1.
Let’s briefly summarize the effects the equipment I needed to produce now had to have.
First, it needed to assist Yeomhwa’s rehabilitation and recovery.
Second, it needed to synergize with her primary weapon, [Tmir’s Grimoire].
And third, it simply had to be good enough to satisfy me.
"Hmm."
I was being a little greedy.
Still, since this was my first auxiliary weapon, I should aim this high.
Flip…
I opened [Tmir’s Grimoire], which lay on the workbench.
First, I needed to properly understand its structure.
After all, this was my first time dealing with a magical tool.
For now, let’s see what was written inside…
But the first thing that caught my eye the moment I opened it wasn’t a magic formula, nor was it a secret Tmir had left behind…
[How do I use this thingy]
"?"
It was a note written in someone’s atrocious handwriting.
And the writing was red, too.
I read the next line.
[Nothing works]
[Did I get scammed]
"……."
I didn’t think I needed to check who had written this.
It was Yeomhwa. I could tell just from the way she talked.
How on earth had someone like this managed to optimize it?
She’d even optimized it with "bang," apparently.
[Waaah I wasted my moneyㅠㅠ]
[If it doesn’t work I’m throwing you in the stove]
Why was she threatening a book…?
Flip…
After I turned a few more pages, the tone of the writing changed somewhat.
[Oh! It works?]
[You can hear me, right!]
"……?"
So the book understood the threat?
After that, enough time must have passed that even the thickness of the ink from the pen had changed.
…And Yeomhwa’s demands had grown more confident.
[It’s all good, okay? The magic’s good too… but I don’t wanna open and close you every time]
[Make it so I can cast stuff just by talking]
[And make it "bang," if you can]
[Bang is cute]
"……."
[Optimize yourself! If it’s not done by tomorrow, I’m seriously putting you in the stove!!]
I immediately flipped to the next page.
[It worked!!]
[I knew you could hear me]
[Let’s get along from now on, Tmir lol]
"……."
This was seriously absurd.
When I heard optimization, I thought she’d used some kind of magical mechanism…
"But judging by the writing, she just threatened it…"
It felt like she had threatened a book that couldn’t even speak.
So the grimoire evolved on its own because it didn’t want to be burned.
You know, survival of the fittest.
I kind of felt sorry for it.
Tremble…
"?"
The book seemed to have shuddered a little, but I chose to believe it was just my imagination.
For now, let’s check the structure.
I spent several hours analyzing [Tmir’s Grimoire] like that…
After turning over the pages known as papyrus, examining the cylinder embedded in its cover, and even checking the flow of mana within it, I came to a conclusion…
"Hmm… I get it."
The analysis was over.
Honestly, I felt like I understood how the grimoire itself worked.
…That was a lie.
"…Actually, I don’t understand it at all."
Inside the grimoire… there were just incomprehensible circuits crammed everywhere…
I had no idea what I was supposed to do with them, and even if I made something similar, there was no guarantee it would work the same way.
You know how they say not to touch code if it’s already working?
It looked like code someone had written in their own language, so trying to interpret magical mechanisms through it seemed difficult.
The spaghetti code to end all spaghetti code.
At the very least, I’d probably need to be able to handle magic or construct formulas to understand it.
"…For now, anyway."
Until now, I had only crafted in ways that drew out a material’s properties and allowed mana to be infused without issue.
I had never created and bestowed magic that hadn’t existed before.
Maybe it would be different after I learned magic someday, but…
"A magical tool is beyond me."
That was the conclusion I reached.
Since I knew no formulas or magic, embedding one was impossible.
I would just have to overcome it with Sun Dwarf physicality.
All right, then. What would make a good auxiliary weapon to support [Tmir’s Grimoire]?
Yeomhwa’s combat basically revolved around guns, so if I considered equipment that went with guns…
"Scopes, stocks, vertical grips, laser sights…"
Those were the basics as far as I knew.
But come to think of it, Yeomhwa didn’t personally hold and fire her guns.
Guns formed in midair and fired on their own.
Honestly, the things I’d just listed seemed meaningless.
Should I watch some more footage?
I watched more videos of Yeomhwa climbing the Tower that had been uploaded to the community.
"…Huh? What’s this?"
She used a much wider variety of guns than I thought.
Shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles, rifles, revolvers.
She used a giant revolver in most situations, but when enemies got close, she frequently used a shotgun.
And when she needed to pick off soldiers standing guard atop a spire, she blasted them with a sniper rifle.
Her firearms changed continuously according to the combat situation…
"If there’s something every gun has in common…"
There was only one thing left.
"Bullets. Or a magazine."
