I Became an SSS-Grade Time-Transcending Almighty Blacksmith - Chapter 62

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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 62
Episode 62
After finishing the meal.
I remained in the Living Room with the Guild Master present.
“Forge of Time.”
A low rumble echoed.
I opened the Smithy.
When I’d moved before, the Guild Master had stood outside, so this was the first time I’d entered the Smithy with an outsider present instead of my assistants.
I felt a flutter of nervousness.
After all, I still didn’t fully understand the Smithy’s system.
I’d wondered if perhaps outsiders couldn’t be invited in.
“……Is this your ability?”
“Welcome.”
Fortunately, I was able to invite the Guild Master inside the Smithy as well.
“Master, I’ll continue hunting.”
“You must be tired—wouldn’t it be better to rest a bit longer?”
“Not tired at all. Besides, even when resting, shouldn’t one complete their work first?”
“Wahahaha! You little one came here to swing a hammer too, didn’t you!”
“Well, that’s true, but……”
“It’s the same for us, so don’t worry about it. We do it because we enjoy it!”
“Yay! Grom, we’ve eaten—now we work!”
The assistants who’d come with me promptly moved to their respective stations.
After that.
“Well, Guild Master. Is there any item you’d like?”
I got straight to the point.
The reason I’d invited the Guild Master to the Smithy was, naturally, to craft a gift for him.
Although.
“……I don’t particularly desire anything.”
“Nothing at all? Weapons or armor might not match your level, but I’m reasonably skilled in my own right.”
“I’ve already retired from active duty.”
The Guild Master’s response was lukewarm.
It seemed he had no desire for any particular item.
That made sense—even in his active days, the Guild Master was known to rarely step in and throw punches unless something truly unusual arose. Those days were behind him now.
It was natural that he wanted for nothing.
The truth was, the fact that he’d come to my house directly and thrown a punch at a criminal was itself an exceptional occurrence.
So, with the thought of crafting something comfortable like a chair for the Guild Master, now that he’d become an administrative worker, my eye caught on something.
“But what about those gloves?”
I noticed the Guild Master’s gloves.
Black gloves.
They didn’t look like a weapon, but they didn’t look ordinary either.
Normally, checking item information required direct contact with the item.
Yet, the moment I focused on the Guild Master’s gloves—
[ Faded Saint’s Gloves ]
Form : Gloves
Grade : S
Restriction : The Cursed
Description : A gossamer thread of hope, worn by a cursed saint to prevent complete consumption by the curse.
Special Ability :
Faded Blessing
“Faded Saint’s Gloves?”
“……Is that also an ability of yours as a blacksmith?”
“Ah, my apologies. I didn’t intend to look, but I didn’t know I could confirm item information like this either.”
The item information appeared instantly.
Since they were gloves, I’d naturally assumed they were equipment in the form of a weapon or defense item.
But there was no attack or defense power attached to them.
Moreover, the equip restriction was ‘The Cursed’?
And the special ability was called ‘Faded Blessing’?
What kind of ability was this?
I’d never seen its like before.
Yet, its form seemed oddly familiar.
‘Piercing Lightning.’
The first SSS-Grade weapon I’d ever created—Piercing Lightning.
The only ability attached to it, ‘Pure Thunder,’ also showed no Level displayed, and the text appeared darkened just like this.
At the time, circumstances had been too urgent, and since the arrow vanished the moment I used it, there hadn’t been time to study it.
Now, though, I could examine that information at my leisure.
First, its effect was.
[ Special Ability: Faded Blessing ]
Prevents the wearer’s curse from advancing further.
It was curse suppression.
‘Special Ability?’
And.
I could see it now.
The Pure Thunder attached to the arrow I’d made before was also this very thing called a ‘Special Ability.’
In any case, the fact that such an ability was attached to this meant.
“Guild Master, could it be…….”
“You’ve grasped it quickly.”
Was the Guild Master cursed?
In response, the Guild Master simply raised his hand and removed his glove.
What was revealed.
“Ah…….”
Was a hand darkened beyond even what the glove had hidden.
The back of his hand and fingers were cracked in places like parched earth, fissures running through them.
Through the gaps, black energy seeped out in a faint shimmer.
He’d shown only his right hand just now, but since he wore gloves on both, both would be in this condition.
“It’s why I retired from active duty.”
I could infer it through the item information.
A curse.
I didn’t know the full circumstances, but perhaps during combat with a monster he’d been cursed on both hands and could no longer fight?
A Guild Master of his caliber could have obtained any number of skilled healing Awakeners, potions, or equipment.
Yet seeing that he wore gloves with the ‘Faded Blessing’ ability instead of seeking a cure.
‘The curse must be incurable.’
Even the Guild Master had found no way to treat the curse.
And so he’d stepped down from active duty and become Guild Master instead.
That was likely the story here.
Those gloves themselves must be a precious item obtained with great difficulty.
Without them, the Guild Master’s hands might have been completely consumed by the curse.
“Don’t concern yourself. It’s all in the past now.”
I wanted to make him better gloves.
But how should I go about it?
I had no idea how to craft the ‘Faded Blessing’ special ability or what materials it would require.
Besides, it seemed like a completely different kind of ability altogether, far beyond the level of a rare ability.
Seeing an item like this for the first time, I felt my eye for items expanding.
Even though the Guild Master said it was fine.
Driven by reluctance and curiosity about the new item, I examined the gloves.
“Hmm…….”
And I sensed something odd.
It wasn’t certain, but my instinct as a smith was telling me something.
These gloves.
“Is it possible this was always like this?”
They seemed worn.
No, not worn in the literal sense visually.
It felt as though this item had originally been of a higher grade, but its durability had declined, lowering its level.
