Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 50

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

Episode 50
“There are those special magical abilities that manifest only in certain bloodlines, are there not? According to records, they appear once every few centuries, and among them there may well have been bloodlines with peculiar dominion over the undead. There is no reason to assume a commoner lacks a Bloodline Ability simply by virtue of birth.”
“Hmm…….”
Kruger stroked his chin.
Whether it was a Bloodline Ability or an Artifact, a man who could command three thousand Skeleton Soldiers possessed military might equal to that of any baron of note, or higher.
And if he were to take possession of the Philkaon Barony as well, his power would grow immeasurably.
“That said.”
Peren lowered his voice and changed the subject.
“I’ve heard that this Baron Maker’s territory holds a great abundance of grain. Is it true there was a bumper harvest this year?”
“So I’ve been told.”
Kruger nodded.
“Everywhere else is plagued by famine, yet his lands alone enjoy such bounty. Whether he’s simply blessed by fortune or possesses the skill to manage it, I cannot say—but it does appear he’s amassed considerable stores of grain.”
“An abundance of grain, you say…….”
Molden murmured to himself.
His eyes had taken on a different light.
For him, who held a modest territory of five hundred souls, this year’s famine had proven catastrophic; the news of a land overflowing with grain was like rain upon parched earth.
“I should make contact with him.”
Molden spoke quietly.
“Contact?”
“We must purchase grain. At this rate, my people will starve. I cannot afford pride now, regardless of whether the man is some common-born dark sorcerer or anything else—if he will only sell us the grain.”
Kruger and Peren exchanged a glance.
For two barons without territories, a grain trade mattered little, yet forging connections with this rising power was no poor calculation.
“I should inquire myself. Even acting as a middleman for grain would prove quite profitable.”
Kruger spoke, tilting his wine glass.
“I concur. If we cultivate good relations with Baron Maker now, it can only serve us well.”
Peren voiced his agreement as well.
The three barons clinked their glasses together.
Their conversation was swallowed by the music of the banquet hall, unheard by any other ears.
Yet the name of Baron Maker was not being spoken by these three alone in that hall this night.
A Territorial War victory.
Three thousand Skeleton Soldiers.
A bumper harvest of grain.
The name of Tei, Baron Maker, had begun to spread in earnest through the noble society of Harundel.
* * *
After the war ended, Tei’s level rose.
-As a reward for a 1-level increase, you have acquired a Warrior-class skill.
Thus he was able to obtain the Warrior’s job skill……
-You have acquired a level-up reward skill.
-You have acquired [Skill: Vitality].
[Skill: Unwavering Vitality]
Rank: Special
Type: Passive
A warrior must not grow weary.
Therefore, he has obtained tireless strength.
Function: Does not grow fatigued.
Something—neither quite remarkable nor wholly useless, yet honestly rather good—had emerged.
Tei already wielded the legendary-grade Immortal Heart, alongside various stamina-recovery items.
In truth, he had no reason to tire even now, and here another skill of this sort had manifested?
Somewhat redundant!
Yet he certainly felt a more vigorous circulation flowing through his entire body.
Better to have it than not.
Tei resolved to move past it.
After all, nothing he said would change this skill—it wasn’t as though he could swap it out for something else.
After the level-up, Tei proceeded at once into the Philkaon Barony.
One castle and a single settlement belonging to it.
The Philkaon Barony, which encompassed eight additional villages, was shrouded in mourning.
Naturally so—the head of house had fallen in battle, and the war was lost.
Tei proclaimed his victory in the Territorial War and announced he would seize every last coin of the barony’s treasury.
By rights, as victor, Tei could have absorbed and unified the territory into his own holdings.

