Chapter 21: Star, Home (6)

“So, do you want me to make you a weapon?” the tattooed man asked.

“That is right,” Chang-Sun said with a nod.

Sitting beside a small table, the man laughed lightly when he heard Chang-Sun’s request, a wry smirk on his face.

“You’re interesting,” the man said sarcastically. “Why would you make such a request to me even after seeing me?”

[The Celestial ‘A Good Season to Hunt’ says the blind man is correct, nodding vigorously.]

[The Celestial ‘A Good Season to Hunt’ suggests that perhaps these high-quality weapons were not made by the blind man.]

[The Celestial ‘World-Encircling Serpent’ urges her to keep quiet because she is being so noisy.]

Forging items out of iron was undoubtedly not easy work. Sitting in front of a hot furnace was extremely tiring, and the smith would always have to be careful to not burn themselves when handling molten iron directly from a furnace. On top of that, hammering iron required a great deal of strength and stamina, as well as considerable skill.

Was a blind man capable of doing all that work? No, it was impossible, just as Pabilsag had said; he would be unable to use the necessary tools.

“If you’re here to mock me, you’ve already done that enough, so go home. We closed down a long time ago. Let’s go, Wilson,” the man said as he stood up. The seeing-eye dog quickly approached, offering his own leash to the man. Seeing-eye dogs were most commonly Golden Retrievers, but Wilson was a Doberman.

Regardless, Chang-Sun crossed his arms and snorted, saying, “You say your shop is closed, but I can see your furnace is still lit.”

He did not fail to notice the man flinching. As the man had been rude, Chang-Sun no longer felt the need to be polite. He continued casually, “Besides, the callus on your right hand looks new. Why don’t you hide those kinds of things first before claiming your forge is closed?”

The man swiftly shot a look of annoyance toward Chang-Sun. Although he was wearing thick sunglasses, Chang-Sun could still feel the man’s glare.

The man angrily snapped, “What do you know…?!”

“It looks as if you’re having financial difficulties, but you can’t starve your buddy who serves as your eyes,” Chang-Sun said, cutting him off.

The man was at a loss for words. If Chang-Sun had just said ‘financial difficulties,’ he would have yelled at Chang-Sun to get out. However, when Chang-Sun mentioned his seeing-eye dog, he couldn’t say anything. He too knew Wilson was thinner than most dogs.

“Ten million won for each request you complete, and I’ll give you an additional 50 million won if you finish all my requests. I don’t care about the quality, but I’ll give you a handsome bonus if the quality is good,” Chang-Sun offered.

The man was speechless for a moment upon hearing Chang-Sun’s unexpected offer. However, he stood by his pride, asking skeptically, “…How can I trust you?”

Still, Chang-Sun knew the man was almost convinced, and soon dealt him the final blow. “Give me your bank account number.”

The man continued to look suspicious of Chang-Sun until…

「Lee Chang-Sun has deposited 10,000,000 won into your W Bank account.」

The man’s smartphone read the message to him, filling him with mixed emotions. He was unsure whether he was supposed to be happy or not.

“This is a deposit, not advance payment. I’m giving this to you as a down payment for my requests, but you can tell me if this isn’t enough,” Chang-Sun said bluntly. If somebody kept refusing his order, all he had to do was pay more; that was the beauty of capitalism.

Although Chang-Sun was out of a job, he had earned a lot during his professional gamer years, so he had never lacked money. That was why his parents had been unable to do anything to stop him from drinking. He would remain unaffected even if his parents stopped giving him an allowance.

Besides, his inventory was full of byproducts he had gotten from his first Dungeon Tutorial. Those byproducts alone would cost more than one hundred million won.

The word ‘flex’ existed for just such a moment. In the end…

“…me more,” the man said, so quietly that Chang-Sun could not hear him.

“What?” Chang-Sun replied.

“…Give me an extra five million. I need to pay overdue rent,” the man repeated, only slightly more audibly than before.

Chang-Sun chuckled as he pulled up his smartphone again.

Ding!

A pleasant notification tone soon filled the room.

* * *

“Chang-Sun, what you’re asking me to make is…!” the man exclaimed.

However, Chang-Sun interrupted, saying, “CEO.”

“What?” the man asked in surprise.

“Call me CEO, not Chang-Sun. I’m your only client, and you’re only going to fulfill my requests with my money. I spent too much to be called a customer, so I’m Gab and you’re Eul,” Chang-Sun replied.

“…So CEO wants a five-meter-long whip, a long spear that can be assembled, five axes and hatchets, four of every type of sword, and a shield… Did I get everything right?” the man, Choi Bu-Yong, asked in bafflement, emphasizing ‘CEO’. Although Bu-Yong addressed Chang-Sun with the requisite term, his tone was far from polite.

