Genius Blacksmith's Game

Eight hundred years ago.

Balladra, the Dragon of Ruin, was a Transcendent breed that made the world tremble in fear.

Back then, the entire continent shook because of Balladra, the Dragon of Ruin.

No one could even count how many castles had fallen to it, and even a decent kingdom couldn’t stand as its equal.

Then Balladra heard stories about the legendary Saint—the strongest of that era.

Balladra sneered.

After all, there were legends that had already melted away under its Breath.

The idea that a mere human could be called an absolute being didn’t sit well with Balladra.

So it spewed its Breath at the great territory Atlas.

And so, eight hundred years ago, the great territory Atlas vanished into history.

On the day everything in Atlas collapsed, Balladra, the Dragon of Ruin, fought the Saint.

Balladra was impressed.

Balladra’s nature is evil.

It wasn’t a demon, a demonfolk, or undead, but it had slaughtered countless lives.

By Balladra’s standards, the Saint was someone it should have been able to kill.

But that Saint unleashed a power strong enough to stand up to Balladra.

It was because of the Saint’s power of good.

And one of the reasons Balladra had been so heavily influenced by that good was the black magic Balladra had learned.

It was the only dragon capable of wielding black magic—and even in death, it could become a Bone Dragon.

The will to keep destroying and crushing things even after dying had taken root inside it.

In the end, Balladra was defeated and became a Bone Dragon.

Then, the Saint—gravely wounded—drove it deep underground and sealed it so it could never crawl back out.

Balladra had been trapped here for a long time, waiting for the day it could return to the surface.

And today, some human showed up.

The human wasn’t strong.

So Bone Dragon Balladra decided it would toy with this plaything that had appeared after eight hundred years.

But then—

-???

The human was grinning at it with a hungry, eager look, like they were drooling.

Balladra thought the human was insane.

-So a wretch has dared step onto this land. Die.

It unleashed its Breath in an instant.

An ultimate attack that most legends could endure—yet no one could avoid being grievously wounded by it.

And the Breath was the strongest attack of all, reaching out to a radius of four hundred meters.

Balladra panicked.

‘What is this?’

The human—who should have melted from head to toe—was spotless in the blink of an eye.

Balladra didn’t hesitate. It cast magic.

It was an existence that could spam eighth-class magic.

But no matter what spell it used, the human recovered.

Now truly rattled, Balladra whipped its tail.

Even twin-headed ogres had been reduced to splinters with a single hit from that tail.

‘......?’

But the human was fine again.

It slammed down with its foreleg.

KRAAACK!

The ground was gouged out four meters deep, and the human was driven into the pit.

But again—clean as ever.

It bit down with its teeth.

Inside its mouth, it felt the taste of the human’s blood being crushed between its jaws.

But then...

‘What in the world is this thing!?’

What it understood even less was the hungry look the human kept making while staring right at it.

And as Balladra listened to what the human said while beating it with basic attacks, it became certain of one thing.

‘This human is using me to test something...?’

Daring to use a dragon like itself?

Sure, this was Balladra after weakening to nearly half its strength compared to its living body.

Even so, Balladra was still a dragon with power that could go toe-to-toe with legends, even now.

What kind of person uses something as a test subject?

Someone who can make the target submit easily.

That was only natural.

And Balladra drew confidence from the sight of the human attacking it without using any magic at all.

‘Confidence that they can kill me whenever they want....’

On top of that, the sword in the human’s hand—soaked in holy power—brought Balladra tremendous pain.

As mentioned, Balladra was a massive monster, standing twelve meters tall.

Even so, when it took a direct hit from an artifact packed with strong holy power, it felt searing pain.

It was pain like the struck area was melting away.

Of course, if it weren’t for the holy power, it wouldn’t have hurt this much.

And that insane human kept swinging, and swinging, and swinging that sword into it.

A sword that came down almost one and a half times per second.

Meaning, every two seconds, three times, one spot would be swallowed by ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) pain that felt like it was melting.

When that passed one thousand strikes—

‘Please stop....’

Balladra, the Dragon of Ruin, was a being that had reigned as an absolute being.

It didn’t believe it could ever submit. It had never really known fear, either.

