Reincarnated as an SSS-Ranked Blacksmith Who Refuses to Forge Weapons-Chapter 223. The Hard Version

The figure didn’t get any closer. It sat on the grass, as if it had all the time in the world, which it had just told them.

The Brotherhood held weapons in their tired, shaky hands, and the First Forgemaster looked at them all with the calm look of someone watching kids play with something dangerous.

The First Forgemaster’s gaze, while not exactly looking down, resembled that of someone who had seen this scene so often that it no longer surprised them.

"Calm down," the figure said.

The voice was warm and calm, and it had the kind of weight that came not from divine authority but from having been around long enough to know that yelling didn’t help anything. "I could kill you if I wanted to."

"I’ve had about three thousand years to get really good at being efficient."

No one put down their weapons. Greg’s prosthetic arm held a rough defensive shape out of instinct, even though the golden energy that flickered along it wasn’t even enough to light a candle.

It was five percent of the capacity, and he could feel every little bit of it.

At that moment, the First Forgemaster looked right at him, and Greg saw something in those old eyes that he hadn’t expected to see. Real fun.

The figure said, "I don’t want you dead."

"I want you to live, just because you did something amazing: you made me wrong."

Greg blinked. "What?"

"I built the First Forge before the gods found it and claimed it as their own."

"I hid the First Hammer so that worthy hands would eventually find it." The figure’s face showed a hint of nostalgia for a moment. "I spent hundreds of years waiting for a warrior..."

"Maybe a conqueror or some mysterious strategist who would take divine power and use it to bring down the system from above."

The figure turned to look at Greg.

"Instead... I got a blacksmith who makes household items."

That made someone laugh, but Greg couldn’t say where he got the energy for it. It came out rough and wet, not too different from crying.

"And this blacksmith who made household items," the First Forgemaster said, still smiling but now very serious, "did what ten thousand warriors could not."

"He made the gods irrelevant, and it’s not by being stronger or by being smarter... but it’s by standing in an arena with two hundred and forty-seven people and giving them a choice."

The old eyes wrinkled. "That’s not supposed to work."

"Every calculation I’ve seen for the last three thousand years says that’s not supposed to work, but it did."

"So I was wrong." Another pause. "I love being wrong... and it means that what I thought was real is more interesting than I thought."

Weapons came down one by one, slowly. Not because anyone felt completely safe, but because the body just didn’t have enough energy to keep things up.

Marina sat down hard on the grass, and her broken ribs made her teeth hiss. Lylia stayed standing but put her head on Elwen’s shoulder. Her eyes were still open and watching, but the frost patterns on her skin had stopped spreading.

The First Forgemaster stood up, stretched like someone whose joints hadn’t been asked to move in a while, and started to talk about what would happen next.

They said plainly, "The other four pantheons will come."

"Divine politics move slowly, which is good for you."

"You have about three months before the God of Death sends someone to look into things, and six months before there is a serious attempt to intervene." A pause. "Okay, I’ll give you some choices."

The figure raised one finger.

"Option one: you come with me. There’s a workshop, far from any civilization, where I’ve been working for longer than your recorded history has existed."

"And you’ll stay there where I teach you techniques that predate divine authority entirely. The other gods won’t touch my apprentices because attacking them means answering to me, and none of them want that conversation." The finger lowered. "The price is that you can never go back."

"You’d be giving up Ferndale, Meridian, and everything else for good."

A second finger came up.

"Option two: you go back to your lives, and I can give you things that will buy you time when the gods arrive."

"You live normally, or as normally as you can, until the first scouts show up. Then you fight, and you might lose, but you’d lose for free." Another pause. "The price is that everyone you care about is always in danger, and they can’t see it coming."

And then the third finger.

"Option three." The smile came back, this time slower and more thought out. "The one I really want you to choose."

"You become what I’ve been waiting for you to become: a reason for every reincarnator on this continent to choose something other than divine servitude....You travel, teach, and show the other two hundred and forty-four people who are scattered across every kingdom exactly what those eighty in that arena learned today."

No one said anything.

"By the time the other pantheons get here," the First Forgemaster said, "you don’t fight them with just one Brotherhood and a few SSS-rank cooking tools."

"You fight them with a community, with people who have built bonds stronger than any system and learned that their worth isn’t based on divine authority."

"You turn their invasion into a statement that doesn’t land, because when what you’ve built is each other, there’s nothing to threaten."

Greg looked at the grass between his knees. He was holding Mira’s headband in both hands without knowing he had reached for it.

He said softly, "The hard version."

"The very hard version," the First Forgemaster said. "Some people who are reincarnated won’t listen."

"Some will try to take divine power for themselves as soon as they realize the three gods are gone... others will be scared, angry, or too far gone in what the gods made them."

"But if it works," Greg said.

The figure finished by saying, "If it works, you don’t just survive the other pantheons..."

"You build something they can’t take apart because it’s not made of stone or magic. It’s made of people who chose each other." They tilted their head. "So, Blacksmith, what do you want?"

Greg opened his mouth and then shut it again.

"I can’t think about pantheons right now." He said honestly, "I can hardly think about getting up."

The First Forgemaster looked at him for a long time before nodding.

"Okay."

They snapped their fingers.

BAM!

At the edge of the cliff, a cottage appeared. The cottage did not appear magically from light and smoke, but rather appeared as if it had always been there, hidden from everyone’s view.

There were stone walls, warm light coming in through the windows, and a door that looked like it had been opened and closed ten thousand times.

"One week." The First Forgemaster said, "Time here is different from time outside."

"A week on this cliff is only one day outside... so take a break, cry, and think about what you want."

They were about to leave when they stopped.

They said, "Your arm," but didn’t turn around.

"I can fix it back to its full power. The First Hammer’s power, rebuilt and stable."

Greg’s heart did something strange in his chest.

"The cost is that you’ll never be able to make another SSS-rank item."

"The potential would be gone forever." A pause. "Or you keep it at five percent..."

"You keep the limit, but you also keep the ceiling."

The figure looked back over one shoulder.

"Think about it."

And then they were just gone, like people who leave without warning do.