Chapter 210. Irish Town Ⅱ (8) Prophecy and Curse

     The goblins sent a high-level craftsman to compete with Ye Mo in forging a sword.  

     The high-level craftsman was also quite old, appearing to be a little younger than Master Ian, but his hands were steady and his attention meticulous. From the very first step of hammering and forging, it was clear that his foundation was solid.  

     However, when he glanced next to him, his heart couldn’t help but skip a beat.  

     He saw that Ye Mo didn’t even start with forging, she began with smelting, starting with a ton of raw materials. Regardless of anything else, this approach increased the difficulty several times over.  

     Some young goblins mocked Ye Mo for overestimating herself, or jeered that she couldn’t even prepare a single piece of high-quality material, so how could she forge a sword?  

     But Ye Mo remained unhurried, accelerating the smelting process while simultaneously setting up a solidification array. Once that was done, she sped up the cooling, a series of maneuvers that left the onlookers stunned.  

     By the time the high-level goblin finished forging, Ye Mo’s solidification process was also wrapping up within 30 seconds.

     “How is this possible?”

     “Why can she work so fast?”

     “……”

     Goblins no longer had alchemists in their ranks, and even if they did, the alchemists of this world couldn’t compare to mechanical arrays when it came to medium and large-scale magic formations.  

     After all, the alchemists of this world disdained competing with goblins for work and had no interest in helping them improve their crafting efficiency. The instruments in the goblins’ underground workshops had remained unchanged for thousands of years.  

     They couldn’t understand what they were seeing, they could only marvel at the spectacle.  

     The intermediate and higher-level craftsmen, however, noticed the exceptional quality of Ye Mo’s smelted materials. They raised their hands to silence the younger goblins’ endless grumbling and indignation.  

     There was no other reason, it was simply too embarrassing.  

     From that point on, the goblins never took their eyes off Ye Mo’s hands throughout the entire competition.

     Her hammering speed is so fast that only afterimages of her strikes are visible… Why is she adding high-tier thunder beast cores and water elemental cores during quenching? Their eyes can’t even keep up with the speed she’s engraving the magic runes. Wait, when did those finely crushed blue-purple cores get embedded into the hilt?

     Impossible!

     This can’t be real!

     How is this possible?

     How did she—

     How did she do this?!

     Ye Mo completely overturned the goblins’ understanding. Precisely because they were knowledgeable, their minds were shattered even more. Their inner turmoil shifting from denial (exclamation marks !) to disbelief (question marks ?) to sheer astonishment (more exclamation marks !!!).  

     By the time Ye Mo finished her magical refinement and the finished sword was revealed, the high-level craftsman was still in the middle of his magical engraving process. He had been slightly flustered at first, but eventually settled into a calm focus, meticulously carving his own masterpiece stroke by stroke.  

     Ye Mo had always held a natural fondness for goblins. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone to such lengths instead of simply using mental manipulation to deceive and control them. She respected them, and she was confident she could earn their genuine respect in return.  

     So she waited quietly.

     Under immense pressure, the high-level craftsman finally completed his work. A sword similar in style to Ye Mo’s, as both had chosen a design commonly used by swordsmen in this world.  

     What determined their differences were the attributes.  

     The high-level craftsman’s sword carried a thunder attribute: (Strength +10, Agility +6, Constitution +7), a decent high-tier weapon.  

     But Ye Mo’s sword?  

     Thunder and water dual attributes: (Strength +50, Agility +55, Constitution +57) an absolutely ultra-high-level sword, pushing the limits of what could even be classified.  

     In fact, Ye Mo’s sword was only rated as “high-tier” not because it matched that rank, but because the evaluation system’s upper limit stopped at high-tier.  

     After all, she was someone the system had declared to possess 99.9% mastery in craftsmanship, surpassing even her own mentors Master Ian and the Juzi Meng Sheng, and perhaps even their legendary predecessor, Mozi himself.  

     Her forging skills were the first to meet the threshold for creating divine or semi-divine artifacts. Unfortunately, her alchemy and mechanical engineering hadn’t yet caught up, and the secrets behind true divine artifacts remained partially unsolved.  

     But none of that mattered here.  

     Without a doubt, the winner was Ye Mo.

     Among the goblins, there were craftsmen even more skilled than the high-level Master Craftsmen, some even reaching the rank of Grandmaster Craftsmen.  

