Chapter 146. The Legendary Blacksmith
Long ago.
A very, very long time ago.
There was someone who had been summoned to another world.
Yeah.
Apparently, there really was.
Not in a novel.
For real.
When that summoned person opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the beach of an empty island.
So, to relieve his boredom, he started farming.
Then hunting.
Then carving.
And on top of that, he decided he needed skills for hunting, so he practiced with swords, spears, and whatever else came to mind.
Basically, he tried everything he could think of.
“Even now, I sometimes wonder.”
The man smiled faintly.
“What would’ve happened if, back when I was young, I’d known even a little about common fantasy tropes?”
“Or if I’d been just a little more desperate?”
“...Tsk, no, that’s... Haaah... Hmm. Sure.”
The summoned person had simply been someone who knew how to relax.
Apparently, once he realized getting off the island was probably impossible, he just decided to build a house and live there.
What an unbelievable way of thinking.
But there was one strange thing about his island.
Once every month...
Either a shipwrecked vessel would wash ashore...
Or unconscious people who simply wouldn’t wake up would be carried onto the beach.
“Once a month.”
The Village Chief narrowed his eyes.
“That is the same period when the Haemo Church offers sacrifices.”
“...Then they’ve been doing that all this time?”
“Like some kind of tradition, all the way from the distant past until now?”
“Exactly!”
The summoned man nodded vigorously.
“The student understands too, right? Honestly, from our point of view, that kind of thing is a little... you know?”
“Human sacrifice...!”
“That’s disturbing from anyone’s point of view.”
“Huh? Really?”
“One of my otherworld friends was thrown alive into a lake once, you know.”
“I thought maybe this world was just more accepting of that sort of thing.”
“What kind of life did your friends live...?”
“Mm. Sure.”
Apparently, the summoned man had lived quite comfortably thanks to the supplies that washed ashore once a month.
According to him, it hadn’t been too bad.
The useless piles of gold and treasure were nice.
And whenever preserved food that could last a long time washed ashore, that became a special feast day.
“Then what about the people who washed ashore?”
“I built a separate storage house and kept them there.”
“You saw it, Student.”
“The coffin house.”
“...You could’ve just kept them somewhere normally. Why did you put them in coffins?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Haha. Why are you acting so obviously annoyed when you’re in such a hurry, Student?”
The man scratched his cheek.
“Was this old man talking too much?”
“At least I’m better than one of those old men who keeps saying, ‘Back in my day,’ right?”
“Uh... sure.”
It was difficult to take that kind of comment seriously from someone who looked younger than me.
Anyway.
As the number of people who might or might not even be alive continued to increase, the summoned man eventually started looking for a solution.
...
Though apparently that happened several decades after the whole thing began.
This man’s sense of time was clearly broken.
“I know.”
“I know I started looking for a solution way too late.”
“Yeah.”
“There were dozens of identical coffin houses, and there had to be hundreds of coffins inside them.”
“You sure were diligent.”
“Hey, don’t mock me too much.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
Actually...
The reason he finally began searching for a solution was because someone who perfectly matched his ideal type washed ashore.
And he wanted to have at least one conversation with her.
To do that, he needed to get past the Indusami guarding the gate of the Isolated Sea.
So the summoned man simply started challenging it over and over.
“Was it... a little over a thousand times?”
“One day, the merfolk suddenly came looking for me.”
“...Those guys are hardworking too.”
“Don’t say that.”
“From their perspective, that monster rampaging was about as noteworthy as saying, ‘Oh, the wind is a little strong today.’”
“...Why do you keep telling me not to say things?”
And then...
Well, one thing led to another.
In exchange for helping the merfolk become the rulers of the Isolated Sea, he gained access to an ore used exclusively by them.
Magnium.
Why was he just casually skipping over the “one thing led to another” part?
This didn’t sound like something you could summarize with—
“Haha, I nearly died a few times! But all that image training I did really helped!”
“Image training...”
I stared at him.
“You’re saying you won a war with something like that?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s simple.”
The man raised one finger.
“At first, you just start like this.”
“There’s one opponent.”
“He has a sword, and I have a sword.”
“Our skill levels are similar.”
“So if I move this way, how does he move?”
He gestured casually.
“That’s how you start.”
“...So what you’re saying is that you became stronger through that kind of image training?”
“Worked for me.”
“...Ah.”
“Ah, this is annoying.”
I rubbed my face.
“Mister, you’re seriously annoying.”
“You’re just bragging about being a genius, aren’t you?”
“Hahaha! It’s not like I was good from the start!”
“I just kept doing it and improved.”
“Once you get used to it, anyone can easily imagine a hundred-versus-one fight!”
“Even the kids I raised about twenty years ago could do it without much trouble.”
This annoying summoned man had used his absurdly exceptional talent and endless amount of free time to make himself stronger.
And eventually...
He earned the recognition of the Indusami and became the master of the gate.
Yet afterward, he was too afraid to leave through it for quite some time.
“Are you serious?”
“Who knows what kind of monsters might’ve been swarming outside the gate?”
“You said you could easily defeat the Indusami!”
