Genius Blacksmith's Game

The beings who created the story of the virtual-reality game Ares were divided into three categories.

The first category.

They were the employees Pureum kept all over the world.

Hundreds of thousands of experts in every field created new characters, stories, quests, artifacts, and more through meetings and discussion.

The second category.

It was the supercomputer Ares.

Ares did not merely create new stories.

It sorted the stories the employees created into suitable and unsuitable ones so they could seep properly into Ares.

It also added or newly created stories so the narrative could continue smoothly.

To begin with, a single supercomputer was superior to all of humanity combined, and it was accurate to say the employees made up 20%, while the supercomputer Ares made up 40%.

The final category.

This was not a story someone had created.

Every NPC in Ares thought exactly like a human, acted exactly like a human, and variables caused by users also occurred.

Thus, there were stories naturally created according to the flow of the narrative, and these made up roughly 40%.

At that moment.

When the episode “Goyad,” which had effectively been on track for abolition, erupted, the Special User Management Team had no choice but to be curious, and Team Lead Kim was certain.

“It’s the third category.”

“An episode naturally derived according to the flow of the story?”

“Right.”

Team Lead Kim thought about the episode Goyad.

Originally, this episode Goyad should have ended with a user inheriting the throne.

However, many things had changed from the moment Master Blacksmith Hyun met Sword King Barad.

Team Lead Kim gave a small laugh.

“Want me to tell you something interesting?”

“What is it?”

“The nation of Goyad was originally supposed to be destroyed around this time.”

“......???”

Lee Jihui looked shocked.

“You know I have the authority to ask questions of Ares too, right?”

The right to ask the supercomputer Ares questions.

Only a few people inside Pureum had it, and Team Lead Kim was one of them.

“I know. Of course, yours is limited compared to CEO Lee Sejin’s.”

“When the ranker called Lord became the Sword King’s successor, I asked Ares a question. What would happen to Goyad if the person called Lord became Sword King? The answer was this: ‘Within three years. Goyad will fall.’”

“.......”

It was undeniably shocking.

Lee Jihui quietly recalled the original Goyad.

Sword King Barad had been going mad from grief after losing his son, and the user Lord had become his successor.

Of course, Ares had not made that judgment because Lord was lacking.

At the time, Barad had been weakening rapidly and losing the will to live.

Barad, who knew he would die before much time had passed, had accepted Lord in haste.

The Special User Management Team could also closely check an NPC’s condition.

“Barad’s condition at the time was like this. He is rapidly weakening and dying after falling into grief and despair.”

But not anymore.

Click—

When Team Lead Kim clicked, Barad’s current state, clearly different from his past state, appeared.

[He is endlessly improving in order to reach a new realm and will live out his natural lifespan before dying.]

He was so healthy that it was as if his second prime had begun, to the point that Lee Jihui said this.

“At this rate, won’t he become Overlord-class......?”

“.......”

It was a bewildering matter for the Special User Management Team, but Lee Jihui’s words were by no means an exaggeration.

They could not know how much time would pass, but it truly seemed possible that someday, he might reach such a realm.

What was even more surprising was this.

“And an NPC like this is user Hyunsoo’s best friend?”

“......?”

Not just a friend, but his best friend.

After all, Hyunsoo was the one who had given Barad a new life.

As they discussed why the Goyad episode had changed, they ultimately arrived at the conclusion that “Hyunsoo is the best.” Then they focused on the original story again.

“It should give us at least a hint soon.”

A hint about how this content had changed.

And the notification that appeared soon after became that hint.

[Vera, the Death-Spirit King, enters the Sword King’s tomb.]

*****

A year and a half ago.

When the first Myth, the White Tiger Sword, was born in the world, Hyun wrote a new history.

On the same day.

One high-ranker took first place as “the unluckiest user of the year.”

Her name was Vera.

Vera.

She had risen to the position of first corps commander of the Legendary class Gremory, which she had searched for over a long period.

What could the first corps commander do?

