Chapter 30
Jade Courtyard (翡翠院).
It was where the elders of House Suzaku gathered for council.
Inside a spacious traditional house across a garden dense with jade trees.
A faint scent of ink and a bitter aroma of tea hung softly in the air.
The retainers were sitting around, leisurely drinking tea.
House Suzaku was especially skilled in painting, calligraphy, and talismans, even among the Four Great Houses.
Perhaps that was why there were so many painters, talisman masters, and brush-wielders among the key figures gathered here.
"……Did you hear?"
One elder asked cautiously.
The old man seated at the head of the table said nothing, carefully wiping a nandina leaf in his hand with a silk cloth.
The one occupying the highest seat in Jade Courtyard.
It was Hwabaek Yoo Cheong-wol, the de facto leader of the Suzaku elders' council.
Even at an age approaching eighty, his gaze remained as black and deep as freshly ground ink.
"……Tsk. I heard."
Breaking the silence was another elder seated beside Yoo Cheong-wol.
"You mean that brat from the Tianshan Sect, the so-called blade artisan."
"Yes. I hear that not long ago, because of the archive incident, that fellow Yoo Seon-woo got thoroughly embarrassed."
A few days ago, the stories that came from Yoo Seon-woo's mouth after he returned from finishing a commission and reporting the results were impossible to believe.
Someone had appeared who could read the enchantments in paintings.
At first, he too had thought it was nonsense.
But looking at Yoo Seon-woo's pale face as he reported, it didn't seem like a lie at all.
'...He read the enchantments in a painting. And on the spot, with his bare eyes.'
Yoo Cheong-wol clicked his tongue without realizing it.
"……Tsk, tsk."
Seeing through a painting's enchantments.
That was a realm anyone walking the path of a painter longed for all their life, yet never reached.
Even the elderly masters seated here now—how many of them could even make out a trace of the flow in someone else's enchantment?
And yet, such god-given talent had been born to a mere upstart for free.
"……And to think he has such a precious talent."
A sighing lament slipped from Yoo Cheong-wol's mouth.
"And he's just hammering away at metal."
It wasn't that working metal was beneath him.
It was more a lament over how he was confining such precious talent inside such a narrow well.
For someone with that level of insight, what realm might he reach if given a brush?
Just imagining it made his mouth water.
"Besides, from what I hear."
Another elder seated beside him quietly added.
"He's said to be very young indeed, barely more than just come of age."
"……Hah."
At that, the hall stirred for a moment.
He had that kind of discernment at such a young age?
Since he was from the Tianshan Sect, perhaps he had inherited a secret transmission from some secluded master?
As various speculations flew around, one elder said with a grave expression:
"……Can we really just sit by and do nothing?"
He set his cup down with a rough clack.
"If someone who doesn't even belong to our clan starts carelessly showing off talent like that, the whole board will be in chaos in no time. We need to act at once."
To act.
Who here didn't know what that meant?
Since directly touching the Tianshan Sect would be burdensome, they meant they'd cripple him—break a leg or a wrist and make it look like an accident.
That was the old nature of this world.
But.
"……No."
Yoo Cheong-wol at the head seat quietly shook his head.
"Somehow, I even feel like taking him in."
"……What do you mean by that?"
The elders' gazes all turned to the head seat at once.
Bring him in, when this was the very time they should be cutting the sprout off at the root.
"From what I hear."
Yoo Cheong-wol put down the orchid he had been wiping and slightly curled up the corners of his mouth.
"He doesn't seem to be entirely one of them."
Though he was affiliated with the Tianshan Sect.
Since they said his Korean was as fluent as a native's, they sent people out in all directions to investigate.
Then we heard that his mother was Korean.
Of course, that was the false identity Seo Ji-an had secretly planted.
'...If I sweet-talk him properly, that should do.'
Even though he wore the cumbersome shield of the Tianshan Sect, wasn't he half Korean?
Yoo Cheong-wol's mind spun quickly.
The younger a child is, the weaker they are to sentiment.
In any case, hadn't he come because he missed his mother's embrace?
He must have been wandering without a family to lean on anyway.
Feed him a warm meal, give him a good position, and slowly sweet-talk him with a plausible pretext.
Then they could make him walk into their arms of his own accord without ever directly touching the Tianshan Sect.
'……Heh.'
A faint smile spread at Yoo Cheong-wol's lips.
He was too valuable to let waste away as a blacksmith.
If they stopped that foolish hammering, put a brush in his hand, and slowly passed down the family's secrets,
they might be able to raise him into an unprecedented grand painter whose name would be etched in the history of world painting.
And the teacher's seat would bear none other than his own name.
Just thinking about it made his mouth water.
It was then, as one old man savored his futile greed.
In one corner of the conference hall, a young retainer's secretary silently approached from behind.
With trembling hands, the secretary quietly held out a screen showing something before his eyes.
The retainer's eyes, after reading it, began to shake violently.
"……O, old master."
The retainer spoke in a trembling voice.
"I believe you should see this first."
"……What on earth is going on to make you so flustered?"
