WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Occult World’s Coveted Blacksmith ◈
Chapter 78: I’ll Make You Shoes.
──────
When does a blacksmith’s inspiration come flooding in?
Having lived as a blacksmith for over ten years, I had a pretty firm answer to that question.
First, when a client comes in with clear requirements.
"I need a spear that can pierce any shield."
"The thing sealed in my left hand has been getting noisy lately. Make me a gauntlet that can keep it suppressed."
In cases like that, the problem to solve is crystal clear.
As I run through every possible method and imagine all sorts of solutions to achieve that goal, one spark of inspiration leads to another.
Then, ideas I’d never have considered before suddenly pop into my head!
Above all, there’s a special thrill to solving a difficult problem.
Anyway, it’s not a huge issue even if they don’t ask for some special function or option.
I made a living primarily through custom work.
I’d measure a client’s arm length, watch how they swung their sword, and take note of things like the scars on their body.
As I did, things even the client didn’t know about themselves would naturally start coming into view one by one.
Maybe the tip of their sword drooped slightly every time they swung it. Or maybe, judging from the location of their scars, they were especially prone to leaving their left side exposed.
Then I’d shift the center of balance slightly toward the handle and make the left guard a little larger.
As I improved things one by one like that, I’d end up with a custom piece that met needs the client had never even voiced.
But!
There was a moment when inspiration exploded on an entirely different level.
That was when I got my hands on a material I’d never seen or heard of before!!
Sometimes VIPs who had just returned from a raid would come in carrying something unidentified.
"What is this?"
"Ah, you know that new boss, the Abyss Dragon? This is some kind of horn-like drop that came from killing it."
"I don’t know the details either! Can’t you just make something cool out of it?"
The so-called blacksmith omakase!
An ordinary blacksmith might say,
"Come on! You should have an appraiser identify it before bringing it here!"
Or,
"How does it make sense to ask me to make something when you don’t even know what you want?"
They might get angry, but!
I wasn’t an ordinary blacksmith.
Besides, plenty of players never learned the Appraisal skill because they thought spending points on it was a waste. That was why they sometimes brought things in without knowing what they were.
For a blacksmith, being able to identify a material’s properties was just as important as being skilled at making things!
Honestly, I liked this better.
I could figure out a material’s properties and freely come up with ways to use them!
Discovering an unknown material, finding new traits, drawing out two hundred percent of its potential, and creating something that had never existed before!
That thrill! That catharsis!
Khh... Nothing was more fun or exciting than that.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that was why I’d traveled all over the continent to learn new techniques.
To shape a new material exactly as I imagined, I needed new knowledge and techniques to match.
In short, if you had to name a blacksmith’s most important virtues, having an eye for materials would easily rank among the top three.
‘Hehehe....’
Which meant this thing in front of me right now.
This Giant Ink Squid bone was the greatest toy imaginable, enough to make my mouth water.
‘Hehe, hehe.’
Aww, it was so cute I could die.
Shouldn’t we take some time to get to know each other very, very well?
"Ugh... Do Emperor looks so creepy. Like a total pervert."
* * *
One of the cabins on Uncle Taegong’s yacht also served as my temporary lodging and makeshift workshop.
I laid the Giant Ink Squid bones Uncle Taegong had given me out one by one on the workbench.
If this were the game, the status window would have displayed the material-inspection process as a hologram and neatly summarized the results.
But a max-level blacksmith like me didn’t need help from a status window anymore. Hehehe....
Still!
I’d just learned this thing was a spirit beast that had mutated from a cuttlefish.
So I decided to borrow a tiny bit of help from modern civilization.
In other words, I looked it up on YouTube.
[Cuttlefish dissection], [cuttlefish bone].
The search brought up a flood of videos.
Kya. Modern civilization was the best.
First, its bone basically looked like a surfboard.
Streamlined, pointed at the front and gradually widening into a rounded back.
The difference from an ordinary cuttlefish bone was that it was thin enough to be translucent and bent with a flexible give.
According to the YouTube science teacher I’d just watched, cuttlefish adjusted their buoyancy like submarines by filling and emptying tiny cavities inside these bones with gas.
When they had to flee quickly from a predator, they also drew water into their bodies and blasted it out through something called a siphon, flying away like a jet.
Then what about this Giant Ink Squid’s bone, after it had mutated into a spirit beast?
I loosened the Suppression Talisman slightly and examined the Spiritual Power circuits carved into its bone.
