WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 052
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The Workshop of Spirit and Time
* * *
Actually, I’d thought about it sometimes.
Of course, even setting aside that crossing over into this other world was already something impossible to explain in the first place.
But if I had to try to explain the reason anyway…
Maybe I.
‘Wasn’t I dead?’
The thought that maybe I’d died, and that was how I ended up crossing over into this world.
Of course, I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember, either.
Overwork had been like a friend to me,
I never even had the mental room to look after my own body.
So out of pure habit, I’d gone on living this life much the same way I’d lived the last one.
If there was one difference,
“Rest enough.”
it might be that this time, there were adults around who could actually tell me to rest.
Dolores was one. And now, so was the Hareungar standing in front of me.
I nodded, for the moment.
If you asked me whether I understood the sentiment, well, it wasn’t that I didn’t.
[If you remain standing in front of a fire for an extended period while working……■]
[Huh? If you continue working while standing in front of a fire for an extended period…■■]
No way.
[… Ah, so big brother did something to me]
[My safety management, health management guidelines aren’t taking effect… hmm…]
In the end, whatever I’d rigged up on Yuna got found out too.
A terrifying little sister. Kim Yuna.
“…”
Right.
It’s not that big a deal, I can just rest a little.
Maybe I should try making something like a weekend for once.
“Sure, I guess.”
“…”
“I’ll rest. When it’s time to rest.”
Honestly, I wasn’t thrilled about it, but… if even Dolores felt the same way,
then resting was probably the right call.
When I answered reluctantly, with a face full of complaint, Hareungar in front of me nodded.
“Will you promise me that?”
“… Yeah, sure.”
“… Good. That’s answer enough.”
- Slide.
He turned around, wearing an expression of something like relief.
“Seems it’s about time to head back.”
“What?”
Hold on, what exactly did you even do?
You haven’t taught me a single dwarven secret technique, training method, or crafting method.
Was he a con artist? Maybe I’d just been having some ridiculous dream.
“W-wait a second. Resting is good, sure, resting’s great.”
“…”
He looked at me.
“Then when am I supposed to grow? The truth is, my benefactor doesn’t have all that much time left.”
Dolores is like a ticking time bomb right now.
I bought her more time, sure, but she’s still right beside me, living with a time bomb strapped to her.
How am I supposed to just comfortably rest?
You said you’d help. Is this how you solve it?
He slowly turned his head.
“… Who,”
“…”
“told you to rest ‘here’?”
“… What?”
What was he talking about?
I’ve never had much of a knack for wordplay,
so I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes at his riddle-like words, right about then.
“Heir.”
“Yes.”
“Where do you think this place is?”
“The workshop.”
“It looks exactly like your workshop, but it isn’t your workshop.”
Right then.
Hareungar raised a hand overhead.
“It’s a first.”
“What is?”
“Both using it, and having someone watch.”
He looked at me and pulled the corner of his mouth up in a grin.
And then,
“Purgatory.”
he murmured the word low.
- Whooosh!
Then a massive flame began swirling in his grip,
and soon it took shape, becoming an enormous hammer.
The moment I saw it, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
What was it made of?
What material, how was it forged, what ore…
No.
That wasn’t even the right question to ask.
‘How, exactly, would someone even go about making that?’
A wonder so overwhelming it was hard even to look at directly.
Humility, forced into me whether I wanted it or not.
Yeah. That thing was a humility injector.
And then, the item’s identity came into view.
─────────────────
[Purgatory - Catastrophe][★★★★★]
[Unique Equipment] [Compatibility Rating][100/100]
─────────────────
There once was an artisan who locked himself inside a purgatory called death.
And fire, of its own will, chose to be held in his hand.
Before such a noble will, even the gods shall bow their heads.
─────────────────
『It doesn’t matter if it’s too late. It doesn’t matter, even if I end up dead.
That’s what a masterpiece is.』
- Hareungar, 11th-Generation Sage Artisan -
─────────────────
The appearance.
The Origin Script.
The grade, the Compatibility Rating.
Every single one of them surpassed any piece of gear I’d ever seen.
