Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

After three days the construction work was finished. Seth had moved his smithy from the private quarters to the new workshop.

In the meantime, Seth started preparations for the grand opening of their shop. He split his time between visiting the Bard college and making uncommon and rare items for the store's first floor.

Some of these items were practice pieces used to learn new ballads and poems. The effects of these items were the ones he was most interested in, but sometimes hard to understand. Most turned out less useful than he had expected.

The best one so far was a poem that could multiply the damage of an ax. After a few tries, Seth judged that randomly trying these poems and ballads made little sense before he knew more. That's why he decided to join more lessons at the college to learn about these demons.

Proficiency wise he made almost no progress with these weapons. The only skill that saw some growth was <Singing>.

Trith had managed to find a scroll and Seth learned <Singing (Beginner) Lv. 1>. Singing in the college with the teacher's guidance helped boost the experience and he had reach lv. 2 within a day.

Monique and the others started exploring the dungeons of Delta and farming materials. Seth would also join them in the future so as to not fall too far behind in level.

The first thing he did when the workshop was finished was getting rid of all the blood in his inventory and fill it into the different vats for the bloodbaths. He also added a badge of uncommon feasting weapon made from steel. He put them into the blood of beasts from different levels and ratings.

When he was done with that, he entered a room with a small lava pool. The heat was terrible and might have killed a normal human if they stayed too long. To Seth, it just felt slightly warm. Very cozy, actually.

Here he followed the instruction from the recipe and built a special furnace that used the power of the lava as fuel. Power did not only mean heat. The whole mountain was a basin for magic, as such the magma inside absorbed a huge amount of it. The molten stone was charged to the brim with a pure fire energy.

In conjunction with the furnace and the energy manipulation method of Hephaistos, this energy could be used to refine and empower a material. In this case one needed at least silver. Although it was not the most noble metal, it was known for its purity and conductivity among common metals.

To take on the properties of <Olympian Silver> a meal with high conductivity and magic purity was needed. This meant that it could not have any strong affinities with elements for example.

Judging by these criteria the next higher step after silver would be either <Mithril> or <Fey Steel>.

It was different from <Bones of Seth> where the main criterium was that the base material was iron and the result increased the more special the iron was.

After everything was ready Seth tested the furnace. Compared to his spirit furnace it was harder to use and needed stronger concentration to evade mistakes. Whereas using his own furnace felt like swimming in the water, this one was like swimming in mud or tar.

Still, Seth had a lot of experience at this point and even had <Pyrokinesis>. The increased difficulty was only a small problem. He managed refined 10 bars of ordinary silver into 5 bars of rare <Olympian Silver> to test the function of the furnace.

There were some problems at the start before he got used to the furnaces functions and calibrated them accordingly. However, despite making only small mistakes here and there it still consumes silver at a ratio of 2:1 to refine the new material.

Even considering this, it was still a great deal to be able to turn common metal into a rare rated material. Silver was not hard to get, and the price was also affordable. He also pondered about replenishing his dwindling steel supplies.

In the end, he decided against it. He had outgrown the <High-Quality Steel>. There was almost no experience to be gained with uncommon or even rare items anymore. The future laid in epic items. He had roughly 150 bars of <Bones of Seth> and an array of rare metals and beats materials to grind his skills further.

He left the last bars of steel in Cerberus' smithy and added what was left of the snake materials. He had stopped putting uncommon beats materials in his inventory. He had kept the materials of the Titano Boa juvenile more out of nostalgia than out of necessity.

He left it all in the adjacent storage room so the golem could turn them into blanks. They should be enough to keep the golem busy for a few days.

The only materials below rare left in his inventory were the <Dwarven Copper> he had left from Ora and the metals he refined from the ores he found on the journey.

Seth still had little idea what effects <Snow Copper> and <Volatile Zinc> could have on an item but used with the souls from the journey he had some hopes for the first.

