The Return of the Transcendent Blacksmith - Chapter 58

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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 Blacksmith’s Return – Chapter 58
Bang!
Shin Tae-ho angled his Combat Hammer to block the attack aimed at his heart.
But the unexpected brute force sent him flying backward, his body crashing into the roots of the World Tree.
‘Its strength surpasses an ogre. Yet its speed is faster than a Bagheest.’
Shin Tae-ho, who had protected his body with Ki to absorb the impact, quickly steadied himself.
The moment he rose to his feet, an Apostle waiting for him rushed forward.
Shin Tae-ho swung his Combat Hammer to meet it head-on, but the Apostle twisted its body and dodged the blow.
‘Too fast. Even this isn’t enough!’
Shin Tae-ho, noting the attack’s trajectory, concentrated his Ki at one point.
The attack came precisely where Shin Tae-ho had gathered his Ki.
Thud-crunch!
The brute force sent Shin Tae-ho’s body flying upward.
The Apostles positioned where he was ascending prepared their follow-up attacks, staring at him.
But just as the Apostles waited for Shin Tae-ho, so too did he wait to draw near to them.
[Activating Unique Ability: Steel’s Pulse.]
Crack-pop!
The face of the Apostle struck by the Combat Hammer shattered.
By Steel’s Pulse effect, the shock wave from converting Shin Tae-ho’s Ki into vibration energy radiated in all directions.
The Apostles who had positioned themselves to attack Shin Tae-ho found their bodies paralyzed by the shock wave.
Boom-crash-bang!
Kwang!
He rapidly hurled three Throwing Hammers to prevent other Apostles from intervening.
Concentrating Ki into both arms, Shin Tae-ho brought down his Combat Hammer in rapid succession.
Belying the unwieldy size of the massive hammer head, the attacks came so fast that five Apostles’ heads were crushed in an instant.
In that brief moment, Shin Tae-ho opened his Inventory and drank a potion.
His Vitality Potions exhausted, he drank an Intermediate Agility Potion and an Intermediate Strength Potion.
And for the first time, he drank an Intermediate Healing Potion.
After drinking all the potions, Shin Tae-ho surveyed the Apostles.
Fortunately, they didn’t divide infinitely—the number of dead Apostles was not replenished.
‘I can kill them, and they don’t divide further. But at this rate….’
Shin Tae-ho looked upward.
The elves were losing their lives one by one to the Apostles’ attacks, which were on an entirely different scale from the monsters he’d fought so far.
If this continued, he might save the World Tree, but the elves would certainly be annihilated.
‘This can’t go on.’
Shin Tae-ho ground his teeth.
Since the Trial’s contents didn’t mention the elves’ survival, perhaps their life or death was irrelevant to passing the Trial.
But what meaning would there be in climbing the tower if that was all he could manage?
‘I haven’t climbed this tower all this way for such a result.’
Shin Tae-ho, consumed with rage, burst the body of the charging Apostle.
As he’d used so much Ki, the durability of his Armor dropped sharply from Steel’s Pulse’s effect.
As Shin Tae-ho felt trapped in an impossible situation.
Yong-ryong-i, wrapped around Shin Tae-ho’s neck and trembling faintly, lifted his head.
“Ryong…?”
“Yong-ryong-i. What’s wrong?”
Shin Tae-ho looked at Yong-ryong-i.
Yong-ryong-i stared blankly at empty space as if entranced.
Yet he kept making sounds—ryong, ryong—as if having a conversation, which made Shin Tae-ho deeply uneasy.
‘Could fear have broken his mind…?!’
Alarmed, Shin Tae-ho drew more Ki.
Even as Shin Tae-ho fought the Apostles with all his strength, Yong-ryong-i’s incomprehensible utterances continued.
Unable to endure it any longer, Shin Tae-ho was about to call Yong-ryong-i to snap him back to his senses.
When Yong-ryong-i, his eyes suddenly alight with clarity, urgently looked up at Shin Tae-ho.
“Ryong! Ryong-ryong! Ryo-ryo-ryong, ryong-ryong!”
“Isolate this place? How?”
Shin Tae-ho, understanding Yong-ryong-i’s words, was bewildered.
Before he could recover from the shock of such an unexpected statement.
Yong-ryong-i pointed far off with his paw and continued explaining.
“Ryong-ryong! Ryong-ryo-ryong! Yo-ong! Ryong-ryong!”
“Yong-ryong-i. Don’t tell me…?”
Shin Tae-ho looked up in surprise at the place Yong-ryong-i was indicating.
There stood the World Tree, still gleaming with its dimension held in Isolation.
Shin Tae-ho’s eyes darted between the World Tree and Yong-ryong-i, then he nodded with sudden resolve.
