Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

588. Shaula

Seth tried to be not affected by his sudden audience and started working on the pauldrons.

The blacksmith gave the pauldrons a polish before getting the acid and brush ready. The text he had chosen was another long one, but it would be worth it. The text was actually a short prose of Leraje the demon archer and his legendary journey.

Leraje was born with the bow in his hand and the quiver at his side. With his great skills as a hunter and sharpshooter, he earned his standing among primordial demons. Seth liked it because it was a prose that lacked much of the generic butt-kissing.

In exchange for the less flowery speech, it used more ancient runes that resembled hieroglyphs, making the text almost like a picture book depicting the story. Although having the dwarfs watch made him feel awkward at first, he quickly became focused and did no longer register the looks of the dwarfs that were glued to his every move and action.

Seth channeled the demonic marquis keeping in mind his desire for the enchantment. What he wished for from Leraje was a pure improvement of his archery skills. Although the demon archer also offered things like arrows that would putrefy wounds, the bard already had a bunch of options for this.

What he was looking for was pure skill, which would allow him to better utilize the options he already had. Of course, it was also to trigger this aspect of Apollo, though Seth didn't know how that would turn out.

Reacting to the blacksmith's pure desires, the etchings of Leraje's Prose filled with a demonic power that colored them in a silver glow, giving a contrast to the black materials and its red hue.

When Seth turned around to bring the pauldrons to the anvil, he almost got a heart attack, facing the searchlight gazes of the two dwarfs. He had completely forgotten about Hoen a Wedan while working on the etching.

The next part would be very boring to the dwarfs, as they were unable to see souls. For them, Seth was probably hitting air, accompanied by the dampened sounds of hitting something.

In the case of the pauldrons, Tano'Mol was no big help again. He didn't have some special archer's soul. Not even a big one. Since he couldn't get something that immediately fit, Seth bought uncommon archer souls in bulk.

The blacksmith couldn't help but ask how Tano'Mol had this many uncommon souls of basic classes. According to the soul trader, these were souls found on battlefields. The bard got a little jealous of the demon.

Since the demon had inter-dimensional sources, he always had someone that could go around and scour the battlefield of their respective world. When he asked why then there were no better archer souls, the demon heard and tried to explain.

Battlefields could be a dangerous business, especially in worlds steeped with magic. If left alone they were a terrible breeding ground for powerful undead. For the safety of his associates, these souls were all from fresh battlefields which had little time marinating in the dreadful environment of the battlefield.

Although he was sure there was more to it, Seth was satisfied with that explanation. On that day he had bought 301 medium-sized archer souls of uncommon and rare rating.

Now he was fusing and refining them. With the experience he had gathered while refining, breaking, and repairing egos, Seth felt amply prepared for the task. However, he had wildly underestimated the chaos created by fusing this many above common souls.

Common Soul could be seen as almost empty containers. The remnants of memories were almost negligible. However, uncommon souls had a greater recollection of their lives. These retained memories made it possible for them to have special effects.

But not all of their memories would act in favor of these abilities. Especially broken and scrambled memories of their past life could get in the way by mixing with the scrambled remnants of their experiences pertaining to their skills.

According to his experience, the rating of the soul was based on size, how much memory was still intact, and the cohesion of these memories that would lead to the soul having special effects or powers. The higher the rating, the better the memories. However, the lower the rating, the more useless and unintelligible waste was contained.

This time he had forged together over 300 souls with most being uncommon. Although the rating jumped to rare, because of the size becoming massive, the inside was just a mess. A mess he would have to refine...

During this ordeal, the dwarfs watched the blacksmith beating the air for hours as sweat started soaking his clothes. They appreciated the great hammer work, however, their excitement was slightly dampened by the fact that they couldn't see what Seth was hammering.

After several hours of extracting the most chaos, Seth's mana was already getting close to emptying out when he suddenly heard a notification.

<Ding! A synergy between your Trait Olympian Myths and the item's properties has changed your material.>

The blacksmith's heart fell in surprise as he got jump-scared by this notification. It was the first time he heard about a synergy with his crafting materials. Still, in wonder about how this happened, he first decided to check what it did to the soul.

<Soul of the Taxotai (Massive, Epic), Crafting Material,

"Our arrows will blot out the sun!"

The will of many iron-blooded archers dwells in this soul. They may have died, but their skills and motivation live on. The soul shows affinity with a myriad of archer skills and mental fortitude.>

He kept staring at the soul as he tried to understand why this happened. Of course, he was happy, but he was more confused about the how. After a while, he was sure it had to do with his trait Olympian Myths.

What had changed? When he thought about this, he had an epiphany. When he got the blessing of Apollo and Eos, it also said that his trait was strengthened. At that time he thought it was about the addition of their names to the list of the skills.

What he expected was that items would have a tiny chance to connect with myths pertaining to the two, as their connection was only described as weak. But maybe the trait strengthening meant that it could come to synergies with more than finished items? This would explain the change of the soul.

Looking up, he saw the two dwarfs looking at him with slightly worried expressions. He gave them a sheepish smile and continued after relaxing his shoulders a little. He stretched the soul into two parts, only connected by a thin thread, and started soul forging them.

After the arduous refining, turning the soul into two soul armament pauldrons was the smallest problem. Seeing the soul armament made from the soul, he got a glimpse at what "An affinity with a myriad of archer skills" meant.

An epic soul manifesting effects or skills was not out of the ordinary, but there usually were not this many. The soul armament alone already granted the skills Bow Mastery, Sniper's Focus, Multishot, and a skill called Volley of 300. With the last one probably being a skill unique to this soul, as it allowed one to shoot all the ammunition on hand at once at a target area.

"Our arrows will blot out the sun!" was not an empty threat. It was a very real promise if one had enough arrows.

The soul armament was already great and now he was going to add an Olympian enchantment on top of it. The enchantment he chose was the Blessing of Menoetius. He was a titan known for his terrible strength, but also an overblown ego.

Seth made sure not to think such thoughts during the enchantment, for the same reasons. He was just glad that Menoetius had no overbearing presence, unlike he expected. He seemed like a simple man, appreciative of the work of a blacksmith.

His Sigil resembled a bull's horns and the engravings that spread from it were like taut ropes or sinew. The skill it gave the soul armament matched with what the blacksmith had expected. He infused the finished soul into the pauldrons

The Notifications dinged through as the item was finished in the waters of Styx.

<Ding! You have finished a legendary item! +1 to all attributes.>

<Ding! Several synergies of powers have changed your item.>

<Shaula

Legendary

Shaula-Set 1/2

Scorpio Set 1/X

Phys. Def.:2400

Mag: Def:2600

Durability: 6666

1. 80% Damage Negation

2. Complete Weapon Damage Negation