Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

After the little shock by the sudden demonic intervention, Seth got back his bearings and continued. As much as he liked to marvel at his new creation, he was on a tight schedule and planned to make another one today.

The next one was for Duhu, the tiger Tijaahk who decided to stay with Minas Mar, together with Drosi and the others. The big catperson asked for something surprisingly normal. He just asked for an axe.

Seth had been waiting for someone to ask for an axe because he had a peculiar enchantment for this. The Axe of Polytechnus, an enchantment made by the god of blacksmith, but without explicit divine powers.

The blacksmith had unlocked it with a slew of other enchantments when he reached the master tier in <Enchantment>. The extremely complicated enchantments seemed to mimic the natural patterns of the divine ones, but they had unlimited uses.

They had only two common drawbacks. One was that the whole weapon needed to be covered with the formation, leaving no room for other enchantments. The other was that they could only be used on weapons made from <Olympian Silver>. In addition, this specific one was restricted and could only be used on an axe.

Other enchantments he had unlocked at level one were basic ones along the lines of Olympian Sharpness, Olympian Durability, Olympian Speed, and so on. The only other one notable at level one was simply called Automaton Core Circuit. As the name said, it was a standardized circuit to create the Control Core for an automaton or golem.

The blacksmith had technically no need for this kind of technology, but he was not arrogant enough to look down on something developed by Hephaestus. Still, he didn't currently have the time, which was why he would have to test it at a later time.

His only reason he even considered using the Axe of Polytechnus, when he had little clue what it would do, was because he was that curious about it. It was also because of Duhu. He was a straightforward power player, too many complicated effects seemed counterproductive for the Tigerman.

He had no idea what exactly was going to do, as he found little information on the axe itself, or Polytechnus for that matter. He was a carpenter who was turned into a woodpecker after some tragic events. The most he could find was that the powers of the axe were attributed to the woodpecker.

Obviously, Seth didn't intend to make a carpenter axe, despite the original being one. The blueprint the blacksmith chose was an elegant war axe with a crescent blade in the front and a sharpened spike reminiscent of a war pick in the back. He also deliberated on adding a spike on top, but he doubted the enchantment would do anything for that.

Forging the axe head was delightfully classic blacksmith work, only disrupted by the eerie droning of the Slaughterer's Anthem Seth was singing to the beat of the hammer strikes. It was the ballad he had once used for Mike's Flaming Fury.

The demonic ballad offered a temporary increase in strength per kill in combat. Despite it being a huge strain on the user's will, Seth now had ample souls to mitigate this effect by paying up front. It wasn't the same as back then when he had to make Mike's Sword in an emergency situation.

After he finished the axe head, there was a choice to make. Either, he would make the handle from legendary material, too, or he used Karina's super wood. After some thought, he was confident that he could cram the enchantment of Axe of Polytechnus on the axe head alone.

Since this was an experiment, to begin with, he wanted to make a traditional axe with a wooden handle. He wasn't 100% sure but he wanted to try and add other enchantments to the handle with <Ithildin> inlays. Since this Olympian enchantment did not automatically encroach on the whole item, he felt confident enough to continue with this decision.

Before he even started on the handle, he began with the enchantment of the axe head. After all, no matter how confident he was, he first had to manage to complete the enchantment on the axe head.

Even though he had reached the master level, the formation of Axe of Polytechnus was too hard for the blacksmith to fully understand. He was able to make sense of some of the parts, but most of the complicated patterns seemed like ornamental engravings to him, not like channels meant for the flow of magic power.

Whether this was a blessing or a problem was unclear. He didn't need to understand them, to copy them using the help of the enchantment table. However, if he made a mistake somewhere and didn't notice, he would have no idea what he did wrong, or why it was a mistake.

Carving the many fine patterns into the axe head took a lot more time than he had expected, much more than forging the axe head, or engraving one of the divine enchantments. Sweat started running down his forehead as he worked in absolute concentration, aided by the skills <Absolute Focus> and <Craftsman's Precision> from his gauntlet.

How long had it been that this kind of work had strained him this much? It was really worth being an enchantment made by a god. The skills of a master were a minimum requirement to have even a chance to succeed.

By the time he finally finished enchanting the axe head, it was already late. Time had flown by without him noticing. He only felt a great wave of relief when he finally gave the piece its finishing touch.

He tried to inject magic power into the axe head and it seem to flow naturally through all the channels, giving him no reason to doubt his success. Seeing that he managed to cram the full enchantment onto the axe head alone, he started on the handle.

With practiced movement, Seth carved a beautiful handle from the wood of the Hangingtree, before once again sitting down at the enchantment table to carve out the channel for the inlays made of <Ithildin>. He did not wish to tempt fate and only used the complex circuits of strength and dexterity for Duhu's weapon.

For the soul, Seth got to use a home-harvested one. It was the soul of a Jackal Chieftain, a dungeon boss. Jackals were a kind of humanoid monsters that appeared in dungeons, they were also the best source of high-grade blood to be used in the creation of <Bones of Seth>.

This chieftain in particular had the skills of an axe warrior. The reason he decided to use this soul, despite only being big and rare, was because it had a trait similar to the Blade Ghost.

<Soul of Jackal Chieftain (Big, Rare), Crafting Material

The soul of a mighty Jackal Warrior and leader of his pack. Talent: Axe Wielding, Trait: Manic Cleaver>

Having fought the beast he had an idea of what that trait was. The Jackal Chief's attack speed had kept growing over the course of the fight. This fit well with the Slaughterer's Anthem and the Olympian enchantment he prepared for the axe.

The enchantment was called the Touch of the Ker. The Keres were death spirits of violent death that were drawn to bloody deaths on battlefields because of their thirst for blood. Seth guessed that it had an effect like life drain or bleeding from what he found about the spirits.

He couldn't really make any sense from the sigil, it didn't quite look like anything the blacksmith knew, which didn't stop him from engraving it. The resulting pattern that covered the soul was so light it was hard to discern, it was a kind of texture of sorts.

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

A first. After handing the weapon over to the waters of Styx to fully fuse the infused soul and weapon to each other, only one notification rang out. Up to now, every legendary item he made had some kind of synergy happening that slightly changed its option. It did not happen this time.

Seth was a little tired, so when he tried to pull the axe from the bubble of water, it slipped from his hand and fell to the ground, where the blade sang into the stone floor without a single sound.

"???"