Chapter 32 – Preparation (7)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Saturday morning dawned.

Normally my weekends were defined by sleeping in as late as possible, but today my body rose on its own.

Because today was the day I was going to the forge to retrieve Murasame, which I’d left there for reforging.

‘Finally.’

A whistle full of excitement came out of my mouth all on its own, and my chest swelled with anticipation the entire time I got ready to head out.

Until now, I’d been using Daiso sashimi knives as my weapons.

Calling them weapons was putting it nicely. In truth, they were basically just metal tools I’d brought along as a face-saving measure, so receiving my first proper weapon could only feel moving.

Besides, the only stat on my status window that hadn’t increased yet was the Rank of the Weapon. Maybe this could let me get a real handle on the mysterious Blessing of the Sword God.

Of course, that was still only a guess, and for the moment I didn’t want to think too hard about the blessing.

For a blade-wielder, after all, there was no gift more valuable than a new blade. That was the very root of my good mood.

A quiet laugh slipped out of me.

At least until I arrived at the forge.

“…Uh, well… hmm. That’s unfortunate. There was nothing I could do.”

“……”

The blacksmith scratched the back of his neck awkwardly and offered a halfhearted consolation.

His face, already red from the heat of the forge, looked even more flushed with embarrassment, like a fully ripened tomato.

“I did work hard on it, but this is the first time even for me. I’ve been earning my meals by hammer for nearly thirty years, but I’ve never seen a case like this. What kind of piece of metal splits clean in half from a single hammer blow? It was like the sword itself was refusing to be reforged. For a moment, it felt like the blade was alive. So I hurriedly made a new form, melted the metal down, and reforged it into this. Still, if some ordinary blacksmith had tried his hand at it, it wouldn’t have even held the shape of a weapon. It would’ve just become a lump of metal. This much only happened because it was me. That’s right, absolutely right, hahahaha!”

“……”

With a hearty laugh, the blacksmith handed me Murasame, which had been transformed into a short kitchen knife.

A smooth reddish-brown wooden hilt, and a blade wrapped around with cord as though it had taken the place of a sheath.

The sleek blade, which seemed to carry some strange energy within its knots, gleamed with a glossy sheen from the warm oil worked into it.

In terms of workmanship alone, I could feel the craftsman’s hand in every detail. Even through the eyes of a man with twenty years of experience making a living by the blade, someone who had sent off many sashimi knives in his life, it was undeniably a sword made with true skill.

Going by what the blacksmith said, it did look like he had tried his best, in his own way….

But the window that rose over my retina the moment I took the weapon into my hands was so absurd it made me laugh.

== ==

[Murasame]

Type: Sashimi knife

Description: The sword that ‘used’ to be called the blade that held dew. It had been reborn as a carbon steel sashimi knife imbued with a craftsman’s know-how. It might be small, but perhaps its performance would differ depending on the user?

Specifications: 「Blade Length – 35 cm」, 「Width – 6 cm」

Traits: 「Destructive Power – C」, 「Range – E」, 「Hardness – E」, 「Growth Potential – A」

Grade: (E) ~ (?) Rank

== ==

‘For fuck’s sake.’

What exactly had he done to this weapon to turn a B-rank weapon into an E-rank weapon, the very bottom of the scale, and on top of that into a kitchen knife? I’d never experienced anything like this even when I was playing Miracle’s Blessing M.

Back then, at worst, things would only drop by a rank or two.

It wasn’t even like a crashing stock market. The grade had simply slipped straight down like a falling Bitcoin, and the back of my head felt numb from the shock. More than that, in the end it was still a sashimi knife. Whether by coincidence or fate, it had become a sashimi knife again.

‘……’

The blacksmith who had reforged and tempered Murasame had naturally noticed something strange.

The reason sweat was trickling down him was no longer the forge’s heat alone.

As I looked blankly down at Murasame, the blacksmith rubbed the bridge of his nose and patted me awkwardly on the back.

