Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 34

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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 34
Clatter. Clatter. Clatter.
One hundred and five skeletal soldiers began moving in unison.
Heavily built skeleton warriors, armed with cudgels and halberds, advanced toward the Ruins Village.
The sight was less magnificent than it was terrifying.
Two-meter-tall skeletal soldiers in full plate armor marching in formation.
Any enemy who saw this would be seized with dread.
Tay walked behind the leading skeleton warrior, advancing toward the stone structure positioned at the center of the ruins.
The largest stone building. Two stories tall, its roof blown away but its walls and pillars intact.
It must have been the village chief’s residence and command post combined.
When they drew close to the building’s entrance.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch-scratch-scratch.
A sound rang out.
The scraping of multiple legs against the floor.
From the window opening of the stone building.
Black legs jutted out.
One. Two. Four. Eight.
“Thought something might be in there… but a spider, huh.”
Tay muttered to himself.
A spider monster.
What burst from the stone building, ramming through the door, was a massive spider monster—an Arachnid—whose body alone was the size of a full-grown ox.
All large arachnid-type monsters are classified as Arachnids.
For instance, a Blade Arachnid would be one whose legs are sharp as blades, and so on.
And the creature now before them had a body covered in black fur, eight crimson eyes, and fangs dripping with venom.
Though Tay had weathered plenty as a mercenary, this was the first time he’d actually encountered an Arachnid.
But he felt no concern.
“Kill it.”
Clatter. Clatter.
The skeleton warriors moved.
At the same moment, the Arachnid lunged.
“Kee-eee-eek!”
The Arachnid shrieked in a ghastly cry, hurling itself at the skeleton warrior in front.
It reared a leg and brought it crashing down on the skeleton!
Crack!
But its leg couldn’t pierce through the layers of chainmail armor the skeleton wore, and the limb caught partway through.
Then.
Whirrr-eek!
The skeleton warrior raised the halberd it held and brought it down.
Crunch!
The Arachnid’s head split open in a single blow.
As its hardened exoskeleton crumpled helplessly, ichor sprayed in all directions.
“Kee-eee-eek……!”
The spider, its head cleaved in one strike, trembled with twitching legs before collapsing.
But there wasn’t just one.
Scratch-scratch-scratch!
More spiders poured from inside the stone building. Five. No—seven.
Spiders were also crawling out across the roof of another stone structure nearby.
The entire Ruins Village had become a spider’s nest.
“Kee-eee-eek!”
“Kee-eee-eek!”
Large spiders converged from all directions.
But.
Clatter. Clatter. Clatter. Clatter. Clatter.
All one hundred and five skeleton warriors raised their cudgels and halberds at once.
It was like five skeleton warriors threw themselves at every single spider.
Thud! Smash! Crunch!
Cudgels shattered the spiders’ legs; halberds hacked into their bodies.
The spiders sprayed venom, but poison meant nothing to skeleton warriors.
What use was venom against bone?
“Kee-eee-eek!”
One spider spun silk to ensnare a skeletal soldier, wrapping it tight.
But another skeleton warrior beside it swung its Cudgel at the spider’s flank, shattering the exoskeleton and spilling its viscera across the ground.
It was one-sided slaughter.
No matter how massive the spider, it could not withstand dozens of heavily armored skeletal soldiers.
Numerical superiority. Poison immunity. Fear immunity. Fatigue immunity.
Every advantage of the Undead legion was on full display.
Within a minute, all the spiders that had emerged from the building lay shattered.
Body fluids and leg fragments scattered everywhere.
“Ahh! Now this is it! Overwhelming slaughter! Absolutely exquisite. Just exquisite.”
Tay’s face had split into a grin.
What an excellent start!
Rant stood beside Tay, gazing down at the spider corpse with complete indifference, her expression entirely unmoved.
That a twelve-year-old girl could watch a cow-sized spider torn apart without blinking an eye was, in every sense, remarkable.
But Rant had always been that way.
Since she was released from the throes of madness, her emotional fluctuations had been subdued.
“Tay. It seems there are more inside.”
Rant spoke while gazing into the darkness within the stone building.
Spider silk filled the interior completely.
Clicking sounds echoed from within.
“Of course. It’s their nest.”
Tay nodded and looked at Rant.
“Rant.”
“Yes.”
“While I clear out the interior of the Ruins Village, you sweep through the rest of the settlement and exterminate every monster. Buildings, basements, everywhere. Leave none behind.”
“Understood.”
Rant nodded.
A concise response.
No hesitation or uncertainty in it.
As Rant raised her hand, twenty-seven skeletal soldiers began to move behind her.
Clank. Clank.
The skeleton warriors, bearing Cudgels and Halberds, advanced toward the entrance of the stone building.
One by one they entered the darkness, and soon a tremendous commotion erupted from within.
Crack! Screech! Shriek! Splinter!
