WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 019

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Looks Like We'll Be Sleeping Together From Now On

* * *

Berdandi, the Empire's flagship guild, backed by the imperial household.

Their guild castle stood somewhere on the 6th floor of the Inner Tower.

Meirin, the guild's treasurer, sat in her office as usual, scanning the Inner Tower auction house.

Part of managing the guild's funds.

Securing promising gear.

Not for the guild members already climbing, but rental gear that had to be readied for the ones about to start.

So-called starter gear.

Honestly, that was the hardest part to source.

Starter gear in name only, since it still had to meet a high standard to keep up with the competition between guilds and noble houses.

"Nothing worth much."

She was scrolling through the listings when it happened.

"......?"

─────────────────

[Chore Gloves][☆☆☆☆☆]

[Enhancement Level: +20]

[Current Bid: 60,500 gold]

─────────────────

She blinked, blinked again. It was a sight she couldn't believe.

No matter how she tried to explain it, the gear made no sense on any level.

"How is this even possible...?"

She quickly dug through the community forums.

...and learned that its level was comparable to a 3-star Mana-Imbued Vambrace enhanced to +10.5.

The source was even a researcher from the Mage Tower posting under their real handle, so it was reliable information.

"......Sakpung."

The guild leader of Berdandi, Sakpung.

He was an enhancement addict.

Every single piece of gear he owned was enhanced to +20, no exceptions.

Except his gloves.

He'd recently lost five Mana-Imbued Vambraces in a row, all destroyed while attempting +20.

And right after that.

- I'm done enhancing. Kuhahaha!!

His mental fortitude was really something. If it'd been her, she'd have already ripped a dwarf's head clean off.

He'd just laughed it off, saying that's just how the odds went.

But this glove was on par with a +10.5 Vambrace....

Even if she recommended it, he probably wouldn't buy it.

He'd said he was done enhancing, but he still had a reputation to think of, the Sakpung standard.

There was nothing he hated hearing more than 'Sak-class RIP,' short for 'the Sakpung standard just died.'

Still, this piece of gear was tempting.

Just lending it out to guild members who'd soon start climbing would push the guild's competitiveness up a whole tier.

If a novice climber got to wear the equivalent of a +10.5 Vambrace, they could probably punch their way up several floors bare-handed, frankly speaking.

And gloves like this could be used by nearly anyone, aside from mages.

Even a mage could make good use of it if they leaned Battle Mage.

It had already blown well past the standard for rental gear, so its usefulness went without saying.

Meirin glanced over at Sakpung.

He was staring off into empty space, focused on something.

"Um... Guild Leader...."

Just as she was about to carefully bring up the budget.

- Bang!

The office door burst open.

"Guild Leader! Why don't you buy this instead?"

A famously oblivious guild member, notorious for never reading the room, walked up to Sakpung with the community forum pulled up in front of him.

Climbers could share their interfaces with each other like this.

"You said you're done enhancing now anyway, right? What about this glove?"

God, that oblivious idiot.

Does he have any idea how much gold the Guild Leader just torched....

Meirin pressed a hand to her forehead.

Sakpung stroked his beard, stared at the glove for a moment...

"Kuhaha! No matter what, there's no way I'd ever use gear like that!"

"Oh? Is that so? So you're finally aiming to graduate to unique-grade gear, then?!"

"...Ha ha ha. Of course I am, you idiot."

That was when it happened.

- Ding!

[A trading company has placed a bid on your watched listing, "Chore Gloves." Current price: 71,000 gold]

The so-called auction house notifier.

A voice announcing the trading company's bid rang out from Sakpung's pocket.

"...Kuhahaha!"

Meirin closed her eyes.

'He must be having a rough time lately.'

It was a moment that made her worry about the Guild Leader's wallet.

* * *

[Yuna's Safe Guard!]

[0:30:00]

"...Sighhh."

Yuna had locked the community forum.

Not even a word before locking it now. I called her name and got nothing back.

Not that it mattered. I'd already gotten my fill of entertainment out of it.

The last bid I'd seen was 105,000 gold.

The price kept climbing, and it was pretty entertaining watching a new reason get tacked on every time it did.

Going by my old online-gaming days, ordinary gear like this usually converges toward a price a little below the expected value of enhancing it yourself.

But there are exceptions.

If the gear carries too much risk, or is impossible to obtain, or its demand and effectiveness are strong enough to break that logic outright, none of that reasoning applies anymore.

The chore gloves, remarkably, seemed to hit every single one of those conditions.

Posts titled things like 'The True Utility of the Chore Gloves' kept popping up.

Put simply, as a shared starter item passed around within a guild, it was something well beyond even end-game.

And for climbers looking further ahead, it was still a plenty attractive option.

On top of that, the best part of its value proposition was this: even though it had gone up for auction, there was no 30-day resale restriction on it.

Since it could be flipped back and forth freely, even merchants seemed to be latching onto it.

- Tap tap.

I tapped the table, sinking into thought for a moment.

