Surtr's Heart
"Oppa."
At that word, I turned to look behind me. There stood Inha, schoolbag slung over her shoulder, apparently just back from school.
"H-hey, it's been a while."
"It's Oppa!"
When I greeted her, Inha came charging at me, only to be stopped dead by Won-ae.
"And who might you be?"
"My, my. It isn't polite to speak down to your unnie, you know."
With that, neither of them uttered another word. They simply held their silence, but even so, a strange tension radiated off the pair of them.
"Won-ae, that's enough."
"If you say so, Jin..."
It seemed leaving them be would only end in a scene, so I decided to rein Won-ae in. At my words, she reluctantly released her grip on Inha.
"Oppa!"
The instant Won-ae let go, Inha came running at me again. We had never been close enough for this kind of tackle, or so I'd thought. Still, there are lines you have to keep. With that in mind, I neatly sidestepped her charge, and Inha went tumbling straight across the floor.
"What is the meaning of this!"
A shriek rang out from the back of the house. I'd been wondering where the old man had disappeared to; apparently he'd gone to inspect my equipment, the set that had been utterly wrecked in my battle with the demons.
"What in the world did you do to break an item this badly?!"
"Well, it's..."
The old man pressed me for an explanation, but I couldn't bring myself to open my mouth. Explaining the state of my equipment would mean explaining what had happened in North Korea. Explaining it later would be fine. Right now, I'd rather not. I didn't think it was time to bring all of that into the open yet.
"Well... a lot of things happened..."
Not that dodging the question left me many options; evasion was about all I had. And he clearly didn't buy a word of it.
"For Unique-grade armor to break this badly, at the very least..."
The old man stopped mid-sentence. He probably couldn't come up with a concrete example. Even the current world's number one couldn't shatter Unique-grade armor. Not when the demons and the celestials have yet to be revealed to the world.
He agonized over it for a long while, and in the end seemed to give up on understanding altogether. Then he asked me, his expression grave.
"Are you going to be fighting foes like this from now on?"
"If you're asking whether I'll fight strong ones like this, then no."
"Then..."
"In all likelihood, I'll be fighting far stronger ones."
"..."
At my answer, the old man's face crumpled. To hear that I meant to fight enemies stronger than the one who had reduced Unique-grade armor to rags, it could only sound like madness.
"...Is that the truth?"
"Yes."
An awkward silence settled over us. The old man deliberated for a long time before he finally spoke.
"If you're going to fight stronger foes, then I cannot make your armor."
"I'm sorry?"
"The best I can manage is Unique grade, like this set here. Which means my armor would be of no help to you at all."
It was an utterly practical thing to say. The pride of a master craftsman should never have permitted those words, yet he bowed that pride to say them anyway.
Even so, there was no question that this man was the finest blacksmith in the world. Smiths who could stand beside him were exceedingly rare. And of those, Master Seo Jincheol was the only one I could actually reach.
"Why are you so certain you can only make Unique grade?"
"Certain, you say... I could likely forge armor of the grades above as well, if the conditions were met."
Before my regression, this was the man who had churned out Legendary-grade weapons and armor as if stamping them out in a factory. There was no way he couldn't make something higher.
"And those conditions are?"
"Materials. And a furnace."
"Materials and a furnace..."
The demon byproducts I carried would more than cover the materials. What I needed to nail down was the furnace.
"What kind of furnace do you need?"
"One with flames stronger than my current furnace by several times at least. No, by tens of times."
The furnace the old man worked with now was already a fine piece of craftsmanship. There couldn't be many forges in the world with fiercer fire than that.
"Now that you've heard the conditions, you see it can't be done, yes? Your time would be better spent clearing high-rank gates and hunting down Legendary items."
"That's not so. It's not as if I don't know where to find one."
"Is that true?!"
The old man stared at me in astonishment. He had probably raised the point believing it was flatly impossible.
"Let me make a call."
With that, I took out my phone and dialed Guildmaster Han Min-joon. He answered before I'd waited long.
The guildmaster accepted my request without a moment's fuss. He didn't ask a single question, and in that alone I could feel how deeply he trusted me.
With the matter settled, I ended the call. When I looked up, the old man was eyeing me with open suspicion.
"The forge is booked."
"A smithy with a finer furnace than mine simply agrees to that, that easily?"
"Well, that's the power of connections for you. Let's get going."
And so we hailed a taxi and set off for the smithy. Won-ae and Inha trailed along behind us, their silent contest of wills still raging.
"I believe this is the place."
"Not this one, you rascal. I'm quite sure it isn't."