And because it didn’t know fear, it hit even harder.

This feeling inside it was unfamiliar.

‘Please. Stop.’

Because it was unfamiliar, it was terrifying.

Fear, dread, pain.

Every time those three struck it, it screamed on the inside.

But it endured—because it still had a dragon’s dignity.

And when it passed three thousand strikes, it realized something.

‘This one has reached the realm of immortality.’

Dragon Balladra didn’t know about the Saint’s Sword that had turned into a bug item through a mistake.

It only knew that what Hyunsoo was doing—this recovery—was the dream of all species: immortality.

Someone who had attained immortality was an existence even Balladra, a mere dragon, couldn’t do anything about.

Wrapped in fear, dread, and pain, its mind breaking apart, Balladra finally believed Hyunsoo was someone who possessed immortality—and it began to submit.

‘Yes... if they possess immortality, then perhaps my defeat was inevitable.’

Balladra itself had also dreamed of immortality, which was why it had walked the path of becoming a Bone Dragon.

When it passed four thousand strikes, after it had already submitted, it wished for just one thing.

‘Let this pain and fear end soon....’

The pain only grew worse the longer it went on, and there was no sign of it stopping.

It tried not to show it, but if it had eyes, they might have rolled back in its skull.

And when it reached five thousand strikes, a strange feeling suddenly seeped in.

‘What is this unknown power?’

An unknown power was controlling it.

That power even made it feel respect for the one who could neutralize it so lightly.

And before the tremendous might of the man standing before it, Balladra submitted completely.

Now it wanted only one thing.

‘For this pain to end quickly....’

Balladra began thinking about how this pain could end as fast as possible.

*****

[The Lord’s Grace is activated.]

Hyunsoo, who had been collecting(?) the Bone Dragon, was startled by the notification.

‘Why is The Lord’s Grace activating on the Bone Dragon?’

The Lord’s Grace activates on those nearby.

Meaning the only possible target here was the Bone Dragon.

And what confused Hyunsoo most was that the activation condition for The Lord’s Grace didn’t match the current situation.

(The Lord’s Grace)

Unique Title

Grade: S

Special Ability:

·If it is judged that someone has received a favor from you that they will never forget for the rest of their life, it activates with an 8% chance.

·Upon activation, they develop a desire to be with you, or they gain deep respect and loyalty toward you, and they may also develop other emotions.

·They may volunteer to become your vassal.

Just like that—if someone judged they had received a favor from him, or if they had a desire to be with him—

It maximized and drew out deep respect and loyalty.

Soon, another notification appeared.

[A special hidden event occurs within The Lord’s Grace.]

[Fear is the greatest power for making a target submit.]

“......!?”

Hyunsoo understood.

It wasn’t only when a title or skill explicitly said, “A special event may occur,” that additional power could be unlocked.

Fear was the greatest power for making a target submit.

The reason no one could oppose a king and instead followed him was the authority he held.

But Hyunsoo frowned in confusion.

‘If that logic holds, then plenty of monsters should’ve felt fear toward me until now, right?’

If so, it should’ve activated on countless monsters indiscriminately.

And then Hyunsoo realized.

‘Me holding the Saint’s Sword and recovering infinitely... that must’ve planted an absurd level of fear into the Bone Dragon.’

In other words, it hadn’t happened indiscriminately.

It seemed fear had to climb far higher than his common sense before it would trigger.

Meaning—

‘Except for today, it’ll be hard to make something submit through fear.’

It was only possible because he had the Saint’s Sword.

But Hyunsoo ignored the notification and struck it faster, harder.

And then, at last, the Bone Dragon revealed the emotion it had been hiding.

-Please... stop. Stop!

The Bone Dragon looked terrible.

After taking Hyunsoo’s basic attacks over and over, its bones had caved in and cracked all over.

It didn’t bend its knees, but it lowered its head.

-I admit I have lost to your strength. I will follow you.

But a question rose in Hyunsoo’s mind.

‘Me... taking this thing?’

[The Bone Dragon cannot leave the dungeon.]

Even the notification said it was impossible.

The Bone Dragon’s power was immense.

