The Genius Construction Worker Who Moved to America - Chapter 7
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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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Episode 7
The Sorcerer of Wood Bending
“Don’t celebrate just yet, Leo.”
Kang Jun spoke curtly, his gaze fixed on the California sky exposed through the gaping hole in the ceiling.
He’d restored the main support beam, but that was merely the skeleton of the structure. The real problem with this decrepit mansion was that gaping head wound—the roof.
Kang Jun approached the weathered wooden ladder propped in one corner of the living room.
He had no intention of climbing it. He just needed a springboard.
‘Let me check those bonus stats.’
From the Hidden Quest reward just now: Strength Stat +3, and the passive skill Craftsman’s Grip Strength (Lv.1).
Kang Jun stepped onto the middle rung, leaped lightly, and stretched both hands toward the second-floor ceiling joist.
Thunk!
For an ordinary person, his fingertips would have brushed and slipped.
But the instant Kang Jun’s fingers met the rough wood grain, his grip strength activated like a hydraulic clamp. His fingertips sank into the wood fibers and locked perfectly in place.
Kang Jun tensed his forearms and pulled himself up effortlessly.
Leo’s jaw dropped as he watched Kang Jun rise onto the broken roof without a single creak of protest.
“Oh my God… Are you Spider-Man?”
Kang Jun caught his breath, standing on the sloped roof.
His body felt light. Fatigue was less than half of what it should have been, and the grip in both hands was firm and steady.
That was when it happened.
Ding!
[Tutorial Quest: ‘Foundation of the New World (Construction Commenced)’ cleared!]
[Your progress on the construction work and resolution of critical defects within an accelerated timeframe (4 days 18 hours, ahead of the original 7-day deadline) has been highly evaluated.]
[Early completion bonus applied. Rewards adjusted substantially upward.]
▶ Initial Settlement Support Payment Complete.
[Reward Grade Adjusted: $10,000 → $100,000]
[The funds have been transferred immediately to a temporary virtual account linked to your identity (freely usable throughout the United States).]
[System Support: An Anonymous Black Card has been generated in your pocket for convenient local payment processing.]
A subtle flicker crossed Kang Jun’s eyes.
He instinctively reached into the pocket of his work jacket.
His fingers brushed something smooth and weighty—a fragment of metal-like card. A courtesy of the system: no identification needed, just swipe and pay.
Even ten thousand dollars would have freed him from the cycle of drifting between motel rooms and cheap hamburgers.
But one hundred thousand. Over one hundred and thirty million won.
‘Insane. He’s got guts bigger than I thought. Though I did stake my life on this….’
Kang Jun swallowed a hollow laugh and maintained his composure. His face remained blank, but his mind was already calculating rapidly.
A hundred thousand dollars. For ninety days of visa residence, it was enough to cover food, lodging, tools, and materials without a single constraint.
But the sweetness didn’t last long.
Flash!
The system window blazed red and an alarm sounded.
[A new Main Quest has been activated!]
[Quest: Create a Roof of Distinction]
Arthur’s decrepit mansion stands reduced to its bare skeleton. Ordinary methods cannot extend the remaining life of this house. As an agent of the great god of architecture, prove your worth by constructing a roof so sound and extraordinary that none could have imagined it—a roof worthy of a master craftsman.
▶ Condition: Maintain the contract with Arthur (use not a single nail throughout the repair).
▶ Time Limit: 14 days
▶ Reward: [Classified (Hidden Trait Reward)]
▶ Penalty for Failure: Ability confiscation and immediate death
Kang Jun clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“There it is. I knew he wouldn’t just hand over a hundred thousand dollars for nothing.”
Complaining wouldn’t help. He had to see this mad ordeal through if he wanted to live.
Kang Jun gazed down at the pitiful state of the roof beneath his feet.
Asphalt shingles torn away by brutal winds, waterproof sheets rotted and crumbling, rafters bleached and discolored by rain and wind.
Kang Jun knelt in the center of the roof and placed his palm against the sparse frame of the roof trusses.
