I Became an SSS-Grade Time-Transcending Almighty Blacksmith - Chapter 57

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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 57
Chapter 57
How many Lightning Stones were left in the warehouse?
I didn’t know for certain, but there had to be dozens of them.
I remembered that Toran had recently discovered a Lightning Stone vein and brought back a considerable quantity.
After selecting all those Lightning Stones,
I turned toward them and
Bang!
swung my hammer.
Each time I did,
Crack!
a current far more powerful than when I’d forged the lightning arrows erupted.
Naturally, that current reached my body as well.
Each time, the electric shock sent a sharp, burning pain through me.
Regardless,
Bang!
I swung my hammer again.
Even as my clothes burned away,
even as my skin charred,
even as my muscles seized involuntarily and my body stiffened,
I ignored every signal, forcing my muscles to move regardless,
Bang!
and swung my hammer once more.
Each time,
‘Compression.’
The Lightning Stone before me compressed.
Of course, there were limits to how much a Lightning Stone could compress.
As it compressed, the surface would crack and shatter, leaving only the pure thunder within.
Even so,
Bang!
I didn’t stop hammering.
The pure thunder, too, compressed under my strikes without resistance.
It was the same with each Lightning Stone.
Compress, shatter, compress, shatter.
The cycle repeated.
And as it did,
Snap-crack!
the current that erupted with each strike grew stronger.
Current so violent it threatened life itself sprayed in all directions.
Yet why was it
that this current didn’t feel so threatening?
Besides, the Giant Bear’s Endurance Apron I was wearing absorbed some of the current.
How much time had passed?
After what felt both brief and endless,
only the pure thunder from the Lightning Stones, now completely compressed by my hammer, remained.
Even then, as I continued swinging my hammer,
Bang!
the pure thunder began taking the shape of an arrow.
Thunder, fully compressed and utterly refined.
Precisely because of this, reshaping it with hammer strikes proved extraordinarily difficult.
Each time I struck the focal point, the erupting current overwhelmed even the Giant Bear’s Endurance Apron, burning it away.
Still,
Bang!
I didn’t give up.
Right now, Serin was facing the Storm Repair on my behalf.
Bang!
There was no time.
Even as I worked, Serin was enduring a situation where her life hung in the balance.
I had to make it faster.
I had to.
The moment that thought crossed my mind.
Tick, tick—
A clock’s ticking echoed in my head.
Then.
[ The blacksmith’s earnest wish causes the Forge of Time to respond. ]
[ The Forge of Time’s time deceleration effect grows stronger. ]
System messages bloomed before my eyes.
I prayed the outside world would slow its passage.
Desperate to keep Serin standing, I swung the hammer with everything I had.
And at last, I could finish it.
An arrow forged from pure thunder.
[ Crafting complete. ]
[ Crafting Evaluation: SSS ]
[ You have obtained Piercing Lightning. ]
The result was nothing short of an SSS-rank item.
That wasn’t all.
[ A Masterpiece has been born. ]
[ A masterpiece forged with all your might has been completed. Drawing inspiration from it, your stats increase. ]
[ Dexterity increases by 2. ]
[ Intelligence increases by 2. ]
A judgment I’d never seen before in all my years.
Recognized as a masterpiece.
And the item that emerged was:
[ Piercing Lightning ]
Form: Arrow
Grade: SSS
Restriction: Serin, Monster Hunter of the Icaya Mountains
Description: A lightning arrow forged by the blacksmith Jang Gang-cheol from extremely compressed pure thunder, created to bring down the Gale Reaper.
Ability:
Pure Thunder
That was it.
Despite being an SSS-rank item, there was no listed attack power.
There was no restricted level either.
What existed instead was nothing but pure thunder.
The ability felt entirely different from anything I’d ever seen before.
An ability with no level designation at all.
This was my first time seeing such a thing.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been marveling at everything—the first SSS-rank item I’d ever crafted, the ability written in bold text I’d never laid eyes on before—but now I didn’t have time for wonder.
Rumble—
Gripping Piercing Lightning, I burst out of the forge.
And what I saw was:
“Haah……”
Serin stood upon a utility pole, drawing her bowstring with composed grace, her breath coming hard.
Beneath her lay dozens of fallen Gale Reapers.
All of them monsters she’d brought down while I was crafting.
To display such prowess even while facing the boss monster itself—she was truly formidable.
Yes, she was strong.
But.
“Screeeeeee!”
