Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 66

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

Episode 66
After Dungeon Clear.
Changes began to ripple through Tay’s daily life.
The greatest change was sleep.
He simply stopped sleeping altogether.
Or rather, not so much stopped as found himself unable to.
Even with the Immortal Life Heart, fatigue had been almost nonexistent—he’d sleep perhaps two hours a day, or not at all.
Since his stamina didn’t deplete, the need for sleep itself had been marginal.
But once he acquired the Immortal Life’s Hell Heart, sleep never came at all.
How could he sleep when he felt no drowsiness?
And because he wasn’t tired either, it was all the more maddening.
He’d tell himself he should sleep, lie down in bed, and his eyes would snap wide open—helpless against it.
The infernal Dark Magical Power dissolving into his blood seemed to keep his body in constant activation.
The very concept of fatigue had vanished from his flesh.
Eyes closed or open, sleep wouldn’t come; even lying still, his mind remained lucid.
‘Fine, then I just won’t sleep.’
Tay surrendered to it cleanly.
Without sleep, a day became a full twenty-four hours.
He could use every moment others squandered in slumber—which was, honestly, an advantage.
And so Tay’s daily routine crystallized into this:
First. Draw blood every day.
Thanks to the Immortal Life’s Hell Heart, Tay’s blood was saturated with Dark Magical Power. The blood itself was an excellent magical material.
Blood infused with Dark Magical Power.
It could be used for potion crafting, Magic Circle inscription, item enhancement—a universal material.
His transcendent regeneration meant he could draw ten liters a day without any ill effect on his body. It regenerated as fast as he drew it.
But extracting ten liters took too long, so he settled for five liters daily, storing it or using it for item crafting.
Second. Sword training and physical conditioning.
Since he had the Warrior Class, he had to maintain it consistently.
Building on the Single-Handed Sword Technique and Shield Technique he’d learned during his time with the Black Spear Guild, he sparred each morning against Skeleton Soldiers in mock combat.
Physical training felt pointless given the Tireless Vitality, but strength and reflexes didn’t improve without work.
Third. Blackmagic training.
He did practice it, but progress crawled at a snail’s pace.
Even repeating incantations, sketching Magic Circles, and casting spells, his skill advanced slowly.
The Hunter System seemed to be the bottleneck—or perhaps his own talent simply wasn’t suited for it.
Still, precision and casting speed could be improved through practice, so he couldn’t skip it.
Fourth. Inspection and maintenance of the mechanical devices he’d created with his Crazy Craftsman class.
Devices like the Item Crafting Automatic Machine Device – Ingol required periodic maintenance.
Since these machines ran on Madness as fuel, he had to monitor the Madness charge and replace worn components.
No one else could do this work.
Fifth. Territory management.
Recruiting Partan and adding ten administrative slaves had improved the administrative system somewhat.
But the Territory’s growth outpaced administrative capacity.
Population increased, merchants proliferated, and with the Dungeon Fortress came endless new tasks.
Partan and Rant alone couldn’t shoulder it all, so Tay himself had to invest time in administrative work.
Even without sleep, he was overwhelmed.
Twenty-four hours wasn’t enough.
‘I never realized being a lord was such a demanding profession.’
Tay sat before a towering stack of documents and sighed.
He’d lived a busy life in his previous incarnation, but nothing quite like this.
Back then, all he’d had to do was craft.
Now there was crafting, combat, administration, training, bloodletting—he’d need five bodies to keep up.
And yet.
‘It’s not so bad.’
Being this busy meant his Territory was thriving, after all.
Tay picked up the next document.
* * *
Kael Pa Londrian.
A young man of five-and-twenty.
Graduate of the Balantma Imperial Academy.
He’d majored in administrative studies, accounting, and political science, and beyond that had studied history, geography, law, and military science with prodigious breadth—a scholar of exceptional talent.
His graduation rank was second in his class.
Second only to the top student.
With grades like that, he should have been welcomed anywhere as a matter of course.
Second-place graduate of the Balantma Imperial Academy, no less.
No noble house in the empire, no lord of any standing, would have turned away talent of that caliber.
But Kael Pa Londrian’s circumstances were considerably more complicated.
His grandfather had been the bastard son of a royal family member three generations back.
A bastard. In other words, not of legitimate blood.
Still, because royal blood ran through his veins, he couldn’t simply be cast aside—so the crown had granted him a barony along with a substantial fortune as a matter of propriety.
The message was clear: Live quietly somewhere out of sight.
With that wealth and title, Kael’s father had managed well enough.
He had no territory, but he had money—plenty of it. He’d bought a mansion in the city and maintained his standing as a nobleman.
When Kael came of age, his family used that wealth to send him to the academy.
That he could receive the finest education without financial worry was entirely thanks to the fortune his grandfather had received.
But here was the problem.
Kael was the third son in his family.
He could not inherit the title.
The barony passed to the eldest son.
His second brother had already entered military service. As the third son, Kael inherited nothing.
Moreover, his family held no territorial lands.
They were wealth and title alone.
Without territory, there were no vassals to command, no lord’s authority to wield.
The most Kael could expect was perhaps a minor court appointment and a modest portion of the family fortune.
So Kael had gone to the academy.
He would forge his own path through merit.
And indeed, he had the talent for it.
From childhood, Kael had been exceptionally sharp.
