Soul Sight
Soul Sight.
As a Necromayster, Jinwoo already possessed the power to see and extract souls.
And beyond that—
I've been doing the work of understanding materials all along, too.
That was why the process of drawing out a soul posed no real difficulty for him.
Hairun, who had no way of knowing any of that, was thoroughly rattled.
"W-why…?"
Why was a soul coming out?
"It isn't supposed to… be this easy."
Pulling a soul free was high-level work. Hairun himself had spent an enormous stretch of time honing the technique just to complete it. You had to understand a material down to its absolute limit. Only then could you draw the soul forth.
"You've never even seen Droyzen Steel before, have you…?"
"No, sir."
"Then how—"
Jinwoo answered Hairun's question simply.
"I understood it."
He had understood the material. He had understood the process by which a soul emerged. It was a difficult process, but it was doable.
"…"
Hairun fell silent. It was exactly as he himself had explained it, only in the briefest terms.
Hairun was stunned by Jinwoo's extraordinary skill—yet Jinwoo, in turn, was just as stunned by Hairun's technique.
This is definitely different.
Ordinary Soul Sight let him see and handle the souls of living creatures. He had looked upon the souls of living beings countless times with it.
Hairun's technique, by contrast, was for drawing out the soul of something inanimate—the soul held by a material.
For a blacksmith, there's no technique better than this.
Because it was inanimate, it was utterly different from the souls of living things.
Deep Smithing
Extract a material's soul, purify it, and maximize its latent potential!
"Purify."
The soul has been purified by the flame.
"Thank you for teaching me, Master Hairun."
To learn Deep Smithing so easily and pull it off on the first try… Hairun swallowed hard. Then he asked in a rush, because another thought about Jinwoo—who had come to him after Hoz, Rodin, and Mire—had just flashed through his mind.
"Can you show me the Flawless Tailoring you learned from Mire?"
Jinwoo immediately pulled out cloth. He had harpy feathers obtained from the Maze Mist Tower. He wove those feathers together.
Swish. Swish.
With Flawless Tailoring, Jinwoo shaped the fabric like flowing waves. Watching the entire sequence, Hairun's mouth fell open.
"Mire is in you. No… maybe a little different…"
Only now did he understand.
"Right. That elf had good reason to praise you."
Hairun crossed his arms. But this was still only the beginning. His real stock of techniques still had a long way to go.
"Excellent work, Jinwoo, my boy. But this is just the start. My Deep Smithing and Fire Build are the basic skills that get you onto the starting line. From here on is the true beginning of my smithing!"
"I'll learn with everything I've got!"
"D-don't try to learn too hard! Rest a bit too! You need that as well!"
The war between broadcasting stations had begun in earnest.
KBC. OBC. And MBS and JBS.
The first two channels would air on Netfelix, while MBS and JBS planned to premiere on Mitube. Each station had recruited different rankers and offered slightly different content, but the ones generating the most buzz were, of course, KBC and OBC. Both had signed top-ten rankers.
KBC had recruited the current combat-rank number one, Slayer. OBC starred High-tech, the famed vanguard tank.
SharkNet. The community boards were watching this main-scenario competition between the stations with keen interest. Everyone was full of praise for the users KBC and OBC had recruited. Slayer was the main dealer of the Doak Guild; High-tech was the main tank for Earth Dragon Guild. The two guilds were rivals in more ways than one.
The main scenario. With tower ownership on the line, not only those two guilds but countless others were colliding. And now the stations were fighting as well—so of course the aggro was through the roof.
MBS and JBS, however, were getting far poorer reviews.
MBS in particular was getting flamed for recruiting a ranker a full tier below KBC and OBC. If you were going to go lower-tier, you at least needed buzz—and they had none.
By that same measure, of course, JBS was even worse.
Every ranker signed by the other three stations was a combat-class player. They could deliver flash for the main-scenario clear, stage dramatic set pieces, and—most importantly—take the lead. Taking the lead mattered a great deal: the direction of the program, the direction of the edit, and the fun for the audience all required it.
Jinwoo was already the subject of plenty of word of mouth. Hall of Fame records broken. First clear of a tower. Auction-house revitalizer and a production player beloved and even worshipped across multiple classes.
