I Stepped on Their Shadows and Skills Started Copying Like Crazy - Chapter 11

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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11
Old Choi Deok-su sat before the Furnace, quietly examining the fruits of his labor, when a faint smile played across his lips.
‘Either he’s got nerves of steel, or his courage has flown straight out the window. An interesting lad, that one.’
He’d said to watch and learn, to pretend he wasn’t there and simply work—nothing more.
It was almost absurd.
This wasn’t something you could master by looking.
‘He must be grasping at straws, but still—if there’s something that can be done, it must be done. Watch and learn to unlock this wretched thing? Ten years wouldn’t be enough for that.’
Time slipped away, and evening fell.
The boy had arrived around midday, so more than six hours had passed in silence.
The sun had long since set.
With that final task completed, the day’s work was done.
Choi Deok-su glanced sideways at the young man beside him.
‘He hasn’t budged from that spot once, except when I needed to rest.’
For hours now, the youth had sat silently beside him, a steadfast presence as Choi Deok-su labored without pause.
Though he sat a little distance from the Furnace—heat made such a distance tempting—he remained rooted there, sweat streaming down his face, and there was something almost endearing about his stubborn vigil.
‘I thought his nearness might become a nuisance, but it hasn’t.’
Smithing wasn’t merely striking iron in front of the Furnace all day.
When needed, one had to cool the metal at intervals, and there was far more movement required than one might think.
He’d expected the boy’s proximity to grate on him.
Yet remarkably, each time it became necessary, the youth shifted without being told—as if by instinct.
‘He’s not entirely ignorant of the craft, that much is clear.’
But only that much.
With a keen eye, anyone could pick up the basics in a month or two.
“Well, that’s all from me. I’ve shown you what there is to show. There’s nothing left to teach—I won’t manufacture falsehoods just to have more to say. So what will you do? Concede defeat and admit the truth?”
Now it was the young man’s turn to prove his words.
The youth’s shrewd expression vanished, replaced by one of utter seriousness as he carefully took the Tongs and Hammer from Choi Deok-su’s hands.
“I’ll give it a try.”
And so their positions were reversed.
“Be careful. It’ll be rather hot there.”
“Don’t worry about the person who should worry about you. That’s not right.”
“True enough. Then I’ll begin.”
Despite his confident words, the young man sat before the Furnace and did nothing.
Not from ignorance, but from precise knowledge—a deliberate pause born of understanding.
That stillness caught Choi Deok-su’s eye.
‘That’s right. You can’t just plunge it into the fire as it burns now.’
A sudden application of extreme heat to cold metal could produce microscopic fractures.
For a blade, such damage was tantamount to a death sentence.
The Furnace had just finished its work; its heat needed to cool first.
And cool it did, in time.
Choi Deok-su watched with sharp eyes, waiting to see what the young man would do next.
‘He waited for the fire to cool. So then… yes, that’s exactly it.’
The youth didn’t plunge the blade recklessly into the flames.
Instead, he laid it along the very edge of the fire.
It was the same patience he’d shown while waiting for the Furnace to cool.
Preheating—a careful process to warm the steel gradually, sparing it from the shock of sudden temperature change.
When the blade had absorbed sufficient warmth, only then did the young man push it deep into the Furnace’s heart.
The ravenous flames swallowed the steel, sparks scattering in all directions, yet he didn’t so much as blink.
‘Now it truly begins.’
Choi Deok-su watched in silence, following the young man’s every movement.
The youth kept the blade in constant motion.
His hand, gripping the Tongs, moved with practiced rhythm, turning and rotating the blade so it absorbed heat evenly on all sides.
Like a fishmonger grilling his catch, each movement was deliberate—never rushing, never allowing any part to burn or remain underdone.
Even as he worked, the young man pumped the Bellows steadily, coaxing the fire’s temperature higher with each breath.
‘Excellent.’
With each pump of the Bellows, the flames shed their red hue, shifting through orange and into yellow.
