The Return of the Transcendent Blacksmith - Chapter 2

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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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Transcendent-grade Blacksmith’s Regression — Episode 2
“…Ha.”
A hollow laugh escaped him.
Looking at the message window, he could finally grasp that this situation was real.
“Regression.”
And to the exact moment of my Awakening, no less.
It was all but impossible to believe.
Shin Tae-ho gathered his thoughts methodically, piecing together what had happened.
‘I used the Core to charge at Arcanus, I’m certain of it.’
He could still vividly recall that sensation—as if his very soul were burning away.
But beyond that, all that came to mind was immense, boundless agony.
The reason for the Regression itself remained frustratingly unclear.
‘No, wait.’
Continuing to sift through his memories, Shin Tae-ho reached back to the very end.
His vision, buried beneath the breath, had been unable to discern anything.
Yet in that final moment, he’d glimpsed something familiar.
Something translucent, with text written in a rectangular frame.
As that familiar shape returned to him, Shin Tae-ho’s eyes snapped open.
‘Could it be…?’
The message window hovering before his eyes now.
What he’d seen then—it was identical to the Tower’s system.
And there was one more suspicious detail.
‘That moment… the charge definitely spiked to 100%.’
The Core’s remaining charge—unable to fill even 1% despite taking countless dragon breaths.
But when caught in Arcanus’s breath, burning away.
For just an instant, he’d watched the charge fluctuate and surge, filling to 100%.
‘Did the Core I created send me back in time?’
Thunk.
As the thought struck him, Shin Tae-ho sprang to his feet.
Something struck his foot and rolled toward the wall.
Shin Tae-ho’s eyes widened as he turned toward the sound.
“A Core…?!”
Barely fitting in one hand—a Core the size of a belly.
It was unmistakably the Transcendent-grade Core he himself had crafted.
Shin Tae-ho quickly snatched it up.
He instinctively reached out with his mind to check the item information, but instead a sharp ache throbbed through his skull.
[You lack the ability to view item information.]
[You have not yet obtained a Class. Please proceed through the Tutorial.]
“So without a Class, I can’t even check item details.”
Shin Tae-ho pressed his temples, wincing at the sensation like static crackling in his brain.
Yet he felt no disappointment.
Quite the contrary.
He was smiling.
‘Unable to check it now or not, the fact that I can start with this Core at all is an absurd stroke of fortune.’
This Core was a precious object that had withstood the breath of dragons.
Above all, it was a Transcendent-grade Core suffused with the very essence of magic, magitech, and alchemy—knowledge even he didn’t fully grasp.
Even if he couldn’t use it immediately, there would surely come a day when it proved invaluable.
‘First, I’ll gain a Class. I can worry about the rest afterward.’
Shin Tae-ho cradled the Core against his chest.
Without a Class, he couldn’t access his Inventory either.
Leaving it at home was an option, but then he’d be too anxious about the Core to focus on the Tutorial.
[Will you enter the Tutorial?]
“I will.”
As Shin Tae-ho spoke, the notification window’s content shifted.
[Consent confirmed. Entering the Tutorial.]
Shin Tae-ho’s body lifted into the air.
His form vanished from the room in an instant, transported to the Tutorial.
* * *
As his feet touched ground, Shin Tae-ho opened his eyes.
A tower rose solitary in the center of a space white and blank as an unmarked page.
“It’s been a long time.”
The Tutorial Tower.
The place where one’s Class is determined—a location every Awakened must pass through without exception.
At the same time, it was a place where every Awakened could only enter once.
‘Class,’ he thought.
Shin Tae-ho’s eyes deepened as he gazed upon the tower.
The Class Shin Tae-ho had obtained in the past was Blacksmith.
And as a result of devoting himself entirely to his craft without ever climbing the tower, he had even earned the title of Transcendent-grade Blacksmith.
Shin Tae-ho, who already knew the Blacksmith Class better than anyone, found himself troubled nonetheless.
