WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
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◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 95
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Lionel-Style Yaksha Rule
* * *
Now then, what exactly is an emblem?
It's a metal badge you attach to clothing or a cloak.
Sometimes used as a symbol for a house or a knight order, that kind of thing.
Of course, in this world, something doesn't need to symbolize anything in particular to qualify as gear, but you can basically picture the basic shape as a badge.
Something you can wear like a brooch.
So then, what was Dolores's emblem?
I put the sample emblem I'd received into Dolores's equipment window.
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[Lavien's Scale][★★★★☆]
[Unique Equipment][Compatibility Rating][9 / 80]
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『A scale that never tilts allows no mistakes.』
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【Distributes mana overly concentrated at one point to adjacent circuits, preventing spell collapse and backflow.】
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[The wearer's mana-control precision is already far too excellent.]
[Has little relevance to the wearer's Formula School, which is founded on multiple circuits.]
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Inside a silver border sat a small scale.
It looked pretty. The function wasn't bad either.
If mana was about to lump up on one side and cause trouble, it split the load and defused the risk, apparently.
"Ah... what a considerate piece of gear."
Of course, the problem was that Dolores already had excellent mana control to begin with, and given how the Formula School distributed mana across multiple circuits by nature, mana rarely piled up in one place anyway.
Which is to say, it was useless.
And so the process of replacing her emblem began.
What I had to do was simple enough.
Melt down a mineral that draws in the energy of the earth well... form it into a plate and hammer it out.
Then cut the plate down small and design it to fit the size of an emblem.
"Doesn't seem hard, does it?"
Up to now I'd never really hit a wall while making gear, so I swung the hammer with confidence this time too.
And then.
- Clang!
- Clang!
- Claaang....
The hammer's ring didn't last very long.
"...... Ah, guess I have to toss this one too."
I'd already gone through ten pieces of material.
About three weeks had passed.
Making the emblem wasn't nearly as easy as I'd thought.
I lifted the reddened plate of differential wheelstone (差輪石) with tongs and set it down in the bin where all the failures had piled up.
Throwing the failed ones straight on the ground had gotten out of hand, so I'd ended up building a trash bin just for them.
"Hah...."
I sat down on the ground, letting Whiri's eco-friendly spirit air conditioning wash over me.
So what was the biggest problem right now?
The craft of the Heirs of Flame and the energy of the earth, those two.
Working through it, I'd realized something, the combination was oddly awkward when you tried to aim for the high end.
In the end, Dolores had the Meridian Affliction, and by nature, mixing in the craft of the Heirs of Flame raised her Compatibility Rating.
But she also used earthen mana, so that had to be accounted for too.
I needed to look after both energies at once, and the problem was....
"Fire and earth don't get along...."
I sat there muttering at the empty air.
Pour sand on a fire and it goes out, right?
Honestly I wasn't sure if it was the same principle, but it felt similar enough.
If the energy of the earth got too strong, it just buried the Sun Dwarves' craft entirely.
There were minerals that carried earthen energy, and I even knew the processing methods, if I just wrapped it up as-is I could get one emblem out of it.
But that's as far as it'd go.
The moment Ignia's fire met the Sun Dwarf process, the whole thing died.
It didn't have that feeling I'd had making Yeomhwa's Rose, materials and craft blending together like some perfectly balanced oriental salad.
Whatever came out of forcing it together like that just didn't feel like it'd count as a Sun Dwarf's own gear.
It'd just come out as some ordinary piece of gear good at drawing in earthen energy.
I put a hand to my forehead.
Three weeks... and this was the first time I'd been stuck before I'd even really started, so I figured I needed a little time to think.
And it was also about time for someone's wisdom.
I opened the contact window and lay down on the ground.
"...... Gaia."
A message floated up in the air a moment later.
『It's really been a while, little one. Something on your mind?』
"I'm making a piece of gear, and it's not going well."
『What part of it is giving you trouble?』
Giving me trouble, huh.
Should I just say it straight, that the energy of the earth was giving me trouble.
The energy of the earth is way too strong.
I turned my head to look at the bin piled with failures.
Ah, whatever.
"...... The energy of the earth, it's way too particular."
So I told her straight.
She was the one whose divine implement this was going to be, after all.
"When I try to bring out the earth's energy, the fire's energy dies. It's hard to use what I'm actually good at. Something about it just... doesn't want to mix."
It didn't blend the way Totality had.
『First of all, you must have gone through so much... you've worked so hard, little one.』
『What a stunning idea, even trying to weave the two energies into one at all is amazing....』
Mm, mm, that does soothe my heart a little.
And on and on she went, patting my ego back up with a string of gentle words.
I'd noticed it before too, everything she said just made me feel good to hear it.
I wish she'd let me use her lap as a pillow.
As she kept comforting me like that, Gaia went on.
『Little one. But does it really need to be one thing, the two energies tied together? You shouldn't force clothes that don't fit onto each other, should you.』
"But I need both."
『So that each can do its best... An emblem was never a single piece of gear to begin with, was it?』
"......."
An emblem... was never a single piece of gear to begin with?
That's true, actually.
I looked over at Lavien's Scale sitting on my workbench.
The base plate, the silver border wrapped around its edge, and finally the large scale-shaped ornament set in the center.
"...... Ah."
