WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 63
──────
The White-Fire Crystal
* * *
After bidding farewell to Gaia.
Dolores and I didn't waste any time leaving the Tower.
For those who'd entered the Tower on an Invitation, leaving was simple.
All you had to do was tear up the Invitation in your possession.
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
I let go of Dolores's hand, our fingers laced tight until then, and tore the Invitation.
- Riiiip….
Along with the tearing sound….
a faint wave of nausea rose up in me.
My body dropped, like the ground had vanished from under my feet.
And just as my vision sank down into black,
【Where are you?】
A voice came from somewhere.
Not that I actually heard it, exactly.
It was more like letters scraping softly across the inside of my skull before slipping away.
They surfaced right in front of my eyes.
【Why didn't you come?】
【I kept waiting.】
【We were supposed to meet.】
Who is this?
… No.
I knew this feeling.
The things I'd blocked out before, the ones whose names I couldn't even read properly.
This was probably….
the Abyss.
【You promised to stay with me■■■■】
【Down here, still■■■■■■■■】
Black letters blotted out my vision, one after another.
【Don't go.】
【Are you going to leave me behind again this time?】
My body… my body kept sinking, lower and lower.
Something like a soft hand seemed to be gripping my ankle.
Just as the darkness tried to drag me down into somewhere even deeper,
- Fwip….
something caught the hem of my clothes from behind.
And then, gently… incredibly gently, I felt myself being pulled back up.
『Little one.』
【■■■!!! ■■■!! ■■ ■■!!】
Suddenly the letters vanished.
A faint scent of earth drifted into my nose.
『I'm right behind you, so don't worry.』
『Let's meet again next time.』
Gaia's voice drew a little closer.
As if she were holding me from right behind.
- Splash!
With a sensation like breaking the surface of water,
my vision went pure white.
“Ugh!”
- Thud!
I collapsed in a heap in front of Dolores's study.
“Lionel!”
Dolores dropped down at once.
She gathered me up off the floor into her arms, checking me over from every angle.
“I'm okay. Just a little queasy….”
Just plain motion sickness.
Probably.
From what I'd heard, the sensation hit a lot harder with an Invitation than with a normal entry.
And I was still a kid on top of that, so of course it'd be worse. Made sense.
I leaned my head against Dolores's chest.
The cool feeling radiating off her body eased me.
“… Whew.”
Now I finally felt like I might survive.
“Would you like to lie down for a while?”
“Yes. Just a little….”
I closed my eyes.
I really did only mean to nap for a little while.
* * *
A bright, vigorous morning.
“This is actually unbelievable.”
I'd said I'd just nap a little, and then slept clean through to morning again.
I was starting to see why they kept children's bodies out of the Tower.
This was just plain hard on the body to begin with.
“Morning, Ruby.”
“… Overslept.”
“It's still morning, though?”
10:48 in the morning.
Still morning, so it counted as morning.
- Munch munch.
I strode down the hallway with a piece of ciabatta clenched in my mouth.
One arm cradled the White-Fire Crystal like something precious.
On the way, I took care of something else too.
“Could I get that flower back, Dolores?”
“Of course.”
I got Gaia's flower back from Dolores too.
From here on out, my religion was Gaia, full stop.
I was pretty sure I'd almost gotten dragged off by the Abyss right before leaving the Tower.
I didn't know for certain, but that's what the circumstances seemed to add up to.
And Gaia was the one who'd pulled me back up.
The Abyss, I'd shelve for now.
There wasn't anything I could actually do about it at the moment.
Maybe I'd just send Isabella a DM about it later.
Wait, no.
“Dolores, by any chance, do you know something called the Abyss?”
“… The Abyss.”
Dolores went still.
Her expression had gone faintly rigid.
“… Don't tell me Isabella said something to you.”
“No, it's not that, um….”
I gave her a light rundown of what had happened right before we left the Tower.
My vision going black. Something calling out to me and dragging me down.
And finally, Gaia pulling me back up.
Of course, I didn't mention that the Abyss had been sending me its little love calls for a while now.
Explaining that much would mean confessing I could see the Tower's system in the first place.
“I saw somewhere that they call that kind of thing the Abyss….”
But then.
“…….”
Dolores's expression turned deadly serious.
“Lionel.”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain Gaia actually appeared to you then?”
“I only heard her voice, but it should be her. I smelled earth and grass, too.”
Dolores fell into thought for a moment.
Her hand came to rest on top of my head.
- Stroke, stroke.
“This isn't something I can just judge on my own.”
“Then should I ask Isabella….”
“Absolutely not. No, absolutely not.”
