Chapter 1: Forge of the End
Clang!
A cold-iron hammer struck glowing steel, sending a heavy metallic reverberation through the air.
To him, the world was simply a forge.
Just a single forge with no entrance and no exit.
There was a time when he went to school just like everyone else.
He'd even travel once in a while, using his own savings.
But all of those were merely faint memories now.
One death, and one reincarnation.
In a nameless forge, he just hammered away at iron.
There was no special reason.
It was simply the only thing left for him to do in this place.
He hammered the glowing iron, cooled it, and plunged it back into the deep-red lava countless times.
Time lost all meaning as discarded scrap piled high like a mountain in the corner of the forge.
He had forgotten how to think long ago.
What was he pounding steel for?
He couldn't tell.
Only the bubbling of red-hot lava and the sharp clash of steel echoed through the forge.
Just as he was forging yet another failure—the space near the furnace warped.
It was a phenomenon he had never seen despite living for so long.
With a low hum, the rift tore open, radiating a sudden heat.
It wasn't the blazing heat of a furnace or glowing iron.
It was cooler, yet somehow warmer.
The Master of the Forge set his hammer down with a heavy clunk and stared blankly at the shimmering anomaly.
* * *
"Haa… haa…"
Daon Lee clenched her trembling hands.
The longsword with its dulled edge shook along with her grip.
She glanced sideways at her status window.
How much longer could this blade hold out?
=====
[Longsword]
Rarity: Common
Type: Longsword
Status: Dulled Edge
[An ordinary European longsword. Steel and a hilt—nothing special.]
Attack Power: +11
Attack Speed: -5%
=====
"Kgh…"
The tip of her sword pointed at a Desert Troll, a monster that mainly inhabited the middle floors of the Tower.
"Why is there a Troll on the 4th floor…?"
Her teeth clicked together in terror, catching the edge of her tongue.
It had been ten years since Gates and Towers began popping up all over the world, ushering in an era of Hunters, Awakened, and Pioneers.
Yet only a chosen few managed to successfully awaken, becoming the protagonists of this new age—the Climbers.
But…
That, too, was a matter of luck.
It was a privilege granted only to those who broke through the most abysmal odds.
The Desert Troll's massive fist hurtled toward Daon.
"Gah!"
Pushed past its limits, her longsword shattered into pieces the instant she blocked the blow.
Daon was a D-rank Hunter.
She was far stronger than a normal person, but that was all.
Just blocking the Troll's massive fist took everything she had.
The force of the blow pushed her backward, dragging her feet through the dirt and leaving jagged tracks.
Pain seared through her blistered soles. But it worked—she gained a little distance from the monster.
There was no time to think.
Daon launched herself off the ground and ran.
She didn't look back.
As she ran, she thought.
How did I get pushed to this point?
Over her ragged gasps came the sound of a heavy weight pulverizing the dirt.
I'm going to die.
Swept up in terror, Daon was instantly consumed by resentment.
When the Troll appeared out of nowhere, her teammates had thrown her to it as bait and fled.
She'd taken out loans with high hopes just to gear up, but her weapons and armor were utter garbage—as if she'd been ripped off.
Not to mention the D-rank label that clung to her like a shadow, and the rotten luck that had brought her to this point.
She hated all of it from the bottom of her heart.
"Cough."
Daon suddenly stopped dead in her tracks.
It wasn't because she'd given up, or decided to fight.
It was simply because there was nowhere left to run.
"Ah…"
A massive canyon opened up right in front of her.
A canyon so deep and dark that the bottom was pitch black.
"Krooargh—!"
As Daon hesitated before the canyon, the Troll's roar closed in from right behind her.
"Haha…"
She saw no way to escape death.
Her heart hammered wildly as two brutal paths laid out before her.
Plunge into the abyss and die a broken, whimpering mess?
Or…
Get eaten alive by the Troll?
Daon collapsed on the spot and looked up at the sky for a moment.
A pitch-black sky.
Between the twinkling stars, clouds drifted slowly away into the distance.
"Ah, haha… This fucking sucks…"
Gazing blankly at the view one last time, Daon chose to jump.
As she plummeted into the abyss, semi-transparent text caught her eye.
[Entering Hidden Stage]
* * *
Daon pushed up her heavy eyelids and swallowed a gasp.
The first thing she saw was a magnificent forge.
A forge that felt like a sacred heaven, yet also a blazing hell.
It was a sight unlike anything she had ever seen.
As she flinched, metal clattered loudly beneath her back.
Only then did she realize—she was sprawled flat on the ground.
"A-Am I alive…?"
Relief mingled with confusion, but only for a moment.
Beneath a ceiling dripping with chains and molten iron, floating text materialized.
[Hidden Stage: -99F, Forge of the End]
The moment she saw it, her heart sank.
Hidden Stage.
It was a term that Climbers clearing the upper floors of the Tower usually came across.
"H-hidden…"
Everyone knew 'hidden' meant a lucky encounter.
But it always came with immense danger.
To Daon, who had just barely escaped death, the term brought pure terror instead of excitement.
"Aaaa…"
She immediately tried to push herself up.
But her legs buckled beneath her, sending her collapsing back down with a thud.