‘...Oh-ho.’
As expected.
Spiritual Power flowed through fine pathways branching like capillaries inside the bone, forming a unique biological circuit that generated gas within it.
I fed in a little Spiritual Power as a test.
Pshhhh...
The bone swelled slightly.
Aha. No wonder creatures that huge could move around so well.
At the tip near its head, where the siphon had been attached, there was even the prototype of a [Propulsion Circuit] that compressed and fired water.
More importantly, when I lightly fed Spiritual Power into the spot that had connected to its Spiritual Power core,
Bzzzing...
The flexible bone stiffened into something like stone in an instant.
‘...It’s incredibly light, yet remarkably hard?’
It also held Spiritual Power exceptionally well.
A material like this existed?
Of course, modifying its circuits to match the natural grain of the material wouldn’t be easy.
Still, it was extremely thin to begin with.
‘So, to sum it up....’
It was incredibly thin and light, yet became hard if I refined the circuits properly.
A board-shaped bone with buoyancy control and a [Propulsion Circuit] built in?
‘No... This...!’
What was this?!
It wasn’t even begging me to turn it into a board!!
It was seducing me!
Scratch, scratch.
I began reading the circuits engraved into the bone one by one and copying them into my sketchbook.
.
.
.
Before I knew it, it was pitch-dark outside the window.
Su-a had come over because she was bored, but at some point, she had fallen asleep in my bed behind me, hugging Meow and breathing softly.
‘I... I can’t sleep.’
This was too fun.
I closed off, one by one, the Spiritual Power circuits that had only been used for life functions and were no longer needed.
I refined the useful circuits for buoyancy and propulsion along the grain, then connected them one by one to the thick main circuit I had created, like branches growing from a trunk.
At the end of that trunk, where Su-a’s soles would touch, I engraved an input circuit.
That way, the Spiritual Power she fed in through her feet would travel along the main circuit and reach every corner of the board.
Crackle...
I also added a [High-Speed Propulsion Spell Formula] to make it go faster.
Then I added a [Balance Assist] circuit so the person standing on it could keep their balance more easily.
Scratch, scratch.
Crackle...
.
.
.
After staying up all night, dawn was breaking when the board was nearly finished.
The problem was how she would carry it around.
Once I folded it, it became ridiculously compact.
Folded up neatly, it was the size and thickness of a palm-sized notebook.
It seemed small enough to fit anywhere.
‘But it needs to be something she always carries around....’
I never knew when Su-a might have to fight.
Hmm. Where should I store it so people would say I really knew what I was doing?
I kept thinking about it.
* * *
"Hup! Chaaah!"
Sploosh!
This was a quiet white-sand beach on the island.
Su-a had been training hard since morning.
I lay on a mat in the shade, keeping an eye on her training.
‘Hmm. Where would be best?’
Her swimsuit? No. She didn’t always change into a swimsuit whenever she was deployed, like during the Hellfire Ghost incident.
And hanging it around her neck wouldn’t work, since the Sea Heart Stone necklace would be going there soon.
‘Hmm....’
Drip. Drip.
My closed eyelids suddenly darkened.
Cold droplets fell onto my forehead.
When I slowly opened my eyes, Su-a’s soaking-wet face was right in front of mine.
"What are you doing?"
"What about you?"
"Me? C..."
"You were about to call it ‘CEO Lounges-Around,’ weren’t you? Just now!"
"That’s not it. I was just ly..."
"You think better when you’re lying down, bleh."
Tch, she’d figured out my whole pattern now.
"Hmph. Some people are training hard while someone else is enjoying a nice nap."
"I told you, I wasn’t sleeping."
As we bickered, something suddenly caught my eye.
Her bare feet, covered in sand, had stepped onto the mat.
"Hey, who said you could get on here with sandy feet? What happened to your shoes?"
"I don’t know. They floated away."
"...They floated away? Whatever, get down already."
"But the sand’s too hot. This is a problem."
"...."
Sigh. I’d have to stop by the arcade later and buy her some slippers or something.
‘...Hmm. Wait.’
Slippers.
Shoes.
‘...!’
I had it.
If they were shoes, she’d be wearing them all the time anyway, right?
I could fold this thing up and embed it in the soles. When she fed in Spiritual Power, the soles would spring open.
Then the board would snap out!
‘Kya...!!’
What was this?
It already sounded insanely cool just imagining it.
"I’ll make you shoes."
"What?"
Footnotes:
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