I Became an SSS-Grade Time-Transcending Almighty Blacksmith - Chapter 99

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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 99
Chapter 99
Public recruitment through the Awakener Association community.
The results were.
“Kang Cheol-mangchi, the organizing is finished…….”
From the dark circles under Lee Seo-yoon’s eyes, I could gauge just how successful the public recruitment had been.
Countless applications had poured in—far more than could be counted.
For this recruitment, I’d hired quite a few people to receive and verify the inquiries.
Even after filtering through them, the numbers were so overwhelming that Lee Seo-yoon had to work well into the night, she’d told me.
And the list that resulted from all that work
“Here it is…….”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No, don’t be. It was hard work, but it shows how successful this has been.”
“Go rest now. Usually in these cases, we give bonuses—I’ll transfer one to you too, so go somewhere nice and eat something delicious, and get some real sleep.”
“That’s okay, there’s still so much work to do!”
was laid before me.
Thousands must have applied.
Or perhaps even more than that.
Yet she’d narrowed them down to just several dozen.
The results spoke volumes about how hard Lee Seo-yoon had worked.
I began turning the pages.
“First, I selected primarily those who use unusual weapons, like you said.”
Lee Seo-yoon leaned in close beside me and began explaining the applicants.
“The first applicant is a Bard.”
“A Bard? You mean a minstrel?”
“Yes. Well, that’s how we expressed it in game terminology, but ‘musician’ would be a more fitting description.”
“Then, what are their abilities…….”
“Literally the ability to wield instruments. They use instruments to attack enemies and strengthen allies—that kind of ability.”
A Bard.
It was truly the first type of Awakener I’d heard of.
From what I understood, a Bard would need specialized instruments to use their skills.
But where would instruments ever drop from monsters?
So they couldn’t properly display their abilities—
exactly the kind of Awakener I was looking for.
However.
“It’s a bit ambiguous to call them a combat-focused Awakener.”
“Right?”
I was now recruiting the first member of the Steel Guild.
I was thinking of recruiting slowly, one person at a time.
For that reason, ideally I’d want the first guild member to be someone capable of tackling Gates on their own.
The first applicant seemed closer to a support-type rather than an offensive-type.
“Would it be possible to set them aside for now and consider them second?”
“I’ll reach out to them.”
I decided to set them aside for the moment.
The second Awakener that followed also used unusual weapons.
Since Lee Seo-yoon had filtered and selected them.
They were exactly the kind of applicants I’d been hoping for, but.
“Hmm…….”
They were a bit ambiguous for choosing as the first guild member.
As I pondered this.
“The next one was selected based on a unique ability rather than a weapon.”
A new type of applicant appeared.
“What kind of ability?”
“The ability is called ‘Weight Negation,’ they said.”
“Weight Negation?”
“An ability to ignore the weight of equipped gear—in other words, the burden of what they’re carrying.”
A fairly straightforward ability.
Hearing this, I realized just how diverse the abilities among Awakeners truly were.
But then again.
If someone could ignore weight.
“Then isn’t that incredibly strong? It means you can ignore weight and lift anything, right?”
That’s what I’d thought.
“As I mentioned, it’s limited to equipment only. The Skill only negates the weight of items classified as weapons, armor, or accessories.”
“Ah.”
“So right now, he’s apparently going into combat wearing the heaviest greatsword and full-body plate armor he can find.”
“That alone seems like it should be plenty powerful, though?”
“The problem is a lack of Skills.”
“Skills……”
“Because his base ability is so strong, he has fewer Skills to begin with, and they grow slowly. The higher his Level gets, the slower his growth becomes.”
“So there is a penalty like that.”
“He just hit Level 30, but without any real combat Skills beyond the ability to wear heavy equipment, Gate raids are starting to become difficult for him.”
So that wasn’t it.
Weight Negation only applied to equipped items.
Until now, he’d managed to grow by relying on the aid of heavy gear.
