Chapter 26
Yuha flinched, wrapping both arms around herself and stumbling backward.
"W-What are you talking about all of a sudden...!"
Yuha's pupils shook like an earthquake.
Isn't he crazy?!
No, I did say I'd give him anything if he fixed my sword!
Could that 'anything' have been taken like this?
In the middle of the night, with a man I'd just met, and outside, no less?!
A dozen different thoughts surged up all at once, and it felt like steam was puffing out of her head.
"Ah... I think there's been a misunderstanding. I need to check the flow of mana."
"Th-there is such a thing...?"
Yuha slowly let the tension in her shoulders ease, then studied Dohyun's face with a doubtful look.
Only then did the face of the young artisan standing before her come fully into view.
His short black hair was neatly tousled.
Pale skin that gave off a strangely forlorn air.
And beneath his cool, indifferent eyes, a single captivating mole.
'...Why is a blacksmith that handsome?'
She had already thought he looked somewhat unusual.
But standing this close to him, the man's appearance was so unreal it was almost cruel.
Thump.
In that instant, Yuha's heart gave a hard leap.
So handsome that it made her earlier suspicion that he might be a pervert feel embarrassing; there truly wasn't a trace of lust on his face.
Too transparent and cool, a perfect expression focused only on work.
He clearly looked much younger than she was.
And yet...
He gave off an odd aura.
As if he'd devoted ages to nothing but this path, unshaken by anything.
It was a bizarre atmosphere that didn't fit his age at all.
"Yes. That's how the spell is structured. Didn't you hear? It was said that no one but your grandfather could handle this blade."
"……!"
Was that so?
...Maybe so.
No, maybe it was that only our clan could use it.
I feel like I heard something like that...
“…….”
Even so, a young man and woman alone together in the middle of the night.
Yuha glanced up at Dohyun.
But his face was completely impassive, as if he were looking at a pebble on the roadside.
That indifferent face, as if he didn't care about this situation in the slightest.
...Somehow, that bruised her pride just a little.
Grr.
'Geez, what am I even thinking about all by myself?'
Right, if she could just fix this sword, she'd said she'd do anything, hadn't she?
Yuha stepped up to Dohyun, her face flushed red.
Unable to look him in the eye, she dropped her gaze and her shoulders trembled faintly.
"P-please do."
Dohyun recalled what Baek Ah-young at the herbal medicine shop had done to him.
'...I think this is how it was done.'
Just below the collarbone, a little above the heart.
Right where the suppressing seal would have been, if there had been one.
Dohyun's long white hand rested there quietly.
"Hngh..."
At that moment, the unfamiliar warmth seeping through her clothing left Yuha breathless.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump!
Her heart was pounding like mad.
The faint scent of the man who had come close, and the alluring face that would be right in front of her if she just lifted her head a little, made it impossible to breathe properly.
It was the kind of picture anyone seeing it would surely mistake for some strange thing happening in the dead of night.
'Heart, please...! At this rate, we'll be found out, seriously!'
***
At the same moment, Dohyun was also focusing every ounce of his attention on her.
Of course, what he was checking wasn't her crazily racing heartbeat, but the mana flowing beneath it.
With his eyes closed, only the sensation at his fingertips remained vivid.
At its core, it was no different from mana fluctuations.
All he needed to do was read the flow of the mana.
'...Her pulse is quite strong and fast. Thanks to that, it'll be easy to trace the pattern.'
Mana rose from her core and spread through her body with every heartbeat.
Dohyun let his own mana flow into that single current like a thread.
And followed the pattern upstream, as if groping his way along it.
Dohyun's mana and hers.
The moment the two mana flows gently overlapped.
Soon, its resonance came clearly into focus.
Dohyun traced Yuha's pulse.
'...As expected. It was similar to what had been set on the sword.'
It seemed that families or bloodlines shared common characteristics in the mana flowing through them.
The moment that thought occurred to him.
Dohyun suddenly recalled the circuit he'd just read from the sword.
'...Wait. This...'
Dohyun's eyes narrowed slightly.
So it really hadn't been sealed just to keep random people from using it?
He once more delved deeper into the mana touching his fingertips.
"Ngh...!"
A specific pattern, a specific resonance.
...!
'From the start, this sword had been made for this bloodline.'
Only then did the structure of that bizarre spell all make sense at once.
If he just tweaked the input circuit a little—
the sword would recognize its master and respond properly.
"Done."
When Dohyun let go, Yuha released a long breath she'd been holding.
"Y-yes..."
Ugh, I really thought I was going to die of embarrassment.
