WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 64

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The White-Fire Crystal and the Frost Crystal

* * *

The instant the tongs fell, I felt that something was wrong.

No, actually, "wrong" wasn't quite right, more that I'd realized something felt strange.

Right now, this.

Is this actually a dangerous situation?

Why, though.

[The fire that touched the ceiling... isn't doing anything at all...?]

Just like Yuna reported.

The flames had reached the ceiling, but they weren't burning anything.

The tongs had just melted, and if something made of iron could melt that fast,

in theory, the moment I got anywhere near it, I should already be a Lionel kebab, but....

Right now, though, I didn't feel hot in the slightest.

That thing, over there.

The anvil, holding the White-Fire Crystal up like that.

That's iron too, isn't it.

"Shouldn't the anvil be melting too?"

But the anvil hadn't changed at all.

And I wasn't hot either.

Only the tongs had melted.

Was this thing igniting selectively?

That was enough to settle on that as the reasonable explanation.

This was a fantasy world to begin with. At 4-star grade, I couldn't really complain if a material decided to pick and choose its tools.

"……."

After a moment's hesitation, I cautiously reached out my hand.

Only possible because it wasn't hot, of course, but as carefully as I could manage.

[Wait, what are you doing?]

"Checking."

[Checking what?]

[Don't you dare check it with your hand!!]

If she'd genuinely needed to stop me, Yuna would've thrown an absolute fit.

Which probably meant even she didn't fully understand what was going on here.

And that this was, in fact, the most rational option.

Either way, I hadn't felt any heat even standing close.

I had gloves on too, so as long as I didn't touch it directly, I'd probably be fine.

But then.

"…… Whoa."

The closer I got, the further I reached my hand, the more the fire's intensity gradually shrank.

I could see it happening right in front of me. The size, steadily shrinking.

[It's... it's shrinking...?]

And so my gloved fingertips finally reached it.

What remained of the flame sank back into the ore, and the fire died out completely.

"… It's warm."

I closed my hand around it.

Yeah, this really was a fantasy world.

A temperamental mineral that could wreck solid iron and then curl up meekly in its actual owner's hand.

You little thing, you've got some bite to you.

Wasn't taming an ore like this the fun part, though?

So if I had to guess at what it wanted, roughly speaking,

'Hold me with your hand. Not with tongs.'

Something like that, maybe?

Right now, the white flame had been drawn back inside the ore.

Maybe because waking the white flame had done something to it, but its once-hard surface had gone subtly soft.

- Squeeze.

I tried tightening my grip.

It gave, a little.

Not exactly jelly-soft or anything, but about the texture of half-melted metal.

- Squish, squish.

Holding what amounted to an ultra-luxury stress ball made of the White-Fire Crystal, I fell into thought for a moment.

What material could possibly get along with this bratty little diva of an ore?

I couldn't make the hammerhead out of this alone.

Even at 4 stars, a single material always skewed toward some extreme property, and more than that.

"A squishy hammer is... no."

I needed something to hold it together.

The moment that thought crossed my mind.

"… Hm?"

A material surfaced in my head.

I turned my head to look at the sack of ores in the corner of the workshop.

The ores Dolores had gone and gathered for me.

There was exactly one among them I hadn't touched yet.

One I'd genuinely been treasuring above all the rest.

Since these were the precious ores Maman Dolores had first given me,

of course, I hadn't thrown away the note yet.

[Frost Crystal x1 (This one's quite a rare ore, so I only brought one for now. Just tell me if you need more!)]

"……."

An ore that held white flame inside it, and an ore that gave off no heat of its own, one that could trap fire within it.

If I could control both cold and heat at the same time….

"So here's my idea, right?"

If I could regulate fire and cold at the same time.

I could handle heating, and even setting the final shape, in just a few strikes.

No more shoving cooled-down iron back into the crucible furnace to reheat it every single time.

Strike it with this hammer, and instead of waiting for it to cool afterward, just harden it with cold right there.

"Not flash-freezing it, obviously, that'd just shatter the thing."

Just adjusting the temperature by exactly as much as needed.

Or if I didn't need either, I could just use it as a plain hammer.

"What do you think?"

The Frost Crystal? If I didn't use it now, I'd probably just end up handing it down to my own kid someday anyway.

Let's get moving on this right away.

[In theory, it's not impossible, but….]

Yuna paused for a beat.

[Wouldn't that just end up as a lukewarm hammer?]

"Hm…."

[No, no, no, I'm not saying you're wrong, big brother, it's reasonable,]

[what I mean is, can you actually control it freely like that…]

Normally, though, whenever I threw out some far-fetched idea or spoke purely on instinct.

Yuna was the one who'd correct it. Refining it into something realistic.

We'd done that same dance all through my PhD.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I know what you mean."

She had a point.

If I couldn't control it freely, the whole thing was pointless.

Then again, something like this usually….

[][A Manual for the Heir of Flame Who Has Become a Certified Blacksmith]

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[Chapter 16. How to Harmonize Two Opposing Energies.]

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Checking the manual, apparently somebody had already tried this before.

The Heirs of Flame had been around for who knew how many years, after all.

Of course someone had already walked this path before me.

"Heirs of Flame, seriously."

There wasn't a single thing they hadn't tried.

I read through Chapter 16 carefully.

The opposing energies this particular ancestor had worked with weren't fire and ice, but lightning (雷) and water (水).

