The Return of the Legendary Golden-Handed Blacksmith - Chapter 160

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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 160
160.
Sulfur and Furnace Tower.
The moment Jin-woo’s conquest was confirmed on the JBS Channel and JinTube, users rushed to pinpoint its location.
“So that’s where it was.”
“Found it. We found it!”
Underground, Iron Helm.
The Sulfur and Furnace Tower, located in the Barren Lands, was genuinely difficult to find. Only five teams had managed to locate it.
Four guilds that had discovered clues in the video found it first, followed by a team operating as mercenaries.
The arrivals regarded each other.
“You all have quite the eye for detail.”
“Haha. I thought I was the only one who’d spotted it.”
Let’s enter in order of arrival.”
The five teams didn’t bother competing with each other.
There was no point in competing anyway. With the location exposed, it was certain that latecomers would follow, and if they lost it to those latecomers while fighting, it would all be for nothing.
“Then we’ll go first!”
-Entering the Sulfur and Furnace Tower!
As soon as they stepped inside, they were met with intense heat.
And before them lay Jin-woo’s Hall of Fame ranking and score from his earlier conquest.
<>
-1. Jin-woo [1,150 points]
-2. NONE
-3. NONE
The sole conqueror.
Jin-woo’s score was a staggering 1,150 points.
“Wow, that’s high.”
“Each tower has different scoring, so I’m not sure how high it really is.”
“Anyway, let’s at least get the second-place conquest reward!”
The arrivals began their slow conquest of the Sulfur and Furnace Tower.
“Uuuuughhhh—!”
-Your party has been annihilated.
Of course, their first attempt ended in failure.
-Tower conquest calculation complete.
-Score: 39 points
-You have not reached the minimum Hall of Fame score and will not be registered.
“?”
“39 points?”
“We didn’t complete the conquest, but we did clear the first floor. 39 points?”
The gap was enormous.
Jin-woo had of course conquered the tower successfully.
Yet the score difference felt impossibly vast.
“We’d better try again quickly.”
On Netflix, the Jin-woo in the video had conquered the Sulfur and Furnace Tower with almost laughable ease.
Because of that, they’d underestimated the difficulty somewhat.
“We were too careless.”
Second attempt.
But it was the same story this time.
-Your party has been annihilated!
-Tower conquest calculation complete!
-45 points.
The score had risen slightly, but it was still trivial.
“Wh-why is this happening?”
“The difficulty is insane… and we can’t even clear the second floor!”
The difficulty of the Sulfur and Furnace Tower was considerable. Certainly, in the JBS video featuring Jin-woo, it had looked fairly manageable.
Of course, it made sense that it would look easier given how strong Jin-woo was, but this was an unreasonably high difficulty.
“What’s going on here?”
“How many stars does this tower have?”
Only then did they search for the tower’s star rating.
“I naturally assumed it would be low. Something about this seems off.”
They had naturally assumed at most two or three stars.
“This can’t be a two-star tower.”
And gradually, people began to realize something.
This was deeply wrong.
As the vanguard suffered failure upon failure,
“We’ve finally arrived!”
“There are already people here.”
“How did you even find this? We barely managed to locate it.”
The latecomers had arrived.
A top-ranking guild in the tower top fifty had found the Sulfur and Furnace Tower.
They immediately began their conquest preparations.
-Entering the Sulfur and Furnace Tower!
-Hall of Fame ranking recorded!
The Hall of Fame ranking appeared the moment they entered.
“Wow. 1,150 points?”
“That’s definitely impressive.”
“Let’s at least claim the ranking reward.”
They naturally assumed second place would already be taken.
“Huh? There’s still no second place?”
Yet second place remained vacant.
“Maybe the minimum score is just that high?”
“Then this works out even better! We claim second place first!”
They began their conquest with overflowing confidence.
-Your party has been annihilated.
Of course they were annihilated.
And not long after, they stumbled out of the tower entrance with astonished faces.
“…This is insane!”
“Isn’t this a four-star tower?”
They had naturally assumed it was three stars, or perhaps two and a half at most.
But the difficulty was absolutely monstrous.
“We still cleared up to the third floor!”
“At least for second place…”
-Conquest calculation complete!
They had cleared up to the third floor.
“120 points…?”
“120 points?”
It was a score that made no sense.
-Registered in Hall of Fame!
Of course they exceeded the minimum score and were registered.
-1. Jin-woo [1,150 points]
-2. Silkkeot and 15 others [120 points] NEW!
The result was overwhelmingly one-sided.
“Sigh.”
“First place is Jin-woo with 1,150 points.”
“If we cleared up to the second floor, shouldn’t we have at least 250 points?”
They challenged the tower again.
-Conquest calculation complete!
-Conquest score: 150 points
No matter how many times they tried, breaking 200 points was difficult.
“Even if we complete the conquest, the maximum score would be around 700 points…?”
“This is insane. What even is 1,150 points? How did he achieve that!”
Now they finally understood.
Just how high 1,150 points truly was.
“The tower was stingy with its scoring.”
The towers in the main scenario each possessed unique characteristics.
Because of this, scoring wasn’t applied uniformly across all towers.
For some towers, 1,000 points came easily; for others, 1,000 points was brutally difficult.
The Sulfur and Furnace Tower was stingy with its points.