When the fire had turned completely yellow, the young man’s pumping ceased—as if by magic.
It was a signal: the proper temperature had been reached.
To begin work now would mark him as a novice.
Choi Deok-su’s gaze sharpened as he waited to see what the youth would do next.
‘There. The temperature you wanted. Now what will you do?’
Could he hear Choi Deok-su’s thoughts?
Rather than rush forward, the young man chose to wait again, studying the fire with deliberate care.
Like a seasoned blacksmith who had kept vigil over flames for decades.
Soon enough, he began working the Bellows again.
It was nothing like before, when he’d done nothing but raise the temperature.
Now he pumped in slow, measured intervals, maintaining the Furnace at a precise, constant heat.
Time slipped away unnoticed.
When the young man finally withdrew the blade from the Furnace, the steel glowed with a vivid crimson—the color of a perfectly ripe persimmon.
‘That’s it. Exactly the right Heat Color.’
Choi Deok-su swallowed hard, almost without realizing it.
That hue was the ideal temperature for Forging.
The boy had nailed it precisely.
“Hah….”
He placed the blade on the Anvil, drew a deep breath, and finally raised the Hammer, beginning to strike.
Clang! Clang—! Clank!
‘Certainly… he’s weak at this.’
The strikes were clumsy compared to the flawless preparatory work that had come before.
It was the first moment Choi Deok-su felt disappointed in the young man, though he’d done nothing but marvel until now.
‘Grinding a blade means working dead iron, but Forging means working living iron. It’s a different world entirely. He showed promise, but it seems he’s reached his limit here.’
Yet, as if to mock Choi Deok-su’s very thoughts, the young man’s strikes gradually began to find their own rhythm.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
“…!”
The irregular, hesitant sound from before was gone, and in its place came the pleasant, resonant ring of a skilled blacksmith at work.
The beginning is always hardest; maintaining it is easier still.
Once he’d found that ideal rhythm, the young man seemed to grasp something, his strikes growing firmer.
‘It’s not slipping anymore…! When did it stop? When did those stray notes disappear?’
The rhythm was familiar, the posture was familiar. They were unmistakably his own.
But something was different.
Bolder somehow. More assured.
It resembled him so closely, yet not quite.
And that resemblance was achingly familiar.
As if he’d seen it before, in life.
‘Ah….’
For a moment, beyond the heat shimmer of the Furnace, the shimmering form of the young man overlapped with another face.
Someone now lost to another world—the person who resembled him most of all.
His son, Kang Hyeok, who had always said “I’ll be back!” before heading to the Tower, never to return.
The old man’s eyes blurred with the image of Si-hyeon, the young man before him.
It wasn’t the heat shimmer.
‘I’ve grown old and foolish.’
Time might rust steel, but longing only sharpened with each passing year.
* * *
The first thing I did after stepping into the wager was Shadow Stepping.
An old man with an absurdly delicious scent.
If that were the case, I figured I could afford to abandon the Healing touch and engrave a Blacksmith Skill instead—and still come out ahead.
But what’s this? Stepping on the old man’s shadow changed nothing.
Which meant he wasn’t an Awakener.
‘Yet he smells this appetizing….’
I was inwardly amazed.
And so I learned something else.
Half a century of hammering iron had made even a non-Awakener smell as delicious as a Skill-bearing Awakener.
It was a fresh shock.
Could technique honed to such extremity be no different from a Skill?
Whatever the world might think, my instincts were telling me exactly that.
‘Skill is just a word—ultimately, a Skill is nothing more than a correction that makes you better at some action. This man has already created his own Skill and mastered it through sheer practice.’
So the easy path of stealing a Skill by Shadow Stepping was closed to me.
But when one door closes, you don’t simply give up.
‘I’ve lived off this one talent. Without any Skill at all.’
All I had to rely on now were my eyes and my gift for imitation.
For hours afterward, I stood by the hot forge, sweating buckets, doing nothing but watching the old man’s movements.
