The dwarf who had secured Sinhyeok folded his arms and wore a proud expression.
“You’re in for it now, you bastard. How dare you ignore me?”
“Are you seriously being this petty over yesterday? I mean, I might not have recognized you!”
“Hmph! That makes it even more humiliating! Today, you’ll feel my greatness firsthand!”
“Please don’t be this childish. I have a lot to do.”
The dwarf chuckled.
“What could a sprout who only just came in possibly have to do?”
“……”
“I have more to do than you’d think.”
“Don’t make me laugh. If you want to leave quickly, help me with my work.”
The dwarf went to the workbench and opened a laptop.
Seeing that, Sinhyeok couldn’t help but make a jab.
“Do you even know how to type on that?”
“Hmph! Who do you take me for!”
He skillfully unlocked the screen by entering the password with a two-finger typing method.
Then he opened a program and checked the list of work requests.
‘That’s fascinating. Seeing a dwarf doing that.’
The dwarf checked the work request list.
“They broke quite a lot. Two greatswords. Three sets of full-body armor damaged.”
Aurumstone checked the request form and closed the laptop.
“Hey, human. If you look behind you, there should be a box. The one marked 1st Company, 3rd Platoon.”
Following the dwarf’s words, Sinhyeok turned around.
Beside the door was a large box.
When he went closer, he saw the words written in large letters with a black pen.
1st Company, 3rd Platoon.
“Is this it?”
“Yeah. Push the whole box over here.”
When he pushed the box, it slid smoothly and gently.
Once he brought it to the workbench, Aurumstone opened the box.
“Let’s see just how badly they wrecked it.”
The box opened, and the dwarf kindled mana like golden flames.
“Hup.”
He sent mana into the box and pulled out a greatsword.
“Shit. They said damaged! This thing’s outright snapped!”
The two greatswords, each over two meters long, had been cleanly broken in half.
As a bonus, they were covered in scratches.
“That damned 3rd Platoon leader!”
Beside him, Sinhyeok got to hear the creator’s miserable scream live.
“Those goddamn bastards. Why the hell do they break things every single day, huh!”
Aurumstone looked up at Sinhyeok and vented his complaints.
“No, what’s the point of making things for them? Huh! They break everything, then come running back asking me to fix it! I ought to just—!”
“What can you do? You should blame the weak 3rd Platoon leader. Kheup.”
Sinhyeok freely badmouthed the 3rd Platoon leader with great satisfaction.
“Exactly! I shouldn’t give them anything! Me, if I went anywhere else and handed over something like this, they’d treat it like a treasure, but these damned Earthlings don’t know how to be grateful!”
‘Ugh, what an old fogey.’
He waited for their old-fogey dwarf teacher’s anger to subside.
“Haa. What can I do about this lot in life? Why was I crazy enough to sign a contract with that brute of a human?”
Grumbling, he placed the greatsword on the workbench.
Sinhyeok watched quietly and asked,
“But are you going to fix all of them? I’m just asking out of curiosity, but are there any pieces of equipment you can’t fix?”
“No. I can fix most equipment. Unless it’s something beyond its grade, like an artifact.”
“Oh, so there are things you unexpectedly can’t do?”
“Hmph! I can! I can fix transcendent-grade equipment too! I just say I effectively can’t because I can’t obtain the materials.”
“Aha.”
The dwarf looked steadily at Sinhyeok and added,
“For reference, the same goes for your gun. I can’t fix it.”
“What? Ah, you knew about that?”
“You think I wouldn’t remember your face? I know. I remembered you when you came to receive that weapon.”
He tapped the greatsword and said,
“That gun, when I gave it to you, was legendary-grade in your terms. It was just within the realm I could handle.”
“No wonder its performance was absurdly powerful.”
“Of course. It was one of the masterpieces I’ve made in recent years. After hearing about your constitution, I got excited and made it.”
Sinhyeok thought of the firearm with regret.
