Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Despite the tension and uncertainty of their situation, nothing happened at all. Several days went by after the Boulder Guild had arrived, and the guild member return to their fortifications. The hive was enveloped in a disconcerting silence.

They had prepared for a counterattack or a full-on invasion. Instead of throwing everything they had at them, the hive only stationed a few guards at the tunnel they had used to invade. After the dragonflies were wiped out by Seth, they also became wary of the golem scouts and destroyed his babies the moment they entered the nest from anywhere.

Solely the fact that most entrances and surface nests were closed up and abandoned was the only recent info they managed to gather. Either the hive was brewing up something, or they had genuinely retreated.

In the case of the first, they could only wait and prepare. Seth was not ready to risk anyone getting ambushed in the tunnels. If it was the second, then Minas Mar was ready to accept the outcome. Although it could be better, they had gained a lot with their dungeon break-in.

The Faer had reached lv.65 on average, while all members of the Oathguard were firmly above lv.70 now. The members of the field teams had not gained as much from killing a few small fries, but they were all in the later 80s.

Seth, who had stolen the souls of over 6000 monsters and gained some experience passively through the Faer and golems, had also gained 2 levels, putting him at the start of lv.89. The 16 AP he gained were invested in intelligence, bringing it to 249.

Since there was little to do, the blacksmith spent the days with his friends and in his temporary workshop. The Soul Refinery seemed like a great item, but unlike the Golem Forge, it worked rather slowly.

Well, it might have also been because he threw in a whopping 4000 souls into the refinery. He only saved up a few of the scout souls. Since he was only after the trait, the aerial striker souls with their skills and size had worth for something else, like golems and items.

To condense down 4000 souls to their single trait and pure power took a while. At least Seth didn't have to constantly keep an eye on the refinery as it did its work. He was training with Mina to help her control the powers of her blessing when he suddenly got a notification.

<Ding! You have created an artificial new trait. Your title "Creator" has improved.>

Seth halted surprised and was rewarded by a punch from Mina.

"Ah! Sorry, I thought you would evade!" she exclaimed in a panic, but the Golden Fleece had already healed the small wound.

"It's okay. I was just distracted by a system notification," he explained a little embarrassed, and checked his title.

Originally, the Creator title improved all the attributes of inventions by 10. Now a second point was added saying that the chance of an invention gaining a trait had increased by 5%. Seth was stumped at first, but after some thinking he just accepted it.

If an item like a sword could gain an ego, then why would it be able to gain a trait? What excited him was what this meant for his golems and Faer. The Faer were practically human and the golem autonomous beings. They should already have a good potential to gain a trait. This chance had now a 5% increase.

Even when traits were something rather nebulous to him, and he didn't know the base chance, they were generally something very good and even a slight increase was very welcome.

"Excuse me, please. I have to take a look at the workshop."

When Seth entered the workshop, he could already see the overwhelmingly iridescent light. In the lower part of the refinery floated a kind of soul he had never seen before. Even if the soul refinery was a little slow, it really produced the best soul for the creation with <Soul Forging>.

<Soul of Sight (Massive, Relic), Crafting Material

An unblemished soul. Trait: Hyper-Dynamic Vision>

The result of condensing down was a clandestine soul without any impurities from a previous life. Pure power and the condensed trait Seth wished to keep. In this case, the trait had actually strengthened with the processing of the Soul Refinery.

The biggest advantage of this process was that he would be able to cleanly fuse souls in the future. When he had a special soul with a specific ability, trait, or personality, he would not have to fear watering it down with impurities introduced by souls he would fuse into it.

In the future, he could even try to customize the souls for items by filtering specific skills and traits to support each other. Instead of just picking any soul that somewhat fit, he could try and engineer a soul specifically for the item he planned to make. Engineered souls like this that did not degrade through the number of souls fused, since they were all pure except for the part he intended to keep.

Only now did he realize the true strength of a Spirit Blacksmith. He could not just infuse a soul to power an item's enchantments, or add another layer of enchantment and abilities to an item. With engineered souls like this, it was equal to the enchantment of a Master Enchanter. Except that there would not be any additional costs for core materials or knowledge of enchantments needed.

It wasn't the only gain from fumbling around with the Soul Refinery. Just skimming through Forgebrand's modes of discernment when it came to parts of the soul the refinery would focus on, also helped the blacksmith understand a little more about the inner working of the soul of a deceased.

The Soul Refinery could not repair someone's soul, but with this knowledge, Seth felt confirmed in many parts and learned some things about others. He was confident to do better in the future.

With a swipe of his hand, the newly created soul floated in his hand. There was no reason to wait, Seth was eager to finally finish recreating his Eye of Argos. He had made his current necklace a long time ago and it was an epic item he came to appreciate.

He had been very apprehensive to modify it because it was one of the first items that was influenced by his trait. However, it could no longer really keep up with his other items. Since it was not a relic, there was also little chance it would grow to become legendary.

His only option was to make a new item to incorporate his new skills and materials. With this soul he had gathered all the materials he needed. The Soul of Sight, legendary <Olympian Silver> for the socket and the refined beast core of a griffin, generously donated by Vegr who became a golem mount.

The core could improve strength, agility, and vision in a similar way to the clairvoyance enchantment when supplied with mana. As an epic material, it was a higher-ranked material the crystal eyes of the hundred-eyed giant. When forging the new pendant, Seth sang the Ballad of Stolas, an owl demon well-versed in astronomy, herbology, and gemology.

It was an epic ballad that not only came to the ballad with night vision that was supposed to help when spotting stars, but it also came with a low-tier appraisal skill that could help identify common and uncommon herbs and gems.

The price was that Stolas would be able to see through one's eyes when using these skills. The reason Seth was okay with this, was because Stolas was probably the most sympathetic of the more powerful demons out there. The demonic prince was a pacifist only interested in new knowledge.

The only enchantment Seth added to the back of the pendant was <Spheric Vision>. It was a master-tier enchantment the blacksmith had purchased at the auction house for a whopping 50 gold. The Eye of Argos had a skill called <Expanded Field of Vision>, it was the only thing he was unsure to be able to replicate without the crystal eye of a giant.

Since Seth had put a lot into learning how to cope with the 360° vision, he chose the <Spheric Vision> enchantment, which had the same effect, to replicate the skill. The next step was soul forging.