Chapter 77
Reconstruction (3)
“Here….”
Do-Young was momentarily stunned by the sudden, unfamiliar scene before him.
A space that looked like the interior of a traditional Middle Eastern house.
According to Se-Hyun, it was called the “Xerxes’ Jar.”
A lantern hung on the plain clay wall illuminated the dim interior, and the crude shelves were filled with peculiar materials.
The “Nakyul Stone” used to make the altar previously, some sticky blue slime, withered vines, and so on.
Everything was fascinatingly strange.
As he took in the magical scenery,
“Don’t just stand there—start organizing these.”
“Ah… yes, yes.”
Do-Young regained focus and took the note Se-Hyun handed him.
The note roughly read:
-
One scoop of unicorn horn powder.
-
The entire container of twin scorpion gold dust.
-
A large pinch of sage powder.
-
Three imp soul stones.
“…….”
Except for the soul stones, he had never heard of or seen any of these ingredients.
“Are all of these materials for the artifact?”
“Yes.”
A combination of ingredients he could never have imagined when he was just hammering iron in the workshop.
But having built an altar himself before, he understood something:
The power of materials to maximize the effectiveness of a tool when properly utilized.
“I had thought about asking someday about weapons made from materials… but…”
He hadn’t expected an opportunity to handle the materials this soon.
Under normal circumstances, he would have spent more time asking questions and studying, but now was not the time.
Each ingredient on the shelf was labeled.
Do-Young began picking them up, one by one, aligning them according to the names.
“Ah, where did I put it? It was here somewhere…”
Se-Hyun muttered as he rummaged through a room for a while, then approached Do-Young with something in hand.
“This is….”
As Do-Young felt the familiar weight, his eyes trembled.
A short-handled hammer, charred black with black flames.
The layers of soot gave it a perfectly pitch-black appearance.
It looked different from what he remembered, but this was the hammer the old lady had given him the day she resolved the Cheonji Workshop problem and left.
Do-Young briefly considered Se-Hyun’s intention.
He valued the stories behind objects quite highly.
“This hammer has decades of history with the old lady.”
Given that, it made sense that he entrusted Do-Young, rather than someone more skilled, with creating it.
“The experience in the hammer is what’s needed, right? To be used as a tool for tempering the artifact?”
“Oh, you almost got it. Since you’ve made one before, that helps, right?”
Almost.
It wasn’t the exact answer.
“This will become the artifact itself.”
“…The hammer?”
Not just a tool for training, but the artifact itself?
“For decades, it hammered iron millions of times. It’s an ideal material.”
Do-Young gripped the hammer again.
He glanced at Se-Hyun.
Se-Hyun’s eyes were filled with certainty.
He was sure that no one but Do-Young could create the new artifact.
But unfortunately…
“…I can’t do it.”
Do-Young shook his head.
Se-Hyun looked puzzled.
“Why? You made the altar just fine.”
“I only commanded back then. The actual crafting was done by the artisans.”
With a sigh full of embarrassment and regret, Do-Young continued.
“I’m not a player.”
“….”
“I don’t even have stellar power. How could I create an artifact?”
A master of stellar weapons who isn’t a player?
A fatal flaw.
He was only a half-fledged artisan who couldn’t even demonstrate a weapon he made himself.
And now they wanted him to create the artifact? And to wield it personally?
Nothing about that was possible.
It was absurd, completely unrealistic.
Se-Hyun clearly didn’t understand.
“I see.”
Yet he smiled.
“That’s actually better, you know? Since you’re not a player.”
“…What?”
Do-Young had finally confessed his inability, yet Se-Hyun claimed it was better this way.
While Do-Young froze in confusion, Se-Hyun’s excitement grew.
“This person is amazing. Not a player, yet a craftsman who can manipulate stellar power? Even if limited to Baekdu Mountain’s mythology, he can handle it?”
“The ideal candidate for learning the orthodox method.”
The orthodox way of creating artifacts.
Conversely, Se-Hyun himself had not been following the orthodox method.
Compared to his previous life, it was a shortcut.
“Using the [Myth Infusion] ability to craft.”
Normally, players could never make artifacts.
Even the basic principles of artifacts prove it.
Artifacts were made through a loophole that awakened objects instead of people.
To awaken them, a “non-awakened” intermediary was required.
That was why Hailhwan came seeking Se-Hyun.
“Follow me. I’ll teach you the orthodox way.”
Se-Hyun grinned.
Do-Young shivered at the smile.
He had a feeling he was about to endure immense hardship.
“Hmm. This should work.”
“This place?”
A small storage room, about two pyeong (≈6.6 m²).
Clatter, clatter—
Se-Hyun removed everything inside.
Then he draped thick tents over the entire room, blocking all light.
After a moment, he peeked out from the tent.
“Come in. Everything’s ready.”
He grabbed Do-Young’s arm and pulled him inside.
“Se-Hyun…?”
The feeling was strange.
A tiny two-pyeong storage space felt like a vast expanse.
And Se-Hyun’s presence could not be felt at all.
“You should at least tell me what to do.”
What exactly was he supposed to do here?
He expected a brutal grind in learning artifact creation, but perhaps meditation to calm the mind was first.
“How can I meditate when the old lady might wake up at any moment?”
Even in such a space, he couldn’t relax.
While fumbling with his thoughts, something touched his fingertips.
He reached out and felt it—cold like metal, but soft, not hard.
Gold.
Its surface was decorated with bumps or spikes.
“Is this also an artifact?”
He asked somewhere inside the tent.
No reply.
