Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 100

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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 100
For a small-to-mid-sized enterprise owner, chronic understaffing was an eternal headache. The larger the domain grew, the more proportionally the shortage of hands multiplied.
‘Still a long road ahead.’
Tay drummed his fingers against the table, thinking hard.
‘Harundel Marquess did agree to recognize the territories I conquered as my own, but……’
The problem was simple: he didn’t have enough mouths to feed them.
The labor was desperately thin, and the distance from his original domain was far. It was like having a pastry dangled before his eyes but lacking the hands to bring it to his lips.
‘Tch. What a waste of good land…… Should I just resell it as secondhand?’
There he sat, genuinely contemplating flipping his hard-won domain on the secondhand market—selling entire territories like used goods.
‘Selling Gehenna County in full, direct dealings preferred, no negotiation,’ he thought idly of advertising it through the Information Guild.
As he mulled over the ledgers and clicked through his mental abacus, the door opened.
Fartan entered the conference room with Gehenna Count in tow.
The battle was already over, cleanly decided.
With Gehenna Count utterly defeated, only the matter of what to do with the aftermath remained.
“Welcome, Gehenna Count.”
Tay greeted the vanquished nobleman with impeccable courtesy.
But Gehenna Count coldly dismissed that courtesy altogether.
“I have nothing to say to a Black Mage like you.”
“Truly, you have nothing to discuss?”
“Not a word.”
The count held his head high to the end, clinging to whatever shred of pride a defeated man could muster.
Tay studied him in silence for a moment, then opened his mouth with an almost serene calm.
“Then I suppose I’ll have to kill you.”
Tay’s tone shifted abruptly to a more blunt address, and Gehenna Count flinched, fixing him with a sharp glare.
But there was not a trace of hesitation or wavering in Tay’s expression.
“Gehenna Count. I will kill you. I will kill your entire family. I will slaughter every one of your retainers without exception. Will that satisfy you?”
His voice was remarkably composed—so matter-of-fact, as though he were merely deciding on tonight’s supper—and it was precisely that casualness that made the horror of the words all the more chilling.
“Y-you madman! How dare you……!”
“Madman? I’m simply making the most rational choice.”
Tay gave a light shrug.
“After all, I invited you here to negotiate. And it was you—and you alone—who kicked away that conversation first.”
Tay’s voice turned colder still.
“I’m a busy man. At a time when Harundel Marquess seeks to subjugate and bring Salkat and the Countess’s territories into submission, I cannot waste time indulging someone like you who refuses to cooperate.”
Gehenna Count’s face drained of all color.
Whether from rage or terror, only the count himself could say.
“So for me, it’s simple enough. I slaughter all of you, strip this city of every last coin of wealth, drag all the domain’s people off as slaves, and be done with it. And I’ll make absolutely certain that the blame for all of it falls not on me, but on you for refusing to negotiate. I’ll take some heat from noble society later, perhaps, but it’s wartime now—things have a way of working themselves out.”
It was, remarkably, an entirely rational argument.
The count, shuddering with horror, cried out.
“The T-temple……! The Temple won’t simply stand by while you commit such atrocities!”
Gehenna Count played his final trump card in desperation, invoking the Temple.
In this age, the Temple was a towering authority not to be trifled with lightly.
Indiscriminate slaughter, plunder, and mass enslavement of a domain’s population were dangerous acts that could well invite the Temple’s divine punishment.
But Tay had clearly already factored this into his calculations.
“If the Temple insists on intervening, I’ll simply yield a step at that point.”
Tay smiled faintly. But there was not the slightest warmth in that smile.
“Even so, you and your bloodline will all die. The Temple won’t interfere with that. Your retainers, naturally, will mostly fall as well. Though those who submit might live.”
His idea of “yielding” amounted merely to giving up the notion of enslaving the entire domain population.
“Even if I don’t take all the domain folk as slaves, you and your vassal families will be utterly ruined.”
“Why…… why would you go to such lengths……!”
“I already said so.”
Tay rose slowly from his chair.
“I don’t have time to dawdle here. Don’t make me repeat myself. Time is money—haven’t you heard?”
In the end, it all came down to time.
“I haven’t the luxury of a leisurely year-long siege with coaxing. So I have no choice but to employ the fastest, most drastic measures.”