When I turned and glared at him sharply, he flinched backward as if he felt the dangerous aura.

“Come on, I already said I’m sorry. I didn’t know it’d turn out like this either. Really! I did my best, but I guess the original form and the new form just weren’t compatible.”

Was apologizing enough after taking the leftover fragments of a B-rank weapon instead of payment and leaving it like this? He’d taken a weapon worth hundreds of millions and turned it into the lowest possible rank, something worth barely a tenth of that.

‘Should I cut him?’

I almost decided to christen Murasame with blood for its first use, but then I lowered my head and let out a deep sigh.

After violently shaking my head to cool the heat that had climbed all the way to my scalp, I slowly began inspecting Murasame.

The make of the hilt was excellent. Its dimensions also fit the blessing’s specifications almost perfectly, and perhaps because the base had originally been a B-rank weapon, its destructive power was at least decent enough.

As for range, that was something I’d had to give up the moment I started holding sashimi knives. What truly disappointed me was that the hardness had sunk all the way to the lowest level.

Even if it was only E-rank, it was still technically a weapon, so it’d probably cut through most ordinary objects without issue, but I hadn’t gone through hell during the midterms just to slice wood. At the very least, it should’ve landed around average. This hardness was nowhere near enough to cut through monsters with sturdy bodies.

“Haa….”

The one encouraging point was its growth potential. Honestly, the fact that its growth potential alone stood out so absurdly high felt strange.

While I was sunk in thought, the blacksmith stroked his soot-blackened beard and stepped up beside me as he spoke.

“To be honest, after thirty years as a blacksmith, I don’t feel good handing over a weapon like this either. But the potential that weapon itself originally had is tremendous, so if you enhance it, it’ll definitely become something usable. It may be awkward to call it an apology, but if you bring the enhancement materials, I won’t charge my own enhancement fee.”

I looked at the blacksmith. His eyes weren’t the eyes of a liar. Seeing those eyes, the anger that had been surging in my chest calmed down a little.

If its growth potential was as high as A, then the weapon’s latent potential had to be at least A-rank, and if luck favored me, maybe even S-rank. It really was an offer that made my mouth water too much to refuse.

Still, what bothered me was the difficulty of acquiring enhancement materials. The main source of enhancement materials was monsters.

You could gather materials even by harvesting groups of lower-tier demonic beasts like those mermen, but to perform even a single enhancement, you’d need to exterminate several hundred of them.

By contrast, if you used derived materials from higher-tier monsters, then as the rank increased, you could get by with about seven or eight kills.

From an efficiency standpoint, that meant that if you wanted to avoid wasting time, there was really only one path: defeat high-tier monsters.

On top of that, as was only natural for a mass-produced Korean mobile game, there was of course also a chance of failure, which effectively forced yet another choice.

There were special enhancement materials that could guarantee success without any risk of failure… but since they came from demonoids, I brushed that possibility aside immediately.

I couldn’t risk my life just to enhance a single weapon. I was doing all this to keep on living somehow, not to stake my life as collateral.

Having finished thinking it over, I reluctantly nodded.

“…You’re promising that.”

“Of course. I swear on my honor as a blacksmith.”

The blacksmith laughed heartily and thumped his chest with his gloved hand. I stared at him for a moment, then opened my palm and held it out.

“That’s one thing. But give me back about half the value of the leftover metal.”

“…What?”

The blacksmith’s eyes curved sharply. Tilting my head far to one side, I asked in return.

“Don’t tell me you were planning to take full value after making the weapon like this?”

“Now hold on, I made it just the way you asked, and didn’t I also say I wouldn’t charge enhancement costs!”

“If you sell the leftover metal, it’ll still bring in several thousand. How about ten million won? No more, no less. Money’s a little tight for me right now. At this amount I’m already going easy on you.”

“What kind of brat are you! Look at this little bastard, trying to skim off the top from an elder?!”

