People Love That Kind of Thing

People love that kind of thing.

1.

The first thing I did when I opened my eyes in the morning was pull up the System window.

It wasn't a dream.

A blacksmith after all.

I hadn't bothered with the vain hope that sleeping on it would change anything. I just checked. That was all.

So that blinking notification last night was this.

I read through the skill details slowly. Grade: three question marks. I skipped past that for now.

Handcrafted only?

Handmade, in an era where machines stamp out equipment by the thousands. Heat the iron. Hammer it. Fold it. Hammer it again. Sure, the times being what they are, nobody else was going to do it — which meant it fell to me.

The enchantment scales with proficiency and dedication.

That was the crux of it. Proficiency I could raise through repetition, fine. But dedication? I had no idea how something like that got quantified. Presumably the lesson was: don't half-ass your work.

And there were ten recipes. I opened the recipe list.

All of it the most basic of the basics — things a machine could churn out for less than a hundred dollars apiece.

So new recipes unlock as I level up.

Which also meant this was everything I had to work with for now.

I closed the skill window and perched on the edge of the bed.

The question is what I actually do with this.

Climbing the Tower was not my calling — I wasn't a combat class to begin with. And getting a job somewhere? No way a shop would take ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me when handcrafted work couldn't hope to compete with machines. Pass.

Which leaves… doing it alone.

Source the materials, set up a workshop, forge everything myself, and sell it myself. In a word: sink or swim. Or more plainly, start a business.

I searched the System window for "blacksmith equipment." A small forge, a forging anvil, a hammer set, tongs, a quenching tank, grinding tools, ventilation. Even at the bare minimum spec—

Five thousand dollars' worth of setup costs. Fifty million won.

I looked at the number, set the phone down, and stared at the ceiling. Fifty million won.

"…Maybe I should find some part-time work."

In the end, there was no other way. Being Awakened made jobs easy enough to come by.

Debris cleanup around the Gates at dawn. A logistics warehouse during the day. A convenience store in the evening. Three shifts a day, every day.

2.

One year. I worked myself half to death.

No days off, no blowing money on fun — pinching every won and pinching it again. The day my bank balance hit thirty million won, I sat down at the family dinner table and opened my mouth.

"Mom. Dad."

Mother looked at me, and Father stopped mid-scoop over his doenjang stew and set his spoon down.

"Could you lend me twenty million won?"

"Seoyun, twenty million is—"

"I've saved up thirty million over the past year. But to set up a workshop, I need at least fifty."

Father asked, "A workshop?"

"I need a forge. Furnace, anvil, equipment — the minimum setup is fifty million…"

"You're going to run a forge?"

"Yes."

Father scooped up another spoonful of stew, chewed, swallowed, and glanced at Mother. Mother's lips fluttered, but no words came out.

"I know you worked three part-time jobs without missing a single day for a whole year."

Father's voice came quiet and low.

"Honey, but Seoyun—"

"I'll just give it to her."

"Honey!"

"Our daughter gritted her teeth and saved it all up for a year. That's more than enough to earn our trust."

He said it with an utterly matter-of-fact expression. Excuse me — who exactly is supposed to trust whom here?

He scooped up another spoonful of stew and added, "If Seoyun says she wants to try, then she should try."

At that one line, Mother went silent too.

…

Before I knew it, my grip had tightened around my chopsticks.

There really was someone who trusted me with no conditions attached. Because I was their daughter.

I bowed my head and started eating. The side dishes kept blurring in front of me, but that was just the steam rising off the food. Really. Probably.

3.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

I leased an empty warehouse on the outskirts of town — five hundred thousand won down and four hundred fifty thousand a month in rent.

You couldn't exactly call it cheap, but spaces that could fit a forge were rare enough that it didn't matter. The ventilation was a disaster, and in the summer—

"It's going to be a sauna in here."

On the bright side, the high ceilings looked like they'd give the smoke plenty of room to escape. And a problem at that level, an artifact could fix. No big deal.

Bringing in the equipment took a solid two weeks.

I mounted the forge against the wall and anchored a hundred-twenty-kilogram forging anvil in front of it. Off the forge's left side, I hooked up a blower so I could adjust the airflow by hand.

Three kinds of hammers: a one-and-a-half-kilo cross-peen for precision strikes and drawing out metal. A one-kilo ball-peen for rivets and curved work. A two-and-a-half-kilo sledge for rough shaping.

Five pairs of tongs — flat jaw, ball jaw, wolf jaw, rivet jaw, and pickup — each suited to a different shape of stock.

For the quenching tank, I placed an order with an alchemy workshop: a two-compartment design so I could keep oil quenching and water quenching separate.

The grinding stone came in three stages — coarse grit, medium, and fine. And I laid a sand floor beside the forge to cut down the fire hazard from stray sparks.

At last, the moment everything was set up, I stood ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the middle of the room and looked around slowly.

"…It's smaller than I thought."

Still, it would do. It was more than enough.

4.

For my first piece, I picked the simplest thing on the recipe list: the iron dagger.

This is where it starts.

I put on my work clothes, tied a thick canvas apron around my waist, and pulled on heat-resistant gloves. Then I gathered my waist-length hair and tied it back tight.

I loaded the forge with coke, shoveled in the black ingots, spread firestarter across the bottom, and lit it. The starter burned away and the flames began crawling into the coke.

Whirrrr. The blower kicked in, and with the hum of the motor, air pushed its way into the forge. The coke glowed red — at first only on the surface, then deeper, shifting from orange toward yellow. Heat rolled against my face, and a prickling stung across my skin.

