Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 83

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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 83
“Ah. Let me rest for a bit.”
So thinking it over,
he decided to take things easy for a while.
He’d been so busy last year—surely it wouldn’t hurt to relax a little.
Truth be told, there weren’t many nobles bold enough to threaten Tay anymore, save for the high-ranking lords above him.
Besides, Tay technically belonged to the Harundel Marquisate, and though he wasn’t exactly the Marquis’s vassal, he’d been sending portions of Undead Control Rings as tribute, placing him under the Marquis’s protection.
Politically speaking, then, there were no obstacles.
A little rest wouldn’t cause any problems.
“Sleep in late… now that I think about it, maybe I should try romance too……”
Come to think of it, Tay had never been intimate with a woman until now.
Why?
For one, there’s the hygiene issue.
Cheap prostitutes tend to carry all sorts of diseases.
This world has priests, so a Holy Healing Spell cures everything in one shot, but it still feels unpleasant.
And he’d never been fond of the act of paying for a woman in the first place.
That was true in his past life, and it remained true now.
So the conclusion he reached was that he ought to pursue an actual romance……
Romance.
But now he realized he’d never been in a romantic relationship even in his past life.
“Hmm…romance…that’s complicated, isn’t it?”
How could he even go about courting someone?
Tay drifted into idle daydreaming on the subject.
* * *
Spring gave way to summer.
The Maker Barony was entering a phase of genuine prosperity.
Population: one hundred ten thousand.
That figure already rivaled most viscounties—yet this was merely a barony.
A baron commanding one hundred ten thousand people. Was that normal? No. It was extraordinary.
But no one in the Maker Barony thought anything strange of it.
At the center of the territory,
stone buildings stood in neat rows, and the streets were paved with cobblestone. The drainage system was fully installed, so there was no stench.
This alone placed the barony in the top ten percent of territories in this world.
In other territories, the day began with feces scattered across the streets; here, people used toilets and flushed. The difference in civilization was stark.
A conversation between two residents passing through the streets.
“So you went to Harundel on business recently, didn’t you?”
“I did. Nearly had a heart attack. The stench of excrement hung over the entire city.”
“Harundel? But it’s a million-person metropolis, isn’t it?”
“What good is being a metropolis? Our territory is far better to live in.”
“Our lord is truly the best.”
“Long live our lord!”
Another resident passing by clenched his fist in agreement.
“I was a pauper in Harundel, but here I got hired as a foreman at the Poultry Farm District! If it weren’t for the lord, I’d still be rummaging through garbage!”
“I was given a plot of land to farm! I spent my whole life working others’ fields, and now I have my own. It’s incredible!”
“May our lord enjoy endless prosperity!”
Truly medieval.
The gap between such sentiment and the civic consciousness of a twenty-first-century Earth citizen was immense.
But such loyalty served as the lubricant that kept the territory running smoothly, so Tay had no complaints.
The Poultry Farm District expanded by the day.
This year the chickens laid eggs diligently, fattened themselves diligently, and got fried diligently. The operation expanded another tier, and the current breeding population had reached tens of thousands.
Thanks to chicken culture spreading beyond the territory to the outside world, export volumes were steadily increasing.
A merchant’s remark in passing near the Poultry Farm.
“Why are the chickens here so plump? Is it magic or something?”
It’s not magic but the power of bio-enhanced feed and systematic husbandry. But explaining it would be pointless, so never mind.
The Port District was also thriving.
Three medium merchant ships lay at anchor.
One was a supplier’s vessel laden with bones, one was a merchant ship come to buy Control Rings and Bone Weapons, and the last was a provisioning merchant’s ship come to purchase chickens.
The territory of skeletons and poultry.
True to that nickname, the two pillars of exports were skeleton-related goods and chickens—which struck him as amusing, though money was money.
Add to that the monster-farming dungeon fortress, the mercenary companies, and various other enterprises.
The barony was flourishing.
Tay’s Maker Barony was earning, growing, and strengthening with each passing moment.
A system that ran smoothly even when its lord sprawled about idle—wasn’t this the true pinnacle of territorial management?
* * *
It happened one morning.
Tay was breaking his fast in the dining hall with Rant at his side.
Fresh-baked bread spread with butter, a spoonful of soup, a handful of fruit—a leisurely dawn.
Rant sat across from him, and Dialogue dozed upon his shoulder.
A peaceful morning, one might say. These days had been unfolding in just such a manner.
And yet.
Patter-patter-patter!
Tay’s gaze snapped downward.
A rat was scurrying across the dining hall floor.
“What in—a rat?”
Tay’s brow furrowed as he extended a hand. Dark Magic Power coalesced at his fingertip, and a small bolt of force flew toward the creature.
