WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 60

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It Was Me.

* * *

I stopped Dolores from getting up and heading straight for Dwarf Company.

"Wait wait wait!!"

Dolores was, by nature, a calm and level-headed person.

To think something could make even her charge out the door without a second thought.

Of course, I understood the feeling completely. Rigged odds are not something you just let slide.

"N- no, you can't!"

- Grab!

I hurriedly wrapped my arms around Dolores's waist.

That instant.

"Mm, all right, I will."

Dolores stopped. Surprisingly obediently, too.

Wait, what?

She was calm by nature, sure.

But shouldn't calming down usually take a little longer than that?

Before I could even finish wondering that,

- Slide.

Dolores smiled and came back to the bed.

She sat me down on her lap, then wrapped her arms tightly around my waist from behind.

Wasn't she angry?

That's how I ended up sitting in Dolores's arms, ostensibly there to calm her down.

"Since Lionel's stopping me, I suppose I'll have to hold back. Nothing to be done about it."

The arms around me tightened.

Her voice sounded perfectly calm, if anything, a little more cheerful than usual.

Dolores rested her chin lightly on my head, as if she had no idea what I was thinking.

Good thing she doesn't actually seem angry, but….

Which brought up a sudden question.

"…Sorry, Maman, but… how much did you spend on the enchanting…?"

How much did you actually sink into this.

A bit of a sensitive question, but I asked it anyway.

"…Mm, well, that's a little…"

She dodged the question at first, but….

"………I think I've spent something like… that much, in gold."

"……."

Dolores was an all-time-record whale.

Those goddamn son-of-a-bitch bastards at that company.

An amount of money that made me want to shell the building right then and there.

Dolores was holding me, so I couldn't, but I nearly shot up out of my seat without even meaning to.

When it was someone else's problem, I was just angry. But knowing Dolores had been scammed too made the fury come boiling right up.

To a climber, their gear is practically their life.

Whether they're actually wearing gear that suits them well is a separate question, of course.

Enhancing it is an act of protecting their own life, of reaching for higher ground.

A system that survives by selling off climbers' dreams.

That's the real face of that fucking, fucking, fucking company.

- Squeeze.

She looked at me steadily.

Now I could tell for certain, she wasn't angry at all right now.

If anything, hearing the amount just now seemed to have made me angrier than her.

"Lionel."

"Yes."

"How would you like to handle this?"

Dolores asked, gently stroking my waist.

"Since Lionel is the one who noticed, what Lionel wants to do about it is what matters."

How would I like to handle this….

Honestly speaking,

I wanted to file a complaint with the Consumer Protection Agency right this second.

But there's no such thing as a Consumer Protection Agency here, so if I wanted to actually settle this, it would have to come down to a show of force.

Except.

"I don't think we should go there right away."

"Mm, why do you think that?"

"Because we don't have any evidence."

Of course I could see it. Exactly what kind of fraud they'd pulled.

But that's only visible to my eyes.

In the end, what actually happened, on the record, was….

It looked like someone had taken a 3-star piece of gear from base straight to +19 in a single attempt, didn't it?

'I hit +19 on my very first try, so I'm pretty sure it was faked.'

If somebody said that to me,

I'd have written it off as a textbook humblebrag and blocked them right there.

To anyone else looking in, it was exactly the kind of thing that could read as an obnoxious brag.

"Nobody else can see the things I see."

"That's true enough, but…."

- Brush.

Dolores gently swept my bangs back.

"If I suddenly started filing complaints against the company, they'd go looking for a reason. For how, exactly, I managed to figure out the fraud."

"……."

"Between who I was before and who I am now, the only thing that's changed is Lionel."

She looked steadily into my eyes.

"They'd pin it on Lionel in no time, and start guessing at just what he really is. If it were the Emperor, or someone from outside the Tower, maybe that would be fine. But if it's the company that catches on…"

And then.

- Peck.

She kissed my forehead.

