Chapter 123 Joining the Team, a Blacksmith with a 0.01% Appearance Rate

At the Fire Rabbit Forging House, Master Hade was still dead drunk, sleeping soundly with loud snores.

"Has the Master forged any weapons since the day we left?" Blaze asked an apprentice.

"Yes," a young apprentice, who was moving materials, nodded while shrinking his neck timidly after being addressed. Blaze’s appearance was still quite imposing.

The reason Hade couldn’t muster any energy was that the Dwarf’s Wisdom had been sealed away. The Blacksmith Profession could no longer advance. Acquiring the Dwarf’s techniques was useless; as a Human, refusing to give up yielded no solutions.

Ultimately, this came down to an inability to understand the language of metal, dance with the Flame, and celebrate the birth of a weapon. Those were abilities unique to the Dwarfs. They had been extremely generous in passing them on to anyone willing to bow their heads and become their apprentices. Consequently, every creature that received this inheritance equally felt the Dwarfs’ despair.

They possessed the knowledge to create peerless weapons, yet could by no means produce the environment necessary for such weapons to be born.

Armed with endless forging knowledge, Hade could only spend day after day doing the simple work of awakening the metals’ Memory and adding Skills to equipment.

Originally, he should have been able to teach these metals, allowing them to learn Skills, rather than letting the injuries they suffered turn into scars. Thus, Hade drank heavily day after day.

"Master Hade, I’ve found the Dwarf’s Wisdom."

With just this simple sentence, Hade—who had been dead to the world a second ago—immediately widened his eyes. The skin all over his body turned crimson, as if burned by a Flame. He subconsciously grabbed Blaze’s wrist, his immense Power squeezing the Armor until it let out a loud CREAK.

"Boy, what are you saying?!"

"The Fruit of Svartalfheim." Blaze took out half a fruit. Its cross-section still maintained the crystal-clear juiciness it had when it was first sliced open.

"Th-this is!" Hade easily recognized the fruit, unconsciously drooling like someone who had been starved for ages. It was the scent of knowledge.

Hunger was a desire that living creatures could not suppress no matter what. The more hunger was repressed, the more fierce and terrifying its rebound would be. The moment Hade saw this fruit, he should have chomped down on it like a Wild Beast that had lost its mind.

However, this fruit was marked. This mark made Hade forget even his hunger, leaving behind only sheer terror.

One-Eyed. That was a Deity who, just by opening its eye, could dictate Destined Death even from thousands of miles away.

"So you’re telling me that in order to properly strike some iron, I need to defeat the Deities? I thought that as long as I found that legendary fruit, I could unlock the restrictions of the Blacksmith Profession," Hade said, becoming even more despondent.

"Even a Foreigner couldn’t possibly defeat the One-Eyed. Foreigners can undergo resurrection; they can trade their deaths for information. But a God isn’t some cheap existence that just sits on a chair, allowing people to casually challenge them over and over again."

"That’s true, but I didn’t come to you so we could defeat the One-Eyed. This time, it’s official business for the Royal Knight Order," Blaze replied.

"Official business?" Hade rolled his eyes. This boy in front of him had spent so much time with Herbie that he had picked up a somewhat sly vibe, using the stick and the carrot.

After Blaze clearly explained the whole story, Hade frowned. This wasn’t an especially difficult task.

"I refuse."

The reason for his refusal was simple. The current success rate of Blacksmiths using materials for Enhancements was far too low. He didn’t care about the mindset of Foreigners facing repeated Enhancement failures, but he couldn’t stand wielding his Iron Hammer to strike the bodies of weapons time and again, forcing them to fail repeatedly amid the agony of their metamorphosis.

When an Enhancement failed, both the Blacksmith and the weapon suffered greatly.

"That is the reason I brought out this fruit. Do you still remember the incident that occurred when you forged the Twisted Greatsword?" To jog Hade’s Memory, Blaze specifically took out the Twisted Greatsword.

"I remember. Because that Foreigner named Flying Brick refused to let Ama no Murakumo undergo Purification, this old man ended up making a fool of himself during work, and you, boy, had to wipe my ass for me."

"You remember that a bit too vividly... Ahem! The point is, how was I able to do it? I don’t possess the Blacksmith Profession or Dwarf bloodline, yet I successfully took over your work."

"I didn’t think too deeply about it. It’s probably because you had something on you that could increase the Enhancement success... Ah!" Hade suddenly realized, his mouth dropping wide open as he pointed at the half-fruit in Blaze’s hand.

"Could it be that simply carrying this fruit on your person grants an extremely high Enhancement success rate?"

Hade immediately snatched the half-fruit, hung it at his Waist, raised his hammer, and began forging an Enhancement. Unsurprisingly, the Enhancement failed.

"Let me finish speaking! At the time, I smelled the fruit’s incense." Blaze decided to just demonstrate with facts. He removed the fruit from Hade’s Waist and placed it on the nearby furnace.

This was a high temperature capable of softening even steel. A normal fruit placed there would have burned to a crisp long ago, but this half-fruit became even juicier. Its skin appeared bright and plump within the Flame, and a faint incense wafted out from the exposed flesh.

"AHHHHHH—"

Upon smelling the fruit’s incense, Master Hade’s clothes suddenly burst off. Swinging his hammer with Madness at a speed of extreme Frenzy, he completed ten equipment Enhancements, successfully completing seven.

The standard Enhancement success rate was only twenty percent. That didn’t mean two out of ten would succeed, but rather that each individual Enhancement had a mere twenty percent chance of success. For Hade to successfully complete seven Enhancements in one breath was nothing short of a miracle.

"I understand now. The flesh of this fruit contains the Dwarf’s Wisdom. While being roasted at high temperatures, the Dwarf’s Wisdom drifts out along with the fruity incense, temporarily granting a boost in Dwarf’s Wisdom to whoever absorbs the incense." Master Hade let out a breath of stale air, staring at the fruit on the furnace with lingering desire.

"If merely smelling its scent can bestow such a powerful Blessing, just imagine how much terrifying Power would be unleashed by eating it."

"If you eat it, you’ll immediately have to face the One-Eyed," Blaze said, picking up the fruit and looking over at the chicken beside them, which was showing off its beautiful body to the Forging House apprentices. "But a certain someone told me to gain a deeper understanding before going to confront that Deity."

"This old man isn’t consumed by that much Greed. Being able to raise the Enhancement success rate is already more than enough to satisfy me. I’ll accept this official business of yours." Hade forcefully stretched his burly frame, then bellowed at an apprentice who was trying to sneakily pluck a feather.

"Boys, close the shop and pack your bags! We’ve got a massive order of business!"

After calling the apprentices over to help, Master Hade seemed to have grown several years younger as he enthusiastically threw an arm around Blaze’s shoulders.

"With me taking action, those Foreigners will definitely flock to the front of my shop like a pack of starving Ghosts."

"Why is that?"

"Don’t you know?" In high spirits, Hade pointed a thumb at himself and grinned proudly.

"I spend over three hundred days a year dead drunk. Whenever I get wasted, I drink for more than twenty hours straight. Add to that the fact that my Enhancement success rate is much higher than anyone else’s... Therefore, to the Foreigners, I am a master Blacksmith whose probability of being sober is a mere 0.01 percent!"