I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With - Chapter 69

WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 69

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Do It In 5 Years

* * *

- Crinkle...

After Lionel dashed back to bed,

Dolores, alone now in her office, crumpled up the measurement slip from Maison Arvuella.

"...... Hah."

Feeling a faint, faint... twinge of embarrassment, she pressed a hand to her forehead.

Had he seen it? Lionel was clever, he might have.

"......."

There were complicated reasons behind why she'd agreed to let Lionel measure her again, even though her measurements already existed on file.

For one, a woman's body changes. Diet, lifestyle habits, and, the biggest reason of all.

Measurements could shift depending on one's health.

She'd gotten healthier.

So it made sense to measure again.

A perfectly reasonable conclusion.

Besides...

"The boy wanted to take the measurements himself..."

With his eyes bright and earnest, insisting it was the best way, that it was what was best for her, how could she possibly have said no?

And she couldn't very well disappoint a child who'd surely prepared so carefully and looked forward to it.

"......."

And everything after that had been perfectly normal judgment too.

Bathing first had simply been washing herself clean before the measurements.

Choosing to wear her thinnest, prettiest underwear was only because Lionel had asked for exactly that.

Leaving her hair down was because it was still wet, too much trouble to braid back up.

As for why she hadn't tied her robe shut right away.......

She didn't know.

She didn't know......

Anyway, there was a reason for absolutely everything.

- P-pretty.

The boy's voice, surfacing so suddenly in her mind.

It was just a different style than usual, so the comment had probably just slipped out.

It didn't mean anything in particular.

- Wriggle.

Dolores pressed the back of her hand to the corners of her mouth, curled up despite herself, and tried to calm down.

- Crackle... crunch......

The paper in her hand turned pure white with frost, then crumbled apart.

This measurement slip wasn't needed anymore.

Everything that had happened today had been decided under Dolores's own rational judgment.

Every single action had a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Thinking that made her feel a little more at ease.

...Though the corners of her mouth never did come back down.

* * *

"......."

- Scrub, scrub.

If there was one lucky thing about all this, it's that I happen to be a blacksmith.

Making a makeshift detergent wasn't hard at all, not one bit.

Just mix the ash left over from burnt charcoal into water and scrub everything squeaky clean, done.

At an estimated age of thirteen, I'm plenty old enough to make a mistake like this.

Yesterday was pretty shocking, wasn't it?

I get it. Even thirty-year-old Kim Yujin might've made the exact same mistake.

I can't exactly swear that isn't true.

Anyway, congratulations on becoming a man, Lionel.

Fuck.

If there's one thing Yuna has going for her in the tact department, it's knowing to keep her mouth shut in an embarrassing situation like this.

[...... heh]

Yeah, that's right, just keep doing that.

Thankfully, doing laundry at 6 in the morning itself wasn't especially hard.

It was just that the situation when I woke up had been so awful and embarrassing.

Counting the years, it'd been about fifteen years since the last time, after all.

"...Everyone was asleep, right?"

It wasn't a question aimed at anyone in particular.

I wasn't exactly hoping for an answer, either.

I wrung out the washed underwear and pants as much as I could, then hung them one by one on the hooks dangling from the workshop ceiling.

They'd be dry in about two hours.

Why? Because I was about to get the furnace going.

With the crucible furnace already lit,

- Rustle.

I carefully pulled out a paper bag, wrapped up neat.

Inside sat a piece of black fabric, folded up carefully.

This, of course, was Dolores's underwear.

I woke up and found this sitting right by my pillow.

It's not even Christmas, but my heart was pounding the second I woke up.

- Slip......

"It's black..."

Black's nice too......

Should go great against Dolores's fair, soft skin......

Maybe I'll go with black......

I laid a white cloth over the cleanest workbench I had,

and set the black underwear down on top of it.

For reference, to describe the size of the bra, it was big enough to cover my whole face.

If the workshop ever caught fire, I felt like I could just tear off one cup and use it as a mask.

"Whew......"

I dragged a chair over and sat down at the workbench.

For the next two hours, while the crucible furnace heated up, I planned to take Dolores's underwear apart and analyze it.

And then.

I never expected the reason the underwear was black would turn out to mean it was a literal black hole.

My precious two hours just vanished.

"I can't see anything."