The difficulty was so high that the point distribution standard had been raised proportionally.
Jin-woo’s 1,150 points was a high score pulled from that miserly point pool.
In other words.
“This makes no sense.”
Those who had faced the tower directly could only be shocked at the seemingly impossible score.
“How did he possibly clear this alone?”
“How did he get 1,150 points?”
Slayer had assembled a six-person raid team including himself and conquered a four-star tower.
Yet Jin-woo had hunted dragons, crafted from dragon byproducts, and conquered a four-star tower entirely by himself.
“Netflix’s first place was obviously deserved.”
Rather, Slayer’s second place began to be reappraised.
“Slayer… he actually did well to get second.”
Second place against Jin-woo. Against Jin-woo, in a brief span of time, to become his rival was itself a remarkable feat.
* * *
Fragment 7 City.
Lerankal, commander of the green spirits, knelt before Jin-woo.
Hundreds of spirits stood behind him, yet they still struggled to move a single finger properly.
“Wow…”
Lerankal and the spirits had naturally assumed Jin-woo would resolve this through sheer force.
That he would battle alongside his familiars and seize Fragment 7 City.
“You achieved victory… without even fighting.”
And it was an overwhelming victory at that.
Lerankal gazed at Jin-woo.
“Just how…”
How could he wield such power?
Despite being alive, he radiated an aura identical to that of the King of the Dead.
Sensing that Jin-woo was ready to speak, he posed his question immediately.
“Who is this new god?”
He was confident that someone of this city’s stature would know much.
‘The new god’s name, and the concrete reason for the betrayal. I’ll be able to hear it all.’
“The King… of the Dead, sir.”
A god. The King of the Dead.
-The Master of Souls and the Abyss says this is a god of the darkest realm, as you are!
“You know of them?”
-The Master of Souls and the Abyss says there is no connection!
-He speaks of it as an outrageous and shameful affair!
‘It seems he’s even more angered because they’re gods of similar domains.’
At least the identity of the new god was now confirmed.
‘Next is the body.’
Jin-woo spoke.
“I heard the King of the Dead promised you new flesh.”
If that were true,
“How exactly does he intend to provide these new bodies?”
Lerankal could not answer.
‘It’s not that he doesn’t want to answer.’
He simply didn’t know the specifics.
“You just believed him, then?”
Under overwhelming power, they had begun to trust unconditionally.
‘If he granted them power like this, it would be reasonable to believe him.’
Jin-woo observed the equipment they wore.
‘And with equipment of this caliber.’
“All the armor you’re wearing—was it all made by Iceelz?”
“Iceelz was… granted tremendous power by the King of the Dead. If it’s Iceelz… he would know.”
Jin-woo found himself genuinely eager to meet Iceelz.
‘This technique of handling spirits.’
Having directly worked with spirits himself, he understood intimately how delicate they were.
Alive yet not alive. That was the essence of a spirit.
‘The quality of equipment made from spirits is quite respectable.’
Moreover, there was something special about Iceelz’s creations.
‘Ice energy.’
All the spirits in Fragment 7 City radiated a distinct blue chill. If this Underworld chill were gathered in totality, it could rival the chill now emanating from Pur.
‘Underworld materials are inherently suffused with chill.’
From Underworld Steel onward, every material bore traces of this cold.
‘I either dampened that chill or harmonized it.’
But Iceelz was maximizing it.
‘A singular technique.’
Jin-woo was curious.
What exactly was this technique?
Lerankal regarded Jin-woo with labored eyes, desperately wanting to know his identity.
Just who was this being radiating such power?
And alive, no less!
Lerankal’s mind worked.
Jin-woo’s appearance.
The familiars behind him, and those blue-tinged spirits.
“Could it be…”
Lerankal opened his mouth.
An old god.
“The Master of Souls and the Abyss…”
“Silence.”
Within the Sacred Domain.
Every living thing within this boundary moved only with Jin-woo’s permission.
Swish—
The power grew stronger still in this Underworld.
‘Is it because this is the Master of Souls and the Abyss’s domain?’
Being the land of the dead, Jin-woo’s Sacred Declaration was operating at peak performance.
“Now then, guide me.”
“Y-yes, but where, sir?”
Jin-woo spoke.
“To where Iceelz is.”
* * *
Fragment 9 City.
Guided by Lerankal, along with a spirit and the others, they arrived at a massive structure.
Pitch black.
The enormous building, which could also be said to be a deep blue, was clearly being used for a specific purpose just by looking at it.
“A smithy.”
Clang—! Clang—!
It was no ordinary smithy.
Hammer sounds rang out distinctly, yet no smoke rose, and no heat could be felt.
“Iceelz!”
Lerankal called out to Iceelz.
The hammer sounds ceased, and Iceelz emerged.
He was a giant towering well over three meters.
Chill radiated from his entire body, and he was more translucent than any spirit Jin-woo had yet encountered.
“We have a visitor. And one who is…”
Iceelz’s expression hardened. He was looking directly at Jin-woo.
“A successor to our old god.”
“I’ve come to set everything right, Iceelz.”
Jin-woo approached Iceelz.
“Set everything right?”
Iceelz let out a derisive snort.
“By what means?”
Jin-woo advanced slowly toward him.
Then he clenched his fist.
“By this.”

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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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