"......."

Wait a second.

Did I just... get my hands on a money printer?

What is this, this easy life?

By my own standards, +20 on the grind-fest chore glove hadn't been all that hard.

- Tap tap tap.

My fingers tapping the table sped up.

Not out of excitement. I'm just naturally suspicious of things.

There's no way the world's about to just hand me an easy life like this.

But no matter how hard I racked my brain.

"What the fuck is going on."

There was, there was just... nothing wrong with it.

That was when it happened.

"You just swore."

A drowsy voice drifted up from behind me.

I turned my head, and there she was, still half-asleep, barely able to lift her head.

Ruby, buried in a pile of books, looked at me and waved a finger.

"I'm telling."

"What are you talking about? You must've misheard, you're half asleep."

No way.

Instinct told me that if this ever reached Dolores's ears, I'd be caught and dragged off.

I'd end up pinned across her lap for hours of proper-language re-education, without a hope of escape.

"......."

But she really must have been half-asleep, because she drifted right back off.

Safe.

Anyway, once I actually thought it through, my head cleared right up.

A person's got to stay humble.

If all I did was keep churning out +20 grind-fest chore gloves, I'd never cure Dolores's illness.

And my blacksmithing skill would never improve either.

I always have to keep striving to improve.

In my experience, striving like that usually leads somewhere good, as long as AI isn't involved.

"Right. I'm a blacksmith, after all."

Man, I'm suddenly feeling pumped.

I poked my head out into the hallway to check the situation.

She'd said going to the workshop at night meant big trouble, right?

There shouldn't be any problem if I went during the day.

I bolted straight down and out,

cutting across the garden toward the workshop.

* * *

The 88th floor.

Dwarf Company's reception room.

Elliot, the company's chief executive, was personally handling this meeting.

Normally, inquiries and customer support were handled by dwarves.

But this case was a little different. The other side was a big spender.

"Thank you for making the long trip, I hope-"

"Our president is extremely angry."

The employee in front of him got straight to the point the moment they laid eyes on each other.

This person belonged to the Golden Scale Trading Company.

Trading company in name, but they were sharks among sharks.

Merchants with no intention of ever climbing the Tower themselves, only interested in leeching off climbers and picking their pockets clean.

They bought up cheap, star-less low-tier gear, enhanced it to +5, and unloaded it back onto the market at a premium under the label of "premium starter gear."

Through the Company's Enchant Rooms, naturally.

"...And in what respect, may I ask, has your president been so upset."

Elliot asked gently, keeping his smile in place.

"It's a matter of trust."

The employee drummed their fingers on the table as they went on.

"What has Dwarf Company been saying all this time? That +5 is the hard cap for star-less gear... that anything past that is systemically impossible. That there's no way around it. That's what you told us."

That was true.

Which also meant the market price for +5 gear had been effectively guaranteed to stay stable.

It became the ultimate starter gear, with a ceiling that never got beaten.

"So what the hell is this, then?"

The employee pulled up the auction house interface, and a +20 piece of gear appeared right in front of him.

Its price had already climbed to 120,000 gold, without anyone noticing.

"Right now, our company has countless pieces of +5 gear sitting in stock. We trusted your enchanting policy."

"......."

"But now the market's gotten the impression that the ceiling's been lifted. The drop in our gear's value is as good as certain, and the losses we're about to eat are beyond anything we could even begin to-"

The employee's voice grew sharper by the word.

Elliot kept smiling and listened in silence.

In truth.

It wasn't as if he didn't understand why the employee in front of him was furious.

But the person most baffled, most furious of all, was Elliot himself.

'It wasn't us.'

The moment that glove had first appeared on the market.

He'd already combed through every single Enchant Room log in the company.

There was nothing.

It shouldn't even be possible to begin with.

Of all the test attempts made on the company's enchant machines to push star-less gear from +5 to +6, exactly one out of roughly 162,000 had succeeded.

Impossible enough that attempting it at all was essentially pointless.

But +20? That alone was already enough to make him want to scream.

All Elliot could possibly say in response was.

"...We're currently looking into it."

That was the only thing he could offer.

If one of their own employees had slipped up, all he'd need to do was clean it up quietly. That would actually be the easiest, most ideal outcome in this situation.

He might even hand out a bonus to whoever could reproduce a +20.

But that wasn't it.

Which meant someone had genuinely done that enchant with their own two hands.

And done it entirely outside the Company, no less.

If he outright admitted the Company hadn't done it.

'Actually, there's a fine enchanting shop out there with no cap at all. Go get your work done there instead.'

That was, in effect, exactly what he'd be confessing.

The Company's authority would collapse outright.

Surrounded on every side, Elliot felt a headache coming on.

"This company, too, is currently conducting an 'internal' investigation."

He put special emphasis on the word "internal."

"The investigation will take some time... we'd be grateful if you could trust in this company's reliability and wait a little longer."

And besides.

"...In the meantime, as a small token of our sincere apologies."

