I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With - Chapter 029

WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 029

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Granting a Potential Ability

* * *

"Whoa."

Before the enchanting began.

[Things have gone completely nuts.]

After getting Yuna's report, I quietly opened up the community forum.

[Is this really an Heir of Flame??]

[When's the gear crafting happening, for real]

[(Saw it live) Just climbed to floor 88 and actually watched the pattern get carved into the sky]

It was nothing but talk of the Heir of Flame.

As for what was actually going on, well, I obviously had no idea, at first.

Apparently, once an Heir of Flame passed through their apprenticeship and became a Certified Blacksmith, some kind of pattern got carved into the floor where the Sun Dwarves lived.

It seemed to have appeared right at the moment I finished the 2-star gear and became a Certified Blacksmith.

"...Hm."

- Scroll, click.

I crossed my arms and savored the flood of reactions.

"Nice."

This felt different, somehow.

The whole world was curious about me, looking for me.

In ten years of haunting forums, I'd never been this popular before...

Anyway.

Right now, the Heir of Flame was a very busy man.

Much as I wanted to keep enjoying the reactions a little longer,

I had things to do.

I picked up my enchant hammer and got to my feet.

Rhythm-game players come in all kinds of tastes.

Among them are those who don't really care about the song at all.

The type who figure it doesn't matter what plays, as long as the chart itself is fun.

Well, I'm one to respect other people's tastes, but...

a song needs a bit more energy for the hand-feel to really come alive.

"Yuna, is there a Sun Dwarf song?"

[There is~]

And I happened to be an Heir of Flame, after all.

Dwarven songs tended to be pretty lively.

I was already riding a high as it was, so today, let's crush it with a traditional dwarven tune.

- Boom, boom, ba-doom.

A cheerful drumbeat rang out.

- Tang, tatang, tang-tang.

In time with it, my hammer struck down onto the glove,

and I didn't miss a single one of the narrowing Hit Circles.

This feeling, yeah, this is it.

- Pang!

The last circle burst at exactly the right timing.

─────────────────

[Strike Tally]

[Perfect] [88]

[Great] [1]

[Okay] [0]

[Bad] [0]

[Awful] [0]

─────────────────

Mr. Perfect.

Along with a results sheet singing my praises.

─────────────────

[Final Success Rate: 48%]

[Failure Rate: 52%]

─────────────────

【Attempting……】

─────────────────

【Enhancement Success】

─────────────────

[the Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Gloves][★☆☆☆☆]

[+15 → +16]

─────────────────

The enchant succeeded.

[Enchant Log]

[14->15]][Failed]

[14->15]][Success!]

[15->16]][Success!]

The 50% chance had failed five times straight going from +14 to +15.

I'd figured my luck must be bad, but then, bam-bam-bam, it just clicked right into place.

"Uhuhu~"

I hummed a tune while getting ready for the next enchant, but

- Rustle.

"Huh?"

No matter how much I dug through my pocket...

unfortunately, the enchant dust had run low.

It was scraping the bottom.

"...Tsk."

Guess that's it for today.

If there was one thing I'd noticed while working, it was this.

No matter how sparingly I used the dust, pushing the difficulty as high as I could,

the minimum dust requirement had risen quite a bit now that these had a star, compared to the grind-fest chore glove, which had none at all.

Naturally, the consumption rate had sped up too.

Also, the charts themselves had grown a lot more varied, as a baseline.

Maybe it was because the star count had changed, or because this was Unique Equipment, I wondered.

But something else struck me as odd, too...

"There's no destruction chance, though...?"

That was a pretty puzzling thing.

Both the requirement and the chart had gotten harder across the board, yet there wasn't even a hint of a destruction chance to be found.

If I just hit it well, I could still climb smoothly all the way to +16 without any risk of destruction.

Probably just because it's still only 1-star, right?

"Hmm..."

I propped my chin on my hand and sank into thought for a moment.

The sample size was probably still too small. And the dust had run out, too.

The enhancement level was already pretty high at this point, on top of that.