She held command authority over all twenty-two corps, which reached the realm of legend.

The world was stunned.

The existence closest to a Great Archdemon.

That was Gremory’s first corps commander.

However, on that very same day.

Vera drew the entire world’s attention once again.

[The Great Archdemon Gremory falls into eternal rest.]

[All twenty-two corps commanders of the Great Archdemon Gremory have died.]

The people of the world, who had been stunned, could only become dumbfounded.

—Guys, Vera became a corps commander, right? But if all twenty-one corps commanders got wiped out and Gremory died too, what happens now?

—She’s screwed.

—The twenty-one corps she could command are all dead, and Gremory, who was supposed to grant her power, is gone too, yeah? She’s been left all alone in this world now~

Vera also could not deny that fact, and she remembered.

Not all Legendaries are the same kind of Legendary.

Vera had died after taking only two hits from Asura Kabel.

Even though they were both Legendaries.

And when her login restriction time ended and she logged in immediately, the Great Archdemon Gremory and the twenty-two corps commanders were already dead.

After that incident, she disappeared.

Some people said it was only natural that she disappeared.

They said she must not have been able to endure the sense of loss after the Legendary class she had gained overnight was taken away from her.

But now.

It took a year and a half.

After completely vanishing for a year and a half, she showed herself once more.

Even now, whenever she thought of that time, her blood boiled backward.

Naturally, as soon as she saw that Gremory had died, she abandoned her position as Gremory’s first corps commander.

However, the fact that she had become Gremory’s first corps commander had not been purely luck, but skill.

Vera, who had left, was reborn as a new Legendary class: Death-Spirit King.

What kind of class was Death-Spirit King?

It was different from a necromancer.

Necromancers needed “corpses,” and the corpses had to exist, while those corpses obeyed their master’s commands.

But the Death-Spirit King did not use corpses.

She was an existence capable of conversing with beings who had lived in ancient times and borrowing their power.

And the place she was entering now.

The place where the kings of Goyad are buried.

It was not a special place.

A member of Goyad’s royal family or a noble could enter.

It was a place where several magnificent tombstones of Goyad’s royal house stood.

After arriving there, Vera smiled softly and reviewed the quest she had received.

[Hidden Quest: First Sword King Baman.]

Grade: S

Restriction: Death-Spirit King.

Reward: Additional death-spirit slot.

Penalty upon failure: Wrath of the Sword King family.

Description: First Sword King Baman. Long ago, he fell into rest while wishing that the nation he founded would prosper and that the name of Sword King would be carried on generation after generation. Tell him about the current Goyad.

This gave Vera a new goal.

As the quest contents said, had Vera come merely to say that the current Goyad was “better now thanks to Hyunsoo!”?

No.

As soon as she received this quest, she dug through hundreds of documents to learn about First Sword King Baman.

The creator of the Sword King’s swordsmanship.

The founder of Goyad.

A stubborn man who believed the sword was supreme in the world.

Setting many things aside, what interested her was this.

On the day Goyad falls into crisis, Sword King Baman awakens together with the Sword Kings.

It was something she had found in an old document.

Documents discovered in Ares were different from those in reality.

Most of them were “real” and became “hints.”

That was why she moved through the tomb grounds.

The black robe pulled low over her head contrasted with the surrounding scenery.

In a tomb ground where green trees and grass grew in orderly fashion, Vera, wearing a black robe pulled deeply over her head, stood before the tomb at the highest point.

[First Sword King Baman. Sleeps here.......]

Seeing it, she recited the casting words.

“I ask to speak with you......”

[The slumbering dead spirit. First Sword King Baman, is awakened.]

Soon, a man appeared above the tomb.

He was unmistakably an old man.

However, his steel-like frame, which looked exactly like Barad’s, announced that he was Barad’s ancestor, and his long white hair was disheveled.

He’s clearly gaunt.......

His bones were so enormous that he did not look thin, and his eyes were so upright and unyielding that Vera flinched.

