Chapter 24 - Episode 4. The 1% World (4)
Chapter 24: Episode 4. The 1% World (4)
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A day at 〈Twilight Dusk〉 had passed, and the next day had arrived. Though a day had passed since the Deputy Workshop Master position had been promised, Meikal and the other craftsmen did not seem particularly dissatisfied. Perhaps it was because opportunities to handle such a precious material as a Garnak horn were rare.
Simply watching a Garnak horn being forged would give a craftsman stories to tell for the rest of their life.
Mino quietly left 〈Twilight Dusk〉.
* * *
The tavern was in disarray.
The boisterous voices of middle-aged men rose from every corner, while an old hologram device mounted near the edge of the tavern played a broadcast. Its host was a pink-haired dream demon with small horns sprouting from her head.
[This Week's Hot Ten with Sirwen! Sadly, it is time for us to say goodbye. The final video for today is one you all know well. There has not been a more famous video on 《Little Brother》 lately. It is the 「99th Floor Solo Clear」 video.]
A massive Ice Dragon soon appeared on the screen, along with a man.
The man did nothing but stab, over and over. His face was faintly pixelated, a security measure to prevent the Product's information from being leaked.
The men seated at the bar grumbled.
"I wonder what happened to that guy. He must've gotten tons of offers from the Lords."
"Hey, didn't you hear? That tower's cultivation got suspended."
"Suspended? Why?"
"How should I know? Maybe that demon got caught rigging it. Rumor says it abandoned the cultivation and ran away."
"What? So it really was rigged?"
"Of course it was, idiot. Does it make any sense for someone to clear a first-generation tower alone?"
The noisy men's conversation gradually shifted elsewhere. They could talk all they wanted, but it was now a story from a distant world to them.
This was Chaos, the world of those who had already died.
"Wouldn't it be nice if a 「Fruit」 fell from somewhere? I'd like to come back to life too."
"Heh heh. Do you think 「Fruit」 is the name of some monster?"
"Ma'am, another glass of One-Horn Liquor..."
At that moment, the tavern door flew open and a woman entered.
It was Mino.
She strode straight to the bar, swept away the men's cups, and casually sat down at the counter. Every eye turned toward her. Her waist was slender, and her face was pale and narrow.
As the men began edging toward her, Mino warned them without even looking back.
"Leave while I'm asking nicely."
"Yes, ma'am."
Crushed by her terrifying Spiritual Pressure, the men hurried out of the tavern. Mino watched them go with a bitter smile.
...Compared to little scrubs like them, I was strong too.
The tavern owner appeared shortly after.
"This girl is ruining my business."
"...Claire, auntie."
"What did you come here for this time?"
Mino smiled sweetly at the middle-aged woman as she silently brought out the liquor, then downed a glass.
One drink, then two.
After emptying glass after glass, Mino began talking with flushed cheeks.
"So, auntie... listen to me."
She told the same story again and again. After who knew how much longer, Mino, her tongue twisted with drink, continued speaking.
"I've heard enough, brat."
Claire frowned. Like Mino, Claire came from the world of Arcal. She was Mino's last remaining companion from home in Chaos.
"So what you're saying is this."
"...Mm?"
"You were trying to tease some unknown guy, nearly got yourself killed, and then he ended up saving you instead."
"Is that what happened?"
"Part of you is grateful, but your pride got hurt too. So now you're following that human around, looking for a chance to repay the favor somehow."
"..."
"But you can't even do that with your own ability, so you came to complain to this old auntie... That's it, isn't it? You really haven't changed, not then or now. Why can't you ever leave people like that alone?"
Claire shook her head as she refilled the ice in Mino's rocks glass. Mino's head tilted back and forth along with the movement of the glass.
Claire knew Mino well.
Mino had been like this even in the Tower of Nightmares. She had been weak, worked hard, and survived. She could never live with a debt hanging over her, and she always paid people back twofold or threefold. Until she believed she had repaid them enough, she never abandoned a Companion.
That was why Mino had died.
"Was dying because of me not enough? Are you planning to get yourself killed again?"
Mino said nothing and drank.
"I hear he's dangerous, so give up quickly. It's not like you're desperate for a man."
"Hee hee."
"You hadn't been like this for a while. Why are you so obsessed with him?"
Mino gently swirled her glass. After thinking for a long time, she finally spoke.
"It's just, when I look at him..."
Claire clicked her tongue as soon as she heard that opening. She had heard countless stories starting that way while running this tavern. She thought another melodrama was about to unfold.
Then Mino said,
"It pisses me off."
"What?"
"That human is so arrogant. He has no manners, and he's got no decency at all... But strangely enough, nobody can stop him. He acts however he wants, yet nobody can deal with him. Not Red Fox Clan, not Stubborn Karlton, not that old man from Twilight Dusk... Do you know what I think when I see that?"
Mino looked slowly around the small tavern.
"It feels like someone like me is nothing."
"..."
"Claire and I worked hard, didn't we? We didn't die because we wanted to."
Old emotions moved very slowly across Mino's eyes.
