Thinking About the Future
Whoosh—.
The cramped dirt wall filling my vision and the blazing red flames of the furnace scattered into the empty air.
“Huff…!”
The first thing to hit me was the cool night air of the forest, stabbing sharply into my lungs. Just moments ago, I'd been surrounded by acrid smoke and hellish heat that scorched the skin, but now I stood in a bone-chilling forest.
My lungs rebelled at the sudden environmental shift, heaving out ragged breaths. Seeing my white breath dissipate in the air made me feel the reality down to my marrow—that what I'd just gone through wasn't some sweet hallucination.
“I'm… really back.”
Muttering dazedly, I carefully looked down at my right hand. Even in the darkness, the texture of the black iron lump gleamed faintly in the moonlight.
Crude Iron Awl (F-rank). This was the first weapon I'd forged myself, hammering and quenching rusty iron nails furiously in that dingy Subspace Forge moments ago. A chill from the metal seeped into my palm, along with the lingering heat from the furnace still trapped in its core.
My heart began pounding like a mad drum. The fact that this awl was in my hand was the most irrefutable proof that the Subspace provided by the system wasn't some mere mental fantasy space.
It meant I could manipulate and transform physical objects there, and even bring the results back to the real world intact. A supernatural ability that crossed spatial and dimensional barriers at will. But what excited me most right now wasn't the weapon in my hand.
My body… it's different.
I jammed the awl securely into the hem of my rough hemp pants and ran my hands over my face, neck, and shoulders in sequence.
No dramatic transformation or steel-hard muscles like some wuxia master had erupted. My forearms were still skinny, and my stomach clung gauntly to my spine. But there was a clear, bone-deep difference.
The excruciating pain in both shoulders from dragging beast-like loads over hundreds of geun all day, ropes digging deep and bruising the flesh. That soul-crushing fatigue and muscle ache that made me want to collapse—it had lightened considerably. Not fully healed, but distinctly reduced from unbearable agony to tolerable soreness.
The sensation under my feet was the same. Sharp pebbles piercing through my worn straw sandals had made my soles ooze blood and burn like they were tearing, but now, even pressing my weight into the dirt elicited only a dull thud.
Above all, breathing was easier. My ribcage, rusted from malnutrition and chronic fatigue, now drew in the night air smoothly and deeply. It felt like shifting from a beast's ragged state to that of a healthy ordinary person, like someone just rising from a brutal fever.
Sufficient experience accumulated. Vitality stat increased by 1!
This was the formula for survival. Not some cheat munchkin system where stats skyrocketed with every hammer strike. But crafting something in the Subspace Forge gave me 'experience.' And when that experience hit a threshold, my physical stats rose permanently.
A mere +1. In modern games or hunters, it'd be negligible. But applied to the bottom-barrel body of a porter scraping by day-to-day, that Vitality +1 felt like a solid, tangible boost to survival odds. Just the easing pain and lighter body made me feel alive.
Standing blankly by the cart, I rolled my thoughts furiously in the darkness, eyes gleaming.
It's not just that. My blacksmith job level is currently 1. If I steadily accumulate experience to hit level 2?
The forge would upgrade, naturally. Subspace Opening lasted only 5 minutes, costing 5 mana per activation. With my pathetic mana pool, this miraculous space was limited to once a day, a fatal constraint. But flipped around, it was a blueprint for steady, reliable growth.
“Every day… one each day.”
I mouthed the words quietly, swallowing them. Forge one weapon daily from scrap, accumulate experience. Experience raises stats, levels upgrade the forge.
I knew those 5 minutes made me vanish into Subspace, turning it into a perfect secret room. My pupils sank chillingly cold in the dark.
“This is the ultimate secret room—the only absolute sanctuary protecting me in this hellish world.”
If the caravan faced another massive Yellow Turban remnant raid, or I got swept up by enemy forces on some future battlefield with my head on the line? If I had 5 mana left, I could vanish into thin air before thousands of spears and swords, fleeing to this perfect dirt-hut hideout.
Reappearing after the 5-minute limit with enemies still there would be trouble, but it was a life-saving invincible skill for dodging lethal blade winds or arrow barrages in the nick of time.