The moment the old man laid eyes on the building, he shook his head and declared it couldn't be the place. Which was a fair reaction, except that the building right in front of us was, in fact, Geumgang Guild's own smithy.
I hadn't expected a smithy to be housed in such a grand building either... When I heard the word smithy, I had pictured something old and worn, but that clearly wasn't always the case. A brand-new high-rise doubling as a forge had never once crossed my mind.
Was it built this far from the craftsmen's street precisely because it's a building like this? If a tower like this went up in the middle of Myeongdong, it would be an invasive species that wrecked the entire ecosystem. It wasn't even a shared building; for a single smithy to occupy a structure this size, the only words for it were the power of money.
"Let's head in."
"This really is the place?"
"Of course."
Still dubious, the old man let me lead him into the building. Inside, the secretary I knew so well was waiting.
"It's been some time."
"It has. Is the guildmaster not here?"
"He is here. The guildmaster is waiting upstairs."
"Then take the master to the workshop in the back, and let's get moving."
"Understood."
With that, the secretary took the lead and guided us deeper into the building. On the way, I tried to strike up a conversation with her.
"I think this every time. Aren't you being a little too brusque with me?"
"Well, I'd say there's a reason for that."
"Then tell me what that reason is."
"I'm under no obligation to tell you."
No matter what I said, she always took the same stance. No, if anything, her manner toward me had only grown worse. Why does she only act this way with me? She had seemed so bright when she spoke with my parents before, but never with me.
"Why is it always just me..."
"If I were going to tell you that, I would have told you long ago."
Whether she had heard my muttering or not, the secretary answered. Her tone was thick with displeasure, but I couldn't begin to guess the reason.
"We go down from here."
"Down here?"
The secretary pointed to the foot of the building's stairwell. About ten minutes of descent later, we reached the bottom.
Fwoom! Fwoom!
A colossal blast furnace. Those were the words that surfaced the instant I saw the underground level. The floors above had been thoroughly modern, but down here it felt less like cutting-edge technology and more like a furnace that had been burning since the old days.
"This is..."
"You recognize it, then. A blast furnace built around Surtr's Heart, recovered from an SS-rank gate."
"As expected!"
The two of them carried on as if none of it were unusual, but I couldn't follow the conversation at all. SS-rank? Surtr's Heart? Every term was foreign to me.
"Wasn't S-rank the top of the scale?"
"What? You didn't know? That there are ranks above S?"
I had never heard of it, so how could I possibly know? Before my regression, I hadn't emerged into the wider world until after its destruction, so there had been no one left to tell me such things.
"Ranks above S are handled as classified, top-secret information. And yet nearly every high-rank awakener knows it as common knowledge..."
Even as he spoke, the old man studied me intently, and his eyes seemed to ask, Aren't you a high-rank awakener yourself?
"Someone has to tell me these things before I can know them!"
"Doesn't that bastard chairman ever tell you anything?"
"He does not!"
I knew perfectly well that item grades continued past Legendary+. But it had never occurred to me that the ranks assigned to gates and skills went above S. No, I should have guessed. Pride and I are both beyond S-rank already. There was no reason others like us couldn't exist. If anything, the fault was mine for having ruled out the possibility outright.
"Out of curiosity, are there awakeners classified as SS-rank as well?"
"There are. The world's number one, and Han Min-joon waiting for us up above, are both SS-rank, for starters."
Those two, SS-rank. Which meant the problem had just grown larger. So I hadn't earned the right to celebrate surpassing S-rank. I had been overjoyed at the start, when I'd already begun beyond S-rank. Right up until I heard the truth that had been hidden from me. The world's number one and Guildmaster Han Min-joon had both been defeated, not by Pride, but by a single one of the Seven Demon Lords. Which meant Pride was SSS-rank. Perhaps even higher.
I clenched my fists. Blood welled from my palms, but I didn't register it at all. I had been drunk on happiness. I was still far from reaching Pride, yet I had neglected my growth, intoxicated by the mere fact of my regression. If only I had driven myself to the very end. If only I had tempered my body to its absolute limit. Perhaps I could have beaten the Baron this time. A true victory, not that half-finished one.
The thought made me feel pathetic, and self-loathing crept in. And at the same moment, a fire kindled in my chest. If I keep settling for this, disaster will follow. Things might not merely fail to differ from before my regression; they might unfold exactly the same way. That alone, I could not forgive. And for that, I had to become stronger. I should assume my current rank is around SS. It even occurred to me that I might fall short of SS-rank entirely, and that was after drinking the elixir and taking the Hidden Piece. The thought filled me with a restless urgency.
"Can you start on my equipment right away?"
"Well, with Surtr's Heart, that much I can manage... but do you have the materials?"
"Yes."