But even that assistance had found its limits.
Finding “heavy equipment matching his Level” couldn’t have been easy.
“Hmm……”
Weight Negation.
Now I understood why an Awakener with such an ability would apply to the Steel Guild.
It seemed like a simple ability on the surface.
But if that ability met me.
It would surely unlock tremendous potential.
As I imagined just how much power he could unleash once I crafted items for him,
“I’ve decided on you.”
I selected him as the Steel Guild’s first member.
* * *
I’d chosen my first guild member.
I wanted to visit him in person and introduce myself properly, but.
“Wouldn’t going out be dangerous for you?”
That was the problem.
I’d been attacked on my way back from the Awakener Association just recently.
Who knew how many more times I might be ambushed.
“I’ll handle the contract. For now, it would be best if you first established a safe location with a guild building, and then made your appearance.”
“A guild building?”
“Yes. Your guild members need a place to gather, don’t they? Especially for you. Once it’s properly built and the guild grows, staying at the guild building will be far safer than here.”
A guild building.
I wondered how much that would cost.
Well, anyway.
I’d have to put off meeting my first guild member for now.
Instead.
‘Should I prepare a welcome gift?’
I decided to prepare a gift for my first guild member.
“Time Smithy.”
Rumble—
As I stepped into the smithy,
I spotted Toran just emerging from the storage after finishing his mining.
“Toran!”
“Huh? What’s wrong with you?”
The equipment I’d make now would be “the heaviest gear possible.”
Since my first guild member had Weight Negation, the heavier the equipment I gave him, the stronger he could become.
And when it came to heavy materials, weren’t minerals the obvious choice?
There was only one person to ask about this.
“Of the ore we can currently obtain, what’s the heaviest?”
“Huh? Heaviest ore? Not the toughest?”
“Yes, the heaviest.”
“Why would you want that? Heavy alone won’t help much. Though, I suppose heaviness means high density, so it would be durable……”
“Ah. Actually, I’ve just founded a guild. I’ve accepted my first member, and……”
I needed Toran’s advice anyway.
There was no real reason to hide it.
So I told him everything about why I needed heavy ore.
And then.
“Well, you’ve got some unusual abilities.”
“True, but if you craft the right equipment for me, I think I could become incredibly strong.”
“I suppose so. For heavy minerals, a Medium-Strong Stone seems like the obvious choice, though…….”
Toran fell into serious contemplation.
Medium-Strong Stone.
I knew the material myself.
Toran had stored some in the warehouse—it was as hard as it was heavy, and if you had the Strength to back it, it proved to be exceptional material for powerful work.
But Toran didn’t seem satisfied with that.
After a moment.
Having finished his deliberation, Toran.
“Come on, follow me.”
He led me deeper into the Mine.
Once we entered the Mine, he jumped into a cart and started pedaling furiously, pushing us deeper inside.
Thanks to the rails he’d laid throughout Zone 3, we moved along smoothly.
We descended in Zone 3.
And as we ventured deeper still.
“Here it is.”
He suddenly tapped a hard rock wall as if knocking, speaking.
“What’s here?”
“Something called Thousand-weight Stone.”
“Thousand-weight Stone?”
Thousand-weight Stone.
I’d never heard the name before.
I wondered why, if such a material existed, we’d never mined it until now.
“As the name suggests, it’s an ore as heavy as a thousand weights. It’s durable, but so impossibly heavy that it’s effectively useless as a material.”
There was a reason for everything.
Even Medium-Strong Stone was tough, but its sheer weight made it difficult to work with unless your Strength was exceptionally high.
If the ore was heavier than that.
Honestly, even if you crafted an item from it, there’d be no one capable of using it.
Likely, the Thousand-weight Stone exceeded that threshold so drastically that it was deemed unusable—which was why we’d never mined it until now.
And now.
That a use for Thousand-weight Stone had finally emerged.
“I’ll extract it quickly, so wait just a moment.”
