I Became an SSS-Grade Time-Transcending Almighty Blacksmith - Chapter 35

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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 35
Chapter 35
“Oh, Bear Gall! Now that’s something to look forward to!”
To Ran’s interest was piqued at the mention of the Giant Bear’s Bear Gall.
Se Rin examined the Bear Gall carefully.
“Master, might I borrow your kitchen? I’d like to attempt this right away.”
“Of course!”
That’s what I said.
Borrowing the kitchen posed no problem, but the real issue was ingredients.
No matter how talented Se Rin was, a single Bear Gall wouldn’t get her very far.
I asked if there was anything else she might need.
“Sun Root and Blue Wind Stem, Snow Salt, and…….”
“……Wait. What are those?”
“Ah, my apologies. Those are ingredients sourced from the Ikaya Mountain Range.”
“Are those absolutely essential?”
The names of these unfamiliar ingredients reached my ears.
Sun Root, Blue Wind Stem—naturally, I’d never heard of them before.
They seemed genuinely necessary, but I asked whether they might be substituted with something else.
Fortunately.
“I’m not certain it will work out, but could you source materials as similar as possible?”
“Of course!”
A positive answer came back.
After that, I searched for ingredients as close as possible to what she’d described.
Garlic in place of Sun Root.
Scallions instead of Blue Wind Stem.
Himalayan salt for Snow Salt.
Substituting materials in that fashion as best I could.
“I’m back!”
I arrived with both hands full.
“I’ll begin at once.”
Se Rin’s cooking commenced immediately.
I’d worried that since my Crafting skill only worked on ‘items’ and not real-world objects, perhaps she’d have the same limitation with food ingredients.
Sizzle!
Watching her work, it seemed that wasn’t an issue.
Se Rin lightly seared the surface of the Bear Gall first.
Once seared, she placed it into the largest pot I owned.
Then she added sliced garlic, scallions, onions, and more into the pot.
The cooking method was surprisingly… ordinary, really.
I might have thought I could do it myself.
[ Cooking Lv 3 ]
One of the skills restored as her level rose.
Cooking.
That skill was being applied to her work.
After finishing the prep work, her cooking became.
“Now it only needs to simmer.”
A soup from the Bear Gall.
Part of me wondered whether making soup with a Cooking skill rather than crafting an Elixir from such fine material was the right choice.
But since there was no Alchemist among any Awakener, it would only become dead weight if we had it.
So Giant Bear Gall Soup was more than sufficient.
“Shall we eat while we wait?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Excellent!”
While the Giant Bear Gall Soup simmered.
We resolved our hunger as well.
Having pushed hard all day, I spent the time resting while we waited.
“Master, it’s done.”
The Giant Bear Gall Soup was complete.
“At last!”
The Giant Bear Gall Soup that Se Rin had made.
What would it look like?
First, I decided to check the item information.
[ Giant Bear Gall Soup ]
Type: Cooking
Grade: A
Description: A rich bear gall soup crafted by Se Rin, a monster hunter of the Ikaya Mountain Range, from a Giant Bear’s gall bladder and refined to near-Elixir quality.
The information had been confirmed as genuine.
It meant the bear gall soup had been recognized as an item.
The item description even said it was made to near-Elixir quality, so I opened the pot lid with anticipation.
“Uh……?”
“Hm……?”
What I saw was pure darkness.
The inside of the pot was stained jet black.
A dark liquid bubbled and roiled, and where it had splattered, the entire interior of the pot and even the underside of the lid were completely black.
And the smell?
I hadn’t even tasted it yet, but an intense bitterness seemed to emanate from the aroma itself.
I glanced at Se Rin, wondering if perhaps the cooking had gone wrong somehow.
“I was worried because the ingredients were different, but it turned out better than expected.”
Se Rin looked quite satisfied.
She then divided the soup into three bowls.
Not wasting a single drop, she scraped the inside of the pot thoroughly.