In the central room, he did not just place his <Spirit Smithy> but also added several shelves for the inks Alison and Evee had made in the meantime. A few worktables for general stuff and s wall for draft and ideas. He had <Blueprint> but it was often helpful to have everything laid out to get new ideas.

Now that the workshop was ready it was time to make equipment befitting the "Lords of Minas mar". Seth sat down at the design table and thought about what he wanted to do first. Next moment he jumped up and left for the Bard College.

The lacking gear the most at the moment was Evee. The immortal witch was a caster and support but could turn into an undead in case she died. This also made the girl quite reckless in battles.

What Seth wanted to make was a self-repairing armor. I self-repairing armor for a self-reviving Witch. It would assure that no matter how she died, she would be covered by the armor.

Al'Zalsa was unable to help him with that. Of course, he could summon her and leave enchanting the item to her, but that was not the point of the exercise. It would also be harder to gather all the necessary ingredients.

He had played with the idea for some time now, but it was the new ballads and etching that made it seem feasible. There were so many demons and possible effects a ballad or inscription could have. All he needed to do was find just the right thing.

He confidently entered the library, and his motivation was dampened. Was the library always this big? Not all of these books were about ballads or inscriptions, right? He used the search function and was greeted by and almost endless list of book titles.

Maybe Trith the etching teacher knew how to reduce the workload! Step by step he came up with attempts to lessen the burden. He really didn't want to read through all those books.

Unfortunately, he could not find the professor for etching. There was no exercise today and he was not at the campus. This left only one final straw.

Tirth's face fell when he saw Seth enter his store again after several days of silence. Seth explained to him his idea of a self-repairing armor.

"Hmm, I know a few ballads that have a similar effect. What's your level in <Enchantment>?"

"Journeyman lv. 2"

"J-Journeyman lv. 2?! You are better than I thought, but it's not enough for the ones I know. I know of some epic ballads and poems but you would need to be at least craftsman rank."

"Damn, it could take a while until then. Is there no other way?"

Trith sat there for a while, thinking.

"How about an undead armor?" he suddenly asked.

"An undead armor? You mean like those living suits of armor-undead?"

Trith made a complicated expression as he tried to come up with a way to explain it.

"it's different. What you mean are armors possessed by strong specters. What I mean is to literally turn a piece of armor into a brainless undead. Some undead have HP-regeneration after all."

Trith stood up and took paper and a pen from the shelve behind him.

"There are many great demons with necromantic abilities. I know 4 that show a preference for blessing armors. Maybe you can find something fitting in the library if you look for these names." he wrote down the a and gave Seth the note.

This was Seth's best clue. With the small list of possible arcane sugar daddies, he returned to the library to look for already written texts. The result was still a long list of books, but it had become manageable.

Seth sat in the library for the rest of the day. When it got dark outside, he had skimmed through most of the books. There were a few promising ballads, but one gave him a huge inspiration.

This was technically not a forging ballad but it fell into a similar category. It asked to borrow the power of the Sovereign of Unlife to grant false life to a corpse puppet. This puppet would inherit the abilities of the beasts it was made of. In exchange, it was brainless and sustained its unholy existence by feeding off other's lifeforce.

This stuff went deep into the practices of necromancers and Seth needed the lich's help to understand some of it. The point was, it granted a semblance of life to dead tissue which then needed power to sustain operations.

The inspiration was that he could use this ballad on a leather armor, for example one made of Ice Troll Leather. The plan was for the leather to gain life and inherit a troll's healing factor. It would only need power when regenerating damage.

Seth hoped it would be similar to other enchantments and was able to use an infused soul as a power source. The biggest uncertainty was a special requirement. Not anyone could just call upon a great demon and ask them for a blessing.

These chants were far from forging ballads and did not fall under the <Enchantment> skill. The skill <Demon Chanting> was needed to cast them. It was a staple for a Demon bard who used his musical talents in battle, but not for Seth.

But Seth had an idea what he could use as a substitute.

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