1.
"Whoa."
Before starting the enchantment.
[It's completely blown up, hasn't it?]
After hearing Yuna's report, I casually opened the community.
[Is he really an Heir of Fire??]
[When the hell is he making equipment? Seriously.]
[(Live) I just climbed to the 88th floor, and I actually saw a crest being inscribed in the sky.]
It was nothing but talk about the Heirs of Fire.
As for what had happened, naturally, I had no idea.
Apparently, when an Heir of Fire went from apprentice to formal blacksmith, some kind of crest was inscribed on the floor inhabited by the Sun Dwarves.
It must have appeared at the exact moment I crafted a two-star piece of equipment and became a formal blacksmith.
"...Hmm."
Click, tap.
Click, tap.
I folded my arms and savored the countless reactions.
"Nice."
This was a new feeling.
Everyone in the world was curious about me and looking for me.
In all ten years I'd spent as a recognizable community regular, I'd never been this popular...
Anyway.
The Heir of Fire was very busy right now.
I wanted to enjoy the reactions a little longer, but...
I had things to do.
I picked up my enchantment hammer and rose from my seat.
Players of rhythm games have all sorts of preferences.
Some of them don't particularly care about the song.
As long as the chart is fun, they're satisfied no matter what plays.
I respect that kind of preference, of course, but...
A more exciting song makes the hits feel better.
"Yuna, do you have any Sun Dwarf songs?"
[I do~]
And I happened to be an Heir of Fire.
Dwarven songs tended to be pretty lively.
I was already feeling fired up, so today, let's go wild with a traditional dwarven song.
Boom, boom, badum-boom.
Cheerful drumbeats began to play.
Clang, clanga-clang, clang-clang.
My hammer struck the gloves in time with them.
I didn't miss a single shrinking hit circle.
This feeling. Yeah, this was it.
Bang!
The final circle burst at the perfect moment.
─────────────────
[Polishing Total]
[Marvelous] [88]
[Excellent] [1]
[Normal] [0]
[Bad] [0]
[Terrible] [0]
─────────────────
Mr. Marvelous.
Along with a result sheet singing my praises.
─────────────────
[Final Success Rate: 48%]
[Failure Rate: 52%]
─────────────────
[Attempting...]
─────────────────
[Enhancement Successful]
─────────────────
[Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Gloves] [★☆☆☆☆]
[Enhancement: 15 → 16]
─────────────────
The enchantment succeeded.
[Enchantment Log]
[14->15] [Failure]
[14->15] [Failure]
[14->15] [Failure]
[14->15] [Success!]
[15->16] [Success!]
I'd failed the 50 percent chance of getting from 14 to 15 three times in a row.
I thought my luck might be bad, but then they started sticking one after another.
"Ohoho~"
I hummed as I prepared for the next enchantment, but...
Rustle.
Rustle.
"Huh?"
No matter how deeply I rummaged through my pouch...
Unfortunately, I no longer had enough enchantment powder.
I'd scraped the bottom.
"...Tch."
Was this it for today?
If there was one thing I'd realized while working, it was this.
Even when I enchanted at the highest possible difficulty using the bare minimum amount of powder...
Now that the gloves had one star, rather than being starless like the old wooden gloves, the minimum powder requirement had risen considerably.
Naturally, I'd been burning through it faster.
And the charts had become much more varied by default, too.
Maybe it was because the star count was different, or because it was unique equipment.
But there was another thing I found strange...
"There wasn't any destruction chance..."
That was what puzzled me the most.
The requirements and charts had both become harder, yet there wasn't even a hint of a destruction chance.
As long as I hit well, I could still smoothly raise it to enhancement level 16 without it being destroyed.
Was it because it was still only one star?
"Hmm..."
I rested my chin on my hand and sank into thought for a moment.
I was probably still short on samples. And I'd run out of powder.
The enhancement level had gotten fairly high by now, too.
I pictured Dolores in my mind.
