WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 024
──────
See-Through Footwraps
* * *
I pattered quickly across the dark garden, heading for the workshop.
The door closed behind me.
In my hand was Dolores's sock.
I kept calling it a "sock" for simplicity's sake, but
really it was more like a footwrap, something worn inside the shoe-slot of a piece of gear.
Technically, it counted as a piece of equipment in its own right.
"...It really is cold."
Tmir's Ice-Bound Soles.
Even now, just holding it, a chill crept steadily out of it.
In a lot of ways, it really did seem like fine gear.
In looks. In performance.
The surface, woven from a blue mesh fabric, was studded densely with ice crystals like gemstones.
Held up to the moonlight,
- Sparkle.
each crystal threw off light at its own angle.
"...Insane."
I'd sensed it was no ordinary piece, but...
I hadn't expected craftsmanship on this level. The outside, plastered with icelike gems, was rough to the touch, but
the inside... was smooth as velvet.
A structure crafted to wrap the foot comfortably even while channeling cold.
Gear that nailed function, aesthetics, and comfort all at once.
A piece of gear to replace this.
was what I had to make, starting now.
Looking back objectively at my last process,
the previous replacement I'd made, the Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Gloves that replaced Gorgonyu's White Gloves, had turned out the way it did with quite a bit of luck baked in.
There'd been relatively few things to worry about, and the process itself had been simple.
That's only in hindsight, mind, not that it turned out badly.
But from here on, that wouldn't be the case.
I'd need to do well in every area, every stage of the process.
I wasn't going to assume I could finish this in one go.
"For now..."
I started with the first process I'd planned out.
Along the same lines as the Warming Gloves, I meant to make warming socks.
It was a test of the question: could I get away with just making them warm, the same as last time?
The Sun Dwarves' list of beginner sewing techniques was fairly extensive.
Warming gloves were one of them, and warming socks were another.
This time too,
"Tanning first."
Earlier that day, thinking of her sock, I'd soaked the leather in oak-leaf-steeped water,
and left it outside to dry.
I brought the dried leather in from outside. Nice and dry, in good shape.
It might look like I'd bolted out here at dawn on a whim, but I hadn't come unprepared.
The process for gloves and footwear wasn't all that different.
Pattern, cutting, then sewing.
Cutting and sewing didn't call for much special skill, more like...
"...honest work, huh."
Simple. The more you do it, the better you get.
Like studying.
So I'd figured this round would be easier than last time, but
"...Huh, what."
Maybe the problem was that I'd underestimated how much bigger a foot is than a hand.
Between the structure and the size, everything was more complicated, so even though my skill had improved, it still took longer.
"...If a sock is this hard, how am I supposed to make underwear?"
Underwear was probably going to demand far more clothing-level detail.
But that was a problem for later.
- Shhk...
At least this time, I didn't stab my fingers.
That's what makes it honest work. Last time, I'd stabbed myself constantly.
Meaning my skill really was improving.
- Shhk...
- Snick.
- Snip.
Before I knew it, I'd finished a pretty decent-looking sock.
"......."
The finished sock.
It looked like a black footwrap.
"Heh..."
There was plenty I wanted to say about it,
but it wasn't finished yet, so I held my tongue.
I looked outside. For the final step.
"What."
I'd figured there was still plenty of time left,
but dawn was already breaking, little by little.
"How many hours has it been?"
[6 hours...]
Considering the gloves had taken 8 hours last time...
I really had gotten better.
"Good."
I took the finished sock and stepped outside.
The sky just before sunrise.
Beneath its mix of pale navy and gray, I held the sock cupped in both hands.
The sun was rising. Slowly, beyond the mansion's outer walls.
- Shhhk...
How long had passed?
I felt the hands cradling the sock grow gradually warm,
and across the leather's surface, the apprentice's pattern slowly etched itself in.
A gray-tinted engraving against the black leather.
- Hisss...
As it greeted the rising sun, the pattern was complete.
