WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 58

──────

The Truth of the Enchant Room

* * *

What does it mean to become a god's Apostle?

At the most basic level, it means deciding to serve that god.

That's not so different, in the end, from vowing to become that god's faithful follower.

After all, it means stepping forward first, as the one entrusted to carry out the gods' will.

In that sense, whenever Dolores, Gaia's Apostle, entered the Tower, before she went anywhere else,

she'd naturally find herself carried off to Gaia's temple first.

"IamalwaysgratefulfortheEarth'sembrace.Thankyouforgrantingyourblessing."

Given what was at stake today, she'd meant to say her greeting quickly and head straight for the 88th floor.

She really had done it fast.

Normally, though, this was the point where she'd get some kind of reply.

A word of blessing, or just some simple little remark.

She couldn't speak for other gods, but Gaia in particular was especially kind about things like that.

But strangely enough,

"……."

today, no answer came at all.

- Tap, tap, tap….

She'd started tapping her foot.

Dolores grew anxious.

Normally she would have waited patiently, but there was nothing patient about her right now.

'What if Lionel gets lost?'

The moment that thought crossed her mind,

Dolores hurried to finish just the greeting,

"G- Gaia, I'm terribly busy right now, so...!"

and just cut the rest of it off.

Just for today, she figured she'd have to trust in the mercy and grace of the god she served.

Hoping to be forgiven for the disrespect,

she headed straight for the 88th floor,

and when she opened her eyes,

she was standing in front of the Tower's floor transfer device.

'…Lionel!'

She cried the name in her head and darted forward at once.

- Whoosh….

A wave of scorching air slammed into her face.

Inside the Furnace Tower on the 88th floor.

Most climbers headed for the floor transfer device outside the Furnace Tower, over at Dwarf Company, so relatively few people came through here.

But she'd visited the verification office once before, back when she'd come for Lionel's glove,

so she'd naturally ended up here instead.

With so few people around, she figured she'd spot him right away, but…

"……."

…even turning her head this way and that, there was no sign of Lionel.

An invited guest would arrive through this very floor transfer device.

So if she waited, Lionel would come.

She waited,

and how long had it been?

Long enough that her hand had drifted to her mouth, nails between her teeth, when-

- Whirrr….

a low humming sound rose from the transfer device,

- Flash!

and a burst of pale green light spilled out.

"…?"

A small silhouette began to take shape,

- Thump, thump.

"Whoa. I think I'm gonna throw up."

A boy stumbled out.

It was Lionel.

He blinked a couple times, looking dazed, glancing around at his surroundings.

'How scared must he have been….'

There was no telling where he might have landed alone, or what he might have seen.

The Invitation's administrator was infamous for its frightening appearance.

Of course, Lionel's expression looked perfectly fine, with no sign of anything like that at all, but-

- Pitter-patter-patter!

Dolores dashed over in an instant.

"Lionel!"

"Dolores!"

For a split second she'd hoped he would call her Maman instead,

but either way, just laying eyes on him was relief enough.

- Fwump.

Dolores threw her arms around Lionel right then and there.

"Are you all right…? Lionel."

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You're not hurt anywhere?"

"Nope."

"Weren't you scared…"

That was when it happened.

"……."

Dolores realized a very familiar scent was drifting around her.

A fragrant scent, at its base.

The smell that rises from the earth after the rain clears.

Mixed with some flower she couldn't name, laid over with the scent of grass.

A scent that loosened the tension from her shoulders just by breathing it in.

"……."

Where had she smelled this scent before,

where, exactly?

No.

Unless this scent came from that place…

Or,

unless it came from Her…

Right as she was struggling to make sense of it,

Dolores's gaze slowly dropped downward.

"What's wrong?"

Lionel's hand.

In it, the boy was holding a single white flower.

A flower steeped, at a glance, in an overwhelming amount of divine energy.

'Divine Favor.'

The act of a god declaring a climber to be theirs.

In other words,

a warning to every other god: this one is mine, so stay back.

The gods used this sparingly.

They saved it only for staking an early claim on someone they truly coveted.

But the true nature of this scent….

Dolores knew this much. Gaia was gentle by nature.

Precisely because she was so gentle, she never held on to anyone… she never, as a rule, called anyone hers.

So why, this time, of all times?

"Um, Dolores?"

Lionel looked up at her from her arms with a blank, puzzled expression.

"This flower, some lady gave it to me, so…."

Dolores couldn't say a word,

and only then,

did she finally understand why no answer had come from the temple that day.

Lionel….

had been chosen by Gaia,

and marked with her Divine Favor.

* * *

Gaia.

Anyway, I'd met her in that impossibly warm space, and then gotten teleported to the 88th floor.

A space thick with steam, brimming with heat.

Below, something that looked a lot like lava flowed by.

And up above,

"…A blast furnace."