Her equipment window appeared before my eyes.
I placed the Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Gloves into her empty glove slot.
[Would you like to equip it?]
Yes.
─────────────────
[Apprentice Blacksmith's Warming Gloves] [★☆☆☆☆]
[Unique Equipment] [Compatibility] [33/40]
[Enchantment Level: 16]
─────────────────
[The warming effect of the Sun Inscription suppresses the wearer's amplification of yin energy.]
[Severed Meridian symptoms alleviated. Seven of the Nine Yin Severed Meridians are in the process of opening.]
─────────────────
I mulled over the numbers and read them several more times, but...
"Hmm..."
Nothing seemed to have changed in particular.
They were gloves enhanced to 16, so their stats must have risen a lot, but...
"Nothing's really different."
The parts I'd been aiming for.
Like the severed meridians being alleviated, or changing to permanently opened, or the compatibility rising further.
None of those had changed from before the enchantments.
Well, maybe all it did was make her stronger.
It seemed treatment simply wasn't something enchantment could handle.
Just as I shook my head...
Pop!
─────────────────
[Latent Ability]
[Enhancement 5 ─ Choose a Path]
[Warmth] Envelops and protects the wearer with accumulated heat.
[Residual Heat] Releases accumulated heat to attack enemies.
─────────────────
"Huh?"
I blinked.
I'd just been disappointed because nothing had changed.
Then, out of nowhere, something appeared.
'...A latent ability?'
Once the enchantment reached a certain level, the gloves gained an entirely new ability they'd never had before.
And now it was demanding that I choose.
Between Warmth and Residual Heat, if I was choosing a direction, the former suited what I was currently looking for in terms of treatment.
It enveloped and protected with heat, after all.
"Warmth."
I naturally chose Warmth.
─────────────────
[Latent Ability]
[Enhancement 5 ─ Warmth]
[Absorbs emitted mana (cold) and stores it as heat.]
[Enhancement 10 ─ Store]
[Envelops the wearer in stored heat, protecting them from attacks.]
[Enhancement 15 ─ Heat Haze]
[Spreads accumulated heat in every direction, deploying a domain. Projectiles that touch the domain burn away before they can arrive.]
[Enhancement 20 ─ ?????]
[???????]
─────────────────
Once I selected Warmth...
In accordance with the path I'd chosen, latent abilities had been granted at enhancement levels 10 and 15.
Even enhancement 20 was locked like a secret, presumably because I hadn't reached it yet.
Raising the enhancement level gave equipment new abilities?
Then why hadn't the wooden gloves I enchanted before gotten one? Those had even reached enhancement 20.
Just as my mind became complicated...
"Yuna!"
[Yeah~ I'm already looking it up~]
Flip, flip.
Yuna rapidly scanned through countless documents.
Sure enough, she began investigating whether there had ever been cases of this kind of effect manifesting in equipment enhanced beyond level 15.
"Ah, could you look through the Sun Dwarf records too?"
[Okay.]
She searched every nook and cranny, but...
[...There's nothing.]
[Nothing at all?]
As expected, there was no precedent anywhere.
Then the answer was rather simple.
What I'd just done was itself something without precedent in the world.
Enchanting unique equipment.
Which meant this situation, too, was part of the unprecedented phenomenon caused by enchanting unique equipment.
A power absent from ordinary equipment, one that only those who enchanted unique equipment could obtain.
The privilege that only those who accepted the absolute risk of irreversible destruction...
And still found the courage to swing an enchantment hammer could obtain.
"This is insane."
So this was...
A stat only real men willing to risk their lives could possess...?
I closed my eyes.
What a thrill.
I'd become the first member of the Real Men Club.
Because this was a realm no one else in the world had dared to challenge.
"Swing it."
Swing the hammer at unique equipment.
There had been such an incredible reward waiting at the end of that risk.
A real man was supposed to leap into battles with risks like this.
"Dolores? Bring me the stockings."
Because I was about to wreck them.