He had taken Chang-Sun’s requests because he needed to solve his financial difficulties… but it turned out that each and every one was ridiculous.

After taking out hundreds of Bloody Mamba and Black Mamba carcasses, Chang-Sun had asked Bu-Yong to use their tendons to make him a very long whip. He had added an extra request to cover the whip with mamba scales, as he wanted it to be unbreakable. However, that was not the end of his first request. He planned to carry it around every day, so he needed a function to transform the whip into a bracelet.

Chang-Sun’s request for ‘a long spear that can be assembled’ stumped Bu-Yong completely, making him wonder what that could mean. It turned out that Chang-Sun wanted two short spears of different sizes with joints on the ends of their handles, so he could connect the two and use them as one long spear later.

Once again, however, that was not the end of the request. Chang-Sun also needed the spear to have a switch that would let him use different blades depending on how much mana he infused into it. In other words, it was no ordinary spear that Chang-Sun wanted. He was looking for a spear that could turn into a variety of weapons—a hoko yari, a dagger-axe, a trident, a glaive, and so on.

When Bu-Yong had shouted angrily about how he was supposed to make all of those weapons, Chang-Sun had calmly replied that it was more than possible, and even offered to give him blueprints. At that point, Bu-Yong had every reason to believe Chang-Sun was making fun of his blindness…

In addition to the aforementioned requests, Chang-Sun had asked Bu-Yong to manufacture a long rapier from a Wyvern’s spine, a shield made from twenty layers of a Black Bear’s tanned belly hide, and several dozen more axes and hatchets.

The more Bu-Yong heard Chang-Sun speak, the crazier he believed his client to be. Each of Chang-Sun’s request was for a strange, brilliant weapon.

“No, I’m planning to request a bow, arrows, and armor later,” Chang-Sun said casually, explaining his future plans.

Bu-Yong could not take it anymore. He gritted his teeth and replied, “I can’t do it.”

“Why?” Chang-Sun asked, tilting his head.

“You’re making too many difficult requests. You seem to be a Player, but I’ve never made this kind of stuff, and I don’t even have materials…!” Bu-Yong protested.

「Lee Chang-Sun has deposited 100,000,000 won into your W Bank account.」

“This is for material costs, but tell me if you need more. Ah, don’t say you can’t make it, since you’ll have to pay 300 million won as a penalty,” Chang-Sun said nonchalantly.

“Fuck!” Bu-Yong cursed, looking as if he would cry.

When he first met Chang-Sun, he had looked like the most pitiful figure in the world, but now he was just dispirited and depressed. Chang-Sun had done that in thirty minutes.

“…Crazy bastard,” Bu-Yong grumbled.

[The Celestial ‘A Good Season to Hunt’ nods in agreement.]

Of course, Chang-Sun simply shrugged indifferently, remarking, “I hear that a lot.”

In the end, Bu-Yong gave up and sighed for a long time. He had no other excuse to use, considering how much Chang-Sun was offering. However, he shook his head in disbelief as he asked, “…Why do you so firmly believe I can make all these? Aren’t we strangers to each other?”

It was understandable that Bu-Yong felt that way, but Chang-Sun just smiled silently as he thought

‘Strangers? Well, he’s right. He’s also a little-known blacksmith who has a critical disadvantage.’

In truth, Chang-Sun knew Bu-Yong was not the Ou Yezi Thanatos had talked about, because he had heard from Bu-Yong’s neighbors that Choi-Lee Forge’s owner was an old man. Chang-Sun assumed the Ou Yezi Thanatos had mentioned was the father or the teacher of the blind man sitting in front of him.

It looked as if a mysterious ‘accident’ had either killed or injured Ou Yezi, so the new Ou Yezi, Bu-Yong, had inherited the forge. Judging from the various circumstances involved, the ‘accident’ must have been the cause of Bu-Yong’s blindness.

‘Maybe they ran into ‘Capricorn’ again, the star who almost killed Ou Yezi,’

Chang-Sun assumed.

That meant all the sacred weapons in the forge had not been made by Bu-Yong, just as Pabilsag said. Although the furnace was still active and he had calluses on his hands, even Chang-Sun could not be certain about his ability. Despite all that, Chang-Sun still wanted Bu-Yong to take his requests, even if that meant having to force Bu-Yong to fulfill them by shoving money at him

Did he have any reason for that? No, it was just his intuition—the intuition that had enabled ‘Divine Twilight’ to become a fiend. His divine class had been revoked, but his intuition was something that could not be taken away, and it had been telling him ever since he met Bu-Yong that everything would be fine.