She reassured me, saying she'd try to request an audience with Gaia herself.
“Don't worry too much. In the end, they're just things that hide because they're afraid of the sun. Have you eaten?”
Afraid of the sun, huh….
Pretty abstract way to put it.
I didn't answer, just pointed at the ciabatta still in my mouth.
As usual, I figured Dolores would sigh and just tell me not to skip meals….
“… Stop right there.”
“Eh.”
“You call that breakfast… Come here.”
In the end, Dolores caught me and hauled me off to the dining hall.
Ciabatta with soup.
Eggs and salad on top of that.
I ended up eating a proper, solid breakfast.
And so, back at the workshop.
I hadn't actually been away that long, but it felt like it'd been a good while.
“Ugh, I'm stuffed.”
I set the White-Fire Crystal down on the table.
Then I put Gaia's flower in a water bottle and filled it with water.
“Pretty.”
It was the kind of sight that made me smile. Like it brought a little life into the workshop.
Now… time to actually get started.
I'd been putting off making the hammer for way too long.
The core of what makes a good hammer, according to Hareungar.
No recoil kicking back into the wrist on impact.
A handle that could be swapped out later, to match a body that was still growing.
That was the gist of it….
“Should I start with a blueprint, then?”
Normally you'd have to draft a blueprint yourself, whether in 3D modeling or with a ruler and pencil.
But I had the best support system around.
Back in the era I came from, using AI to draw up schematics was standard practice.
The kind of thing you used to only see in movies, actually possible.
Call it the pinnacle of mechanical engineering.
“Yunaaa.”
[Hmph. Long time no see.]
Her voice practically dripped with irritation.
Seemed like going back and forth to the Tower so much without calling on her at all had left her a little sulky.
Say the word “sulky” out loud right now, and it's game over.
“My beloved little sister, I could use some help.”
[…… What is it.]
Best to just keep things smooth and pleasant.
“You know already.”
I grinned and answered playfully.
[………]
Yuna was quiet for a moment, then spoke up curtly.
[The angle and speed when big brother swings the hammer, and the impact data on your wrist.]
“Oh, and my arm length and palm width too.”
[I was already going to include all that.]
“Heh, should I just spread my arms out?”
[Yeah, hurry up and spread them.]
I stretched both arms straight out.
- Bzzzt….
A thin blue line swept down from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.
It wasn't an actual hologram scanning me, just an image Yuna overlaid on my own vision.
To anyone else, I probably just looked like I was standing in the middle of the workshop with my arms flung out for no reason.
[Measurement complete.]
“Then just draft the blueprint as a prototype for now.”
[Conditions?]
I grabbed the Earthborn Hammer from the corner.
“… Fit to my body as it is right now. Weight similar to this one, but with the center of balance shifted a bit more forward than the Earthborn Hammer's.”
The finer details, I could sort out later.
[Materials?]
“Just set placeholder properties for that and calculate off those for now. I'll figure out what matches the White-Fire Crystal later.”
Placeholder properties.
Since the actual material hadn't been decided yet, you set arbitrary values for density, strength, and elasticity, just to nail down the shape first.
[Got it.]
Thin lines began appearing one by one in front of my eyes.
Horizontal, vertical.
Strange, intricate numbers and angles overlapped one another.
Before long, a translucent hammer floated in midair.
Of course, only I could see it.
I reached out and mimed grabbing it.
My fingers passed straight through the hologram, obviously.
- Slip.
It settled naturally into my grip.
I treated it as though I were actually holding it.
“Can you overlay this onto the Earthborn? I'll just keep the actual weight for feel.”
The Earthborn's weight really had been perfect.
Something else had been the problem.
[Yeah.]
I gripped the actual Earthborn Hammer, and the translucent shape of the new hammer overlaid itself on top of it.
What I actually felt in my hand was, of course, the familiar hammer's weight.
What I saw was the new hammer's shape.
Yuna marked out just the differences between the two hammers with red hologram lines.
- Clang.
I gave it a light swing toward the anvil.
“The head's a little small.”
[I sized it to your grip strength and arm length though.]
“No, it's fine to make it a bit bigger. Just shorten the handle to make up for it.”
[But then the weight will shift toward the head, won't it?]
“That's what I want. I'm not going to strike with my wrist, I'm going to use the weight.”
Hareungar's words.
Never move it by force.
A hammer isn't something you force down onto the anvil.
[Design version 01]
[Handle shortened, hammerhead widened]
Yuna adjusted the numbers right away.
The hammerhead widened slightly, and the handle shrank just a touch.