I pictured Dolores in my mind.

and her gear window rose up in front of my eyes.

I slotted the Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Gloves into her empty glove slot.

[Would you like to equip this?]

Yeah.

─────────────────

[the Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Gloves][★☆☆☆☆]

[Unique Equipment][Compatibility Rating][33/40]

[Enhancement Level: +16]

─────────────────

[The sun engraving's warming effect suppresses the amplification of the wearer's Yin energy.]

[Nine Yin Meridian Affliction symptoms eased; opening progress at 7 of 9 meridians.]

─────────────────

I mulled over the numbers, reading it through a few more times, but

"Hmm..."

nothing seemed to have really changed.

This was a glove pushed all the way to +16, so sure, its stats had probably climbed quite a bit.

"Nothing's really different, huh."

The part I'd actually been aiming for,

the affliction easing further, the meridians switching over to permanently open, the Compatibility Rating climbing higher,

none of it was any different from before the enchant.

Guess this was just another case of stats going up and nothing else, in the end.

Curing an illness really wasn't something enchanting alone could reach, it seemed.

Just as I was shaking my head over it,

- Pang!

─────────────────

【Potential Ability】

[+5 - Choose a Path]

[Warmth] Wraps the wearer in accumulated heat, protecting them.

[Residual Heat] Releases accumulated heat to attack the enemy.

─────────────────

"Huh?"

I blinked.

I'd been disappointed just a moment ago that nothing had changed at all,

and now, out of nowhere, something had appeared.

'...A Potential Ability?'

Once the enchant reached a certain stage,

a completely new ability that hadn't been there before had shown up on the gloves.

And right now, it was asking me to make a choice.

Between Warmth and Residual Heat, if I had to settle on a direction, the former was the right call, since what I was after right now was something for treatment.

Because it wraps and protects with heat.

"Warmth."

I naturally chose Warmth.

─────────────────

【Potential Ability】

[+5 - Warmth]

[Absorbs emitted mana (cold) and gathers it into heat for storage.]

[+10 - Gathering]

[Wraps the wearer in gathered heat, protecting them from attacks.]

[+15 - Heat Haze]

[Spreads accumulated heat in every direction, deploying a field. Any projectile that touches the field burns up before it can even arrive.]

[+20 - ?????]

[???????]]

─────────────────

Once I chose Warmth,

in line with the direction I'd picked,

a Potential Ability had been granted at each stage, +10 and +15.

Even +20 sat locked away like some kind of secret, probably because I hadn't reached it yet.

Raising the enhancement level had attached a whole new ability to the gear?

But then why hadn't that happened with the grind-fest chore glove before? Those were even at +20.

Just as my head started spinning with it,

"Yuna!"

[Yep~ Already looking into it~]

- Flip flip flip.

Yuna skimmed through a mountain of documents in an instant,

checking whether there was any precedent of an effect like this manifesting on gear above +15.

"Oh, could you dig through the Sun Dwarf documents too?"

[Sure]

She searched every nook and cranny, but...

[...There's nothing.]

[Nothing at all?]

As expected, there was no precedent anywhere.

Which actually made the answer simple.

What I'd just done was, in itself, something without precedent in this world.

Namely, enchanting Unique Equipment.

Which meant this situation, too, was just one more part of the unprecedented things that came from enchanting Unique Equipment.

A power that didn't exist on ordinary gear, one only available to those who enchanted Unique Equipment.

Taking on the absolute, unrecoverable risk of destruction...

and still, a privilege only those with the courage to swing the enchant hammer anyway could ever get their hands on.

"This is insane."

So that meant this was...

a stat only guys willing to stake their lives on it could ever get, wasn't it...?

I closed my eyes.

Thrilling.

I'd become the first-ever member of the manly-man club.

Because this was territory no one else in the world had ever dared to challenge.

"Swing it."

Swing the hammer at Unique Equipment.

At the far end of the risk, a reward this incredible had been waiting.

A real man was supposed to dive headfirst into a fight with stakes like this. That was just how it worked.