However, that was not the only reason. Chang-Sun actually liked every part of the forge… from the smell of Divine Fire in the furnace to Bu-Yong’s determination.

“Does the manufacturer need to question the client’s decisions? You make products and I pay for them. I would call that a pretty good deal,” Chang-Sun said as he tapped on the table.

Even though Bu-Yong was still unhappy, he soon began to feel a fire rising inside him. After all, Chang-Sun was technically correct; a professional blacksmith did not need a reason to make a product.

“Okay, I’ll take the requests, but it’ll be too difficult to manufacture all of them. First of all, your requests are too hard. It’ll take forever to find a way to create them. Secondly, your deadline is too short. Oh, yeah, and I haven’t pounded iron for a long time, so I should get the hang of smithing again. Above all, though…” Bu-Yong sighed, pausing for a moment as he tried to find the right words. “I have one critical problem.”

“What is it?” Chang-Sun asked.

“I don’t have my hammer,” Bu-Yong replied.

“Your hammer?” Chang-Sun repeated, sounding perplexed.

Thinking Chang-Sun had assumed his answer to be an excuse, Bu-Yong quickly added, “I don’t want to lose a sugar—no, a tycoon like you, so while I could lie to you, I can't lie to myself like this and lose my pride. I may look like this right now, but I’m still a blacksmith.”

“Explain it in detail,” Chang-Sun replied. He knew that Bu-Yong had been about to call him ‘sugar daddy,’ but he did not bother to point that out.

“Do you see my family’s furnace?” Bu-Yong asked as he stroked Wilson’s head.

Chang-Sun nodded. Bu-Yong’s furnace, the Divine Fire Furnace, was the reason he had found the forge.

“I can’t tell you why in detail, but my family’s furnace is more special than the furnaces used in other forges, so it requires a special hammer when we handle metals from it,” Bu-Yong began to explain.

However, he suddenly wondered why he was explaining his story in detail to Chang-Sun. After going through unfortunate incidents that most ordinary people would never experience twice in their lives, Bu-Yong had only been left with fury. Thus, he would usually have stood by his pride and told Chang-Sun to not mind his business.

Strangely, however, he did not feel the urge to do so with Chang-Sun. Instead, he felt that he wanted to ask for Chang-Sun’s help and rely on him instead. Even he did not know why he wanted to do so, though. Was it because of Chang-Sun’s strange tendency to randomly throw money away? No, it was for a different reason…

“Did it get stolen?” Chang-Sun asked.

“…That’s right,” Bu Yong said, nodding with great difficulty.

Chang-Sun could see Bu-Yong’s knitted eyebrows over his sunglasses as he asked, “Who stole it?”

“He was my senior brother and my father’s former disciple. When my father passed away… He stole my father’s hammer and ran away.” Bu-Yong replied.

Chang-Sun nodded with a heavy heart. Such things happened in Arcadia too. After the passing of a great teacher, the disciples often fought over their teacher’s legacy.

‘I guess he had poor judgment,’?

Chang-Sun thought as he looked at the bronze sword that had been used as a fire poker for the Divine Fire Furnace. The hammer that had been used by Ou Yezi for generations would undoubtedly be powerful, but it would not be more powerful than that sword.

“The problem is that I won’t be able to properly use our family’s furnace without the hammer. Although I’ve been trying to create something of similar quality, I keep failing…” Bu-Yong trailed off.

However, Chang-Sun inferred the hidden meaning behind Bu-Yong’s silence. He asked, “Which Clan persuaded your senior brother?”

“…The Highoff Clan.”

“The Highoff Clan?” Chang-Sun repeated, tilting his head in confusion as he had never heard of them.

Bu-Yong was very surprised to see Chang-Sun’s reaction. He replied, “You don’t know? They’re one of the Ten Clans…!”

“I’ll get it for you,” Chang-Sun said, seemingly not caring about the identity of the Highoff Clan.

The Highoff Clan was one of the most powerful Clans in Korea, so if an ordinary person had said that, Bu Yong would just have thought they were just bluffing. However, he was inexplicably confident that Chang-Sun would be able to pull it off. He did not have a logical reason; he just felt… incredibly certain. People did say words had power, and it seemed as if Chang-Sun’s words actually had power.

‘Yes, this is it. He somehow always manages to persuade me…!’

Bu-Yong thought, feeling like a believer who had met his savior.

“It’s still danger…” he timidly began.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chang-Sun said, interrupting him. He said firmly, “I just have to erase all the evidence so no one finds out.”

1. When Koreans sign a contract, the more powerful party is called Gab, and vice versa. This idiom is also used commonly to imply ‘I’m more powerful than you.’