There was one problem, however: the Philkaon Barony was a fief that Harundel the Marquis had granted to the Philkaon noble family.
In principle, Tei couldn’t absorb and merge it at will without Harundel’s consent.
Harundel the Marquis had said Tei was welcome to keep the territory if he became his vassal, but Tei had no intention of accepting that offer.
So.
He carefully gathered four thousand serfs belonging to the Philkaon family and the family’s assets, then returned to the Frontier Territory.
With that, the territorial war was over.
The Philkaon noble family had survived, but their condition had become dreadful.
They would have to work hard in many ways to establish a new viscount and rebuild the family.
One misstep and they could fall into ruin—a precarious situation indeed.
Pitiful as their state was, it wasn’t his concern.
The Viscount of Philkaon was the one who had started the war with ambition.
Tei had nothing to worry about.
However.
The sudden surge in population was welcome.
Combined with his existing population, the new additions brought his total to over six thousand.
That was a respectable population for a proper territory.
But Tei thought it insufficient.
Because.
He earned far too much money from his Bone Spear.
He needed a territory with at least one hundred thousand people to properly protect his wealth.
That’s what Tei believed.
With a population that large and military forces under his command, he could truly safeguard his fortune.
* * *
“Excellent. Once I have momentum, I’ll push harder!”
Victory in the territorial war!
Four thousand people added to his population!
He’d leveled up too!
He’d scraped together the family’s wealth and made a fortune!
Victory!
Tei was overjoyed.
So he decided to begin his next phase of work in earnest.
Using the money earned from the noble family, he went to Harundel and gathered up the poor.
Crop failures were occurring everywhere, so food prices had skyrocketed. Though he’d only promised food, the poor flocked to him in astounding numbers.
“Food. If you would provide food…….”
“You truly mean to give us bread?”
“We will follow you!”
Thus he acquired an additional four thousand people from the slums.
His population surged past ten thousand in an instant.
Using all these gathered people, he launched massive expansion works.
He cleared farmland, dug moats, and raised earthen walls.
Of course, he also had to build homes for the swollen population.
It was nothing less than a sprawling construction site!
“Monsters!”
“An orc appeared… wait, it’s dead?”
“What? Why are those orcs charging and then just glowing?”
Orcs came rushing toward Tei’s now greatly expanded territory.
But the skull decorations, combined with the Mark of Madness, trapped and destroyed them.
The orcs, afflicted by Mental Erosion, fell into frenzy and slaughtered each other, while the Skeleton Soldiers advanced and butchered them.
Tei’s Skeleton Soldiers had grown to four thousand strong, so now he possessed such overwhelming military force that even without the skull decorations, he could not fear any orc assault.
His troop numbers alone were simply too vast.
And so, finally.
The orcs—the very cause that had made this region a wasteland—had appeared.
But there was no problem.
Rather.
Tei decided to seize this opportunity.
He resolved to wipe out the monsters in the surrounding area completely.
Of course, even if he purged them once.
They would inevitably return later, but a single extermination would buy him peace for at least several years.
For that reason.
Monster subjugation commenced!
* * *
An army of the dead marches forth.
Thousands upon thousands of Skeleton Soldiers moved in perfect formation, cutting deep into the mountains and forests.
The orcs who had made their lair in these hills naturally erupted in rage and threw themselves forward, but numbers had always been the deciding factor.
“Gwaaaah!”
“Ork laka!”
The orc chieftain appeared. And orc shamans as well.
The orc chieftain was twice the size of any other orc and wielded an aura, making it a formidable monster—but it mattered little.
Crack! Crunch!
When hundreds of Skeleton Soldiers swarmed forward, there was nothing it could do.
In the end, it was slaughtered without mercy.
“Krak kataaaa!”
The orc shaman summoned a dark spirit, which shattered hundreds of Skeleton Soldiers.
But that was all it could manage.
“Kraagh!”
Soon after, it too was swept away by the tide of Skeleton Soldiers and fell.
Reliable, these Skeleton Soldiers!
With four thousand of them, they’re as dependable as a hearty bowl of rice soup!
And so.
The orc settlement in the mountains was exterminated.
A settlement of hundreds of orcs—the kind that would be difficult for a baron alone to handle—had been completely eradicated.
Of course, the bones stripped from the bodies of the fallen orcs were all incorporated into Skeleton Soldiers.
Tei’s army of Skeleton Soldiers continued to grow.
A truly unstoppable army of death was taking shape.
* * *
A discovery made after the orc extermination.
There were no trolls.
Whether the orcs had killed them or driven them away, Tei couldn’t say.
But no trolls were anywhere to be found.
This rankled Tei.
Trolls are worth money, after all!
In any case, having eradicated the orc settlement and hunted down all the lesser monsters, Tei had secured the safety of the surrounding region.
What he did next was expand the farmland further along the valley streams.
More farmland! More harvest!
Tei did not scatter his ten thousand subjects across multiple villages.
Instead, he extended the pioneer settlement that had begun along the coast, stretching it out in a ribbon that followed the valley waters, continuously expanding the farmland.
Between the fields, he built homes for the Free Commoners and Serfs who worked the land, linking everything together in a linear chain.
And so, an agricultural city of ten thousand inhabitants bustling with life took shape.
What Tei did second was build a harbor.
The seas of this world are treacherous.
Because of the marine monsters, ships cannot be built without magical enchantments.
The usual approach was to layer Perception Distortion Magic heavily onto vessels.
Without doing so, the monsters dwelling in the sea would come swarming and attack.
Survival at sea depends on remaining invisible in the first place!
Marine monsters are fundamentally far larger than their land-dwelling counterparts!
Krakens! Sea Serpents! Turtle Dragons!
Encountering even one of these would reduce an ordinary ship to splinters.
But.
It is precisely because of this danger that maritime trade yields enormous profits.
Tei intended to prepare for exactly that kind of maritime commerce.
Why would anyone come to some backwater harbor when Harundel exists right there?
They would come if there were no tariffs!
Harundel, being a crucial hub of trade, imposed substantial tariffs.
Why were merchants now constantly streaming in and out of Tei’s territory?
Because the taxes were low.
The Silver Shield Guild paid no tariffs at all.
Other merchants were charged only half the tariffs of other regions.
As a result, merchants and the mercenaries escorting them—along with monster hunters seeking work—had begun flowing in and crowding the place.
However, since Tei had swept away all the surrounding monsters in one fell swoop,
the number of mercenary monster hunters would soon decline.
That’s why the Harbor.
I need to make some money through maritime trade.
The Dark Sorcerer is a Blacksmith
Author |
Automaton G
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Editor-in-Chief |
Editorial Department
Published by |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — Dream Books
Address |
7th Floor, Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeun-sa-ro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
UCI |
G720:N+A063-20260511100
Blog |
blog.naver.com/dreambookss
Twitter (X) |
@dreambookss
Submissions |
[email protected]
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means 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
—————