Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

“How many were that?” Seth asked the demon when the notifications fell silent and the flames inside slowly died down.

“Roughly 1300 souls. About 900 small ones, 400 Medium-sized ones, and 5 big ones.”

“Wow, that's quite good for a single target. Especially the five big souls,” Seth exclaimed pleasantly surprised.

Over the past two days, Seth and Tano had laid waste to 36 garrisons and settlements, some based on smaller and medium dungeons. Over the course of their Travel, they managed to collect 6300 small, about 1100 medium, and just 15 big souls. Getting five from a single target was a good result on the surface.

Of course, the dungeons in the abyss offered a much better booty, but they were also hard and cost time. The quantity made up for the quality on this trip.

“Yes, it's going quite well,” the demon agreed.

“Then let's go inside. There is still a dungeon that needs to be cleaned,” Seth said motivated and made the titan take the lead. The Draconic Fire Titan busted down the city gates with ease. Like the city, they had been almost disintegrated by the heat of the flames. All the city walls now surrounded were ashed and the remains of crude wooden huts.

The only place spared from the fire was the relatively more advanced residence of the city lord. A simple castle, built with the entrance to the dungeon in its center. When they arrived, they found Viggu already waiting for them, sitting on the corpse of an armored ogre, the dead city lord.

“Viggu, good to see you were not hurt,” Seth greeted him with a wave of his hand. “Do you think they managed to alarm the ones inside the dungeon?” the bard asked. The oni shook his head.

“I killed the city lord when he tried to do that. The guy below shouldn't be prepared for a raid.”

“Shall we go in then?”

As mentioned, the dungeon here was a typical subterranean structure. It had 70 floors with a box at every ten floors and monsters ranging between lv.75 and 80. Again, Seth didn't halt to harvest each and every monster. He only did so with the boss monsters, which yielded a big soul every 10 floors, giving him as many big souls in one location, as they had collected in the 36 previous ones.

The greatest hurdles would have been the traps, but the were next to no traps. Viggu said that the priority of Kozdam was getting orcs into this world, not wasting energy defending the dungeons with traps. Seth made his “Ash Walker” and “Burning Savage” titles proud for most of the path, as he simply ran past the creatures and they died from his <Flame Aura>.

Then, finally, they reached the boss room. The guardian of the core was ready for their arrival.

<Vegga Gorz lv.98(Boss)>

“Viggu, who would have thought that you would betray his majesty like this?” the general asked, lifting his massive axe on his shoulder. Viggu silently stared at him, standing behind Seth. The oni general didn't react. Ever since he was revived, his loyalty to Seth was unwavering.

“Not only did you betray us! But you even led this guy to our border! Do you have any-Agh!”

“Enough talking. We are on a tight schedule here.”

Vegga still managed to react when Seth suddenly appeared before him, but it didn't save him. The axe that was brought before his body to block an attack, was broken through by the Giant's Rod, while Vegga lost his life being pierced by rock needles. In one move, Seth collected the soul and body. It was the first massive soul since he went on this journey.

“Come on, let's see if you really could take over the dungeon.”

This lv.80 dungeon was the biggest and highest level among the quests they had picked up. If he wanted to test it with Viggu, then on this one. The question was, what if it worked? He could hardly leave Viggu here. The Oni would simply be besieged until he died and the dungeon would go back to Kozdam.

At this time, Seth wistfully thought of Solar Solace. The boss of the Abyss dungeon had sworn him fealty, but he had no way of contacting him. If it was that guy, he might have even had some minion that could have taken over and held this dungeon. But it was just wishful thinking.

The blacksmith stepped toward the dungeon core and went through the usual routine, once again only earning a meager harvest. These orcs really didn't know how to save up. There was no money to be made, so it was time for the next strep.

“Can you take him as your master?” the bard asked, rattling his weapon menacingly.

Since it was irresponsible to make Viggu stay here, this was merely an experiment. If it worked, they would just find a big dungeon in Minas Mar for him to take over. There were a lot of advantages to owning a dungeon Seth could think of. Mostly he wanted to try to deliberately nurture weapons with the power of dungeon and-

The core flickered a hesitating light red, destroying all the blacksmith's short-lived hopes and whimsy dreams.

“I'm sorry, Seth. I really thought I would be able to...” the oni boss said with guilt in his voice. Viggu had been convinced that he could become the boss of a dungeon, since he had not lost the power of the blessing, but it seemed that that was not the case.

“It's okay, Viggu. It's not like I had any high hopes in the first place. I was just looking forward to the possibilities,” despite trying to calm him, the bard spoke in a lethargic voice, shrugging his shoulders devastated.

“Seth, I'm really-”

“Pff, calm down. I'm just joking. Let's leave here. We have some more places to visit today.

…

The night had fallen. Seth and Tano'Mol sat at a nice campfire in the middle of the prairie. The night sky was almost clear. Of course, it was purely for the atmosphere. They wouldn't camp outside, and neither were they cooking food. They had food and would return to Legion's space to get some rest.

Seth was intently staring at the interface of <Blueprint> and was working on a blueprint for the Golem Forge when the communication orb in his pocket started vibrating. Seth took his eyes off the interface and answered the call.

“Leana? Do you need something?” he asked the princess after their greeting.

“No, I just wanted to know when you are returning. We are ready to announce the date for the Pythian Games and start the promotion. Of course, you are the one who needs to announce it.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I should be back in two or three days. What day is today? Monday? Schedule it for Friday, I should be back by then,” he answered her quickly. In two days was the Maestro's deadline. Afterward, he planned for a day of rest.

Alright, that should be enough time to gather the journalists. I will go ahead with that date then.”

Since this was really all she needed from him, they said their farewells and the call ended. After the call, Seth's gaze returned back to the panel he had been working on.

„What are you even doing?“ Tano'Mol asked the blacksmith who had been intently staring into the air and moving his hands. He might have thought he was staring into the campfire, but the hand movements made it seem that he was working on something.

“Oh, I'm just trying to make a blueprint that mimics the automatic mode of the golem forge,“ the blacksmith explained. In the beginning, Seth lacked experience with the machine, to know how it turned a corpse into what could be called a golem or corpse puppet.

Thinking of these golem puppets he had an idea. Since it was a pain to make armor sets for them, he was trying to find a way to armor them, without having to make the armors by hand. It was one thing to equip the strong ones with good gear, but the throw-aways who wouldn't even get a soul were not really worth the effort.

This was why Seth tried to make a blueprint that would make the golem forge fuse metal plates to the corpse puppets' leather skin. It would essentially be like a scale armor, but closer to lizard skin than overlapping ones like dragon or fish scale. He actually had this idea because of Sivri's articulate outer shell.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“I see, it sounds really complicated,” Tano'Mol commented after the blacksmith explained it to him.

“Because it is. Let's go to rest, I will continue on this at another time,” the blacksmith finally said, feeling tired after a day of farming. A portal to Legion's inner space opened and the two stepped in, vanishing from the prairie.