A chance to legitimately observe and learn the genuine craftsmanship of a master who smells this delicious—even without a Skill.
There was no room for carelessness.
‘If it came down to it, I was ready to punch in every single day just to learn this properly….’
Given that the first floor was only a single level, climbing one floor a day for a while would be nothing, so I planned to rush straight here the moment I finished ascending.
No matter how many days it took to learn.
‘But why does it feel like I could do it today?’
Somehow everything appeared sharper than before.
I’d always had good eyes for detail, but this felt different.
‘The sense of controlling the fire’s temperature, the angle of bringing down the hammer, the force behind each strike, the timing of cooling the steel. I can feel all of it so vividly.’
Could this be the effect of my awakening?
The countless details pouring out in real time from the subject I was trying to imitate came through far more minutely and clearly than before.
Just as my confidence was peaking, the old man stepped back from his work and handed me the hammer.
‘Can I do this? Right now, like this?’
I hesitated for a moment, but then decided to trust my instinct and gripped the hammer in my hand.
And so the work of restoring the sword began.
The start was promising.
Even I was surprised.
The problem came when I started striking the steel with the hammer myself.
‘…Oh no.’
The first strike was a disaster.
The hammer hit the wrong spot, and my arm quickly grew sore.
But I couldn’t stop.
I’d started this whole wager to somehow change the old man’s mind and get him to examine the sword directly, but I’d long since forgotten about that bet somewhere in my thoughts.
All I could see was the red steel before my eyes and the hammer in my hands.
All I could hear was the song of the steel.
How much time had passed as I struck the metal in a state of complete absorption?
“Hah….”
At last the Forging was finished.
As the sound of the hammer ceased, the world fell into silence.
‘We’re almost there.’
But nothing is finished until it’s truly finished.
Until now, I had been breathing life back into the fading sword, but one final step remained—Tempering, which would lock that breath into cold steel.
If I succeeded, the lump of iron would finally be reborn as a sword, but a single moment of carelessness could reduce all my effort to nothing.
‘If I fail, it goes straight to scrap metal.’
The sword could become too soft, or it could bend or warp.
Worst of all was if it shattered completely.
There might be ways to salvage the other outcomes, but once it broke, there was truly no remedy.
‘How well I’ve done until now doesn’t matter. Everything comes down to this final moment.’
I steeled myself and placed the sword back in the Furnace.
To raise the temperature one last time.
‘It can’t be too hot, and it can’t be too cold.’
When the sword had once again turned a vivid crimson.
‘Now!’
Speed was everything.
My body moved faster than thought.
Without the slightest hesitation, I drew the sword and plunged it straight into the cold water.
Ssssshhhhhhh!
An ear-splitting, violent sound.
The Smithy filled with billowing white steam.
The sword thrashed violently, like a final spasm.
Just as a newborn baby cries and writhes at the threshold between life and death, this blade too thrashed and convulsed at the crossroads of rebirth.
‘We’re almost there. Please…!’
Soon all that violence subsided, and as the sword found its peace again, I slowly drew it from the water.
“…It’s done.”
The opposite of moments before when it had glowed crimson—now the blade, dark as a night sky, poured forth a deep blue light.
Beneath it, beads of water reflected the dying embers of the Furnace and gleamed like stars.
I could not tear my eyes from its beauty.
I’d wondered what the old man meant about the sword breathing, but now I felt it too.
‘It’s alive. It’s truly alive.’
A moment ago it had cried and thrashed, yet now it lay tranquil as if nothing had happened.
As if to celebrate the birth of the peacefully sleeping blade, a System message appeared.
[The Sealed State of the Old Corroded Longsword has been released.]
[External System interference detected. Item information is being reconstructed.]
[A unique designation is required for item identification.]
[Once you assign a name, you will be able to access that item’s information.]
“Phew….”
System-confirmed recovery successful.
Just by stepping on a shadow, the Skill copied itself.
Author |
Killingpart
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Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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