As Yuha cupped her flushed cheeks with both hands and let out an inward sigh of relief.
"Please wait a moment."
Dohyun had already turned sharply toward the sword cooling before the furnace.
*
Yuha stared blankly at Dohyun's fingertips as he stood before the furnace.
She had caught a glimpse of him carving something into the dagger even inside the illusion earlier, but back then everything had been so urgent that she hadn't really taken it in.
But what she was seeing now, right before her with no distractions at all—
was completely shattering her common sense.
Dohyun wasn't holding any engraving tool.
He simply held out two fingers, straight and upright.
Soon, blue mana began to condense thinly and sharply at the fingertips.
And the moment those fingertips touched the surface of the Japanese sword.
Fwoosh—! Crackle!
Along with a chilling grinding sound, blue sparks burst violently in all directions.
“……!”
Yuha's lips parted on their own.
A thin trail of smoke rose, along with the acrid smell of burning metal.
As his unhesitating hand movements scattered blue afterimages, a clear line was being carved into the blade.
'T-That can't be possible...?'
She had also learned about spell engraving when she attended sorcerer academy.
Just how much concentration was required to engrave a spell onto a magical implement.
A task so extremely precise and nerve-racking that even the tiniest error, the slightest tremor of mana, could ruin the entire spell in one go.
So if someone could do even a little of it, wouldn't they be called an artisan in this business and treated with great respect right away?
Even the famed craftsmen of prestigious clans or workshops had to use special magnifying glasses and precision engraving tools just to barely manage it.
But the man before her...
Was drawing the lines with such calm, without the slightest hesitation.
Even amid the sparks bursting violently upward, his fingertips didn't so much as tremble.
Only the blue mana hanging from them burned with a steady light.
In this pitch-black night, with darkness all around, only his fingertips shone blue.
One stroke, then another.
The sight of him slicing through the darkness and drawing star-like trails was unrealistically beautiful.
Yuha could only stare in a daze at the scene.
**
Dohyun pictured the resonance he'd read from Yuha's pulse in his mind as he made the firmly locked input circuit match her all the way through, refining it one last time.
The final stroke.
'...Done. With this.'
This circuit would finally accept its master's energy properly.
'...Just what kind of person made something like this?'
If he were alive, I'd really like to meet him at least once.
Well, he was probably someone from hundreds of years ago already.
All right, and the traces left by the hacks who'd botched it were cleaned away too.
The input circuit had also been tuned to match that person's mana.
So the commission was more or less done...
“…….”
Dohyun quietly looked down at the sword in his hand.
...but this still doesn't satisfy me.
Dohyun glanced over at Yuha.
According to what he'd heard from Seo Ji-an earlier, the more this woman made a name for herself with this sword—
the more famous she became, and the more she earned—
the more of it would end up coming straight back to him.
Besides, he'd already received enough for the fee.
And she was his first sorcerer customer, too...
“…….”
Well, then.
"Yuha?"
"Yes?"
Yuha carefully stepped closer.
"...By any chance, does the sword need an upgrade?"
"...What?"
A faint smile spread across Dohyun's lips.
It was an unmistakable merchant's smile.
"I'll even engrave a few extra ones for free this time."
*
"...What?"
Yuha was already half out of her mind.
He'd only just set up this makeshift forge, and not only had he fixed the broken spell.
What was more, he could add other spells too?
Was it even possible to engrave multiple spells at once?
There was no way adding a new spell to an already completed magic tool would be easy.
If it collided with the existing spell, the entire sword could be ruined.
And he was doing this without any prior design or preparation?
But her concern was rendered pointless.
The young artisan before her simply kept engraving new spells with indifferent hands.
Dohyun's hands moved swiftly across the blade again.
'Let's see...'
Dohyun recalled the flow of her mana he had just checked.
The total amount of mana she was born with wasn't all that plentiful.
Then there was only one answer.
Make it so that no mana was wasted, and keep it circulating inside the sword.
Dohyun's fingertips drew a long line along the blade's outer surface.
A path that, by lightly linking to the end of the existing circuit, drew the escaping mana back inside.
Named [Mana Recirculation Circuit].
Well, in this world's terms, maybe [Spiritual Power Recirculation Circuit].
A structure that caught the mana scattered and wasted when the sword was swung, and circulated it back into the blade.
That takes care of the energy-efficiency issue. The second is...
Dohyun's gaze slowly swept over the sharply extended blade.
He had once glimpsed her swinging the sword in the illusion from the picture.
He made an instinctive guess.