That Jinwoo was an outstanding crafter was beyond doubt. He had already proven it many times over. People expected him to crack the top 100 soon enough. But in this ratings war between stations, most agreed he simply didn't offer much of an edge.
Slayer and High-tech already signed… and they pick Jinwoo?
Users dismissed JBS and talked about KBC and OBC instead—about Slayer this, High-tech that. No one was expecting anything.
And then—
KBC's video dropped first on Netfelix. Right behind it came OBC's. The war had truly begun.
"Hoooooo."
PD Lee Ilyong, working under PD Han, had been called in on short notice and rushed to the editing bay.
"What are we even supposed to do with this?"
The user PD Han Ingu had picked was Jinwoo. As a production player, Jinwoo would of course have sent crafting footage. Lee had no idea how to cut that into something watchable.
"Can we even make this entertaining? We're going up against Slayer."
The Tower Slayer that KBC had recruited—with Netfelix money behind them, the edit would already be spectacular. That much was certain.
"How do you beat that with crafting footage?"
He reached the editing bay.
"You made it?"
Lee was the last to arrive. Everyone else was already gathered.
"Then we roll the tape?"
"Uh, PD Han, shouldn't we have a meeting first?"
"No. Watch first."
Everyone looked at Han Ingu strangely. Right now he was a candle in the wind. Inside JBS his standing had shrunk to almost nothing. The whole room felt like a funeral house—yet Han himself was beaming.
"What kind of footage did he even send…"
"He's been like this since earlier, PD Lee."
The writers looked at Lee.
"Then let's just watch the video first."
"Rolling."
Han Ingu immediately played the footage Jinwoo had sent. He had stayed up all night putting together a rough cut—trimming the obvious fat and leaving only the core.
Once the video started, Han closed his eyes. The corners of his mouth were already lifting.
"Uh…?"
Confusion erupted from the very first stretch of the video.
"Why is there a tower…?"
Wasn't this supposed to be crafting footage?
Han's entire team kept watching—and then they all reacted exactly the way Han had.
"Th-this is—"
"Are we seeing this right?"
"No, seriously… is this real?"
Everyone's pupils had blown wide. That meant they were thoroughly shocked.
"It's real. I only rough-cut it a bit. You're seeing exactly what I saw."
"PD Han, if this is—"
"The buzz potential is insane!"
A crafter had cleared a tower alone. He had even crafted inside the tower—and in doing so had shattered every existing frame people had for production players.
"How the hell did he even… I've never seen anyone craft in a situation like this."
"And he still comes out of it with SSR-grade gear."
The PDs and writers played New Generation themselves. They also networked with New Generation rankers, so they had a fair amount of knowledge. Crafting inside a tower? You could force it if you really tried. But forcing it and still producing SSR-grade equipment was astonishing. The buzz was inevitable. The more people understood it, the more they would realize just how ridiculous it was.
Watching his team's reaction, PD Han Ingu grinned. Only now did he feel at ease.
"This works. It absolutely works. Even I had no idea. I never expected footage like this."
He had recruited Jinwoo because the man's skill was outstanding. He had believed Jinwoo's potential outstripped even the other rankers. But Jinwoo had gone far beyond that.
"I was already shocked the moment he sent the file. The title said 'tower clear footage,' so I assumed it would be crafting footage for tower progression."
It wasn't.
At Han's words, everyone nodded. Having just watched the video, they understood completely. He hadn't been overreacting at all. If anything, he'd been remarkably calm. If any of them had seen this first, they would have lost their minds. The footage earned that reaction.
"So we're pulling an all-nighter, then?"
Everyone nodded.
"The second the edit is ready, we upload. Keep an eye on the view-count trajectory for Slayer's video on Netfelix too."
"Yes, sir!"
"On it!"
"Use Deep Smithing and Fire Build to craft a piece of equipment. Knowing a skill and using it well are two different things."
Hairun spoke.
"No need for more talk. Just show me."
Whoosh—
Jinwoo stepped up to the forge.
"Oh."
The forge flame.
The fire of the forge was fierce. Not merely fierce—
It's intense.
"Master Hairun. What kind of flame is this?"
"That flame is…"
At Hairun's answer, Jinwoo's eyes went wide.
It was not the answer he had expected.