I went back into the workshop, footwrap clutched in hand.
It was certain now.
Calling this a "sock" would honestly be embarrassing.
The moment I stepped into the workshop, I grabbed Dolores's sock (not really a sock) and squeezed it tight in my hand.
Yes, the very one she'd been wearing until just that morning.
[......?]
And then.
- Squish, squish...
Eyes closed, I kept kneading it.
"Definitely soft and squishy."
[...Pervert.]
That's not it.
Then I touched the footwrap I'd just made, for comparison.
"This one's stiff. As I thought."
That was how it felt to me, anyway.
I brought Dolores to mind, mentally, to check the result.
A status window rose up, several slots still locked.
But now, two slots stood open.
Footwrap and gloves, though the footwrap slot, over the current shoe slot, sat empty.
I lifted up the newly made footwrap.
How would this newly finished item, the Lionel Mark 2 Warming Footwrap, fare...
─────────────────
[the Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Footwraps][★☆☆☆☆]
[Unique Equipment][Compatibility Rating][- /40]
─────────────────
『If socks are already this hard, how am I supposed to make underwear?』
- Apprentice Blacksmith L -
─────────────────
Ah, unbelievable.
"Ugh, seriously."
Got me again. Seriously.
Wow.
I really can't let myself think anything while I'm making this stuff.
I've basically become a potential underwear maker now.
...Not that I'm denying it.
I'll have to do it eventually anyway. Yeah, yeah.
"......."
Apparently you need a high-tier appraiser to actually see this anyway,
so let's just go ahead and check.
[Would you like to replace your current equipment?]
Honestly, I wasn't expecting much at this point, but
soon the interface opened.
─────────────────
[the Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Footwraps][★☆☆☆☆]
[Unique Equipment][Compatibility Rating][13 / 40]
─────────────────
[The sun engraving's warming effect partially, slightly suppresses the wearer's amplification of Yin energy]
[However, the material's innate class, texture, and appearance do not suit the wearer's own standing]
[The material's rigidity likewise does not suit the wearer's physical characteristics]
[The wearer's charm is halved]
─────────────────
The Compatibility Rating had gone up, of course it had.
But alongside it came some fairly sharp feedback.
It felt almost regretful, if that's the word, honestly, so was I.
Like the things I'd been unconsciously suspecting had just been confirmed.
Let's go through it one by one.
The first line of the evaluation, fine. Good.
The problem starts from the second line. Someone might question the bit about bearing and material.
'Wait, the gloves used the exact same material and there was no complaint back then?'
That's not it, though.
What I'd felt looking at Tmir's Ice-Bound Soles was that this was all relative.
A difference in ceiling, in how much effort went into the design.
Dolores's old gloves, Gorgonyu's, and mine didn't look all that different from each other.
With a bit of bias thrown in, mine were actually more refined and sharper-looking, if anything.
But looking at Tmir's soles... both the material and the level of craftsmanship overwhelmingly outclassed it.
Never mind the looks, honestly. That sock was pretty enough you could've worn it on your head and it'd still work.
Not that I actually want to wear it on my head.
'That kind of gap at the top, that's probably what "doesn't suit" means here.'
Of course it had to be better than whatever the wearer had on before, but it also had to match the wearer's own standing.
What I was doing right now was a relative gear replacement.
Which meant I needed to come out ahead in most respects.
Next.
The third line: doesn't suit the wearer's physical characteristics.
I thought I understood this one too.
I crumpled the footwrap in my hand.
- Creak.
It was pretty stiff. Wrapping the leather all the way around some cylindrical shape had made it noticeably thick, too.
Dolores had thin ankles.
Unless you had a build as sturdy as Eric's, this would be hard to pull off. Put simply, it'd be uncomfortable.
Especially for wearing around the house.
And, last.
'The wearer's charm is halved.'
"I accept the verdict."
I nodded and gave it a standing ovation.
- Clap, clap, clap.
[......?]
Yeah, the charm really was halved.
