The blacksmith's shop stood just a short walk from Grundar's house, its wide doors thrown open to let out the heat and the ringing echoes of metal on metal. The familiar scent of iron, coal, and oil filled the air the moment we stepped inside.

"Try using your ability."

The demand came so suddenly that I barely had time to react.

"…Right now?" I asked, blinking.

Instead of answering, Grundar pointed toward a workbench nearby. A thin metal rod lay among scattered tools, still faintly warm from recent use.

I hesitated for a brief moment, then focused. Mana stirred within me, flowing outward in a familiar pattern. I reached for the metal, pulling at it with magnetic force.

Thunk.

The rod shot through the air in a straight line and landed neatly in my palm.

For a second, the workshop fell silent.

Grundir's eyes widened, his rough brows lifting as he stared at the rod in my hand as if it had betrayed the laws of the world.

"So it really was true…" he muttered.

I shot him a sulky look. "I've told you that already. More than once."

Only now does he believe me.

I closed my fingers around the rod and placed it back on the bench with a dull clatter, my mood sinking. Being dragged here like this, right when I was about to hear Vermut's advice, didn't exactly put me in a good state of mind.

"So," I said, crossing my arms, "why did you call me down here?"

Grundir finally tore his gaze away from the tools and looked at me properly. His expression shifted from shock to something more serious—almost contemplative.

"That ability of yours," he said slowly, "it's not something you should be using carelessly. Especially not at the Academy."

I frowned. "You called me all the way here just to say that?"

"No," he replied firmly, shaking his head. He walked over to the anvil and rested a heavy hand against it, the metal ringing faintly. "I called you because I wanted to be sure. And now that I am…"

He paused, then let out a short, breathy laugh.

"You've got a rare gift. One that even most mages would kill to have."

I didn't feel particularly proud hearing that. If anything, my unease only grew.

"…And?" I prompted.

Grundir met my eyes, his gaze sharp and unyielding.

"I don't make weapons anymore."

…I know.

At least, I know that much.

But what did that have to do with what he'd said earlier?

I glanced around the blacksmith shop again, letting my eyes trace the familiar details. The anvil was clean. Too clean. The forge—something that should have been roaring day and night—was cold and dark, its embers long extinguished.

A blacksmith's forge going cold was never a coincidence.

The furnace had gone out.

And with it, so had his passion.

I didn't know the full story. Even in the comic, it was only touched on briefly—some incident in the past, some regret he never spoke about in detail. What I did know was that one day, eventually, Grundir would pick up his hammer again.

Just… not yet.

"I see," I said quietly.

"But," Grundir continued, his voice lowering, "there is one thing I've always wanted to make."

That made me pause.

For someone who claimed he no longer forged weapons, his posture had subtly changed. His shoulders were straighter. His eyes—just for a moment—held a faint glimmer.

The blacksmith in him wasn't dead.

Just buried.

"What is it?" I asked, meeting his gaze calmly.

Grundir's lips curled into something halfway between a grin and a grimace.

"A golem."

"…A golem?"

"A steel golem," he clarified, his eyes lighting up, "that shoots lasers from its chest."

"…What?"

"A steel golem," he repeated seriously, as if explaining something perfectly reasonable, "that emits concentrated laser beams from its chest plate."

I stared at him.

Silently.

For a long second.

That design… sounded extremely familiar.

Uncomfortably familiar.

"…You mean," I said slowly, "a humanoid construct made of reinforced steel, powered by a mana core, with a central emission unit in its torso?"

Grundir's eyebrows shot up. "You get it?"

"No," I replied flatly. "That's exactly the problem. I get it too well."

A vague sense of recognition surfaced in my mind, like a puzzle piece slowly sliding into place.

"It had an angular exterior," Grundar continued, his voice steady, "and the chest only opened when it fired its laser. It charged itself using electricity."

With every word, the image in my head grew clearer.

The dungeon.

The one I'd stumbled into beneath the academy.

The steel golem that nearly crushed me to death.

Grundar's description matched it perfectly—down to the smallest detail.

"…How do you know about that?" I asked before I could stop myself.

Grundar turned his gaze toward me, clearly surprised by my reaction.

But that only deepened my confusion.

I had never told anyone about that dungeon. Not Berno, not Elena—no one. So how could Grundar know about the steel golem that lurked there?

