Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 115

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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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Chapter 115
Water spreading thin meant one thing: the surface area exposed to wind and sunlight expanded exponentially.
As it flowed down, moisture evaporated into the breeze, and by the time the seawater reached the bottom, it had become a far more concentrated brine than before.
Then he’d pump it up again and let it cascade down once more, and again.
After repeating this process several times, seawater that had originally held roughly three percent salinity became concentrated several times denser.
Then he’d pour that concentrate into a cauldron and simmer it?
Firewood consumption plummeted to a fraction of what it had been!
It was a system that replaced the fuel-devouring burden with free energy from wind and sunlight.
Nature did the work for him, and Tay simply harvested the salt.
Labor came from skeletons, evaporation from wind, and collection from the lord. Perfect division of labor.
After hearing the full explanation, Ars stood silent for a while, gazing up at that spine-studded tower.
Then he murmured softly.
“The wisdom of mankind. Now I understand why you call it the ‘Outside World.'”
Behind his glasses, his eyes carried a light that had grown somehow deeper.
“Knowledge that doesn’t exist in this world…”
The demon’s curiosity had clearly been kindled, but Tay remained unmoved.
If he wanted to know, he’d have to bring payment for it!
“Anyway… I wonder if that thing I ordered has arrived yet.”
Tay dropped the subject of Ars and quickly turned his attention to what he himself had commissioned.
“What did you order that commands such interest?”
“A magnifying glass. But not just any magnifying glass—an absurdly large one.”
“…A magnifying glass?”
Ars’s glasses gleamed subtly. Talking about lenses in front of a demon wearing spectacles seemed to be a subject that touched a nerve.
* * *
Now for a bit of history.
In Earth, the earliest spectacles are said to have appeared in Italy around the thirteenth century.
Before that, how did people with poor eyesight manage? They would place a “reading stone”—crystal or glass ground into a convex shape—over text and read line by line through the magnification.
The ancestor of the magnifying glass, if you will.
Then some genius had the idea of grinding that stone thin, making two of them, and fitting them into a frame to rest on the nose.
Thus humanity’s presbyopia and myopia found salvation, and the lifespans of scholars’ and monks’ desks stretched by decades. One might say glasses were an invention that quietly changed the world.
And in this world too, spectacles exist.
Only the method of manufacture differs somewhat.
In this world, mages who have mastered magic are the ones who make glasses.
Though they occupy the lower Classes—around 1 or 2—they nonetheless learn a skill called Glasses Crafting specifically, grinding out lenses.
Using magical power to refine glass’s grain structure and extract flawless lenses—a kind of magical artisanship, in other words.
Naturally, the price is obscene.
Stack mage labor costs and craftsmanship fees together, and a single pair of glasses becomes worth more than an entire modest house.
In this world, wearing glasses is essentially a certification mark proclaiming “I am wealthy.”
Tay had commissioned several master craftsmen to make magnifying glasses of considerable size.
Two meters in diameter.
Two meters!
A colossal lens taller than a man. With magic, such things were possible to manufacture. The only problem was that there was no reason to make them.
‘Why on earth would he order something like this?’
The craftsmen who received the order must have tilted their heads in confusion.
A magnifying glass as tall as a person? They could ask the purpose, but no answer came.
Yet because Tay paid handsomely, the craftsmen produced the pieces without complaint and sent them over.
No business without money, no questions with advance payment. The fundamental principle of commerce was the same on Earth as here.
* * *
And finally, those giant magnifying glasses arrived.
Tay immediately set to work installing them.
He had the concentrated seawater from the Saltwater Concentration Tower flow into a large cauldron, then erected a mounting frame made of bone above it and fitted the magnifying glass in place.
He adjusted the angle back and forth until winter sunlight passed through the lens and converged to a single point on the cauldron’s bottom.
Then.
Bubble-bubble.
The concentrated seawater began to boil.
Without a single stick of firewood, the cauldron bubbled vigorously from sunlight alone—a sight to behold.
“This is…”
Ars gazed in genuine wonder, his eyes darting between the cauldron and the magnifying glass. It was a rare spectacle indeed—a demon from hell, eyes widened in amazement for the second time at human ingenuity.
Then Dialogue, perched on his shoulder, seized the moment to show off.
“Hehehehe! Impressed, are you, Ars? When you gather sunlight into one point, that thermal energy is beyond imagination! The heat warms the cauldron and brings it to a boil! Ahahaha!”
“……You didn’t make it either, so why are you bragging?”
Tay’s rebuke did nothing to slow Dialogue’s shoulder-shimmy.
The master’s achievements are my achievements. This is Dialogue’s philosophy of profit-sharing.
Either way, the principle is sound—just as Dialogue said.