High above in the sky, the boss monster spread its massive wings as it looked down upon her.
The Gale Reaper’s body bore not a single wound.
No sign of exhaustion either.
It simply gazed down from above as if it had grown bored, uninterested in prolonging this any further.
And to finish Serin once and for all, it began compressing the air before its beak, preparing its final attack.
Seeing this.
“Serin!”
I hurled the arrow toward her.
Though the grueling battle had pushed her to her limits.
“Master!”
She recognized my voice at once.
As I turned my head, I caught the arrow I had released with perfect precision.
And then.
This was my limit.
Crafting that arrow had consumed both my stamina and mental energy, and my entire body now wracked with electrical burns, I could no longer endure—I dropped to one knee.
But she did not run to me.
She understood.
That her task now was not to save me.
Meeting my gaze, she nodded once, then fitted the arrow I had given her to her bowstring without hesitation.
The lightning in the arrow was so potent that even its maker could not contain it—current arced through Serin’s fingers.
Yet Serin did not flinch. She gritted her teeth and endured the electrical surge.
Then came her strongest attack yet.
She activated Focused Shot.
Even as electricity crackled around her, she maintained absolute concentration.
Drawing the bowstring to its limit, the bow groaning as if it would splinter—
“Hyyyyooooo!”
Whoosh!
As she released the wind pressure gathered at the arrow’s nock, firing the Air Breath in a explosive gust—
Snap!
she loosed the string.
The arrow ascended.
Fired like pure lightning, the arrow looked as if the sky had flipped upside down and lightning was surging skyward.
That single brilliant bolt of lightning tore through the Storm Wyvern’s Air Breath without effort, driving forward.
Thunk.
It pierced the Storm Wyvern’s chest.
Then, silence.
The Storm Wyvern’s movement ceased; the violent currents swirling around its body stilled; even those watching froze.
All motion stopped for a single instant.
And not long after.
CRAAAAAACK-!!!
Thunder roared belatedly across the sky.
Inevitably, the Storm Wyvern—the source of that sound—received the full brunt of the devastating electrical strike.
Pure Thunder.
Lightning of an entirely different magnitude than ordinary electricity, it did not scatter in other directions but concentrated wholly upon the Storm Wyvern.
The current was so violent that the brilliant flash momentarily blotted out even the sun’s light.
After the Pure Thunder was released,
the Storm Wyvern’s body did not plummet.
Instead,
Crumble.
it began to scatter as black ash.
The electrical current had been so overwhelming that its body was completely incinerated, reduced entirely to cinders.
A Boss Monster—not even an ordinary one—reduced to ash and scattered.
Impossible as it seemed,
[ Your Level has increased. ]
the Level Up message that appeared before my eyes confirmed the Storm Wyvern’s death.
And with it,
[ C-rank Gate, “Storm Ravine,” has been cleared. ]
[ The Gate’s entrance is closing. ]
The Gate overhead, which had relentlessly spawned Storm Wyverns, began to fade.
The Boss Monster had fallen, and the Gate was sealing.
And.
“C-rank…?”
Looking at the system message displayed before me,
I could only shake my head.
C-rank? Wasn’t that supposed to be relatively weak?
It couldn’t be.
Gates are classified starting from F-rank.
So C-rank would be—by count—the fourth tier of Gate.
The typical monsters found in C-rank Gates are threats like Trolls or Salamanders.
And even fairly skilled Awakeners struggle against C-rank Gate monsters.
Yet here,
Serin brought down every monster in that C-rank Gate on her own.
She even defeated the Boss Monster single-handedly.
Anyone who witnessed it would have stood slack-jawed in astonishment.
But there was no time to marvel.
“Ungh…….”
As a wave of overwhelming exhaustion crashed down on my entire body, my posture gave way.
I collapsed.
“Master—!”
I fell to the ground.
* * *
“Chairman, things are gradually coming under control.”
“……Good to hear.”
The calamity that had erupted so suddenly.
The Monster Gates were finally winding down.
The monsters that had poured out without warning caused considerable casualties, but relative to the scale of the Gate Break, the damage was mercifully light.
One need only look at the situation abroad to see the difference.
In some places, national landmarks had crumbled. In others, major cities had been devastated.
But Korea had experienced almost nothing of the sort.
In fact, Korea had contained this Gate Break with the smallest loss of life anywhere in the world.
The reasons were manifold.
“People were alert to the monster threat and evacuated quickly enough, for one…….”