"I saw something related to it a long time ago," Grundar replied after a brief pause.

"A long time ago…?" I repeated.

His eyes shifted, as if glancing back into the past.

"Are you talking about…" Vermut slowly interjected, narrowing his eyes at Grundar, "…what we found back then?"

Grundar gave a small nod.

"Yes. The blueprint we discovered in that dungeon."

The air subtly changed.

Vermut straightened in his seat, his relaxed demeanor gone, replaced by sharp suspicion.

"A blueprint," Vermut muttered. "You never mentioned it being connected to something like that."

"At the time, we didn't understand what it was meant for," Grundar said calmly. "Just fragmented designs. Power circuits. Reinforced joints. A core mechanism that could store and release massive amounts of energy."

My heartbeat quickened.

A blueprint.

For the steel golem?

From the context of their conversation, it seemed they were talking about something akin to the blueprint of the steel golem I had encountered before.

"But didn't you say it had no practical possibility?" I asked.

"I did," Vermut replied calmly. "Because back then, I believed that even if we could reproduce its structure perfectly, there was no way to actually make it function."

Grundar crossed his thick arms, his expression complicated.

He could replicate incredibly complex mechanisms. After all, he had once been a craftsman renowned even among the dwarves—a race obsessed with perfection in forging and construction. If it came down to craftsmanship alone, the blueprint was not the issue.

The real problem lay elsewhere.

"No matter how precise the frame is," Grundar continued, his voice low, "a golem is nothing more than a pile of metal without something to drive it. There was no method, no core, no logic that could make it move on its own."

I nodded slowly. That much made sense. Even in the webtoon, steel golems were considered impossible for that exact reason.

"But now," Vermut said, turning slightly, "that problem no longer exists."

Grundar lifted his arm and pointed straight at me.

"But now, someone who can make it move has appeared right here."

"…Huh?"

The word slipped out before I could stop it.

Me?

As someone who had barely managed to follow their conversation until now, I could only stand there with a thoroughly stupid expression on my face.

"Wait—hold on," I said, raising both hands instinctively. "I don't remember agreeing to anything like that."

Grundar's lips curled into a wide, toothy grin at my words, as if he'd just confirmed something he'd been hoping for all along.

…But honestly, I was confused.

What did I have to do with a golem?

More specifically, what was I supposed to do with a golem? I didn't understand where this conversation was even headed.

"I've been thinking about the power source for the golem for a long time," Grundar said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I followed the blueprint exactly, over and over again. But no matter what I tried, I couldn't solve it."

So he'd already experimented on his own.

And yet, in the end, he'd hit the same wall every golem researcher eventually faced—the core problem.

The power source.

"A golem without a stable power supply is nothing more than an expensive statue," he continued with a bitter laugh. "Magic stones alone aren't enough. They burn out too quickly, or their output fluctuates."

That much, I knew. Even in the comic, unstable cores were the biggest weakness of artificial constructs.

"Then one day," Grundar said, his eyes lighting up, "it occurred to me—what if I didn't rely on magic alone? What if I could create an engine that used both magic and a powerful magnetic field?"

…Magnetic fields?

Now that was an unexpected direction.

"If magic could act as the fuel," he went on, growing more animated by the second, "and magnetism as the mechanism that keeps everything circulating and stable, then in theory, the golem could operate continuously."

It sounded absurd at first.

But only at first.

"The problem," Grundar sighed, spreading his hands helplessly, "is that there's no established method in this world to generate or control a magnetic field intentionally. Not like that, anyway."

That was when it finally clicked.

This was a fantasy world—one brimming with mana and miracles—but it lacked the technological foundation for concepts like electromagnetism. People here knew lightning magic, attraction spells, force manipulation… but they didn't understand magnetic fields as a principle.

Only after hearing that far did I slowly nod.

"So that's why…" I murmured.

That's why he'd reacted so strongly when he heard about my abilities.

Being able to manipulate magnetic force meant being able to create magnetic fields.

And a magnetic field, at its core, was simply an invisible space formed by forces of attraction and repulsion—objects pushing and pulling on each other without direct contact.

Something I could do.

Something I had already done.

Grundar leaned closer, his grin returning, sharper this time. "If you can generate even a stable, localized magnetic field, then my theory stops being fantasy."

In other words—

I wasn't here to fight a golem.

I was here to bring it to life.

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