I'm a blacksmith, so of course I knew what that was.

That, right there, was the same furnace everyone already knows.

"……."

Dolores kept a tight grip on my hand as she led me out of the Furnace Tower.

For some reason she'd gone quiet a while ago,

and her grip on my hand was a little too strong.

I'd noticed before that she tended to do this whenever she got a little anxious.

Ah, come to think of it, she'd been a little like this ever since I mentioned the flower, too.

Dolores had also agreed that the woman was probably Gaia.

Made sense, given she'd been wearing my earrings.

So for now, I'd handed the flower off to Dolores's pocket space for safekeeping.

Something a god gave you had to be different somehow, right?

Was I supposed to boil it down and drink it, or something?

The moment we stepped out of the Furnace Tower,

the view outside was a world apart from what we'd just left.

Compared to the scorching interior,

the air out here was pleasant, and cool.

And down below, something was slowly descending.

- Whirrr….

At the same time, something else was rising up.

Wait, could this be….

Right as my eyes went wide,

just then,

"This is the Circulation Shuttle. Think of it as the machine connecting the outside and inside of the 88th floor's tower."

A man in a suit explained with a smile.

So.

Isn't this just an elevator?

We climbed aboard and started slowly descending.

I could see villages down below, and mountains too.

And….

a massive white building came into view as well.

That was probably-

'The Enchant Room.'

It looked like it would be my first destination.

Partly because Hareungar had asked me to,

and partly just because I was curious myself.

Just how were they enchanting gear that it sold for so much?

'Plenty of suit-wearing bastards on other floors of the Tower too. Every one of those suit types has a tongue a mile long.'

That was Hareungar's pet theory,

and honestly, I agreed with him.

Not that it had anything to do with the fact that the only suit I'd ever worn in my past life was a rented interview suit from college.

I just don't like suits, period.

[ㅠㅠ]

Don't cry, Yuna.

You're making me sad all of a sudden.

While we were talking like that,

this cutting-edge elevator delivered us right in front of the Enchant Room.

- Whirrr….

"We've arrived. We hope you enjoy your enchanting."

"Thank you."

Whether it would actually turn out to be an enjoyable enchant, I had no idea.

Anyway, we'd be doing our own enchanting today too,

but the gear we were bringing in belonged to Dolores.

The reason was simple.

She was a Named High Ranker, so it only made sense that the gear brought in would be hers.

"…You're really sure about this, right, Dolores?"

"Of course."

The first piece was-

─────────────────

[The Blue-Silver Bracelet]

[★★★☆☆]

[Enhancement Level: +0]

─────────────────

A high-performance 3-star item bought at the dwarves' gear shop.

The second was-

something she'd used before she got her Unique auxiliary weapon.

─────────────────

[the Ancient Grimoire]

[★★★☆☆]

[Enhancement Level: +18]

─────────────────

She'd apparently meant to pass it down to Ruby eventually.

'I figured I'd rather just make her something myself.'

Since I could make Ruby something better than this anyway, I decided we'd just use this one for today's test instead.

So, to sum it up,

one piece of gear with zero enchantment, and one already heavily enchanted.

Those were the two we planned to bring in.

With that, we stepped inside the Enchant Room.

From what I'd read on the forums, this place was supposed to be packed with people….

"…Hm."

Well, there were plenty of people, sure,

but not quite on that level.

"Welcome. Oh, isn't this Duchess Dolores!"

- Bow.

Ugh.

"It's been a while since your last visit. I trust you've been well."

The reason I'd flinched just now

was that the moment the suited man had greeted us from across the room,

Dolores's expression had curdled instantly.

It snapped back just as fast, but-

I'd never seen her look this annoyed before.

It felt different from that time with Isabella, too.

More like she'd just laid eyes on something genuinely filthy, I guess.

"……."

Dolores answered the greeting with only the slightest nod of her head.

"We've registered your two pieces of gear."

The employee smiled as he slid the paperwork off to the side room.

"We hope you enjoy your enchanting. May good fortune be with you."

I turned my head and looked around the interior again.

Rooms lined up in a ring around the space, with people sitting in front of them, waiting their turn.

We'd been assigned Room 6,

so we headed straight there.

- Creak.

Once inside, the room turned out to be surprisingly spacious.

A massive machine stood right in front of us.

So this was the enchant machine.

The one I'd only ever heard about.

There was a glass panel set into the front, and behind it, a large open space where something could be placed.

And across from the machine,

"……."

Huh?

Every employee we'd met so far had been human, but….

the one sitting right in front of us was a dwarf.

Short,

and packed with so much muscle that his suit looked strained, the buttons across his chest looking about ready to burst.

He sat there awkwardly, in an outfit that didn't suit him no matter how you looked at it.

"Ha, ha. W- welcome."

- Shuffle.

