episode_0009

Before dawn the next day, Sihyuk neatly organized his body.

I shaved my messy beard cleanly and washed my greasy hair. I soaked my body in hot water, scrubbed it off, and used a lot of shower gel as if I was being extravagant, lathering it up, and thoroughly washed every nook and cranny of my body.

Even though I had never paid any attention to my body, the amount of dirt and black impurities that came out was so bad that the drain almost got clogged.

Washing the foam off his body with the shower hose, Si-hyuk recalled yesterday.

It was a day full of things that were difficult to describe. The sweet and soft aftertaste, as if he had had a good night’s sleep surrounded by the soft texture of the best comforter, still lingered by his side.

It was as if all of this had been a fleeting dream, if only the vivid memories, the joy welling up from the depths of my heart, and the omnipotent feeling that I could do anything were whispering to me that yesterday was not a dream.

There was another change there that made me convinced that yesterday’s events were true.

‘The furniture has gotten lower… .’

It was a change in his body. Shihyuk was like a blacksmith’s shelf, and the furniture in the living room, as well as the sink and toilet in the bathroom where Shihyuk was now, and even the bathtub he had just been soaking in, all felt low and small.

It’s impossible for all the furniture in the house to have gotten smaller overnight, and the fact that his pants and shirts felt uncomfortable to move in told him that his body had grown. But that wasn’t the only change.

His hunched back straightened, and his turtle neck that had been hunched over disappeared. All of his joints, including his shoulders, knees, elbows, and wrists, where the cartilage had worn away from overuse, moved smoothly, and he was able to breathe without any discomfort. His field of vision became so wide and bright and clear that it was easy to take off his glasses.

The muscles that had dried and twisted like dried pollack left out in the sun were as elastic as high-quality rubber. When I rolled my tongue to scan the spot where my tooth had fallen out, I was surprised to find a small tooth growing under my tender gums.

“… How strange.”

It was a total reconstruction of the body that occurred when he attained enlightenment, escaped from his ignorance, achieved great awakening, and transformed into an incarnation, reaching the state of an arhat. Shihyeok, who had little interest in matters unrelated to blacksmithing, was ignorant of these details.

‘Still, my physical condition hasn’t gotten any worse, and it seems like it’ll be easier to work, so I guess it’ll be okay.’

If monks and seekers around the world knew that I had such a simple thought, they would have been pounding the ground in lamentation.

Shihyuk changed his tops into loose ones and decided to start his work a little more quickly than usual today – his usual blacksmith work. He had just washed up, so his body felt refreshed and his mind was clear, but he felt a bit uneasy.

Even though he had been working until dawn yesterday, his body was still light, and this obsession was the cause. He always used to whip his body to the point where he considered pain to be normal when working. But this time, even though he had been moving for a long time, his body was still light, and he felt something strange.

Because of my larger body, my clothes, which had become relatively small, got caught in the way and were uncomfortable to move around in. More than anything, I suddenly started to smell terrible – like waste products were coming out of my body – so I had a problem with not being able to finish my work properly.

It would take a little more time to adjust to his changed body, but in fact, Shihyuk was quite restless at the moment. The desire to test his changed self was hiding in the shadows between his obsessive thoughts, pushing him even harder.

Shihyuk pretended to hurry, but he still thoroughly checked the status of the remaining magic stone inventory and items in the underground blacksmith shop, and if there was anything that needed maintenance, he checked in advance and ordered any parts that needed replenishment. Finally, after checking the mana furnace and the melting furnace, he finally started his work with the burning copper.

On the lathe workbench, the [Magic Iron] he had been pounding yesterday was still there.

Unlike the works of ordinary blacksmiths with Awakening, the [Magic Iron] created by his transformed hammering was strangely soft at first glance, but was as hard as plaster, and as clean and white as the skin of a child.

It wasn’t just the appearance. The mana contained within it was thick and strong, as if it would burst and flow out if you poked it, and even in the dim light of the basement, it reflected a soft and faint luster like a natural pearl. Its noble appearance reminded me of a noble lady from a high-class family.

If this beautiful lady were to be made of ‘lower-grade magic stones’, and if she were to be made by a blacksmith who couldn’t even open the [Status Window], who in the world would believe her?

But it was true. This [Magic Iron] was something that Shihyuk had created yesterday while establishing his own goal. Even without [Item Appraisal] skills, it was a rare item that anyone, regardless of age or gender, could tell at a glance that it was extraordinary.

More than anything else, more than any change, Shihyuk was most thrilled by the sight of this [Magic Iron]. He had to happily but painfully worry about what kind of thing he should make with this thing.

After a period of deliberation and several changes in between, Shihyuk finally made a decision and started the mana melting furnace. The melting furnace, filled with his now more purified mana, worked smoothly like a lubricated gear.

Soon, a fiery flame spread across the Mana furnace, and Shihyuk bit his teeth in preparation for exposure to the extradimensional particles.

However, there was no rusty iron or unpleasant bitter aftertaste as expected. It was a pleasant change. His body did not convulse or fester. His body, which was always in the best condition, did not even allow the invasion of extradimensional particles.