They differed depending on the firearm… but in the end, every gun needed ammunition.
Since I was at it, I’d use the fancier word: rounds.
There was also one scene that constantly repeated in Yeomhwa’s battle footage.
Click!
The huge revolver tilted sideways, its cylinder swung out, and its empty chambers were exposed.
Then red mana flowed out from Yeomhwa’s body, turned into rounds, and slotted back into the chambers.
For shotguns, they were thick to fit the gauge; for machine guns, they formed ammunition belts… Either way, they took different shapes.
In the end, the source of the rounds seemed to be Yeomhwa’s mana.
Which meant that was where she consumed enormous amounts of mana.
Watching the footage, Yeomhwa never looked good whenever she reloaded.
Sometimes her body even swayed for a moment.
I suspected that she had overexerted herself by squeezing out too much mana to make ammunition.
If I could somehow regulate that continuous drain of mana, it would naturally help her recovery too.
"…For something like this, you just try it."
Let’s just go for it.
Nothing comes from rolling it around in your head. That was true of anything.
I rose from my seat…
Slip.
And pulled [Totality: Vision] down over my eyes.
"Hi, Hwiri."
"Hello!"
I greeted Hwiri, who was sprawled out in one corner of the workshop…
And began work on Yeomhwa’s first auxiliary weapon.
2.
Time passed.
A little more time than I’d expected.
"…How long has it been?"
[Two weeks…]
"This is insane."
…What I had spent the last two weeks doing was nothing other than searching for suitable materials.
Was this how elderly potters felt?
Creating something from absolute scratch might have been one thing, but trying to make it work in tandem with an existing grimoire was incredibly complicated.
For one thing, I didn’t know what materials the grimoire was made of.
So over the past two weeks, I brought Dolores over, ran mana through things, heated them in fire, and tried all sorts of things…
And this was the conclusion.
"I have good news and bad news, Yuna."
I muttered while lying atop a mountain of ore in the materials storeroom.
"Which one do you want first?"
[Umm… the bad news first…?]
The bad news.
"I don’t think I can use [Whiteheart Iron]."
[Whiteheart Iron], the vessel that held mana so well—the material that had gone into Ruby’s equipment before, as well as [Totality: Vision].
There was no better material for containing mana.
But I didn’t think I could use it this time.
"It’s too plain… It has no distinctive character."
Ruby needed to receive not only mana but the power of spirits, so pure and flawless [Whiteheart Iron] had been good for her.
But if I used it in Yeomhwa’s equipment… it would just become bland.
I didn’t think it would create any synergy, either.
My latest attempt had failed too.
In the end, [Whiteheart Iron] was ruled unusable.
[Then what’s the good news…?]
Then what kind of ore would suit Yeomhwa?
To find that answer, I frantically leafed through textbooks for Sun Dwarves… even ones for Skilled Blacksmiths.
And I reached an unexpected conclusion.
"I think Yeomhwa and Sun Dwarves would work really well together."
Since Yeomhwa handled guns, her mana could basically be considered fire-aspected.
Her name even had fire in it.
And as it happened, Sun Dwarves were said to create excellent synergy with fire-aspected equipment.
I just hadn’t known because I had never made fire-aspected equipment before.
So there was a reason the Goddess of Fire Ignia or whatever kept obsessing over me.
I had just decided on the material to use, too.
"Do you know what a sunwheel is?"
[…The thing from that anime…?]
That was the one, but that one was a sword.
A sunwheel.
Put simply, it meant the sun. More specifically, it referred to the sun and the blazing, pointed rays that extended from its rim as one whole.
The emblem of the Heirs of Fire was, in a way, also a sunwheel.
So, my conclusion.
"[Sunwheel Iron]."
I had to use it.
But there was a problem. Perhaps because it was a material humans didn’t know about…
"There isn’t any."
None among the minerals the Imperial Family had given me.
"So, Yuna."
I pointed into the air.
─────────────────
[Sunwheel Iron] [★★★★☆]
─────────────────
Iron that contains the sun.
No further explanation is needed.
─────────────────
[Buy Now: 500,000 Gold]
[Time Remaining: 5:01:33]
─────────────────
"I think I need to buy this."
There was exactly one in the entire auction house.
This had no transaction history. There had never been a listing before, and if I didn’t buy it now, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to buy it in the future.
Since it wasn’t equipment, it wasn’t even being auctioned—it was listed for direct purchase at a price set by the seller.
[💬 Comments (1)]
I clicked on the comments.
─────────────────
[Anonymous1]: Who the fuck would buy this for 500,000 gold?
─────────────────
"……Me, you bastard."
