[The third attempt has failed]

[You don't command enough authority]

[You cannot summon the soul of a celestial]

'...ah, so the problem is authority.' Raith looked down at the lifeless body of the asura as it lay in a pool of blood.

He gritted his teeth and suck in the dissatisfaction. He was hyped up thinking that he was going to have an asura as one of his soldiers.

He turned and walked out of the dungeon. "Let's go clear this fucking gate" He mumbled as he trekked outside.

***

***

***

'How? This makes no sense! How is a man serving in such heat, how is he able to even... I thought I had seen the best of him but no! I have never seen him as this' Tam Seon shook with fear as he watched Dong-Hyun from afar.

He couldn't go nearer to the smithy than he was already. And could only catch glimpses of the hammer each time it smashed the sound and produced a defeating clanging sound that traveled around the entire underground.

Each sound was a reformation as much as they were the same, they carried enormous heaviness, and the air vibrated with each hammering and sent blue sparks flying around. Dong-Hyun himself was sweating all over his body, and cuts were on his face– the arrogance of the sword could not be contained; it was as if he was trying to tame a ferocious fire beast at first it got very violent and he just kept getting cuts in the face.

Every time he hammered the sword, he was thrown into an illusion, faced with a great monster of darkness, so colossal.

That was the thing he was hammering– he knew it even from the first time he saw it. The true form of the sword, although it was irregular and unclear because of the reforge over the years, it still spat great fear into him.

He knew that the only reason why he was alive after the first landing of the hammer was that the sword had given him consent to reforge it. If not, he would have been killed by the ferocity of the sword.

It was a mere sword, just a sword– Tae Dong-Hyun had never encountered something like this in his entire life.

So much time had passed, his muscles hurt, blisters formed on his palm, his mouth was dry and he yearned for water, sweat, and blood mixed on his face and dropped with every straining of his muscles as he hit the hammer on the boiling sword.

At first, he was trying so hard to maintain his focus but it got better, as the hammering continued, he somehow managed to cling to the sound. The sound was his guidance into the depth of darkness that the sword carried.

And through all that horror and darkness, it was so easy for one's sanity to be lost. He could feel it with every inch of him– one mistake with this sword and he might end up brain-dead.

Staying with sound was like a thin rope through– as far as he was hanging on that thin rope he was safe.

But as the hammering continued, his mind was sucked into the sound so much that he entered a deep trance. His hands kept moving, they kept hammering, and his eyes were fixated on the sword even with how bright and flaming it was, they didn't blink.

He had reached that point where his abilities could manage but now he had to shed off that skin, in order to do that– this trance was his breakthrough.

Without even the slightest change in his breathing pattern, he kept hammering.

A hundred?

Two hundred

Nine Hundred

A thousand

Ten thousand

Hundreds of thousands

Millions

The hammering had surpassed millions. And so much time had passed but the blacksmith did not stop.

'If I can bring it out. If I can just bring it out'

Tae Dong-Hyun because of his amazing focus could at this point see that all that ferociousness was due to all the reforge over the past years as the sword itself said.

But he finally reached an image, one that he hadn't met, one that seemed to be trapped amidst that ferocious monster. The only thing that was on Tae Dong-Hyun's mind was reaching that image. He knew that was the end point of his hammering.

His hammering was to bring the sword back to its original form. For that to be possible he had to hammer away all the past reforges.

Considering that they were great blacksmiths, Tae Dong-Hyun right now was doing a great feat. However, no one knew, no one recognized it. Not yet.

Kang

Kang

Kang

Kang

'...it's enchanting and sickening at the same time' Tam Seon's eyes slowly shut as he was stricken by tiredness and fatigue. All he had been doing after Tae Dong-Hyun sent him out was watching but he couldn't hold on anymore. It was hard to tell how much time has passed except if he looked at his phone, but time didn't seem to be the issue of concern amongst any of the two.

He slowly fell asleep to the hammering sound like a lullaby. A bedtime song for a blacksmith.

***

***

***

All of them hung around while Mok Jae-Hwa began to find a solution. to their problem. No matter how much they tried anyway, it wasn't something that they could get out of or think of a way compared to Mok Jae-Hwa who had [Parallel Thought Pattern]. And was able to discern things.

He paused as he caressed a certain tree, "Again...Gen." Mok Jae-Hwa muttered the Chinese characters that he could feel engraved on the tree.

'Why is a Chinese character engraved on a tree in a gate.' Gow wondered and looked back at the tree he was coming from. On that one, he felt the Xun character. He couldn't see it but when he touched the tree and ran his hand around he could feel it on every part of the tree, as if they existed on every space, every corner- but weren't visible to the eyes. It was probably another perk of the illusion. historical