     Do not underestimate a goblin Grandmaster Craftsman. Their mastery was achieved without truly understanding the underlying principles. They had no psychic abilities, no innate magic resistance. Every ounce of their skill was hammered out through sheer, relentless effort, making their accomplishments nothing short of hellish in difficulty.  

     Goblin Craftsmen looked down on human alchemists, and this wasn’t without reason.  

     Yet even so, not even a goblin Grandmaster Craftsman could forge a dual-attribute sword with such staggering stats. The reason wasn’t lack of skill, but their “know-how without knowing why.” Ye  Mo, on the other hand, combined three disciplines into one.  

     Wang Xue, who didn’t understand the whole process, only knew that Ye Mo was faster and the quality was higher. Her four-word summary was, “Sister Jing is awesome.” Watson shared much the same sentiment.  

     The goblins had long shed their earlier arrogance. An elderly goblin, older than the high-level craftsman from the duel, his steps no longer light emerged from the crowd. Addressing Ye Mo, he said, “Great Grandmaster Craftsman, you and your companions are welcome in the Goblin Underground City of Meath.”

     Ye Mo, Wang Xue, and Watson immediately put away their previous smug looks that made even themselves want to punch themselves. They placed their right hands on their chests and slightly bowed to the goblin elder.

     “We thank you for your generosity.”  

     The elder returned the gesture. “You are the first non-goblin guests of the goblins in a thousand years.”

     This “non-goblin” included elves and merfolk.

     …

     The three were finally able to enter the goblin underworld, teleporting in using a space array.

     Goblins possessed natural night vision, so they had no need for lamps. Yet, for their first human guests in a thousand years, they had prepared rows of thumb-sized oil lanterns, personally arranged by the goblin elder.  

     Thud!

     Wang Xue rubbed the fresh bump on her head, gritting her teeth. The goblin world was so small—it felt like stepping into a Lilliputian world.

     Tiny lanterns. Tiny rooms. Tiny pathways. Tiny tables and stools. Tiny hammers, shovels, and awls. Even the goblins themselves were tiny.  

     Sometimes, the tunnels were so narrow they had to be widened.  

     Ye Mo often joined the goblins in this task, swiftly expanding the passages while reinforcing the structure, all done in a few efficient strokes. The goblins had never seen a human so adept at digging tunnels. Working alongside her, they sometimes felt an odd kinship, as if she were one of their own.  

     A few bold little ones, too young to have been taught by their elders how “terrifying” humans were, bounced forward curiously to interact with these strange visitors.  

     Ye Mo, however, wasn’t exactly skilled at handling this kind of attention.

     But Wang Xue was a natural at this. With a flick of magic, a flourish of spirit plants, and a stream of playful, whimsical words, she quickly won over the little ones. Watson mused that she might as well be called “Three-Year-Old Wang Xue.”  

     Other goblins wanted to step forward to stop them, but the goblin elder shook his head.

     Finally, they arrived at the goblin workshops. Ye Mo gazed at the vast, honeycomb-like space. Seven or eight times larger than the goblin underground of Irish Town and felt a surge of emotion.  

     Setting aside nostalgia, she realized that what had once awed her now seemed… unremarkable compared to the many workshops she herself had built.  

     After a moment of contemplation, Ye Mo chose the most fitting ancient Irish term to describe her thoughts:  

     “Innovation.”  

     “Innovation?” The goblin elder didn’t take offense not after witnessing Ye Mo’s forging techniques, so different from their own yet staggeringly efficient. “That… would be difficult.”

     “Not necessarily.” Ye Mo smiled and shook her head. “Those high-precision magical instruments—they must have been made by alchemists, right? Goblin alchemists.” 

     Had this been Irish Town, some goblin might have already shouted “Those half-blood traitors!” because in their memories, the fusion of alchemy and craftsmanship was often the work of mixed-blood goblins.

     But in Meath, the goblin elder stopped the dissatisfied young goblins and said meaningfully: “In the far, far eastern continent, are goblins also alchemists?”

     Wang Xue & Watson: …Here it comes again, the magical legend of the Eastern Continent.

     Ye Mo smiled: “I don’t know about the Eastern Continent, but in another continent called Northern Europe, I have seen an intelligent race that looks very similar to you. They also live underground, and they can even create artifacts for the gods.”