Shihyuk, who had put a small amount of magic stones into the mana furnace, decided to shape them by pounding [magic iron] in the remaining time until they became mana crystals.

What he decided to make was a dagger. After drawing the outline in his head, Shihyuk carefully refined it by distinguishing between the handle and the cutting part.

After trimming it to a short but straight shape, the body part was hammered to make it thinner. A slight curve was added to the handle to make it more comfortable to hold. I meticulously inspected it so that there was not a single flaw so that it would not lose its sharpness even to the corners of the blade.

Soon, as the splendid dagger took shape, the magic stone placed in the furnace also transformed as if it had been waiting for it. Sihyuk, who was about to take out the heated mana crystal and place it on the shelf, paused for a moment.

‘This alone would be fine, but isn’t there a way to further increase the purity of the mana crystals and condense them?’

However, unlike [Magic Iron], which had a lot of his mana at the end of the stage, the mana of the mana crystals that could be squeezed from two or three low-level magic stones was probably limited to this amount.

Shihyuk felt regretful. While he was pondering a method, he put his hand on the flame of the Mana furnace.

It was an extremely dangerous act. Just as roasted sesame seeds are pressed to produce fragrant oil, countless magic stones were crushed to particleize and blow away unnecessary foreign substances, and only the mana was used to create a flame of pure energy.

Of course, the mana flames were condensed with energy that surpassed the purity of the crystals, just as Shihyuk had hoped, but their firepower was so strong that it could be considered comparable to a gas fire in an ordinary home.

If you were to touch it with your bare hands without any special equipment, it would not just end in a burn, but within seconds, your blood, nerves, and even bones would turn to charcoal.

But somehow, Shihyuk was convinced that the action was possible as naturally and as obvious as blinking or breathing through the nose or mouth.

-Hwa-reuk!

“… Haha!”

And just as he was certain, Shihyuk was able to pluck a piece of the mana flame and hold it in his hand, just like a fruit ripe on a tree.

The powerful heat felt like the warmth of a teacup held in one’s hand during tea time after brunch, and the flame, which had not been continuously receiving mana, should have died down in the palm of one’s hand, but it was receiving his energy and pulsating like a heart, pulsating in large and small cycles.

Shihyuk smiled. A genuine smile appeared on the lips of the immature man who had been unable to even express himself as he pleased because his face was frozen. It was a pure and innocent smile like that of a child, just like his teacher.

As if cheering at that laughter, the flame in his hand filled up with his mana and grew in size, then coiled around him like a living snake and danced around him.

Showing off skills that no one can imitate, Sihyuk is bigger,

I laughed while crying.

Pfft!

The clear sound of a hammer echoed through the underground forge. It was deep and grand, like the sound of a large bell being struck, and light and elastic, like the strings of an acoustic guitar being plucked. The mana crystals that had permeated the scepter and even the flames surrounding Shihyuk collided with the dagger, sending small sparks flying.

The dagger on the shelf caught fire, and Shihyuk’s hammer also sparkled. The five-colored flames dazzled my eyes.

The mana crystals quickly seeped into the dagger, like water drops spilling onto a dry desert, even though he didn’t hit them very hard. In an instant, the crystals were nowhere to be found, and only flames remained on the dagger. The five-colored flames covered the surface of the dagger as if coating it, but the dagger was intact, without a single trace of soot.

Shihyuk repeatedly struck the hammer. The sound of a bell? The sound of gold being plucked? The high notes of a piano? The sound of hammering, which was difficult to explain and did not seem to be iron hitting iron, continued to fill the space. It was as if a small orchestra had opened up inside the blacksmith shop.

And soon after, his first ‘work’, literally forged with flames, was born.

It wasn’t quite satisfactory, but it was satisfactory. The light reflected off the body of the silver blade and gleamed, and the grip was comfortable to hold in the hand, and the sharp tip was straight, just as he had wanted and intended.

The black veil. As is typical of a potter who has completed an item, Shihyuk also wanted to test the dagger. The pile of failed items in the corner of the blacksmith shop caught his eye.

Until this success, there was a mountain of failures he had accumulated in the past. There were a lot of ‘throwaway items’ that had turned black and were no longer usable.

They weren’t straw dolls, and even though they were failures, they were equipment made of [magic iron] created by the Awakened. They weren’t [rare grade equipment] with correction effects or additional options, but they weren’t lacking in strength. Since it was a test of iron against iron, it might end up ruining the equipment that was so well made.

But Shihyuk believed in himself and in the equipment he created.

Since yesterday’s incident, the confidence that has always been there for him whenever he makes a decision has never let Shihyuk down.

-square!

It was the same this time too.

When he brought his white dagger down on the blackened shield, there was not the loud noise of metal hitting metal, but a crisp sound like cutting paper or peeling an apple.

The dagger had cut off the edge of the shield with a single swing, leaving not a single scratch, and the severed corner of the shield rolled on the floor.

A process that took twenty years.

Thousands, maybe millions, of failures.

At the end, Si-hyuk could feel the tingling sweetness of first success that made his whole body tremble.