Chapter 14
‘Guess I should make a knife now.’
I was planning to ask the chef one last thing: whether there was any phrase she wanted engraved on the knife.
Like her initials, or a motto, for example.
Something like that is basically standard practice in the customization business.
Of course, I’d never actually done it anywhere except in the game.
Just as I was about to casually turn my gaze toward the chef.
‘...Huh?’
Something about the atmosphere was off.
It wasn’t just that thug sorcerer who’d been glaring at me a moment ago.
Seo Ji-an, the executive secretary, and even the other attendants inside.
Everyone there was frozen with their mouths hanging open.
Glancing back and forth between the vent and me.
‘...Why again.’
Didn’t they ask me to exorcise it?
“W-wait, hold on! Chef?!”
Seo Ji-an’s urgent voice broke the silence.
When I turned my gaze, Chef Kim Hye-yoon was slowly slumping to the side.
Fortunately, Ji-an, who was beside her, quickly reached out and caught the chef, almost as if she were hugging her to support her.
“C-chef! Stay with us!”
“Call an ambulance, quickly!”
***
Top-of-the-line suite.
“Haa…….”
I was sunk deep into a top-class sofa so soft it felt like my body would melt into it.
A five-star hotel, and a suite at that.
Was it really okay for me to enjoy this kind of luxury?
Ahh, I’m melting, melting.
This place probably costs several hundred thousand won a night, at least.
As I stared blankly at the chef being loaded into the ambulance, the executive secretary, now wearing a thoroughly serious expression, guided me all the way to this room.
Leaving only the words, “Please rest here for today and wait.”
It was such a strange atmosphere that I couldn’t tell whether I’d been kicked out or ushered in.
Anyway, once I was lying on this plush sofa, none of that really mattered.
Swish―
Beyond the automatically opening curtains, the night view in the middle of Gangnam spread out like a panorama.
The tightly packed buildings each spewed out their own lights.
How should I put it? It felt like one gigantic living creature.
“...Hah.”
Until just recently, I’d been living in a cramped one-room apartment and playing games all day.
They say sudden change can kill you.
I might be shaving years off my life for nothing.
Slurp, slurp! Smack, smack!
“Haa, the jjamppong broth is killer. Guess this is what five-star means. Want a bite too, big bro?”
At the round table in one corner of the suite.
Jin Muyeong, the thug sorcerer, was wolfing down the seafood jjamppong he’d ordered through room service.
I stared at him in disbelief.
‘...But why is that guy, who said he was in the next room, eating jjamppong over here?’
Apparently, he’d been assigned a room here as well while handling the request.
But just when I thought he was resting in his room, he’d changed into a casual hoodie and sneaked over to knock on this door.
Whatever happened to that prickly attitude he’d had at the restaurant earlier?
After asking my age, he said I was older than him and suddenly started calling me big bro this and big bro that.
“If you’d come earlier, big bro, I wouldn’t have had to go through that hell for three whole days.”
“……….”
“And you said you’re from the Cheonsan Sect? I saw earlier that you speak Korean way too well…….”
‘...Hmm.’
There was an answer Ji-an had coached me on beforehand.
“...My mother is Korean.”
“Oh! That makes sense!”
Jin Muyeong slapped his knee dramatically. Fortunately, he didn’t pry any further after that.
Then Seo Ji-an, who had been on a call outside the room, came inside.
“Is the chef all right?”
“Ah, yes. I just got a call—she woke up pretty quickly.”
Only then did Seo Ji-an look relieved.
“The hospital said there’s no real problem either. They said she was just tense for too long and then all at once relaxed, so this happened. Still, just in case, they’re keeping her overnight today and discharging her tomorrow morning.”
“That’s a relief.”
At any rate, it didn’t seem like I’d accidentally touched the wrong thing.
Relieved, I lightly tapped the suppression seal hanging inside my clothes.
When I used the talisman earlier, I’d loosened the suppression seal just a little so I could let spiritual power flow through.
I tightened it back up quickly right after using it, just in case any spiritual power leaked.
‘Definitely, the effect is insane.’