[That's because you're wearing it on your face]

"Ah, okay."

I set down the underwear that had been wrapped around my face and wrote up my findings.

I couldn't say for sure, but the outer layer seemed to be woven from black thread.

The inner side, where it touched skin, had a softer thread layered in.

Given the size, the band wrapping under the bust was pretty firm,

and the shoulder straps sat much higher than on ordinary underwear.

"Strong support."

Dolores has a large chest, so it made sense that support, holding the shape in place and keeping it from bouncing, would matter this much.

Being custom-made, it seemed like real thought and effort had gone into it.

If there was a problem......

"...This would get uncomfortable if worn too long."

Okay, the underwear itself is good.

The material's good, and it fits her body type, but in the end it's a piece built entirely around holding things in place.

Especially at the underbust and the sides.

"The pressure here is way too strong."

For an ordinary person, it'd probably just feel a little stuffy.

But for Dolores, whose circulation is already poor and whose meridians are blocked by cold, that's a different story.

It'd probably feel stifling.

The bottoms aren't much different.

Dolores has a build suited for easy childbirth, so if it's fitted to her waist, her hips pinch,

and if it's fitted to her hips instead, her waist ends up floating loose.

Her lower body's shaped like an hourglass to begin with, so no matter what you fit it to, empty space opens up somewhere.

But after studying a woman's body like this for so long, I know it sounds pretty perverted, but I still feel like it's not enough.

At the very least when it comes to Maman's body, I'd like to reach the point where I could describe every detail of it with my eyes closed.

"......."

Given the size, support is absolutely non-negotiable.

But I don't want it to cause discomfort.

Something with a nature that holds without holding......

"...What if its nature just changed moment to moment?"

[What do you mean?]

"The material's own nature."

Soft while at rest.

But the moment the body moves and some part starts to bounce, that exact spot goes firm.

Comfortable in daily life, but strong during combat or heavy movement.

Let me think about the material a bit.

Feels like I've seen a material like this somewhere before......

Oh, right, kind of like potato starch dissolved in water.

I buried my face in the underwear for a moment.

Come on, remember, hup.

Smells nice.

In the middle of all that.

"...Ah."

It came back to me.

The material used for the Elves' bowstrings.

Pull it slowly and it stretches soft, but the instant force is applied, it stiffens up firm.

Why would a bowstring need a property like that?

When drawing the bow, it stretches gently to make up for the Elves' relatively weak strength,

and the instant the arrow's released, it reacts to the string snapping back toward the bow and contracts even more powerfully.

Easier to draw, and it launches harder.

"What is this."

It's exactly the material I need right now.

When Dolores walks or moves hard, it holds her in place, and when she's just resting, it just gives a little sway.......

Heh heh.

Now that I think about it,

"This is basically the perfect underwear material."

You Elves are a pretty lewd bunch, huh?

Sneaky.

Then again, they're elves after all... mm, I guess that kind of makes sense.

Elves are supposed to be a lewd race anyway.

The material's name was Spirit Thread (精靈絲).

It has to be drawn directly from a spirit, and honestly, the process itself is pretty complicated.

You earn a spirit's favor, receive a spirit stone from it, then break it into fine pieces and dissolve it in water.

Then the once-solid crystal melts down into a thick liquid, which gets fed through a spinneret with tiny holes to draw it out into thread.

That much is just the prototype stage.

To actually give it the right properties, one last tuning step was needed.

Apparently, since the Elves don't have proper tools for their craft, they just beat it by hand, or with a flat board.

Sorry, but I wasn't about to do that.

"With a hammer."

I spread the prototype threads out across the anvil,

and struck each section with a different amount of force.

The parts I struck lightly would end up covering the upper part of the bra, where less bounce control was needed......

and the parts I hit hard would support the underbust, right?

Apparently the Elves use this exact process to control the exact moment a bowstring stiffens.

This was shaping up to be, hands down, the most miserable job I'd ever taken on.

But before that.

"Can you pull up my DMs?"

I hadn't touched my DMs in ages, too unsettled by that whole Abyss thing, so I wondered just how many messages had piled up.

【Erien, Grand Chieftain of the Great Rainforest】[19]

Hm, not bad, considering how long I went without checking.

I opened the message window.

【Erien, Grand Chieftain of the Great Rainforest】: Honored Heir ㅠㅠ nothing's happened to you, has it? ㅠㅠㅠ

That was the last message.

