Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

"... Say, Uncle. How much of the power of a champion did he inherit through the class?" Hephaestus asked Hades beside him.

The blacksmith god was sure that it took quite a lot of dedication for a champion to gain this many skills from someone like Hades. How had that dwarf gotten so far with his uncle? To the point that his successor was able to inherit the <Permit of Hades>

"Oh, don't worry, this is the second to last," he said with a sardonic smile playing around his lips.

"Isn't this too much!?" Seth broke out. The blacksmith did not speak but nodded affirmatively.

"What are you two on about? Look at you, didn't you push him on the path of a bard? And you, Hephaestus, do you really have a reason to be unsatisfied. His path is closest to yours, look at him bringing people and creatures back to life." Hades scolded the two with a calm voice.

Seth fell silent, while Hephaestus leaned back with a small smile.

His uncle was right. Even though small Seth had not chosen his preferred second class, he was effectively following in his footsteps. It was a shame that the Lich had denied the title of Pandora, the little blacksmith could have profited a lot from that.

He couldn't help but smile when he thought of the future. If Seth kept going at this pace it wouldn't be long for him to unlock more of the god's own works. Maybe he could even help his personal champion to ripen when he played it right.

The best time to choose would come soon.

...

Descending the floors, Seth would leave the normal groups to the golems, but would directly take action when a caster was among them to secure its soul.

In the course of 30 floors, Seth was able to harvest three other souls of healers, five with a talent for magic and one warrior's soul that dropped from a floor boss. All of them were uncommon. He was torn on the decision of what he would use them for.

While the golems gathered experience for him, he was pondering about it. In the end, he came to the conclusion, that making golems from then, was the best option. They were not enough to improve his own equipment. It was a waste to make weapons from them, as he could get similar results with soul etching or engraving.

Of course, it tickled his fancy to see what could happen if he combined the soul's talents and his techniques, but they were so rare that it seemed like a waste. Using them as the core of golems had an objectively greater gain.

He would only have to-

<Ding! You have leveled up! You are now lv.71!>

Just when he wasn't paying attention, his experience bar was filled and he leveled up. Finally, he had eight skill points to upgrade his <Spirit Smithy> to lv. 7. He paused for a moment, surrounded by the silent stares of the golems.

A little nervous, he used the skill points on the skill. He had put quite some time and a little bit of effort into leveling up to this point.

<Ding! Skill: <Spirit Smithy lv.6> has become <Spirit Smithy lv.7>!>

No fireworks, no notifications...well he didn't expect them, really. However, he could feel the change in his skill. He opened the skill window and checked the perk list with glittering eyes. There it was! The Golem Forge had been added as a new perk to the <Spirit Smithy>.

A wave of relief washed over him. Seth was unsure whether he would have been able to deal with it if it wasn't there again. He didn't think he would have had the motivation to try and go for level 80 right away.

He was about to summon the golem forge then and there when he realized that he was still in the middle of the dungeon. There were still 15 floors to go before they reached the end, according to the report.

He cleared his throat and looked at the golems, waiting and staring in silence.

"Let's continue," he said awkwardly, giving the sign to march on.

The groups of lizardmen slowly rose in level, but the composition of enemies had not changed, it was always a small group of high-lizardmen, sometimes with a healer or caster, not of the time just made up of warriors.

However, when he went to loot the corpses of the next group they encountered. Before the corpse vanished, depositing the loot in his inventory, he suddenly heard a mechanic voice.

"Checking minimum requirements...

Blacksmith (Craftsman): Check,

Enchantment (Craftsman): Check,

Advanced Reinforce(Craftsman): Check,

Energy Circulation 3: Fail.

Unlocking Storage Function: Denied."

"What?" Seth exclaimed in surprise.

~ Did you hear that voice, too? ~ he asked Puffles and Tatzel, but both denied.

~Are you okay, Mom? ~

~ Maybe you should take a break?~ Puffles offered as if Seth wasn't already lazying around in the back while the golems did most of the work.

He was sure that he wasn't crazy. If those two didn't hear it, then maybe? Thinking of what the voice had said, Seth listened into himself. It had checked his forging skills, in relation to that he could only think of the golem forge. It was the only thing that changed.

It seemed like the golem forge tried to unlock one of its functions before Seth even summoned it for the first time. Remembering the skill check, the only thing he lacked was <Energy Manipulation 3>.

The blacksmith's <Energy Manipulation 2> had reached lv. 9 some time ago, thanks to his work with the bones of Python and the other golems.

Checking the time, there was still a good amount on the schedule. Since the golems had been gaining strength all the time, they were now able to quickly overwhelm even high-level intelligent mobs like the high-lizardmen quickly.

Should he try and raise his <Energy Manipulation 2> before continuing? The problem was whether he had enough material to use the skill on. Seth was sure that it was close to leveling up, as the skill had been lv. 9 for a while after he finished Python.

But he also had to admit, that the tenth level of a skill was usually another step harder than the normal ones before. Still, he wanted to try. The function had to do with looting, and Seth felt like he was losing out on something if he just finished the dungeon now and only unlocked the option later.

Even if simple grinding wouldn't be able to achieve it, he wanted to try. Checking his inventory, he searched the miscellaneous materials he had with him, that would require <Energy manipulation> to process them.

He sighed when he saw the mess that had accumulated in his inventory. There were a lot of boxes of things he had recently used or used regularly. But there were also many of the stuff he had not used in a while or had even forgotten.

Inside the boxes, he found the last wyvern fang from Tora. He also found some Minotaur Horns that were in the same chest as the leather he had used for the handle wraps. The beak of a Terrorbird he had looted from a dungeon once. He even found a bunch of metallic "Eagle Chief's Wing feathers", they were not fit for what he wanted to do, but these were the ones that the bronze birds reminded him of.

In the end, he did not find much else. He had gotten used to using the storage in Minas Mar and did not always carry everything around with him. The blacksmith made sure to have a pile of every good metal, wood, and some leathers, but why would he carry bones or horns with him all the time?

A few rare materials were better than nothing and Seth didn't worry about it too much. The blacksmith was more occupied by the question of what he should make out of them.

"Something that will challenge the energy manipulation..." he pondered.

He kept flipping through his catalog of blueprints for ideas, before deciding on his further actions. Although it meant, that Cerberus would have to work on a normal smithy, Seth summoned his whole workshop then and there in the dungeon.

Among the crafting stations was also the Golem Forge. It was a huge blocky machine. The left and right were like clean rectangular towers of metal, while in between them was a gap filled with all kinds of mechanical arms, metal parts, and movable parts.

It looked more like a modern assembly machine than anything else! There was a control display hovering on the left side of the forge. Checking the display he found that golem blueprints had been added to his <Blueprint> skill and he could choose from them on the display.

Just like Ceres described it. He could choose the blueprint and provide the materials, and the Golem forge would automatically build the golem for him.

"This is nuts!"

Besides this basic option, he also found a few options that were simply shown as locked. One was most likely the storage function he had heard about. But what were the others? Were all of these locked because his skills were not yet up to par?

There was still so much to find out. Motivated more than ever, Seth started forging in the middle of the dungeon. He didn't have a lot of time, which was just more reason to hurry and begin.