Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 116

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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 116
And spring arrived.
Tay summoned Kael, Rant, and Partan to conduct the winter settlement accounts.
The ledger, meticulously organized by Kael through the night, lay unfolded across the desk in the office.
The reactions of the three men as they studied it were, each and every one, perfectly true to character.
“…The profits from a single winter season are approaching last year’s annual revenue.”
Kael pointed at the ledger with trembling fingers. His voice, ordinarily so composed, had cracked. For a practitioner who lived by numbers, this ledger was almost sacrilege.
“My lord. I have never heard of anyone earning such sums from salt alone. What, I wonder, is hidden inside that mind of yours?”
Rant shook his head in disbelief, arms crossed, though his eyes betrayed an admiration he could not quite conceal.
“My lord! This Partan has served you, and it remains the greatest blessing of his life—!”
“Don’t cry. We’re in the middle of accounts.”
Partan’s eyes were already glistening. Surely he was the only knight on the continent who wept at the sight of a ledger showing profit.
The numbers were staggering. Insane. Impossible.
Though each man expressed it differently, their conclusion was one and the same—figures worthy of the fuss being made.
After the initial excitement had subsided, Kael posed the practical question that had been waiting.
“But my lord, what do you intend to do with this money now?”
The treasury was overflowing, amassed at a rate that made merely storing it increasingly problematic. The scale demanded action.
All three pairs of eyes fixed upon Tay.
Tay savored their attention, letting the silence stretch.
Then he grinned.
And made his declaration.
“I’m going into SimCity mode!”
“…I beg your pardon?”
“Sim… SimCity? What is that, my lord?”
Question marks hung thick and heavy above the three men’s heads.
They could not possibly understand. Yet Tay’s eyes already shone with fevered brilliance, gazing into some distant future where roads, canals, and buildings rose in perfect order across his domain.
Two years of war had consolidated land. Six months of integration had welded the territory into a single whole. Winter and salt had loaded the coffers with abundant capital.
Now there remained but one thing.
The city building he had dreamed of for so long—made real at last.
* * *
Night. The office.
Tay sat alone, studying a large map spread across his desk with intense focus.
In SimCity, you always began with the map. Even in the game itself, you surveyed the landscape before laying down a single structure.
Build a city without understanding terrain, and you’d face catastrophic redesign later.
At present, his domain took on the shape of a flattened ellipse.
Tay’s Maker Barony nestled in the southernmost reaches of the Harundel Marquessate, specifically toward the western edge.
In other words, the southwest corner.
Below that lay the Molton Marquessate, separated from the Harundel Marquessate by a mountain range that cut firmly across the boundary.
Not devastatingly harsh terrain. Yet neither was it developed, nor did any proper road cut through it. It was simply that kind of ridgeline—traversable if one pushed, but with no real incentive to try.
This was why the Gehenna Earldom had become a gateway city and commercial hub.
The range stretched across the Harundel Marquessate and extended far below the old Salcatna County, with Gehenna’s fortress sitting squarely atop one of the very few passes through it.
There was truth to the saying that a single chokepoint could feed a family for three generations. Gehenna’s reputation as a mere toll-collection machine stemmed precisely from this geography.
The domain Tay had secured lay in the southwest of the Harundel Marquessate, and if he acquired just three more territories eastward, he could connect directly to the Gehenna Earldom.
‘Though I sold that prospect in the territorial exchange anyway. Premature, as it stands.’
Clinging to land that was tantalizingly close but forever out of reach would only create headaches. He’d abandoned the idea. Later, when his power grew, he could reassemble the pieces then.
Real estate, after all, could always be repurchased.
In any case.
The question was how to SimCity this elliptical cluster at the southern edge of the Harundel Marquessate.
That was the puzzle Tay now wrestled with.
The territories currently within this domain, excluding the Maker Barony itself, numbered three.
The Bake Barony. The Zain Earldom. The Huit Barony.
With respective populations of fifty thousand, one hundred twenty thousand, and eighty thousand…but their specialty products?
None.
Cleanly, utterly none. Just farming, across the board.
The populations also fell short of the Maker Barony itself. The Zain Earldom at least boasted a hundred twenty thousand, giving it some heft, but against the Maker Barony’s hundreds of thousands, it barely registered.
An earldom outmatched by a barony—a reversal of hierarchies.
These territories weren’t even blessed with proximity to rivers, so water resources were scarce.
And unlike the Bone Jars that Tay produced, there were no magical items here to supply water.
