WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 051
──────
Do You Want to Die Young?
* * *
Hareungar, the Sage Artisan pressing me for an answer, right in front of me.
I supposed you could call him our great ancestor, someone I owed thanks to for coming all this way to help me, but…
“…”
I turned my body slowly, putting on a wistful expression.
My eyes fixed on the window.
Only half my face left in view.
“… Actually, I,”
I paused for a beat.
“was an orphan. I never had any parents.”
“… I see. So that’s the past you carry.”
Despite this deeply personal story starting up out of nowhere,
whether it was just common practice to spin a tale like this before making a piece of gear,
he settled into his seat without missing a beat and listened closely to what I had to say.
“Someone took me in. Someone who’s spared no support in letting me stand before a forge at this age.”
“…”
The details of Dolores’s illness were, ordinarily, top secret, every bit of it.
But he was already dead, so telling him shouldn’t cause much of a problem.
“But she has a congenital illness, and I’ve been making gear for someone who’s weak to the cold.”
Well, to be precise, it’s more that she runs too cold, but.
I said, pointing at the gloves and the footwraps.
“These are part of that process, and she’s my motivation.”
“Well now…”
Hareungar stroked his beard and nodded.
“If you owe someone a debt of gratitude like that, repaying it is only proper.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then is the next piece of gear also for this benefactor of yours?”
“For now, yes.”
But.
“I’d like to make her a piece of clothing.”
“I see.”
“But this particular item…”
“…”
“I want to make it entirely alone, start to finish, with no help, using only my own two hands.”
Clothing, sure, that’s what I’d called it.
What I actually had to make, what I was trying so hard to make, was Dolores’s underwear.
This.
Just.
Who was I supposed to hand it off to?
Unless I’d lost my mind, at least not until Lionel Yujin was buried six feet under.
I would personally oversee every step, from start to finish,
keeping it as spotless as a semiconductor fab, not one speck of dust, not one stain, not a trace of contamination allowed.
And making sure no one else could ever lay eyes on it.
No one but Kim Yuna, who had deep expertise in the aesthetics of women’s clothing, was to be allowed anywhere near this process.
That was Rule Number One of this whole project.
My ancestor showing up to help me out? Sure, thank you very much. But this was my business.
For starters, you were a man.
I wanted to bring in more of the Elves’ sense of beauty than Sun Dwarf craftsmanship anyway.
Though whether any Elf actually had a figure like Dolores’s, I had no idea.
Of course, I couldn’t say any of that out loud.
“So… would you leave this one to me?”
“… That feeling of yours, it’s only natural.”
- Slide.
Hareungar nodded slowly.
“If it’s something for your benefactor, of course you’d want to finish it alone.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
“Then let’s use this time to talk about everything else. There’s plenty left to cover.”
“Good.”
With that settled, on to the next thing, as he’d said.
What was I actually supposed to ask him for?
“What I’d like to ask, and to request…”
Several possibilities did come to mind.
But I had no way of knowing what was most urgent, most important.
I’d need to know what I was lacking in the first place before I could even ask about it.
After all, I’d never had anything to compare myself against.
It struck me all over again how reassuring it was that the person in front of me was a Sage Artisan.
That was when he spoke.
“Heir, we haven’t spoken much, but… you seem to have some firm ideas of your own. Convictions might be the better word.”
“… I hear that a lot.”
“There must be things you’re normally dissatisfied with, or ideas you’ve turned over already.”
He looked around the workshop once, taking it all in.
“Someone with your temperament is always turning problems over in your head, hunting for solutions.”
He was right on the mark.
That was just how I was, I suppose you could call it complaining a lot.
Whatever the case, if something about my current situation bothered me, I filed it away, one thing at a time. Exactly what was wrong with it.
“I’ll take care of it for you. Tell me what you’ve thought of, and your reasons for each request.”
I answered right away, without hesitation.
“First is the hammer.”
Making a hammer for me to use.
There had to be a reason he’d frowned when he glanced at my Earthborn Hammer earlier.
