Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

"We have to land!" Mike screamed in a panic when a whale-sized zombie fish rammed into their bus.

With the others still in a stupor, Seth could only erect a fire shield around the shuttle, to protect it from harm.

"Don't land. Keep aiming for the ocean, I will take care of this."

…

The pressure was gone now, but Leana had never experienced being frozen like this. To be grabbed by a kind of primal fear made her feel sick. Her <Fear Resistance> was lv.3 and even went up by two levels but to no avail.

How was Seth fine? Grabbing the frame of the bus door and pulling himself on the roof in one smooth move, she watched the blacksmith leave the bus.

What was he going to do? She found herself thinking, still in a weird stupor. She was only slowly recovering her senses, but what she saw made her doubt them.

A bright blue light suddenly illuminated the sky outside. Looking out the window she was a fire nova waltzing across the sky. A billowing wave of pale blue flames expanded and swallowed up the parade of undead.

Silence. What made the scene absolutely surreal was how the fire didn't roar and only the cries of pain and wails of suffering from the undead that were swallowed filled her ears.

The pale flames relentlessly ate away at the undead sea creatures, even after the wave passed them and they were falling from the sky like fireflies. Like small pieces of ember that were blown in the air by a campfire.

She had only really seen him in action as a bard. Leana had heard the reports about his skill with fire but this was outlandish.

Then there were his golems. In the distance was the raving mass of spectral bones, busy with fighting the lightning bird, the nightmare centipede, and another creation Seth had pulled from his sleeve.

Just how many secrets did he have? But she couldn't help but feel like those broad shoulders seemed quite reliable.

…

"Okay, Mike get me to the ground. Hurry. Once I am off, you have to shoot for the ocean." Seth urged his friend after returning inside when the shuttle stabilized.

"What are you planning to do?" Mina asked worriedly.

The team had recovered and all of them looked at him with worry. Did they think he was going to sacrifice himself to let them escape? He had to explain.

" I want to fight it to test something out. I'm worried you might get caught up in the aftermath of my attack"

Ever since he got the trait of Kin of Fire, Seth held no more fear of the undead. With his high level and all options of his legendary gloves unlocked, the subordinates were no problem. But he had a different plan for the big guy.

It would make a good guinea pig.

"Blacksmith, I know you are strong, but we aren't weak. Although I embarrassed myself earlier, you should let us help." the cloaked figure beside Leana stood up.

This was the misunderstanding he wanted to evade. Mina and the others also didn't seem convinced that he wasn't just telling them to run and sacrifice himself. He sighed.

"I really mean it. I'm afraid of literally disembodying your souls and or disintegrating it if you stay too close." Seth answered honestly.

He meant especially the princess and her guard. The Members of Minas Mar all wore soul armaments to protect them against these kinds of attacks, but what Seth was about to try might even endanger them.

Since Leana and her guard were there, he didn't directly mention the soul armor, but his friends seemed to understand. Only the guard of the princess seemed unconvinced, however, Leana made him stand down. Since Seth's people trusted him, she would do so, too.

The shuttle hovered several meters over the ground for Seth to jump out. After he safely landed in a clearing outside the city, it sped off in the direction of the open sea in the distance.

Seth signaled for the Puffles and the other to get away from the thing. So far they had been successfully playing catch with the Ethnarch, but they were unable to do any real damage to the creature.

Wearing the Cloak of Hekate, he used double cast and quick cast to summon two fire storms. Injecting his spirit flame into the spell, he sent it against the specter to get its attention and give Puffles and the other two a chance to retreat to him.

The beast was not stupid and tried to evade the huge whirling masses of blue fire. After seeing what the same fire did to its subordinate it had no intention to tank it. It was too big to move out of the way, but Seth was able to observe parts of it slowly vanishing as if phasing out of reality.

It was the first time they heard its otherworldly screech when it couldn't evade quick enough and parts of its body were swallowed in the fire. Hiding behind this wall of fire, Puffle, Wolfram, and Ceres managed to return to Seth.

"Ceres, follow the shuttle and protect them," Seth commanded, while the other two entered his pet space and inventory respectively. In exchange, Oz appeared beside him. Seth took a deep breath.

"Are you ready for a thrilling performance?" the blacksmith asked as he loosened his shoulders.

It didn't take long, but longer than the bard had estimated, for the Ethnarch to escape the firestorm. Some distance away from where the whirling firestorm was slowly dying down, the disturbing skeletal body appeared again from thin air, rushing towards Seth with its prehistoric-looking fish skull and eyes seething with fury.

Even when it spotted Seth in the Cloak of Hekate, it did not slow down, so the Undead Amity of his cloak was not working on it. He didn't really count on it. The Wraithguard appeared on his hand and Charon's Obol in it.

Standing there with his hammer in hand, the Anvil of Tartarus appeared before him. A soul-shivering choir emerged from his throat as he emulated the soul-torturing ballads of demonic bards. The Ethnarch halted in place, but it was too late.

The Hammer had been lifted, and it fell. Energy coursing through the tool, it crashed onto the anvil and thunder erupted, drowning out the world.

This was Seth's answer. He may be a bard, but he was first and foremost a blacksmith. As such, his anvil was his instrument of choice.

Traveling with the speed of sound, the power of the ballad swallowed the world around Seth and also the Ethnarch. Accompanied by the demonic lyres play, the bard hammered on the anvil. At some point, the forge and furnace joined with the roaring of flames.

Light smacks, heavy hits, glancing blows. The thunder of powerful strikes and the clear ringing of metal on metal weaved into a rhythm. With every hit, of the hammer, a shockwave was created, made possible by the amplification of <Instrument Mastery>.

What seemed like a cacophony of chaos at first came with a rhythm that kept swelling and further fleshing out as it joined with its own echoes.

He himself was not spared from the power, wrenching on his soul, but he had strengthened his soul armaments and wore the Wraithguard. He did his homework after his experience with the angel soul. With these preparations and his own modifications to the song, it had a lot less impact of an on him, than on those around him.

As expected, Seth's music worked wonders on the incorporeal being.

"What is this infernal noise!?" it screeched in pain.

It was unable to keep hovering in the sky. It fell to the ground writhing in agony. Parts of its body kept phasing in and out. The bard could only imagine what this would feel like to a conscious being whose body was probably formed from its soul.

Like having hot needles shoves under the fingernails? Or maybe like someone directly piercing a nerve? It didn't matter to him. Why should it? This was a creature that was about to kill him and his friends. Who knew what kind of shenanigans it was up to in Sigma.

The spirit smith's ballad kept resounding in the vicinity and he still kept going, even as the creature begged for mercy.

"Please, I beg you, stop! I will give you anything! I can give you power! I won't even take your soul or anything...just please... stop..." he kept stocking in its speech to cry or gasp in pain.

Its body which already had burns and scorched places had started forming cracks all over, with small parts even crumbling away. Seth judged it as a direct representation of the state of its soul. If it was like this, maybe he could...

The song waned away, the hammer made a last strike and the lyre fell silent.

"So you make deals with souls on the line like some demon folks do? How many souls do you have?" he asked in a friendly manner.

"...What?"