Okay, I'll just do what I can for now, and ask for help if I actually need it.

Doesn't seem like these people can even open a Child of the Forest's own manual anyway.

"Yes, I'm alive."

I sent back a short reply and closed the message window.

- Slide.

Then, naturally, I opened up a document.

[] An Introductory Guide to Elf Gear-Crafting.

I skimmed past the table of contents, Leather Softening Methods, Reading the Grain of Gemstones, Thermal Shock Delamination, and so on,

"Found it."

[Chapter 4. Spirit Thread (精靈絲)]

and flipped straight to that section.

─────────────────

『A crystal a spirit hands over is a piece of its own heart. Do not covet it or take it by force; it is best to wait until it is freely given.』

『It is an extremely, extremely, extremely, extremely precious raw material, and must never be used carelessly.』

─────────────────

Okay.

Honestly, this was exactly what I wanted to know most too.

Where the hell am I even supposed to get a spirit stone.

Judging by how they wrote "extremely" four whole times, it must really be precious......

『Since it is a raw stone obtainable only once one's spirit affinity reaches its very peak, one must never lose that trust......』

Ugh, I'm exhausted already.

I looked at the reference photo of a spirit stone printed in the manual.

It was about the right size to fit comfortably in one palm.

A colorful stone, its colors all jumbled together beneath a clear, transparent surface.

The color varied stone to stone, but objectively speaking... it was pretty.

Wonder if I could get one at the auction house.

"......?"

Wait, what is this.

This looks really familiar.

This... I've definitely seen it somewhere......

I dug through my memory.

And then, before long.

"Ruby."

Ruby's been grumbling every time she jumps rope lately, saying it's not enough of a workout.

I figured she was just at it again, but then out of nowhere she started stuffing colorful stones into a pouch and strapping it around her waist to jump with.

I zoomed in on the photo.

".........It's the exact same thing?"

I realized it looked exactly like the stone Ruby had been carelessly stuffing in a pouch to jump rope with.

Wait, hold on a second.

The Elves supposedly can't even buy this stuff no matter how much they want it.

And Ruby's been using it as exercise weights?

- Rustle, rustle.

I took down the underwear and pants I'd hung from the ceiling, stuffed them into the bag holding Dolores's underwear,

and headed straight back to the manor.

- Bang!

I threw open the door to the parlor, no, I guess I should call it the gym now.

"You scared me."

"Ruby."

Ruby happened to be right in the middle of shoving spirit stones into a leather pouch.

Ugh, something that precious.

"What?"

"Give me some of those stones."

Of course, there was some resistance at first......

"No way."

"I'll make you something even better."

"Ugh......"

- Clatter, clatter.

I scooped a bucket of sand from the garden and made her a sandbag of the exact same weight,

even personally strapping it around her waist for her, full service.

"This is better, right? No more rattling around."

"...Yeah, guess so... it's nice that you put it on for me......"

"Yeah, I'll keep putting it on for you from now on too, just tell me if you need more weight."

"...Thanks."

And so, mixing in sweet talk and just the right amount of flattery,

I successfully looted... no, acquired, every single spirit stone Ruby had, the same stones the Elves apparently couldn't get their hands on no matter how badly they wanted them.

This, right here, is what you'd call a win-win trade.

* * *

Meanwhile, in Dolores's office.

- Why the long face again?

"......."

Dolores said nothing, just pressed a hand to her forehead.

- Move your hand, would you? Calling me out of nowhere after all this time and then......

At that, Dolores reluctantly lowered her hand.

The person on the other end was an old friend she'd once climbed the Tower alongside, a former teammate who'd filled the role commonly called a healer.

No matter how she thought it over, the only person she could bring herself to ask about something this private and serious was... her, tight-lipped and knowledgeable in medicine.

- ...Hey. Why's your face so red?

- Did you drink poison or something?

In the end, after her lips parted and closed several times over, Dolores finally... managed to speak.

"...The boy became a man, what do I do... hff."

She cut herself off mid-sentence and covered her face,

- Wh-what? I can't hear you well.

"TheboybecameamanwhatdoIdofromnowon......"

- What?

"......."

Dolores bit down hard on her lip.

And then.

"The boy I've been raising became a man."