Ah, and bring some powder too, of course.
Please. I'm all out.
My hands were already trembling a little. I'd only been enchanting for four hours.
I wanted to find out right now what latent ability would unlock when I reached enhancement 20.
Unfortunately...
"...Business is over for today, first of all."
I'd gotten more out of this than I'd expected.
Of course, the enchantment hadn't helped improve Dolores's condition at all, but...
Life didn't go so easily.
Things might be difficult right now, but all I had to do was make better equipment for her to wear going forward.
Who knew? Maybe a latent ability would let Dolores climb the Tower again.
I was illiterate when it came to this stuff, so I didn't know exactly how good those abilities were, but I'd leave that judgment to Dolores.
That was when it happened.
Ding.
"Hm?"
That sound was...
"The High Chieftain?"
Last time, she kept trying to pry out my home address.
I'd just left her on read, and there'd been no word from her since.
Her cooldown must have finally ended.
I indifferently opened my DM window.
A message had arrived from someone other than the person I'd expected.
[Sun Dwarf]: Hello? ^^
[Sun Dwarf]: You're the new Heir of Fire and a great blacksmith, aren't you?
After reading that much, I quietly pressed a hand to my forehead.
"Are these guys elves?"
A reasonable suspicion.
I'd kept saying no, so maybe they'd disguised their name altogether.
But...
Come to think of it, there was no way the elves could have known I had any connection to the Sun Dwarves.
There was no basis for it.
From their perspective, I was simply a one-hundred-percent pure elf.
[...You remember what the elves planted in those documents last time, right?]
"Right."
[But we just opened Sun Dwarf literature, didn't we? I think they detected that on their end and reacted.]
Now that she mentioned it, that made sense.
I'd just combed through every document I could find.
So dwarves had that kind of ability too.
Maybe because I'd been hit with the same trick once already, it didn't even surprise me.
How underhanded.
Still.
Even if it was the same trap, I felt more favorably toward the Sun Dwarves than the elves.
Despite never having seen their faces, I felt a sense of belonging welling up in me.
I was an Heir of Fire, after all.
"Okay, let's go over the current situation."
I couldn't afford to misspeak.
Things like this required cross-checking.
"They know I'm an Heir of Fire who's just become a formal blacksmith, and they only know whether I'm inside or outside the Tower. Is that right?"
[Yeah, but the last part is a little different. I altered your location information.]
"...What?"
Did she mean a VPN...
[Ugh, not that.]
[Last time, the elves identified your location as outside the Tower, remember?]
Right.
I'd opened it without knowing anything at first, and I'd gotten a little scared after hearing that.
[So I completely blurred your location information and changed it to make it look like you're inside the Tower.]
[It'll probably naturally look to them like you're in the Inner Tower.]
"Neat."
The moment they set the trap, they could tell whether I was in the Outer Tower or the Inner Tower, so she erased that information.
"...But do elves or dwarves even live outside the Tower in the first place?"
I was suddenly curious.
Could people inside the Tower leave it and go outside?
[It's not completely unheard of. Apparently, there are rare cases of people going outside.]
[But it's not common, so... I thought that if your location registered as outside the Tower, they'd wonder, 'What on earth is this?' So I just erased it.]
"That's my Kim Yuna."
I clapped.
A dependable strategist, a dependable little sister.
Then my preparations for the basic question of 'Did you think before speaking?' were more or less complete.
Now then, what did you want to ask, dwarf?
With my nerves wound tight, I opened the DM window.
"Hello."
Yuna typed in exactly what I said.
And then...
Ding.
The reply came immediately, but...
[Sun ■ Dwarf]: Yes! Nice to meet you! You live in the Outer Tower ■, don't you? ^^
[Sun ■ Dwarf]: Do you have any plans to enter the Tower? Or are you unable to enter it?
"...Huh?"
[...Huh?]
I take back what I just said.
The worst little sister, Kim Yuna.
I'm reporting you.
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