"Dolores? Bring me the stockings."

Because I was going to wreck it.

Oh, and bring some dust too, of course.

Please, it's all gone.

My hands were already trembling a little. I'd only managed four hours of enchanting.

I wanted to find out right now what Potential Ability would unlock the moment I hit +20.

Unfortunately, though...

"...Well, business is closed for today, at least."

I'd come away with more than I expected.

Sure, the enchant hadn't done a thing to actually improve Dolores's condition, but...

life just doesn't flow along that easily.

It might be tough right now, but going forward, all I had to do was keep making good gear for her to wear.

Who knew, maybe a Potential Ability would even let Dolores climb the Tower again someday.

Since I was pretty clueless myself, I couldn't say exactly how good this ability really was, but I'd leave that judgment to Dolores.

That was exactly when it happened.

- Ding.

"Hm?"

That sound...

"The Grand Chieftain, maybe."

Last time, he'd kept trying to dig for my home address,

so I'd just left him on read, and there'd been no word since.

Guess his cooldown's finally up.

I opened the DM window without much interest,

and there, a message had arrived from someone other than who I'd expected.

[Sun Dwarf]: Hello? ^^

[Sun Dwarf]: The new Heir of Flame, and great blacksmith?

Reading that much, I quietly pressed a hand to my forehead.

"Are these guys Elves?"

A reasonable suspicion.

Since I kept saying no, maybe they'd just disguised themselves under a different name entirely.

But then again.

Thinking about it, there was no way the Elves could have any reason to suspect I had a connection to the Sun Dwarves.

No basis for it.

From their perspective, I was just a hundred-percent-pure Elf, after all.

[...You remember that thing the Elves planted in the documents last time?]

"Right."

[But we just opened up the Sun Dwarf side's records ourselves, didn't we? Looks like they must've sensed it and reacted the same way.]

Now that she mentioned it, that made sense.

We'd just gone digging through document after document, after all.

So the dwarves had that kind of capability too, huh.

Since it was a trick I'd already been burned by once, it wasn't even surprising.

Real sneaky, these guys.

Still.

Even if it was the same kind of trap, the Sun Dwarves came across as a bit friendlier than the Elves had.

I'd never even laid eyes on them, but there was this welling sense of belonging, I guess you could call it.

I was an Heir of Flame in name, after all.

"Alright, let's sort out the current situation."

In case I accidentally said the wrong thing,

this kind of thing needed cross-checking.

"They know me as an Heir of Flame who just became a Certified Blacksmith, and they only know roughly whether I'm inside or outside the Tower. That about right?"

[Yeah, but the second part's a little different. I edited your location info a bit.]

"...Hm?"

Wait, does she mean a VPN...

[Ugh, not that.]

[Remember how the Elves pinned your location as outside the Tower last time?]

Right.

The first time, I'd opened it without knowing any better, and hearing about it afterward had scared me a little.

[Right, so I just smudged your location info entirely and made it look like you're inside the Tower.]

[From their end, it should naturally look like you're inside.]

"Nice and clean."

The moment the trap triggers, it can confirm whether you're Outer Tower or Inner Tower, so she'd wiped that piece of the information clean.

"...But do Elves or Dwarves even live outside the Tower to begin with?"

Suddenly I was curious.

Could you even leave the Tower and go outside, from the inside?

[It's not that it never happens. It's rare, but apparently some do go outside.]

[But since it's not common, I figured the moment your location showed up outside the Tower, they'd start thinking, "what's going on here?" So I just erased it.]

"That's Kim Yuna for you."

I clapped.

A reliable advisor, a reliable little sister.

Well, that about wrapped up my prep for "did I think before I spoke?"

Now then, what is it you want to ask, dwarf?

Tense all over, I opened the DM window,

"Hello."

and Yuna typed my words in exactly as I said them.

And then.

- Ding.

The reply came instantly, but

[S■n Dwarf]: Yes! Nice to meet you! So you're resi■ding in the Outer Tower, right? ^^