He never forgot anything he’d seen once, and his mind was extraordinary.
He solved complex mathematical problems by pure intuition, and memorized entire volumes of law codes after a single reading.
His memory and comprehension were so remarkable that even the professors shook their heads in disbelief.
But his magical talent was precisely zero.
Nonexistent.
He’d hit rock bottom on the mana sensitivity test.
And it wasn’t as if he had talent in swordsmanship, Aura, or spirit arts—the other transcendent powers available to him.
That was the problem.
In this world, lacking talent in any transcendent power was quite fatal.
In noble society, transcendent power was the most vital pillar supporting both bloodline prestige and family strength.
In such cases, one could at least study Blackmagic to develop real power.
The advantage of Blackmagic was that it could be cultivated even without innate talent.
But Kael had not chosen that path.
There was social stigma to consider, and more importantly, he understood perfectly well that his true talent lay not in combat but in administration.
So he’d decided to become a bureaucrat.
Graduating second from the academy, he’d thought, would open doors in any lord’s administrative service. That was his reasoning.
But even someone as clever as he hadn’t foreseen the misfortune that would befall him.
While attending the academy, he’d somehow ended up making enemies of a family with considerable influence in the central government.
The details are long, but here’s the essence.
The top graduate of the academy happened to be from that very family, and throughout his studies Kael had competed with him consistently in academics.
The competition itself was not the problem.
The problem was that in the process, Kael had cited the opposing family’s corruption in his scholarly dissertation.
From an academic standpoint, it was entirely justified. His analysis was based on facts.
From a political standpoint, it was suicide.
The result was inevitable.
After graduation, he couldn’t secure employment anywhere.
Every application was rejected outright; he never made it past the paper stage to a single interview.
It was obvious that the influential family was working against him behind the scenes.
Second-place graduate of the Balantma Imperial Academy.
Yet unemployed.
‘This won’t do.’
Kael decided to leave the Capital.
If the center wouldn’t have him, he’d try the provinces.
A provincial lord would have less need to mind the eyes of the central court.
It was during such a time.
Kael Pa Londrian heard a rumor.
Tay, Baron of Maker.
A Black Mage of commoner birth.
He had founded a pioneer territory and been ennobled to the rank of baron, and was now the lord of the fastest-growing territory within the Harundel Marquisate.
Yet despite this, he remained shunned.
The problem wasn’t just his commoner background and status as a Black Mage—his territory was also pioneer land!
Who would willingly go to a place with no established foundation?
No matter how rapidly it grew.
Inferior was inferior, all the same.
Even in twenty-first century Earth, wasn’t there a saying to avoid startup companies?
It was all or nothing.
But Kael noticed something else.
Information that he commanded and controlled over ten thousand Skeleton Soldiers.
Over ten thousand?
Kael had initially thought it exaggeration.
It was common enough for a Black Mage to command the undead, but ten thousand strong?
That was a number far from ordinary.
Even a baron of considerable means, scraping together every scrap of military force, could muster only around five hundred soldiers.
But if the rumor were true.
That lord would need administrative capability.
To manage both an army exceeding ten thousand and a rapidly expanding territory simultaneously, he would require capable administrators—necessarily skilled ones.
No, one or two managers wouldn’t suffice. He would need talent capable of designing the administrative system itself.
Kael knew he was precisely such a talent.
This was an opportunity.
A chance to buy at the bottom! A moment to board the Black Mage lord coin that no one had yet touched!!
‘Let’s go.’
Kael packed his belongings.
From the Capital to Harundel. And from Harundel to Maker Barony. It would be a long journey.
As he climbed into the carriage, Kael made an inward vow.
‘When I arrive there, I will become at the very least his right hand.’
The pride of second place in the Balantma Imperial Academy.
Anywhere he went, anything less than the best meant nothing.
Even working under another, he would accept no position lower than right hand.
Kael’s carriage passed through the Capital’s gates.
Toward Maker Barony.
* * *
“Kael Pa Londrian. That’s correct?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Third son of the Londrian baronial house, then……”
Tay reclined in his office chair, observing the young man across from him.
His dress was neat and orderly.
Nothing expensive, but clean and well-maintained, and his posture was impeccable.
His eyes were sharp and alert, and by all appearances, his first impression was not unfavorable.
In truth, Tay had not planned to conduct an interview to recruit personnel at this time.
Lately, he had been in a leisurely mode.
Since clearing the Dungeon, he’d gained new skills, and the territory’s economy was running smoothly.
There was no immediate reason to hurry into anything.
He intended to take a year or so to rest and consolidate his foundation.
Money was taking care of itself.
The Ring monopoly remained intact, and with the additional revenue from the miscellaneous item mining Dungeon, the treasury swelled each month. The population was steadily increasing as well.
Above all else, military power was growing of its own accord.
A Black Mage’s profession was far too easily suited to the work of a craftsman.
Author |
Automatic G
Publisher |
(Corp.) Samyang C&C
Editor-in-Chief |
Editorial Department
Published by |
(주) Samyang C&C – Dream Books
Address |
7th Floor, Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsaro 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 used or reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of (주) Samyang C&C – Dream Books.

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