What I’d engraved onto the yellow talisman paper on the spot wasn’t a circuit inspired by the Flame Sword I’d made last time.
If a fire broke out indoors, I’d be trying to kill a bedbug and end up burning the whole house down.
The damages alone would be in the hundreds of billions of won.
So something suddenly flashed through my mind.
A holy skill from the game I used against undead and ghost-type monsters: [Light of Purification].
It was the circuit structure that activated it.
It was usually engraved onto equipment for priest or paladin classes.
I’d just improvised an application of it on the spot.
‘...The effect is way better than I expected.’
Even in a method where I carved the circuit instead of drawing it with a brush, once I poured in desperate intent, the spiritual power was perfectly trapped and amplified.
Ding-dong―
While I was lost in thought, the suite’s doorbell rang.
The executive secretary opened the door and ushered someone inside.
“I’m Yoon Se-a, the executive director in charge of TK Group’s hotel operations.”
This woman was the executive director?
‘...What? Why is she so young?’
Could she even be in her early thirties?
A young woman in a refined suit stood before me.
The moment she came in, she bent her waist ninety degrees toward me.
“Thank you, truly, truly thank you. Because of the Hyeonmu Clan’s pressure, everyone had been keeping their heads down and couldn’t lift a finger…… Thanks to you, Master Craftsman, our group was saved.”
From what I heard, it went roughly like this.
In a few days, this hotel restaurant was going to host a huge social gala attended by major figures from politics and business, as well as key people from the sorcery world.
But they’d run into trouble with a branch family of the ‘Hyeonmu Clan,’ one of the Four Great Clans, over a redevelopment project, and in order to humiliate TK Group and put them in their place, they had apparently planted a bunch of vicious spirits in the head chef responsible for the event.
“As for a proper token of gratitude for your kindness, Master Craftsman, once the chef’s kitchen knife is finished I’ll make sure you’re compensated separately, generously, and without leaving you wanting. Please look forward to it.”
Director Yoon smiled softly and placed two tickets on the table.
“It’s late today, so please rest in this suite for a few days. And these tickets are VIP invitations for the day of the gala. I’d really like you to watch the chef cook with the knife you made, Master Craftsman.”
Director Yoon said, bowing politely.
A suite, huh.
The bed did look so soft I wanted to dive right in and lie down on it.
But.
My fingertips were starting to tremble, and something in my chest began to feel restless and uneasy.
That’s right!
I was the kind of man who hammered away in front of the forge every day for ten straight years, without missing a single day.
After the service shut down, I couldn’t hold a hammer for a while, and only recently had I started getting that feel back again, hadn’t I?
As a result, I’d become the kind of body that couldn’t stand even a single day without hammering.
Right. I was seized by the urge to go to the workshop this instant, light the forge again, and start hammering.
Up to now, I’d been waiting obediently because they told me to hold off for the moment.
And the chef was fine, too.
And the client, Director Yoon, had finished her thanks looking this happy.
Everyone’s happy-happy. So isn’t this situation basically over?
The only one not happy seemed to be me, suffering from severe hammer withdrawal.
My current favorite: a 1.5-kilogram hammer made of high-density tungsten alloy. Soedol.
That guy was surely waiting eagerly for me to come back.
And then I thought of the chef’s knife from earlier.
Its blade was a little too thick, and the center of gravity was off.
I couldn’t just let her slice scallions with a knife whose balance was that broken.
She’d be discharged tomorrow and use it again—what if she tore all her ligaments?
I’d spent ten years grinding away as a blacksmith. With a customer’s gear improvement right in front of me, I was supposed to just lie here and sleep?
My occupational disease wouldn’t allow that.
My hands itched to get to the forge and make a custom knife perfectly suited to the chef as quickly as possible.
Well, then, it looked like the situation was over.
I rose from the plush sofa without hesitation.
“Ji-an, could you call me a taxi?”
“Huh? W-why all of a sudden?”
“Ah, is there something uncomfortable…….”
Director Yoon also stepped forward, looking flustered.
“Chef, you said you’ll be discharged tomorrow morning, right?”
Ji-an nodded dazedly at my question.