     Ye Mo recounted her encounters with the dwarves, from nearly being tricked by them, to digging tunnels to capture them, outsmarting them, and eventually reconciling through shared craftsmanship. She told of how, with the dwarves’ help, they evaded an attack by giants.  

     Her narration was straightforward, but the life-and-death chase alone made for a thrilling tale. Moreover, the dwarves in her story were vividly portrayed—cunning, sly, clever, and brave, flawed yet virtuous, never lacking a sense of justice.  

     The goblins listened with deep immersion, as if they themselves were the dwarves in the story though, of course, they were neither cunning nor sly. They were far cuter and more handsome.  

     This was a fact. 

     “Can a goblin truly not become an alchemist?” Ye Mo posed the question at the end of her tale. “Elder, I aspire to forge divine weapons and I wish to learn from them, to create one miracle after another.”  

     “It is all… fate,” the goblin elder replied after a long silence.  

     This wasn’t the first time Ye Mo had heard this word. All three of them had now heard it: “Fate?”  

     The elder spoke slowly: “Fate is singular. Unchangeable. The destination every being must reach.”

     “If the goblins’ magic resistance is truly predestined, then fate is far too tyrannical,” Ye Mo said, glancing at the goblins who had perked up their ears. “Have none of you ever thought of breaking free from fate and reclaiming your place as alchemist-craftsmen?” 

     Some of the younger goblins immediately voiced their agreement.  

     Ye Mo pulled out a few notebooks from her storage space and smiled. “Of course you can. You can reclaim your true glory forging swords and spears capable of slaying dragons, reaching the pinnacle of craftsmanship.”  

     The goblin elder seemed deeply moved. Then, he began to tell a story one that started with the hunting of a dragon.  

     Well, this was already the third version Ye Mo had heard.

     The elder wasn’t an eyewitness himself. They had been deprived of the inheritance of this memory, and could only imagine the past glory through the oral accounts passed down by each successive elder.

     The world back then was nothing like it is now. There were no sprawling cities. Each race lived in their own ancestral lands—dragons, goblins, all of them.  

     Then, one day, the first prophecy emerged. It came from the Stone of Fate, forged by the goblin ancestor Dagda himself. A relic capable of glimpsing the past and scrying the future.  

     Alongside the Stone of Fate, three other artifacts were born: the Sword of Light, the Spear of Gold, and the Magic Cauldron. The first two fell into the hands of other races. The elves, dissatisfied that they hadn’t received a wooden bow or sword, left the Magic Cauldron in Dagda’s possession.

     The goblin elder thoughtfully pointed out, “The birth of divine and semi-divine artifacts isn’t solely tied to materials and spiritual energy. They also require at least one of the following forging environments: the power of new life, the light of faith, the abyss of darkness, or the revival of all things. Without these, it’s impossible.” 

     Ye Mo fell into deep thought.  

     Before long, the darkest of dragons was indeed born, just as the prophecy foretold. Because of the Stone of Fate’s vision, it was abandoned in the Magical Beast Forest at birth. Yet, it did not die.  

     The nature of dark-aligned talents lies in conquest through slaughter or being conquered by it. 

     While most dark-aligned beings hunt magical beasts, this dragon acted as their protector, slaughtering intelligent races instead. Humans suffered the most, followed by the forest-dwelling elves, with merfolk and goblins faring slightly better due to their living environments.  

     The more it killed, the stronger it grew—plunging the entire world into chaos.  

     As for the rest of the story… Ye Mo had already heard it twice before.

     A missing part of the story was that in the instant the dragon was pierced by the Sword of Light, just as the Stone of Fate had foretold, the goblins lost their magic due to a curse.

     Weakness was the original sin.  

     Among the four semi-divine artifacts, the goblins could only hold onto the Magic Cauldron—overlooked by others who prized weapons more. Stripped of their lands, they wandered as refugees until the lord of Tu’an, wielder of the Spear of Gold, finally took them in.  

     To survive in Meath, the goblins began exploring unknown paths concocting potions, mastering craftsmanship, cultivating crops, even intermarrying with humans in hopes of regaining magic.  

     As a result, in the second war, the goblins were completely betrayed by the humans.

     “Could we see the Magic Cauldron?” Ye Mo asked after the story ended.