[First Sword King Baman Lv.564.]

Baman, awakened as a dead spirit, looked at Vera.

A long time had passed, and he had hoped someone would tell him the story of Goyad. He had known someone would come.

“What became of Goyad?”

His voice carried the roughness of an old man, but an enormous power was also loaded into it.

“Does it still stand firm? What is the name of the current descendant?”

To be honest, Vera knew.

Goyad.

It had abandoned its other name as the nation of swords, and by uniting swords and blacksmithing techniques as one, it had grown even greater.

In fact, Goyad, which received high-quality swords from the nation of Hyun, had become so remarkable that its national power had risen by more than 15% compared to the past.

And because its soldiers wore high-quality armor, the sacrifices suffered during subjugations had noticeably decreased, and it had become a nation that steadily produced skilled swordsmen.

However.

As the saying went, old habits die hard. As a former demon corps commander, she was still skilled at using that glib tongue of hers.

Furthermore.

The Death-Spirit King had something called “a dead spirit’s resentment.”

That resentment was what the dead had longed for so desperately while alive.

When she spoke about that, it gave her words far more sincerity and the power to make the dead believe her.

With this, Vera had coaxed many dead spirits.

“It has split into two. In other words, it has been torn apart.”

“What?”

That glib tongue shook Baman’s eyes.

“Master Blacksmith Hyun absorbed many things from the nation through Sword King Barad, and using that power, he founded his own nation. During that process, Master Blacksmith Hyun, who was originally a Goyad noble, declared his territory independent, then founded a separate nation soon after. The foundation for that came from what he obtained from your descendant, Sword King Barad.”

There were no lies, but the reason behind words was important.

The reason it had split into two countries.

Hyun had left Goyad himself to protect Sword King Barad’s position.

However, it reached Baman differently.

He felt as if the current Sword King had been robbed.

Of course, even so, Sword King Baman had no intention of interfering in the affairs of his descendants, nor did he intend to kill the man called Hyun.

However.

“He is a blacksmith.”

“A blacksmith? Those who make arms?”

“That is correct.”

He was an old-fashioned man full of stubbornness.

In an even older era, blacksmiths had been a profession held in even greater contempt.

Also, Vera did not intend to tell him, “Hyunsoo is a bad man!”

She simply said,

“Why not personally test that man’s position, First Sword King?”

What she wanted was chaos in the nation of Hyun.

She was also curious what would happen to the nation of Hyun if he failed the First Sword King’s test.

She was filled with rage toward Hyun.

Because Hyun’s friend, Asura Kabel, had killed and humiliated her.

And because she believed Hyun was the one responsible for killing Gremory and taking away her Legendary class in a single day.

Vera was foolish enough that she did not realize everything had been her own fault and had originated from her own mistakes.

Baman muttered,

“The Sword Kings are awakened when the nation faces a crisis......”

The power of the first generation that Sword King Baman had hidden away thoroughly.

The power to summon the Sword Kings who had existed as time passed, or their successors.

It was a power born from the hope that his descendants would endure.

At times, against traitors.

Or against enemy nations that threatened the country.

Or against an empire.

Vera’s word “test” also resonated with him.

Yes.

He was only trying to test him.

First Sword King Baman.

As he touched the necklace hanging around his neck, he agonized before making a decision.

The Sword King’s tomb grounds.

“Descendants, answer my call.”

[The dead will be awakened for 72 hours.]

WHOOOOOSH—!

Soon, a tremendous gust of wind blew through the Sword King’s tomb grounds, and four descendants began to appear.

“.......”

Vera admired them as she watched.

Each one resembled Baman or Barad, and their presences were extraordinary.

Their weapons were all different.

One held a greatsword, another dual swords. Another carried a rapier, and another a plain longsword.

One thing was certain.

They were the “pillars” that had supported Goyad.

One of the awakened men asked,

“Where is our destination?”

Sword King Baman looked toward the setting sun and said,

“The nation of Hyun.”

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