"But he suddenly appeared out of nowhere, smashed apart all the things we never dared defy as if they were wrong, swung his sword so easily, and looked down on them..."
Her glass was empty. Mino poured herself another glass of One-Horn Liquor. The bitter fragrance of horn spread faintly through the air with the scent of alcohol.
"Maybe I want to see it. Someone giving him the beating I can't. And then, then I want to see him finally despair..."
Listening to Mino, Claire felt a distant ache somewhere in her heart.
The girl could never be honest to the end. That was probably not what Mino truly wanted to see.
What Mino wanted to see while traveling with that man was...
"You met someone you should never have met, Mino."
Claire knew what Mino had felt, because she had once felt something similar long ago.
Back then, Claire had turned away from it and run.
Then she had grown old.
Claire spoke in a firm voice.
"I'll give you one piece of advice."
"Yeah?"
"Never get involved with him again. Don't even see him again."
"...Why?"
"If you're with that person, you'll die."
Mino flinched.
It was the first time she had seen that expression on Claire's face since they had died together.
At the same time, Mino felt something strange.
The death Claire spoke of seemed different from the death Mino knew.
Just as Mino was about to speak again, a Messenger Hawk made from spiritual power flew through the tavern window.
Mino checked its sender.
North Checkpoint Chief Karlton Xavier
"...Why does Stubborn Karlton want me?"
The moment she tried to open the message, Mino felt a chilling presence behind her. She could not sense hostility, but the strange spiritual power was far from ordinary.
There was more than one.
Several dangerous presences approached, opponents she could never be certain of defeating alone in a direct confrontation.
The tavern door burst open the next moment.
Though the alcohol was rushing to her head, Mino tensed further and pulled a dagger from her clothes.
One of them stepped forward and asked,
"Are you the Witch of Massacre?"
"So what if I am?"
The tavern door closed as soon as she answered.
"There is something you need to do for us."
* * *
The forging began by supplying spiritual power to the central furnace. Since the material was a Garnak horn, they had to pour in more spiritual power than usual to kindle an intense blaze.
While the flames burned, Jaehwan looked at the Garnak horn, which had been thoroughly cleaned.
"Show me how you process it first."
The first step in processing a horn at 〈Twilight Dusk〉 was establishing its basic framework.
Meikal was already dipping a quill into white ink and drawing a preliminary design over the Garnak horn. Since the framework sketch was the most basic step, the more detailed it was, the better. Once the horn had been processed, there was no undoing it.
As the draft was nearly complete, the craftsmen called for Meikal.
White flames blazed in the central furnace, where spiritual power had gathered.
Meikal placed the horn into a prepared mold and waited for the heat to weaken its internal bonds. After enough time passed, tiny bubbles began forming over the horn's surface.
Meikal and the craftsmen quickly removed the horn from the mold and began cutting it with the prepared cutters. They needed to cut away the necessary amount of horn.
The cutters moved along the burning white ink marks.
Even with its bonds weakened, the horn's strength was formidable. They had to ruin more than a dozen cutters in the workshop before they were finally finished. Only then did Meikal let out a breath.
"Now the real battle of skill begins."
The unique skill of an Apprentice-grade Creator, 「Crafting」.
It was the processing technique of a master whose proficiency had already reached its peak.
The white light coming from the hammer and chisel was too astonishing to believe it was merely human craft.
Jaehwan's expression did not change much. He had seen something similar before.
"Jaehwan-gun, what I do isn't forging. It's just a game of probability."
Jay had once said that.
Jay, Atopos's finest blacksmith.
"Seeing you, Jaehwan-gun, I worked hard too. I mastered every skill related to blacksmithing. I can say this with pride. I have a 99% chance of repairing any weapon that comes out of the 《Tower of Nightmares》."
Weapons from the 《Tower of Nightmares》 were nothing more than trivial imitations in the 《Great Realm》. Every item from the Tower was only a copy of the real thing.
Even so, a 99% chance was astounding. Jay was the only one in the 《Tower of Nightmares》 to reach such an incredible repair rate. Jaehwan had almost never seen Jay fail a repair.
"But after reaching that probability, I sometimes have a strange thought. I wonder if I've been missing something truly important."
At the time, Jaehwan had asked what that meant.
Jay replied,
"I gave all my time to skill proficiency to reach a 99% chance. But lately, I have been thinking this. Perhaps I wasn't running toward that 99% chance. Perhaps I was desperately running away from the 1% chance..."
It had not been long after Jaehwan heard those words from Jay that he gained the ability 「Doubt」.
A power different from skills.
Imperfect and difficult, but free.
"I understand enough now, so stop for a moment."
Jaehwan stopped Meikal, who was drenched in sweat. Though a considerable amount of time had passed, there was not even a scratch on the Garnak horn.
Only the chisel and hammer had broken.
"Forging takes more time than you think. And for a Garnak horn, you need to invest at least a month to process it."
"I know."
"...You know? Hah hah."
Meikal looked oddly deflated.
"You shouldn't tease an old man."
"..."
"You already know I'm lying, don't you?"