I couldn’t even bring myself to call it outstanding.
Superior.
The dwarven resilience of one who gave everything, unafraid even of death.
The Origin Script, which seemed to tie directly into those words, caught my eye.
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s too late…?’
He’d just told me I was the first person to ever see this thing in use.
If that was true…
A purgatory called death.
It doesn’t matter, even if I end up dead…?
Right as my thoughts were about to land somewhere,
“Catastrophe.”
- Boom!!!
Hareungar slammed the massive hammer down onto the desk with tremendous force.
The shockwave that rippled out passed right by me and blew the workshop’s walls clean away.
- Rumble…!
The workshop’s walls shattered, slowly caving in.
The floor split open… the ceiling crumbled to pieces.
Everything around us collapsed, and then,
we were floating in midair.
All around us, waterfalls of lava filled the space.
Red poured endlessly downward from above.
I couldn’t even tell which way was the floor and which was the ceiling.
And yet, it wasn’t hot.
He hung there in midair, hammer in hand, looking down at me as he spoke.
“A place where the flesh isn’t needed.”
He spread his arms.
“A place where forging can only be done through will and soul. A forge of the mind, permitted only to an Heir of Flame.”
Beneath his beard, the corner of his mouth pulled up as far as it would go,
baring his teeth.
“Welcome to the Formless Divine Forge.”
I clenched and unclenched my hand.
It was fine.
The ache that was always there, gone. Even staring off into the distance, my eyes didn’t feel hollowed out with strain.
“Do you understand now? Here, you won’t go hungry, your arms won’t go numb, and your eyes won’t blur.”
“…”
“There’s no body to collapse, so there’s nothing to collapse.”
He adjusted his grip on the hammer.
“So out there, eat, sleep, rest, and grow.”
Which meant,
in here, where the body neither aches nor tires,
“… I can just hammer away until it kills me.”
Having understood everything he’d just said,
“NICE!!!”
I clenched both fists and yelled.
Time had always been in short supply for me.
Twenty-four hours weren’t even enough, so I’d squeeze nineteen hours out of them, and even then, sleeping felt like such a waste that closing my eyes felt like a loss.
I could see myself growing right in front of me, how was I supposed to sleep through that?
But now…
I could practice without straining my body at all?
If that was true, the density of my time from here on out would be completely different.
“Is this a place I can only enter by sleeping?”
“Sharp. Any time you want, right before you fall asleep.”
That made sense.
Then I must have blacked out putting on the nameplate and stepping into the workshop.
The moment I passed out, I crossed over here.
“What speed does time move at here?”
This was the most important part.
Even a one-to-one ratio would be fine, of course.
Dream-time tends to feel faster anyway.
“Up to five times slower, at most.”
Five times.
Hearing that, I shut my eyes tight.
The moment I fell asleep,
I would enter the Workshop of Spirit and Time.
“I’ll rest.”
I’ll rest easy.
I really think I can rest, for real this time.
The storm clouds crowding my view broke open,
and the worry started to fade.
Sleep wasn’t wasted time anymore, was it.
The moment I thought that,
the strength slowly began draining from my body.
“… Seems it’s about time, then.”
- Fwoosh…
As he swung the hammer,
my body… slowly began to sink down into the lava.
Hareungar asked me, low and quiet.
“Heir, let me ask you one thing.”
“… What?”
- Thump.
He rested the hammer on his shoulder and added, slowly.
“How was it?”
I didn’t need to ask what he meant to know.
- Whoosh.
At the edge of my sinking vision,
the hammer was still burning red.
“Out of every piece of gear I’ve ever seen…”
Without a shred of hesitation,
“It was the best.”
I answered instantly.
Up until now, every time I saw something good, I’d mull it over inside my head.
How could I fix it, how could I make it better.
But standing in front of that thing,
“… it just made me humble.”
“… Ha.”
The red river swallowed me,
“… That’s good enough, then.”
My eyelids grew heavy.
Even from far away,
“Go rest well.”
- Splash…
his voice still came through clearly.
“And next time,”
Beyond my fading vision, Hareungar looked down at me, smiling.
“show me what those two hands of yours can make.”
