Blacksmith vs. the System 301

I stepped through the gate, bringing me to the fourth floor of the dungeon while the spy floated next to me, and the young man followed, making me wonder if his ring was even stronger than he realized.

Or maybe he was even more naive than I had assumed. Difficult to truly judge.

“You do know that it wasn’t a spell that he used on me, right?” he asked.

I might have deflected it, but his attempted probing was hardly as secretive as he had hoped. “Oh, are you sure about it?”

“I recognized the effect,” he started, and I deliberately put a teasing smirk, a silent reminder that he hadn’t recognized anything until I pointed it. The shameful blush that appeared on his face rather than anger was a good sign. “Well, once you point it out, of course. For that, you have my thanks.”

I nodded silently, accepting his thanks, my focus mostly on the spy, setting several wards around him to make sure he would stay alive even if he had other tricks.

I also noticed the absence of a title at the end of the sentence, which felt rather pointed. It didn’t surprise me. While he was being manipulated by the spy, considering the speed he was able to catch the true nature of the manipulation, it had to be mostly surface level. It meant that his perspective of a Blacksmith not being a fitting king came from himself.

It wasn’t a problem. Ultimately, I didn’t care much about his opinion. I only cared when he declared that in a crowded room, turning into a challenge I needed to address.

The silence stretched for a minute, and the young man started to shuffle his feet, slowly getting uncomfortable with my silence despite the question, before he spilled. “I know you have Charisma. There’s no other way you could have caught his manipulation,” he spilled.

I turned to him, my lips quirked in amusement. That little trick with the silence was my unique variant, one that I had used back when I had to deal with problematic students. It worked surprisingly well on young people with little worldly experience, which the young man clearly qualified for . “Oh, do I, kiddo?”

“Don’t call me kiddo,” he growled, finally annoyed.

“I don’t have a name to call you, do I, kiddo?” I responded, which worked well enough to distract him further.

“I am Jaiella —,” he started. “Call me Joey,” he corrected himself, using the most obvious fake name I had ever heard, but I let it slide. His gaze tightened. “And, I know you have Charisma.”

“Do I? Are you sure? After all, it’s a rather kingly stat, don’t you think?”

“Do you think a few points of Charisma is such a big deal? Only in this backwater land.”

“Maybe you’re right, young Joel,” I said, playing to his perception that my Charisma was not particularly significant. It wasn’t ideal that he knew its existence in the first place, but now that he did, I wanted to see if I could turn that into a perk.

Despite our best efforts, information about Charisma was limited.

He looked surprised. “Am I?”

“Well, you’re right. This is a backwater place, and we barely had the System for three years. We poor natives have a lot of things we don’t know. Maybe you can enlighten me so that I can fix that grievous mistake.”

“Fine,” he said, not even bothering to argue that he hadn’t just arrived to Earth. “But only because I owe you one, blacksmith.”

I nodded.

He chewed his cheek. “It’s for your own good that you don’t call yourself a king. Not truly,” he started. “It’s not an empty title to be thrown around. Not when the System is included. It is not just about being the strongest, or the overseers wouldn’t have called themselves mere City Lords.”

I nodded. “I had wondered about it. It didn’t look like they were driven by their humility.”

“No, they were not,” he responded. “Calling yourself king invites the judgment threefold … and failing has consequences. I’ll explain, but don’t talk about it much. They are considered secrets.”

“I have tight lips. Now, three judgments?” I asked.

“Land, subjects, and soul,” he responded. “It’s a convergence. Three approvals, all at once, and then again every day you breathe. Most people don’t have the necessary soul strength, so it’s out.”

“Oh,” I responded. “Is there a way to measure it?”

“Not easily, but unless you can handle Celestial skills, there’s no reason to check,” he said.

“Mythic is not enough, then?” I questioned, subtly testing him about skill rarity as well.

He scoffed. “Of course not,” he responded. “Neither is Ethereal. Not when it comes to kingship. Do you have any idea just how many stats are involved in a king’s title? Most souls can’t bear it for a month before dissipating. It’s not like forcibly absorbing an external skill.”

It was lucky that he mentioned that. A monumental input, though one requiring verification. I had already known that the System impacted the soul, exhausting whenever one felt like experimenting, but I hadn’t known that there were long-term effects.

Admittedly, I suspected, which was why I warned everyone about the potential long-term risks whenever they upgraded their skills or class. Not that it mattered much. In a world where life expectancy as a statistic was mostly a joke, long terms potential risks were more of a joke than anything else.

That was without factoring in the potential void invasion.

“Still, there should be many people from your home planet who want to get such a title. I’m sure people’s approval could be gained if they protect them against the monsters.”

He scoffed. “Good luck with that. Gaining people’s approval is not that simple. Killing a few monsters is not enough, nor is protecting them. You need to gain their approval and loyalty completely.”

“So, it requires Charisma in the first place,” I baited.

He scoffed. “Yeah, good luck with that. Charisma only makes it harder. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. The real challenge is gaining the approval of the land.”

“How so?” I said, feeling curious. While I felt like I had fulfilled the first two, the last one did not fit in. Especially since I sincerely doubted that he was talking about the dungeons, which were very explicitly external domains.

“Simple. One needs to be a native. It’s almost impossible for an outsider to gain the approval of the land. The land recognizes the souls it birthed, and it rejects the ones that arrive from distant lands. It requires a resonance.”

“That part is not a problem for me, right?”

He scoffed. “Oh, but it is. It’s clear that you have been greedy enough to bind yourself into the dungeon. Once you do, you destroy any chance of binding with the land.”

“Really, I can’t?” I said, not questioning him about how he knew I bound myself into the dungeon. Neither the tales of my infinite mana, nor the dozens of dungeon gates covering our ever-growing city were secrets.

I was more interested in his judgment, as his declaration sounded far too confident, particularly considering he was referring to something I had already achieved.

“It’s the drawback of the binding method,” he said. “No matter how fine the protective layer, ultimately, it dulls the connection of your soul with the land. You’ll lose your ability to speak with it.”

“I see,” I said, finally understanding where the disconnect was. As I had no protective layer, the dungeon linking directly to my soul, something that almost killed me.

It was good to see that it had certain benefits.

“Sounds difficult,” I admitted.

“It is, especially since one has to achieve all before ascension to solidify one’s class. It makes it harder to gain loyalty, as it couldn’t be just lip service. It has to be recognized in their hearts, a silent oath that even the System recognizes. Not fear. Not mere admiration. Recognition.” He sighed. “I'm sorry about reacting aggressively back in the meeting, but no matter what, it’s impossible for a production class to achieve it.”

“I see; what a pity,” I said, not trying to correct his misconceptions. I had no use for it.

“A pity indeed,” he admitted. “A new world like this, kingship wouldn’t have been the end of the path. But, it’s not a path that can be taken by anyone.”

I let the silence stretch once more while I finished building the wards around the spy.

There were a lot of questions to be asked.