“Then I’ll need to hand her a new knife first thing tomorrow morning. You said there’s an important event in a few days, right? It takes some time to get used to a new knife.”
I had to get to the workshop quickly.
Just heating the forge back up would take quite a while.
And because my beloved Soedol was waiting for me!
“...W-wait a moment, Master Craftsman.”
Director Yoon stammered a beat late, mouth hanging open in a daze.
“P-please don’t do this; stay and rest for a few days. We’ll also prepare a separate reward, and a very generous one at that. If there’s any amount you want, anything at all…….”
“I-I heard this hotel’s spa is really amazing, big bro! You should try it before you go!”
Even Jin Muyeong, who’d been eating jjamppong beside us, put down his chopsticks and eagerly chimed in.
‘...What the hell is wrong with these guys all of a sudden?’
Their eyes were all glinting strangely, as if they’d agreed on it beforehand.
Well, anyway.
“I’m going to the workshop. Ji-an, you can use this room if you want.”
“W-what?! Ah, I-I’ll go with you! Wait!!”
Bang.
***
The suite, after Dohyun and Ji-an had left.
Director Yoon Se-a, the executive secretary, and the grade 3 sorcerer Jin Muyeong.
The three of them stood frozen there with dazed expressions.
Yoon Se-a had been suddenly handed succession at a very young age and ended up leading the group.
But putting the rough management aside, the real problem lay elsewhere.
Since she’d inherited the post only recently, she hadn’t realized just how vicious the so-called sorcerer world could be.
As punishment for offending the Hyeonmu Clan, the entire group was slowly withering away. They had spent huge sums calling in countless sorcerers, but afraid of retaliation from one of the Four Great Clans, they all tucked their tails and ran.
This time too, they’d called him as a last-ditch effort.
But that startlingly young adept from the Cheonsan Sect had solved everything in one fell swoop.
In fact, before she even got to this room.
Jin Muyeong, the grade 3 sorcerer who had been here first, had come to see her separately.
At first, she thought he had come to claim credit for himself.
[Director! That guy is a freaking monster! Do you know how vicious and horrifying the spirits inside that vent were?!]
Jin Muyeong, on the contrary, practically foamed at the mouth, going on and on about how incredible the evil spirits that adept had dealt with were and how amazing the whole thing was.
Half skeptical, she quickly sent people out to verify it separately, and Muyeong’s words were no exaggeration.
The investigation showed they were such vicious things that only a top-tier grade 2 sorcerer or a high-ranking priest could barely exorcise them.
Director Yoon realized instinctively.
That a lifeline to save their group had appeared right before her.
‘Ahh…….’
She’d planned to somehow hold tightly onto the thread of connection while he was staying here.
Keep him in the suite for a few more days, sip top-shelf wine with him, and naturally bring him in as an adviser to the group, tying him down permanently with a generous stipend.
Only then did she realize how mercenary her thoughts had been just moments ago.
The curse of the Four Great Clans, the group’s crisis, the top-class suite, and the promise of a reward worth hundreds of millions of won.
For that young man, making the one knife he’d promised to make was more important than all those grand-sounding things.
Even Jin Muyeong couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation.
‘I really can’t figure that guy out.’
A suite for several days, VIP invitations, and a grand reward to boot.
He’d even deliberately raved to Director Yoon, practically foaming at the mouth, about how incredible what he’d done was.
He wanted her to know ahead of time just how incredible the man was. That way, she’d be sure to reward him generously.
If it were him, he definitely couldn’t have done that.
Turning all of it down and just leaving, saying he was going to make a knife.
‘...So this is what they mean when they talk about a true master craftsman—the real thing?’
***
Hotel corridor.
“M-Mr. Dohyun! I’m coming with you!”
Seo Ji-an was hurrying after Dohyun in high heels.
‘No, I asked for a taxi, so why is everyone just staring at me like that?’
My heart was already pounding at the thought of lighting the forge.
I had to get to the workshop quickly and feel the satisfying heft of my favorite hammer, Soedol, in my hands again.
“Ah, the elevator is really taking forever.”
Dohyun nervously tapped his foot, mentally sketching the blueprint for the kitchen knife he was about to make.