“All right. If you can, ask it to isolate this space for us, Yong-ryong-i. I’ll handle the rest.”
From the circumstances, it was clear that Yong-ryong-i had been communicating with the World Tree.
Though the World Tree was isolated, just as they could see it, it could see them in return.
Without the Tower’s system, Shin Tae-ho couldn’t communicate with the World Tree.
But somehow, Yong-ryong-i was speaking directly with it, and had clearly found a way to isolate this space.
“Rooong!”
Upon hearing Shin Tae-ho’s reply, Yong-ryong-i closed its eyes.
For a moment he wondered if it was falling asleep, but the creature’s eyes remained tightly shut while it made guttural sounds—clearly doing something.
That fact was soon proven by Yong-ryong-i’s scales.
“Yong-ryong-i, your scales…?”
Yong-ryong-i’s scales began to shimmer, transforming to a luminous, iridescent hue.
The sight matched exactly the appearance of the World Tree in its Isolation.
The moment all of Yong-ryong-i’s scales had changed.
Yong-ryong-i opened its eyes, unwound itself from Shin Tae-ho’s neck, and soared upward.
While Shin Tae-ho shielded Yong-ryong-i from the Apostles’ attacks.
Between its horns, Yong-ryong-i gathered Ki brilliant and intense as the sun, opened its mouth toward the sky.
Shrieeeek!
From Yong-ryong-i’s maw poured not flame, but a luminous torrent of that same iridescent hue as its scales.
The light soared skyward to its apex, then spread like an umbrella, enveloping the entire area.
“What in the world is happening?!”
“Wait, look! The Divine Beast did it!”
The elves trapped within the light froze in panic before they spotted Yong-ryong-i.
Even the Apostles, who had been attacking with neither fear nor fighting spirit, halted and looked around at the light that had enclosed them.
As the descending light finally touched the ground.
The Apostles’ bodies were forcibly isolated into a different dimension.
[Unknown situation detected.]
[Commencing situation analysis to execute orders—]
The head of one of the standing Apostles exploded as a hammer struck it.
Shocked for the first time by the unexpected attack, the Apostles turned their heads in unison toward the source of the hammer.
There was Shin Tae-ho, who had crossed over with the Apostles, one hammer resting on his shoulder while his other hand hurled a Throwing Hammer.
Crack-boom-crash!
Each time the Throwing Hammer struck an Apostle, a shockwave erupted.
The exploding waves, unable to disperse, began to overlap and concentrate at a single point.
As the condensed wave reached its threshold.
The impact detonated like a bomb, triggering a massive explosion that obliterated everything around it.
Shin Tae-ho recovered his Throwing Hammer and quickly checked on Yong-ryong-i.
“Yong-ryong-i, are you all right?”
“Y-yoooong…”
Yong-ryong-i shook its head weakly, completely exhausted.
Whether from channeling its Ki to the limit while isolating the space or not, it looked utterly drained.
Hearing the reply, Shin Tae-ho stroked Yong-ryong-i and adjusted its posture.
“You did well. As promised, I’ll take it from here, so rest now.”
“Ryuu… ooong…”
Feeling Yong-ryong-i’s complete trust in his words as it went limp, Shin Tae-ho raised his hammer.
In this isolated space were only the Apostles, himself, and Yong-ryong-i.
Which meant he no longer had to worry about the elves—he could fight freely now.
Gulp.
Shin Tae-ho drank an Intermediate Recovery Potion.
The Armor that had protected his entire body while using Steel’s Pulse for so long had been reduced to only fragments across his shoulders.
Where the Armor had vanished, only his clothes remained, so Shin Tae-ho continued to accumulate injuries as he fought.
‘Roughly nine hundred left, then.’
After battling enemies in the thousands, he’d developed a sense for approximate numbers.
But that also meant he’d only managed to kill about a hundred despite fighting this long.
‘At this rate, I can’t win.’
The total amount of Ki wasn’t the issue.
The Ki he’d brought back from the Management Bureau after negotiating with Oh Jin-hyuk still had enough to fill the Circuits dozens of times over.
The problem was firepower.
Only after using Steel’s Pulse could I deal meaningful damage to the Apostles.
Now that my armor had worn through, the time I could maintain Steel’s Pulse was running dangerously short.
‘At this rate. Once the Apostles’ numbers drop below five hundred, Battlefield Blessing will vanish too.’
Unless I annihilated them in one overwhelming surge of firepower, time would only work against me.
Shin Tae-ho exhaled slowly.
‘Still anxious about this. But now is the moment—I have to use it.’
Shin Tae-ho gripped his Core and guided his Ki.