As a Sage Artisan, he must have seen countless fine hammers in his time.
“For hammering out gear at whatever level I’m currently capable of, there’s nothing lacking, but,”
I’d never actually made anything highly difficult yet.
“someday I’ll need a far better hammer than this one, so…”
Mid-sentence, Hareungar’s face screwed up and he raised a hand.
“… Wait. I can’t just let that pass.”
Cutting right into what I was saying.
“… You’re saying you’ve never felt your hammer was lacking, until now?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
What was that about?
Had I said something wrong?
He moved toward my hammer,
picked up the Earthborn Hammer, and came back.
“… Go on, then. Keep talking.”
Hareungar looked at me and nodded.
“Second is the anvil.”
An anvil. For one thing, I didn’t like the human-made ones.
“I got a new one not too long ago, set low to match my height, picked out the best material I could find, but…”
“…”
“I still don’t like it very much.”
“Good. What’s next?”
The third thing I’d been curious about.
“… Third is a method.”
“A method.”
“Yes.”
I held up my own arm to show him.
“As you can see, I’m on the small side.”
My muscles, my height, all of it, small, admittedly.
“Up until now it hasn’t been an issue, since gloves and footwraps are small anyway, but…”
“…”
“once I start making something larger, I have a feeling things will be different.”
The reason I’d only ever made small gear, and clothing for Dolores, up until now, was…
partly because I’d wanted to make exactly those things, but also because that was about the limit of what I could physically handle.
“Honestly, even now it’s a bit of a struggle.”
Swinging the hammer once, or stepping down on a piece of gear, took my whole body, so after doing it over and over, my body stopped cooperating.
It left me deeply exhausted.
“I’m curious whether you have any know-how for making up for that, physically.”
According to the records, there were dwarves who’d lost an arm entirely.
I wondered how people like that managed at all.
Hareungar wore a strange expression as he asked me,
“… How many hours a day do you work, exactly?”
“At least nineteen hours.”
“… What?”
Hareungar’s brow furrowed.
“H-how long does it usually take you to make one piece of gear?”
“At most two months. At least, about two weeks.”
I answered honestly, exactly as it was.
“… Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Every bit of it? All by your own two hands?”
Hareungar set both hands on the desk.
He propped his chin on them and stared at me for a long while.
“…”
What was with that look?
Deadly serious, deeply grave.
Not long after, he finally spoke.
“… Very well. I’ll answer all three of your questions.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s start with the second. The anvil.”
He turned his head and looked at my anvil.
“It’s certainly a ‘fairly’ poor piece of work. Your eye was right.”
“…”
“But it’s also true that making you a new one right now wouldn’t be wise.”
- Thunk thunk.
Hareungar stood and rapped the anvil with the back of his hand a couple of times.
“This is a piece of equipment that has to fit your body.”
“…”
“If you were short like us dwarves, fine, I wouldn’t worry. But aren’t you still growing? Lower it to fit your current height, and you’ll be remaking it again inside of two years.”
Oh?
He’s right.
I’d been thinking only in terms of dwarves.
I was still in my growth years, and while whether I’d actually get any taller was anyone’s guess, my growth plates were still open.
It made sense.
“So bear with this one for now. Once your body’s finished growing, we’ll make you a proper one.”
“Understood.”
Next.
“Now, the answer to your first question.”
He lifted the Earthborn Hammer he’d been holding onto this whole time and frowned.
“There’s a saying passed down among the Sun Dwarves, from our Heir of Flame ancestors. A craftsman never blames his tools.”
So they had a saying like that too.
People were the same wherever you went, I supposed…
“Except.”
He went on,
“the hammer is the exception.”
Hareungar picked up the Earthborn Hammer and set it down on the desk.
“… It’s a common misunderstanding young dwarves just starting out in metallurgy make. And I’m not simply talking about a hammer’s performance.”
“Then what…?”
“For a blacksmith, the hand isn’t where the body ends. There’s one more joint beyond the arm, the very last part of the body. That’s the hammer.”
