The Returned Genius Blacksmith has Awakened as an all-Master - Chapter 1

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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 1
000. The Day the Sky Fell
Crackle-crack-
Bang-
Lightning carves thin fissures across the darkened sky.
Those gleaming cracks that should flash for an instant and vanish.
They do not disappear.
Like a brand mark that refuses to fade, they remain burned into the heavens, layer upon layer, accumulating without end.
A man stares up at that precarious sky with vacant eyes.
“They say when the sky collapses, there’s a hole through which it can be rebuilt. Do you think there is one?”
If asked to describe a sky on the brink of shattering and falling apart, it would look exactly like this moment.
He could only gaze at it and manage a bitter smile.
Because there was nothing he could do.
Or rather, he had already done everything he could.
And even then.
Messages float before his eyes.
[Genesis Blue Staff destroyed. – Creator: Geum Son]
[Barthcelni’s Fang destroyed. – Creator: Geum Son]
[Tiger-Head Demon Armor destroyed. – Creator: Geum Son]
[Elios Tablet destroyed. – Creator: Geum Son]
[Crabel’s Black Heart destroyed. – Creator: Geum Son]
[Silverna’s Wings destroyed. – Creator: Geum Son]
[Underworld Land Tablet destroyed. – Creator: Geum Son]
.
.
.
Creator: Geum Son.
The name of the man staring up at the sky with hollow eyes.
Seeing his name inscribed in the messages, Geum Son could only laugh—empty, devoid of mirth.
A notification of every item he had poured his heart into crafting for the final battle now shattering in real time.
So all he could do was laugh.
“Ah, if I’d known it would come to this, I should have delved deeper into the Blacksmith profession…”
Watching the messages appear.
He looks down at the Hammer held in his hand.
What if he had forged equipment that never broke?
What if he had crafted something stronger?
What if he had made equipment with special abilities?
.
.
.
Would it have changed anything?
Unanswerable questions echo ceaselessly through his mind.
But now, regret comes too late.
Crack-crack-
The fractured sky.
The heavens begin to collapse.
Geum Son merely stares up at it, numb.
‘A hole through which to rebuild…’
There is none.
On this day, humanity was defeated.
The day the sky fell.
The world came to an end.
001. Round and Round, Lepion
Beep-beep-beep-beep-!
He had stopped paying attention to his phone alarm long ago; now the alarm of his last resort—an old-fashioned analog clock—blares insistently.
A man hoists his heavy body upright and reaches across the room to silence the distant clock with visible effort.
“Ugh, the time…”
As he slowly sat up, the man let out a stifled yawn.
Worn-out sweatpants, an inside-out t-shirt, tangled hair.
Well into the afternoon, he looked every bit the unemployed drifter.
He scratched his belly with one hand and rubbed his eyes.
Just another ordinary morning, the start of a day like any other—or so it seemed.
But something felt off.
“…Huh?”
The man, Geum Son, suddenly froze as if caught on something.
The landscape of the room was familiar.
No—so familiar it felt strange instead.
“Didn’t I…die?”
The memory was clear.
A shattered sky.
Beneath that sky, he had waited for death.
The memory was vivid—watching the system message announcing his equipment had been destroyed, waiting helplessly for annihilation.
“Is this a dream?”
It might be a hallucination before dying.
Just before consciousness faded.
It could be the last refuge his brain had conjured.
Geum Son exhaled shallowly and checked the alarm clock in his hand.
One o’clock in the afternoon.
Whoosh—
He quickly pulled back the curtains and looked out the window.
Not a shattered sky.
The sun beating down.
A clear, azure sky.
The bright afternoon sun greeted Geum Son.
“How…why is the sky so clear?”
Geum Son let out a hollow laugh, muttering to himself.
The dark sky collapsing from above.
The memory of those final moments before oblivion was too vivid, and this peaceful scene made no sense at all.
The disconnect sent a physical signal—his legs trembled and threatened to give way.
Geum Son staggered toward the bathroom.
After finishing his business, he glanced at the mirror without thinking.
“…!”
He stopped breathing.
His heart began to race wildly.
What reflected in the mirror was not the exhausted thirty-six-year-old man who had watched the world’s end.
A young man.
No dried blood. No wounds.
Smooth skin, clear beneath the eyes with no dark circles, full head of hair—a man in his twenties, youthful and unblemished.
A young man bearing none of the marks of a life consumed by gaming or the brutal struggle to prevent the world’s destruction, standing there with a vacant expression.
“Is…is this real?”
In that moment before he could laugh at this absurdity—
his mind dredged up his appearance from just before, his past self.
‘I was active as a free-to-play player and a gaming broadcaster…’
Strict neutrality.
He hadn’t joined what was called a Line—affiliation with a specific guild.
For a free-to-play player like him, paying guilds consistently was poison.
But when major raids or special events came around, he’d work as a Mercenary for these Lines.
‘I was pretty popular, wasn’t I?’
His skill wasn’t top-tier, but he’d earned decent recognition.
