How to Survive as an Extra

Chapter 118

The friction of metal continued to ring out.

Without any sign of stopping, with uniform force, following a steady rhythm.

Cha Yeri and I made our presence known several times over the course of about thirty minutes, but the dwarf never once lifted his eyes from the anvil.

Without a word, he simply kept striking the metal.

CLANG!

CLANG!

Cha Yeri, who had been fidgeting with her pistol since earlier, loosened her guard at some point and stared blankly at the dwarf.

I kept my Demonic Eye active and swallowed a mana potion that had been hanging at my waist.

My mana was running low, but more than that, it was so hot in here that I wanted to wet my throat.

“Would you like one?”

I took out a fresh potion and offered it to Cha Yeri.

She was drenched in sweat as well.

But she did not react at all.

She did not even look back at me.

As though she had hardened in place while standing.

“…A status ailment.”

Only then did I notice that something was interfering with Cha Yeri’s mana.

That mana was the color of the furnace flames.

I had thought it was not an ordinary fire, but to stiffen a body with heat alone…

“Do not tell me that fire is…”

Fortunately, it was not affecting me at all.

Most likely because my Endurance stat had already exceeded the bounds of a normal human.

Still, what was I supposed to do?

Should I place Bind on her and restrict her mana?

As I was caught in a rush of thoughts, the dwarf finally spoke.

“It would be better to take her outside. Unless you want to watch her soul dry up as she stands.”

Even as he spoke, he continued striking the metal with the same even force.

I did not have the leisure to respond. I hoisted Cha Yeri onto my back and crawled out again.

Then I took out several potions from my inventory and tilted them to her lips. Only after I confirmed that her breathing had stabilized did I return to where the dwarf was.

CLANG!

CLANG!

The same unchanging metallic rhythm.

I spoke carefully.

“Thank you.”

I did not expect an answer.

He gave no reaction and simply kept hammering the metal.

For a moment, it seemed we would waste time like that again, but after a few seconds he asked an abrupt question.

“That eye of yours… how far can it see right now?”

He still did not turn around.

Of course, if he could sense mana, it was not strange, but what mattered was that he recognized it.

More precisely, he recognized my Demonic Eye.

But how was I supposed to answer?

He could not be asking about the Demonic Eye’s ability in a simple sense…

Without finding a clear answer, I spoke.

“I can at least tell that you should not exist in this world.”

“I see.”

The dwarf suddenly set his tool down on the anvil.

Then, with a body worn by age, he turned to face me with effort.

The moment he turned, the metal resting on the anvil caught my eye.

A ring-shaped metal with an intensely familiar pure white sheen.

If my eyes were not deceiving me, it was jewelry forged from Platium.

Noticing my gaze, the dwarf spoke.

“As expected, you recognize it.”

“It would be stranger if I did not.”

In truth, what shocked me was not the existence of Platium, but that he was forging it.

Platium was a metal so hard it was practically impossible to destroy physically.

Even bending raw ore into a ring shape would take years.

Which meant the dwarf had been hammering at this anvil without end to achieve a perfect curve.

Just how long had he remained here…?

I quickly pressed on.

“Who are you?”

“As you said, I am a being who should not be here.”

“Then why are you sweating in a place like this?”

“To keep a promise to a friend.”

A friend…

By the setting, there was no way another dwarf could have survived from an exterminated race.

In that case, he likely meant a promise with a human of this world.

I asked again.

“Did you carve the murals on the upper level too?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Instinct. A struggle not to be forgotten.”

“Then that serpent, the Basilisk… was that your doing too?”

“Yes. I did not expect it to burst out like that, though. Still, to think there is a being in this world who knows its name… Well, there is nothing surprising about that anymore.”

This time, the dwarf asked me.

“More importantly, how did you come here?”

There were many reasons I had ended up here, but he would not understand anything if I mentioned the Special Affairs Division or Cha Yeri.

So in the end, I gave a vague answer.

“Because I was drawn here. By something.”

“Hm. A truly fitting answer for Hyun Yuyeol’s bloodline.”

“…”

So it was.

From the fact that he knew my Demonic Eye, I had suspected he had a connection to Hyun Yuyeol.

“What relationship do you have with Hyun Yuyeol?”

“We exchanged promises. He offered us a new land to live in, and we offered him our talents.”

Who was “us”?

Survivors of higher races like this dwarf?

The original author of this world had been me, but I knew nothing at all of the narrative tied to “Ji Seokhyeon” and Gangwon-do.

Because it had been designed by the Avid Reader from the beginning.

In the first place, I had never written a dwarf character into the setting bible.

“By ‘land to live in,’ do you mean Gangwon-do?”

“Yes. But it is all in the past now. Gangneung was swallowed by flames, and we scattered so completely that we do not even know whether the others are alive. At least…”

The dwarf trailed off and stared at me openly.

As though comparing his memory of Hyun Yuyeol to the sight of me standing before him.

Meeting his gaze, I asked.

“Who do you mean by ‘us’?”

He turned back to the furnace flames and spoke in a calm voice.

“This will be a long story. You should sit on the floor for a while.”