Panic seized her, and she began looking around frantically.
The ceiling was too high to see, but thousands of iron chains hung down from the darkness, intertwined like a spiderweb.
Hanging from the ends of those chains were swords and spears that looked freshly quenched.
Every time they swayed in the heat, a cold metallic chill washed over the room.
"Ugh…"
A stinging pain bit into her hands as she frantically searched the ground.
Daon carefully lowered her head to look for the source of that pain.
The furnace's crimson light reflected off the ground beneath her—a massive hill of iron stacked layer upon layer with steel fragments.
Before she could even process the overwhelming sight, a suffocating pressure slammed into her from behind.
"…"
As she turned her head carefully, a giant figure entered Daon's vision.
Atop the iron hill stood a humanoid figure of pure, endlessly churning lava.
"N-ngh…"
Her eyelids felt hot just from looking at it.
「Ah.」
After staring silently at Daon, the creature parted its bubbling lava mouth—or whatever passed for one.
"Aaaaaahhh!!!"
A shrill scream escaped Daon.
She scrambled backward.
She tried to flee.
But sadly, all sides were blocked.
Right as Daon was desperately scrambling backward, pushing through the metal debris to put any distance between them—
Slice.
—A sharp pain climbed up her palm.
"Kgh... Nnh..."
She turned her eyes back to the floor.
A single dagger glinted in the red light, resting right beside her own blood.
=====
[Unnamed Dagger]
Rarity: ???
Type: Dagger
Status: Incomplete
[A blade discovered in a corner of the Forge of the End, buried within a mountain of scrap labeled "failures." Forged through tens of thousands of hammer strikes, it was born alongside a single question: "What am I pounding this for?"]
Attack Power: +89
Attack Speed: +10%
[Applied Options]
Ignore Defense: Ignores all of the target's defenses and inflicts damage.
=====
As her hand touched the dagger, a status window naturally floated up.
* * *
「What is that…」
Before my eyes, space began to shimmer.
An eternity had passed. It had to have.
Without any way to track the flow of time, it was only a guess—but the mountain of equipment piled around me proved how long I had been here.
Whirrr.
The shimmering space soon spat out something.
Short brown hair.
Brown eyes.
A person…?
It matched the appearance of a human that I vaguely remembered.
Naturally, I should have been happy to see one, but I was flabbergasted instead.
Why all of a sudden?
The girl, swiveling her head left and right, eventually turned her gaze toward me.
Wide eyes and parted lips… What emotion did that expression carry again?
「Ah.」
"Aaaaaahhh!!!"
The word I spoke after such a long time couldn't be finished.
Her scream drowned out my voice.
And in the very next instant, the girl moved away from me.
「…」
Unable to think of what to do, I simply stared blankly.
Backing away without pause, the girl soon hit the wall.
To be precise, a wall formed by towering heaps of failures.
Her hand touched one of the failures I had recently made and tossed aside.
…Uh.
Fresh blood immediately ran down her palm, but she didn't seem to care—as if she couldn't even feel the pain.
She simply looked up with blank eyes, her gaze locked on nothing but the dagger.
…That's gotta hurt, though.
With a bit of worry, I took slow steps forward.
Sizzle.
The metal scraps touching the soles of my feet melted away.
At that sound, the girl snapped her head back toward me again.
"W-wait…!"
As our eyes met, I could see her dark brown pupils tremble wildly.
The girl soon picked up the dagger and pointed the blade at me.
"D-d-don't… don't come any closer…!"
Even though it was a language I hadn't heard in ages, I could understand its meaning.
Korean.
My native tongue.
A person.
A dull ache throbbed in my chest, and my vision blurred at the same time.
Hot stone dust brushed down my cheek.
In other words… I was crying.
"H-huh…?"
I stood frozen in place, listening helplessly to her voice.
Time was a harsh whetstone, grinding away emotion until all of it went dull.
And yet… and yet.
Loneliness, it seemed, was the one thing it couldn't wear down.
"A-are you crying…?"
Tears fell without stopping.
A human warmth so vastly different from the heat of the furnace.
A voice with soft inflections, so vastly different from the pounding on the anvil.
I had missed them so bitterly.
* * *
A bit of time passed.
Clang!
Cowering in a corner of the forge, the girl watched me as I hammered the iron.
This time, I was forging with a clear purpose.
Because the dagger she clutched so tightly in her arms was far too shabby.
Even if it wasn't perfect, I wanted to give her something.
Clang! Clang!
I swung the hammer again and again.
With every splash of molten metal, the dull lump of iron reshaped itself, growing stronger with every quench.
After one last quench, I held up the steaming dagger.
"U-uh…"
Seeing her timid posture, I swung the blade in a sharp vertical slash.
Whoosh.
A gale-force wind swept through, violently rattling the iron chains dangling from the ceiling.
I stared down quietly at the dagger, now fully cooled and tempered.
This wasn't a piece I was completely satisfied with either, but…
It's gotta be better than that one.
Yet unlike the countless lumps of iron I had aimlessly forged all this time, this dagger was made with a reason to exist.
「…」
Without quite knowing why, I tossed the dagger over to the girl shivering in the corner.
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