Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 71

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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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Episode 71
High-Ranking Nobles Live Five Hundred Years!
And that’s not all.
Tay didn’t actually know it himself, but the Balantma Empire had far more population than he’d imagined.
A staggering two hundred million!
If he compared it to the martial arts novels of his past life, the Balantma Empire was like the Ming Dynasty, and the Harundel Marquessate resembled Zhejiang Province, where Hangzhou was located.
Tay had been obsessed with martial arts novels in his previous life, so he knew well what Hangzhou was like.
In 16th-century China, it was already a thriving trade city with a population exceeding a million, also famous as a pleasure district.
With a population around a million, Harundel occupied a similar position!
And that wasn’t even the full picture.
The Harundel Marquessate centered on the port city of Harundel, much like Hangzhou, but the entire territory had a population of roughly five million.
This information came through the Information Guild, so it was certainly reliable.
That’s right.
This place was an empire nearly as vast as the Ming Dynasty! Yet its administrative system wasn’t centralized like the Ming’s — it was feudal, making it oddly peculiar.
At any rate.
Now that he’d confirmed the entire world was far grander than imagined, and the power of the upper echelons far exceeded his expectations,
he couldn’t afford to remain complacent in his current position.
The Marquess of Harundel could, if he wished, capture Tay and kill him, gut him open, and seize his wealth.
Of course, matters of honor and various other concerns would likely prevent him from doing so. But the problem was that it wasn’t a matter of being unable — it was a matter of choosing not to.
The existence of a predator capable of ending him at any moment. And his awareness of that fact.
It was stressful.
For this reason,
Tay began to consider: what should he do to Level Up?
Not because Rant, his slave, had become a Black Mage of higher refinement than Tay himself.
* * *
Recently, Tay had been learning knowledge that nobles possessed from Rant, so he could finally grasp various truths about this world.
One of them concerned Dungeons.
Once, he hadn’t been particularly curious about why Dungeons existed, nor had he known.
He just entered them and hunted because they were there.
That was roughly the feeling of it.
It had been the same when he lived as a Hunter in his past life.
Yet he’d come to learn it all the same, thanks to Rant’s instruction.
Rant said that if Tay were to become a noble, there were things he needed to know, so he’d studied various matters.
So then — why do Dungeons form?
Most of the Dungeons in this world are said to be created by Foreign Gods.
Foreign Gods are deities from worlds other than this one, and the reason they create Dungeons remains unknown.
Because Foreign Gods create Dungeons, the gods of this world create them too.
Primarily the gods of demons, and their purpose is to invade the Middle Realm — the world where Tay currently lived.
If left unchecked, a Dungeon erodes the surrounding region?
Tay thought it was similar to how things worked on Earth in his past life.
While Dungeons seemed good for Leveling Up, they weren’t really ideal.
War was actually better.
Why?
Because ultimately, Leveling Up is more efficient through mass killing — Tay’s Undead gained Experience Points simply by taking lives.
But the unique rewards Dungeons offered were attractive.
Even if Leveling Up was slow, he could acquire various things in the process.
‘What should I do?’
War. Dungeons. Those were the two Leveling Up methods he could consider.
Training was out of the question — he’d realized that Experience Points from training alone grew at a painfully slow rate.
‘Leveling Up is faster through war than Dungeons. Why don’t I just work as a Mercenary?’
This world experienced far more wars than one might expect.
The Balantma Empire, rather than being a centralized empire like the Ming, operated under a Feudal Contract system, so the lords constantly waged war against one another.
Hadn’t Tay himself destroyed a Baron who’d declared war on him last year? Though now, no lord in the vicinity dared challenge him.
So. He’d start a service of seeking them out!
Getting paid to join other people’s wars.
That way, he’d earn money and gain Levels.
Two birds with one stone, no?
But he didn’t want to abandon Dungeons entirely either.
After all, having decided to choose based on circumstances, Tay resolved to head to Harundel first. There he could gather information about where wars were breaking out and also acquire Dungeon intel!
This was why lords abandoned their own territories and gathered in the royal capital or major cities — the infrastructure in the fiefs just didn’t support what people wanted to do!
At least Goldmanta Bank was there to cushion the blow. Otherwise I might’ve died from sheer frustration.
* * *
A high-class inn in Harundel.
Tay sat at a table, picking up a sheaf of documents and examining them.
These documents had been brought by a member of the Voice in the Shadows.
Information like this was exactly why the Information Guild existed—you paid them, and they delivered.
Until his territory grew large enough to establish his own intelligence network, he had no choice.
The documents were two separate bundles: one listing Dungeons, the other containing war intelligence.
He opened the Dungeon list first.
—Current Dungeon Survey: Harundel Marquessate.
Total: 19 Dungeons.
‘Nineteen? That’s more than I expected.’