"That absolutely cannot happen."

Sh- she had a point. That was true enough.

Wait, but weren't you just saying you were going to go smash the place a minute ago?

"So for now, I'm not going to do anything."

Dolores smiled.

"Don't worry, the company isn't exactly in good shape right now."

"……."

"The Kargon mine collapsed just a few days ago, and once the Belua mine comes over to our side at the end of the year, things will only get harder for them. And a company backed into a corner…"

would grow even more disgusting.

Even more shameless.

They'd end up committing far more fraud than they already have.

"So once that time comes,"

Dolores's hand slowly stroked my hair.

"let's catch them all at once."

She added, in a warm voice,

"Fraud's only ever hard the first time."

"And what do we do until then?"

"We gather evidence, of course."

The corners of Dolores's eyes curved into a smile.

"Enough that they can't just settle it by refunding one or two people and calling it done."

"……."

"A tail that grows too long always gets stepped on eventually."

In other words.

It would be a waste to end this by smashing just one building right now.

Climbers' dreams were worth far more than that.

Wait until Dwarf Company, its mana stones bled dry, is backed into a corner.

Wait until they're piling fraud on top of fraud without even realizing their own tail is about to get stepped on.

"So they can't just cut off that tail and hand it over."

Dolores pulled me deep into her embrace.

"We'll make not just Dwarf Company, but the 'Company' above it, take responsibility too."

The Company. Dwarf Company's head office.

I'd heard that Dwarf Company was, at the end of the day, just one branch handling the dwarven race's technology and business.

Which meant that if trouble broke out, the head office could just cut this branch loose and dodge all responsibility.

"…Which means, Lionel,"

Dolores suddenly cupped both my cheeks gently.

"you should eat well and grow up nice and big."

"Huh?"

Why bring up me growing up all of a sudden.

"While Lionel grows up nice and strong, their fruit will… ripen nicely too."

The corners of Dolores's eyes curved softly.

Fruit, meaning an actual piece of fruit.

Or did she mean it in the sense of a fault, a wrongdoing? I couldn't quite tell.

I mulled it over for a moment, but….

Probably,

"once it's ripened properly,"

it was both.

- Squeeze.

"we'll pick it all and eat every last bit."

Dolores hugged me once more, then

- Crunch.

took a bite out of the peach sitting beside her.

* * *

The actual reason I'd come to the Tower in the first place was,

─────────────────

『To the heir who's taken their first step.』

『Clumsy, yes. But unmistakably burning.』

『Please, don't let it go cold.』

『If you ever lose your way, come find Boldr's Workshop-』

- Maker of the Appraisal Machine, 7th-Generation Sage Artisan Boldr -

─────────────────

This, right here.

But fine. Sure, fine, whatever.

"So where the hell is Boldr's Workshop?"

I lay in bed, munching on the fruit Dolores had peeled for me, staring at the appraisal certificate.

In the middle of that,

"……?!"

What is this flavor.

Juice practically exploded in my mouth. It looked like a peach, but this was insanely good?

Tower fruit really was on a different level.

No, wait.

That's not the important thing right now.

According to what I'd looked into before entering the Tower, or rather, what I'd had Yuna dig up for me,

the Sun Dwarves currently seemed to live split broadly between the 88th and 89th floors.

The 88th floor housed the pro-company faction that cooperated with Dwarf Company.

The 89th floor housed those wary of the company, centered around Ricardo.

The problem was, back when Boldr was alive, no such division had even existed.

So there was no way to know where Boldr's Workshop actually stood these days.

On top of that, an Heir of Flame, let alone a Sage Artisan, was someone so exceptional

that they seemed to have guarded even the location of their workshop from ever getting out.

No matter how hard I searched, I couldn't come up with an exact location.

Someone might ask why, then, I'd come all this way with no plan whatsoever.

I'm not an idiot, though.

'Do you happen to know where Boldr's Workshop is?'

