Dragon's Flame
“It’s Dragon’s Flame.”
Dragon’s Flame.
“Also called Dragon’s Breath. Long, long ago, a dragon lived near this Iron Helm. My ancestors spent their whole lives fighting that beast—until, in one great war, they joined forces.”
Every fire in Iron Helm, he explained, burned with Dragon’s Flame for that very reason.
“Is there a way to obtain that flame?”
Jinwoo’s gaze was locked on the fire.
This heat. With firepower like this, he could work SSR+-grade materials without holding back.
“Hmm. The existing flames are under a seal, you see. Dragon magic. So—”
Hairun tried to scoop some of the flame into a vessel.
It snuffed out on the spot.
KRA-KOOM—!
Accompanied by a crack of miniature lightning.
“One wrong move and that sealing bolt will cook you alive.”
“So I can’t just take it from here.”
“That doesn’t mean there’s no way at all.”
Hairun spoke—
KUUUUUUNG—!
—and the entire workshop shuddered.
No. Not the workshop.
The ground itself is shaking!
“Get down!”
KUU-GAGAGAGAGAGAK—!
Jinwoo whipped his eyes toward the outside.
“The volcanoes…”
Iron Helm was riddled with small volcanoes, and they were erupting.
“Truth is, Iron Helm’s got a problem. Things keep blowing up without warning.”
“Don’t tell me…”
“Aye. A man of your caliber already knows. It’s the Tower. That thing appeared out of nowhere and the whole of Iron Helm has been trembling ever since. We set out on a journey to deal with it.”
But the Tower wasn’t the only problem.
“There was a dragon. A Tower in the Iron Helm Gorge—and a dragon in that same gorge. Only the dragon’s condition was… wrong. Its whole body had turned pitch-black. Corrupted.”
The dwarves who witnessed it fell back at once.
“We raised an expedition. Under the Great Hammer’s orders—the one who leads Iron Helm—our warriors gathered. But…”
Dwarves had only three callings: warrior, blacksmith, and hunter.
The blacksmiths forged the gear; the warriors and hunters wore it.
“They came back defeated. The losses were heavy.”
They had failed. All that remained were wounds.
“So you’re just going to sit on your hands?”
“No. The Great Hammer went to seek help. We’re waiting on that.”
“Help from whom?”
“From the Great Dwarf God—more precisely, from the dwarves who serve the Great Dwarf God. We’ve gone to them for aid. If they join us, we should have a chance against that corrupted dragon.”
One of the reasons Jinwoo had come to this dwarven city was to clear a quest tied to that very Great Dwarf God.
I can link this up nicely.
“Then that method you mentioned a moment ago…”
“Aye. Taking the flame straight from the corrupted dragon. But…”
Hairun clicked his tongue.
“In our present state, it’s flat-out impossible.”
Even Iron Helm’s finest warriors and hunters had gone and failed. How was anyone supposed to wrest fire from that greedy, overwhelming dragon?
“Then we’ll need to prepare.”
“Aye… preparation’s what we need… Hm? Prepare?”
Hairun’s face went blank with surprise.
“Don’t tell me…”
“I need that flame.”
Jinwoo said it simply.
“A flame of overwhelming power.”
New Gene was a game that strongly encouraged party hunting.
But irregulars always existed for rules like that.
“Why can’t priests solo? Seriously.”
Holly Molly, a priest player for whom hunting was nearly impossible without a party, had no shortage of complaints.
“There’s got to be plenty of players like me.”
Players who hated being stuck as pure backline support.
“Everyone says just change jobs, but the priest class itself is good. I just hate how passive it is.”
Even their “dedicated weapons” barely had attack power—most of them could only handle trash mobs.
“Hmm. Looking at this, the guy makes a ton of different stuff.”
The rising star—Jinwoo.
A crafter who truly turned out every kind of equipment imaginable.
“No way…”
Holly Molly felt a flicker of hope.
And then—
New gear had gone live.
“Gargoyle Stone… Mace!?”
The new listing was a mace.
“I-it’s finally… finally here.”
Overwhelming attack power. Excellent secondary options. And the design looked damn good, too.
Not a weapon for a support who only ever hung in the rear—
—but one a priest could use to stand on the front line if needed, striking and rallying morale in the same breath.
“This is it. This is it!”
Holly Molly was completely, utterly hooked on the mace.
“Let’s see… money.”
This piece had been listed as a bid auction, so he had to win the competition.
“I’ve got money!”
He was sitting on a full thirty million gold.
“?”
Bid amount has been updated!