The blacksmith roared. Maybe because he was a merchant by nature, he simply couldn’t let anything go if the numbers didn’t balance out. I let out a dry laugh and firmly locked the latch on the forge door.

Srrng.

Next I slowly began undoing the cord wrapped around the paulownia sheath that fit so snugly in my palm.

Thanks to the Blessing of the Sword God, even changes in my temperament had left the thread of reason so calm it bordered on stillness.

“Y-you bastard! What do you think you’re doing right now?!”

The blacksmith’s eyes shook violently.

“I needed to check its performance anyway. This works out nicely.”

With a mocking smile on my lips, I started walking toward him in slow steps. Maybe because this was already the second time since the Nox incident, I was getting pretty good at intimidation.

“T-then how about half? Five million! Even if they’re fragments from a B-rank weapon, market circulation changes prices a lot, so it’d be hard even to recover my base cost, truly!”

Apparently realizing something had gone badly wrong, the blacksmith bent the back he’d been holding straight and began stammering. I kept loosening the cord on Murasame and took one more step forward.

“E-eight million! No higher than that!”

The blacksmith raised one finger at a time as he named prices. But I walked forward in silence.

By the time I was standing at his feet, the cord wrapped around the blade had slid off, and the white edge bared its teeth as a familiar phrase echoed beside my ears.

[The Rank of the Weapon rises slightly.]

[Using restraint to begin synchronization suited to the user.]

Jiiiiing.

[The Blessing of the Sword God manifests.]

A bitter silence filled the forge.

“……”

“……”

Gulp.

The sound of someone swallowing hard rang out loudly.

“Ten.”

“I-I under… stand.”

* * *

A meeting room so spacious it felt empty, yet so lavish it bordered on obscene.

Five men sat around a round table marked with numbers in order, and began interrogating Elder Cladi, the same elder who had been slapped across the face.

“…Elder Cladi, you took action without any consultation whatsoever with the rest of our council. This time you went too far.”

“I agree with that. This is clearly an action that can only be taken as disregard toward the rest of us, Elder Cladi.”

Their tone was polite, but their eyes were cold.

It was because of the incident during the midterms, when Cladi had independently ordered an attack on Leon’s group.

But the reason they were expressing dissatisfaction so strongly was not because they were worried about the cadets’ safety.

“Weren’t all of you in agreement with this in the first place!”

“Even so, what sense is there in sending a demonoid? Armistice or not, they are still our enemies.”

“Is this really the time to be picking and choosing? We need to eliminate troublesome elements as fast as possible, that’s what I’m saying, damn it!”

Cladi slammed his fist down on the table with a bang and instead flew into a rage himself.

“Your voice is too loud, Cladi.”

“…Ah, my apologies, Council Head. That was unbecoming.”

An old man with a thick scar carved across his face. The moment the Council Head narrowed his brow, Cladi sat back down awkwardly.

“T-then let me explain again.”

After gulping down the expensive bottled water in the glass before him, Cladi cleared his throat and continued.

“Honored members of the council, this is not a matter we can lightly overlook. Think about it. Was it not that bitch Media who, only ten years ago, drove out all of our people from the academy? And yet now she’s taken the opportunity to bring the Sword Emperor into the academy herself.”

“And what exactly does that have to do with your earlier claim that this cadet named Kang Geom-ma should be investigated?”

“Under the excuse of protecting that special advancement student, the headmaster is blocking information from reaching us, as if she were trying to hide something.”

“What exactly is she hiding? Speak clearly.”

The Council Head, who had been silently listening, asked in a sharp tone. Cladi clenched his faintly trembling hands into fists and opened his mouth again.

“The Council Head saw the footage from the class assignment test too, didn’t you? Does it make any sense to think that level of swordsmanship belongs to a mere cadet? I’ve spent my whole life in the academy, but I’ve never seen swordsmanship like that before. I believe he is clearly an abnormal cadet.”

“…Ahem.”

The five men recalled the test footage in their minded.

The movement with which he had taken down the genius twins within mere seconds had looked like a ghost wielding a sword.

