Blacksmithing Is Child’s Play for a Dark Mage - Chapter 94

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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 94
Skeleton Troops alone couldn’t fill every position that needed filling. The more commander-class talent, the better.
Having entrusted the war preparations and territory management to Partan, Tay set out on his journey.
* * *
Harundel.
The port city governed by the Marquess remained prosperous even in the drought.
While the continent groaned under starvation, the Marquess’s Domain, with three years’ worth of provisions stockpiled, stood unshaken. The streets teemed with people, and the markets overflowed with vitality.
While other territories burned in hellfire, this place alone maintained a peaceful, ordinary rhythm.
‘As expected, wealthy neighborhoods really are different.’
Tay marveled inwardly as he made his way toward the Marquess Castle.
Upon arriving at the castle, Tay waited briefly in the reception hall.
It was different from before.
The first time he’d requested an audience, he’d had to wait a month, and even then the steward had come in the Marquess’s stead.
But this time, after only a brief wait, he was granted a direct audience with the Marquess himself.
The treatment of an ally.
It was proof that Tay’s standing had risen considerably.
A Baron with a population of 360,000 and twenty thousand Skeleton Troops was no longer a provincial lord whom one could keep waiting for a month.
And.
They met alone.
The office door closed, and Tay finally sat facing Grimoire, the Marquess of Harundel.
“…….”
The air grew heavy in an instant.
He’d glimpsed her from afar once before, but this was the first time they’d sat face-to-face. And the Marquess’s presence, observed at close range, was nothing short of overwhelming.
Formidable charisma.
And a tangible pressure felt through the skin itself.
The fluctuation of magical power flowing from the Marquess’s body pressed down upon the room.
On the surface she appeared merely a middle-aged noblewoman taking tea, but the power concealed within was of an entirely different order.
It was like a calm lake that conceals an abyss beneath.
‘Indeed…… the difference in rank is clear.’
Though Tay himself was now a Class 3 Black Mage who had surpassed level 16 in total, the gap before the Marquess was undeniable.
They said nobles of Count rank and above lived for centuries. The strength accumulated over such ages was surely the source of this oppressive presence.
But Tay did not shrink back.
He understood that she was strong. Yet strength was not everything. Tay possessed an asset even the Marquess could not dismiss—an army of twenty thousand Skeleton Troops.
The Marquess opened her mouth.
“You’ve traveled far. Baron Maker.”
Her voice was deep and dignified.
Tay met the Marquess’s gaze directly and replied.
“The honor is mine, Your Grace.”
Their gazes collided in the empty space between them.
The meeting of two lords seeking to join hands in this age of chaos.
Was finally beginning.
* * *
The Marquess broached the matter first.
“Word reached me that you would join as an ally in the campaign against the Salkatna Countdom. I called you here to speak face-to-face before we march to war.”
Her voice was gentle, yet each word carried a weight so grave that four soldiers could be crushed beneath it without raising an eyebrow.
Tay felt like a low-level adventurer who had just drawn the aggro of a field boss directly.
“The honor is mine.”
Tay offered the most measured and proper response he could muster—brief and respectful.
Of course, he merely affected composure on the surface; internally, he was considerably tense.
The other party was far too powerful a figure from whom even a single verbal misstep demanded caution!
For a moment, a silence so heavy that even breathing seemed audible pressed thickly between them.
Tay was acutely reminded that such silences were torture devices that slowly drove a person mad.
The Marquess lifted her teacup, took a slow sip, and then her lips curved slightly upward, as if amusement had struck her.
“Are you not curious? Why does this Marquess move to strike Count Salkatna?”
He could have adopted an expression brimming with curiosity and exclaimed something flattering, but he refrained.
Tay did not for a moment believe that such honeyed flattery would work on this woman.
“There’s no real reason to be curious. For my part, I need only gauge whether to board the same ship as Your Grace or not. That suffices.”
After all, once you’ve boarded the same vessel, if the ship sinks, you drown together in fellowship—such is the sailor’s fate.
So for Tay, whether the ship’s destination mattered far less than whether the ship itself remained sound and seaworthy.
The Marquess’s eyes narrowed. It was the gaze of a cat that has discovered an interesting plaything—precisely that kind of gleam.
“Is it something simple, then? Or do you possess some kind of insight?”
Insight. That grandiose word clinging to someone like Tay made him acutely uncomfortable, as though his skin were crawling.
