Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 49

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 49
“Gahhhhh!”
A scream tore through the air beside Muntre. The Skeleton Soldiers came without pause, and defending against them proved far from easy.
After the initial clash.
Within moments, many of the mercenaries lay dead.
Formation?
Mercenary bands had no such thing as disciplined order to begin with.
Some mercenaries conjured Aura or wielded Magic Items they’d purchased with their own coin, pulverizing the Skeleton Soldiers before them.
But.
“Grrrraaagh.”
There were simply too many Skeleton Soldiers.
Destroy one and two more surged forward. Destroy two and two identical Skeleton Soldiers filled the gap.
Muntre fought with surprising vigor for a common mercenary, yet he and his comrades could not match three times their number in Skeleton Soldiers.
Thud!
“Ugh.”
At last, a Skeleton Soldier’s blade drove into Muntre’s body.
“Damn… this…”
The light drained from his eyes, and his corpse crumpled, bleeding out onto the ground.
But that was only the beginning.
“Grrrraaaaaagh.”
As black magic rippled outward, Muntre—now a corpse—rose to his feet.
A Zombie.
And that was far from all.
Crack. Crunch. Clatter!
Shattered Skeleton Soldiers reassembled before their eyes.
Fragments of broken bone adhered together, reforming, and once more they began their march of death.
Less than thirty minutes after the battle began, two hundred mercenaries had already fallen.
Some eight hundred Skeleton Soldiers had been destroyed, yet they were instantly restored as one, and the two hundred dead mercenaries rose again as Zombies.
Faced with that ghastly sight, the mercenaries were naturally seized with terror.
“It’s… it’s a High-Ranking Black Mage!”
“Damn it! This wasn’t part of the contract!”
“Run! Run for your lives!”
The mercenaries broke ranks. Baron Philkaon watched their collapse with fury, yet controlling them while an army of the dead advanced was impossible.
Baron Philkaon’s jaw tightened.
Should he commit the knights now?
The knights were all superhuman beings trained in Aura, and their mounts had been fed Elixirs.
If he could locate the Black Mage and strike them down in one blow, victory would be his—but if he failed…
His knights would be trapped among those corpse soldiers and cut down.
As he wrestled with the decision.
The Skeleton Soldiers drew ever closer.
Should he gamble? Should he admit defeat?
“Knights, follow me!”
He chose, in the end, to gamble.
There, at the heart of their formation.
Someone riding something curious.
He had spotted Baron Tei Maker with his own eyes.
Six knights aligned themselves beside their lord.
Seven horses.
Seven Aura-trained knights, including the lord himself, prepared for the charge.
“Chaaaarge!”
Fifteen hundred heavy infantry and fifteen hundred Skeleton Soldiers—between them, the charge began.
* * *
“Ha! Now that’s what nobility looks like. Brains pickled in the Bet-and-Repay Meta, every time.”
“The Bet-and-Repay Meta usually leads straight to ruin and disgrace, though!”
“What even is the Bet-and-Repay Meta?”
“Short for taking and then repaying—what gambling addicts call it. A path to losing everything.”
Tei, Dialogue, and Asu.
The three watched the incoming knights while exchanging idle chatter.
Lant, observing his master, found himself thinking.
He wasn’t worried at all.
In truth, stopping the charge of knights trained in Aura on horseback reinforced by Elixirs or Magic was extraordinarily difficult, even with three thousand ordinary infantry.
Yet her master seemed perfectly assured of himself.
“Then… shall we begin hunting knights?”
Tei flicked his Staff.
In that instant.
The knights plunged through the ranks of Skeleton Soldiers.
Tei watched the knights’ charge.
Indeed, they struck with the force of a living war machine!
Though the knights themselves were superhuman through Aura training, their mounts were merely living creatures with somewhat superior constitution to humans.
However formidable their breakthrough power, a spear or blade through them sent them shrieking and tumbling.
This was the consensus of the age: well-trained pike infantry could hold back a knight’s charge to some degree.
Tei, who had rolled through mercenary work for years, knew at least that much from the talk he’d heard.
But.
Witnessing it in person was different from hearsay.
Because he watched heavily built Skeleton Soldiers without armor, bearing only spear and sword, ground to pieces.
“Impressive, though. The Elixir boost is potent, isn’t it?”
They pierced through in an instant, crushing dozens and drawing close.
And finally they reached even the heavily armored Skeleton Soldiers.
But that was all.
“Skeleton Jump.”
The moment Tei waved his Staff and issued the command, the Skeleton Soldiers’ response changed.
Quite literally.
They jumped.
Whoosh! Crack! Crunch!
Hurling themselves through the air, they clung fast to whatever they could reach.
Both the heavily armored and the bare Skeleton Soldiers alike!
The breakthrough power became meaningless in an instant.
Though Skeleton Soldiers were light, Tei’s specially built frames each weighed around forty kilograms.
Those in heavy armor weighed considerably more.
When such creatures, knowing no fear of death, threw themselves at the horses and their armor and the knights themselves, clinging on with no thought of release, of course their legs became hopelessly tangled.
And. That was the end of it.
“These… these were Skeleton Soldiers too!!”