Jaehwan did not answer. He only ran his hand over the horn's surface in silence.
It was a material that countless hammer strikes could not leave even a slight scratch upon.
Jaehwan could no longer use the System, but he knew very well the messages Meikal must have heard continuously during that hour of forging this horn.
[Skill has failed.]
[Skill has failed.]
[Skill has failed.]
[Skill has failed.]
...
"I'm too old to handle a Garnak horn. You should have found me sooner."
Meikal sat heavily in a chair beside the furnace and quietly lit a cigarette.
"The promised day has already passed. Can I speak more casually now? You aren't the Acting Deputy Workshop Master anymore."
Jaehwan silently nodded.
With the Deputy Workshop Master's authority returned to him, Meikal seemed more at ease.
"Want one?"
Jaehwan shook his head.
Smoke from Meikal's mouth clouded the air. The faces of the craftsmen watching beside them darkened.
Meikal was someone who never did anything else while working. Yet now he had set down his hammer and was smoking.
"There are things in this world that won't work even if you try a hundred times, a thousand times. Young people like Naven over there won't think that way."
The craftsman Naven's face turned red. He was the very craftsman who had first guided Jaehwan and Mino.
"That isn't true, Deputy Workshop Master!"
"Isn't it? You seem to have forgotten how you talked back to me last time."
Meikal turned back to Jaehwan.
"That craftsman works very hard. He was reassigned to the entrance after talking back to me, but he's promising. That boy will probably become the next Artisan of Dawn. If he's lucky, he may even receive the title of 「Apprentice」. But..."
Meikal stubbed out his cigarette against the anvil.
"Even he will never surpass the wall of his birth. A human cannot become the greatest craftsman, just as I cannot handle this Garnak horn."
Jaehwan realized that the self-mocking sorrow in Meikal was not born from one Garnak horn alone.
The horn was only a trigger.
This man had been breaking down from somewhere much deeper inside.
Jaehwan spoke.
"How many times have you tried?"
"I've tried enough. Hundreds, thousands of times."
"Then try ten thousand times."
"And if it doesn't work after ten thousand?"
"Then do it ten billion times."
"Ten billion? Hah hah! You're young."
Meikal threw back his head and laughed as if it were amusing.
"You think I haven't tried hard enough."
"..."
"But I have worked hard enough. Whether you believe it or not. Fine, I don't know about the ten billion times you mentioned, but I must have worked close to that hard. I worked, and worked again. That is how I got here."
Time passed through Meikal's eyes. It had already been a long time since he came to this workshop.
"How many years have you lived?"
Jaehwan counted his age in his head. He had lived twenty years before entering the Tower, then more than forty years inside it.
He had stopped counting time after learning 「Doubt」, so he could not remember precisely, but it had certainly been more than sixty years in total.
"About sixty years."
"Is that so? It seems you died earlier than I thought."
Jaehwan looked as though he were in his early twenties. Meikal said,
"I've lived for one hundred and fifty years."
There was a strangely arrogant note in his voice. Once he learned Jaehwan's age, Meikal appeared more relaxed.
"No matter how much I explain, you won't understand. You've never lived as long as I have."
No one could fully understand another person's time.
It was an obvious statement.
Yet Jaehwan spoke.
"No. I know."
Meikal's brow twitched at the flat reply.
A faint smile then crossed his lips.
Well, that was youth. Youth was ultimately too immature to understand long, arduous years.
Meikal had been stubborn in his youth as well. He had wanted to say he understood the years to come. Yet there were things one could not know without growing old.
Just as Meikal decided he should offer a dignified piece of advice, Jaehwan spoke.
"You must have worked, and worked again, to get this far."
Hearing Jaehwan's calm voice, without a trace of rise or fall, Meikal was momentarily speechless.
It was a simple statement of fact, without grand rhetoric or praise.
Yet those words shook Meikal.
Perhaps it was because no one had ever spoken to him so plainly.
He had received praise when he was young and respect when he grew old. But he had never felt acknowledged.
...It seems I've become senile too.
Meikal wore a bitter expression.
"Those are welcome words. I never thought the day would come when I'd hear something like that from a young man."
Jaehwan did not reply.
Meikal found himself curious about that blunt young man. What judgment would such arrogant youth pass on the years he had lived?
"Since we're talking about it, I feel like asking your youth something."
Meikal took out another cigarette and asked,
"What do you think I'm lacking?"
"..."
"Talent? Birth? Or luck and probability?"
Jaehwan's eyes, as he looked at Meikal, were deep.
No, even deep was not enough to describe them. It was not a depth that could be contained in tired words like abyss or bottomless pit.
There was something uncomfortable in those eyes, something beyond the reach of any words Meikal possessed.
"You aren't lacking."
"...I'm not lacking?"
"Rather than lacking, you are..."
"Rather?"
"You could say you have too much."
"Too much? Too much of what?"
Meikal had asked what he lacked, yet Jaehwan said he had too much. He looked at Jaehwan as if asking what that was supposed to mean.
Jaehwan spoke again.
"You've lived too long."
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