“Come on.”
The man laughed.
“I thought, ‘If I got this strong this easily, wouldn’t everyone else be able to do the same?’”
Later, I learned that the amount of time he had spent there was actually several hundred years.
So apparently when he said—
“I just kept at it and got better.”
He wasn’t lying.
“I just kept at it” = several hundred years.
Let’s remember that as we continue listening.
He kept saying absurd things like how he should have realized something was wrong whenever he visited the merfolk kingdom and noticed that the king’s face was different every single time.
Apparently, he spent so much time doing image training that he completely lost track of the passage of time while doing it.
In other words...
This man wasn’t capable of easily imagining one-versus-one-hundred fights because his brain was simply more gifted than everyone else’s.
No.
He possessed the insane mental endurance to carefully think through every single possible move, one by one, match them against each other...
And somehow not go insane in the process.
“Come on, how many times do I have to tell you?”
“It’s really not that difficult.”
“If I move like this, then these two move like this, right?”
“Oh! But what if this one has an impatient personality?”
“Ahhh~! Then you just adjust it like this.”
“You must be good at chess or Go.”
“Haha, I got bored of those.”
“If you already know exactly how your opponent is going to move, what fun is there?”
Whatever the facts were...
This summoned man definitely wasn’t normal.
From then on, he properly began learning and practicing blacksmithing.
Using that insane mental strength...
And persistence so absurd that I almost felt like I should tear the word Indomitable off my own sign and hand it to him...
He endlessly forged weapons.
Then armor.
Then infused them with various magical effects.
Eventually, he even began creating grimoires.
“Grimoires?”
Pie immediately reacted.
“May I see one?”
“Hm? Ah.”
He pointed toward a nearby shelf.
“Everything over there is a grimoire.”
“Haha. Read them if you want.”
“You’re a Witch, so I doubt you’ll go insane from reading them.”
“...I think listening to you might make me go insane first.”
Pie walked toward the shelf.
Then froze.
“Wait.”
“These are all originals?”
Her eyes widened.
“Are you telling me you personally wrote every single one of these?”
“Hm?”
“I heard copies of my books became popular outside.”
“Are they that famous?”
“Famous?”
Pie stared at him.
“One of them is famous for erasing an entire city from the map.”
“...Huh?”
The man blinked.
“I made that spell because I wanted cleaning to be easier.”
“They used it like that?”
“What kind of lunatic creates a spell that erases something from existence just to make cleaning easier?!”
“Well, uh...”
“Hahaha!”
“When I was forging weapons, I sometimes ended up with failed products that wouldn’t break or melt, so...”
“Hahaha!”
“Crazy....”
The summoned man was starting to scare me.
Apparently, once he had finished all his preparations, he finally went outside the gate.
And there...
He met the Great Hero of Hope.
And one insane mage.
Yes.
That insane mage was the Chairman.
Once Pie heard the name, she confirmed it was definitely him.
I wouldn’t know.
I didn’t know the Chairman’s real name.
“Student, this is the part you actually wanted to hear, isn’t it?”
“The story about that insane mage.”
“Yes.”
“A lot happened between me and that guy.”
“He really wasn’t normal.”
“Haha.”
I looked at him.
“You’re one to talk....”
This was coming from a man who had survived the destruction of the world completely intact along with this place...
And was later forcibly incorporated into the game by the Chairman.
Even Grandpa Darkness had lost his original body.
Only a fragment of him remained among the remnants of the destroyed world.
So what exactly was this man?
How had he remained completely intact?
‘Wait.’
‘Could he be the possibility that Ruin supposedly preserved alongside everything else?’
Looking at the way this man talked and acted...
I could genuinely imagine him saying—
“Ohhh, when I went outside, there was noooothing there! Just complete darkness!”
“So I thought about what I should do~”
“And then I helped that crazy mage a little.”
“Then he created a whole world!”
“Hahaha!”
...
That possibility terrified me.
“Oh, right.”
“I promised to make you a weapon.”
The blacksmith clapped his hands.
“Should we talk while I make it?”
“Sounds good.”
Magnium.
It was an ore that looked like someone had directly cut out a piece of solid lava.
Apparently, it could only be mined deep within the Isolated Sea.
In a place so inaccessible that even only a small number of merfolk could enter.
This old man received a small amount of the extracted Magnium for himself.
And in return...
He used the rest to produce enough equipment to arm even ordinary soldiers.
A ridiculous amount of equipment.
He only received a tiny amount as payment for making everything.
Just a little.
A very, very small amount.
Then why...
Why was there a mountain of it piled up in the storage building behind his house?
“There’s probably more leftover Magnium sitting in the warehouse behind my house than there is in the merfolk kingdom’s royal treasury.”
“Just...”
I stared at him.
“How old are you?”
The very special gentleman who had been summoned to another world actually stopped and seriously counted for a moment.
Then he smiled bitterly.
“Haha.”
“I’m at an age where numbers don’t really mean anything anymore.”
“But in terms of how I feel, I don’t think I’ve even reached my thirties yet.”
“Getting old scares me, you know?”
