Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 58

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

Chapter 58
“You’re no ordinary Black Mage, are you, Baron….”
Hayan said nothing. She simply observed their surroundings in silence.
Tay paid no attention to the mercenaries’ reactions.
He was studying the corpses of the ants scattered across the cavern floor.
Thirty-six ant carcasses, each the size of a medium dog, lay piled across the cavern bottom.
Tay stepped before the bodies and reached out his hand.
“Flesh Grafting.”
Dark Magic activated.
A dark art that could strip flesh from dead corpses and reassemble it anew.
One of the foundational techniques of Necromancy. With it, one could craft what they called Abominations—corpse golems.
Dark Magic Power unfurled across the ant bodies.
The corpses began to tear, to fuse, to stitch themselves together.
The head of one ant joined to the torso of another.
Then another. And another.
Legs splayed outward to both sides; heads and tails connected, stretching into length.
Rant grimaced at the sight.
Bilton stepped back a pace.
Bolbao nearly dropped the Lantern.
Only Hayan watched with an expressionless face.
After some time had passed, what emerged at last was—
A centipede-like creature, fashioned from ant corpses.
Multiple ant torsos laced together in sequence formed a long body, while dozens of legs jutted outward from either side, scraping the stone.
At the head section sat three pairs of enormous ant mandibles layered upon each other, and when they gaped open, they spread like petals unfolding.
A vile and grotesque creation.
A Corpse Ant Centipede.
Tay breathed Dark Magic Power into it.
“Undead Creation.”
The dozens of legs on the Corpse Ant Centipede twitched in unison.
Its dead eyes flickered with a faint light.
Since he’d made it a low-rank Undead, the Lord of Death skill allowed infinite dominion over it.
Tay smiled with satisfaction.
‘Yes. It works. There are limits on bringing Undead in from outside, but there are no restrictions on creating Undead from enemies I kill here and putting them to use. Excellent. This will make things easier.’
This was what he’d wanted to confirm.
The more ants Tay killed, the more his power grew.
The true nature of a Black Mage: growing stronger with every death dealt.
If that principle held true inside the Dungeon, then descending deeper would only tip the scales further in Tay’s favor.
“Well then. Let’s continue.”
“Yes, Baron.”
Bilton and Bolbao replied.
Hayan gave no answer. She simply moved forward quietly.
* * *
The soldier ant smelled it.
It was not an unpleasant odor.
It was an ominous one.
The Pheromone released when kin fall in death.
A smell of warning. A smell of danger.
Ants communicate through sound and Pheromone.
And the message this Pheromone conveyed now was simple.
An enemy has come.
Many have died.
The soldier ant tapped its mandibles sharply—click, click! A signal of alarm.
Other soldier ants nearby responded. Click. Click-click. Click-click-click. The sound spread outward.
The soldier ants stationed deeper in the passage began to move at once.
A soldier ant is one stage above a worker ant.
Its body mass is nearly double that of a worker, and the strength of its jaws can shatter stone.
Its exoskeleton is also far thicker.
Any invader that comes must be killed.
It had always been this way.
One soldier ant took the lead, charging down the corridor. More than twenty soldier ants followed behind.
Behind them came swarms of worker ants in ever-growing numbers.
At this rate, they could have handled any ordinary intruder.
What came rushing toward them, however, was their own kind.
Or rather—
What had been their own kind.
A grotesque mass of worker ant corpses stitched together like a centipede stretched the length of the corridor, advancing in a tide of death.
Dozens of legs scraped against wall and floor and ceiling all at once as it crawled forward—a nightmare made flesh.
But the soldier ant felt no fear.
Only hostile intent, faced with the corpses of its kin.
Behind that horror came worker ant corpses walking upright, their dead eyes glimmering with a faint, unnatural light.
Things that moved though dead. Shapes wearing the form of kin, yet kin no longer.
The pheromones were tangled.
From the corpses of the fallen still came the scent of colony-mates.
But mingled with it was the stench of death itself.
Friend or foe?
The ant’s simple system of judgment collapsed into chaos.
That single moment of hesitation proved fatal.
The Corpse Ant Centipede surged forward and engulfed the lead soldier ant.
Three pairs of mandibles unfurled like a flower and seized the soldier’s head as zombie workers swarmed in from all sides.
The soldier ant bit down with its own jaws, tearing one corpse in half.
But the severed body continued moving—the dead could not be killed again.
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!
It hammered out a warning signal. Other soldiers were fighting too.
Biting with mandibles, trampling with legs, striking with their bodies.
But the wave of corpses had no end.
From deeper in the tunnel, fresh undead surged endlessly onward.
Every worker ant that had fallen before had become one of these things.
Tens, hundreds of corpses merged into a single tide that swept over the soldiers.
One was brought down. Another was flipped. Corpses piled upon it, crushing it beneath their weight. The exoskeleton couldn’t withstand the pressure—it cracked.
