."
All I knew about the Homesick Ghost Musician was his appearance: more like a revered immortal from some Taoist sect than a demonic cult leader, and that he'd been a wandering bard from a distant ancient homeland lost long ago, drifting into the martial world.
"He looked like he could ascend to immortality any moment. Snow-white beard, wrinkled forehead. An old geezer whose eyes sparkled like stars embedded in them, but with a temper sour as hell."
But from investigating his use of the gayageum as his main instrument and the origins of his twelve pieces, I'd uncovered something unexpected.
"That guy... he was from my country, probably."
"Same country? Was it a madhouse like this place, full of tiny states everywhere?"
"It's complicated—let's just say roughly yes."
Truth be told, it was a long story.
My original homeland was 21st-century Korea; his was a small ancient kingdom on what was once our land.
Even after he rose to demonic cult leader, long after his nation's fall, he always yearned for home and composed his laments.
"That's how the Twelve Pieces of Homesick Lament came down to me—his life's masterpiece, an unparalleled sonic art."
No one could imagine it.
The aching sorrow of a traveler missing home, captured in that performance—how it pierced the soul, driving men mad.
Only I remembered him, carrying the true intent of his music alone.
"A life of eternal loneliness, for him and me both."
"What're you on about..."
The Buddha said life is a lonely island.
A solitary isle adrift on the vast sea.
But the Homesick Ghost Musician was an especially isolated, silent one, they said.
No one truly understood him, no one shared his landscapes.
So he delved deeper into his music, unexpectedly earning fame as a sound art master.
That's why, perhaps, when I inherited the essence of his twelve pieces and recited the scenes he painted,
that crotchety musician quietly wept and thanked me.
"Back then, I didn't get why the old man was crying. Only much later did I understand."
"Why'd he cry?"
I grinned at Hestosiass, who glanced curiously at me despite his gruff tone while tending the gayageum.
"He said a lonely island no one ever visited had birthed, by my hands, another island just as lonely as itself.
How could tears of joy not flow?"