The thing that had kept nagging at me, that had bothered me through the whole process, was exactly this.
I lifted up Tmir's Ice-Bound Soles.
The whole point of Tmir's Ice-Bound Soles was that you could see straight through to what was underneath.
In stocking terms, maybe about 10 to 15 denier[1].
The fully sheer, see-through kind.
In other words, see-through.
This sock, made of SEE-THROUGH material,
showed off nearly all of the shape of Dolores's foot, pretty, delicate, elegantly long, without holding anything back.
Add just a bit of lighting and it'd be the icing on the cake, SHIT.
But this clunky-looking footwrap covered all of that up.
"No, no."
This absolutely could not stand.
This was the most serious problem of all.
Dolores was going to be walking around the mansion wearing this footwrap.
Sheer, no question, that was the right call.
The unease that had been nagging at me all along eased up at once.
"Whew..."
[Pervert pervert pervert pervert pervert]
[Die... no wait that's not it]
[Anyway why don't you just try holding your breath, seriously ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ]
I ignored Yuna and set the footwrap down on the side table.
"I'm not a pervert."
[Does anyone know what a certain someone did during the 15 minutes he spent nervously looking around after he turned Yuna off, right after "accidentally" seeing a clip of a woman in stockings: reply below- ☠☠☠]
Wait, how did she know that...?
I definitely turned her off properly...
I kept as detached an expression as I could manage, ignoring Yuna,
and so.
"All things considered, this can't replace it."
Maybe as a stopgap, but as a permanent replacement, it failed.
That was my conclusion.
"Wasted 6 hours."
I said it flatly and nodded.
[Then why are you smiling...?]
Was I smiling?
Maybe I was.
Honestly, I was pretty happy right now.
Even back when I was in my PhD program, or really just in everyday life,
I never much liked things going smoothly and succeeding on the first try.
This is just a personal belief of mine, but
I think results like that always have some element of luck mixed in.
There's room for a fluke to be at work. And you can't rule out the possibility that the success isn't even reproducible.
So I love a proper failure like this.
Why?
It hands you a new milestone to aim for.
Precisely because it failed, there's a mountain of things to learn.
How could anyone possibly hate a failure that lays out exactly what needs fixing, right there in plain sight?
You get to produce a better result, don't you?
With my own two hands. No flukes involved.
Besides.
There's no failure in the world this considerate, spelling it all out in three or four lines of feedback.
Even my professors never went this far.
"It saves me the time of figuring out why I failed?"
That's something to be grateful for.
If I really am a pervert,
it's not because of sheer 8-denier stockings or that whole foot business.
it's precisely this.
"I need to rework the materials."
Our spotted cowhide seemed to have its limits.
Just then.
Off in a corner of the workshop, a sack of ore Dolores had brought caught my eye.
I'd been so caught up making the stockings, no, the footwrap, that I hadn't even noticed it.
I went over to it.
Inside were various ores, still in their raw state.
Then.
"......?"
A note was tucked inside.
Written in Hangul. Funny, that.
[Lionel! Here's the list of raw ores!]
[Iron Ore x4]
[Copper Ore x3]
[Ember Ore x5]
[White Ore x2]
[Obsidian x6]
[Frost Crystal x1 (this one's quite a rare ore, so I only brought one for now. Just say the word if you need more!)]
And so on.
There was a ton of it. Dolores's generosity really did reach the heavens.
"......."
Looking at it, Tmir's soles seemed to have gems worked into them too.
To measure up to that...
"There's plenty of gems in here too, right?"
[Give me a second, let me look it up.]
Yuna searched.
[There's a lot of ore, but there's a fair number of raw gemstones too.]
[Plenty of pricey ones, too.]
Yeah?
So her expectations for me really were high.
Then I'd rise to it.
Let's see about topping Tmir, at least once.
The problem was, while I'd raised my metallurgy grade quite a bit in theory,
gem-cutting,
that was, unsurprisingly, something I was hopeless at.
