Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

She didn't know for how long she had been asleep. When she finally came to, her head was leaning against the cold glass of the bus window.

"What a pretty field of flowers," Mina mumbled, looking below with a hazy gaze.

"Wow, it's really beautiful." a high-pitched voice agreed with her.

The small fairy had slept in her arms and woke up when Mina started moving. She, too, looked out the window at the field of bright blue flowers that covered the city, with their glowing petals drifting in the wind.

As her mind slowly cleared, Mina realized that this was not a field of flowers. The city below stood in flames, blazing in roaring contrast to the darkness and twilight of this world.

"You woke up. How do you two feel?" Bulko asked friendly.

"Okay, I guess?" she answered still a little drowsy.

She had a hard time recalling what happened. Looking down at the burning city she couldn't help was think of Seth.

"Doesn't this look like Seth's fire?" she mumbled.

"It is! It totally is. I've seen this before, he managed to follow us somehow!" Fin cheered.

Hearing the fairy jubilate, everyone, looked out the windows, at the flaming tide that was rolling through the city. The other members of Yulecat's fur were a little speechless, as they had never seen Seth use fire to this extent, but they didn't doubt Fin's cheers.

"He can do something like that...?"

"...?"

Yvette and Cade looked in disbelief at the scenes. Since Seth had mostly kept to his role as a Bard during their time together, they had no idea he was capable of something like this.

"Why didn't he do that during the examination..." Yvette felt wronged. She had truly feared for their lives when they faced Natina at that time. Seeing the blacksmith pull this kind of card in this situation, she couldn't help but question his decisions during the evaluation.

"He probably had his reasons," Mina tried to calm the saintess. "I'm sure if there really had been any danger, he would have used it," she argued.

"Should we go look for him, or continue with the towers?" Mike asked into the round.

During Mina's and Fin's nap, the team had changed their strategy. After coming back with the information they gathered and two knocked-out members, Idyllin suggested a change in strategy.

Instead of entering the core room, they blasted the corresponding floor from outside. Since there was no durable core, but just a formation wall, the space mage thought this to be the more viable method, with two members missing.

While Idyllin blew a hole in the hull, the other casters simply concentrated on demolishing the room with magic, ignoring the guardian. It was truly an unfair design, for people used to the principle of a dungeon.

Not only would people have to fight hordes of monsters to reach this room, the "boss" in this case was actually just a diversion. Even if they managed to kill these sludge beasts, if the people of sigma had left the walls intact, all this would still have happened.

But this also meant they could ignore the guardian and destroy the walls from a distance. While Mina and Fin were out cold, the team had already finished three more towers before the fire appeared.

"We could become a lot faster if Seth joins us," Bulko commented.

"Maybe we could even destroy all of the towers and bring back the whole of Sigma," Lixiss suggested.

"What do you think Idyllin?" Mike asked the strongest person currently on the bus.

"We should look for him. If he can help us, I will have more mana left to prepare for our return." he finally stated after giving it some thought.

Although they didn't know how long it would take to find Seth, it couldn't be that long. Taking into account that they only managed to clear four towers in the past few hours, if they coordinated with Seth, their speed would probably increase exponentially.

Steering the shuttle Mike turned toward the sea of fire. Seth would probably be somewhere in there.

"Oh, yeah, since you woke up. Don't you have something to explain to us, Fin?" Mike asked from the front.

"W-What could you mean?" Fin tried to play over it.

"You, turning into that giant and beating the hell out of that thing." the party leader elaborated.

"Oh, that..." she seemed troubled and looked around.

"Fin learned the ancient magic skill of <Transformation>. It is a skill of my people but it is still hard to control;" she said, blushing a little. In the end, she stayed silent about the princess giving it to her.

"When Fin saw Mina like that Fin...I couldn't control my anger."

With big round tears in her eyes, she looked up to the catwoman on whose lap she was still sitting, She felt guilty for her conflicted feelings. She liked Seth, but Seth liked Mina. If Mina wasn't there Fin could have him, but Fin also like Mina a lot and couldn't deal with her envy.

Mina stroked the fairy brute's head with a smile.

"It's okay, Fin," she said with a sympathetic voice.

She bent over and whispered in her ears so only Fin could hear her.

"Quickly hurry and master that skill so you can join us. Don't worry, I'm sure Seth will also go along with it if you can grow to human size. Even if he doesn't immediately, I'm here to support you," she guaranteed the fairy her support.

It was a rare moment for Fin to be speechless. She just didn't know how to put her emotions in words. It may have seemed like a trivial worry, but for the fairy, a big knot was unraveled. She didn't doubt the words of Mina, the deviant and hugged her cheeks tightly.

Their emotional bonding was disrupted when Cade suddenly exclaimed.

"Isn't that Python over there?"

"Really? Wow, he's really serious then." Yvette sighed.

…

The fire was happily spreading across the city. The blacksmith had stopped actively controlling the fire, aside from the path he created for Python. It was a lot better when it came to resource management, he just kept singing and clearing the path.

Following the wave of Fire, the giant snake entered the city, barely fitting in into the wide streets between high risers.

The indiscernible mass of creatures, limbs, and eyes that filled the gaps between buildings was too convoluted to escape from the inferno. Weaker beasts turned to ashes, the stronger ones were flattened by Python waltzing along the way.

Barreling their way towards the glowing dome that started flashing as if it would collapse soon, Seth noticed movement overhead. There it was, his flying school bus, probably filled with all his friends.

~Python, do you think you could open us some space?~

The snake mom didn't say anything and moodily came to a halt in the middle of a wide crossing. A nova of earth spike ripped away the paving and shoved away the mass of burning beasts and bodies, clearing a nice circle.

Seth pushed away the fire within the circle, creating a place for the shuttle to land.

"Seth!" the Mina called out as she directly jumped out of the shuttle and slowly floated down with feather fall.

The bard stopped his song and directing caught her in his arms. They shared a deep "couple's greeting"

"Seth!" Fin joined after the two separated, hugging his cheek.

"Fin, you are okay. I'm glad."

The shuttle landed in on the demolished crossing before the several times bigger snake. The rest of the crew alighted from the shuttle.

"I'm glad all of you are okay. But that was stupid. Why would you just up and enter a place with things like the Ethnarchs lurking?" he scolded, but he was too relieved to do it seriously.

"I'm sorry. It was because my Lady felt it was urgent to retrieve Ms. Albright." Idyllin apologized openly.

Seth only noticed the additional cast at this point. There were Cade and an old wizard in a white, expensive-looking robe, that fit his white beard and hair.

"Oh, so we were actually looking for Cade, huh? And you are?"

"I'm sorry, I previously hid my identity with a robe. I am Idyllin, a space grand magus and enchanter from Chrona," he introduced himself with a bow.

"Oh, a space mage? Interesting. Since you are all here, I guess you are up to something?" the blacksmith asked. He judged it by the absence of Leana among them.

They spent the next 20 minutes roughly exchanging their experiences and plans going forward from here. The party told Seth about their plan to evacuate the people of Sigma to Delta through a portal.

"Oh, cool, you actually have a plan. Well, I have Vlad and a pack of sleeping vampires in the belly of Python and told them a grand story about salvation to make them come along."