“Hmph, seems he won’t tell me.”
Given his temperament, he wouldn’t give answers easily.
Do-Young decided to find out himself.
Clearly, it wasn’t ordinary.
It had to be either an artifact or a tool useful for crafting one.
“The basics of an artifact are its personal mythology, right?”
And it must be made from your own myth, not someone else’s.
“My own myth….”
It felt hopeless.
His life wasn’t even a story yet, let alone a myth.
Only endless forging—what story could he have?
“Still, the brightest part of my life… must have been then.”
A rural village in North Korea.
Born a flower orphan, starving and unable to speak properly, he was rescued by the old lady.
That was the beginning of his life.
To Do-Young, she was both mother and hero.
From that moment, he had one goal:
“If I could save someone, just like the old lady….”
Then—
Flare!
Light erupted before him.
The object he had just felt reflected the light.
A golden chalice, glowing like the sunset warming his face.
A gilt-bronze incense burner.
“You passed stage one.”
Finally, Se-Hyun appeared.
“Stage one…?”
“You drew forth the fire of mythology.”
He handed Do-Young a bowl containing an unknown glittering powder.
“…What’s this?”
“Something good. Just a pinch into the incense burner.”
Ah, it was incense powder.
‘But a pinch seems too little.’
A handful would produce a proper effect.
Do-Young sprinkled the powder into the incense burner.
Flare!
Lavender-colored smoke rose, and a purple festival of lights spread across the space.
It felt like floating above the clouds at dusk.
Not just the view—his body felt weightless too.
When he inhaled once,
“Huh…!!”
His eyes widened, then instantly blurred.
His entire body stiffened.
‘An intense sensation.’
Se-Hyun recalled that excruciating feeling.
A sixth sense beyond the five senses constricted his body.
Every subtle sound cut sharply through his ears.
Most of all, he felt infinitely small and distant, as if viewing the universe at once.
‘He’ll recover soon—this is beginner-level mixing. The artifact reduces the sensory overload.’
The powder was an awakening agent made from soul stones.
“Whew…”
Do-Young exhaled sharply.
“What… is this?!”
“You temporarily felt the awakening sense. How was it? Manageable?”
“You must be joking!”
He flailed his hands, but Se-Hyun knew it was an exaggeration.
Maintaining consciousness while first experiencing awakening was normally impossible.
‘Quick adaptation or artifact effect? Probably both.’
Unlike Se-Hyun, he had already adapted to Baekdu Mountain’s mythology.
‘And this artifact—the gilt-bronze incense burner.’
The soul stone powder, burned to produce incense, covered the physical strain with myth.
A ritual principle: conceal the body in incense to meet the divine.
‘Back in my time, we inhaled the raw stuff directly—crazy.’
Se-Hyun added another pinch of powder.
Cold sweat ran down Do-Young’s neck.
“Not… again…”
“You’ve adapted, so time for real practice. Think you’ll train slowly? The old lady’s in that state.”
No retreat was possible.
“The gold dust slowed the stellar absorption earlier, but this time it’s different.”
This new mixture contained a slight red tint, balancing optimal absorption.
Even a novice like Do-Young could enter the state easily.
He pinched a small amount and sprinkled it into the burner.
The incense flared with a mix of blue and red light.
Eyes shut, he inhaled deeply,
“Huh…!!!!!”
Boom!!
Excess stellar power lit up his veins red, and his irises glowed with blue spectral fire.
His mythic scripts scattered around him in letters.
The sage powder acted, merging his myth with the surrounding stellar energy.
A temporary awakening state at peak sensitivity.
Walking the line between awakened and non-awakened.
Yet Do-Young remained conscious.
‘He has the talent to make artifacts.’
Se-Hyun smiled.
“Ready?”
Do-Young silently reached for the hammer.
It was as if the hammer itself pulled into his hand.
“…!!!!!”
His stance faltered; his knees buckled.
A hammer, though solid, felt unbearably heavy.
A star had been compressed into it, naturally.
The hammer’s immense stellar power clashed with his own, sending shockwaves.
‘Finally… the supernova state.’
The final stage of a star’s evolution.
His myth and the hammer’s collided.
‘Can’t let go. Must endure.’
If the myths were separate, success was uncertain. But their essences were aligned.
After brief resistance, they would produce a larger stellar system.
Failing would mean he could never create the artifact.
“Ugh…!”
He stayed conscious.
Veins bulged as stellar light surged.
Blood seeped from his clenched teeth.
‘That’s it.’
Perhaps years in Baekdu Mountain helped.
Unlike Se-Hyun, who had fainted multiple times, Do-Young endured fully.
Kneeling, but determined not to let go of the hammer.
Slowly, he lifted it from the floor.
“Just a little more!”
The letters of his myth formed words and sentences, merging with the hammer.
At the moment his myth overlapped with that sustaining the old lady’s legacy—
“Grr, aaaaah!!!”
“Hey! Do-Young!”
He arched his back, screaming.
Stellar power began to radiate from his hammer.
‘Damn, it’s going out of control…!’
The myth surged internally just before merging.
No choice remained.
‘I’ll have to artificially control the flow.’
Se-Hyun, having done this before, acted immediately.
And then…
“…!!!!!!”
The scenery suddenly shifted, as if teleported.
“Here….”
Se-Hyun stood in a field.
Clouds hugged the towering mountains, and lava flowed from Baekdu’s peak.
And…
“….”
In Se-Hyun’s hand was the nearly finished hammer.
“…You ended up here.”
This was Do-Young’s myth projected into a mental world.