Gargoyle Stone Mace — 35,000,000 Gold
“Uh…?”
Thirty million gold wasn’t even close.
“Is it always this expensive?”
Holly Molly frantically searched Jinwoo’s other listings.
“That’s only five hundred thousand gold!”
But those hundred-plus pieces were the kind you only got if you hit an open-run drop—otherwise you simply couldn’t buy them.
“What about the others?”
Orcish Emerald Jade Stone Axe.
An SR-grade piece—lower grade than the mace currently up.
“….”
“So the mace was the cheap one…”
The mace was, relatively speaking, a bargain.
“No. Absolutely not. I’m not losing this.”
Holly Molly started converting everything he owned into gold.
Jinwoo first set the Droyzen Steel into the forge.
Fwoooooosh—.
Then he activated Fire Build.
CLANG—!
With flame wrapped around his hammer, he struck the Droyzen Steel.
CLANG—!
“Oh.”
Fire Build.
This skill fit Jinwoo’s style perfectly.
It’s like they turned the technique I used to use into a skill.
Which was why it felt so natural.
CLANG—! CLANG—!
Fierce flame churned straight through the heart of the Droyzen Steel, driving heat into the material so it would reshape all the faster.
Nice.
Using it as an actual skill made the effect far stronger than before. And this forge heat—he liked it a lot.
With Fire Build still running, Jinwoo immediately extracted the soul held within the Droyzen Steel.
Shuuuk—.
Then, under Deep Smithing, white smoke rose from the metal.
Extracted the soul of Droyzen Steel.
Droyzen Steel has been purified!
Impurities removed! The material’s potential breaks through its limit!
A power similar to Dust’s—the material spirit.
But not quite the same.
Where Dust pushed a material’s potential all the way to its ceiling, Deep Smithing purified it so that ceiling could be shattered entirely.
Which means—
“Dust.”
Jinwoo summoned the spirit.
“The synergy between these two is massive.”
Dust spun once in the air.
“Pyorong~.”
As soon as Jinwoo called the spirit, Hairun leaned in for a closer look.
“Never seen a spirit like that.”
Dwarves were intimately familiar with spirits. Contracts with fire spirits and earth spirits were practically mandatory for their craft.
But the spirit Jinwoo used was one Hairun had never encountered.
“Push the potential.”
“Pyorong!”
Shaaaaa—.
Dust settled onto the material, hauling the Droyzen Steel’s potential up to its absolute limit.
At the same time, soul extraction stripped away the impurities and shattered the material’s ceiling—and what remained was something completely transformed from what it had been.
“Hah.”
Glint—.
Light shone from the metal. The unique aura it carried surged even stronger than before.
“That synergy’s something else…! What spirit is that?”
“A material spirit.”
“A material spirit, is it.”
Different indeed. From the spirit itself, an ordinary blacksmith and Jinwoo were already in separate leagues.
CLANG—! CLANG—! CLANG—!
Jinwoo hammered the Droyzen Steel.
Droyzen Steel was an SS-grade material.
Keep it simple—a dagger.
CLANG—!
He used no other techniques.
Only the Deep Smithing and Fire Build Hairun had taught him.
CLANG—!
Before, he’d taken S-grade materials and made SR-grade gear.
Now SS-grade is producing SSR.
Jinwoo was impressed.
My skill’s improved a bit too, I’m sure.
But the power of Deep Smithing was enormous.
This is even better than I expected.
He hadn’t realized Hairun’s technique, Deep Smithing, would be this good.
“Incredible. Deep Smithing. I never thought it would turn out like this.”
“……?”
Hairun looked at the Droyzen Steel dagger Jinwoo had made.
“SSR-grade…?”
He had definitely handed over SS-grade material. Not a scrap of anything higher.
And Jinwoo had forged it with the simplest hammering imaginable—just the Deep Smithing and Fire Build Hairun himself had taught. Clean, pure hammer work. That was the whole dagger.
“It’s thanks to how excellent Deep Smithing is.”
Jinwoo smiled as he spoke.
“Thank you for teaching me so well.”
“Deep Smithing is a fine technique, aye, but… even I can’t do this.”
Taking SS-grade material and producing SSR-grade gear was something even Hairun—who had mastered Deep Smithing—could not do.
And Jinwoo was claiming he’d done it thanks to the technique.
“Hrrrrrmmm…”
Hairun swallowed hard once, then spoke.
He hadn’t wanted to ask. But after seeing this, how could he not?
“Jinwoo, lad.”
Hairun said,
“How in the world did you do that…?”