WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Occult World’s Coveted Blacksmith ◈

Chapter 2: The Market Alley Forge

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I held out for another week.

I left the card on the sink and stared at it every time I ate.

No, I stared at it even on days when I didn't eat.

○○ City, ○○ District, ○○ Market, ○○ Street, No. ○○.

I looked it up. It was an alley deep inside a traditional market.

The Street View photos showed nothing but old signs and narrow lanes.

There was no way to tell what was actually at that address.

Every morning when I woke up, I thought about it.

Should I really go?

But every day ended with me doing nothing but thinking about it.

I had no reason to go.

Was I seriously going to visit a market because of a card from someone I didn't even know?

That seemed a little insane.

“...”

Even so, my eyes kept drifting back to the card.

There was one word I couldn't get out of my head.

Perk.

When I'd called the game company, they clearly said there wasn't one. That there had never been anything like it in the first place.

Eventually, they started treating me like some kind of lunatic.

They even said they'd report me for interfering with business if I kept calling.

Then, just a few days after the game ended, a card with a hammer on it was wedged under my door?

That was a little too much to be a coincidence.

“Maybe... I should at least go take a look?”

Yeah. I could just go and sneak a peek.

If it turned out to be somewhere weird, I'd leave right away.

Come to think of it, there wasn't exactly any reason to avoid it.

It wasn't like I had anything else to do.

Screw it. Let's just go take a look. It's no big deal.

I'd reached my limit staying cooped up at home anyway.

* * *

The moment I got off the bus, the bustling atmosphere unique to a traditional market washed over me.

A tteokbokki shop's song blaring from a loudspeaker.

Grandmothers seated behind street stalls, calling out to customers.

Motorcycles passing by with their horns blaring.

Once I left the market's main passageway, the number of people dropped sharply.

Signs appeared only here and there. Dust lay thick over the shutters of vacant stores.

'Is this the right place?'

The alley turned once more, leading to what looked like a dead end.

That was where it stood.

Smoke rose beyond the open shutter of an old building's first floor.

There was a sign, though half the lettering had peeled away. I could barely make out the word forge.

A forge.

"...It's really here."

The words slipped out before I realized it.

I'd seen places like this every day for ten years, but this was my first time visiting a real forge.

I could see inside through the raised shutter.

A furnace, an anvil, all kinds of tools hanging densely along the walls.

Chunks of metal and a charcoal furnace sat in one corner.

There was a smell.

The distinctive burnt scent of heated iron. Charcoal smoke. Leather soaked in grease.

It smelled like a forge.

It was exactly the same smell I'd breathed in every day in the game.

'The attention to detail really was insane.'

“Got something you need worked on?”

A voice came from inside.

A middle-aged man sitting beside the furnace looked up.

He was a broad man in his fifties, wearing a blackened leather apron and holding a small file in one hand.

He seemed to have been filing something.

“Ah, no. I...”

I took the card from my pocket and showed it to him.

“I think this is the address on the card. Do you happen to know anything about this?”

The man accepted the card. He looked over both sides, then tilted his head.

“This? Never seen it before.”

“...Oh, is that so?”

He really didn't know?

“Who sent it?”

“I don't know either. It was stuck in front of my door.”

“Huh. That's strange.”

The man handed the card back with an uncertain look on his face.

Damn it.

...So it wasn't this place after all.

Something small that had been swelling in one corner of my chest deflated with a hiss.

Damn it.

Cold sweat ran down my back.

“...”

An awkward silence followed.

I should've left, but my feet wouldn't move.

My eyes kept sweeping over the inside of the forge.

Hammers hung on the wall, all different sizes and shapes.

There were large, heavy hammers and small ones for precision work.

Some looked similar to the ones I'd seen in the game, while others came in shapes I'd never encountered before.

A half-finished knife lay on the anvil.

The curve of the blade was smooth.

Even before sharpening, its shape was clean.

'If a little more thickness had been left along the spine before quenching, its durability would...'

My thoughts stopped there.

I was doing it again. Just like with the fruit knife.

“What are you staring at?”

I turned at the man's voice. He was looking at me strangely.