You lot can't afford to give up on enchanting either, can you?

"For the next two days, we'll offer a 5% discount on enchant fees in Room Number 7."

"......!"

The employee's eyes went wide.

For a company that stuck strictly to "fixed pricing," this counted as a genuinely radical discount.

Of course... there was no need to get ahead of themselves.

Naturally, the success rate would drop by 5% to match.

"...Well, please hurry the investigation along."

The employee nodded, somewhat satisfied, and rose from their seat.

Power with no alternative.

A monopoly with no substitute.

That was the Company's true weapon.

* * *

Dolores hummed a little tune to herself as she sat down at the table in her room.

Sunlight through the window settled gently over her hair.

"......."

She was in a good mood.

Good things had been happening, one after another.

Double the joy. There was really no other way to put it.

It felt like decades' worth of saved-up happiness was pouring down all at once.

'Lionel.'

All of it was happiness that came from that child.

She lifted her teacup for a sip.

A smile spread across her lips.

That was when it happened.

- Ding.

The Inner Tower interface popped up in front of her.

"......?"

Dolores set down her teacup and opened the chat room the notification had come from.

The Inner Tower interface let people who'd exchanged contact info message each other this way.

[Apostles of Dawn]

A chat room that rarely lit up with new messages.

Everyone in it was too busy for their own good, so it only came alive a handful of times a year.

It was the chat with the sworn sisters she'd once climbed the Tower alongside.

But a message had arrived in that room, for the first time in a while.

She opened the screen, and...

─────────────────

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: (photo)

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: Whoever knows where this is, has seen it, or has it, message me first. ASAP.

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: The Prince's collecting obsession has gone completely off the rails right now so hurry, somehow, hurry. Just, somehow, please hurry.

─────────────────

She tapped the photo.

"Puhahahaha!!"

Dolores set down her teacup and clapped a hand over her mouth.

Because in the photo...

was an auction house photo of the very same glove sitting right in front of her.

Dolores laughed and laughed, on and on.

- Click.

She slowly moved her fingers and attached a photo of her own.

The +20 chore glove, laid out on red velvet.

─────────────────

[Dolores]: (photo)

─────────────────

She hit send and picked her teacup back up.

And then.

- Ding, ding, ding!

─────────────────

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: ?

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: ?

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: Dolores, what is this?

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: Dolores?

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: Elysia von Dolores?

[Praying to Retire, Day 1456]: TheGreatRulerofthe5thFloorandDuchessofHouseDoloresLadyElysiavonDolores??

─────────────────

Dolores closed the chat, still laughing.

She wasn't worried at all.

That sister kept her mouth shut, the type who'd choose silence over reporting anything to the imperial household.

Honestly, all of her sworn sisters were the same way.

She was someone who rarely showed much reaction, so Dolores had wanted to savor this a little longer.

But it was about time to start picking out the good reactions to show Lionel.

Which ones would be best?

She opened the auction house.

and slowly opened the direct messages that had come in from would-be buyers.

And the instant she opened them, one message caught her eye.

"......."

─────────────────

「Dwarf Company」

─────────────────

Dear Seller,

We sincerely thank you for the deep trust you have shown this company.

Regarding the [Chore Gloves / Enhancement Level +20] you have listed, our company's detailed investigation has confirmed that this enhanced item resulted from a system malfunction and error occurring within our own enchanting process.

In light of this, our company respectfully requests the following of you.

Please either visit our headquarters on the 88th floor in person, or, if travel is inconvenient, register a retrieval request for the item through our headquarters' delivery system.

As compensation for this, our company will immediately pay you a reward equal to double the item's current auction price.

Furthermore, we promise strict confidentiality regarding this matter, and will permanently register you as a preferred customer of this company going forward.

We await your careful reply.

─────────────────

Dolores read the message slowly, then.

"Delete."

This wasn't the kind of good reaction she wanted to show Lionel, after all.

He was at an age where he should only be seeing and hearing good things.

"As if."

She hoped they'd just keep stamping their feet and stewing in anxiety.

She lifted her teacup again for another sip, then rose from her seat.

The moment she pulled the curtain back slightly and looked down at the garden.

"......."

The corners of Dolores's mouth pulled upward.

There, where he should have been off lazing around with Ruby, was Lionel.

- Pitter-patter-patter-patter!

Checking his surroundings in the middle of the garden, he crept stealthily toward the workshop.

Dolores smiled brightly.

Lionel.

Looks like we'll be sleeping together, starting today.

Normally, she'd have just smiled and watched from here....

"With his hand in that state, what does he think he's..."

Dolores threw the window wide open.

Lionel, no overdoing it, understood?

- Whoosh.

She leaped straight out through the window.

Far off, a servant tending the garden stared, eyes going wide.

It wasn't the kind of landing you'd expect from Dolores, who always carried herself with elegance, mindful of noble dignity.

- Fwip.

That was how much more Lionel mattered to Dolores.

She quietly began to trail him.

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