Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 107

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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 107
And so knights who had lost limbs had no choice but to resign themselves to it. Miracles existed, but for the common folk, they might as well not.
“It is not a miracle.”
Tay shook his head. Then he continued, speaking plainly.
“As you know, I am a Black Mage. I created it with Black Magic.”
Tay spoke frankly about the Occasionally Lonely Limbs.
That they felt and looked in every way no different from a real limb.
But that their true nature was a type of Undead, closer to a Parasite. And that they ran away once every half-year.
He held nothing back.
After all, it was something he would be carrying on his body and living with. Better to lay it all bare from the start than have it discovered later and destroy the trust he’d built.
“The limbs… run away, you say?”
“They do. Once every half-year. In exchange, I’ll create new ones when they disappear, and I’ll embed tracking magic in them.”
……
Marent fell silent for a long stretch.
Undead limbs. Parasite. Running away.
Every word was anything but normal. And yet, beyond those abnormal words, there it was: “legs”—two characters that meant something entirely different.
“…… Allow me some time to consider this.”
“By all means.”
Marent bowed deeply and withdrew from the reception room.
* * *
Marent sat by the window of his guest quarters, lost in thought alone.
His gaze drifted naturally downward—to the crude wooden prosthetic leg visible beneath his trouser cuff.
‘Legs. To have legs again……’
Even with one leg gone, Marent was strong. His Gold-Ranked Mercenary insignia proved it. A body that wielded Aura could crush most opponents even with a prosthetic.
But.
Strength and being a Knight were two different things.
Marent closed his eyes. The years behind him rose slowly to the surface.
He had been born the third son of a fallen merchant house.
No lands to inherit. No fortune to inherit.
All that remained was a worn blade his father had left him, and a deathbed wish to become a Knight.
At seven years old, he entered service in another man’s household.
He cleaned the master Knight’s armor, took beatings, and took more beatings still.
In winter, he slept pressed against the horses in the stable. They were warmer than people.
At nineteen, he stood on a battlefield for the first time.
He wet himself in that first fight. It was shameful, but true. Yet he did not run. Running would mean he could never become a Knight.
At twenty-three, he received his formal investiture as a Knight.
He has never forgotten the tremor that ran through him in that moment—the touch of his lord’s sword on his shoulder.
A boy who had shoveled dung had finally become a Knight. That night, he wept alone behind the stable, his father’s worn blade clutched in his arms.
And then the years that followed. More than ten of them.
He fought faithfully beneath his lord’s banner. He took the field in Domain Wars and earned distinction. He was wounded in border skirmishes, yet rose again and took up his sword. He believed that was what it meant to be a Knight.
To draw the blade for his lord, to raise the shield for the weak, to stake his life for honor.
Let them mock it for its rusticity if they will. Marent had made that rusticity his lifelong pride.
And then thirty-eight.
In the chaos of a Domain War, an enemy’s axe took his left leg.
An injury suffered defending his lord.
When he opened his eyes in the sickbed, Marent still smiled. His lord was safe.
He had done his duty as a Knight. One leg was nothing—he counted it as a badge of honor.
A month later.
What his lord sent was not consolation, but dismissal.
A Knight without legs was of no use.
More than ten years of loyalty, distilled to a single line.
The day he walked out through the castle gates, a handful of coins pressed into his hand as severance, Marent did not look back. Looking back would have shattered him.
After that, he lived as a mercenary.
There was no shortage of coin.
He had even reached Gold-Rank, earning better wages than in his Knight days. But on nights when he lay drunk, staring at the tavern ceiling, he would ache with longing—
For the days when he stood beneath a banner.
For days when there was a lord to call his own.
For those days when there was something—something worthy—to stake his life upon.
A mercenary fights for coin.
There is nothing wrong with that.
But Marent was, through and through, a knight. A sword wielded for coin could never fill the hollow in his chest, no matter how many times he swung it.
‘If only I could have legs again.’
Marent opened his eyes slowly.
If he could stand on two legs again. If he could stand beneath a banner once more.
What did it matter if the banner’s master was a Black Mage?
It was the “noble” legitimate aristocracy who had discarded him like a worn-out rag when he lost his legs.
And it was the “wicked” Black Mage who had extended a hand to restore them.
So then, which one was truly worthy of his allegiance?
The answer had already been made clear.
Besides, the man he’d sat across from in that tavern—the lord who had hidden his station and drunk among mercenaries—hardly seemed the type to treat subordinates as mere objects.
Marent rose from his seat.
The dull thud of his prosthetic leg striking the floor sounded unnaturally loud today.
‘I’ll take Tay as my liege.’
Perhaps it wouldn’t be long before he heard that dull sound anymore.