But Hyunsoo’s first thoughts were worry.

If he had the Bone Dragon’s great power, it would help Hyun’s Forge a lot going forward.

But not only could he not take it outside, the side effects that would come from taking it were far too many.

“You can’t go out anyway, can you?”

Hyunsoo hit the core of it.

The Bone Dragon acknowledged him.

-You who made me submit. There is a way for me to follow you—can you grant what I desire?

Hyunsoo looked puzzled.

-Give me peaceful rest.

The Bone Dragon looked over its own body.

A Bone Dragon was an existence that couldn’t be healed.

Sure, it might be different if you dragged it to some absurdly powerful necromancer.

But anyway—its bones were shattered and sunken in across its entire body.

Meaning, it wanted to stop suffering from basic attacks and die quickly, all at once.

But it didn’t add up.

“How are you going to serve me if you’re dead?”

-After I die, I will be reborn. I will be no more than a hatchling, and I will lose all memories from my life.

“So you’re saying you get peaceful rest, and the thing that’s reborn will follow me? That’s pretty shameless.”

-.......

Part of it was true.

But for Hyunsoo, this was honestly better.

First, he couldn’t take the Bone Dragon with him right now—and even if he could, taking a full-grown Bone Dragon would bring even worse side effects, like he’d thought.

But there was still one more question.

“How do I know it’ll follow me?”

-Dragons recognize the first thing they see after being born as their parent.

It made sense.

And honestly, whether he kept hitting it with basic attacks for ten more minutes or killed it in one blow didn’t make much difference.

‘I already collected all the materials.’

Hyunsoo had nothing to lose.

“What will it be reborn as?”

Hyunsoo imagined a hatchling—something out of a story.

-It will be reborn in the form I had when I died. It will be born as a Bone Dragon hatchling.

That was a real shame.

Compared to a true dragon, even when it matured, it would be far weaker.

Hyunsoo asked the most important thing.

“How long until it’s fully grown?”

-It will need to be at least one hundred years old.

That was about thirty years in real time.

‘So I got a Bone Dragon... but I didn’t really get anything?’

Like he’d said, Hyunsoo didn’t have much to regret.

‘Besides, I was going to kill it soon anyway.’

Hyunsoo maximized the Sword Cry using the Twin Dragon Sword meant for buffs.

Then he swapped to the attack-type Twin Dragon Sword and cut it down with Sword Cry.

RRRRRUMBLE—

As the Bone Dragon collapsed, its expression finally looked like it was receiving peaceful rest.

And an enormous notification was rising in front of Hyunsoo.

But he pushed the notification aside for the moment.

He focused on something else.

Between the completely collapsed fragments of the Bone Dragon’s bones—

A being inside shook itself off.

Soon, it fully stood up amid the bone dust.

‘Small?’

Its size was about the same as Lucky Lump.

A little bigger than two fists pressed together.

It was made of bone, and its appearance was, literally, like a baby Bone Dragon.

It looked around.

Then it met Hyunsoo’s eyes and tilted its head.

“Kyoo-kyoo?”

It was a dragon’s cry—and ridiculously cute.

“Kyoo-kyoo-kyoo, kyoo-ang!”

Then it ran at Hyunsoo like an ostrich.

It jumped with all its strength, but it only reached Hyunsoo’s knee, so Hyunsoo snatched it up before it could fall.

In his arms, it looked delighted.

“Kyoo-kyoo!”

[The Bone Dragon’s hatchling recognizes you as its parent.]

“Kyoooooong!”

Then it buried its head into Hyunsoo’s chest.

[The Bone Dragon’s hatchling likes your embrace.]

“Kyoooooong....”

In his arms, it made a sound like it was asking to be put to sleep.

Hyunsoo gave a bitter smile.

The Bone Dragon’s words were true, and Hyunsoo had gained a baby Bone Dragon pet.

‘It’s a shame it’s not a real dragon, but....’

RRRRRUMBLE—

As the Dragon’s Grave began collapsing, Hyunsoo was swallowed in light.

And in that moment, Hyunsoo didn’t know.

He didn’t know that the one reborn as a Bone Dragon hatchling would become a true dragon.