Rant opened the Dark Grimoire as she listened to the sounds.
“You’re reading while they work?”
“The skeletal soldiers will handle it themselves. Since I share their vision, I’ll intervene if danger arises.”
“Fair enough.”
Tay let out a quiet laugh.
Quite the girl.
Deploying twenty-seven skeletal soldiers to cleanse the entire ruin while simultaneously studying Dark Magic.
‘At this rate, her raw talent as a practitioner of Dark Magic might actually surpass mine.’
Of course, Tay possessed the broken ability of the Hunter System, so direct comparison was pointless.
But when it came to pure talent in Dark Magic alone, there was no question that Rant was superior.
Spider shrieks echoed throughout the ruins.
The sound of Cudgels crushing bone resonated across the settlement.
Tay leaned against the outer wall of the stone building and gazed toward the Sea.
“I’ll build the settlement here.”
He spoke the thought aloud, as if committing it to words.
River and sea. Mountain and forest.
And already existing stone structures.
There could be no better location than this.
Except for the matter of monsters infesting it.
‘But there’s a way around that. Monsters don’t necessarily have strong willpower.’
Tay smiled leisurely.
Items he could create through the mad engineer.
With those… defense would be far easier than he’d thought.
* * *
The extermination of monsters from the Ruins Village took a full day.
The Arachnids—or spiders—had been far more numerous than expected.
Not only had those nested inside the stone building, but they infested the remains of burned wooden structures and lurked in cracks along the crumbled outer walls of the settlement.
Some of them had even set up webs and made their lairs in underground storage chambers.
Dozens were nesting there, and I couldn’t help wondering what on earth they were eating to survive in this place.
And so Rant and Tay’s skeleton soldiers ranged through every corner of the village, ransacking buildings and excavating basements.
The Arachnids threw themselves at the skeleton soldiers without exception, but the results were all the same.
Annihilation.
Venom was useless against them. Even when silk wrapped around them, the skeletons simply tore free by sheer strength. A blow from a Cudgel shattered the exoskeleton outright.
Not a single skeleton soldier was destroyed.
Overwhelming—that was precisely the word for it.
“Mopping-up complete.”
By the time Rant reported this, the sun was already setting.
“Well done.”
“It was nothing much.”
Rant’s assessment, as always, was understated.
The following day, they began work on restoring the village.
It involved gathering the Arachnid corpses in one place, removing all the webs, and cleaning out the stone buildings.
Of course, the skeleton soldiers did all of this themselves.
Tay and Rant would hardly move spider carcasses by hand.
Give the skeleton soldiers an order, and they moved efficiently without question.
Move the corpses—and they moved the corpses.
Strip away the webs—and they stripped away the webs.
Being Undead who retained memories from their living days, they executed such simple commands flawlessly.
“Undead really are made for labor.”
That was Tay’s observation.
The Arachnid corpses were all buried in a pit dug at the village’s edge.
Leaving the bodies of venomous monsters lying around could attract other monsters.
The webs, though—they actually had their uses.
Arachnid silk was remarkably strong; processed, it could serve as rope or thread.
But for now there was no luxury for such work, so they buried it all together.
Of the three stone buildings, the largest two-story structure was chosen as a temporary base.
The roof had been blown away, so the sky opened up above, but the walls and pillars were sturdy.
For the time being, they could live here while rebuilding the village.
“Rant. We rest here today.”
“Yes.”
Tay settled himself on the second floor of the stone building.
Without a roof, the stars were visible.
The wind blowing in from the Sea was refreshing.
The skeleton soldiers were stationed throughout the village—ten at the village entrance, thirty more on patrol around the perimeter, and the rest posted on guard duty around the stone building.
* * *
A sky utterly different from his past life.
Gazing up at the night sky, so clear that countless stars were visible, Tay grew contemplative.
“At least it’s summer. If this were winter… ugh. Just thinking about it makes me shiver.”
And he shuddered.
Even imagination made him feel cold.
Especially since this world’s winters were brutal, with heating systems being rather poor.
“Wasn’t it specifically because it’s summer that you set out on this development project?”
Ath.
The demon emerged from the shadows and spoke.
“True enough. Though I’d have done it even in winter, once I started earning money and hired the Silver Shield Guild.”
“A well-timed venture, then. I see.”
“You could say that.”
“Without question. You are no ordinary human, contractor. I wonder how far you might yet go… How fascinating.”
Ath smiled as he spoke.
“To be the object of a demon’s curiosity. I’m flattered.”
“And rightly so—you’re demonstrating extraordinary progress. At this rate, you’re certain to become a master of Dark Magic, which benefits me considerably.”
It was common knowledge that demons profited proportionally as their contractors grew stronger.
However.
The trouble was that most demons never saw such profit at all.
After all, most who summoned demons were unremarkable Dark Mages to begin with!
Becoming a weaponsmith is far too easy for a Dark Mage.
— Author’s Note —
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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