“Ah, nothing. Sorry, I shouldn't have...”

“First time at a forge?”

“...Yes? Ah, yes. It is.”

That was a lie.

It was true that this was my first time in a real forge, but saying it was my first time at all made me feel a little guilty after practically living in one for ten years.

“If you're that curious, look around before you go.”

I must have been staring too openly.

The man muttered that, then took his file and went into the workshop at the back.

The sound of metal being filed came from beyond the partition.

He said I could look around, but should I just leave?

I didn't know who the card belonged to, and the man said he didn't know either.

There was no reason to stay.

Still, my feet wouldn't move.

The smell of the forge held me in place.

Charcoal smoke and heated iron. The warm scent of grease lingering at the tip of my nose.

How long had it been since I'd smelled a forge like this?

'...Just a little.'

I'd look around a little longer, then leave.

“Then, excuse me...”

I stepped inside.

My eyes traveled over the tools on the walls. I examined the structure of the furnace and checked the shape of the half-finished piece on the anvil.

Wow. Look at the size of this thing. This place had everything.

Without realizing it, I was getting excited.

Then I noticed someone crouching in the work area beside the shutter.

'That guy...'

He looked about twenty-two or twenty-three.

A young guy with bleached blond hair, dressed carelessly in work clothes.

He had AirPods in both ears, bobbing his head as he sharpened something.

A knife.

He was sharpening what looked like a small paring knife on a whetstone.

I took one look and stopped walking. His angle was completely wrong.

Not just a little wrong, either.

He was holding the blade against the whetstone at far too steep an angle. That wouldn't sharpen the edge. It would blunt it.

On top of that, he was only pushing it hard in one direction.

He needed to alternate in both directions with steady pressure to sharpen it evenly. At this rate, he'd only grind down one side and turn it into a lopsided mess.

'Ah...'

I could just leave. It wasn't my business what someone else's apprentice did at someone else's shop.

But...

I really couldn't stand this.

The urge to give him advice rose all the way up my throat. In the end, I couldn't hold back and walked up behind him.

“Excuse me.”

I tapped his shoulder, and his hand stopped. He whipped his head around and irritably took out one AirPod.

“Ah, you startled me! Yeah? What is it?”

The way he looked me up and down was unbelievably arrogant.

Then again, I'd spent a week shut in my room before throwing on whatever clothes I could find, so I probably didn't look great.

My hair was a mess, my eyes were hollow, and my T-shirt was stretched out.

The corner of his mouth twisted into an expression that openly looked down on me.

“What?”

“That knife, the angle is a little... Haha.”

“Yeah? What did you say?”

“I think you should lay it down at about fifteen degrees and alternate strokes in both directions. You're also putting too much force on one side.”

“Ha.”

The guy snorted as though that was absurd.

“What are you doing right now? Who are you, mister? Are you homeless or something?”

Mister and homeless? I was still only twenty-eight.

“No, it's just that you're sharpening it at too steep an angle. If you do that, you'll ruin the edge.”

“Wow, that's ridiculous. If you're a customer, wait outside. If you're here to beg, go somewhere else. Who are you to come into someone's workplace and tell them what to do?”

He turned fully toward me and glared. His voice was full of irritation.

“I've been working in this field for five years, you know? Looks like you watched some YouTube and picked up a few things, but I'm not inexperienced enough to need advice from some unemployed middle-aged guy passing by. Go on your way.”

Five years? He'd been learning for five years and was sharpening it like that?

How did that make any sense?

“If you've been doing it for five years, you should know better. You can tell just from the sharpening sound that you're tearing metal particles off.”

His face flushed red, then pale. I must have hit a nerve.

“Is this bum seriously out of his mind?! Hey, what do you know about knives? Go to a junkyard or something. Who do you think you are, causing trouble at someone else's business?”

He shot to his feet, slammed the knife onto the whetstone, and pointed at me.

“Get out right now! Get lost before I call the cops!”

His voice was so loud it echoed through the forge.

“What is it? What's going on?”

At that moment, the man came out from the back. He must have heard the commotion. He set down his file, saw the hostile atmosphere, and frowned.