Our reactions to this were:
“This is quite satisfactory, I’d say.”
Se Rin, pleased as could be, and
“Ahem, ahem. The good stuff always tastes bitter!”
To Ran, nodding in agreement.
“Ugh…….”
And then…… me.
I’d never been good at swallowing herbal medicine.
This was the kind of thing where just looking at it made my tongue recoil.
I genuinely wondered if I had to eat this, but
“Once you drink it, you’ll feel your body warming from within. In Snow Mountain, there was no more nourishing tonic than this.”
Looking at Se Rin, so proud and eagerly waiting for me to take a bite, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse.
Still, despite appearances, it might taste good.
Taking a deep breath and lifting a spoonful to my mouth:
“Ugh…….”
An overwhelming bitterness began to seize my taste buds.
My entire tongue felt coated in bitterness.
No matter how I moved my tongue or how much I swallowed, the bitterness wouldn’t fade.
It was a bitterness more intense than anything else I’d ever tasted.
Far more bitter than the herbal medicine my parents had forced me to drink as a child.
They wanted me to eat this?
I wanted to spit it out immediately, but
“How is it, Master……?”
Looking into Se Rin’s eyes, I simply couldn’t spit it out.
However, I had no confidence I could take another spoonful.
That maddening bitterness would assault me with each bite.
So I made a choice.
“Master?”
“Gulp!”
I picked up the bowl and began drinking the soup straight down.
It was brewed so well that the bear gall melted smoothly without a trace of grittiness.
My mouth filled completely with bitterness.
You’d think I’d adapt by this point, but the bitterness of this cursed broth felt fresh with every swallow.
Forcing myself to endure it, I held the bowl to my lips for some time until finally:
“Phew…….”
I managed to drink all the soup.
Though it shouldn’t have been possible, the bitterness lingered not just in my mouth but in my throat and stomach as well.
Unable to bear it any longer, I grabbed a drink I’d had delivered and left chilling in the refrigerator and chugged it.
[ You have consumed ‘Giant Bear Gall Soup’. ]
[ Having consumed ‘Giant Bear Gall Soup’, the essence of the giant bear fills your body. ]
[ Health increases by 3. ]
[ You gain the Power of the Giant Bear for one day. ]
[ Power of the Giant Bear – Strength and Health increase substantially. ]
System messages flickered before my eyes.
Health up by 3!
Three points was practically equivalent to leveling up, yet I’d gained this much from a single bowl of Bear Gall Soup. No wonder Elixirs commanded such prices.
Now I understood.
“You downed it all at once…! Did it taste that good? If you’d like more, I’m happy to share mine!”
“Oh, no, that’s fine. You should drink some too, Se Rin. Since this counts as an Elixir, it’ll raise your Health stats too.”
“I’m perfectly fine! It’s more important that you, Master…”
“No, really, I’m okay! If your Health stat increases, you’ll be safer, right? You should be the one to drink it!”
“Master…!”
I barely managed to refuse Se Rin’s offer to give me more of the soup, thinking I was somehow lacking.
Though she did give me a strangely moved expression as she looked at me.
Watching her eat it slowly, spoonful by spoonful, I realized this wasn’t a cooking mistake—it genuinely tasted this way.
What on earth had she been eating out on Snow Mountain?
I’d have to make sure never to ask her to cook again.
Speaking of which—how was To Ran handling it?
He seemed like the type who’d eaten plenty of strange things, so I figured he’d be fine. I turned my head to check.
“Guaaaaaaah…”
Thud.
To Ran’s eyes rolled back as he collapsed, unable to withstand the intense bitterness of the Bear Gall Soup.
* * *
Fortunately, To Ran came to quickly.
I’d expected that after being knocked out by the soup’s overwhelming flavor, he’d avoid even looking at it again.
“I can’t give up nourishment like this! Kaaaaaaagh!”
The moment he stood up, eyes still rolled back, he drained the entire bowl of soup in one go.
