Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 36

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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 36
“Please be good. Please be good. Please be something good, please!”
While Tay was putting on his show,
the system finally displayed the result.
-You have obtained a level-up reward skill.
-You have acquired [Skill: Madness Control].
[Skill: Madness Control]
Grade: Unique
Type: Passive
Controls the madness of a Madness Craftsman.
You can control the madness that once affected allies as well.
Function: Do not inflict Madness damage on allies.
“Ugh…”
Something good had come up, but it wasn’t exactly stellar.
Tay felt slightly disappointed.
A Madness Craftsman.
The items this crafting-class profession produced came with multiple penalties in exchange for reliable effects.
Various bizarre and grotesque penalties attached to them, but the most notorious was mental attack.
It caused Mental Erosion, driving people to madness.
The problem with this was…
it didn’t distinguish between allies and enemies.
Even the Madness Craftsman who created them suffered Mental Erosion in return.
Well, a Madness Craftsman had the Madness Accumulation skill to begin with, so it was actually beneficial for them. The real problem was the allies.
Those who formed a team and went in together always had to suffer Mental Erosion as if taking damage over time.
This created a problem: either crafting separate items to protect allies’ minds, or paying to acquire such protections from elsewhere.
It was quite a significant issue.
A team kill against your own side.
This skill prevented such friendly fire, which was good—but it didn’t strengthen the Madness Craftsman profession itself or enable the creation of superior items.
In short, it was ambiguous.
Furthermore.
Tay’s main forces were undead and demons.
They were immune to mental attacks!
There was only one human—Rant—and he was a dark mage who could cast mental protection sorcery well enough on his own.
In other words.
this was currently a skill with limited usefulness.
It might have been worthwhile in his past life.
Back then, he didn’t have the triple class of dark mage, Madness Craftsman, and warrior.
He was purely a Madness Craftsman, and during those days he was a crafting hunter who made and sold items rather than hunted.
Of course, it wasn’t completely useless.
Even now, Tay earned money by selling items made with his Madness Craftsman skills, and this would definitely prove useful later when he crafted cursed items with Mental Erosion penalties to sell.
Wasn’t there a difference in value between a cursed item that drove both allies and enemies mad, and a mental attack-type item that only broke the enemy’s mind?
“Subtle, but inevitable.”
“What ability has blossomed to provoke such a reaction?”
“Nothing urgent came through is all.”
“Hmm?”
“To explain…”
Tay explained to the curious As.
“An ability that raises the value of your creations. But as you say, its practical application is somewhat limited.”
“Right?”
“Yes. Still, isn’t it better than nothing? Have a drink.”
“Where did you pick that up?”
“Dialogue taught me it.”
After a brief exchange, Tay sighed and stood up.
The time was morning.
Yesterday he’d been too tired after the battle to do anything, so there was much to clean up now.
“Come on, let’s get to work. Rant!”
“Yes, Tay.”
“Let’s start the cleanup.”
First, the Craptyr corpse disposal.
He had the Skeleton Soldiers drag the bodies together.
Unlike the arachnid, the crabapod left little worth discarding.
The carapace.
That was money.
The crabapod’s carapace was remarkably hard, and once worked, could serve as material for shields or armor.
Especially the shells from the largest specimens were valuable enough to craft into full shields without joining pieces.
“Rant. Help me strip the carapace.”
“Yes.”
As Rant directed the Skeleton Soldiers, they began separating the carapace from the crabapod’s corpse.
A halberd wedged into the seams and twisted would crack the shell free.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Pieces of flesh clinging to the carapace piled upon the sand.
The claws were collected separately.
A crabapod’s pincers were formidable enough to crush Skeleton Soldiers in their mail, so they could serve as weapon material.
Everything else—the meat and viscera—was buried in a pit.
And then.
He cast Flesh Dissolution black magic.
An absolutely perfect spell, this one.
Why?
Because when you stirred that dissolved flesh into the soil, it became extraordinarily rich earth.
Since he’d need to farm later, it was wise to prepare the soil now.
But that wasn’t the only reason.
A corpse left to rot drew other monsters.
“We’ve got over thirty carapace plates. Nearly twenty claws. That alone is real money.”
“The blacksmiths in Harundale will be pleased to see it.”
At As’s words, Tay nodded.
“Indeed.”
Tay nodded with satisfaction.
Kill monsters, sell materials, earn coin.
This was why Frontier Development was profitable.
The next task was repairing damaged Skeleton Soldiers.
Five Skeleton Soldiers had been destroyed in the fight with the crabapod.
But the greatest advantage of Skeleton Soldiers:
They could be remade if bones remained. The shattered bones couldn’t be reused, so the missing portions had to be filled with spare bone.
The problem was, this place had no bones.
The crabapod didn’t have them, nor did the arachnid.
These creatures.
No bones at all.
Arthropods—that’s why!