Thud.
The rat let out a sharp squeak and collapsed dead where it stood.
Tay gazed down at the corpse without much thought.
Then something struck him as odd.
“……This creature’s positively plump, isn’t it?”
The rat was fat—noticeably heavier than ordinary vermin.
As though it had fed itself to bursting on an abundance of food.
Now that he thought about it.
He’d been spotting rats more frequently of late.
Just yesterday he’d watched a pair slink past the warehouse, and the day before that, a report had come in of a swarm in the Poultry Farm District.
“Why have there been so many rats suddenly?”
Tay murmured aloud.
Rant, across from him, set down his soup spoon.
His expression had turned grave.
“My lord.”
“Hmm?”
“This may well be an omen of calamity.”
“An omen?”
Before Tay could blink, Aas burst from the shadows.
“Ah, I see.”
Aas gazed down at the dead rat, eyes narrowing.
“Rant, you are indeed well-learned.”
Aas inclined his head toward Rant.
“This is certainly an omen. More precisely—a sign that someone is orchestrating a calamity, and this is its warning manifestation.”
Tay’s expression hardened.
“Explain. In detail.”
Rant spoke first.
“A spike in the rat population is typically a precursor to plague—but not by natural means. Some force is at work here.”
“Plague?”
“Indeed. If the rats had multiplied naturally, we might blame shifts in their habitat. But this is far too sudden. For their numbers to swell in mere days suggests something is actively drawing them here.”
Aas nodded in agreement.
“I concur. A faint demonic aura emanates from the rats.”
Tay’s eyes widened.
“Plague? Engineered deliberately? That would mean—”
“A Demon Worshipper, perhaps. Or an unlicensed Necromancer.”
Rant counted off on his fingers.
“Or else a plague-related Artifact. Something from the ancient world. Even a demon itself made manifest.”
Aas interjected.
“Statistically speaking, a Necromancer is most likely. They favor plague, after all.”
“Favor? What an odd way to put it.”
“But true nonetheless. When plague kills masses of people, corpses pile high. When corpses abound, Undead materials overflow. From a Necromancer’s perspective, it’s a dream scenario.”
‘Ah. I suppose that logic holds.’
Since Tay himself was a Necromancer, he couldn’t deny the reasoning—though he would have preferred not to understand it.
Aas continued.
“There are plague-related demons among the Demon kind, yes, but most prefer insects to rats. If we saw flies swarming abnormally, I’d suspect a demon. But rats? That points more strongly to a Necromancer.”
Tay’s fist came down on the table with a crack.
Soup splattered across the surface.
“What in the void are these Black Mage whelps doing, constantly sniffing around my lands?”
First Parksan, and now this.
“Do they think I’m easy prey?”
There was no way. A baron commanding tens of thousands of Skeletal Soldiers couldn’t possibly be easy prey, yet he couldn’t fathom why these creatures kept coming. What did they see?
‘Ah. Maybe it’s because the population is 110,000. They swarm because there are plenty of sacrifices to be made.’
When he thought about it, Parksan too had targeted a densely populated area.
A large population was attractive hunting ground for necromancers, for Demon Worshippers, for madmen bent on spreading plague — all of them.
A large population was its own problem.
“Aas. How do we find them?”
“A price will be necessary.”
Aas answered unhurriedly. Like any demon, he gave nothing free of charge.
“Name your price. If it’s something I can manage, I’ll do it.”
“Ten hearts. That should suffice.”
“Hearts?”
“Yes. The hearts of living humans. Specifically, hearts that are still beating.”
Rant frowned but said nothing. He knew well enough that in a bargain with a demon, this was a trivial ask.
Tay nodded.
“Fine. I’ll arrange it.”
Aas’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“You consent rather easily, it seems.”
“I can procure ten hearts from death-row criminals deserving of execution.”
Tay spoke matter-of-factly.
A territory of 110,000 souls was sure to have criminals aplenty.
Murderers, rapists, serial brigands — there would be several in the dungeons awaiting the executioner’s axe.
They were dead men walking anyway; extracting their hearts to offer the demon served the territory far better.
It was a calculation as cold as winter frost.
But ten criminals’ hearts were a pittance compared to tens of thousands dying of plague.
“Partan. Send word for him to bring the death-row roster.”
Tay’s voice had turned glacial.
Plague.
This was a threat of an entirely different order from war or Black Mage attack.
An armed enemy could be met with steel, but plague was invisible. Once it began to spread, even tens of thousands of Skeletal Soldiers could not contain it.
Skeletal Soldiers could not strike down germs.
‘I must find them. Before it spreads.’
The Black Mage is Too Overpowered as a Blacksmith
Author |
Automaton G
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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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