Toran faced the rock wall where the Thousand-weight Stone lay embedded.
“Hah!”
Crack!
He swung the pickaxe.
His ability scores and Skills had grown alongside me as we both crossed Level 30.
And when he combined that with the power of an SS-rank Pickaxe imbued with special properties.
The hard rock wall of Zone 3 fractured and splintered.
Rumble—.
The wall collapsed almost instantly.
Then.
Boom!
Several boulders fell with a particularly heavy crash.
I walked over and nudged one gently.
“This is incredibly heavy.”
“Told you. Thousand-weight Stone.”
It was so heavy it didn’t even shift.
Even though my Strength was fairly high.
Even at full power, I could barely lift it.
After he continued breaking the wall and extracted a considerable amount of Thousand-weight Stone.
“Will this amount suffice?”
“With this much Thousand-weight Stone, you could build a house.”
“If you built a house from this, the ceiling would collapse under the weight. Hehehehe.”
We’d managed to extract all the Thousand-weight Stone.
And besides.
“Look at this.”
“What now?”
“It came from the center of a Thousand-weight Stone vein. There’s only one piece, but it should be far superior in quality to ordinary Thousand-weight Stone.”
The finest grade among Thousand-weight Stones.
Even at a glance, there was an ore that felt distinctly different from common Thousand-weight Stone.
Still, given that these ores were called Thousand-weight Stone, I wondered how to transport something so impossibly heavy.
The answer was simple.
“This bag really is something else. I’d have struggled for ages without it.”
The backpack slung across Toran’s shoulders.
The Spatial Dimension bag—the Blacksmith’s Bag—made it possible.
Even if I barely lifted the Thousand-weight Stone, once I placed it in the bag, the weight vanished entirely.
So I had little trouble transporting all the ore to the storage.
‘Convenient, that’s what it is.’
The Blacksmith’s Bag.
If I could mass-produce bags like that, how wonderful would that be?
If I could, every Awakener would go mad trying to get one.
I wanted one, certainly, but I had no way to craft a Spatial Dimension bag right now.
I lacked the materials, and I lacked both the skill and experience to make one.
Anyway, the moment I’d moved all the Thousand-weight Stone to storage.
“Phew.”
I stood before the anvil.
And then, immediately.
[ Special Crafting Skill activated. ]
[ Please provide a design blueprint for the Special Crafted item. ]
I activated Special Crafting.
A blueprint.
My first guild member uses a greatsword, or so I’d heard—but that was likely not because the greatsword was superior, but simply because it was the largest and heaviest blade available.
So the type of weapon mattered little.
What truly mattered was something else.
‘A weapon that could maximize the advantage of its weight.’
That was it.
And as a blacksmith, what I believed fit such a purpose best was.
‘A blunt weapon.’
A blunt weapon.
Something like a hammer or a mace.
Why would a weapon designed to exploit mass need an edge?
A heavy weapon’s strength lay in its weight—crushing and pulverizing everything it touched was all that mattered.
So I decided to forge a blunt weapon, not a greatsword.
A hammer would be fine, but if weight itself became irrelevant through Weight Negation…
‘A staff? No, something closer to a pillar would be better than a staff.’
A staff-like weapon would serve well.
I’d use as much Thousand-weight Stone as possible, maximizing the weapon’s mass.
But I couldn’t simply make it huge and unwieldy.
It had to remain a proper weapon.
Something that could be gripped and swung.
Something that wouldn’t be cumbersome to carry.
I had to find that optimal balance.
So I recalled the physique of my first guild member, which I’d been told about beforehand, and designed the ideal weapon form.
“It has to be for a weapon, doesn’t it?”
The finest grade among the Thousand-weight Stones that Toran had mined.
I selected that premium ore as my material.
The moment I finished the blueprint.
[ Crafting begins. ]
“Let’s get started!”
Clang!
I began swinging the hammer in earnest.

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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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