WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 005

──────

Dwarves and Elves

* * *

I got up from my seat right away and headed for my room.

Let’s think about this simply.

The Compatibility Rating that only I could see, and the fact that I could swap someone’s gear at will and check the result.

So based on that, I could craft gear that suited Dolores…

“No, wait.”

I didn’t think I could just whip up perfectly suited gear in an instant.

What gear, this was the first time I’d ever done this in my life.

If there was one thing grad school taught me, it’s that nobody’s good at anything on the first try.

But it didn’t have to be perfect, did it?

At least, if I could make gear better than what she had now.

Dolores’s current glove Compatibility Rating was 1.1. If I couldn’t pull it up higher than that, that would honestly be the strange outcome.

“Dolores will notice, right?”

If the gear improved even a little.

She’d probably be able to tell the moment she put it on.

I called up the status window again.

The line written beneath her gloves had been bothering me for a while now.

─────────────────

[Gorgonyu’s White Gloves][★★★★★]

[Unique Equipment] [Compatibility Rating][1.1/100] - [Extremely Toxic]

[A cooling effect is currently suppressing the progression of the meridian occlusion.]

[However, the wearer’s Yin energy and the gear’s own Yin energy interlock and amplify each other, and 7 of the 9 meridians in the Nine Yin Meridian Affliction are progressing toward permanent closure.]

─────────────────

【The best treatment is to freeze the wound.】

- Great Sage, Gorgonyu -

─────────────────

‘The best treatment is to freeze the wound…’

So maybe what these gloves were doing right now was flash-freezing her, to keep her condition from getting any worse.

Or maybe it was just buying time until a cure could be found.

The problem was, while the freezing looked like it was halting the progression…

the Yin energy was still building up inside, quietly causing permanent closure.

She just couldn’t tell, because every sensation was frozen numb.

“Okay.”

I nodded slowly.

Thawing the freeze, or fitting her with gear that actually suited her.

Either one alone might let Dolores feel something for the first time.

And that could become proof.

So now, it was time to change jobs, to become a blacksmith.

My mind was made up, and I’d settled on a direction.

So what did I need to do next?

“Yuna? How to become a blacksmith even a total beginner can manage. Quick.”

Read a reference book, obviously.

After all, I had an excellent professor at my disposal.

That thing she’d shown me earlier had just been bait.

[I’ll pull up 4 recommended materials~]

A moment later, various teaching materials Yuna had pulled up appeared before my eyes.

[🔒] [An Introductory Guide to Elf Gear-Crafting]

[🔒] [The Frost Tribe’s Cold-Gear Crafting Methods (Private Lore Commentary Edition)]

[🔒] [A Blacksmithing Manual Containing the Sun Dwarves’ Secret Racial Techniques]

[🔒] [■Λb■y■■s5■]

There was one thing different from every post I’d seen so far. Every single one had a lock emoji hanging at the front of the title.

“What’s with the lock?”

[Lore material written by Inner Tower natives, people who’ve lived in the Tower from the start, posted to the community.]

[Only accessible to those with race verification, or people who’ve been given permission.]

“So doesn’t that mean I can’t see it, then?”

I’m Korean.

Well, if we’re being technical, I’m of Hwanung’s bloodline, and that’s got a fair bit of distance from being a dwarf.

Wait a second.

But she doesn’t seem like the type to put something I can’t even see on a recommendation list for no reason.

“Hey, did you…?”

[😏]

Wow, there it is.

That infuriatingly punchable little face.

[hehe, that’s obviously me]

[🔑] An Introductory Guide to Elf Gear-Crafting

[🔑] The Frost Tribe’s Cold-Gear Crafting Methods (Private Lore Commentary Edition)

[🔑] A Blacksmithing Manual Containing the Sun Dwarves’ Secret Racial Techniques

[🔑] ■Λb■y■■s5■

Every lock emoji had turned into a key emoji.

Wait, doesn’t that mean it’s unlocked?

“Huh, so this actually works…”

It suddenly hit me why I’d lost my job.

Yuna really was incredibly capable.

I was just surprised it worked even in another world.

Anyway, now I had to choose.

First, the Elves.

Second, the Frost Tribe.

Third, the Sun Dwarves.

And the fourth, what even was that?

I opened the fourth document first, but the whole thing was plastered black.

It gave off a pretty ominous vibe. Probably just an error, the whole screen being black like that.

[Λbys5]

Though there was one strange word buried in the middle.

Anyway, skipping this one.

“Now, the second one…”

This one’s probably out.

The problem right now seemed to be Yin energy to begin with.

Not that I was trying to slander a Frost Tribe I don’t even know anything about, but it just felt like it was pointed in a different direction from what I wanted.

Looking at it that way…?

“You know anything about the Sun Dwarves?”

Even the name sounded warm. Good vibes.