So the Skeleton Soldier count diminished somewhat. After restoring his forces and disposing of the monster corpses, Tay turned to clearing the village.
“Huurgh.”
Clang. Clang.
First, the wooden houses burned to ash.
Five or six buildings reduced to pillars and rubble.
“Tear them all down. Clear what’s useless, separate out timber we can use.”
The Skeleton Soldiers moved in unison.
They swung their maces and halberds at the charred beams, hauling away the debris.
Blackened wood was piled in heaps to burn later; intact timber was set aside separately and stacked.
Recycling what they could would save coin in the long run.
Next came the general cleanup.
Collapsed fence rubble, broken pottery, nameless refuse.
The Skeleton Soldiers handled it all.
There was an unexpected amount of salvageable material.
A few iron tools, rusted but repairable.
Four or five unbroken jars.
And from the underground storage, several stone blocks—which the previous settlers had apparently left for construction.
“This is good. Stone blocks make building so much easier.”
Tay was satisfied. Days passed.
The ruins were neatly ordered.
The stone structures remained half-ruined, but most of the buildings had been completely demolished and leveled, and the roads were clear of debris.
For several days, there were no monster attacks.
Tay declared a withdrawal after thoroughly clearing the village.
After all, his purpose in coming had been to scout the area before beginning the frontier development.
“Good. Let’s head back.”
Clatter. Clatter. Clatter.
Tay climbed aboard the Skeleton Soldiers’ carriage and began retracing his path.
The sea breeze pushed against his back.
‘Next time I come, I’ll have all the preparations for building the village in place.’
Tay gazed out at the sea as the thought settled over him.
The real frontier development was only just beginning.
* * *
Morning.
Roen, the frontier development officer at the Harundale administrative office, sat at his desk and took a sip of coffee.
“Ugh…….”
The bitterness wrapped around his tongue, and the sensation of mental clarity spread through him.
Coffee.
A precious beverage imported from distant foreign lands in the east.
A luxury that cost several silver coins per handful of beans, yet Roen could not bring himself to give it up.
Without this single cup in the morning, he couldn’t endure a full day buried under mountains of paperwork.
‘Another avalanche of documents today.’
He sighed, gazing at the heap of parchment stacked on his desk.
Tax reports. Commercial licensing applications. Land dispute complaints.
And frontier development reports.
Frontier development reports typically carried nothing but bad news.
Failure. Annihilation. No survivors.
That sort of thing.
Roen took another sip of coffee and picked up the report sitting on top of the pile.
A frontier development matter.
‘Let me see…… Southern Wilderness of the Harundale Marquessate. Applicant: Tay…….’
Tay.
He remembered.
The black mage who had come not long ago to say he would establish a settlement in the Southern Wilderness.
The one who had caused quite a stir by appearing at the administrative office in a Skeleton Soldiers’ carriage.
He’d warned against it, but the man had just smiled and handed over the notification form.
‘So he actually went. He must have died or failed and came back. So the outcome is…….’
Roen unfolded the report.
And.
His hand holding the coffee cup froze.
“……What?”
He rubbed his eyes.
He read it again.
Only after reading it a third time did Roen confirm that his eyes were functioning normally.
[Pioneer Settlement Construction Progress Report]
Applicant: Tay
Location: Southern Wilderness of the Harundale Marquessate
Status: Residential district construction in progress. Palisade installation completed. Stone building repairs completed (3 structures). 56+ skilled laborers confirmed employed. 200+ construction workers. The settlement’s population is planned to consist of 300 enslaved persons.
Remarks: Local monster extermination completed (Arachne, Crapter species). Continuous guard system operated by Skeleton Soldiers.
“Frontier development is actually proceeding?”
Roen’s voice trembled.
The Southern Wilderness.
Seven attempts over five years, every single one a failure.
Fifty members of the Golden Badge Mercenary Company, completely wiped out in half a year.
And frontier development is happening there?
Monster extermination completed?
Two hundred or more construction workers?
“……Is this real?”
Roen set down the report and removed his glasses.
He cleaned them. Put them back on.
The report’s contents had not changed.
Roen drained the cooling coffee and murmured to himself.
“What on earth did that black mage…… do to accomplish this?”
For fifteen years, sitting in this office, I have read countless reports on frontier development.
Most were failure reports.
Occasionally there were successes, but those came from the relatively safe regions—the north, the east.
Never from the south.
But then.
Roen read the report again.
There was no doubt about it.
Frontier development was underway in the Southern Wilderness.
“……I’ll need to report this upstairs.”
Roen picked up his pen.
As he began writing the opening of a report for the Marquess, he murmured to himself.
‘I prayed for him to come back alive…… and he didn’t just come back, he’s actually building a village?’
The coffee had gone completely cold, but Roen had no time to mind it.
The Dark Mage is Too Easy as a Blacksmith
Author |
Automaton G
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Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
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Editorial Department
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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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