Just like I had.
As he started to collapse again, barely having finished the soup,
“To Ran, here.”
I handed him a drink.
I knew that feeling all too well.
“Kid…!”
To Ran took the bottle with an expression of deep gratitude and chugged the entire thing.
Only then did he seem to recover somewhat.
Still, though.
“Whooooa! I’m absolutely bursting with power! I could swing a pickaxe all day long!”
The effect was clearly working.
Meanwhile, Se Rin continued eating her soup calmly with a spoon, as if nothing was amiss.
I was starting to wonder if her sense of taste had gone numb.
Though the flavor was genuinely that harsh.
‘Elixirs really are something else.’
Once I made enough money and got comfortable, I’d have to start buying Elixirs myself.
With enough coin, you could raise your stats this easily.
Speaking of which—did my stats go up significantly?
I was curious, but there was no way to check.
Actually, wait. There was one way.
[ Awakener Community ]
I could post on the Community.
Posting under Steel Hammer’s name would cause an uproar, but
the Community allowed anonymous posts. So while sipping the Elixir, I wrote:
[ Just drank an Elixir—is this much of an increase decent? ]
Got +3 Health and a buff that substantially increases Strength and Health for one day.
The increase seems to be roughly this much.
(Photo attached)
I posted the system messages exactly as they appeared.
Not long after, comments from other Awakeners started rolling in.
But then,
– +3 Health is pretty standard
– yeah but what’s that thing in the back?
– Strength and health surging dramatically for an entire day?
People’s reactions were strange.
They knew ability points could rise, but they’d apparently never seen them climb with a time limit like this.
Though such cases did exist, admittedly.
– Isn’t that just a buff potion effect?
– Yeah, looks like it
– You’re saying an Elixir can produce effects like that?
– The efficiency is good though—at that level, it’s better than most high-grade buff potions, isn’t it?
– The duration is insane, it’s not even a few hours, it’s a whole day lol
– What are you doing? I’d have headed straight to the hunting grounds
– But what exactly did they eat to get both ability point increases and buff effects together?
– Maybe they drank an Elixir and a buff potion separately and mistook it for stacking?
– Yeah, probably
– Otherwise it doesn’t make sense lol
– Or it’s fake
– Fake fake fake
– Faaaaake
That was the case with buff potions.
Generally, Elixirs didn’t produce effects like that, apparently.
Looking at the comments like this.
“Ah, now that you mention it, that makes sense.”
The Power of the Giant Bear—lasting for an entire day.
I felt the effect was being wasted.
The comments were full of advice that if this effect was real, they should hunt immediately while the buff was active.
I didn’t need to hunt, but strength and health ability points were useful for Crafting as well.
So the moment Se Rin finished the Giant Bear Gall Soup.
“Well then, let’s get to work right away!”
“Understood.”
“Hahahaha! I’m overflowing with power! Let’s go check it out!”
“Smithy of Time!”
Rumble—
I headed toward the smithy.
Immediately picking up the hammer.
[ Crafting begins. ]
I started crafting.
The moment I swung the hammer for the first time.
Clang!
I could feel it.
“Oh! This feels great!”
The Power of the Giant Bear.
The elevated strength and health from it.
The effect was immediate and tangible.
Power flowed into my swinging arm, and no matter how much I swung, I felt no fatigue.
[ Crafting is complete. ]
[ Crafting Evaluation: S ]
[ You have obtained ‘Bat Wing Shoes’. ]
The result was excellent.
I could feel the probability of S-grade items appearing had risen meaningfully.
Excited by this, I continued swinging the hammer.
How many items had I crafted by then?
“Master.”
“Se Rin, what is it?”
Se Rin, who normally reported nothing special to me even after finishing hunts since hunting was her daily routine.
Called out to me the moment she arrived at the smithy.
“Will you check something?”
Rumble—
She turned the Blacksmith’s Bag I’d given her inside out and began pouring the items from inside onto the floor.

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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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