episode_0002

“… Even so, you are the master of the guild. There is nothing to be ashamed of. No one can look down on all the efforts and passion you have put in so far. It is unacceptable to hold an event like this with your small flaws.”

Woo-sik opened his mouth softly as if to appease Si-hyuk with a calm look in his eyes, as if asking when he had ever shouted at him.

The angry, grumpy old man had suddenly transformed into a grandfather struggling to calm his grandson who was suffering from a sense of inferiority.

“It is by no means a small flaw. Don’t you know that, sir?”

However, Sihyuk denied Woosik’s words.

Not being able to open the status window also means not being able to open the skill window that comes with it. You can’t know what your abilities are or what skills you have.

It was inevitable that it would interfere with the use of skills naturally, so it was by no means a small flaw, as Lee Si-hyuk said.

How can you know how to use a skill if you don’t even know what skill you have? An Awakened Craftsman who can’t use skills is like a hunter who uses a rifle as a club.

This flaw stands out as a distinct gap from other awakened blacksmiths.

Since you can’t get any help with skills while working in metallurgy,

When Lee Si-hyuk was refining, he couldn’t get the fire in the magic furnace to flow.

When I was doing the shorthand, I couldn’t evenly apply mana to the hammer and strike it evenly.

When I was making a pension, it was difficult to extract magic iron from the magic stones collected from monsters.

Without teeth, he worked as a blacksmith with his gums, through countless efforts, repeated trial and error, and accumulated data, but the limitations were clear.

The quality of the weapons he had made so far was not much different from the mass-produced weapons that were produced by magic in a factory, and he was far from making [rare grade equipment], which was a prerequisite for receiving the title of Meister.

No, in the first place, he couldn’t even check the grade of the equipment he made. Because he couldn’t use the item appraisal skill.

Shihyuk’s lips were distorted. The corners of his lips were forcibly wrinkled, and his expression was not one of smiling.

Regret,

Sorry,

shame,

pain,

despair,

And the embarrassment and very small sense of liberation that came from confessing one’s problems.

Although he was just biting the corners of his mouth, Woo-sik noticed that his friend’s disciple’s expression was one of resignation.

“Now that the Master is no longer here, I will take the time to reflect on myself.”

“Are you thinking of leaving [Daon Hammer]?”

The old man was silent for a while. Then he fumbled with his cigarette pack, but the cigarette he finally took out broke between his trembling fingers.

The cigarette pack, half empty like Woo-sik’s aching stomach, was crumpled in his other hand.

“Yeah, shit. I thought about it carefully. Was Hyun-man a person who spent money like a tycoon? He lived humbly until he died, so he must have saved up like a millionaire. Even the shameless guild executives wouldn’t covet the inheritance. No, even if I have to go, I’ll stop them from coveting it. Shi-hyeok, you suffered a lot as a caretaker for an old man, so now you should be at ease. Inherit it all, eat some delicious food somewhere warm, and, and… .”

Woo-sik opened his mouth once and then closed it again. The dried tobacco leaves from the cigarette pack in his hand were scattered on the floor by his trembling hands.

Seeing his teacher’s friend with red eyes, Shi-hyuk felt a little sad, but he pretended not to notice and tried to joke around while picking up the messy floor one by one with his hands.

“I guess you’ve gotten older. Can the steel tiger of [Daon Hammer] shed tears so easily?”

“Hyunman too… You too! You deserve to be respected…! Damn it, you can’t treat us like this in a guild that we built with one heart and one mind! It’s been twenty years. Twenty years. The original intention of contributing to society has been erased, and now it’s just because of those pigs who are obsessed with selfish desires! How can you, who have devoted yourselves until now, be reduced to nothing-!!”

Twenty years, twenty years? Shihyuk hummed briefly, closing his eyes as he reminisced about the past. Time had already passed so quickly.

It was around that time that Baek Hyun-man, who participated in the operation to reclaim Daejeon as a repairman and engineer by the Awakened who gathered due to the Second Dimension Crack Incident in South Korea, and Lee Si-hyuk, who became an orphan, met.

At the time, Kohli-gae was four years old and was taken in by the best craftsman in Korea and began to walk the path of a craftsman. And it has been twenty years since he founded the guild.

Twenty years he had been with his master. Now his master is gone. He is gone.

… The guild that the master had helped with and to which he had contributed a little strength had also gone far away in another sense.

Shihyuk was used to feeling the emotions that had built up inside him. He thought that what to do in the future was more important than these emotions.

“I don’t plan on changing my decision. I won’t be able to see you as often as before, but I hope you stay healthy.”

“… … .”

Kim Woo-sik didn’t answer. The old man, tears streaming down his tightly shut eyes, nodded his head with difficulty.

Shihyuk tried to contort his lips again as if to smile, but soon closed his mouth.

Expressing his feelings was not an easy task. He was so worn down in so many ways that he could not even laugh at himself.

Shihyuk, who had been struggling under the great teacher for a long time, was struggling with the world’s gaze and his own shortcomings, but as time went on and on, the wounds piled on top of each other, at some point he became numb.

No, maybe it was something that had already been torn to pieces and disappeared from the repeated wounds of the past.

‘I should prepare the food as soon as it’s ready.’

Sihyuk stood in front of his teacher’s memorial tablet, picked up two incense sticks, and lit them with a candle.