Reluctantly, Yoo Cheong-wol took it.
The instant his gaze fell on the screen,
Crash—!
The celadon teacup in his hand fell to the floor and shattered to pieces.
"……Whaaaaaaat!?"
The old master's cry echoed throughout the Jade Courtyard.
"They made E-rank items?!"
***
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Iron rang out.
The forge's heat scorched my skin.
Sweat ran down my back.
A heavy resonance traveled through the muscles in my arms.
Beneath the calluses on my palm, the hammer's thrilling vibration pulsed through.
It felt good.
If you asked what was so good about it, I couldn't really explain. It had been the same before too.
When I said I was going to be a blacksmith in the game, everyone laughed at me.
They said if I was going to stand in front of a furnace hot enough to kill me all day, I might as well do real-world manual labor.
Why pay money to do cyber manual labor?
Of course, at first there were people like me who'd stepped in out of curiosity, wanting to try a job no one else did.
But they too grew tired of the endless boredom and repetition, and left one by one.
As barbarians, as mages.
In search of ice-cold draft beer and adventure bursting with adrenaline.
But I didn't leave.
Because it was fun.
Across the vast continent, there were hidden NPC craftsmen.
Each one was a cranky artisan, jealously hiding some special secret technique.
The cold-forging method I learned from a dwarf in the northern snow mountains.
The mana-alloy secret I picked up by chasing an itinerant technician through the eastern desert.
The lava-rock refining art taught by a hermit artisan in the southern volcanic lands.
Those guys were all equally hard to please.
Some would only open up if you brought them rare liquor every day and coaxed them carefully.
Some would only teach you after you offered a gift made from legendary-grade materials.
Another would suddenly challenge you to a duel.
A duel with a blacksmith? How was that supposed to make sense?
But once you learned one thing like that, you realized there was something even deeper beyond it.
The farther I went, the more I longed for it.
I was thirsty.
So after chasing it down like a madman, learning, and hammering away.
Before I knew it, I had almost reached the summit.
I knew there were still techniques I hadn't reached.
But by then, the game's service shutdown was already looming.
'There's still a realm I haven't reached yet......!'
Swallowing that regret, I focused on reaching max level.
And that was how my ten-year game came to an end.
……But then.
It wasn't over.
Clang.
I set down the hammer.
I lifted the red-hot lump of metal with tongs and examined it.
It was beautiful.
The grain of the spiritual energy I had devised had seeped perfectly into every gap between the iron particles and settled neatly in place.
This real-world sorcery world.
There was an endless expanse of a new world here that I still had yet to set foot in.
It was only the beginning.
My hand gripping the tongs tightened on its own.
My heart raced.
This damned heart was pounding like mad again just from looking at a lump of iron.
"Oh? Mr. Do-hyeon, did something good happen?"
……Looks like I was smiling to myself again without realizing it.
I must've kept the habit from working alone.
Looking up, Seo Ji-an was coming in, waving a black bag.
Behind her, Yoo Ha was following awkwardly.
"Yoo Ha was also here on a commission, so I came with her."
"……Hello, Master Artisan."
Yoo Ha bowed, carefully hugging the Japanese sword to her chest.
"Here, you two each take one of these."
Seo Ji-an took a chilled canned drink out of the bag and handed one to each of us.
I set down the hammer and perched on the chair in front of the workbench.
Sshh.
I popped open the can and drained it in one go.
Gulp. Gulp.
Maybe because I'd just sweated buckets, the carbonation sliding down my throat was exhilarating.
"Hehe. You'd be happy, of course."
Seo Ji-an, seated across from me, smiled meaningfully.
"……Why?"
"Ta-da—!"
She took a tablet from her bag, tapped the screen, and turned it toward us.
A sorcery magazine that was quite well respected in these circles.
[The Return of the Sword Ghost! Shaking Up the Korean Sorcery Rankings]
And below it, a large interview photo.
"……!"
Yoo Ha, seeing that, stiffened in surprise.
"W-wait!"
She hurriedly reached out to cover the screen, but
it was already too late.
In the photo, Yoo Ha was leaning slightly to one side.
She puffed out her cheeks and, with a bright smile in her eyes, made a V sign with both hands.
Where had the serious, taciturn usual her gone?
In an utterly lively, cheerful pose.
"……."
I looked back and forth between the real Yoo Ha and the Yoo Ha in the photo.
"……Oh, it came out well."
"……!"
Yoo Ha's face instantly turned bright red.
"D-don't look! That's……! The photographer told me to do it like that……!"
She ended up covering her face with both hands.
"Oh, why? She's only cute."
Seo Ji-an chuckled and briskly flipped the screen.
[Rising New Face, Exclusive Interview with Newly Promoted Grade 2 Sorcerer Ishihara]
[Korean Sorcerer Rankings Skyrocket! Just How Far Can She Go?]
Yoo Ha had become a celebrity before she knew it.
The granddaughter of the Sword Ghost who had cut down that massive illusion all on her own.
It hadn't been long since I'd repaired her sword.
Before long, she had risen as a new talent drawing the attention of the Korean sorcery world.