[I’ll crawl for the keyword “Sun Dwarves.”]

A moment later, what caught my eye was a title that looked pretty desperate.

[Title: Fuck, isn’t this dwarf enchant rigged or something?]

[Poster: Anonymous]

Why just me? Why just me? Why just me?

Everyone else just clicks their way to a comfy +19 while I’m the only one blowing up over and over

Why am I the only one getting destroyed? I spent 4x the expected value already

I did the quests too I killed the goblins too I did everything

I lived a good life

Anonymous: I got there in 1 try

L Anonymous1: you fucking bastard

L Anonymous: not everyone can be lucky. you’re the guardian of balance

L Anonymous1: (an emoticon going “…hah”)

The reactions were no joke.

Skimming through a bunch of posts, there was one common thread.

‘Enchanters are dopamine, blacksmiths are boring.’

Dwarves had two branching paths.

One was enchanting, which strengthened gear. The other was blacksmithing, which made it.

Enchanting seemed to be the popular one. There used to be a perception that dwarf-made gear was something you could trust and use without worry.

These days, apparently, that wasn’t really the case anymore.

Sure, they called it blacksmithing, but apparently it was all mass-produced by machine now, and the quality had dropped a lot because of it.

Not bad, exactly. More like, decently usable, I guess?

Anonymous3: look at the odds

L Anonymous1: is there any way to just get actual gear made? not the mass-produced shit

L Anonymous3: there’s no dwarf who actually makes it anymore yeah

L Anonymous1: (an emoticon going “…hah”)

Apparently, every once in a great while, there really was a blacksmith who still hammered out gear by hand.

But to get a piece from one of them, you’d basically have to save their life first.

Most dwarves seemed absorbed in enchanting. It felt like only mass-produced gear ever made it to market.

So in the end, dwarves were…

“Rare, I guess.”

In other words, they seemed to be a race that was both popular and highly respected.

The problem was, there were almost no actual blacksmiths left.

“I’ll go with this one, for now.”

The name alone sounded like a good fit, and the skill seemed solid too.

Whether it was even okay for me to bootleg a manual full of a whole race’s secret techniques, I had no idea.

Either way.

Not listening when I could was rude too.

- Click.

“Let’s go.”

I opened the now-unlocked post.

* * *

The Inner Tower, 89th floor.

A land where lava flowed.

Ricardo, Grand Chieftain of the Sun Dwarves.

He sat alone on his throne.

Ever since the Outer Tower had opened, the race had been enjoying its greatest golden age. Demand overflowed, and their renown had only grown.

But there was one problem.

“Why won’t anyone walk the path of the Heir of Flame anymore…”

Dwarves had two paths open to them.

Blacksmith, and enchanter.

Those who made gear, and those who strengthened it.

Among them, those who passed the trials handed down by the ancestors were called elite blacksmiths, Heirs of Flame.

The difficulty of the Heir of Flame path was overwhelmingly higher.

But ever since the Outer Tower opened, climber demand had tilted heavily toward enchanters.

Demand for blacksmiths had grown too, but not a single one had passed the trials and claimed the title of Heir of Flame.

From a young dwarf’s perspective, there was no reason at all to stand in front of a scorching furnace hammering iron and grinding through trials.

They chose enchanting, where a few clicks alone could earn you wealth, or ordinary blacksmithing, where running a crafting machine now and then was enough to get by.

Even at an ordinary grade, Sun Dwarf craftsmanship was more than good enough to be recognized out in the Outer Tower.

[🔑] A Basic Blacksmithing Manual Containing the Sun Dwarves’ Secret Racial Techniques

To unlock this manual passed down since the ancestors, one had to complete the hundred trials of hardship the ancestors had decreed.

You could become an enchanter for the simple reason of being a dwarf, no hardship required.

An ordinary blacksmith could earn plenty of money too.

So who on earth would bother headbutting their way through the Heir of Flame trials?

In the end, not a single young dwarf had opened this manual in recent memory.

Dwarves who’d given up on the path of the elite blacksmith.

Only the so-called Flame Dropouts were left.

Ricardo closed his eyes.

“Back in my day…”

thinking the kind of stodgy old thought that phrase implied.

If there was any comfort in it, maybe it was that the Elves and the Frost Tribe weren’t in a much different situation.

He was mulling over how the once-envied Heir of Flame path had come to this, when it happened.

- Rumble…

The Sun Dwarves’ great furnace began to seethe.

Ricardo’s eyes slowly opened.

“What…?”

This reaction only ever happened under one circumstance.

When the manual was opened for the first time by someone newly entering the path of the Heir of Flame.

In other words.

Right now, someone had opened the manual. A new Heir of Flame had appeared.

Ricardo rose from his throne.

“Find them.”

The low words he’d growled out quickly turned into a booming roar.