He got up from his seat.

"Which piece of gear would you like to start with?"

"……."

For some reason, he was making his pitch like it didn't come naturally to him at all.

"…This one first, I suppose. Let's aim for a hundred attempts, please."

"Yes, understood."

- Slide.

Dolores held out the Blue-Silver Bracelet,

and the dwarf took it, setting it down behind the glass.

For reference, each attempt cost 500 gold.

You might think, wait, isn't that cheap? But converted to Korean won, that came out to five million won a pop,

which, as far as I could tell, sat right at the outer edge of what a beginner climber could actually afford.

From +5 onward, it climbed higher,

and from +10 it climbed higher still. From +15, higher again.

Not some modest jump of a few hundred gold, but multiples on top of multiples.

That was how the whole system worked.

"Starting from +0 to +1."

Dolores and I sat down on a plush sofa and watched.

All right.

What exactly is enchanting?

An incredibly precise, delicate piece of work.

So how, exactly, was a machine supposed to pull that off?

That much, I was genuinely curious about.

I watched the inside of the glass panel closely….

- Shhhk….

A spray of blue crap powder rained down.

Ugh, cheap quality. Ugly to even look at.

Just then,

─────────────────

[Would you like to begin the enchant?]

─────────────────

A message popped up in front of my eyes.

I almost answered out loud for a second,

but I held still,

and soon,

a circle began to form over the bracelet.

It shrank.

Shrinking, little by little.

…you're gonna hit it, right?

Hey.

You should be striking it by now.

"…I'm losing my mind."

Why isn't he hitting it.

Why isn't he doing anything?

'Hey, hit it!!! Swing the hammer!!!!!!'

The Hit Circle flashed red, then vanished.

Meaning it had failed.

Another one vanished. Another failure too.

- Shudder shudder.

My legs started shaking without my even realizing it,

and I brought my nails to my mouth, betraying just how anxious I was.

How many circles had we missed so far?

[4, 5]

Yuna was giving me a running count,

but honestly, I was watching every single one with my own eyes,

watching us miss every single one of them in real time.

It was probably-

Awful, Awful. That's probably what kept flashing up, over and over.

Hey, you crazy dwarf bastard,

hurry up and hit the damn thing already!!!

The total number of Hit Circles between Level 0 and Level 1 was eight.

But….

the last Hit Circle vanished too, in the end,

and every single one of them had failed.

"……."

Unbelievable.

I stared at the dwarf, mouth hanging open.

What the hell do you even do around here?

And what the hell is this piece-of-shit machine!!!!!

Even the crap powder was wasted on this.

That was when it happened.

- Whirrrr….

Suddenly.

Like, seriously, way too suddenly, completely out of nowhere.

Both doors inside the machine slid open, and a hammer came creeping slowly out from within.

And then,

- Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap!

- Tap-tap-tap-tap!

At a point where every last Hit Circle had already come and gone, vanished a good few thousand years ago,

it started wildly hammering away at the circle-less Blue-Silver Bracelet.

"…The fuck?"

I closed my eyes at a sight I honestly couldn't believe,

and then,

the results sheet rose up in front of me.

─────────────────

[Strike Tally]

[Perfect] [0]

[Great] [0]

[Okay] [0]

[Bad] [0]

[Awful] [8]

─────────────────

[Final Success Rate: 50%]

[Failure Rate: 50%]

─────────────────

【Attempting……】

─────────────────

Wow, this whole load of dogshit….

I really don't swear, as a rule, but I couldn't hold it in today.

In my entire life, I'd never once seen a result like this.

I was in awe at just how generous this enchant system was, handing out a full 50 percent after missing all eight circles.

So, Dwarf Company.

This Enchant Room of theirs,

to put it simply,

wasn't enchanting anything through careful, precise hammering at all.

It just hammered away wildly, not caring one bit about the circles or anything else, and then,

enhanced the gear using nothing but the flat base success rate handed out at each stage.

That was the whole thing, wasn't it?

Just going through the motions of hammering.

Just pretending to do something, and nothing more.

Sure, later on the Hit Circles increased, so there'd probably be times it got lucky and landed a few extra hits, but-

In the end, this was….

not enchanting.

And it definitely wasn't an enchant machine, either.

'Just a machine that sprinkles some crap powder, waits five seconds, then beats the hell out of it with a hammer.'

That would be the more accurate description.

"Urgh…."

Staring at a results window that made me want to gag,

I barely held it together and got up off the sofa,

─────────────────

【Enhancement Success】

─────────────────

[The Blue-Silver Bracelet][★★★☆☆]

[+0 → +1]

─────────────────

"…It's a success."

The dwarf in front of me,

though I had no idea what exactly he thought he'd done well,

"Whew…."

wiped the sweat from his forehead, looking awfully proud of himself.

Ah, fuck.

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