Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 45

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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 45
“Ugh……”
His stomach ached so sharply that a groan escaped of its own accord.
All he’d managed to find yesterday was two chunks of bread, hard as bricks.
He’d soaked one in water and split it with his wife, so he’d eaten barely half a piece.
The other he’d given entirely to the child.
Of course he had. His daughter had been burning with fever lately, and the cough wouldn’t stop.
He needed to buy medicine, but he had no money.
His wife was out now, he imagined, wandering the streets offering herself for any work—laundry, cleaning, anything at all.
Somehow he had to find a way, but none appeared.
He wanted to commit a crime, but even that wasn’t easy.
‘What am I supposed to do…….’
Anton crossed the Plaza, clutching his hollow belly.
Then.
He noticed a commotion on one side of the square.
Drawing closer to see what was happening, he found Grain Sacks being stacked.
Two carts sat there while laborers unloaded massive sacks and arranged them.
Flour. Barley. Beans.
The quantity of grain was staggering.
Dozens of impoverished people besides Anton stared at it with hungry eyes.
And then.
A man climbed atop the pile of Grain Sacks.
He was young.
He wore a black robe and carried a Bone Staff in his hand.
Heavily armed soldiers stood around him.
“I am Baron Tei, of the Frontier Territory!”
Baron.
Nobility, in other words.
The crowd of impoverished people in the square stirred and murmured.
“If you will come with me to the Frontier Territory, I will give you food right now!”
Food.
Anton’s eyes widened.
“If you have a family, I will provide food for all of them! I will give you homes in my territory, and farmland too! If you cannot farm, I will give you other work! If you have sick family members, I will have them treated! Do not worry—I have brought a Priest with me!”
The man who called himself Baron continued to shout.
“If any of you have family who are ill, I will see them healed! A Priest awaits in my territory—fear not!”
Treatment.
Anton’s heart seized.
His sick daughter.
The child burning with fever because he couldn’t afford medicine.
‘They would treat her?’
Anton moved forward as though enchanted.
Several impoverished people had already formed a line in front of the Grain Sacks.
A mercenary in Leather Armor stood at the head of the line, holding out a document.
“Your name. Number of family members. Special skills. Sign here or mark with your thumbprint. This is the agreement to relocate to the Frontier Territory.”
Anton cannot read.
He couldn’t make out what was written on the document.
But.
That didn’t matter.
Food. A home. Treatment.
Better to go to a Black Mage’s territory than to starve to death.
Anton pressed his thumb into ink and pressed it firmly to the document.
Would this be the beginning of his new life?
Or was he descending into an even deeper abyss?
He couldn’t know.
But at the very least.
If his daughter could be healed.
That was enough.
“Here. One sack of grain. Come with your family to the South Gate tomorrow morning.”
And he’d given the grain in advance without any conditions whatsoever!
Anton stared at the mercenary in astonishment, but the man had already turned his attention to the next person in line.
Anton cradled the sack tightly in both arms.
It was heavy.
But he had never felt such joy from weight before.
* * *
“Heh. Feeling good, are we?”
“Well, with so many who are practically voluntary slaves trailing after you, naturally you’re in excellent spirits! You truly are a master! Such a wicked method!”
Tei answered Dialogue’s remark.
“Ahh. Wicked? Let’s call it a win-win. They get to eat and survive. I get territorial citizens at a bargain price. Fair trade, no?”
Behind Tei, some three hundred impoverished persons followed in his wake.
Men. Women. Children. Elders.
They moved forward carrying bundles, pulling hand-carts, bearing young ones on their backs.
The horses and wagons that Tei had purchased were carrying roughly half of the impoverished crowd.
Of course, they were not transporting only the poor.
Various materials needed for the Frontier Village were being transported as well.
Around them, a hundred mercenaries and scores of Skeleton Soldiers served as escort.
It was a spectacle, if anything—and quite extraordinary at that.
A Black Mage’s procession of Skeleton Soldiers at the lead, followed by three hundred paupers and a hundred mercenaries.
In a sprawling city like Harundale, the disappearance of three hundred impoverished persons hardly made a ripple.
Harundale’s population numbered in the tens of thousands. On Blue Street alone, there were likely tens of thousands of poor.
Three hundred fewer was barely a drop in the bucket.
But.
In the Frontier Territory, it was different.
When three hundred were added to a village of three hundred, the population instantly doubled.
Moreover, these were free citizens.
The fact that they were not slaves—that mattered.
A territory filled only with slaves was not healthy.
Free citizens needed to be mixed in for the territory to function properly.
What slaves lacked, and free citizens possessed.
A sense of ownership.
Free citizens viewed the territory as their own ground.
With that mindset, they would fight to protect it and strive to develop it.
“Heh. If I do this just a few more times, I’ll have thousands of inhabitants in no time.”
Tei grinned widely.
Starving people couldn’t refuse when you dangled food before them.