“Now, this instant! Bring me this fine, upstanding young one!!”

Ricardo bellowed.

The lava probably boiled right along with him.

* * *

I spent several days studying the blacksmithing manual.

“Several days” out of a single week was a genuinely huge chunk of time.

But I figured this was worth pouring that much effort into.

But.

Where I’d been foolish was…

this world’s blacksmithing manual, that is…

I’d thought making gear would be way too easy.

No wait, let me be honest.

I never actually thought it’d be easy. I went in with real resolve.

“…I think I’m gonna die.”

My resolve just hadn’t been enough.

It was way too hard.

Where’s the machine, where’s my machine. I want to mass-produce gear too.

For starters, the introduction alone made no sense.

[A 100kg hammer is mandatory. You, who have completed the hundred trials of hardship, should have no trouble with this.]

What the actual fuck.

You who have completed the hundred trials of hardship. The problem was, that “you” wasn’t me.

What I realized while studying was that this manual hadn’t been written for ordinary blacksmiths at all.

Among blacksmiths, it was for the elite few who’d passed the worst trials of all.

Heirs of Flame.

This manual had been written for them.

In other words, among the already-rare blacksmiths who hammered gear out by hand…

this was an even rarer, higher-tier profession, one practically treated as legend even among them.

“Heirs of Flame…”

Even the name was grandiose. Figured, I’d thought the difficulty seemed off.

Thankfully, the hammer wasn’t mandatory, just recommended.

If it had been mandatory, I’d have flipped straight over to the Elf document.

The manual’s first chapter was flashy.

Greatswords, plate armor, mana-imbued shields…

I skipped all of it.

[Metallurgy]

Well, all of that fell under the “metallurgy” section, melting and working iron at high heat.

But I was in a position where I couldn’t even scrounge up a rock without worrying, let alone iron.

So.

What I ended up approaching was…

[Leatherworking]

the section on.

“Warming gloves.”

That was it.

Literally just that, a pair of warm-ish gloves made of leather.

The materials were simple, and the process was straightforward.

Above all.

Dolores’s constitution ran cold.

So the opposite, gear that held onto warmth, might raise her Compatibility Rating even a little, right?

The supplies list was minimal.

Leather, even, was easy to get.

“Wild animal hide?”

This was a livestock barn.

I went up to the instructor and said, “I need leather for magic supplies,” and he agreed without hesitation.

The privileges that came with being under Dolores’s protection apparently extended even to this.

Thanks to that, I got myself a corner of the barn to work in.

Not that my “workspace” amounted to much, just a bucket, a scraper, and a plank of wood.

So, once again.

the reason I’d thought I was going to die earlier.

what I was doing right now was…

“Hah… hah…”

washing raw hide.

Otherwise known as tanning.

Scraping fat and flesh off the livestock hide, soaking it in water, scraping it again.

The manual said, “Scrub with all your heart and sincerity,” but…

if sincerity alone got the job done, there’d be nothing in the world you couldn’t do.

“I think I’m actually going to die…?”

I’m not joking, my forearms are shaking.

The fact that this body was a scrawny kid to begin with was already a problem.

And on top of that, the size of this spotted cow made no sense.

Obviously, the bigger the animal, the bigger the hide.

This hide was big enough to cover the entire floor of the workshop if I laid it out.

At this point, without any detailed information on tanning.

was doing this with no technique at all actually the right approach?

This absolutely wasn’t me looking for shortcuts because I didn’t want to do the whole thing.

- Clap, clap.

I wiped away the sweat pouring off me and clapped my hands together.

“Yuna?”

Give me your best tanning tips.

This was probably the exact reason humanity lost its jobs.

Live like this a little longer and I’ll turn into a total finger princess.

[…]

Yuna seemed to stare at me pathetically for a moment.

See, this is supposedly an AI? I can’t believe it.

[Hmm… but I didn’t only give you one book…]

[Why not take a look at the Elves’ leather-tanning method?]

The now-unlocked Elf document appeared before me.

I’d only chosen the Sun Dwarf manual earlier, I’d never said I wouldn’t read the rest.

“Yeah, open it.”

I’d unlocked all of them anyway.

Couldn’t hurt.

[Apparently, because they’re a small-statured race, they developed a softening method using natural materials.]

What?

Wait, that’s literally me.

A small person with no strength.

I read the document right away, and here’s how I’d summarize it.

One, crush oak leaves to extract the juice.

Two, mix the juice into water and soak the hide overnight.

Three, take it out the next day and the fat will have separated out on its own.

“…That’s it?”

[The tannins in the leaves loosen up the hide’s fibers, that’s the principle behind it.]

[It can replace the dwarf-style tanning process. To some degree, anyway.]

So basically, if I just left it soaking overnight, it’d be nice and clean by morning.