It was a line written even in the Heir of Flame records.
The hammer is a part of your own body.
“So do you know what the first condition of a good hammer is?”
“… Wouldn’t it be how well it strikes, and its durability?”
“No. That’s not it.”
He shook his head.
“It’s that it doesn’t hurt its owner.”
“…”
“You said you spend nineteen hours a day in the workshop, yes?”
“Yes.”
“That means you’re striking anywhere from five thousand to ten thousand times a day.”
That was roughly right.
I’d once asked Yuna to count how many times I swung my hammer in a day.
There’d been a day I hit it about 9,815 times. Factor in enchanting, and the number would climb even higher.
“But.”
- Slide.
He picked the Earthborn Hammer back up,
- Thud…
It was a light tap against the anvil.
Not even a hard one.
- Ring…
As always after a strike, the hammer’s head trembled violently.
“The handle isn’t absorbing a damn thing.”
- Hum…
Only then did the hammer finally stop trembling.
“It means less than half the force of every strike actually makes it into the metal, the rest comes right back through your wrist, your elbow, your shoulder.”
“… The Earthborn Hammer does?”
“That’s right, this damn hammer, exactly that!”
- Thud!
- Hummmm…
When Hareungar brought it down on the anvil harder,
the hammer trembled for even longer.
“Once, it might be nothing. But do it ten thousand times, and your arm ends up taking in every last bit of that force.”
He asked, wearing a worried expression,
“Heir, let me ask you now. Has your hand never gone numb?”
“It has.”
[??]
The moment I answered, Yuna started with a jolt.
“… Heir, let me ask you again. Has your shoulder never ached so badly it kept you from sleeping?”
“It nearly did once, but I was so exhausted I passed out before it could keep me up.”
[What is this, big brother?]
[You’ve been hurting this whole time, big brother??]
“… Heir. Has staring so hard at your work ever made your eyes ache badly enough that your vision blacked out for a moment?”
“It’s never blacked out, but I did go a little hollow-eyed once while sewing.”
[Is htat true, big brohter? Rea-lly, did taht really haapen?]
[whydidntyousaysomething, why didn’t you tell me??]
I had no idea what she meant, saying I “didn’t tell her.”
Back in my past life, going hollow-eyed while writing my dissertation had been an everyday thing.
I’d passed out cold from exhaustion more times than I could count.
Fatigue had always been like an old friend that never left my side.
“Then I suppose you’ve also felt your workshop get so hot it left you dizzy, the strength draining right out of your body.”
“I have.”
[Why, why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I realize you were getting hurt, big brother…?]
[I’m sorry, big brother. I really didn’t know. I’m a failure as a… little sister…]
Yuna had nothing to apologize to me for.
Because I,
had made sure Yuna couldn’t point out the health risks I was running,
had already switched off every warning about overwork and fatigue, a long time ago, back in my past life.
She was the type who’d screamed at me to please just sleep every chance she got,
so I’d erased every one of her health-warning protocols completely.
The nagging about my rhythm games, I’d left alone, just our little running WWE bit.
But this, she’d fought against with absolutely everything she had.
But if I’d followed nothing but Yuna’s guidelines…
I never would have earned my doctorate,
and I never would have closed the gap between myself and the AI and the front-runners racing ahead of me.
A little bodily pain here and there had simply been part of my everyday life.
Where would I have even found the time to rest? I never had any time to spare for that.
I wasn’t in any position to enjoy that kind of luxury.
And then.
“… All of this-”
- Footsteps.
Hareungar walked toward me.
“has its answer in your third question.”
- Footsteps.
“You asked for wisdom on how to avoid growing fatigued.”
“I did.”
He stood in front of me and spoke.
“Nineteen hours of labor a day.”
“A hammer so wretched it hurts its own owner.”
“A workshop that gets so absurdly hot it’s hard to even breathe.”
He recited my working conditions, one after another,
“Your age. A mere thirteen.”