Temperature first.

The sweet spot for forging runs roughly between nine hundred and eleven hundred degrees — when the iron glows bright orange. Too cold, and the metal won't move; too hot, and it burns.

Once the coke was good and hot, I picked up the stock with the flat-jaw tongs — a medium-carbon steel bar about twenty-five centimeters long and three wide. I turned my wrist slightly to check the tongs' grip. Solid. No wobble.

I pushed it into the heart of the coke bed, then added one more shovel of coke on top — the heat had to wrap around it evenly from every side. And then I waited.

One minute. Two. The bar began to glow; its black surface darkened to a dull red, the red brightened, and the red turned orange.

Not yet.

I waited longer. And then — bright orange.

Now.

I tightened my grip and drew the bar out. The moment the hot steel met the air outside the forge, I could see something thin rising off its surface. I moved to the anvil fast — the temperature drops second by second in open air.

The instant the bar touched the anvil, I grabbed the hammer. Hammer in the right hand, tongs in the left.

Heavy.

But I clenched my teeth, raised the hammer high, and brought it down. First strike.

CLANG.

The sound of metal striking metal rang through the warehouse, leaving a hammer mark where it landed.

Too weak.

Second strike, with more force behind it.

CLANG.

Third.

CLANG.

My rhythm was a mess and my striking points were all over the place. But with every blow of the hammer, something reached my fingertips — a sensation I couldn't begin to describe. Where the iron wanted to stretch. Which point to hit to make the metal spread evenly. It felt as if my hand knew, not my head.

Is this Master's Touch?

Whether it was the skill or not, I could vaguely feel where the hammer needed to land. Hit here. At this angle. With this much force. I didn't fight the feeling — I started following it.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

The bar flattened bit by bit. It was still a long way from looking like a blade, but with every strike, something was changing.

The iron cooled, and its color began to shift. When it darkened to dull red, further work was pointless, so back into the forge it went. Heat it. Pull it out. Hammer it. When it cooled, heat it again. This cycle is called a hit.

One hit done, back into the fire. A single hit buys you thirty seconds of work — a minute at most.

First hit: I blocked out the rough silhouette. Second hit: I started thinning the blade section. Third hit: I drew out the back end to form the tang.

The tang. The section that extends back from the blade into the handle. If it's too short, the blade works loose from the grip while you're using it.

On the fourth hit, my arms simply refused to rise anymore.

I set down the hammer and flexed my fingers. The inside of my gloves was soaked with sweat, and my arms were trembling without my noticing.

…And I thought those part-time jobs had toughened me up a little.

What lay before my eyes was a lump of iron so grotesque it was embarrassing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to call it a knife. Dented, uneven in thickness, its outline warped out of true. A failure.

I expected as much.

I picked up the lump with the tongs and flung it into the corner. Then I untied my apron and sank down onto the workshop floor. Looking up, I could just see the sky outside through the vent.

…Let's try again tomorrow.

It wasn't like I had any other choice.

The next day I lit the forge again. And the day after. And the day after that. Every day: heat, hammer, fail, and heat again.

Muscle started showing on my forearms around the two-week mark, and the number of strikes I could manage per hit climbed noticeably. In the beginning, fifteen blows and my arms gave out. Two weeks later, thirty. Three weeks in, fifty. My striking points gradually steadied, too — maybe my body was slowly adapting as it learned to follow the sense Master's Touch fed me.

Then, on the first day of the second month, I finished my eleventh hit and carried the work straight through to the quench.

What sat on the anvil was a dagger. The edge ran true, the thickness was reasonably even, and the tang had been drawn to the right length for the grip. I ground both faces of the blade through all three grades of stone, fitted a wooden handle, and wrapped it in leather cord. The wrapping was still clumsy, but at least it had the shape of a knife.

And then—

Ding.

"It worked!"

The first finished product the System had ever recognized. The enchantment: slightly increased durability.

"So it really does work. For real."

With my own hands. By hand. The skill had actually activated.

I held the dagger and turned it over and over. Ugly, honestly. And yet — how do I put this — I couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from creeping upward.

"The real problem now is…"

I'd confirmed with my own eyes that I could make things. Now I had to make money — and how was I supposed to sell them?

Listing it on the Gate Market? Could anything handmade outsell machine-made gear there? But sell it cheap and it wouldn't even cover the cost of materials…

Then a flash of inspiration struck. Video.

"What if I filmed the process and posted it?"

Not machines stamping out equipment, but a person heating iron with their own two hands and hammering every piece into shape, one at a time.

People love that kind of thing these days, don't they?

ASMR, artisan videos — it might actually land even better. There were almost no hand-forging blacksmiths left in this world, so if I played up the rarity…

I pulled out my phone on the spot and searched "handmade equipment," "hand-forged weapons," and the like. Practically nothing came up. A blue ocean.

Whether that meant there was no market or just no demand, I couldn't tell.

"Okay, so I need a phone stand… and lighting…"

I settled into a corner of the workshop and started filling a notebook: camera angles, editing, upload platforms. Did I need to show my face? Was there any point?

At the end of the notes, I added one more line. "Channel name is…"

No need to think about that one.

Blacksmith.

Start filming tomorrow. I'd never know if it would work until I'd put at least one video up.

I set the phone down and picked the dagger back up. Staring at my first completed piece, I thought:

Tomorrow, I can make something a little better.