Gather sunlight through a magnifying glass to a single point, and the temperature at that focal spot defies imagination.
Anyone who burned paper with a magnifying glass as a child knows this.
Paper ignites under a lens that small—so imagine the heat a two-meter lens could gather. It would bring a cauldron to boil without breaking a sweat.
No firewood needed.
Fuel cost: zero. Perpetual motion incarnate!
Wind concentrates the water, sunlight boils it down, and skeletal hands scoop out the salt.
Not a single being in this salt works for wages.
Without labor costs or fuel costs, salt pours forth—nature’s own cornucopia, complete and perfect.
Of course, there are drawbacks.
First: the system depends on natural weather!
Rain or clouds? Useless on those days.
The inevitable weakness of solar power.
But that’s nothing. On clear days, we extract like mad; on foul days, we manage inventory instead. Salt doesn’t spoil, after all.
Second: the taste is poor.
Boil seawater down, and you get salt—true enough.
But this salt is no pure salt.
It’s seawater’s countless impurities all mixed in together.
In short: so many contaminants that beyond the salty taste, it might come out bitter or brackish.
Refining such impure salt is a separate skill entirely, one Tay had no intention of learning.
First, he didn’t know the technique. Second, this salt was meant for high-volume, low-margin sales anyway!
Even if the salt tastes poor, if the price is low enough, it’ll fly off the shelves.
That is salt’s true value!
‘Hah. Never thought a YouTube video from my past life would be this useful.’
Tay watched the furiously boiling cauldron and folded his arms with satisfaction.
In truth, the magnifying glass idea for boiling water was Tay’s own. Nothing like this exists on Earth.
Among various videos he’d seen in his previous life, there was one of people using a massive magnifying glass to melt minerals for smelting.
Stone glowing cherry-red as it melted under solar heat alone—the kind of satisfying video that made you forget to think.
Why the algorithm pushed it to him, he still had no idea.
But who could have predicted that a video he’d once watched from bed, giggling idly, would become the backbone of a salt business in another world?
‘I remember thinking: if it melts stone, how hard can boiling water in a cauldron be?’
And this—the thing before him now—was the result.
Saltwater Concentration Tower plus magnifying glass: the ultimate collaboration!
Wind concentrates. Sunlight reduces.
The world’s first fully natural-force salt production plant—perhaps the first across both worlds combined.
With this system, salt could be made at an enormous rate, at an enormously low cost.
Seawater salt cheaper than rock salt—an impossible thing—was being born right now, bubbling away on this winter coastline.
* * *
And so, salt production began in earnest.
The results were staggering.
A full five tons of salt were produced in a single month.
Five tons!
An astronomical quantity.
By the era’s standards of salt production, it was insane output.
While others tended cauldrons one by one, feeding in firewood, Tay’s salt works were churning salt out for free—wind and sunlight doing the labor.
Even selling at high-volume, low-margin rates, five tons meant roughly eight thousand Goldmanta Gold Coins flowing into Tay’s purse.
With each coin worth about a million won in felt value, that translated to eight billion won monthly. Salt alone was generating eight billion won a month.
Of course, Tay’s monthly income already exceeded this. Bone Spears, Water Magic Tools, food stocks—he had multiple businesses spinning already.
But the crucial point was that this income stacked directly on top of existing revenue.
The old income kept flowing in, and on top of it sat the new salt sales.
One wallet hanging inside another. The textbook definition of how capitalism enriches the already-rich.
And more Saltwater Concentration Towers could be built.
Magnifying glasses too, obviously.
The materials were bone—the skeleton could handle construction, and craftsmen would make magnifying glasses for coin. Expansion faced no obstacles.
But there was one thing that nagged at him.
Others could copy this too?
A Saltwater Concentration Tower was, after all, just a structure. Looking at it and copying it—there was nothing to stop them.
One day, knockoff concentration towers might sprout up like bamboo shoots all along the continent’s coasts.
But.
Until then, there was honey to be sucked!
In a world without a Patent Office, technology belongs to whoever reaches it first anyway.
From the moment competitors catch on until they manage to replicate it—that window of time, that golden age of monopoly—he’d drain every last drop. First-mover advantage was the ultimate patent.
So Tay kept pouring money into the venture.
More towers, more cauldrons, magnifying glasses installed by the hundreds.
And with that, he built a Saltwater Concentration Tower complex that produced twenty tons of salt per month.
Now he was making thirty-two thousand Goldmanta Gold Coins a month!
Insane profits, absolutely insane!
Convert that to currency: three billion two hundred million per month. Annually, nearly four trillion in gold pouring in from salt alone.
Seawater hauled in and dried by sunlight—and look at this. The entire ocean had become Tay’s personal vault.
The Black Mage Makes Too Good a Blacksmith
Author |
Automaton G
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Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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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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