I already had money deposited into the Tower system to buy materials for building the workshop.
I never thought I’d spend this much on a single material, though.
"Purchase."
Without hesitating any further, I pressed the button.
─────────────────
[You have purchased [Sunwheel Iron] for 500,000 Gold.]
─────────────────
My precious 500,000 gold vanished…
And soon, in midair…
Hummm…
An ore the size of Lionel’s head—my head, that was—dropped out of thin air.
Thud!
Its base color was dark silver, but red veins ran across its surface.
"So this is why I charge for materials."
This tiny thing cost 500,000 gold?
The moment I got a little ambitious, it became hard to procure.
But come to think of it, Yeomhwa had spent ten million buying an [Ether Circle]…
Hmm…
"…I can give her this much as a free service."
She was a valued customer, after all.
Good. I had the material, too…
"Hup!"
I picked up the [Sunwheel Iron] and headed into the workshop.
Normally, volume and mass were proportional, but [Sunwheel Iron] was surprisingly light for its size.
It felt like some kind of advanced material.
Thud.
[Sunwheel Iron] was placed on the workbench.
What I had to do from here was decided.
I hadn’t spent the last two weeks searching only for materials.
I had already thought up the auxiliary weapon’s appearance.
"First, melt it, flatten the iron into thin sheets, cut them out…"
[Cut them out?]
There were many public evaluations and epithets used for Yeomhwa…
But the identity that symbolized her best was the red rose.
I supposed she was called that because she used red mana.
There had also been the scent of roses when I entered her room not long ago.
And Yeomhwa herself seemed to like roses quite a lot.
My beliefs and philosophy of equipment crafting were fundamentally based on compatibility.
In other words, it had to suit the wearer.
In that respect, the conventional magazine design… failed aesthetically.
Angular, crude hunks of metal that looked like they would clank didn’t suit Yeomhwa’s refined image.
Then did a magazine really have to look like a magazine?
"I’m going to make a flower."
[A flower?]
I planned to shape each petal individually and layer them together… to make a single flower.
A magic magazine that, on the outside, looked like a single rose.
That was the shape I had in mind for the auxiliary weapon.
And in conclusion…
"It’ll be the most mind-numbing grind ever."
Scrape…
I pulled the flowerpot from one side of the workbench in front of me.
A rose I had transplanted from Dolores’s garden yesterday, with her permission.
I had chosen the prettiest and most extravagant one.
This little thing would be today’s teaching material.
Beautifully, extravagantly.
Reflecting Yeomhwa’s identity.
I intended to make every petal myself, each with different sizes and thicknesses, and join them together.
"Stoke the fire."
I gave the instruction as I stood up…
But naturally, there was no one there to stoke it for me…
"Yes, sir."
I lit the crucible furnace myself.
Whoosh!
The workshop began to grow hot.
2.
At that time, inside the Dolores estate.
Yeomhwa had recovered greatly while recuperating at Dolores’s house.
The only problem was Camilla’s message that she should refrain from using mana for the time being.
In the end, the cause of all her problems was mana overuse.
Which also meant that as long as she avoided that, there would be no major obstacle to her recovery.
"…So get some more rest."
"Waaah."
"…Sigh."
Yeomhwa lay on the bed, rolling her pillow around and whining.
"What’s Lionel doing?"
She had expected to wait at least a year for a piece of equipment to be made.
For high-quality equipment, that was generally normal, and it could easily take three years.
But Dolores thought differently, and Yeomhwa had been quite surprised to hear it.
Maybe it wouldn’t take that long.
"…He’s started making it."
"Oh, what’s he making?"
It had finally started!
Yeomhwa’s eyes began to sparkle.
Dolores’s gaze turned toward the window…
The workshop was visible beyond the garden, and since its door happened to be open, Lionel could vaguely be seen inside.
There was a single rose in front of Lionel.
And the boy was joining metal petals together to make a flower…
A flower?
He was making a flower for Yeomhwa?
"What’s he making?"
"…I don’t know."
A finished product would come out eventually… but Dolores didn’t want to tell her now.
Knowing Yeomhwa’s personality, she would definitely say something like…
Was he preparing flowers for her already, or did the kid already know his older woman’s tastes so well…
It was obvious that such pointless talk would rattle Dolores’s mental state.
"Huh? Then I’ll go loo—"
The moment Yeomhwa tried to sit up from the bed.
Rrrk…
Dolores drew the curtains shut.
"Good night, Yeomhwa."
Then she walked straight outside.
"……It’s five in the afternoon, though?"
Yeomhwa could only stare blankly at Dolores’s retreating back.
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