Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

"Genevieve, you must know one of the ways that lead to the beyond." the vampire pressed his sister.

This was his solution. Although the ethnarchs had used the Towers of Trial as stable portals and to transport a part of the city to the beyond, it didn't mean this was the only way. The boundaries of the beyond were unstable and constantly shifting, this meant it would constantly open new paths.

According to Vlad, she was the only vampire aside from him in Sigma. He concluded that she didn't come through the towers, but through a path that connected with the vampire's land in the beyond.

They would be able to enter the Beyond that way, then they would just have to find where the Wards had been transported to. But they had to hurry. According to Vlad, the defenses he had set up would not be able to resist. Not when the miasma and hordes of the Beyond directly attacked them.

"Heh, you got quite the fantasy brother. You think you could lead all of them out of the beyond just like that? If you had that power why did you leave in the first place?" she asked sarcastically.

The vampire didn't admit it but he also couldn't deny it. His conflicted expression showed that this was an uncomfortable truth.

"Let me guess, You are only planning to get your family and run. Just like back then, when you just ran off alone?!" she spat out.

"I left to protect you! All of them!" he finally exploded.

"Protect us? How arrogant can you be? We were ready to die with you for our freedom," she cried, tears flooding her face.

"That's the problem! I didn't wish for you, any of you, to die! I mad ea deal with them and- "

"Death in one last fight would have been better than the fate you condemned us to! You have no idea..." and she kept on whining about the terrible fate the surviving vampires had to suffer through after their leader was gone. How they tried to keep fighting but lost all battles until they finally ended up in slavery and servitude.

Seth understood how much this brother and sister duo needed to talk things out, so he patiently waited-

"Stop whining already! Everyone gets it. He was a leader who couldn't shoulder his incompetence and the death of his people and you blame him for being a faulty human- vampire, whatever! Can we jump to the point where both of you realize that you made mistakes and move on!? My friends are stuck in this shi*hole dimension. Tell me how to get there. Now."

Seth had instinctively used <Voice of Seth> and fueled it with all his aggravation. Genevieve barely managed to resist and instead started to argue with the blacksmith.

"I already said it! There is nothing you can do- Urgh!"

Fitting like a glove, the Wraithguard blatantly took its rightful place in the middle of her perfect face, punching her across the roof where she hit the reinforced concrete railing.

It was the first time Seth actively and directly used the status improvements granted to him by the divine soul armaments he made.

This girl had been looking down on him from the very start as if he was just a sidekick to Puffles. Which was fair if he compared his own power to that of Puffles. But even he was, the power of the Ivicer's sidekick was nothing to scoff at.

"You won't tell me what I can and can't."

He slowly walked toward over and candidly picked up the glaive she had unconsciously let go off. The blacksmith proceeded to put it in his inventory.

"This is confiscated," he said to her, who was groaning on the ground,

"The only thing I want to hear from you is the location of that entrance your brother mentioned."

She suddenly shot up, her claw aiming for his face. However, it stopped several centimeters before touching it. No, it was stopped. Seth had caught her wrist with an iron grip provoking a shocked expression from the vampiress.

The blacksmith didn't know their level, as Genevieve was not part of the system and Vlad's level was too high for his <Observation>. But he was obviously able to compete with them when it came to stats alone.

"Genevieve, please tell us," Vlad pleaded.

"Fine! Let go of me," she barked and pulled her hand out of the blacksmith's grip.

"You want to run into your death and despair. That actually works out for me. I will show you. Follow me."

She finally agreed and led the vampire and the blacksmith towards the outskirts of the city. She walked through dark alleys, left, right, right, left. Seth already suspected she was just wasting time and aimlessly walking around but the environment started to change.

Their surroundings grew darker and darker until they were finally walking through a pitch-black void. The two men could just make out the back of their guide for a few long moments before the surroundings finally started to brighten again.

It brightened, but it was still a darkness that was hard for the eyes to penetrate. Even Seth's <Nightvision> didn't help a lot in this place. In the front appeared an exit and outside was twilight. Leaving through the exit and looking back, Seth found that they had just left a cave.

Behind them was a rocky hill, barely a small mountain, before them lay a dead, desolate land covered in gray dust and desiccated black shrubbery. Beside him, he saw Vlad's face fall in terror. The vampire didn't say anything, but the sight seemed to hit him hard.

"Don't look so shocked. This is the kind of place you condemned us to survive in." Genevieve scoffed at her brother in disdain.

"Hey, get a grip. Do you have any idea where it put Sigma?" Seth asked a little annoyed.

He couldn't help but be annoyed by their drama. Mina and the others were in danger and they were wasting precious time. He had already tested the cloak of Hekate. I worked, but the direction was vague and a little hard to read.

"It should in the territory of the shaggy men" the sister answered with a grin that exposed her fang.

Vlad cursed silently to the side before explaining.

When the Beyond swallowed a piece of land, it would slowly corrode away the ground and its people. While the earth turned into the gray dust of the Beyond as its life was sapped out, the people would be slowly twisted over time and become a multitude of abominable creatures, like Seth had seen in Sigma.

The shaggy men were the most common creatures of the beyond and often the only thing that was left of previous victims. The shaggy men could easily infect weaker beings with a low resistance to grow their numbers and they lived in the empty dunes between the crumbling lands.

It all sounded very poetic for saying: They put it somewhere in the empty place wherever was space for it."

Genevieve led the way. Although the blacksmith did not trust her, her path coincided with the directions of his cloak and his gut feeling, which was why he decided to follow for now.

"Genevieve are you leading us to-"

"It's coincidentally on the way."

Seth could roughly guess what this was about and his suspicions were quickly confirmed a while later. A ramshackle settlement soon came into view. The buildings looked crooked, old, and worn. It was like a ghost town, but there were people present.

They were not much more than skin and bones, their deep-set eyes without any glimmer of life or hope. Wearing rags of what could have been noble gown at one time and broken weapons Seth recognized as a scrap of once fine products, they were a pitiful sight to behold.

"This is what you did to our people, Vlad."