Chapter 197: we have three hours

The air inside the floating market didn’t circulate. It hung low over the black timber planks, thick with the smell of scorched coke, wet basalt, and the cold salt brine that splashed through the gaps in the iron barges.

Jun-ho walked past a row of stalls selling rusted engine parts and dried river moss, his left hand holding the bare grip of The Ash Remnant. The solid black wedge felt heavy and stable against his thigh, its matte surface perfectly dry despite the damp sea mist that covered his gray undershirt. Every few paces, his rubber boots would hit a loose iron bolt in the floorboards, making a dull scrape that the busy local runners ignored.

Right behind him, Eun-bi carried her canvas bag over both shoulders, the flannel shirt tied tight around her ribs. Her headlamp was turned off, but her sharp face was moving constantly, her eyes tracking the dark alleys that led down into the rock fissures of the island cliff.

"The security grid out here is completely dead," she whispered, her voice dropping into a quiet murmur right at his shoulder as they turned a narrow corner near the refinery chimney. "No ministry sensors, no guild transponders. But look at the wall on the left. Every third shanty has a shortwave receiver wire running down the drain pipe. They’re matching the city bands manually."

A young man in a frayed leather vest and oil-stained trousers stepped out from the shadow of a rusted shipping container, blocking the narrow path. He had a thin, twitching face and a low-grade mana ring on his thumb that glowed with a weak, unstable orange light—a local information broker.

"You’re the vanguard from the morning wire," the boy said, his voice hushed but rapid. He didn’t look at Jun-ho’s face; his eyes were locked straight onto the dark shape of the black iron sword under the canvas duffel bag. "The Sun God office just updated the priority list. They’re offering an extra thousand crystals for the location log of the side exit. But I don’t care about the legacy families. I have the map for the First Sealed Unranked Trial hidden right under the northern cliff shelf. Five thousand won in raw stones, and the log is yours."

Jun-ho didn’t stop walking. He didn’t even lift his left arm. He simply kept his stride steady, his monstrous strength making his frame so heavy and rigid that when his shoulder brushed past the boy’s leather vest, the broker was thrown sideways against the iron container with a sharp click of his teeth, his orange ring sputtering out instantly.

"The stones are for the forge," Jun-ho said, his voice flat.

"Jun-ho," Eun-bi muttered, her hand catching the edge of his sleeve as they reached the red iron door of the blacksmith’s shop. "He’s going to tell the other runners we’re here."

"Let him tell them," Jun-ho said. "The runners don’t have the tools to clear this path anyway."

He pushed open the heavy iron door of the forge.

The room inside was large, built right into a natural cavern in the volcanic rock. The air was intensely hot, thick with the smell of sulfur and melting iron ore. In the center of the room sat a massive brick hearth, its coals burning with a bright, white-hot glare that cast long, sharp liquid shadows across the stone walls.

Behind the anvil stood Master Kwang. He was an old man with a completely bald head, a thick gray beard that reached his stomach, and arms that looked like knotted tree roots covered in old burn scars. He didn’t look up from the red iron plate he was hammering, the heavy iron mallet hitting the metal with a rhythmic, deafening roar.

Jun-ho walked up to the edge of the hearth, unslung the two heavy canvas sacks from his shoulder, and dropped them onto the dirt floor near the anvil tree trunk. The bags burst slightly, pouring a massive mountain of five hundred high-density blue crystals across the mud.

The old blacksmith stopped his hammer in mid-air. He turned his head slowly, his small, sharp eyes looking from the mountain of blue light up to the solid black matte metal of The Ash Remnant in Jun-ho’s left hand. The rhythmic roar of the shop died out completely, leaving only the slow, heavy hiss of the coal fire.

"That’s high-density foundation iron from Sector Zero," Master Kwang said, his voice deep and gravelly, like two stones grinding together. He laid his mallet down on the anvil with a dull sound. "Gyeong-su made the wedge, but he didn’t give it a hilt. He always was a lazy brute who expected the user to supply the skin."

"The blade needs an anchor," Jun-ho said, his face an unmoving sheet of stone. "And a proper wrap."

The old smith walked over, his calloused fingers running slowly along the smooth matte-black edge of the sword. He didn’t see the gray system boxes, but his hands could feel the immense, freezing density of the Ash Monarch Phase 2 mana humming right through the iron.

"To channel this kind of weight without shattering your wrist, you don’t use standard leather or silver wire," Master Kwang muttered, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the five hundred crystals on the floor. "You need a crossguard forged from the raw slag of the black basin, and a hilt wrapped in unrefined hemp cord soaked in the oil of a Tier 5 iron crawler. It will take three hours to temper the metal properly."

"We have three hours," Jun-ho said.

Eun-bi stepped forward, her yellow rain jacket rustling as she tapped the wooden counter near the back door. "The room upstairs is empty, isn’t it, Master Kwang? We’re taking the log for the night."

"The key is in the latch, girl," the old smith grunted, already using his heavy tongs to shovel a tray of the blue stones straight into the center of the white-hot coals. "The floorboards are loose. Don’t step too hard near the chimney line."

They walked up the narrow wooden steps behind the forge, entering a small, square room right above the workshop. The floor was warm from the heat of the hearth below, the air smelling of dry timber and old grease. Two low canvas cots sat near the window, which looked out over the dark grey mist of the outer bay.

Eun-bi dropped her canvas bag onto the boards, unzipped her plastic apron, and sat down on the edge of the cot. She pulled out the plastic bag of dry biscuits and a small container of salted river fish she had bought at the lower pier. She split the food into two neat halves on top of her clipboard, sliding one half toward his rubber boots.

"Eat," she said, her voice dropping into that regular, flat public-sector drawl as she bit into a cracker. "Your blood sugar is probably tanking again after shoving that broker."

Jun-ho sat across from her, his knees nearly touching hers in the small space. He took a piece of the fish, the salt clearing away the dry sulfur taste of the lower tunnels. The warmth from the floor boards was comfortable, cutting through the cold mana that had settled behind his ribs.

He looked at her sharp, tired face under the yellow hood. Her dark hair was finally beginning to dry, falling around her neck in soft, messy strands.

"You’re a very expensive partner, Kang Jun-ho," Eun-bi said softly, her eyes looking at his face through the dim yellow light of the oil lamp on the wall. She didn’t shift her weight back; her thigh stayed pressed firmly against the side of his heavy rubber boot, her posture relaxing completely for the first time since Friday morning. "We have a twenty-million-won bounty on the city wires, a mutated ledger in the bag, and an unranked trial waiting under the cliffs tomorrow."

"The trial will give us the next milestone," Jun-ho said, his voice quiet and steady in the warm room.

"Yeah? Well, it better give us some clean shirts too," she muttered, a small, genuine flush creeping up her neck as she reached down to pick up another piece of fish, her breath warm against his hand as the gray lines in his eye began to count down the final hours until the next sunrise.