Electricity and water, in plain terms.

What they'd been trying to make was a spear.

Pierce through with the lightning-charged end, then use the water's energy to send that lightning crackling out in every direction.

"That's an absolutely ridiculous amount of ambition."

Sounds like the kind of thing you'd dream up with a liberal-arts sensibility.

Like some Bluetooth showerhead.

I was doing better than this, at least.

『Total attempts: 191』

Christ almighty.

This must've been seriously hard, huh?

What survived all those countless failures.

The conclusion, the actual method for reconciling two opposing energies, was….

─────────────────

『Neither energy may be forced into submission.』

『Both energies must possess a certain minimum standing.』

『Above all, the two energies require a harmonious agreement between them.』

─────────────────

"… Agreement?"

Was this some kind of joke?

Was I supposed to sit them down and make them talk it out?

Well, standing wasn't a problem, at least.

The White-Fire Crystal was 4 stars.

And the Frost Crystal, too.

[Frost Crystal][★★★☆☆]

Rare enough that even Dolores called it precious.

And she'd only brought exactly one.

Its standing didn't look like it fell far short.

I picked up both ores.

And then.

"Hey, you two, think you can get along?"

Naturally, there was no answer.

"No objections, then I'm just going ahead."

Seeing was believing.

I decided to get started right away.

The Frost Crystal first.

This was an ore that couldn't be melted to begin with.

One look told you that much.

─────────────────

『Frostfall, an ore condensed from thousands of years of bitter, biting cold.』

『A substance impossible to melt.』

─────────────────

That's literally what it said.

Shoving it into the forge would just waste a perfectly good crucible for nothing.

So what was I supposed to do instead?

"Carve it, I guess."

If it wouldn't melt, sculpt it.

Direction decided.

This one would become the core that went inside the hammer.

The White-Fire Crystal would become the shell wrapping around that core.

In other words, a structure where the ice held the fire captive from the inside.

I set the Frost Crystal onto the anvil.

- Clang.

I set the chisel against it, then struck carefully.

A blue shard broke away.

For reference, both the Frost Crystal and the White-Fire Crystal were each about the size of my face, Lionel's face.

Even carved down, plenty large still. The White-Fire Crystal was a bit bigger, but anyway.

The finished shape for the Frost Crystal was a long, slender column.

The plan was to spread the White-Fire Crystal out flat, wrap it around this, and then hammer the whole thing.

That would become the hammerhead.

- Clang.

The problem was that this thing wouldn't stretch the way iron did.

So rather than hammering it into shape, I had to chip away the parts I didn't need.

- Clang!

Another layer flaked away right where the chisel had bitten in.

- Clang, clang.

If the angle slipped even slightly, it looked like it would run against the grain and crack all the way through to the inside.

I let the tension out of my shoulders and focused everything into the hand gripping the chisel.

At a glance, blacksmithing looked like it was all about raw strength.

But fine control mattered far more, so bulging muscles weren't really the deciding factor.

The face-sized lump slowly shrank down.

As the edges were chipped away, an outline gradually began to take shape.

- Clang.

- Clang.

I struck it, on and on, for who knows how long.

The last fragment fell away.

On the anvil now sat something about as thick as my wrist, roughly half the length of my forearm.

A single blue column, left behind.

I picked it up and raised it to eye level.

- Hmmm….

I could feel a biting chill radiating off it.

The workshop's light caught the Frost Crystal.

"… This one's done."

Now.

Time for the rest, the White-Fire Crystal.

I carefully set the Frost Crystal down on one side of the worktable and moved the White-Fire Crystal onto the anvil.

Still pure white.

This was a fairly different process from what I'd just done.

This time, I needed to stretch the White-Fire Crystal out flat.

Wide enough to wrap the whole core, and… thin.

I picked up the Earthborn Hammer.

- Shff.

No need to put any force into it.

- Thunk.

I just let it drop.

- Fwoosh….

White flame bloomed up where the hammer touched.

Apparently it hated being touched by anything like tongs, but hammering it was fine.

Seriously, such a diva.

- Thunk… thunk….

I kept hammering the White-Fire Crystal with the Earthborn Hammer,

spreading it out wide.

"Blueprint hologram, if you would."

[Yep, yep.]

A blue rectangle appeared over the anvil, roughly outlining how far I should spread it.

I spread the White-Fire Crystal out to fit exactly inside it.

- Thunk.

"……."

One last pass to tidy up the edges,

and that was it.

I walked over to the worktable and brought back the Frost Crystal I'd shaped earlier.

- Hmmm….

The Frost Crystal was still a little biting to the touch.

Though at least this one didn't throw a fit about being held with tongs.

The process from here was simple enough.

Set the core in the center, fold the White-Fire Crystal around it,

and just fine-tune the hammer's front face and back face, and that's it.

The front, wide and flat. The back, narrow and sharp.

The handle, well… I just needed to drill the socket hole through the head for it to slot into.

A wooden handle, in a hammer, was ultimately a consumable.

Something you could swap out anytime.

So even after I grew and my body changed, I'd only need to replace the handle.

- Shff.

I brought the Frost Crystal core over the sheet.

Now.

All that was left was to set it down.

"… Hah."

I'm counting on you, ancestors.

'Their standing should be similar. Lay enough groundwork for harmony.'

Both conditions were met.

And I,

carefully,

- Plop.

set the Frost Crystal core down onto the White-Fire Crystal sheet.

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