The cost was negligible.
A few Grain Sacks and the wages of one Priest.
With only that, he’d acquired hundreds of loyal free citizens.
‘Is there a more efficient investment than this?’
With such buoyant steps heading southward, Tei’s eyes caught sight of it.
There in the distance.
The Frontier Village came into view.
Wooden palisade and moat.
Beyond them, roofs crowded densely together.
Tei’s village.
“Your lordship’s slave den is visible! Will we be able to sleep warmly there tonight?”
“Ahh. Let’s use the more respectable word—territory.”
“As you wish, my lord!”
Bantering with Dialogue in this manner.
Tei returned to the village.
* * *
Anton seemed to be dreaming.
A home.
It was a small house built of wood, but it had a roof, a door, and straw laid across the floor.
Two rooms.
One for the husband and wife. One for their daughter.
Where he had lived in Harundale’s slums was a ramshackle shanty that leaked when it rained.
Holes in the walls let winter wind pour in, and the floor was damp earth.
Compared to that, this place was like a palace.
Evening had fallen.
Anton’s family sat in the communal dining hall used by the slaves.
He was a Free Citizen, but with nothing in his possession, he’d been told to take his meals here for the time being.
Would he become a Slave?
In truth, it mattered little.
Before him lay a bowl of stew.
A thick, hearty stew laden with meat and vegetables.
And a hunk of bread.
Anton gazed at it in a daze.
His wife ladled the stew with an expression as though lost in some pleasant reverie.
And then.
His daughter.
The girl sitting beside Anton was no longer coughing.
The fever had broken. Color had returned to her cheeks.
“Papa. This is delicious.”
His daughter laughed as she ate, her illness cured by the Priest.
The moment they arrived at the Frontier Village, the Baron had gathered the sick and brought them to the Priest, who had used Holy Miracle to heal his daughter’s sickness.
Ordinarily, such a thing could never be granted without coin.
How could a Pauper ever receive Healing Magic from a Priest?
Yet the Baron had done it.
They called him a Black Mage.
They said he was terrifying.
They said the village was haunted by walking skeletons.
But he gave food to the hungry.
He healed the sick. He assigned them homes.
Anton had never known a nobleman who offered work.
Not once in his entire life.
Nobility were creatures who collected taxes.
Indifferent to whether you fell ill or recovered, unconcerned whether you starved or ate.
That was the nobleman Anton knew.
But this Baron…
……
Anton lifted a spoonful of stew.
He placed it in his mouth. Heat and salt bloomed across his tongue.
The texture of the meat felt real beneath his tongue.
For reasons he could not name, tears began to fall.
Glancing beside him, his wife too was eating silently, tears streaming down her face.
Only their daughter, oblivious to it all, ate contentedly, remarking how delicious it was.
After the meal, the Anton family returned to the house they’d been assigned.
They put their daughter to bed.
Anton and his wife sat side by side for a long while, neither able to speak.
At last, Anton opened his mouth.
“We can… we can live.”
His wife nodded.
Anton closed his eyes.
He prayed to God.
Only.
That God might protect the Baron.
That the day might come when he could repay this grace.
With only that wish in his heart.
Anton fell asleep.
* * *
Slaves. Free Citizens.
Two categories of people, totaling a population of six hundred.
There were mercenaries as well, though their stay was temporary and uncertain whether to count them as population.
Tei, working alongside Rant (As and Dialogue had virtually no administrative ability), threw himself into developing the territory.
He expanded the farmland and began construction on a reservoir near the small stream that flowed down from the gorge.
In the meantime.
He continued to recruit Paupers from Harundale.
It was no exaggeration to say that he reinvested every coin earned back into developing the territory.
When spring had passed in this manner.
The population had swelled to two thousand.
The slaves were pulled entirely from agricultural work and redirected wholesale to construction and building projects.
The swollen population needed homes built, the reservoirs required expansion, and the wooden palisades had to be upgraded to earthen ramparts.
The Free Citizens were given farmland, but it came at a price.
Still, they had to eat while waiting for the fields to yield their harvest, didn’t they?
A house. Farmland. And all the grain and sundries needed to sustain them until the autumn harvest.
All of it was recorded as debt.
The interest rate, however, was set at fifteen percent—absurdly low by the standards of this age.
Tei needed to create favorable conditions if he wanted to swell the population rapidly.
Besides, since monsters kept attacking this region, they continued to pour in assault after assault.
Naturally.
Every last one of them was ensnared by the Skeleton Trap, their minds shattered, and slaughtered.
Watching this, Tei found himself thinking.
Mental Attack. Wasn’t this completely broken?
Then again, what did it matter if it was?
Having cheat-tier abilities was simply a good thing.
Even in his past life, there had been plenty of such people.
The Mad Engineer was certainly a capable hunter, but there had been far more absurdly overpowered specimens.
Black Mage Is Too Easy For 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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