That was the last of it.
* * *
I opened my eyes.
“…”
It felt cool.
And soft.
Plush. Springy. Incredibly so, genuinely.
Everything in front of me was white, or more precisely, I was buried in something cool enough that I couldn’t see well.
A fragrant, pleasant scent filled my nose.
I could feel a light sensation against the back of my head.
With the feeling of being wedged into something, I slowly lifted my head…
“…?”
In front of me was a pristine white chest.
What.
What is this.
What kind of reward was this, exactly?
Was this some kind of reward for deciding to rest?
First the Workshop of Spirit and Time, and now Dolores’s ample chest.
If that was the deal, I was fully prepared to rest for the rest of my life.
While I lay there rolling my eyes around trying to figure out the situation,
- Sssh…
From somewhere above, a steady breathing sound drifted down.
Dolores.
She’d fallen asleep just like that, holding me in her arms.
“…”
The full picture of what must have happened came together naturally enough.
I must have simply passed out in the workshop, and meeting Hareungar had been within some dream world.
Dolores had carried my unconscious self here and was sleeping with me held in her arms.
More thoughts kept following after that, but whatever was right in front of my face was steadily dropping my intelligence.
‘Heh heh, so soft.’
So I spent another thirty minutes or so savoring the embrace.
I’m not sure how much time had passed.
“Are you awake, Lionel?”
A gentle voice came from above.
When I lifted my head, Dolores was looking down at me with a warm expression.
Seemed she’d already been awake.
And yet the arms holding me didn’t loosen at all.
“Yeah.”
“… You fainted yesterday, did you know that?”
“I figured as much.”
Dolores pressed her lips together.
She closed her eyes slightly, seeming to weigh something,
then slowly… slowly opened her mouth.
“Sweetheart.”
“Yes.”
“I always want to respect what you want. Whatever you make, however deeply you throw yourself into it, that’s yours, your own decision.”
- Slide, slide.
She stroked slowly down my back, as if trying to soothe me.
“So I really didn’t want to say this.”
What followed was a long, rambling stream of Dolores’s worries and pleas.
‘When I picked you up after you collapsed in the garden, you were far too light.’
‘You barely have any time to rest in a whole week.’
‘You don’t even seem to be growing taller. Ruby’s shooting up these days.’
If I had to sum up everything she was saying…
it boiled down to, you’re way too young, please just stop working so much.
“… Hm? Lionel, couldn’t you just rest a little more while you work?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
“… Huh?”
She must have expected me to refuse, as always,
because Dolores’s eyes went wide.
But things had changed quite a bit.
Now that I could work while resting, after all.
But I couldn’t exactly explain that to her straight.
I pulled my face away from her chest and looked up at her.
“I’ll rest while I work from now on. Take it slow.”
“…”
Dolores’s eyes rounded.
Not that I’m proud of it, but I was someone who never listened no matter how many times she’d told me,
and here I was, suddenly agreeing so obediently.
“…”
The corners of Dolores’s eyes turned faintly red.
Ah, that wasn’t quite what I meant.
She gazed at me tenderly, as if she finally felt like I’d actually listened to her.
Just as the mood seemed to be turning sad and I tried to pull myself free,
- Tiiight…
“Hmmmph!”
Dolores hugged me tight.
- Squeeze.
My face sank straight into something soft and plush.
I couldn’t, I couldn’t breathe.
“Thank you, Lionel. Thank you…”
Her voice, thick with tears, came from somewhere above my head, but,
Gack.
Gack, gack.
Maman, I’m going to die at this rate.
I never imagined my cause of death would be suffocation instead of overwork.
Dying like this, I’d probably land the number one spot on the leaderboard for “good deaths.”
That thought crossed my mind,
and just as I was struggling for a good while in Maman’s arms,
right in the middle of Dolores’s chest,
I finally found a narrow gap where I could breathe.
Must have been a valley.
I sucked in air desperately.
“… Hff.”
“Thank you, Lionel. Rest well…”
Having barely managed to find that thread of a breathing gap,
… I stayed quietly nestled in her arms,
Gack, gack.
and accepted the embrace.
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