“I heard it was broken. Even right before it was collected, it had a lot of cracks.”
Aurumstone recalled the gun’s condition.
“It was a shame for me too. I never expected an item I’d handed out as legendary-grade to come back transcended.”
“What?”
Calmly taking his hand off the greatsword, he headed toward the storage area in the corner of the workshop and said,
“It transcended from how much it had been reinforced with mana. It surpassed its original class and limits, and a miracle occurred. It doesn’t happen often.”
The dwarf opened the storage room door and pointed with his finger at a K14, shaped like a Korean military sniper rifle, displayed up high.
“It really did break.”
“An item like that deserves to be hung up. It has value worth remembering.”
Leaving the door open, the dwarf looked over the materials on the shelves.
As he looked, he said to Sinhyeok,
“But can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
Sinhyeok followed behind the dwarf and looked around.
“Why did you come back? That human said you probably wouldn’t.”
“Seriously, why does everyone here know my business so well?”
“Krhm. Well, because your story is the most entertaining one here. A nobody became an ability user, and then even ran away.”
“……”
At that miraculous sentence that compressed his entire shameful past into one line, Sinhyeok couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“At any rate, it was entertaining. That’s why you left more of an impression. Among humans, yours was the soul that shone the brightest, blazed the hottest, and in the end turned to charcoal……”
Leaning against the doorframe, Sinhyeok spoke to the dwarf rummaging through the shelves.
“What about now?”
“You do look different now. If you were like sunlight before, now you’re about like a burning piece of charcoal?”
“I suppose I’m lucky something is still burning.”
Sinhyeok looked at the dwarf in the storage room and said,
“Why do you like me so much? I don’t think it’s just because I managed to pull off that wave thing.”
“Hmm. Couldn’t that alone be reason enough?”
In the end, the dwarf came out of the storage room empty-handed.
He plopped down on the chair beside the workbench and looked at Sinhyeok.
“It’s only natural I’d be interested if a mere human can hear the Echo of Iron.”
“You call it the Echo of Iron?”
“It’s an old expression from our tribe. The echo that iron lets you hear.”
“So that’s why you noticed me?”
“Among other things. And when I heard you were an alchemist, I became even more interested.”
At his generous attitude, Sinhyeok couldn’t help but laugh.
“That interest of yours is remarkably generous. The world I saw wasn’t like that, except for a few people.”
“That happens. So, do you dislike it?”
Sinhyeok looked at the dwarf sitting in the chair and said,
“No. I like it.”
‘I have to secure him. He’s someone I need even more than Lucien.’
He knelt on both knees before him.
“I’ll give you anything. Everything I can give. So could you give me knowledge, or teachings, or if not that, even scraps?”
Aurumstone looked into those desperate eyes, eyes that seemed ready to burn everything.
“You truly do burn well. You’d burn anything.”
“I’m in the middle of doing that. So will you give it to me?”
“Haha, how very nice. A disciple I never expected to have in my fate.”
“I serve quite a lot of masters. Don’t expect luxurious treatment.”
“Hmph! You may as well devour me whole. Fine! I’ll give you everything I have. Even the secrets of our tribe.”
At those words, both of Sinhyeok’s pupils twitched.
He looked at Sinhyeok as though he would devour him instead.
“If you can take them.”
Sinhyeok met the dwarf’s sharp gaze and said,
“You’ll probably be stripped of everything before long. Everyone else was.”
The dwarf put on a confident expression.
“Hmph! As if! The secrets of Aurumstone, spanning over ten thousand years, won’t crumble so easily.”
“……”
Sinhyeok smiled without a word.
‘No. You’ll end up giving me everything.’
That was both resolve and the future.
“Then what should I start with?”
Aurumstone pointed to the greatsword on the workbench.
“That, obviously. You didn’t think I was going to do it, did you?”
“Wow, so you were planning to dump the work on me from the start?”
“But of course! I’ll make you handle the scut work I couldn’t dump on Moron Two!”