The soldier felt the dead weight accumulating on top of it.
Legs bent. Mandibles snapped. The exoskeleton fractured.
The queen must be warned.
Danger approaches.
An enemy unlike any before has come.
The soldier ant squeezed out the last of its strength and released a desperate pheromone signal.
But whether it reached the queen, it could not know.
The weight of the corpses crushed its exoskeleton completely, and the soldier’s consciousness blinked out.
* * *
Tay’s party swept through the Ant Dungeon, raising a tide of Undead in their wake.
With each battle, their numbers swelled.
Every ant they killed became a zombie, and every zombie killed living ants, which became zombies in turn. A self-feeding cycle of death.
Like a rolling snowball, the Undead multiplied in a geometric cascade.
At some point, Tay no longer needed to fight at all.
Zombie ant swarms advanced ahead, filling the corridors, while four, then five Corpse Ant Centipedes swept through every side passage and dead end.
The worker ants were exterminated in moments.
The soldiers didn’t last much longer either. Tougher than workers, yes, but they were ultimately buried beneath the wave of corpses.
Bilton walked with his shield at the ready, having nothing left to do, while Bolbao had no need to reshape the corridors—the zombie swarm opened the path of its own accord, leaving him to trudge along in a daze.
Hayan had no wounded to tend. No one had been hurt.
Only Tay and Rant kept their hands busy.
Turning dead ants into zombies, commanding the zombies, fashioning additional Corpse Ant Centipedes.
And between it all, the system messages kept chiming.
—Level up!
—Black Mage has reached Lv. 4.
“Heh.”
Tay felt his mouth twist upward unbidden.
Black Mage level 4. A level he’d never managed to reach while buried in estate management was rising this effortlessly.
This was what happened when a necromancer entered a quantity-type dungeon.
‘It’s a goldmine.’
Tay marveled internally as he felt the surge of Dark Magic Power and the rising enhancement of his physical capabilities.
Though he hadn’t gained a trait—the level being even—the very act of ascending made his growing strength palpable.
Next time, he thought, he could come with just Rant. There’d be no need for the mercenaries.
Honestly, the three of them hadn’t done anything useful.
Bilton hadn’t raised his shield once, Bolbao had merely carried a Lantern, and Hayan had no reason to use Sacred Magic at all.
The hire fees for two Gold Rank mercenaries felt wasted.
‘This time I hired them to cover any unexpected danger, but next time we can manage fine on our own. Money’s one thing, but I can’t let my full strength be exposed either.’
Tay moved forward into the next tunnel with that thought.
Deeper into the Ant Dungeon.
Toward where the queen resided.
* * *
Hayan was watching a tide of corpses.
Zombie ants flooding through the passage, filling every inch of space.
Corpse Ant Centipedes crawling across walls and ceiling, sweeping through side corridors.
And presiding over it all, the Black Mage Baron’s broad back, utterly composed.
Hayan was a quiet woman.
As a Gold Rank mercenary, her skill was sufficient, and she had a reputation for faithfully executing contracts.
Her taciturn nature stemmed partly from temperament, but it was more than that.
Before she was a mercenary, Hayan was a priestess of Elveera, the Mother of Life.
The Elveera Church.
An order devoted to Elveera, the deity governing life and healing, which operated temples and healing sanctuaries across the continent.
Hayan’s ability to wield Class 3 Sacred Magic came from being Elveera’s priestess.
And her acceptance of this contract held another reason beyond the mercenary fee.
The observation of the Baron Tay.
A rising upstart lord in the Harundel Marquisate, of late.
A Black Mage who commanded thousands of Skeleton Soldiers, toppled a barony, and had secured independent economic power.
The church’s upper echelon desired intelligence on him, and Hayan had been assigned to that task.
When a contract was posted to the Golden Great Sword Guild, she had volunteered of her own accord.
And now.
The Baron Tay that Hayan had witnessed with her own eyes exceeded what the church had feared.
‘He is dangerous.’
Hayan stated it inwardly with certainty.
He commands Undead without limit.
That alone made him sufficiently perilous.
A typical Black Mage can only dominate a number of Undead proportional to their own magical power and mental fortitude.
Even the strongest Black Mages reach a ceiling at a few dozen—at most, a few hundred.
Yet this baron seemed to have no such ceiling.
He turned every ant he killed into a Zombie, and controlled every single one.
Even commanding hundreds of Zombies simultaneously, his expression bore not a hint of strain.
Of course, what he was commanding now were lower-tier Undead.
Zombies and Skeleton Soldiers—the lowest grade of Undead.
Lower-tier Undead had weak individual combat strength, so they might not pose much threat to superior beings.
But.
‘What if that baron continues to grow?’
The Black Mage Is Too Overpowered as a Blacksmith
Author |
Automaton G
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Editorial Director |
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
Submissions |
[email protected]
© Samyang C&C Co., Ltd. — The contents of this book may not be used in any form or by any means without the written permission of Dream Books.

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