Tay ran his eyes down the list from the top.
The first things that caught his attention were three underwater Dungeons.
Since the Marquessate had developed around a port city, it wasn’t strange to have Dungeons on the seafloor.
And all three were listed as never having been cleared.
Though it was possible they had been cleared and simply never recorded.
The administration here was so chaotic that missing records were common. But given the nature of underwater Dungeons, it was far more likely they’d simply never been cleared.
Which made sense.
Underwater Dungeons were submerged.
The entrance itself was beneath the surface. How was an ordinary human supposed to clear it?
Without magic or items that allowed underwater breathing, you couldn’t even enter.
And even if you had such things, could a land-dwelling human really fight effectively in a Dungeon underwater?
‘This… if I ever get a diving spell scroll, it might be worth trying.’
But Tay had a different thought.
If he could just throw Undead at it, numbers could overcome anything—that was his philosophy!
Tay circled all three underwater Dungeons.
Worth keeping in mind for now.
There was a high chance First Clear Achievements remained unclaimed, making them worth attempting later once he was better prepared.
He scanned through the rest of the list.
Most Dungeons had owners.
Some were operated like Tay’s own—with fortifications built around them and entrance fees collected. Others were monopolized by noble families for their exclusive use.
No outside entry permitted. Family-exclusive hunting grounds.
Of course. Dungeons made money. They were like mines where resources were harvested periodically—except the price paid was human life.
In the end, there were only four ownerless, abandoned Dungeons, aside from the three underwater ones.
Ant Dungeon. Swamp Dungeon. Lava Dungeon. Old Fortress Dungeon.
The Ant Dungeon he’d already cleared, so that didn’t count.
The other three were new to him.
‘The Lava one’s off the table.’
Lava Dungeon. True to its name, its interior was filled with lava. Fire was rat poison to the Undead.
The Black Magical Power that composed Undead burned easily in flames.
The matchup was terrible from the start.
In terms of compatibility, two remained.
Swamp Dungeon. It spawned toxic insects and poisonous creatures. Poison didn’t affect Undead, so the matchup was favorable.
Old Fortress Dungeon. An ancient castle-shaped Dungeon with Undead monsters that deployed Mental Attacks as a core mechanic.
Mental Attacks wouldn’t work on Undead, so this matchup was favorable too.
Tay?
For the Crazy Craftsman, madness was simply a useful resource!
The reason these four Dungeons had no owners was simple.
Low profit margins against high risk. The math didn’t work, so nobody bothered maintaining them.
Tay rested his chin in his palm, thinking.
‘If I go, it’ll be the Old Fortress Dungeon.’
The Swamp wasn’t bad, but the Fortress appealed to him more. Something about it felt right. It called to him.
What would happen if a Necromancer walked into a Dungeon spawning Undead? Could he turn the enemies’ Undead to his own side? That was the hope.
Tay placed a star beside the Old Fortress Dungeon and unfolded the second bundle of documents.
War intelligence.
Currently, there were no Territory Conflicts within Harundel Marquessate.
Grimoire, the Marquess, governed it well, keeping internal disputes suppressed.
That Tay had previously declared war on a Baron was only possible because Tay was an independent lord, outside the Marquess’s authority.
But in other regions, wars were breaking out.
Three of them were close by.
All were disputes occurring in the Salkathna Earldom, neighboring the Harundel Marquessate.
Territory conflicts among nobles. Common enough in a feudal society.
‘The Salkathna Earldom, then…….’
A decent distance for taking work as a mercenary in a war. Not far from Harundel, after all.
Of course, “not far” was judged by this region’s standards.
And at the final page of the stack of documents, there was yet another piece of information.
A large-scale monster extermination request.
‘Oh. So there’s that too…….’
Tay’s eyes gleamed.
There were options besides wars and dungeons.
Extermination requests from large-scale monster outbreaks.
Multiple postings about recruiting monster-slaying parties were listed there.
‘This would be good for leveling up too, wouldn’t it?’
Killing a large number of monsters brings in Experience Points.
Unlike wars, there’s no political risk, and unlike dungeons, you’re not trapped in a confined space. It could actually be a clean way to level up.
Tay decided to bookmark the extermination information as well.
As he organized the documents, Tay made his choice.
‘For now…… let me try a war first.’
Joining a war as a mercenary.
Since they said the pay was decent too…… it would be worth trying.
‘And if the war gets a bit messy…… it’s good for bringing over the territory folk there as well.’
This age.
It was an accepted practice to capture commoners and turn them into slaves with every war fought.
Slave traders actually followed battlefields, procuring slaves as needed.
‘Good. Off to the battlefield.’
Tay rolled up the documents and rose from his seat.
There were preparations to be made.
The Black Mage Made the Blacksmith Too Easy
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Automaton G
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(주) Samyang C&C
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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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