Hoakin Academy was full of geniuses, but that movement existed on a completely different axis from anything one could attribute to a mere minor.

The one-eyed elder with the eyepatch asked Cladi:

“So what part of him are you saying we should investigate?”

“He is a special advancement student with an unclear background. It is only natural that his origins are suspicious. Who knows? Perhaps that special advancement student may turn out to be the true hero candidate.”

“…But isn’t the hero candidate Leon van Reinhardt?”

“That boy still can’t even properly manifest his blessing. He is half-baked. Honored Council Head, the disposal of the hero is unavoidable anyway. We’re already suffering headaches because of the Seven Heroes, and now a hero as well? This is the perfect time to preempt it and root him out.”

“……”

The Council Head sat with both hands gently folded atop the round table, his eyes closed. In the end, the council’s judgment rested with him. After all, none of the other elders had objected to whatever he decided.

Cladi had made Media the central justification because she was the point to which the council was most sensitive.

After Media took office, the influence of the council had diminished somewhat.

Even though the five council elders were undeniably part of Hoakin Academy’s highest leadership, in this world one’s words only had force when backed by both legitimacy and martial strength.

They who straddled politics and wealth beyond the academy itself found their influence paling before the renown of the Seven Heroes. That was why, ever since Media became headmaster, the elders’ actual status had been reduced to little more than occasionally putting on the brakes.

And now, while they were already shrinking before the weight of the Seven Heroes, a so-called hero candidate had suddenly appeared as well.

The council needed the Demon King as a public enemy in order to maintain its meager power.

Because as long as the Demon King existed, the masses remained obedient to the words of the heroes who opposed the demon race and, more precisely, to the nobles.

But if that common enemy were to disappear, not only would the council face a backlash, but the very foundation of what it meant to be a noble would collapse.

No one understood it better than the council, well trained in agitation and fabrication alike. An army that loses its enemy loses its value.

That was why, for the council, the hero was a being that absolutely had to be removed.

Cladi spoke again.

“For humanity, the beings most necessary are our council, who strive to lead the foolish masses and preserve balance. Look at us after the elimination of the Sixth Legion Commander Basmon. The public worships only the Seven Heroes now, and we are treated like old men in the back room!”

“……”

No one spoke, but everyone present agreed with those words through silence.

“And if the hero grows stronger than that, then what? The very existence of us, who are meant to lead the masses, will be placed in danger. Council Head, I beg you, please commission the House Auditore.”

The moment the word Auditore came up, the elder with the eyepatch frowned and replied.

“Those people who love to posture about legitimacy and principles are unlikely to accept a commission without clear grounds, Elder Cladi.”

“If the Council Head himself makes the request, then no matter what principles they pretend to care about, they will find it difficult to refuse. To be blunt, for all their talk of being the family of order, aren’t they nothing more than butchers?”

“Ahem, on that point I agree. They are people lacking all the elegance and dignity proper to nobles.”

“And if they refuse, there will be other ways to proceed, won’t there? Council Head, I trust you to make a wise decision.”

Having finished his grand speech, Cladi pressed a hand to his chest and tried to calm the pounding of his heart as much as possible.

He knew perfectly well that this was built on speculation and shameless insistence, but his own life was hanging by a thread, so how could he hold back now?

It was not the prospect of becoming kindling in the hands of that sinister female instructor that frightened him most.

Cladi too was one of the academy’s proper elders. It wasn’t because of one mere woman that he was going so far as to forcefully persuade the council like this.

The person he truly feared was someone else. A devil too horrifying to even name aloud.

‘Agor, Fifth Legion Commander of the Demon King’s army.’

If he did not do something here… it would be better to beg for death instead.

Thinking that, the blood in his veins felt as if it were turning cold. Cladi shuddered, then focused his gaze once more on the Council Head.

At last, the Council Head opened his eyes halfway and spoke in a low voice.

“Contact the House Auditore.”