“I couldn’t say. It’s merely the art of self-preservation—survival instinct for someone like me, who rolled around in the mercenary trade before stumbling into a title by sheer accident.”
In other words, the instinct of a perpetual junior employee, always gauging the boss’s mood, scrambling to stay afloat.
Keep yourself small enough, and at least you defuse the bomb of expectations before it detonates.
Another silence descended—longer this time, deeper than before—and with each passing second, Tay felt his lifespan ticking away, grain by grain.
For the record, Asu, the Imp Butler, was hiding demurely within Tay’s shadow, and under any other circumstances would have been needling him with remarks like “Master, surely you’re not trembling before a mere human?” but today her mouth remained firmly sealed.
Even a demon, by her nature, instinctively shrank and withdrew into the deepest recesses of shadow in the presence of this Marquess.
Or perhaps she was restraining herself for her master’s sake.
The prattling voice clinging to his shoulder—that constant internal dialogue—was straining to burst forth with something like “Master! Before such overwhelming majesty, surely one ought to cry ‘Long live the sun!’—” but Tay was clenching his teeth and mentally strangling it into silence.
If that chatterbox let slip even one wrong word here, it would spark a catastrophe etched permanently into imperial diplomatic history.
At last, the Marquess broached the main matter.
“I would have you assume command of the detachment.”
“The detachment, you say…?”
Tay ventured carefully to ask for clarification, and the Marquess set down her teacup soundlessly before continuing.
“This campaign will not unfold as an orthodox Territory War.”
“If not orthodox, then how do you intend to proceed?”
An orthodox Territory War was precisely the manner of conflict Tay had once participated in as a mercenary.
A neutral arbitrator stationed in the center, both sides agreeing beforehand on date and place, gathering at a single location to conduct their clash with absolute candor and decorum.
In essence, a civilly negotiated conflict in which two powers would meet at an appointed hour and exchange blows with gentlemanly restraint.
This war, however, would be nothing of the sort—or so the Marquess was suggesting.
“Do you know why?”
The Marquess posed the question as though testing him.
Tay’s mind raced through calculations.
Then he drew forth the most plausible answer.
“Because the Count of Salkatna lacks the capacity to maintain control of his own Domain?”
“Sharp as ever.”
A faint smile touched the corner of the Marquess’s mouth.
Then, in measured tones, she began to unravel the current situation piece by piece.
The internal state of the Salkatna Countdom, compressed into a single phrase, was simply fractured chaos.
The lords beneath the Count were waging Territory Wars among themselves, striking and counter-striking until the Domain burned like a civil war—civil war in all but name.
And in this age, ambushes and surprise attacks—deeds ordinarily branded as cowardly—were being perpetrated without hesitation, as though shame had been pawned away to a pawnbroker long ago.
In the parlance of another life, they were unsportsmanlike players stabbing each other in the back and fleeing across the server, and they infested every corner of this conflict.
On top of it all, innocent villages belonging to the Domain were being openly massacred, torn apart from all sides—civilian slaughter on a brazen scale.
“The Count of Salkatna should have, early in this crisis, clamped down firmly on his subordinate lords to prevent them from clawing at each other’s throats.”
The Marquess clicked her tongue lightly, as though disappointed.
“But by neglecting to do so, by putting it off day after day, the entire Countdom now burns uncontrolled.”
It was a perfect cautionary lesson—what happens when an administrator abandons all oversight and permits chaos to consume the server.
“Which means the Count cannot afford to respond properly, Your Grace.”
Tay struck at the heart of it, and the Marquess slowly inclined her head.
“Precisely. With his own household in such shambles, how could he possibly formalize an external Territory War?”
The Marquess’s explanation flowed seamlessly onward.
“The Count of Salkatna cannot accept an orthodox Territory War. Which means, in the end, we have no choice but to march our forces in and take what we need by strength. And that is why you matter.”
“Because of troop strength.”
Tay grasped it at once.
“Exactly so.”
The Marquess raised a finger lightly.
“My direct forces, combined with every vassal’s troops I can muster, amount to barely thirty thousand. Even adding the Skeleton Troops I received from you, plus those I’ve purchased with gold, we cannot exceed fifty thousand. Yet you alone command some twenty thousand Skeleton Troops as though they were nothing.”
In other words, the Marquess’s entire faction, scraping together every last soul, barely mustered fifty thousand—while Tay sat upon nearly half that number single-handedly.
The Black Mage Is Too Overpowered As A Blacksmith
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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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