Because of that, he’d built a reputation in gaming circles and his broadcast viewership was solid too.
Besides, for a free-to-play player, crafting was essential.
So he’d invested considerable time raising crafting characters, and those had earned respect as well.
‘I was making…what, five to six million won a month?’
Substantial income for a free-to-play player.
So his days had been quite satisfying.
Of course, there was much he’d had to sacrifice for it.
‘A girlfriend was a luxury I couldn’t even dream of.’
To maintain that level of income, he needed to play constantly.
Literally all day.
Which meant relationships just…fell away.
A wrecked social life was inevitable.
But it didn’t matter.
He could live without those vaunted human connections.
He could live without such grand social achievements.
If anything, he preferred it.
He could go through life without fretting over such trivial things.
He’d thought that life would continue forever.
Of course, he was proven wrong.
In the most absurd way imaginable.
“But is this actually real……?”
Geum Son sorted through memories—or rather, the present—in his mind, checking his reflection in the mirror over and over again.
Still unable to believe it, he reached out and pinched his cheek without thinking.
“Ow!”
A sharp, stinging pain.
Not a dream.
Geum Son looked around once more.
Worn wallpaper.
Snack wrappers scattered haphazardly across the desk.
Video game cases piled in the corner.
A landscape from the depths of memory was unfolding before his eyes.
“This…… is the One-room Apartment I lived in seven years ago, isn’t it?”
Puzzle pieces began to click into place in his mind.
Seven years ago.
Three years after entering the gaming industry at twenty-six.
Twenty-nine years old, the point when he’d already established himself in the field to some degree.
If so, the world was still at peace.
The problem came five years from now.
“Damn Gates opening……is that it?”
Five years from now, Gates opened to the world and everything began to crumble.
Humanity desperately held on through the power of awakened Hunters, but ultimately failed to prevent annihilation.
Two years.
That was how long it took for the world to completely collapse.
And one astonishing fact.
The game Lepion, which had launched seven years ago, right at this very time.
When the Gates opened, the abilities and skills of Lepion characters manifested directly in the real-world players.
As if someone had granted humanity a training program in advance, telling them: try to prevent the world’s end.
But only speculation had swirled about whether that ‘someone’ was a divine transcendent being, and the identity was never revealed.
‘I’m losing it.’
As the facts lined up one by one, Geum Son staggered under the shock and approached the desk.
He found his phone, which he’d thrown down without thinking at the sound of the alarm.
And the moment he opened his phone to check.
His fingers trembled slightly.
[XXXX Year X Month X Day]
Geum Son’s pupils shook violently as he confirmed the date.
He remembered exactly when this day was.
There was a reason he’d set the alarm so many times.
It was the very day he’d felt Sage Time creeping in on the game he’d been playing all along, quit it entirely, and was about to start the newly launched virtual reality game Lepion.
Geum Son stood motionless, staring blankly into empty space.
He didn’t know why.
But he had regressed.
To the very moment everything began.
* * *
Click—
Glug—glug—
“Cough! Phew…….”
Geum Son drained half a can of beer pulled from the refrigerator in one long pull and collapsed onto the worn sofa.
The cold touch of aluminum and the carbonation trickling down his throat proved he was alive and that all of this was real.
‘I regressed. Did only I come back? Or did others too?’
Impossible to know.
But one thing was certain.
If he remained still, in seven years the world would collapse once more.
‘I have to stop it.’
How?
In his past life, even those called humanity’s strongest had failed to breach the Level 450 Wall.
To prevent the world’s destruction, he would need to surpass them.
But truth be told, Geum Son’s combat instincts had never been top-tier.
A capable mercenary of the upper-middle rank.
That was his limit.
‘Then… is there really only one answer?’
The regret he’d felt in that final moment.
It came back to him now.
Geum Son looked down at his hands.
Hands that had once forged countless legendary weapons.
Yet in the end, every piece had shattered.
‘This time will be different. I’ll become a Transcendent-tier Blacksmith. I’ll craft arms that never break, weapons that challenge the realm of divinity. And….’
The faces of his comrades from that final battle surfaced in his mind.
He would guide them with his knowledge, arm them with the finest equipment, make them stronger than anyone.
No—he would shatter that cursed Level 450 Wall that had been his limitation, pierce through it.
That was the best role he could play, the only way a man without combat genius could save the world.
“Damn it, I should’ve memorized stock prices or real estate markets or something. Come on, think! Give me something!”
Of course, if he could freely spend money through Cash Shop Purchases, everything ahead would be far easier.
But regrettably, though Geum Son tore at his hair, his mind—soaked in nothing but games—held no such information.
Worse still, the company that made Lepion was privately held, so dreams of fortune through investment were out of reach.
“Then there’s really only one thing left for me to do.”
Geum Son rose from his seat.
Life returned to his eyes.
With resolve etched across his face, he lowered himself into the Capsule—that second self of his.
“Wretched Lepion. What else is there but the game?”

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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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