And it was precisely because of this that he could not help but waver.
‘The Blacksmith Class has limits.’
A Class, once determined, fixes the trajectory of one’s future growth in stone.
And the disparity in that growth could never be bridged easily.
To use an analogy: if a level-100 Blacksmith fought a level-80 Warrior, the Warrior would more likely emerge victorious.
That was the problem.
‘This time, I’ll climb the tower myself. If I do that… a Class other than Blacksmith would be advantageous.’
Of course, it didn’t mean the Blacksmith Class was useless.
But no matter how excellent the items one crafted and equipped were,
as long as one’s Class was Blacksmith, it would be difficult to fully manifest that power.
‘The tower determines your Class based on how you perform during the tutorial, they said.’
Shin Tae-ho recalled information he had learned in the past.
The tower could only be climbed by those who had already obtained a Class,
and since humanity’s survival depended on the Awakened, mankind had never ceased its research into them.
As a result, it was revealed that a Class was determined by innate talent and performance during the tutorial.
‘Stop overthinking. My Class isn’t something I choose anyway. It manifests.’
Even now, after the Regression, the knowledge and experience from when he was a Blacksmith remained in his mind.
In other words, the only difference was that if he obtained a different Class, he wouldn’t be able to use the Blacksmith Class abilities.
He would preserve the existing Blacksmith abilities he possessed,
obtain a combat-related Class, and climb the tower with the weapons he had crafted himself.
That was Shin Tae-ho’s plan to change his future with this second chance.
And more than anything else,
‘I will never repeat the same mistake.’
Clothed in the Suit he had made,
the traitors who wielded the weapons he’d forged against humanity for the tower’s sake.
After that, Earth, corrupted and twisted by the tower’s Ki,
and the tower’s entities that poured forth, trampling the world as they advanced.
Just recalling these memories caused his fists to clench and his muscles to tense.
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Shin Tae-ho looked around.
‘Strange. They should have appeared by now.’
Shin Tae-ho furrowed his brow.
The Tutorial Tower was where newly Awakened came.
That is, it was a place where people arrived knowing nothing about the tower.
Because of this, a guide would appear upon arrival at the Tutorial Tower,
and the usual procedure was to provide basic explanations about the tower before opening the door.
But for some reason, the guide who should have appeared long ago had yet to show himself.
‘Is it because I’ve Regressed that the system doesn’t apply to me?’
Just as he was wondering whether to simply open the door and enter on his own,
an unfamiliar voice reached the ears of the deliberating Shin Tae-ho.
“A curious child, aren’t you.”
At the voice coming from above, Shin Tae-ho looked up.
There stood a woman—it was unclear how long she had been there—suspended in midair, looking down at Shin Tae-ho.
Shin Tae-ho quickly took in her appearance.
A distinctive outfit reminiscent of a hanbok, with horns sprouting from both temples,
and a thick, long tail visible behind her caught his attention.
‘What is this? A species I’ve never seen before?’
Shin Tae-ho asked, tensing.
“Who are you?”
“Asking for my identity right off the bat—what a rude child.”
The woman let out a soft chuckle.
Despite her words, she didn’t seem particularly displeased.
“But since you’ve come this far, I suppose I should introduce myself. I am Arimír, the administrator of this place.”
‘Administrator? Not a guide?’
Shin Tae-ho’s confusion deepened.
There was actually an entity that managed the Tutorial Tower.
He’d never even heard of such a thing.
But one thing was certain.
There was nothing good to be gained by provoking this Arimír, who had just introduced herself as his administrator.
“Forgive my rudeness. My name is Shin Tae-ho.”
“I have no interest in the name of one who will soon perish. Ordinarily, I would have had no reason to come to this place myself.”
Arimír closed her eyes dismissively and shrugged her shoulders.
But when they opened again, her pupils had narrowed to vertical slits.
“However, it was the object you brought with you that drew me here.”
