Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Upon his return, Seth was immediately briefed on the announcement. Mary and the others really spared no expenses. Not only were ads running on local and across Chrona Empire's channels, but they had even hired some of Y-City's engineers to broadcast on several older technologies such as radio and TV.

Although the range was limited, even people who were cut off from the districts, like Mount Agra, would be able to receive the message with older systems. Now Seth's task was simply to read out the things that had been long since decided and the date for the Pythian Games, set to be two months later, system time.

They set up a long period to allow the news to spread and give people time to arrive on Urth and in Little Gamma. Among their preparation were not only the venues for the various contests, but Karina and the others had specially set up a whole region with temporary lodging for participants and tourists.

Although it was a secondary goal, Minas Mar was looking for a hefty profit, despite the expenses on construction and advertisement. Jane had even asked Seth for more merchandise to set up another Turquoise Anvil in Little Gamma so that participants and tourists would have a chance to buy their merchandise.

Seth gladly agreed, seeing it as another outlet for his, Nädel's, and Alison's practice products. The blacksmith himself was free to get back to what he planned to do after the speech was recorded in several takes. What he did after a while of rest was return to his Workshop.

His first action was to load up the Golem Forge with the new blueprint and the corpses he had looted from their raid on the orc dungeons. The blacksmith managed to free 76 slots of his 100 inventory slots before the trip. With over 18,000 kills, his inventory had been bursting. Even using the Legion's Space, he couldn't take all the corpses with him.

Meaning he had already sorted them and only taken the best ones he could get. However, the first ones to enter the Golem Forge were not the ones profiting from his new blueprint, which would give them a skin of metal scales. Seth didn't have the materials for them, yet.

For the material of the scales Seth had decided on <Stainless Steel>. The stainless steel Seth knew from his everyday life, were usually judged as common steel or iron with impurities. This <Stainless Steel> however, was and uncommon material acknowledged by the system and had a specific recipe, just like uncommon <Carbon Steel>.

There were two reasons for this. The first was that stainless steel would not corrode, even if the new product would spend long times outside. The other was the price. Minas Mar was sitting on tons of common ores that were a byproduct of their excessive mining operations across the Tree Route.

It made sense that a vein of ore for <Magic Iron> or <Dark Iron> was obviously surrounded by ore for normal iron and other metals, too. They already had large quantities in storage, all Seth needed to pay for was to have it refined by the people with the <Smelting> skill. As that needed time, he started with the corpses, that were worth being fitted with armors.

The next step was activating the Soul Refinery and filling it with 12,000 of the small souls he brought back from the Holy Land. Like the Golem Forge, the Soul Refinery was a powerful toll, that allowed him to fuse and refine Souls to a certain end.

Its most basic use was to completely clean the souls of old memories and residues, making them a pure power source that could be used to enhance other souls with little to no side effects. Another way to use it was to have it filtered and refined so the result would keep or enhance specific skills and traits.

Of the over 16k souls he got, these 12k souls he loaded in were all souls of warriors and non-combatants, that would be refined into big souls with concentrated warrior skills. Once these were done, he would put in the rest which were souls holding talent and skills in magic. The neat part was that he could leave the specific sorting and fusing of the souls to the refinery, which would choose the optimal combinations.

With the two crafting stations running, he could finally focus on what he wanted to work on: the new crafting station. Since he finally had a fitting soul for an alchemy station he could start on building it.

From what Seth had understood from Sivri's explanation and the feeling he got from the skill, was that he could either forge the soul itself into the crafting station or try to create the crafting station first and then imbue it with the soul. The latter being much more difficult, especially with a complicated build, like the Golem Forge.

What the demonic bard originally wanted, was an acid rack for etching, that could refill itself. Of course, since he also learned alchemy his ambitions had grown a little and he was thinking of a full alchemy station.

In the beginning, the blacksmith had many worries. For example, how to implement an inventory space for the crafting station. If it was like Legion, he actually needed to know spatial enchantments to implement it, which he didn't. Subspaces were usually the domain of magic enchantment, not something he could achieve with circuits.

His uncomfortable suspicion was that Forgebrand probably split off part of his soul, which not only imbued his skills into the crafting station but also part of the blessing of the system, like the inventory. Neloth was not a player, he didn't have an inventory to start.

Another was how it would act on its own. Would he have to forge the soul into a fully enchanted automaton? These worries were quickly banished when he realized that he was forging a soul, which had consciousness in every part of itself. The station would be the soul's body, so it would be able to move on its own. As for the inventory space, it was not necessarily needed. He would just have to live with the fact that he would have to carry the ingredients and results himself, or put up racks in the workshop.

The only hurdle now was Neloth's cooperation. The souls still refused to even communicate with him, which made an additional step necessary. As a spirit blacksmith, Seth could have tried to manipulate the soul personally, which was more accurate than the Soul Refinery. However, Seth recently theorized a much simpler method.

Since Neloth wasn't cooperating, Seth could just install a superior ego and force him to work. This meant he prepared to engrave the generic automaton core circuit onto the soul. In theory, the automaton circuit might get influenced by the original ego, or even meld together with it, however, Seth was quite sure it would stay obedient, since the core enchantment would not change at any point.

As far as Seth understood it, the enchantment could be seen as a second, dominant personality, that had access to all the memories and skills and had a higher decision making power. He already had this idea with Bazalith, but the soul of the Blaze Cat was cooperative, unlike Neloth.

~Wait, what are you doing to me?!~ Neloth finally decided to speak, when his soul found itself on the surface of his anvil. Before Seth placed the automaton circuit, he had to finish the shape of the crafting station after all.

~Oh, now you want to speak to me? Well, it won't hurt if you know your fate. I will turn you into an alchemy crafting station. Your primary job will be making acids for etching items. I might also use you to make potions.~ Seth explained to him, as he turned part of the soul into the shape of a workbench.

~What crazy-? Urgh, how can someone force a soul into a physical shape like this?~ the soul exclaimed. It was the first time a soul kept trying to communicate with him during the forging process. It didn't seem to hurt, but Neloth sounded quite confused.

~Oh, it's just part of my class. Don't worry about it. You will become a fine alchemy table.~ Seth assured him.

~I don't want to! I will never help you, no matter what you do to me!~ the demon screeched, vehemently trying to resist. However, he couldn't so much as twitch under the control of <Soul Capture>, <Soul Forging>, and the Wraithguard.

~Too bad, I don't really need your consent. You had your chance to make a deal before.~