‘Material Voice.’
A gentle rush of sound.
▶ Target: Red Pine roof beams and rafter cluster
▶ Condition: Severe deterioration and decay in progress. (Moisture content: 28%)
▶ Structural Integrity: 18% (critical threshold—risk of complete collapse if strong winds occur)
▶ Hidden Defect: Oxidation within the timber caused by rust from corroded nails driven in improperly during past repairs. Fiber bond collapse in progress.
The condition was more complicated than he’d anticipated.
Moisture had lingered too long, leaving the roof’s structural members unable to function properly. If he simply loaded heavy materials onto this frame, the weight would exceed what it could bear and the entire structure would collapse through to the first floor.
And the most severe constraint.
‘Not a single nail. I have to roof this entire expanse without a single nail.’
In modern wooden construction, roofing meant firing thousands of nails with a nail gun to secure everything in place.
To withstand the upward lift that wind exerts on a roof required the bonding power of metal. To solve it without nails, using only wooden joinery, demanded absolutely perfect structural mechanics.
‘He’s testing me directly, isn’t he?’
A fire of competition ignited in Kang Jun. His mind began to race.
A structure without metal that simultaneously withstands both the weight of gravity and the force of wind—the most perfect of all designs.
There was only one answer.
“An arch.”
Bend straight timber into curves, and use the resulting tension and compression to lock each piece in place like wedges bearing against one another.
A blueprint fusing Eastern traditional architecture with ancient Roman building methods took shape in Kang Jun’s mind.
Once his design was complete, Kang Jun jumped down from the roof.
Arthur and Leo, who had been waiting in the living room, looked up at him.
“Mr. Jun, how’s the roof condition?”
“As bad as I expected. The framework is rotted halfway through—if we just lay new shingles on top, the whole thing will cave in.”
“Oh, Lord… So in the end, without driving in thousands of nails….”
“Who said anything about nails? Instead, the gable roof is going to be difficult. We’ll remove the rotted framework and cover the entire roof with an arch structure.”
“An arch?! You mean you’re going to bend those thick rafters and shape them like a bow?!”
Arthur cried out in alarm.
As a carpenter who’d spent his whole life wrestling with wood, he knew full well the difficulty of that technique.
Kang Jun turned to Leo.
“Leo, those materials you brought yesterday are still stacked in the yard, right?”
“Yes! Twenty pieces of premium Red Pine Timber, four inches each, plus a waterproof sheet and oil stain—all stacked up! We used one on the column earlier, so there are nineteen left.”
Leo suddenly tilted his head.
“Wait a second—nineteen pieces can’t possibly cover this entire roof. Did we order the wrong amount of material?”
“Those nineteen pieces are supports. They’ll act like ribs, holding up the entire roof.”
“Ah! Ribs! But if we only use nineteen supports, won’t the spacing be too wide?”
“The damaged ceiling section is exactly 10.8 meters. If we space nineteen supports sixty centimeters apart, calculate how many meters that gives us.”
Leo’s eyes rolled back and forth as he calculated.
“Nineteen times sixty centimeters… 1,140… Accounting for the end caps, that’s exactly 10.8 meters…!”
“Correct. The twentieth piece was ordered to account for the patch repair on the column.”
Goosebumps erupted across Leo’s entire body.
The moment he first saw this house yesterday, this man had calculated—by eye alone—the exact length of the damaged section, the amount of lumber needed for column repairs, and the precise number of supports required.
“Truly… do you have a supercomputer installed in your brain?”
Arthur ventured carefully into the conversation.
“What are you planning to cover those arch supports with? Waterproof sheets and shingles would be difficult to secure without nails.”
“There’s a way. I’ll show you as we go.”
Arthur was left speechless by Kang Jun’s confident reply.
“One week. I’ll have the support beams bent, the waterproof sheet joined, and the roof installed—everything done by then.”
The system had given him fourteen days. Kang Jun had set his sights on half that: seven.
To maximize the Hidden Trait Reward, speed was essential.