In short, they were textbook rural agricultural domains—nothing more.
This was poor country.
The combined population of three territories totaling 250,000 souls, eking out a living by farming under heaven’s gaze—that’s what they’d told him.
There was a reason the Marquess had surrendered a fifth of his land so readily. If it had been worthwhile, he’d have claimed it for himself long ago.
‘Still, population is national strength, isn’t it?’
Tay switched on his optimism circuit.
250,000 people meant 250,000 pairs of hands and 250,000 consumers.
With the right management, it could work. After all, Maker Barony had started as barren wasteland where no water flowed at all.
And he had the track record of developing it into a jewel territory of hundreds of thousands.
To pull that off, it helped to have some specialty product beyond mere farming.
Produce the specialty.
Sell it to the outside world through Maker Port.
That’s the basic strategy.
Make it inside, sell it outside, keep the profits flowing in. Export-led growth. A development model he’d seen plenty of times, and it was famous for good reason.
‘The problem is logistics though…….’
Tay’s eyes, fixed intently on the map, abruptly halted at a single point.
Huit Barony, situated at the easternmost edge. From the mountain range to its south, a tributary flowed down, forming a small river.
And that river ran north, joining the larger river connected to Harundel.
“……Hmm.”
Tay’s finger traced slowly across the map.
Small river. Great river. Harundel. And Maker Port at the far western end.
A line drew itself in his mind.
‘That’s it.’
What if he dug a canal and connected this river to Maker Port?
Link the eastern river with the western port by water.
Then the entire territory would have a complete waterway network running through it.
A hundred wagon-teams groaning under their load would become a single ship gliding smoothly along—the ultimate cheat key for logistics would be unlocked.
Water supply falling short?
Mass-produce Bone Jars and pour them in!
Install those magical water-spouting jars all along the canal at intervals.
Others might search three thousand leagues for a water source, but Tay would manufacture his in a factory.
Since Tay himself made the Bone Jars, production costs would plummet too—what a beautiful structure it was.
If there’s no river, dig one. If there’s no water, make it.
What nature didn’t give, the Crazy Craftsman will!
“Let’s start now.”
Tay struck the map with his palm and rose from his seat.
His decision came swift as always. This was the moment the curtain rose on SimCity Project One: the Grand Canal Construction.
* * *
Office.
Kael was working through a mountain of documents, signing them off with a heavy sigh.
It all started with one word from the Lord.
While digging the canal, he’d decided to construct a massive watermill complex right beside it—and a blacksmith’s forge too.
Water flows, the wheel turns; the wheel turns, grain is milled and bellows are worked. Since they were building the canal anyway, there was no sense wasting that hydraulic power—a thoroughly characteristic notion from the Lord.
It sounded easy. On paper, it did.
The problem was that single word “while”—it dragged hundreds of documents in its wake.
To make it happen, the Lord had issued Kael a command.
Find people.
That was precisely what Kael was doing now. Drafting the official request to the Builders Guild. Calculating required manpower. Setting wages. Assigning quarters. Ordering materials.
‘Our Lord certainly does work people hard.’
Kael released another sigh. His dark circles seemed to deepen by another finger’s width today.
And he still needed to hire mages.
Just call in some mages and be done with it? Hardly. You had to bring along support staff for those precious beings, and assemble a separate garrison force to protect them. The overhead cost of running a single mage and her entourage was no small matter.
‘Troop assignments…… I’ll need to discuss that with Partan.’
Kael added another line to his task list. This wouldn’t be finished today. Not tomorrow either. Probably not the day after.
But.
‘……Still, it’s exhilarating.’
Buried in paperwork, Kael found himself smiling without even meaning to.
And yet now he was managing the operational details of a massive project involving hundreds of thousands of people.
A mountain of documents meant a growing territory.
This towering pile wasn’t suffering—it was proof of growth.
Kael brought his stamp down hard. Bang. Bang. Bang. The stamp’s sound seemed especially cheerful today.

* * *
Meanwhile, at the canal construction site.
Madon the mage.
A Class 1 mage, and a mercenary.
His talent had never been remarkable, so his magical prowess had plateaued at Class 1—a ceiling no amount of training could breach. For a mage, it was a death sentence of sorts.
That’s why he’d scraped by as a mercenary…… until this contract with the Maker Barony came along.
And now, Madon stood with staff in hand, weaving his magic.
“Earth, yield to my will and be torn asunder! Excavation!”
A Black Mage is far too easy for construction work
Author |
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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