When I leaned my back against the wall and sat, the dwarf began his lengthy tale.

First, he said that when the Great Rift opened, he had been swept into this world by the Demonic Beings.

Not only him, but also the last surviving remnants of the higher races that the Demonic Beings had exterminated.

They cooperated with humans and helped oppose the Demonic Beings.

Secretly, on Sword Saint Kim Yuseong’s side.

Fortunately, the battle of the Great Rift ended in humanity’s victory.

But during the fighting, the Broom of Gluttony fell into Gangwon-do, and my grandfather, Hyun Yuyeol, left Seoul with the monsters that remained there and headed for Gangwon-do.

In that process, “they,” who could not blend into human society, naturally followed Hyun Yuyeol. With their knowledge added to his, they founded Gangneung, a transcendent city.

“Back then, we believed we could begin a new life. For a while, we even lived openly with humans again.”

“The fact that you believed… means…”

“Yes. In the end, we were nothing more than outsiders. This was not Hyun Yuyeol’s fault. It was the result of an instinctive difference between races.”

It was not difficult to understand what he meant.

The first humans who settled in Gangneung may have felt less hostility toward “them,” but as more people arrived after hearing rumors of Gangneung’s growth, they would have seen them as mere remnants from beyond the Great Rift.

“Eventually, we decided to leave Gangneung. Each of us would search for a place to live and wander Gangwon-do. Until then, it was peaceful. The land altered by the Broom of Gluttony was not very different from what lay beyond the Rift.”

“Until thirteen years ago.”

“Yes.”

The dwarf lifted his eyes from the furnace and looked at me.

“Hyun Yuyeol and we swore to protect one another until the day our strength connected again. Yet that day, we could not bring ourselves to go to Gangneung. It may be an excuse, but… the sight of humans slaughtering humans was too unfamiliar to us.”

“…”

By the setting, the higher races beyond the Rift had not advanced civilization to the level of this world’s humans.

So it was only natural for them to have a tribal temperament.

If dragons had been flying overhead breathing fire, humans in this world probably would never have dared to build airplanes, either.

“After that, we scattered completely. Some may have returned beyond the Rift, and others may have made misguided choices out of guilt for failing their oath.”

“Thirteen years ago, Hyun Yuyeol was already dead. You did not have to bear such guilt.”

“No. We abandoned our promise after being seduced by a comfort we had never known beyond the Rift. The fact that you, with Hyun Yuyeol’s eye, found me means the power of that promise is still enduring.”

The dwarf approached me.

Then, with a hand that seemed made of nothing but calluses, he stroked one side of my cheek.

“I can see his face. It is as though a demon came to expose my guilt.”

“…”

He grabbed my clothing and pulled me to my feet.

Then he turned back toward the furnace, lifted the ring resting on the anvil, and spoke.

“Take it.”

“What?”

“Hyun Yuyeol always said he wanted to hide his mana. That light that resembles the Demonic Beings… Perhaps he prepared this for you.”

“…”

The dwarf placed the ring into my hands.

The moment I touched the Platium ring, the dark-attribute mana flowing through my body vanished.

As though it had never existed.

He quickly gathered his anvil and tools.

Then, when he extinguished the furnace, darkness settled over the area.

“Are you leaving?”

“I have kept my promise to my friend, so as you said, there is no longer any reason for me to exist in this world.”

With those words, the dwarf drew a bizarre stone from his clothing.

He hurled it to the floor with all his strength, and an alien current of mana formed in that spot.

“…!”

A Rift.

A small Rift, just large enough for a single person to pass through.

Only then did I speak again.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to where I came from. That is the natural order.”

Without looking back, the dwarf stepped into the Rift.

The moment he vanished, the Rift evaporated without a trace.

The stone that had created it disappeared as well.

I stared at the spot where the Rift had been for a long time, then lowered my gaze to the ring in my hand.

“Hyun Yuyeol, Gangwon-do… and another race…”

No matter how I thought about it, the context of all this felt wrong.

Hyun Yuyeol’s story sounded plausible, but I could not understand why Platium had ended up in my hands.

“So this… is something the Avid Reader gave me.”

This episode was entirely shaped by the Avid Reader’s settings, so the reward must have been as well…

Why?

After tormenting me so thoroughly, was he trying to soothe me now?

More than anything, this reward was too sweet.

Platium restrained dark attribute mana, which meant that as long as I wore this ring, I could unleash sword strikes freely with any sword.

If I wore it openly in public, it would draw attention, but it could also serve as proof that I was not a dark-attribute awakened being.

So why would he hand me an item with such an enormous advantage?

Was it some kind of twisted “give the hated one an extra rice cake”?

“Is this going to bring me bad luck for no reason?”

Maybe I would get dragged into some absurd incident because I wore it, or maybe it would erase my dark attribute forever.

A thought suddenly flickered through my mind.

Maybe the reason I had become a main character was that the Avid Reader simply liked the character called Ji Seokhyeon.

Seen that way, this reward became easier to accept.

Just as I had granted Lee Eunho a fortunate encounter, he was granting one to me…

“Damn it. Should I just throw it away…?”