'You'll know once you go there.'

That's exactly what Hareungar had said.

That I'd just naturally find out once I entered the Tower.

And he'd said it with such a confident look on his face, too.

When my own ancestor talks like that, what am I supposed to do, doubt him?

"…Dolores, could I sleep for just an hour?"

"Mm, go ahead."

I'd have to go track him down and give him a piece of my mind.

Between eating fruit one piece after another, I could feel a blood sugar spike creeping in.

I let myself sink into the drowsiness,

and closed my eyes.

And then.

How much time had passed?

"……."

What's this.

Wake up!! Heir!!

That's usually how he jolts me awake, like a thunderclap.

I slowly opened my eyes.

But the space that unfolded in front of me was a remarkably plain one.

One old wooden table.

Two chairs facing each other.

One small stove quietly burning in the corner.

A kettle full of tea water sat on top, bubbling away.

It hardly looked like a blacksmith's workshop, let alone the Formless Divine Forge.

It was just, plainly, somewhere I'd never been before.

"Hareungar…."

I turned my head, looking for him, but

"If you're looking for that boy, you've come to the wrong place."

Before I even noticed,

- Clink.

an old dwarf sitting across the table set down his teacup.

White hair that fell all the way to his waist.

An ash-gray beard covering him down to his chest.

The corner of his mouth, visible through it, slowly curled upward.

One of the old man's eyes was tinted blue.

But the other, gleamed gold.

"Did the peach suit your taste? Sit."

He pointed at the empty chair across from him.

"Heir who has lost his way."

"……!"

As if he'd been waiting for me,

"This is Boldr's Workshop, the very one you've been looking for."

If that's true,

if this really was Boldr's Workshop,

I carefully sat down in the chair the old man had pointed to.

- Creak.

The person in front of me….

"Are you Boldr?"

"I am."

There was no shortage of things I wanted to ask.

Advice about my hammer.

How he'd known I'd just eaten a peach.

And,

…if he really did have the Sage's Eye, the power to glimpse the future,

had he known, back then, that the Sun Dwarves of the future would throw away their pride?

"The peach… how did you know about that?"

Even Hareungar had never known much about what I did out in the real world.

"Ah, that."

A bent finger tapped at the corner of his golden eye.

"The Sage's Eye."

An eye said to glimpse fragments of the future.

"My body died long ago, but that doesn't mean the consciousness I left behind here vanished along with it."

"……."

"I can catch a glimpse, at least, of what someone about to reach my workshop has seen along the way."

Boldr's golden eye turned toward me.

"A dazzling, magnificent building, and in its shadow, a village of descendants slowly losing their light."

Exactly right.

What I'd felt walking over here was that Dwarf Company's building was so huge and gaudy you could spot it from far away at a glance.

But the farther I went past that building, deeper into the village, the more drab the scenery grew.

And that was the 88th floor, the one that supposedly got support from Dwarf Company.

If that was the case,

what did the 89th floor, the one that had turned its back on the company, even look like?

"It's a simple story."

Boldr slowly set down his teacup.

"You're curious how the Sun Dwarves fell this far."

"…That's right."

His golden eye glowed faintly.

"Then I suppose I should start from the day the decline began, but…"

Boldr smiled, bitter.

"To tell that story, though, I'll first have to explain how I came to have this eye."

- Tap, tap.

His finger tapped against the eye glowing gold.

"Four hundred and twenty years ago."

He opened his mouth.

"The inter-floor war with the Elves ended."

"I've heard that story."

A war born of each side coveting the other's craft.

Countless artisans died, and neither side ever got what they wanted, or so I'd heard.

"Then did you also hear who started that war?"

"…No, I haven't."

No, I hadn't heard that part.

"It was me."

"……What?"

Boldr said, looking down into his teacup.

"The one who started that war, who dragged the dwarves into crisis and poverty, was…"

With a bitter look on his face,

"…it was me."

That's how he opened up.

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