Experience from crafting for permanent stat growth. Absolute evasion from death's door. This seemingly lame F-rank blacksmith job was insanely optimized for survival the deeper I dug.
But cold reality pierced my rosy fantasies sharply.
The problem is materials. I furrowed my brow hard. The Subspace Forge provided furnace, anvil, hammer—but no infinite magic spring of iron. For the awl, I'd dug up crude scrap from the dirt. But that was gone now. Only finger-joint iron bits and a half-bent horseshoe fragment remained. Not enough for tomorrow night's forge.
No materials, no hammering. No hammering, no experience or stats. Growth stalled dead.
“Gotta scrounge from outside and bring it in.”
Steal or pick up scraps. During night marches: worn-off horseshoes, crushed nails from busted wheels, weapon fragments from bandit fights. Gather those worthless iron lumps like a cockroach. That was my lifeline to keep growing nightly.
Thoughts sorted, I slipped back into the cluster of sprawled porters in the thick darkness.
Lying back on the cold dirt, my pounding heart kept sleep away. Eyes open, I quietly observed the other porters huddled like beasts around me. The stench assaulting my nose: sour sweat from unwashed bodies, dirt dust, rancid sweet breath from malnutrition.
An old porter groaned in fever from an infected arm wound grazed by a bandit arrow yesterday. A skeletal boy, shivering, burrowed into another's warmth begging body heat. No one pitied them with medicine or blankets. To the caravan, they were expendables: drop dead pulling carts, dump by roadside, buy cheap in the next village. Two-legged livestock.
Deep in my mind, scraps of the original owner's—Aman's—miserable memories surfaced. Back torn by escort whips. Begging for a sip of saltwater. And from modern Korea, Kang Do-yoon's: abandoned by parents, gnawing discarded convenience store meals in a coffin motel, crawling society's underbelly. Lifetimes of being trampled and devoured by the strong.
I gripped the hidden awl's handle in my hemp pants tight. My knuckles whitened with force.
Never again. Never will I die like a worm in this nauseating gutter. My eyes gleamed with venomous resolve in the dark.
Scrap to weapons, experience to raise Vitality and Mana. Level up the forge, build my strength. Break free from this damned caravan slavery, walk out tall on my own feet. My first resolve to survive this mad Three Kingdoms chaos, a desperate oath to this second life.
How much time passed? The eastern sky paled to milky white, cold dawn mist lifting.
“Get up, you lazy beast bastards! Tie those cart ropes now!”
Escorts spewed curses, kicking porters' shins awake. Amid screams and groans, I slapped on Aman the porter's servile face and sprang up quick. Lighter body spared the bone-screaming agony of yesterday.
Last night's Yellow Turban ambush had hit the caravan harder than expected. Dawn revealed the campsite's grim toll: dead porters shallow-buried, several carts' axles split and shattered, packhorses limping from arrows. Worst: broken iron fittings for the rugged mountain paths ahead.
“Damn it, cart wheels are all smashed! At this rate, we'll lose 'em all before half to Xu Province!”
The escort captain kicked a wrecked cart, bellowing irritably. At his shout, a bearish middle-aged man with bushy beard and soot-blackened face lumbered forward from behind the escorts.
Heavy iron hammers crossed on his back, thick leather gloves on his hands. No ordinary warrior or frail porter—this man exuded raw, heavy grit. The caravan's veteran blacksmith.
He glanced silently at the busted axle, then jerked his chin at his young apprentices.
“Fetch the bellows and furnace. Nail temporary fixes. Bring the cracked horseshoes here too.”
Apprentices hauled a bulky portable furnace and black anvil from their dedicated cart, setting up on the dirt. Charcoal lit the furnace, bellows roared, thick acrid smoke slicing morning air. He clamped a worn iron rod, thrusting it into crimson flames. Red-hot, he laid it on the anvil, drew a heavy hammer from his back, and took a deep breath.
My heart thumped again. Tying ropes to heavy carts, my eyes locked on his rugged arm muscles and hammer arc.
Worlds apart from my clumsy solo scrap-banging in Subspace.