“One week? Have you lost your mind? Bending thick wood requires a steam box—there’s no other way! Just cooling and setting takes days, and here we are with no equipment whatsoever, and—”
“If we don’t have equipment, we use nature. There’s nothing that can’t be done on a construction site.”
Kang Jun gave Leo—who’d gone blank—a light tap on the shoulder.
“And Leo, from today until the work is finished, let’s just set up a simple cot in the corner of your office.”
“My office?”
“I’ll need to work on the blueprints through the night.”
“Ah! For our skilled craftsman, I’ll bring out the finest sofa!”
That night. Leo’s office in Pasadena.
The cot was there, but Kang Jun didn’t lie down.
‘Finish it as fast as possible.’
He stood before a large drafting board, gripping only a worn pencil stub—no compass, no protractor—and drew out the blueprints.
Scratch, scratch.
Diameter and circumference, the wood’s elastic modulus—all flowing from his fingertips without a single formula, creating perfect arches in precise proportion.
* * *
The next morning.
The mansion’s sprawling backyard had transformed into a war zone.
Arthur sat on the front deck, listening to the sounds drifting up from the back.
Thump, thump—the sound of earth being dug up.
Splash, splash—the sound of water being poured out.
“Kang Jun… what on earth are you doing back there?”
Kang Jun offered no reply, lost in his work, caked in dust.
Leo and Kang Jun had carved out a trench seven meters long and one meter wide before sunrise—pure, brutal labor with nothing but two field shovels and their bare hands. No excavator.
Without the Craftsman’s Grip Strength and his enhanced Strength Stat, it would have taken half a day just to dig.
Kang Jun laid a Waterproof Sheet seamlessly across the bottom of the trench, connected a garden hose, and filled it with water. He’d created a makeshift reservoir in the middle of the yard.
“Leo! Get all the Red Pine Timber into the water! Weight it down with stones so it doesn’t float!”
“In fifteen years in construction, I’ve never done anything like this!”
Leo grumbled as he pushed nineteen four-inch-thick beams into the water, straining with each one.
But this alone wouldn’t bend the wood. To soften the fibers of such thick timber, steam and heat of over one hundred degrees Celsius were essential.
“Kang Jun! You think soaking this thick lumber in cold water will bend it? You need to boil it! Don’t tell me you’re planning to light a fire at the bottom of a pit?”
“Who said anything about a fire at the bottom? We light it from outside.”
Kang Jun stacked firewood over the pile of river stones and chunks of scrap concrete he’d gathered in one corner of the yard, then ignited it with a gas torch.
Whoooosh!
Crimson flames swallowed the wood. The stones blazed with ferocious intensity.
Just over an hour later, when the rocks glowed red like they’d been freshly pulled from a volcano.
“Stand back, Leo!”
Kang Jun seized the white-hot stones with long iron tongs and hurled them mercilessly into the water pit where the lumber was soaking.
Ssssshhhhiiiiing!!!! Boom!
White steam erupted in an explosion, accompanied by a deafening roar.
“Hack! Hack! I can’t see anything! My skin’s going to cook!”
“What on earth are you doing?”
Hundreds of degrees Celsius in stone meeting ice-cold water—a vaporization phenomenon of violent intensity.
The entire yard vanished beneath clouds of steam so thick you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face. No steam box required. A wild, open-air sauna had materialized.
“With this kind of punishment, there’s no way it could hold up.”
Leo and Arthur stood speechless, witnessing something they’d never seen before.
Kang Jun’s extraordinary Wood Bending exhibition was underway.
미국으로 건너간 천재 노가다꾼 7화
지 은 이
칼만
발 행 처
타이탄
기획 / 편집 / 제작
이성국
표 지
스튜디오 이너스
UCI
G720:N+A036-20260819030.0007
ⓒ2026, 칼만
※ 이 전자책은 대한민국 저작권법의 보호를 받는 저작물입니다.
저작자와 발행처의 허락 없이 본 저작물의 내용의 일부나 전체를 어떠한 형태로도 재가공할 수 없습니다.
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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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