That woman had never learned proper swordsmanship.
Of course, a sword like this would still have plenty of bite even if wielded clumsily, but it wouldn't hurt to add a little help for a beginner.
So Dohyun added a circuit that would help stabilize a sword wavering wildly in unskilled hands.
Set up one axis to hold the center of gravity, and fix the tip so it always points in the same direction...
So the tip wouldn't drift off somewhere else, but would stay aimed at the place it was meant to cut.
These two should be enough.
One to make up for her lack of mana, the other for her clumsy hand.
The two auxiliary circuits, for two completely different purposes, blended seamlessly into the existing main circuit.
He could have gotten greedy and stuffed in all kinds of other things too...
Still, simple was best.
If he engraved too much at once, her limited mana would just scatter in every direction.
This was the most perfect balance.
Phew.
Dohyun let out a light breath as he released his hands.
The crackling blue sparks subsided, and the sword finally settled into a perfect form.
All that remained was the polishing work, smoothly honing the blade that had gained new life.
Clack, clack, clack.
Dohyun took three portable whetstones out of the case.
From rough first grind to medium grind, and then the fine white finishing stone.
Scrape, scrape, scrape.
At the feel of the rough grain being shaved away, the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
Heh, now that's the feeling.
From the rough whetstone setting the blade's crooked angle straight, to the medium grind smoothing the surface, to the final stone polishing the edge mirror-bright along the grain...
His hands never hesitated once.
Meanwhile, Yuha, who had been watching all this in silence, was now at the point of letting out a hollow laugh.
Just how many places had she taken this sword?
She had gone to every workshop in Japan and Korea that claimed to have some real skill.
Even the white-haired old veteran who had spent generations only repairing famous blades.
Even the famous noble clan that made its living entirely from crafting magic tools.
Each and every one of them took the sword, stared at it for a long time, and then shook their heads.
"This is not something we can fix."
That was the honest answer, at least.
More times than she could count, they had taken tens of millions of won under the guise of inspection fees, then put their hands on the sword, ruined even the good parts they couldn't fix, and sent it back.
It was a sword she'd spent her whole life chasing.
And the man before her now...
Had set up a makeshift furnace in the middle of someone else's yard at night, with neither a proper workshop nor a forge.
And in less than twenty minutes.
He had revived a sword no one else could repair and even engraved two new circuits into it.
'...Does that even make sense?'
Even though his face was still that of a young boy, the way he handled the metal didn't seem like someone his age at all.
As if he'd spent his whole life in front of the flames.
'...Just who is he?'
Before she knew it, the whetstone sounds had faded.
And as the newly polished blade tip caught the moonlight and flashed—
Dohyun finally stopped.
"There, it's finished."
Dohyun wiped the blade clean with a cloth, then held out the hilt toward Yuha.
"Ms. Kim Yuha?"
"Ah...!"
Yuha started and took the sword with dazed eyes.
A weighty grip. The ugly, patched-on scars were gone clean, and it was practically a brand-new sword, freshly honed.
And then, as she gently tried pouring mana into the hand holding the sword.
At that moment.
Swoosh.
The mana that had never gone in, no matter how hard she tried,
as if it had been thirsty for ages,
gulp, gulp, it was sucked in.
The sword accepted every last bit of her mana.
Bzzzz—
From the tip of the blade to the hilt, it began to vibrate softly with a pleasant resonance.
Proof that the magic tool that had slept for so long had finally awakened.
Ah...
Could this be a dream?
Yuha stared blankly at the sword, alive and breathing in her hands.
It was simply unbelievable.
Yuha's eyes wavered helplessly.
Her eyes slowly grew hot, and her vision blurred.
The contempt and ridicule that had been heaped on her for relying only on her bloodline.
All those nights she had endured while fleeing to Korea, getting turned away from workshop after workshop, and being shaken down by scammers.
[If you can just learn to use this sword, you'll surely become the finest sorcerer, just like your grandfather.]
The time she'd held on by clinging to those words flashed past like a panorama.
The sword she'd longed for all her life.
Was now breathing in her hands.
Drip, drip.
At last, the tears she could no longer hold back fell down her cheeks and soaked the back of her hand.
Sob...
If she had never met this man.
She would still be wandering through that endless night.
When she slowly lifted her head, her trembling eyes looking ahead.
That young artisan...
Was still smiling faintly with that unreadable, impassive face.
Even after washing away all her sorrow and humiliation in just twenty minutes, he looked as if it were nothing at all.
How do you like it?
Dohyun asked with a light shrug of his shoulders.
Do you like it?