Chapter 62

Clang!

Elder Golgoda, who had been hammering away without rest, threw down his hammer as if looking at a patient beyond saving.

“Ahh…”

Everyone let out a sigh of regret and frowned.

Elder Golgoda, who had been holding the hammer, also clenched his teeth in anger and glared at the Primordial Flash.

His eyes were so filled with anger that they were brimming with tears.

“There’s no point in looking anymore! Our tribe’s warriors are already here! Stop being stubborn and hand it over!”

At Thor’s angry shout, Golgoda collapsed with a miserable expression.

At the same time, the dwarf warriors who had entered with Thor began to wrap the Primordial Flash in the cloth they had prepared.

-You?

My thoughts were organized. Even though I had said that not everything goes as planned, the complexity was more than I had anticipated.

“Huh?”

Without a word, I stood up, picked up a small hammer nearby, and entered the central forge. The dwarves who saw me had a look of confusion on their faces.

Passing by the despondent Yellow Rock Tribe dwarves, I reached the broken Primordial Flash and looked at Elder Golgoda.

“You...”

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Are you a master craftsman?”

My voice was colder than I had intended.

26. Your names will be Cheongdan and Hongdan.

The scorching air of the central forge turned cold.

The elderly dwarf, who had been sitting in a daze, seemed to finally understand my words and glared at me with a fierce expression.

His eyes were filled with anger, as if he wanted to grab a hammer and strike me right away.

“What?”

“A master craftsman feels the soul in each item he makes and respects it. But you, Elder, are throwing it away from the start. That’s why I asked.”

He flinched at my question.

There are very few things I have almost caught up to my master in, even in the corridors.

One of them is the skill of a master craftsman.

Among the many heroes who taught me, the one who poured the most into me and helped me grow the fastest was Surt.

Was it because of his exceptional teaching skills?

More accurately, it was because I was a unique case, having learned a vast array of skills including magic, swordsmanship, alchemy, divine power, and many others.

For someone to master so many fields, a single life is too short and the knowledge too limited.

Surt’s teachings were a fortuitous match in that sense.

Of course, I still fall short of his monstrous level of craftsmanship.

“Human?”

Thor, from the Black Rock Tribe, who had not noticed me until now, frowned at my sudden appearance.

“Hey, old man Golgoda. Now you’ve even brought a human to the central forge? When did the central forge become a place where just anyone can come and go?”

“Dave! Stand down! This isn’t your place to interfere!!”

As soon as Thor finished speaking, Elder Golgoda, who had brought me here, hastily tried to stop me, but I continued to look at Golgoda.

“I’ll change my question. Do you really want to fix this?”

“What do you mean? Of course...”

Golgoda frowned and answered my question.

But before he could finish, I cut him off.

“But why did you do that?”

His eyes widened at my question.

“Does pride put food on the table?”

Saying this, I walked over to where a part of the Primordial Flash had been detached and struck it lightly with the small hammer.

Thud... Thud...

A sound that seemed impossible to come from a hammer echoed clearly.

“Tsk, it’s gone too far, it’s useless now.”

Over time, the mana circulation system of the Primordial Flash had reached its lifespan.

While a regular piece of metal could last for tens of thousands of years with proper maintenance, an artifact infused with mana is impossible.

The metal itself erodes due to the mana.

“Hey, human! What are you doing! Get away from there right now?!”

Finally, a few other dwarves seemed to come to their senses and rushed over to forcibly pull me away.

“What are you doing? Do you know where you are to interfere?”

“Get out of here right now?!”

The atmosphere began to heat up as they growled, as if ready to crush my skull with their hammers.

“This is an overreach! We need to formally protest to the Round Kingdom!”

“Elder Golgoda! How do you plan to take responsibility for this?!”

The voices of the enraged dwarves grew louder.

Some were already rushing to drag me out.

“Elder Golgoda.”

“...”

“Not answering?”

At my question, he narrowed his eyes as if trying to read me.

“You, what nonsense are you...”

“Do you not want to fix it, or are you giving it a meaningless purpose because you know it’s already at the end of its life?”

My words made a few dwarves flinch.