This time, though, it was the reverse of what he’d done before—instead of drawing Ki from the Core through his Circuits, he was channeling Ki from his Circuits into the Core.
Once he confirmed that his Circuits were completely empty,
Shin Tae-ho drew in a different Ki—one he’d been too afraid to touch until now—and fed it into his Circuits.
Crackle-snap!!
“Ugh—!”
Into his vacant Circuits poured a sensation like molten lava, heavy as molten metal.
The Apostles, who until then had hesitated and hadn’t attacked easily while assessing the situation, opened their eyes wide.
[Non-standard entity detected, separate from previously sensed parameters. Command execution initiated.]
The Apostles charged forward, their long arms trailing behind them.
Because their imprinted commands specified collection, they didn’t attack immediately like before.
And that difference determined the line between life and death for the Apostles.
“Krraaagh—!!”
Wrapped in Arimyr’s Ki, Shin Tae-ho hurled his Throwing Hammer with a cry like a scream.
Because the Ki he’d infused matched the hammer’s durability limit so precisely it trembled as if about to shatter,
the power behind this attack was in an entirely different class from before.
Boom-boom-boom!!
From the Throwing Hammer embedded with the Wind Rune, his Unique Ability—Storm—formed.
But its scale bore no comparison to the whirlwind that had swept through a radius of two, three kilometers before.
Every living thing, Shin Tae-ho included, was caught within a colossal storm.
The Apostles that had been rushing to attack him scrambled to grip the earth and hold their ground,
but as the wind tore away not just the soil but even the stones buried beneath it, not a single Apostle remained with its feet on solid ground.
Boom-boom-boom-boom!!
The storm continued to grow.
But Shin Tae-ho’s true purpose was to annihilate every Apostle while he wielded Arimyr’s Ki.
Confirming that he’d successfully trapped the Apostles within the typhoon, Shin Tae-ho threw his second Throwing Hammer.
Boom-boom-boom!!
The hammer, caught by the typhoon, spewed a massive inferno as it rode the whirlwind upward like a wave.
Compared to the storm raised by the Inferior Wind Rune, the fire from the lowest-grade Fire Rune was relatively small.
But as it fed on the powerful winds and swelled in size, that difference closed quickly,
and the colossal fiery typhoon grew larger with each moment, scorching the land as if to consume the world itself.
Unlike monsters, the Apostles made no screams.
They simply burned to pure white ash and scattered away, dispersing into the typhoon.
“Cough! Cough!”
Shin Tae-ho hurriedly drew the remaining potions from his Inventory and swallowed them.
Among them were potions other than healing draughts, but Shin Tae-ho had no mind to distinguish them.
“Yong?! Yong-yong-yong!!”
Startled, Yong-ryong-i called out to Shin Tae-ho, but he couldn’t answer.
Like a circuit breaker overloaded with far more current than it should carry, sparking a fire through electrical surge,
Shin Tae-ho’s Ki Circuits were collapsing in real time from the strain of Arimyr’s Ki.
“Ahhh! Kugh!”
He’d only used the tiniest fraction of Arimyr’s Ki, yet it had come to this.
Shin Tae-ho endured as his Circuits crumbled in real time, then recovered fractionally from the potions’ effects, as he channeled his remaining Ki back into the Core.
Fortunately, the use of Arimyr’s Ki had apparently opened his Circuits, because the massive mass of Arimyr’s Ki drained away rapidly.
“Cough. Gasp.”
“Yong-yong-yong! Yoooong!!”
“I’m… fine. Yong-ryong.”
Shin Tae-ho stroked Yong-ryong-i with trembling hands.
Taken aback by this side of Shin Tae-ho she’d never seen before, Yong-ryong-i shed tears, drop after drop.
As his Circuits gradually calmed and Shin Tae-ho took steady, measured breaths,
a message window appeared between the flames of the still-swelling fiery typhoon.
[You have cleared the 70th Floor Trial.]
[You have cleared all Trials in the Tower.]
[You have obtained the ‘Tower Conqueror’ achievement!]
[The Tower Conqueror privilege can be verified through the information window.]
[You have successfully used Ki that far exceeds your limits.]
[Your Ki Circuit has been greatly reinforced through experience with Ki manipulation beyond your limits.]
[Your Ki Circuit level has been promoted from 7 to 8!]
Continued in the next chapter ▶
The Transcendent Blacksmith’s Return
Author
Sealing Release
Publishers
Kim Seok-hwan, Choi Se-ra
Published by
Grraph Publishing
Contact
[email protected]
Publication Date
May 26, 2026
UCI
G720:N+A327-20260227067
※ This e-book is protected under copyright law; unauthorized reproduction and copying are prohibited, and violations may result in criminal and civil legal liability.
※ Pentagram welcomes 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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