The Earthborn Hammer Hareungar had been holding-
- Thud!
hit the floor.
“Let me ask you this, Heir, just in case.”
“… Yes.”
“Do you want to die young?”
A shocking thing to hear.
Before I could say anything back,
he turned his head toward the forge.
“A blacksmith is someone who spends their whole life living in the heat.”
“…”
“Several times a day, we stand before the fire, step back, and stand before it again. That’s our work.”
Hareungar looked at me again.
“So our rule is simple. To stand there a long time… we rest a long time. Forging one piece of gear usually takes half a year.”
He nudged the fallen hammer on the floor with the toe of his boot.
“You cut that half a year down to two months. Then down to two weeks.”
“…”
“What do you think you cut to make that happen?”
He took one step closer.
“Your lifespan. That’s what. You’ve been burning your own lifespan to make things.”
He spoke slowly.
“There are people like you. The moment they lock onto one thing, everything else disappears from view.”
That was exactly me.
“Unable to look after your own condition, not even noticing you’re hungry or that night has passed. A superhuman focus, whatever you see through your eyes is probably a world apart from what I see through mine. That’s undeniable talent.”
Hareungar’s eyes burned bright as he seized both my arms.
“But Heir. Whatever it is you’re trying to make,”
- Tight…
“you have to be alive to make it.”
The hands gripping my arms tightened.
“I kept wondering how in the world you could be growing this fast, in this little time.”
And then, right then.
“So this was a devil’s own talent you were born with.”
He looked up, at the top of my head.
“Now I finally understand what this strange spell hanging off the back of your head actually is.”
“A spell?”
There was a spell on the back of my head?
“You didn’t even know.”
He pointed a finger at the back of my head.
I turned my head on reflex.
Of course I couldn’t see it.
It was the back of my own head. How was I supposed to see that?
Watching me twist my neck this way and that, Hareungar sighed and went to take a mirror down off the wall.
- Slide.
He set it up behind me, angled just right.
The back of my own head, reflected in the mirror.
There…
a few tiny, pale-blue specks floated.
When I moved my head,
- Slip.
they trailed after it, half a beat behind.
What was this?
Kind of cute… no, wait, that’s not the point.
“W-what is this?”
“Once a set amount of time passes, or you reach a state of exhaustion, or certain other conditions line up, it forces your body to relax and puts you to sleep. Have you never felt it before?”
“…”
“It’s a kind of protective spell. Looks like it was cast quite recently.”
I thought it over carefully.
Lately, I’d been putting in some late nights building the new workshop and shaping the crucibles.
Working hard enough that I hadn’t nodded off even when Dolores slipped in to see me in the evenings.
She’d ended up making the trip for nothing, a few times.
Normally, one look at Dolores’s face was enough to send sleepiness creeping over me and drain every last bit of strength from my body.
I supposed I’d managed to overcome that learned helplessness of mine.
But then.
starting from some point,
just seeing her face alone left my body languid, the sleepiness so overwhelming it became impossible to fight…
Huh?
When my eyes went wide,
Hareungar spoke.
“Figured it out now, have you.”
“…”
“Seeing as you didn’t know, I’d guess that ‘benefactor’ of yours is the one who cast it.”
He turned the mirror back around.
“Which means your benefactor knew as well. That you’ve been grinding yourself into the ground.”
“…”
“Told you, and you wouldn’t have listened, I’d wager. You look stubborn enough that in the end, with no other way, she settled for putting in at least this much of a safeguard.”
Get tired, sleep. Wake up, then do it all again.
I’d thought that cycle had just been taking care of itself, all on its own.
“What you need most isn’t anything complicated.”
“…”
“Eat well. Rest well.”
- Tap.
He tapped my forehead lightly with one finger.
“Rest, and plenty of it.”
Hareungar added, looking me straight in the eye.
The advice this dwarf Sage Artisan I’d just met had for me was-
“This is the first piece of wisdom Hareungar has to give his Heir.”
Rest.
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