“But the real credit goes to Kang Cheol-mangchi, doesn’t it?”
“If we trace it to the fundamental cause, yes, that’s the strongest factor.”
“I thought as much.”
Kang Cheol-mangchi was indeed the primary reason.
Thanks to Kang Cheol-mangchi, new Awakeners had grown rapidly.
Not only did they grow at an accelerated pace, but through quality equipment they were able to maintain high combat power.
And the veteran Awakeners, donning Kang Cheol-mangchi’s ornaments and accessories, saw their battle strength rise dramatically.
Moreover.
“The performance of Yeom-je and the Divine Archer this time was particularly notable.”
“Yes, I saw that myself.”
Yeom-je, with accelerated spell-casting speed, kept the Boss Monster under relentless pressure.
And the Divine Archer’s faster arrows dropped monsters the instant they emerged from the Gate.
The gap between Awakeners who had benefited from Kang Cheol-mangchi’s gear and those who hadn’t.
The distinction had become unmistakably clear through this crisis.
And there was one more thing.
“Treatment of injured Awakeners is also progressing rapidly, it seems.”
The beds Kang Cheol-mangchi had recently begun selling.
Thanks to beds imbued with Regeneration, the recovery of injured Awakeners had accelerated dramatically.
It wasn’t merely speed—even critical patients saw their surgical success rates skyrocket once they underwent procedures in these beds.
Kang Cheol-mangchi’s influence was woven throughout the entire Awakener community.
In any case, as the situation wound toward resolution.
“Chairman, there’s something I think you need to review.”
“What is it?”
“A report of Dwarves appearing. And Orcs as well…….”
“Dwarves?”
An unusual report reached the Association Chairman.
Dwarves and Orcs, no less.
He wondered why such a ridiculous report had been filed.
“We have video evidence as well.”
The footage handed to him lent credibility to the report.
A Dwarf wielded a pickaxe, smashing the shell of a Fire Tortoise.
An Orc, rather than attacking humans, was helping them strike down a Mucus Toad.
Even during the Gate Break when monsters flooded out, monsters had never fought one another.
What on earth was happening?
This alone was strange enough, but the report didn’t end there.
“Additionally, a C-rank Gate that appeared at the midpoint between the locations where the Dwarf and Orc were spotted has apparently been cleared.”
“Was an Awakener dispatched there? A C-rank Gate would have needed a skilled party……?”
“Yes, and it was one of the more difficult C-rank Gates at that—a flying-type monster variant.”
“So what happened?”
“We were puzzled by that ourselves… Would you take a look at this?”
A photograph was pressed into the Association Chairman’s hands.
A woman in a white fur coat that seemed at odds with the weather.
She held a bow, and from it extended a blue lightning that pierced through the “Storm Repairer” in the sky above.
“Who is she?”
“We don’t know. We haven’t been able to identify her at all.”
An archer of that caliber couldn’t possibly escape the Awakener Association’s notice.
The same went for the dwarf and orc.
Which meant, naturally enough.
“Begin the investigation immediately.”
“Yes, as soon as the Gate Break situation is resolved…”
“No. Start right now. Assemble a separate team if necessary.”
“…Understood.”
“Once you locate her, I’ll go find her myself.”
“There’s no need for you to go out personally, sir…”
He issued the order.
An Awakener of that level operating without reporting to the Awakener Association was a serious problem.
And the dwarf and orc hunting monsters were equally mysterious.
Yet the Association Chairman’s gaze was directed elsewhere entirely.
His eyes lingered on.
“No, I’ll go myself.”
The bottom of the archer in the photograph.
The faint silhouette of a man captured there.
The problem was.
“So? That dwarf is Kang Cheol-mangchi, right?”
“Yes! It’s a dwarf, after all! The legendary master smiths from fantasy novels! If a dwarf shows up in this situation, there’s no way it isn’t Kang Cheol-mangchi, is there?”
“Mmm, plausible enough. But what if it isn’t?”
“Then, well. It isn’t. But if we’re right, that’s a jackpot, isn’t it?”
“True enough.”
“When have we ever looked before we leaped? We act first. Worst case, we slip into China. We were planning to leave Korea soon anyway, right?”
“If we bring the world’s first legendary smith as a gift to China, they’ll be absolutely delighted.”
“Exactly what I’m saying!”
Though their reasoning was somewhat flawed.
The point was that Kang Cheol-mangchi’s residence had caught the attention of more than just the Awakener Association.

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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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