“Master! This bum suddenly walked in and started picking a fight with my work! Should I throw him out?”

As if he'd been waiting for it, the apprentice rushed over and started tattling. He looked ready to make up every lie he could think of.

The man's gaze went to the paring knife on the workbench. Without a word, he picked it up, ran his thumb lightly over the blade, then held it up to the fluorescent light from different angles.

“...”

The man's brow furrowed deeper. He silently set the knife down again and stared at me.

“What did you say to him?”

“Ah, I just said that the angle was too steep, and that he should lay it down at about fifteen degrees and alternate his strokes in both directions for an even edge. He was putting too much pressure on one side, so the edge was becoming uneven.”

The apprentice snorted and cut in.

“Master, you heard him, right? He's some YouTube expert now. He heard a couple things somewhere and...”

“Jun-ho.”

“Yes, Master! I'll throw out a troublesome bastard like that...”

“Shut your mouth.”

“...!”

Jun-ho closed his mouth at the man's cold voice.

“How many times did I tell you that if you hold the angle too high and only push in one direction, you'll crush the edge?”

“No, Master, that's...”

“Not one thing this person said was wrong. You claim you've been learning for five years, and you're making mistakes obvious even to someone passing by? Have you been ignoring everything I've taught you?”

Jun-ho's ears reddened like tomatoes. He bit his lip in frustration and shot me a glare.

The man looked at me again. His eyes were completely different from before.

He slowly looked me over as if weighing something.

“You.”

“Yes?”

“Come sharpen it.”

“...Pardon?”

“That knife. You sharpen it. Anyone can talk big. Let's see for ourselves whether it works the way you said.”

It was a sudden offer.

Jun-ho stared at his master in disbelief and practically jumped.

“Master! Are you out of your mind? You're going to let some filthy unemployed guy use my workbench? What if he steals something?”

“Enough. Step back! Shut up, open your eyes, and watch carefully.”

At the man's thunderous rebuke, Jun-ho reluctantly closed his mouth and took a step back.

But he made no attempt to hide his expression.

He crossed his arms and curled one corner of his mouth upward.

As if to say, Go ahead and try if you can. He was openly mocking me.

Honestly, I was flustered too.

I had sharpened knives and hammered metal before. Tens of thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of times over ten years.

But all of that had been in a VR game. I swore I'd never held a real whetstone or worked real metal even once.

'Can I do this...?'

As I hesitated, the man gestured at the workbench with his chin.

Well, if I couldn't, I could just run.

More than anything, smelling a forge again and looking at the metal made something inside me boil like crazy.

I slowly walked to the workbench and sat down.

I picked up the paring knife beside the whetstone.

The instant cold metal touched my palm.

Jolt!

Something sparked in my head. At the same time, I could see straight through the knife, as if it had been rendered in 3D.

'What the hell? What is this?'

[Mana Wave], the skill I used in the game to check an item's condition.

It was exactly like the vision I got when I used it.

The blade's surface. Its slightly uneven hardness. Even the damaged carbon steel's grain structure.

I frowned and turned the knife over in my hands.

“This can't be fixed with sharpening alone.”

Pfft.

Jun-ho burst out laughing.

“See? He's all talk. The moment we gave him a chance, he's making excuses to run away! Look at him laying the groundwork already, saying he can't do it!”

“No, that's not it.”

Ignoring Jun-ho, I looked at the man.

“This guy didn't lower the angle and just forced it down with brute strength, so the blade has warped completely out of alignment. On top of that, he didn't cool it after the friction heat built up during sharpening, so the structure near the spine has hardened. No matter how nicely you sharpen it from here, the edge will snap even while cutting radishes.”

“...”

The forge went quiet in an instant.

The man's eyes wavered slightly. What I was pointing out matched what he knew exactly.

“...Then what will you do?”

I pointed to the furnace burning behind me.

“I'll need to use the furnace and a hammer. I need to heat it again and straighten the blade's axis first.”

“Is this guy insane?!”

Jun-ho gaped.

“Hey! Do you even know how hot that furnace gets?! Heat it wrong and it'll melt down or turn into a lump of charcoal! You've never held a hammer in your life!”