After a while, he stirred the burning incense until smoke came out, then inserted a new one into the empty space in the incense burner.

‘I must be fully prepared to die.’

—

‘I must be fully prepared to die.’

It wasn’t an idea that came to me impulsively.

Shihyuk hadn’t done anything special, nor had he sorted out his relationships with people or his possessions, but he had been thinking about this for quite some time.

However, the death of his teacher only served as an impetus to put his thoughts into practice.

The persecution he had received since childhood had become so worn out and hollow that it was now familiar to Si-hyuk. Therefore, it was not a decision made while being pessimistic about the eyes, evaluations, and criticism of those around him.

The glare that had continued since childhood? That kind of thing didn’t really inspire Shi-hyuk, who was already twisted to the point where he had no self-esteem to fall any further.

His heart had become so accustomed to the pain caused by the jealousy and criticism of others that it barely even felt real.

However, among all those slanders and criticisms, there was one part that resonated with me, as if it was seeping into Sihyuk’s bones.

[If you can’t grow up under a teacher like that, aren’t you lazy and lacking in effort?]

No, rather, it was the criticism that was forcibly made up just for the sake of criticism, rather than the petty slander, that was the most painful arrow of criticism that struck him, who, like his teacher, was inflexible and endlessly straight.

Even though Shi-hyuk was accustomed to being pointed at and criticized as a worthless bastard, a retard, a talentless guy, a loser who met a great teacher, a loser who only Baekhyun could eat, and a loser from [Daon Hammer], no, because of that kind of Shi-hyuk, that was the part he was most proud of and ashamed of.

‘If you don’t have talent, you have to at least try.’

His great teacher Baek Hyeon-man said that he thought Si-hyeok, who walked the path of a craftsman with his own intuition and sincerity rather than relying on ability, was a true blacksmith.

And he would often say that he was most proud of his disciples who walked the path of a true blacksmith.

But Sihyuk thought differently.

Since the starting point is different from others, you have to run rather than walk. You have to squeeze out every bit of strength you have. It was an ignorant and stupid method, but I believed that was the only way, and that’s how I did it.

‘Effort never betrays.’

It was a phrase that ran through Sihyuk’s entire life.

When Shihyuk became an adult and had his own workshop set up in a corner of the guild, he ate and slept next to the magic furnace and just kept hammering away.

I was stuck in my studio, not knowing the sun rising or the moon setting, and with no sense of time, I kept working hard.

It was crazy.

Since I would sleep in a corner of the studio, my sleep cycle was ruined long ago.

The murderous intensity of labor wore away all of Shihyuk’s joint cartilage, causing him to suffer from chronic arthritis. He was also unable to straighten his spine, forcing him to live with a hunched posture.

My body, which was always exposed to the heat of the hot workshop, covered in extra-dimensional particles, and not receiving proper nutrition, suffered from various bone diseases.

The two eyes that had been staring at the lights of the mana circuit all along made the Awakened one wear glasses.

There were countless instances of blackouts and fainting. In fact, the only reason Shihyuk was still alive despite torturing his body like this was because of the Awakened’s outstanding physical ability to control mana.

But his efforts have always been betrayed.

As much as he had worked hard, his past life had been denied. His production skills had only gotten used to it and were not improving. The flames of the magic furnace did not know how to flow as he wanted. The equipment he had made with his blood, sweat, and tears was always excluded from the evaluators’ evaluation.

Among the guild executives, there was a constant debate about whether [the personal workshop given to Sihyuk was meaningful], but the only one who ignored this and pushed him forward was his teacher, Baekhyunman.

Even though his reputation within the guild was falling because he was protecting his incompetent disciple, his master was always on his side, and Si-hyuk felt ashamed of himself in front of such a master.

What I was most ashamed of was that I couldn’t whip myself more.

‘Why didn’t I try harder? Why did I stop there? This is all I have as a flawed Awakened. A little more… .’

-I had to try my hardest, even to the point of death.

If others knew the inside story, they would have told him that he had tried hard enough, that it would be foolish to torment his body any longer, and that he should just give up. But Shi-hyuk imposed this ordeal on himself as if it were natural.

Because from the moment the runny nose dog, whose head was still bleeding, lost his parents and held the old man’s hand, he thought there was no other way.

He only thought about the path of a blacksmith. He never thought of giving up. He felt that running away was a luxury.

From the past to the present, Shihyuk lived only for the sake of being a craftsman, and the work of a craftsman was his entire life.

That’s all, Lee Si-hyuk was always in a position where he had to hang on. He was always desperate, daring to walk the path of a craftsman while being a half-a-penny awakened person.

As desperate as his heart was, Shihyuk’s crazy efforts continued. And as much as his efforts continued, his body was ruined, and he endured all the hardships by force, using his mental strength to replace his ruined body.

-However, his skills as a craftsman were lacking.

Baekhyunman couldn’t stop Shihyuk. Because he knew the earnestness behind his efforts. That’s why the great teacher just watched Shihyuk with pitiful eyes.

‘You bastard, are you planning on going before me?’

Occasionally, he would only stop Shihyuk from abusing his body to the point of excessive abuse.

There is no master anymore.

Even if Shihyuk crosses the line, the brakes that would have stopped him have disappeared.