Things like the center of balance weren't something you could just know right away, though.
So I swung it a few more times.
Adjusting the size, the shape, and various other details bit by bit.
It didn't seem bad.
At this point, it looked good enough to me.
Now, little by little… it was time to bring in a different specialty.
“… What if we add your sense of style on top of this?”
Looks mattered too, after all.
And from here on, this wasn't really my territory.
[Hmm.]
And so, with Yuna's touch,
- Bzzt….
staying within limits that wouldn't ruin the balance,
the hammerhead got refined, and the handle turned a little smoother too.
[Appearance adjustment complete]
I turned the finished shape around once and nodded.
Not bad.
“Blueprint, done.”
Now.
It was time to choose the material.
The White-Fire Crystal, the most basic material that would become the hammer's frame.
First, I needed to heat this thing up and see.
I set the White-Fire Crystal in the crucible and cranked up the heat.
- Creak, creak.
- Whoosh!
“Hah….”
No matter how many times I did it, heating up a crucible furnace was never easy.
Doing it in the real world after so long felt like death.
I wasn't planning on melting it outright.
Just seeing at what temperature it started to soften.
How its properties changed once it took on heat.
A simple test was necessary.
So, that was what I'd meant to check first.
“……?”
But.
[Are you going to raise the temperature more…?]
“No, that's not it….”
The flame, once red, turned yellow.
Then crept closer to white.
I kept raising the temperature until the inside of the crucible furnace turned white.
- Creak.
I opened the lid and checked inside the crucible.
“Why the hell isn't this thing melting.”
The White-Fire Crystal hadn't changed at all.
Its surface hadn't softened, hadn't even flushed red.
The crucible furnace was already at its limit.
I tried waiting a bit longer, patiently, but….
“…….”
- Clack.
In the end, I lowered the heat and pulled the White-Fire Crystal out with the tongs.
- Chk.
Held in the tongs, the White-Fire Crystal was pure white.
“What…… is going on with this thing?”
At this kind of temperature, even if it didn't melt, something should have changed.
It should've shown some kind of reaction, at least.
But the White-Fire Crystal.
Forget melting, it hadn't even softened.
And so the White-Fire Crystal ended up on the anvil.
I thought for a moment, wondering if I was missing something.
Then looked at the ore again.
─────────────────
[The White-Fire Crystal (白火晶石)][★★★★☆]
─────────────────
『An ore crystallized from the last ember Boldr, the 7th-Generation Sage Artisan, left behind before he died.』
『For hundreds of years, buried in the ashes of a dead forge, it never once went cold, waiting for a new Heir of Flame.』
『Only when struck by an Heir of Flame does the dormant white flame (白火) finally awaken.』
─────────────────
“…… Struck, and only then does the white flame awaken, huh.”
Normally, the basic principle for working ore was to heat it and then strike it.
Striking cold ore was pointless, it would just crack or break.
There was no way it would change shape.
But.
“… Fine, got it.”
Might as well try it once, even if it felt like a scam.
I lifted the Earthborn Hammer.
And aimed it precisely at the top of the White-Fire Crystal.
No need to put any force into it.
Just let the weight of the hammer do the work and drop it straight down.
- Thump!
The clang of metal rang through the workshop.
“…….”
No change at all.
Guess that wasn't it after all.
Just as I thought that and started to pull the hammer back,
- Crack.
I heard something splitting apart inside the White-Fire Crystal.
“……?”
And then.
Right where the hammer had struck, a single beam of light stretched out from between the cracks,
and then,
- Fwoosh.
a white flame swallowed the ore whole.
“Hey, that was it!”
Just as expected of a 4-star ore.
No ordinary material, after all.
I stared at the White-Fire Crystal, thrilled.
The white flame kept growing bigger and bigger.
“Whoa, nice.”
I didn't actually feel much heat from it, oddly enough.
More like the warmth of a campfire.
The flame, once palm-sized, was already as big as the Earthborn Hammer.
“…….”
Then as big as I was.
“……?”
Hold on.
When does this stop?
Just as the flame was about to reach the ceiling,
[Fi- fire!!!]
Yuna shouted first.
“Fi- fire?!”
The fire had grown this huge, and yet my own body hadn't felt hot at all, so I'd been careless about it.
Seriously, not even a little hot.
I reflexively reached out with the tongs and grabbed the White-Fire Crystal.
Just as I moved to shove it back into the crucible furnace,
- Glub.
the tip of the tongs holding the White-Fire Crystal bent,
and then,
- Clang!
“……?”
the tongs melted away,
and the White-Fire Crystal dropped to the floor.
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