“Heavy armor on Skeleton Soldiers… blasphemy! Return to dust, unholy Undead!”
In moments, the knights found themselves trapped among thousands of Skeleton Soldiers. Their poor war-mounts shrieked and bled from spears and blades striking from all sides.
Then the Skeleton Soldiers became a wave and crashed over the knights.
Not with spear and blade.
They simply smothered them with their bodies, crushing them beneath their weight.
Boom! Crash!
One knight detonated his Aura and shattered a dozen Skeleton Soldiers, but it hardly mattered.
Skeleton Soldiers swarmed from all directions.
“I… I yield! I surrender—aaaahhh!”
One knight declared his surrender.
But he was slain all the same.
The overwhelming wave of death, born of sheer numbers, swallowed the knights in moments.
And.
Inevitably.
Philkaon the Count as well.
Was swept up in the wave of death and perished.
The war was over.
* * *
The manor of one of the nobles on Harundale Platinum Street.
A banquet was underway there.
Nobles holding banquets is commonplace enough.
They believe that without indulging in luxury and pleasure, they cannot be thought honorable.
This hall where the social gathering of such nobles took place was adorned with glittering chandeliers and marble floors, and musicians played soft melodies at every corner.
In one corner of the banquet hall.
Three barons stood holding wine glasses, conversing.
“Have you heard? That Philkaon the Count lost his Territorial Battle.”
It was Baron Kruger who spoke first.
He was a nobleman bearing an inherited title without lands to rule it—all he possessed through inheritance from his predecessor was the title itself and a single manor on Harundale Platinum Street.
He was barely maintaining the pretense of nobility by gradually depleting the family fortune, so attending these gatherings and cultivating connections was his only survival strategy.
“I heard about it. The Viscount lost to the Baron, didn’t he? And one-sidedly at that.”
The one speaking was Baron Feren.
His situation could be described as worse than Kruger’s, or in some respects better—he was a nobleman with neither territory nor succession rights.
The title he’d received was a reward for service rendered to the Marquess’s house, so once he died, it would end with him.
Still, he had skill as a knight, and was fighting tooth and nail to build some foundation while he lived.
“One-sidedly, you say?”
Kruger took a sip of wine as he asked.
“The man supposedly brought three thousand Skeleton Soldiers with him. Viscount Philkaon deployed seven hundred mercenaries, three hundred territorial soldiers, and even six knights—and it still wasn’t enough.”
“Three thousand? Skeleton Soldiers, three thousand of them?”
Kruger’s eyes widened. The territorial battle result itself was shocking enough, but the figure of three thousand Skeleton Soldiers was far more startling.
At that moment, a third person who had been listening from the side interjected.
“Three thousand Skeleton Soldiers. If that’s true, this is no ordinary matter.”
Baron Molden.
He differed somewhat from the previous two barons—he did possess territory.
But it was a pitiful little holding, with a population of five hundred and an army consisting of fifteen territorial soldiers in total.
His situation had grown even more dire with this year’s poor harvest, and he had a headache over it.
“Could it be that he made a contract with a High-Ranking Demon?”
Molden spoke cautiously.
“A High-Ranking Demon?”
“I’ve heard that among Black Mages, there are those who gain power through contracts with High-Ranking Demons. It’s possible he obtained the ability to command vast numbers of Undead through such a contract, isn’t it? If that’s the case, it would be a breach of the agreement.”
A contract with a High-Ranking Demon.
In this world, there existed strict agreements governing contracts with demons.
Borrowing the power of a High-Ranking Demon was forbidden throughout the entire empire, and violation was a capital crime that could result not only in stripped titles but execution.
If this Black Mage had made a contract with a High-Ranking Demon and was commanding three thousand Skeleton Soldiers, this was no mere territorial dispute.
It was a grave matter that could escalate into a security threat to the entire empire.
“That shouldn’t be the case.”
Feren shook his head.
“From what I hear, the Black Mage was originally a Debt Mercenary. If he was a Debt Mercenary, he would have sworn an Oath Vow, making a High-Ranking Demon contract impossible.”
A Debt Mercenary.
This term referred to those who became mercenaries to pay off debts, and upon mercenary registration, they were bound by a magical oath called an Oath Vow.
This Oath Vow included a clause prohibiting contracts with High-Ranking Demons, so if someone was a former Debt Mercenary, they were fundamentally blocked from making such a contract.
“Then how does he command three thousand Skeleton Soldiers? No matter how skilled a Black Mage is, to control that many, he’d need… some sort of special artifact, wouldn’t he?”
Kruger tilted his head in confusion.
“It could be a Bloodline Ability.”
Molden spoke as he swirled his wine glass.
“A Bloodline Ability, you say…”
The Black Mage Is Too Easy to Become a Blacksmith
Author |
Automaton G
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Chief Editor |
Editorial Department
Published By |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dream Books
Address |
7F, Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsa-ro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
UCI |
G720:N+A063-20260511100
Blog |
blog.naver.com/dreambookss
Twitter(X) |
@dreambookss
Submission |
[email protected]
The contents of this book may not be used in any form or manner without the written permission of Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. – Dream Books.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————