Or rather, it felt like something different from mere durability loss.
Not quite understanding, but trusting that feeling, I asked the Guild Master.
“Is that a Smithy Skill?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just a feeling I got.”
The Guild Master pondered something for a moment.
“……That’s right.”
He began to answer my question.
“Originally, these gloves were not black. They were grey. And they had the ‘Purification’ ability.”
“Really?”
“That’s precisely why I bought these gloves in the first place. I thought that with both the Faded Blessing and Purification attached to them, perhaps the curse might be recoverable… but…….”
The Guild Master raised his hand, gesturing toward the blackened gloves as he continued.
“The curse won out. It stained the gloves black, the Purification’s level dropped, and then it vanished entirely.”
“I see…….”
“Only the Faded Blessing remained, and it’s managed to prevent the curse from consuming them completely.”
The moment I heard those words.
I recalled the image of the Guild Master throwing a punch at Jeok Byeok.
A tremendous blow.
And yet even that strike had been weakened by the curse.
But that wasn’t the real problem.
From what I could gather, the curse must have made it difficult for him to use his fists at all.
Perhaps there would be aftereffects from using them even once.
Or perhaps they were already manifesting.
The thought filled me with guilt, and it made me want to help him all the more.
Yet no matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn’t think of any way to create a Faded Blessing.
Then.
‘Wait.’
An idea struck me.
‘If the gloves became like this because of the curse, not because of their original nature… couldn’t I just repair them?’
I wasn’t only capable of ‘crafting’ items.
While it wasn’t a skill I used often, I also possessed a Repair Skill.
Though I’d barely ever used it for anything more than mending a broken arrow here and there.
If I had the Repair Skill, wouldn’t it work on this as well?
The moment that thought occurred to me.
“Guild Master, would it be alright if I tried to repair these for you?”
“Repair? Is that even possible?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I’d like to try.”
I had made my decision.
I would repair the Guild Master’s gloves.
Of course, there was one problem.
“……This is awkward. I only took them off for a moment just now to show you their condition, but these aren’t gloves I can leave off for long.”
“If you take them off, the curse worsens right away, doesn’t it?”
“Exactly.”
The Guild Master couldn’t remove the gloves.
A brief moment seemed manageable, but honestly, I wasn’t confident I could complete the repair before the curse worsened, no matter how fast I worked.
From what I could tell, the curse began to deteriorate the moment the gloves came off for even ten seconds.
So then.
“Keep them on.”
“……Is that even possible?”
“I’ve never tried it before, but it should work.”
I decided to proceed with the repair while the Guild Master kept the gloves on.
The Guild Master seemed doubtful…….
But hey, you never know, right?
I obtained his permission and began the repair immediately.
“I’ll do one hand at a time. Would you place your hand on the anvil?”
“……You’re not planning to swing a hammer at me while I’m wearing them, are you?”
“Don’t worry. My skill doesn’t involve striking the item directly.”
The Guild Master looked worried.
Even for an Awakener with superhuman strength and the leader of the Guild, resting his hand on an anvil seemed to make him uneasy.
But that wasn’t what mattered now.
I immediately picked up the hammer and activated the Repair Skill on the gloves.
[ Using Repair Skill. ]
Fortunately, the skill activation itself worked smoothly.
It seemed there was no problem even with someone wearing the item.
That was fortunate.
The problem was.
[ Insufficient materials. ]
This.
For items in relatively good condition, repairs sometimes don’t require large amounts of materials, but.
Repairs generally require materials.
Not as much as crafting demands, but at least some minimum amount is necessary.
“Hmm…….”
The trouble was, I had no idea what materials I needed.
Honestly, for the Faded Blessing, I couldn’t begin to guess what would work.
But according to what the Guild Master said, the gloves originally had Purification attached to them, so I decided to use something related to Purification.
I tried dropping in a Lumina Stone just to see.
[ This material is unsuitable for repairing the Faded Saint’s Gloves. ]
So Lumina Stone wasn’t it.
Next, I tried one of the ores Toran had brought in recently.
[ Silver White ]
“Oh, that works.”
Silver White slipped into the system window.
It meant Silver White was accepted as a repair material for the Faded Saint’s Gloves.
But I only needed to repair one pair of gloves—left and right together.
I couldn’t use all the Silver White.
I added exactly half the Silver White, then searched through the remaining materials I had on hand.
Fortunately, I found several other materials suitable for the repair beyond Silver White.
[ Purification Wood ]
The timber Grom had cut, and
[ Silver Moth Droppings ]
monster materials Serin had brought back.
All of these were extremely rare materials even among what we had in storage.
Once I added them all, the minimum requirements for the repair barely came together—but just fixing this one pair of gloves threatened to exhaust our supply of these materials entirely.
In any case, the moment I filled in all the materials,
[ Beginning repair. ]
I was able to start the work.
Clang!
I swung the hammer as I always did, without much thought.
Honestly, I’d been thinking the difficulty of repairs was less than crafting, so I’d approached it lightly.
But it wasn’t.
The moment my first hammer strike hit the point, I felt it.
‘So hard!’
It wasn’t just hardness.
The speed at which the point appeared, the size of the point itself—
the overall difficulty felt like it had jumped considerably.
And not just a little jump.
It felt harder than when I crafted even moderately complex items.
What that meant was simple.
‘The item must be of a much higher tier than I thought.’
The Faded Saint’s Gloves.
This item was of a higher caliber than I’d imagined.
I hadn’t expected the repair difficulty to be this demanding, but that was fine.
This was repairing something I hadn’t made—an existing item.
And not just repairing it, but working on something of even higher quality than anything I’d created myself.
Clang!
It stirred in me a tremendous sense of challenge and fascination.

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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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