The air around them shifted.
Though she hadn’t used any power, the mere fact that Arimír had opened her eyes slightly seemed to increase the gravity itself.
Shin Tae-ho’s face hardened.
‘Is she using Ki? But to emit such overwhelming pressure just by releasing it alone…?’
Ki was the Tower’s power that materialized abilities which would be impossible in reality.
Awakened ones likewise enhanced their physical bodies with Ki and wielded magic.
But to produce such an immediate, crushing presence was nearly impossible.
In all his memory, there was only one being who could do such a thing.
‘Dragon Lord Arcanus. This feels exactly like when I glimpsed him from a distance.’
His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
The sensation of countless unseen eyes raking over him caused his skin to prickle involuntarily.
“An object? What do you mean?”
“Are you playing ignorant? But the presence of that thing emanating from your garments is far too conspicuous for such pretense.”
“My garments?”
At Arimír’s words, Shin Tae-ho remembered something and reached into his pocket.
The moment the Core emerged from his hand, Arimír’s eyes gleamed.
“Ah yes, that’s the one. How curious. Let me see it.”
Arimír’s Ki, which dominated the space around them, stirred into motion.
As naturally as breathing, her will alone wove her Ki together, transforming it into Telekinesis.
With merely an outstretched hand, an invisible force tore the Core from Shin Tae-ho’s grasp.
His expression twisted.
“What in the—”
“Be quiet. Insolent child.”
One of Shin Tae-ho’s knees buckled.
The Ki woven by Telekinesis bore down on him with tremendous weight, sealing his mouth shut.
Thick veins swelled across the forehead of the enraged Shin Tae-ho.
‘Damn it…! Even without a Class, to be unable to resist Ki that hasn’t even been materialized…!’
Shin Tae-ho glared upward.
He could see Arimír examining the Core he had created with obvious interest.
Her face overlapped in his mind with that of the human traitor who had wielded his own weapon as she pleased.
‘Never again! Once I leave this place, I will never let anyone steal my things again! Never!’
As Shin Tae-ho stewed in his rage.
Something strange registered in Arimír’s Ki Sense as she examined the Core.
Arimír, who had been scrutinizing the Core like she was searching for a flaw, suddenly froze in alarm.
‘What is this? Is it trying to absorb my Ki right now?’
Since a Core itself was a vessel for containing Ki, that wouldn’t have been unusual.
The problem was that the Core, separated from its master’s hand, had activated on its own.
And both the Core’s capacity and the power with which it absorbed Ki far exceeded all reason.
Crackle-crackle-crackle!
“Wha—?!”
Arimír’s composure shattered.
The Core drank in Arimír’s Ki as parched earth drinks in rain.
It happened far too suddenly.
Arimír tried desperately to sever her Ki, but its pull was so immense that the Core’s absorption did not cease.
‘Imp—impossible! To hold this much of my Ki and remain unaffected?!’
The Core had already consumed all the Ki that had been converted to Telekinesis.
And unsatisfied with that, it now sought to drain the very Ki from her core being.
Arimír’s eyes widened in horror as she realized she had lost control over her own Ki.
‘No, stop!!’
Arimír hastily cut off all the Ki flowing through her meridians.
The moment all her Ki severed, Arimír’s body—suspended high in the air—plummeted toward the ground.
Thud!
“…?!”
With a sharp impact.
Shin Tae-ho’s eyes widened in shock at the sight of Arimír sprawled before him in a sprawling heap, her body bent at an angle.
Continued in the next episode ▶
The Transcendent-grade Blacksmith’s Regression
Author
Seal Release
Publisher
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Publishing House
Grae Publishing
Contact Email
[email protected]
Publication Date
May 26, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260227067
※ This e-book is protected by copyright law. Unauthorized reproduction and distribution are prohibited, and violation of these terms may result in criminal and civil liability.
※ Pentagram eagerly awaits the precious manuscripts of our authors.

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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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