The man reacted differently. He stroked his chin and quietly stepped back.

It meant I should try.

“Use it.”

“Master!”

“Quiet. Let him try.”

I walked to the furnace. Heat slammed into my face. It was the heat I'd felt tens of thousands of times in the game.

Using tongs, I pushed the paring knife into the furnace. I watched the color of the flames.

The instant it shifted from orange to cherry red.

It was the first time I'd seen that color in reality, but my body remembered it instinctively.

'Now.'

Whoosh!

I pulled out the knife and set it on the anvil.

Then I took a 1.5-kilogram forging hammer from the wall.

“Ha! Think you can even hit it right?”

Jun-ho sneered behind me, but I couldn't hear him.

I raised the hammer and took a deep breath.

Clang!

The first strike.

The sound of anvil, iron, and hammer colliding rang through the forge.

'What?'

I was secretly surprised.

My avatar in the game had been a monster with a Strength stat of 999.

There was no way my pathetic real body could produce the same sense of impact.

Yet the instant the hammer struck the anvil, the correct trajectory came naturally. My weight transferred perfectly to the hammer's head.

It wasn't brute force.

Precise posture had sent my body weight into the hammer's head.

My body remembered, not my mind.

Clang! Clang! Claaang!

I found the rhythm.

[Consecutive Strikes], a technique that used the hammer's recoil to flow straight into the next blow.

The skills I'd used in the game were being reproduced through my body exactly as they were.

After only a few strikes, the warped blade straightened as if it had never been bent. Through that X-ray-like vision, I could see the hardened structure relax and regain its optimal elasticity.

“W-What is this...”

Jun-ho's voice trembled behind me.

Without paying him any attention, I pushed the knife into the quenching trough.

Sssssssss!

White steam rose. The heat treatment was complete.

I took out the knife and sat back down before the whetstone.

“Now I just need to sharpen the edge.”

I splashed a little water onto the whetstone.

Exactly fifteen degrees.

I locked my wrist firmly in place and began alternating strokes in both directions.

Shhhh. Shhhh.

Where Jun-ho's sharpening had made a grating screech before, the blade now slid with a smooth, even sound.

Push left, pull right.

The force was split fifty-fifty.

After dozens of strokes, I lifted the knife from the whetstone.

“It's done.”

I wiped the blade with a cloth and held it out to the man.

Nobody spoke.

Neither Jun-ho nor the man said a word.

As if possessed, the man came forward and accepted the knife.

His rough, calloused hands trembled slightly.

He held the knife beneath the fluorescent light.

The blade that had been warped out of alignment was perfectly straight again.

The dull, damaged edge reflected the light at a flawless, even angle.

“H-How can this be?”

The man plucked out a strand of his own hair and let it fall lightly onto the blade.

Slip.

The hair split cleanly in two without resistance and fell to the floor.

“The edge is sharper than a razor, the balance is perfect, and that heat treatment... I think it's even better than mine?”

The man looked at me with dazed eyes.

“What in the world do you do? You handle a hammer like you've held one for ten, no, twenty years. Which master craftsman did you learn from...?”

“T-That makes no sense... Isn't that a trick?!”

Jun-ho stammered, his face drained of color.

The arrogant look he'd had while calling me unemployed and homeless was nowhere to be seen.

His legs must have given out, because he was barely clinging to the edge of the workbench.

“Wait... I've been doing this for five years...?”

Jun-ho clutched his head.

I quietly looked down at my hands. My heart was pounding like crazy.

'It works.'

The ten years I'd poured into [Kingdom of Fire].

The stats the system had adjusted for me, my knowledge of item crafting, my understanding of minerals, even the feel of swinging a hammer.

Every bit of it remained intact in this real body.

If anything, I could perform delicate work here that the system's limitations had prevented me from doing in the game. My hands followed my thoughts exactly.

I couldn't stop the smile from creeping onto my lips.

When the game ended, I thought everything was over. I thought those years had been wasted, with nothing left behind.

But the ten years I spent becoming the only blacksmith in the world to reach max level hadn't been in vain.

Yeah. There really had been a perk.

Footnotes:

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