Looking at the brazen dwarf, Sinhyeok straightened his knees.
He stood up and brushed off his pants.
“My knees sure have become easy.”
Sinhyeok approached the workbench and looked at the dwarf.
“So what do I do? I’ll say this in advance, but I can’t do stuff like hammering iron.”
Aurumstone stood up, mocked Sinhyeok, and said,
“I had no intention of making you do that in the first place. Dwarves hammering away is out of style these days.”
“Then what do you use?”
“Machines, obviously. I need to protect the cartilage in my wrists.”
He pointed to a guillotine-like machine.
Instead of a blade, it had a huge blunt hammer attached to it.
“That thing is truly incredible. But we won’t use it today. There usually isn’t much occasion to use it anyway.”
The dwarf jumped up and perched on the workbench, then explained the method.
“Repairs, too, have an alchemical method of repair.”
“Hmm?”
At the strange explanation, Sinhyeok’s interest focused sharply on him.
He rattled it off.
“Appraise it, remove the impurities from the damaged item, synthesize and restore it, then finish with a mana coating. That’s it. Easy, right?”
“……”
He explained it so easily, but Sinhyeok did not understand a single thing.
“What?”
“I’ll show you. Watch closely. Step one, appraisal.”
The dwarf deliberately kindled golden flame at the tip of his finger so it would be easy to see.
‘That’s really unusual. Why does his mana sparkle like gold?’
“How did you classify minerals?”
At the dwarf’s sudden question, Sinhyeok hurriedly answered.
“By waves.”
“Right. You have to hear that echo. That way, you know what metal was used.”
When he tapped it, a wave flowed out.
What went in was golden, but the mana that came out was a different color.
“This is the standard method. When it comes out, it’s not my mana, only this fellow’s.”
“Ah.”
Sinhyeok understood immediately.
“You have to tap it with an extremely small amount, don’t you? So it naturally dissipates?”
“Correct. That’s the trick.”
The dwarf flinched for a moment at how quickly he understood the knack.
“Well, you’re rather decent.”
“This much is a piece of cake. Because of my constitution, do you know how deeply I’ve had to dig into mana?”
“Hrm. Then make sure to check this color and the texture you feel from the wave.”
Sinhyeok listened closely to his explanation.
“Now comes the most important process. Using what you analyzed, you have to find the metal to use for the repair.”
“Mm, something about this feels strange. Isn’t a craftsman supposed to look at the equipment’s condition and immediately know, ‘What did they use here?’”
At his rather blatant gaze, the dwarf smirked.
“You, are you going to memorize every metal in this vast universe with a different name on every planet? And on top of that, all the ones with different properties, hardness, and strength?”
“Ah?”
“I can’t do that either, you brat. That’s why you look at the essence. Things like its hardness, strength, properties, and the fundamental attributes within the object.”
The dwarf took his hand off the greatsword and said,
“Then you find the material by looking only at its essence. Even if it’s a mineral mined on another planet and called by a different name, you’ll be able to use it.”
“That is an amazing pro tip.”
“Hmph. It’s common knowledge among our kind. Those who spend their whole lives on one planet may wonder why anyone would bother doing that, but it’s different from our perspective. And this way is better. Good ore, good iron, exists on rare planets at odds as slim as winning the lottery.”
“That makes sense.”
Sinhyeok deeply agreed with the dwarf’s words.
“Then I just have to find it now?”
“Right. But this thing isn’t here right now. It’s probably an alloy. We don’t have that alloy made in advance, and I haven’t bought any either.”
“Ah, then what do we do?”
“What do you mean? You have to make it.”
Aurumstone shamelessly pointed at Sinhyeok.
Sinhyeok smiled brightly and asked again,
“Me?”
“Yes, you. If you listen carefully to this echo and feel it, you can learn the ratio of the alloy and even the catalyst that was used.”
“Good grief.”
The dwarf tapped the workbench and said,
“Now, practical training begins.”
“……”