Thanks to her neatly handling one request after another, the revenue flowing our way was also steadily increasing.
But it wasn't only the sorcerer rankings that were rising.
"See? She's absolutely blowing up in popularity."
Seo Ji-an slid the screen sideways.
It displayed the ranking site of a sorcery magazine.
"Ms. Yoo Ha! You moved up again! At this rate, you could easily crack the top five soon!"
This was, quite literally, a ranking of sorcerers' 'popularity.'
Though the sorcery world was a hidden world ordinary people didn't know about, it seemed that fame existed there in its own way.
If your name made the rankings, that became your fame, and you could also get ad-model offers circulating only within sorcery circles; before you knew it, you'd even get fans.
It seemed to be something a little different from the sorcerer rankings, which measured only ability.
"I told you so. I said she'd attract attention."
Seo Ji-an murmured in satisfaction, propping her chin on her hand.
"She's got skill, obviously, a tragic backstory, she's beautiful, and that figure of hers too...... Ahem."
"S-Seo Ji-an!"
Yoo Ha, finally taking her hands from her face, flared up again.
"Why? It's true. Isn't it, Mr. Do-hyeon?"
"……Well."
I just sipped from my can.
Seo Ji-an chuckled and flipped the screen again.
"Anyway, it isn't just her popularity that's gone up."
A news headline in the ranking site's banner.
[Ishihara's Sword: Who Is the Tianshan Sect Blade Artisan Behind It?]
Naturally, as she rose, people's attention shifted to the weapon behind her.
"Thanks to that, requests and interview offers have been pouring in by the truckload lately."
Seo Ji-an added with a proud expression.
"Oh, right. Mr. Do-hyeon, you read Goblinfire these days too, right? It's all about us on there lately."
I sipped my drink and smoothly scrolled the screen with my finger.
Sure enough.
The board was completely plastered with stories about me.
[HOT] Wow, did you see Ishihara's interview? They say the sword she got fixed was repaired by a blade artisan?
Turns out she'd been everywhere in Japan and Korea.
It was a sword that everyone had turned away, saying they couldn't fix it.
But after going there on the commission, some benefactor she happened to meet looked it over, asked to borrow it for a moment, and then just fixed it right there on the spot, damn.
Who was it?
It was none other than our Tianshan Sect blade artisan.
└Damn, the Blade Emperor is seriously badass.
└Wow, if that's the case, doesn't that mean he's at least E-rank or higher?
└lol I heard even Cheonhwadang couldn't fix it.
Some said he was the descendant of a secluded master who had come down from some deep mountain.
Some said he was the Tianshan Sect's secret trump card.
Rumors bred rumors, and words spawned more words, until before long they were creating unofficial settings about me.
And just like that, among people who didn't even know my face, I had become known as the Blade Emperor.
But.
As I scrolled down, one post with a suspicious title caught my eye.
[Column] Is Hype for the Tianshan Sect Blade Artisan Really Okay?
―Everyone's been talking about the Tianshan Sect blade artisan as an 'E-rank artisan' and the like because he repaired Ishihara's sword, but that's nonsense. He merely 'repaired' an existing E-rank cursed tool; he didn't create anything from nothing.
How can you call him an E-rank artisan when he merely piggybacked on a perfect spell array already laid out by the original master? The public shouldn't be fooled by this flimsy noise marketing; they should know the roots of the sorcery world.
"……."
It was a column written by the chief artisan of a famous workshop that had quite a name in this field.
In short, they were saying we couldn't be recognized as E-rank, so everyone should stop making a fuss.
And that wasn't the only one.
Similar rebuttal pieces from clans and workshops with some reputation here and there were going up one after another, as if they'd agreed in advance.
But despite all that pushback,
└Damn, Blade Emperor. The fact that the family is pushing back right away means he's definitely a superstar.
└lol if he fixed an E-rank item, then he's an E-rank artisan—what nonsense is this? How many times have they sold stuff and then shrugged off repairs? Pathetic, pathetic.
Now even non-clan people can buy E-rank weapons? Should I get ready to run?
└Do you even have the money to buy it?
└No worries. Sell your house and go full installments.
└lol you'll be living on cup ramen in a studio apartment for the rest of your life
Rather than the editorial trying to put us down, the comments underneath were burning even hotter.
Hmm…….
Seo Ji-an, who had been looking at the screen with me from the side, clicked her tongue.
"As expected, the controversy about whether it's right to hype him as an E-rank artisan just because he fixed an E-rank item is the loudest one."
Then she slowly curled up the corners of her lips.
"Well. To be honest, that was the noise marketing we were aiming for. Heh."
Controversy is attention.
Attention is money.
Seo Ji-an looked absolutely delighted.
"That's how you get it properly burning. Give it a little more time, and everyone's going to go crazy."
Then, checking the time, she spoke again.
"Ah! It should be going up soon."
"……What is?"
The clueless Yoo Ha asked back.
Seo Ji-an grinned.
"The article saying that our superstar blade artisan's three E-rank cursed tools"
"……."
"are going up on the auction house at the same time."
"Huh?!"