Gehenna Count clenched his teeth so hard they nearly cracked.
The price of rejecting negotiations was only now settling upon his shoulders with its crushing weight.
In the end, Gehenna Count signed the Surrender Document without further resistance.
Moments earlier, he had been the stiff-necked fool who swore he’d rather die than exchange words with a Black Mage. But when the specter of familial annihilation spread before his eyes, that stubborn pride melted away like spring snow.
The count’s hand trembled as he held the pen.
His expression was solemn beyond measure—as though he were being forced to affix his seal to some grossly unjust contract that would strip away even his very soul.
Once the Count had finished signing, soldiers dragged him away without ceremony.
Tay watched that pitiable figure disappear, grinning with undisguised satisfaction. Negotiation, after all, always belonged to whoever held the sword.
* * *
The next day.
Gehenna Count departed his beloved castle, trailing his blood relations behind him like a procession of ghosts.
The Domain passed down through generations had been stripped from him entirely, and he was cast out with nothing but the clothes on his back.
Days ago, this castle’s confident master—now fleeing like a criminal in the night, clutching only a single bundle of possessions.
Tay observed the spectacle from atop the castle wall, perfectly at ease.
Asu emerged soundlessly from the shadows with a soft rustling.
“Impressive work, Contractor.”
“It was nothing special.”
Tay shrugged with feigned modesty, though his face betrayed unmistakable delight.
Anyone looking at him could see he was thoroughly pleased with himself.
In truth, Tay had walked away from the Gehenna campaign with no fewer than three prizes.
First: ownership of the Domain.
Gehenna County was now, in every sense, Tay’s.
And entirely by legal means, no less. There could be no accusations of unlawful occupation or brigandage—a proper signed Surrender Document, bearing the defeated Count’s unmistakable seal, existed to prove it.
In essence, a flawless transfer of ownership, with the receipt kept perfectly on file.
Second: reparations.
The amount Gehenna Count had agreed to pay was a staggering two hundred thousand Goldmanta Gold Coins.
With a single Goldmanta Gold Coin worth roughly one million won, the total came to an astronomical two hundred billion won.
At that figure, even a lottery jackpot would pale by comparison.
Of course, Gehenna was an extraordinarily rich Domain to begin with, and the Count’s house had accumulated considerable wealth over generations—it was not impossible to pay. But it would hurt. Deeply.
It was the kind of sum that would require draining the treasury to its very bottom.
For reference, a County in this world’s terms corresponded to roughly half the area of Gyeonggi or South Chungcheong Province back in Tay’s former life.
Wealth extracted from such a vast expanse of land could hardly be anything but enormous.
Tay had immediately arranged for the Goldmanta Bank to transfer one hundred thousand coins to his account.
The sensation of watching zeros accumulate in the ledger was indescribable.
The remaining hundred thousand he would take as goods—a transfer of all the various enterprises operating within the Domain itself.
It would take months to liquidate everything, but in effect, Tay had reaped a fortune beyond measure.
Third: supplies in bulk—food, weapons, and more. Plus, as a bonus, ransoms from every nobleman in the County.
Supplies and spoils were one thing, but the real prize was these nobles’ ransoms.
There were quite a number of barons and lesser nobility who had served under Gehenna Count.
Squeezing a ransom from each of their families would likely yield another hundred thousand Goldmanta Gold Coins.
Nobility, after all, were nothing more than walking cash machines—seize them, and they practically vomit up their wealth.
And when they arrived in wholesale quantities like this, it was less a cash machine and more a cash machine warehouse.
“War truly does pay,” Tay murmured contentedly.
He spoke the words with genuine satisfaction.
Marching into another’s Domain, claiming the entire territory, extracting hefty reparations, stripping the supplies, and extorting ransoms from the nobility.
This was no longer war—it was a megaproject of pure profiteering.
The dialogue box hovering above his shoulder chimed in enthusiastically.
“Truly worthy of you, Master! Transforming war into a profitable enterprise—this is the very definition of a wartime tycoon!”
Tay watched the distant figure of Gehenna Count for a time. But only briefly. He was not one to cling sentimentally to matters already concluded.
“Well then. Shall we head back inside?”
Tay turned on his heel without hesitation, not a shred of regret in sight.
The Black Mage’s Blacksmith is Too Easy
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Automaton G
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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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