“You...”

“About 3,000 years, right? That’s how long the Primordial Flash has been around, and it’s a sword that has protected the village without rest for that long.”

At my words, Elder Golgoda gritted his teeth.

“Are you trying to revive something that has already reached its limit? Are you, the so-called master craftsmen, treating something that has been your spiritual pillar in such a way?”

Apart from pride, this is something made by a master who was once my teacher.

It’s not completely unrelated to me.

Snap!!

As soon as I finished speaking, I violently swung my arm, and the two dwarves holding me fell to the ground.

“Ouch!!”

“Gah!”

“When did dwarves become so shameless?”

Dwarves are a race of master craftsmen.

They are even called the greatest craftsmen on the continent.

How could they not know the state of an item that had reached the end of its life and could no longer be revived?

It was almost laughable.

Shaking off the dwarves, I examined the part I was holding and threw it into the nearby furnace.

“No!!”

As a few dwarves screamed, I walked to the next part, examined it, and threw it into the furnace.

Despite the dwarves rushing at me, I continued to throw the parts into the furnace one by one.

“Damn human!”

“Do you want to die?!”

The eyes of the dwarves, red with anger, were filled with murderous intent. It was understandable.

Even if it was broken, the Primordial Flash was a symbol of their race.

However, a few, including Elder Golgoda and Thor from the Black Rock Tribe, just stared at what I was doing in a daze.

“No, no...”

“It’s over...”

After throwing the last part into the furnace, the dwarves collapsed with a look of despair, frustration, and extreme confusion on their faces.

Some even shed tears of frustration.

Looking at this, I felt like I had become a real bastard.

-This is the first time I’ve seen these stubborn ones so distressed.

Ignoring Perseus’s chatter, I coldly shot back.

“You can’t remake it, and something that has reached its limit is dead.”

“Shut up! What do you know to say such things?!”

“You damn bastard!”

At my question, a few dwarves glared at me with murderous intent.

“Not even trying because it’s impossible? The so-called greatest craftsmen?!”

Bang!!

Kicking the anvil beside me, it bent as if struck by a giant iron ball.

“Stop it! How much more do you plan to make us miserable?!”

However, not everyone lost their composure and expressed violent anger.

For example, one of the elders who had been looking sad a moment ago shouted in anguish.

They must have known.

They knew that this item had reached its limit and that it was meaningless to try to fix it.

They also knew that they lacked the skills to create a new one.

This proud race could not accept that fact and eventually rationalized that this item, passed down for a long time, was the only one that mattered.

It was the worst mistake a craftsman could make.

“Even with our skills, the best in the world, we couldn’t restore it!”

“Then can you make this damn thing?!”

“Yes.”

“Don’t make me laugh! Even the greatest craftsmen couldn’t handle the strange metal alloy used in its forging, and you, a human brat, can do it?!”

“It’s a work of a thousand-day master! It’s not something that can be made with half-hearted effort!”

“Then stop rejecting and learn, you people.”

-Think positively, since you need to win their hearts for the plan to work...

‘Think of it as a warm-up.’

Once I made up my mind, my actions were swift.

I immediately started gathering and checking the items in the forge, setting the stage for my work.

I checked the reagents by their smell and sorted them, and gathered the necessary tools in one place.

The tool preparation was complete.

Indeed, this is a dwarf forge, and the central forge of a tribe known for its best craftsmen.

This place is the pride and glory of the dwarves.

Turning around without hesitation, I looked up at the giant furnace.

The pride of the dwarves and the pinnacle of their technology, capable of reaching 3,000 degrees Celsius.

The Great Furnace.

The Great Furnace, which had been in continuous use, was glowing with red flames, displaying its full power.

The heat was so intense that even someone not used to it would find it hard to approach.

But I walked straight to the furnace, raised my hand, and quietly formed a seal, drawing mana.

The way of handling mana was fundamentally different from magic, giving a strange unfamiliarity...

Mana processing technique.

A method that most craftsmen wouldn’t even attempt, and a specialty and vision of the thousand-day master, Surt.

“Huh?!”

“The flames... they’re...”