I hadn't even read the theory book on it yet.
Apparently the gems in this world held a power called mana.
So cutting wasn't just about shaving it down, apparently it required a rigorous procedure of its own.
Even the dwarves seemed to focus more on ore and metallurgy than on gems,
which was probably why the Elves were the ones famous for this field.
"...Could I actually do it?"
It wasn't like I'd never opened an Elf document before.
I'd read one before, the leather-softening technique.
"......."
Now that the tension had eased, I did feel a little sleepy, but
what would happen if I combined the Sun Dwarves' gear-crafting methods with the Elves' gem-cutting?
"Wouldn't I be the first one to try that?"
Gear combining just the two strong suits.
That curiosity chased the sleep away.
[🔑] An Introductory Guide to Elf Gear-Crafting.
Just a little, then bed.
I opened the guide, specifically to the gem-cutting section.
"...Gem-cutting begins with physical labor...?"
Already, right from the first line, I could feel a sense of dread.
No, wait. These are the Elves who found an easy, painless way to cure leather, right?
I believe in them.
Right around then.
- Ding!
Something popped up in front of my eyes.
【A message has arrived!】
【A message has arrived!】
Huh?
A message?
[Uh, huh?]
Yuna was flustered.
One thing I'd learned in life was that Yuna didn't get flustered very often.
And when she did, a mere human like me was better off not jumping in first,
"......."
and instead holding still, waiting for my top-tier AI little sister to finish making her judgment.
[Hold on a second, okay?]
Where could the message have come from?
Not long after,
Yuna's crisp, precise briefing began.
[Okay, I've got it sorted out.]
I knew I could count on you!!!
[So, a message really did arrive for you.]
[Looks like it identified the user through a log of who'd opened the document, then sent it out.]
[The Sun Dwarf documents, and the others, didn't have any logging feature like this.]
That much was true.
I'd been in and out of the Sun Dwarf documents like they were my own bedroom, and never gotten so much as a peep back.
[But the Elves seem to have really, absolutely wanted to catch whoever was reading. Looks like they built some kind of security device right into the document itself.]
I see.
[But that's as far as it goes.]
[All they can do on their end is confirm there's an unidentified user and send a message through the system.]
[That's the only thing they can do.]
[The messenger function probably only lets them tell whether you're inside the Tower or outside it.]
[Tracing it back is impossible.]
So basically, all the Tower's system lets them do is send a DM, nothing more.
"So the conclusion is..."
[It means it's fine to read it.]
I nodded.
My mind eased in an instant.
I let the corner of my mouth curl up and moved to open the message.
But right then.
[Wait, wait! Hold on a second?]
[Things you absolutely must not do in a DM]
[1. Revealing your identity]
[2. Giving out your address]
[3. Bragging about being "the guy who made the +20 gloves"]
[Got it?]
Yeah, got it.
Felt like she was treating me like some clueless newborn.
I'm not that bad.
[.......]
"Ahem."
With my heart racing, I opened the DM window.
【WhereDidYouGoChildOfTheForestPleaseComeBack】: Hello? I'm from the Elf tribe, Grand Chieftain of the Great Rainforest. My name's Erien.
【'WhereDidYouGoChildOfTheForestPleaseComeBack' has changed their nickname to 'Erien, Grand Chieftain of the Great Rainforest'】
【Erien, Grand Chieftain of the Great Rainforest】: Do you need my help?
There it was.
"......."
[......?]
Rather pathetic-looking, if I'm honest.
A DM had arrived.
And the moment I read the message,
【Erien, Grand Chieftain of the Great Rainforest】: Ah!! You read it!
【Erien, Grand Chieftain of the Great Rainforest】: Future Child of the Forest! Might I ask where you currently live?
And just like that, the interrogation began.
Footnotes
[1] Denier is a real-world unit of textile measurement, used to describe how thick or sheer a fabric or stocking is, based on the weight of its threads. The lower the number, the finer and more sheer the material.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