* * *
Marent lay on the surgical table.
Though “surgical table” was merely the Black Mage’s workbench cleaned off, it had nonetheless become the world’s first Prosthetic Body Transplant Surgery chamber as of today.
“Let’s begin.”
Tay reached into the Occasionally Lonely Limbs and pulled out the leg portion.
To all appearances, it was simply a human leg. Fresh and vivid as though just severed from someone, with ten toes—no, five intact toes attached to the left leg.
Tay placed it directly against the cross-section of Marent’s severed limb.
Then he poured Black Magic into it.
Writhe-writhe.
From the prosthetic leg’s cross-section, slender strands of flesh extended like tentacles. They quivered across Marent’s severed edge, exploring, then began to burrow in with fervor.
The description of it as a parasite was no exaggeration. The leg attached itself first and with aggressive intent. Eager as a perpetually single man on a first date.
Muscle interlocked with muscle. Blood vessel joined with blood vessel. Nerve shook hands with nerve.
Slurp. Slide. Click.
The sound effects were all rather unpleasant, but the result was undeniable.
The boundary between flesh and flesh blurred away.
There was no seam, no scar, no trace of stitching.
The leg was simply there, as though it had always been part of him.
-The transplant is complete.
-The parasite has achieved perfect adaptation to the host.
“There. All done.”
The entire procedure took only minutes.
What took the Church years of territorial revenue to perform as a miracle, Tay had accomplished in a snap.
Marent carefully pushed himself upright.
And looked down at his left leg.
It was there.
His left leg, returned to him after years, was there.
Marent moved his leg as though in a trance.
His knee bent smoothly. His ankle rotated.
Even his toes twitched.
Wiggle-wiggle.
All five moved at his command!
Marent’s hands began to tremble.
He sprang to his feet, stamped the floor, jumped in place, bent and straightened his knees.
Instead of the dull wooden sound, the soft whisper of bare feet meeting stone rose to meet him.
And finally.
Marent drew up his Aura.
Whoosh!
Blue energy flooded through his entire body.
The energy circulated through his new leg with perfect smoothness, unobstructed—something absolutely impossible unless it was truly his own flesh.
“This is… this really is my own leg!”
Marent’s voice trembled.
The eyes of a Gold-Ranked Mercenary who had weathered every hardship burned crimson with tears.
Tay watched him in silence for a moment, then slowly spoke.
“Now then, Marent. Will you become my blade?”
Marent knelt on one knee right there.
Planting his newly restored leg firmly against the ground.
“Sir Knight Marent. I dedicate my sword to you, my lord!”
And so the knighthood ceremony was conducted right there.
Tay drew his sword and laid it across Marent’s shoulders, one after the other.
Though the procedure was makeshift, the sincerity in it surpassed any ceremony held by the great nobility.
It was Marent’s second knighting since the day that stable boy became a knight.
And this lord, at least, was not the sort of man to cast someone out for losing a limb.
“Sir Knight Marent. I have your first task.”
“I await your command, my lord.”
“Find others like you—those with damage to their limbs.”
Tay smiled wickedly.
“I shall make them all knights.”
A knight without an arm. A mercenary without a leg.
Real skill, dragged through the mud because of their bodies—undervalued gems left crawling in the dirt.
He would sweep them all up.
Preferred hiring for those with missing limbs!
Where else in this whole mad world would you find such a notice?
“I shall obey the order!”
Marent answered with a ringing voice.
His newly fitted leg was already trembling with strength.
* * *
Two weeks later.
A shabby inn in a small town.
Geilard, a knight without his right arm, was nursing an afternoon drink.
Once, he had been a master of Spear Mastery—so skilled that other knights would defer to him.
But three years ago, while subjugating a beast, his entire right arm had been torn clean away, and his life had slid downhill ever since.
He had relearned the spear with his left hand.
He could still make a living.
But with strength reduced to less than half his prime, his wages had fallen to half of that.
“Geilard. It’s been a while.”
“…Marent?”
He lifted his head and saw a familiar face standing before him.
It was Marent, the gold-ranked mercenary with a prosthetic leg—someone he knew from being in similar circumstances, someone he’d shared a drink with a few times.
But.
Something was off.
“…You. Why do you walk like that?”
That distinctive limp of a prosthetic leg.
That dull wooden sound.
It was gone.
Instead of answering, Marent smiled wickedly and rolled up his pant leg right there.
A perfectly intact left leg was there.
The Black Mage Makes Blacksmithing Look Easy
Author |
Automaton G
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Samyang C&C Inc.
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Editorial Department
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The contents of this book may not be used in any form or by any means without written permission from Samyang C&C Inc. – Dream Books.

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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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