An emblem isn't one solid piece.
Only once you set a carved gem or ornament onto the plate, and finish drawing in the border, does it become a single emblem.
... The problem had been in my own assumptions.
Every piece of gear I'd made up until now had always had to become "one."
Even when I used different materials, I always tried to fold them into a single whole.
The Harmonics, fusing the Sunlight and Wind spirit stones, was the same story, so I'd assumed this time would work the same way too.
That in the end, they'd become one and reach harmony.
Maybe that had just been stubbornness on my part, I probably needed to think about this a little differently.
"...... Just let each one bring out its own strength."
Let the Sun Dwarves' energy and the earth's energy each stand out on their own.
Force a dress shirt onto sweatpants and it looks like garbage, but a full, proper suit paired with sneakers?
That's its own style.
Silicon Valley style, they call it.
Instead of forcing two natures that don't get along to blend, bring out what each is actually good at, properly, on its own.
Let the base plate be the base plate, and let the ornament set in the center be its own thing.
And then, in the end.
"...... Kill each other, starting now."
I'd pit the earth's energy against the fire's energy, Yaksha Rule.
Let them show off whose energy was stronger.
A kind of Gu jar.
"Gaia."
『Mm? What is it, little one?』
"You're the best."
『Little one......!』
"I'm off to work now."
『Wait, hold on just a-, it's been three weeks, can we just talk a little lo-』
"I'll be in touch again soon! Thank you, always!!"
『Ah, w-, well... all right...!』
I closed the contact window and headed straight for the trash bin.
A Gu jar was nothing else, this right here was the Gu jar.
Ten discarded base plates sat piled in the bin, made from minerals famous for drawing in the earth's energy well.
I'd rejected them for smothering the energy of fire, the energy of the sun.
"I'm melting all of you down together."
Give it everything you've got, let's see the most earthen energy you can squeeze out.
And then.
I went into the storeroom and opened the jewel box Yeomhwa had brought me.
From the very back, I pulled out the one I'd tucked away separately, saved for later.
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[Crystal of Consuming Flame (劫火晶)][★★★★★]
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『It swallowed every flame, every moment, and lost none of it.』
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The one that carried the deepest, richest energy of fire and sun of them all.
Inside the crimson gem, flames burned so thick you couldn't even see through it.
I picked up the Crystal of Consuming Flame and came back to stand in front of the trash bin.
For the record, it was hot as hell, you couldn't hold it bare-handed.
- Thump.
"Beat this one."
The base plate held the earth, and what would sit on top of it, the shard of the fire-bearing Crystal of Consuming Flame.
Let's see how far it can push.
An emblem where both sides insisted they were the main character.
I pulled out all ten plates.
Differential wheelstone, vein-iron, true-mountain stone, plates that drew in the earth's energy in all sorts of different ways sat lined up on the workbench.
Then I headed straight for the crucible furnace, already at a boil.
"Guess this'll take a while to melt down."
I fed in the plates with the highest melting point first, stirring the metal that had started crumbling from the edges with a rod as I went, then adding the next plate.
Waited for each to fully melt before adding the next.
- Bubble, bubble....
Molten metal of different colors churned together inside.
I gradually turned up the fire and kept stirring, from the bottom of the crucible all the way to the top, until everything mixed.
By the time my arm had gone stiff, the boundaries that had split apart into different colors began to blur.
- Bubble....
The bubbling stopped.
That usually meant it had become a single material.
- Clank.
I hooked the crucible furnace onto the rod, lifted it slightly, and carried it over to the mold I'd already prepared.
- Glug, glug....
I poured the molten metal into the mold, and the metal, as it poured, glinted a brownish color.
Subtractive mixing, normally when a bunch of colors get mixed together they end up reverting to black eventually....
but the molten metal in front of me was holding a bright brown.
It didn't take long for the metal poured into the mold to set.
All right, so what did the winner of this earthen survival, the one who'd lived through the Gu jar, actually look like?
"Crystal of Consuming Flame~~! And its opponent is?"
Something floated up in front of me.
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[Pangaea: Root of Ten Thousand Mountains][★★★★★]
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『The lands that had split apart came together as one again.』
『Even with ten thousand mountains built atop it, the root will not waver.』
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【The properties of different earthen minerals interlock, forming an independent vein network inside.】
【Circulates and gathers the earthen energy it holds, suppressing loss to the outside.】
【The more it comes into contact with a strong outside energy, the more earthen energy gathers along the vein.】
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Wa-, wait a second.
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[Achievement][The Earth Before It Split][★★★★☆]
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『You united land that had lain scattered for tens of thousands of years.』
[Title Acquired ─ 'Ten Thousand Mountains']
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[Reward]
[Special Process ─ Vein Fusion]
The messages kept popping up without pause.
Wha-, what in the....
"......."
Once I finished reading the description, I turned my head slightly toward the Crystal of Consuming Flame.
Hey, Crystal.
I think what came out of that fight is a bit stronger than I expected...?
"...... You can beat it, right?"
I muttered, glancing back and forth between the wide plate and the gem.
- Shudder.
For a second it almost looked like the Crystal of Consuming Flame trembled.
... Sorry, but it's too late now.
The Lionel-Style Yaksha Rule doesn't allow forfeits.
I picked up the crystal and started the setting work.
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