"Clang! Clang! Clang!"
As the saying went: pull the bellows with a whoosh and a puff, swing the sledgehammer with a clatter and a clang. At this moment, a player with the ID "Gangtie Kuangchao" was wildly hammering iron with brute force, a sizable pile of wrought-iron pipes already stacked beside him.
Gangtie Kuangchao paid no heed to the searing heat blasting against his face, nor did he care about the sweat pouring down his brow. His expression was wildly excited, as though he possessed an endless reservoir of energy.
This fellow had chosen the barbarian class, yet he had hardly ever fought in battle; he had picked it purely to obtain greater strength.
And that brute force was used for only one thing: blacksmithing.
Indeed, from the moment he entered the game, he had done nothing but hammer iron nonstop. By now, he had become the youngest and strongest blacksmith in the City of Baator's smithy.
Standing aside, Dammon, the old tiefling smith of the blacksmith shop, watched him with glaring eyes and a bristling beard. "You rascal! Shirking honest work all day—what's the point of tinkering with these pieces of junk?"
He shook his head and sighed, his face full of heartache.
"What a waste of good material! With this much fine iron back in my youth, I could have forged you a set of the finest armor."
Gangtie Kuangchao shot the old smith a disdainful glance, never pausing his hammer for an instant.
"It's not like I haven't been working for you. I finished my quest quota ages ago! I can do whatever I damn well please on my own time, so quit your yapping."
Gazing at the crooked iron pipes, his expression grew feverish once more, his voice laced with uncontainable excitement:
"Just you wait and see, Old Dammon."
"The course of history lies right beneath my hammer!"
Gangtie Kuangchao declared spiritedly as he hammered away with passionate vigor.
Dammon: "..."
Fortunately, he had seen plenty over the past few days. No matter what these fellows who called themselves "players" said or did, Old Dammon was no longer surprised in the slightest.
"Tsk, tsk... these people."
It was nothing more than habit.
Dammon drifted into his memories.
A few months ago, while minding the shop, two players had seemingly come in to buy gear like ordinary customers.
One chatted with him, while the other brazenly began stealing right inside the smithy, rummaging around in a noisy clatter, turning the place into a complete mess, and in the end even shoved a hand straight into Dammon's pocket.
Meanwhile, the accomplice attempting to "distract him" kept up the conversation without blushing, a racing pulse, or a twitch in his expression.
This had left Dammon utterly dumbfounded. He had seen thieves before, but never ones so blatant. And even among the brazen, he had never seen anyone so arrogant.
Old Dammon's patience snapped right then and there. Veins bulged on his arms as he seized a ten-jin hammer and knocked both of them flat.
When he summoned the peace officers to haul them away, the two "players" struggled relentlessly, looking bewildered and babbling nonsense like, "I snuck up behind him!" "My Stealth check should've succeeded!" and "We were clearly locked in dialogue!" leaving Dammon thoroughly speechless.
Later, however, as such incidents grew increasingly frequent, Old Dammon gradually became numb to it all. He began knocking thieves unconscious with his hammer without batting an eye, as routine as a seasoned farmer reaping wheat.
Yet over time, he also discovered their positive side: they were tireless, entirely heedless of life and death.
For example, he no longer had to do any heavy lifting himself—all the work had been handed over to these blacksmith apprentices.
"Done! It's done!"
"I succeeded!"
Gangtie Kuangchao's excited shouting interrupted Old Dammon's reverie.
Just as the old smith moved forward to take a look, a dozen player apprentices swarmed past, completely disregarding Dammon's old bones.
"A bunch of insolent brats," Old Dammon muttered under his breath.
Still, he couldn't be bothered to look anyway. Who knew what devilry they were tinkering with?
Old Dammon reclined in his chair, narrowed his eyes, draped an old yellowed book over his face, and settled in to enjoy his idle time free of labor.
"It worked! It worked!" Gangtie Kuangchao roared wildly.
The crowd packed the smithy so tightly that water couldn't leak through, their eyes glued to the newly cooled, crude iron gun barrel.
Every one of them belonged to the same guild: the Machine Cult.
This was a guild composed of machinery enthusiasts led by Gangtie Kuangchao. Their slogan was "The flesh is weak; mechanical ascension!" Unfortunately, none of the game's early base classes had anything to do with machinery.
Fortunately, they were astonished to discover that various physical and chemical reactions from reality could manifest through magic in Elezerg. Thus, the players of the Machine Cult took an unconventional path, blazing a new trail of smithing: smithing.
Now, Dammon's Blacksmith Shop was filled with plenty of new additions: iron pipes, crude springs, taps and dies, a rudimentary lathe, bench drills, bench vises, files, and more—all concocted by these machine zealots.
Seeing that they worked for him for free, Dammon turned a blind eye and let them fool around.
Guild member and renowned firearm enthusiast "Zhandi Lunyiren" shouted, "Bring me the best wood! The stock needs to be huge!"
Now, the Machine Cult players bustled about the smithy with great enthusiasm.
"One part saltpeter, two parts sulfur, three parts charcoal! The equipment is poor right now, so let's make do with traditional black powder."
"Where are our trigger and hammer?"
"Damn it, that old codger Dammon took them and forged them into rings! We have to remake them."
"What about shot? Grab some plowshare iron—break it up and it'll do the trick."
"Ammunition? Small steel balls work. We can add a bit of lead, wrap them in cloth before firing, and ram them right down the barrel so they won't fall out."
Soon, through everyone's frantic efforts, what was perhaps the very first firearm on the land of Anzeta came into being.
A muzzle-loading percussion shotgun that could be considered ancient lay quietly before them. It featured a rough wrought-iron barrel, a crude hammer-percussion firing mechanism, and an absurdly oversized wooden stock. Beside it lay scattered oilcloth-wrapped "cartridges," with a dozen loose steel balls having tumbled out, while the smell of saltpeter permeated the air.
Though it looked crudely cobbled together, like scrap salvaged from an abandoned factory, it embodied the sweat and blood of everyone present.
Crafting such a contraption in a place whose productivity was roughly equivalent to the Middle Ages had naturally been a grueling ordeal.
"Did it work?"
"Pick it up and test it, quick!"
Gangtie Kuangchao carefully picked up the makeshift gun and painstakingly rammed the oilcloth-wrapped ammunition into the barrel, losing several steel balls in the process.
He slowly raised the makeshift firearm, leveling the muzzle at a scarecrow target prepared in advance.
The members of the Machine Cult held their breath.
Bang!
The gun fired, cracking like a bolt of thunder on a clear day.
Old Dammon, who was sleeping soundly, jolted awake with a start, the book tumbling from his face.
He roared in fury, "What are you brats up to now?!"
Only to see the players dancing and cheering wildly around an odd-looking, beat-up iron tube.
Beside them, the scarecrow was shredded to tatters, billowing with black smoke, while warm iron pellets lay scattered across the ground.
The air hung heavy with the smell of gunsmoke.
"Just messing with that junk again..."
Old Dammon mumbled under his breath, picked up the tattered book from the floor, patted off the dust, placed it over his face once more, and drifted groggily back to sleep.
Chapter 95