Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 90

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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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Chapter 90
The Domain Lord’s mansion conference room.
Core personnel of the territory gathered around a long table.
Tay sat at the head, with Administrative Minister Kael flanking him on one side, Partan in charge of military affairs on the other, and Rant, who handled all manner of territorial business, taking his place as well.
The brains of the domain had assembled in a single room.
Kael began his report, sliding a document across the table.
“Lord Tay. The influx of refugees is accelerating.”
The parchment Kael unfolded displayed a graph of daily refugee arrivals, and the line—rather than merely climbing upward—had begun climbing at nearly a vertical angle.
“At first, we were receiving roughly ten per day, but now dozens arrive daily. And this trend shows every sign of intensifying further.”
A Refugee Wave.
Like monster waves crashing through in a game, an endless procession of starving refugees poured relentlessly toward the Maker Barony.
An ordinary lord would have clutched his head at such a report. When thousands—tens of thousands—of refugees flood in, feeding and housing them alone threatens to bankrupt a domain.
But Tay’s reaction was the exact opposite.
“This is our moment!”
Tay pushed himself up from the table, his eyes gleaming brilliantly—the eyes of a collector who’d just spotted a store stocked with limited-edition releases.
“Launching the Expand-the-Territory-Population Project right now!”
To Tay, refugees were no burden but a goldmine.
He had already felt, bone-deep, the truth that people were national strength, people were wealth, and people were the future—lessons learned by absorbing one hundred thousand paupers into his domain.
“Rant.”
“At your command, my lord.”
“Mass-produce bricks and churn out housing for the refugees like madmen. We have Skeleton Soldiers as unlimited labor, so we can manufacture brick houses from a factory like mass-producing instant noodles.”
Tay’s plan was simple yet efficient.
Skeleton Soldiers were tireless, required no food, and could work twenty-four hours nonstop—deploying them to brick production and construction would yield residential output at a scale entirely different from human labor.
True, there was a large mountain nearby they could fell for timber.
But he’d decided brick was the better choice.
Wood, after all, was vulnerable to fire.
By Tay’s recollection, a major American city in the twenty-first century had burned to ash in a massive conflagration, so wooden houses carried that much risk.
“Commander Partan.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Take troops and patrol the territory boundaries. When refugees reach the frontier, escort them in safely. If they’re waylaid by bandits or monsters on the way, we lose valuable labor. And if you spot thieves, capture them and bring them here. Criminal slaves make excellent workers, don’t they?”
“Understood. I’ll deploy immediately.”
Partan replied with crisp assurance.
“Take as many as we can. As many as possible, even more. Accept every refugee without exception!”
The mood in the conference room heated with Tay’s declaration.
“Lord Tay. Our domain does maintain considerable food reserves compared to neighboring territories, but if we accept that many, problems will arise.”
“Expand fishing. Support it with Undead.”
“Undead…… understood.”
Undead didn’t need to breathe, so they could operate underwater, and one could even create fish Undead.
If skeletal Undead brought fish back from the sea, the food problem would be solved.
No—it could become the most profitable enterprise imaginable.
Fish commanded premium prices in this world!
Why?
Because sea monsters were stronger than land monsters.
The marine environment made them so.
Which was why Kael was nodding thoughtfully.
Then, at that moment.
Rant raised his hand.
“My lord. There is one problem.”
“What is it?”
“We cannot produce bricks immediately.”
Tay’s expression stilled.
“We lack the foundational infrastructure—brick kilns, drying grounds, clay pits. It’s possible to harden soil via Dark Magic, but it’s unsuitable for mass production. If it were just one or two houses, perhaps, but to churn out homes for tens of thousands using Dark Magic alone? My magical reserves would deplete first. Or else it would take an extraordinarily long time.”
It was a sound objection.
Tay stroked his chin, thinking for a moment.
Then his lips curved upward.
“Then we make one.”
“Make what?”
“A brick factory.”
Tay tapped his own chest.
“I’ll construct the brick factory myself right away, so don’t worry about that.”
Rant paused, studying Tay for a moment, then nodded.
Creating impossible things in this territory was commonplace by now; there was hardly reason to be surprised anymore.
“Understood. Then I shall prepare the construction workforce allocation and site selection.”
“Good. That concludes the meeting.”
The meeting came to an end.
* * *
A vacant lot on the Territory Outskirts.
Tay placed his hand on the empty ground and activated his Insane Engineer Ability. A Design Drawing by Madness-Tinged Imagination unfurled in his mind.
The accumulated Madness Points drained instantly, and a new blueprint took shape.