The dwarf crafting method was incredibly detailed when it came to explaining the gear itself.

but it was pretty unhelpful about tanning specifically… so what if I just swapped in the Elf method for that one part?

This was way too good.

‘This is basically how you write a thesis, too.’

Something a senior grad student had once told me came back to mind.

The key, they’d said, was citing other people’s research appropriately and reinterpreting it your own way.

Back then I’d been pretty full of myself and hated hearing that, but now, I got it, at least somewhat.

Guess I’m making a mixed stew of it.

“Oak… oak leaf…”

Oak leaves. Honestly, I was a total outsider when it came to plants.

I trusted Yuna’s knowledge and headed for the hill out back.

“This one?”

[That’s a pine tree.]

“This?”

[You dummy, brother, that’s a paulownia tree.]

Sorry, but how would I know that.

Ugh, damn it, it looks like it should be around here somewhere.

That’s when.

“Hey, this is it, this has to be it.”

I compared it against the photo Yuna had pulled up and walked over.

Look at it from any angle, this was an oak tree.

[Oh?]

[Correct, hehe]

I immediately plucked a handful of leaves.

By the manual’s count, I needed twenty leaves per hide.

I wasn’t about to half-ass this.

Whatever I do, I do it perfectly, that’s just my style.

No need to compare myself to anyone else, if I score 100, I’m number one.

Of course, that belief had gotten crushed by a bunch of bastards, not even human apparently, who scored 110, 200 points.

They say you never know which way life’s going to bounce.

I just never thought it’d bounce all the way here.

I went back to my spot in the corner of the barn.

I filled the bucket with water and crushed the leaves with a rock to extract the juice. According to the manual, all I had to do was mix the juice into the water, submerge the hide, and leave it overnight.

- Splash.

The hide sank into the leaf-juice water.

“…Guess that’s it.”

I’d be able to check the results by tomorrow morning.

I plopped down next to the bucket.

I’d done everything I could. That was it for today.

The moment I leaned my back against the wall, my whole body finally started throbbing with ache.

Felt like the payback for all that shoveling, on leather instead of dirt, was finally catching up with me.

“…Let’s just sleep for now.”

My eyes fell shut.

From experience, following the book usually worked out most of the time.

…If it didn’t.

I’d just figure it out when the time came.

I believed in the power of books.

I’d been about to spend the entire day stuck rubbing at leather with no way out…

All I could do was thank the Elves for writing a book like this.

* * *

Around that same time.

The 19th floor, the Great Rainforest.

The very heart of the Elves’ Silver Forest.

Grand Chieftain Erien sat atop the roots of an ancient tree.

For what it’s worth, she was also biting her nails.

A scout knelt before her and bowed their head.

“…The, the investigation results? Our promising, our most promising successor, the one who opened the ancestors’ records, where are they?”

Her voice was trembling.

Not that it was any wonder.

The Elves’ situation wasn’t so different from the dwarves’, either.

If anything, it was worse.

If the dwarves were famous for their gear, the Elves were famous for jewelry and gem-crafting.

But being famous and being fine were two different things.

Once every few decades, the Elves had to hold a rite for the World Tree of the Great Rainforest.

To receive the World Tree’s blessing of prosperity and abundance.

The rite absolutely required a gem that only an elite jeweler could craft.

Those who opened the ancestors’ records and passed the trial.

A gem made by the elite jewelers called the Children of the Forest.

The problem was, there were only three Children of the Forest left right now.

Being a long-lived race had made them careless, and that carelessness was their downfall.

With such long lifespans, they’d assumed someone would always be around to hold the position.

By the time they realized how complacent that assumption had been, it was already too late.

Before anyone noticed, the number of Elves crafting jewelry had dropped drastically.

All three remaining were veterans with backs bent from age, with no disciples to speak of and their own funeral rites drawing near.

Not exactly “Children” of the Forest anymore. More like elders of the forest.

In the end, they needed a gem to hold the rite, but they couldn’t even get in touch with the three.

There was no way to know if they were alive or dead. Frankly, they weren’t the type you could just summon back and forth for a ceremony either.

They did things when they felt like it, and not otherwise.

While everyone had been stuck stamping their feet in worry… good news had finally arrived.

The instant Erien received word that someone had opened the ancestors’ records, she shot up from her throne.

Some young Elf had opened it, apparently.

How could she not go looking? She was practically dying of pride.

This one had to be raised up properly.

For their own survival, there was no other choice.

“We’ve pinpointed the reader’s location.”

Erien leaned forward.

“Where?”

“…The Outer Tower.”

“The Outer Tower…?”

Erien’s lips trembled faintly.

If they were in the Outer Tower, she couldn’t grab them, no, couldn’t bring them in.

Are they even, are they even actually an Elf…?

“…”

Erien fainted.

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