“Crafting by Madness-Tinged Hands.”
From Tay’s palms poured forth both black mana and mechanical components in equal measure.
Something began rising from the earth.
An enormous kiln broke through the ground, and beside it a clay-mixing apparatus assembled itself. Conveyor belts unrolled, brick molds arranged themselves in neat rows, and a core engine powered by madness locked into place at the center.
The machines interlocked, gradually forming the silhouette of a massive factory.
What was completed was:
The Bone Chip Affection Brick Factory.
Even its name defied normalcy.
Being a creation of a Crazy Craftsman, it naturally carried a side effect—and this time the side effect was “bone chip affection.”
Anyone working in this factory would develop an obsessive attachment upon seeing bone fragments.
But such things weren’t truly a major concern.
One could live with an obsession of that caliber well enough.
“Excellent.”
Tay nodded with satisfaction.
The factory began operating. The kiln roared with flame, the conveyor belt spun, and bricks rolled out of the molds in an endless stream.
“This should keep the bricks coming steady.”
But the bricks emerging had an unusual appearance.
Rather than ordinary rectangular bricks, these had studs protruding from the top and corresponding slots carved into the bottom.
LEGO Bricks.
That was precisely their form.
These bricks required no separate adhesive like cement or mortar.
Simply interlocking the tops and bottoms held them firm—snap the studs into the slots and you were done. One could build houses as easily as children assembling toys.
It was a design that would accelerate construction impossibly fast, all carefully calculated by Tay in advance.
This was convenience itself!
Rant picked up one of the LEGO Bricks rolling off the line and examined it from every angle.
“You’ve made these so they can be stacked without adhesive?”
“Right. Just interlock them. No waiting for cement to dry.”
“…Your master’s Bloodline Ability is truly peculiar.”
Rant murmured in a tone that couldn’t quite decide whether to marvel or be bewildered.
By this world’s logic, it was an incomprehensible notion—yet the result was undeniably revolutionary.
“Now go work. The construction crews need deploying.”
“As you command.”
Rant scooped up a handful of LEGO Bricks and turned to leave.
The factory continued pouring out bricks without pause.
Homes for the refugees would soon sprout like bamboo shoots after rain.
* * *
In twenty-first century South Korea, there was a saying:
“Man, it’s like money’s being photocopied!”
A phrase from some game broadcast that had become a meme, used to describe something abnormally ballooning.
And now, in the Maker Barony, exactly such a thing was happening.
“Man, it’s like the population’s being photocopied!”
The territory’s inhabitants really were multiplying as if being duplicated.
As winter faded and spring arrived, the population swelled from 110,000 to 160,000.
Fifty thousand people had arrived in mere months.
The numbers were insane.
While the entire continent groaned under drought, word spread that “they’ll feed you there,” and refugees from every direction began their mass migration toward the Maker Barony.
Like ants swarming toward food, the starving masses poured in endlessly.
Any ordinary territory would have gone bankrupt long before this point.
Feeding and sheltering fifty thousand unexpected arrivals was the sort of burden that would incinerate an average domain’s yearly budget in a single month.
But the Maker Barony was no ordinary territory, and more importantly, Tay possessed an absurdly exploitative asset: unlimited labor.
Every refugee who arrived was immediately put to work.
According to Tay’s iron rule that there was no such thing as a free meal, the refugees whose bodies had recovered were promptly sent to work.
Construction work—fitting together LEGO Bricks to build houses (they had to build their own homes first, which, surprisingly, went up remarkably fast. It was the magnificent power of the LEGO Brick) work.
Land reclamation work—tilling the wastelands into arable fields.
Infrastructure work—laying roads, digging wells, and maintaining sewers.
A surreal spectacle unfolded with Skeleton Soldiers and refugees working side by side, and the sight of the living and the dead shouldering their loads as they carried bricks was a landmark sight that could be seen nowhere else in this world except the Maker Barony.
But one problem emerged.
Food.
With fifty thousand additional mouths to feed, even the abundant territory’s stores depleted rapidly.
At the sight of stockpiled provisions vanishing like melting snow, Kael let out a scream.
“At this rate, we’ll run out of food within two months, Lord!”
Tay paused to consider, then swiftly set his pre-planned solution into motion.
The sea!
“I suppose I’ll have to create Undead specialized for the ocean.”
The drought had parched the land, but it could not dry out the sea.
No matter how arid the continent became, the fish beneath the waves swam as they always had—and not harvesting them would be a waste.
The Black Mage Is Too Easy as a Blacksmith
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AutomatonG
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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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