Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

When Seth arrived, quite a few people had already gathered in the room.

"W-Where am I?" he asked wearily. "I have to get to Minas Mar! How far am I from Delta?" the man suddenly jump up in bed.

"Why do you care about Delta? You are standing in front of the Tower Master of Minas Mar, you numskull," Ceres scolded from the side. The golem had been guarding beside the bed for the whole night since it brought him in.

The man's eyes wandered over the golem and the people in the room before his eyes stopped at Seth and he show an expression of recognition.

"Tower Master! My name is Taurio, the chosen of Nas'korn. I came with the urgent plea for reinforcement!" he suddenly blurted out, falling from the bed, and kneeling in front of Seth.

"What is this- I mean, how about you calm down? Sit back on the bed and tell me what this is about?" the blacksmith asked taken aback. He awkwardly sat back on the bed, before he continued hurriedly.

"Mount Agra is under siege! Several days ago, unknown troops appeared out of nowhere in the mountains surrounding Agra. The great deity felt their intentions and employed the divine barrier, but it was already too late to call for help. They had already locked the space and communication channels. This was why I was sent to break through their lines and bring the message directly."

"Is it really that dire?" Mina asked worriedly. Taurio grimaced and nodded before he explained.

"Their troops are near immortal warriors. Even if our people and the chimeras strike them down a dozen times, they just keep standing up again. They have cut off all our supply routes and we are unable to defeat them in direct combat.

The only thing that stopped their invasion was the great barrier holding them back. But we don't know how long it will last. They started using a kind of weird magic that was able to weaken the divine barrier, hastening my departure," he explained how dire things looked for Agra.

"Why didn't you contact us on the communication orb once you got out? Wouldn't that have been faster?" Mike asked shocked.

"That was the plan, but my pursuers were more stubborn than expected. When I tried to use it, I was attacked and the orb was destroyed during my escape," Taurio paused.

"Although Nas'Korn told me about the maintenance tunnel to Minas Mar in case the orb didn't work, I was unable to reach it for the same reason. My pursuers chased me deep into the mountains before I finally lost them. I feared they would follow me again if I returned, which only left me with the direct way." the young man explained.

"Didn't I do well then? Without me, he would have never reached here!" Ceres triumphantly brought attention to its major contribution. The elemental was still a little huffy for Seth scolding it when it dropped Taurio in their snowball fight.

"Thank you for saving me, great bird deity," Taurio bowed to the conceited bird brain, further inflating its ego. Seth ignored the elemental.

"We will call a meeting and decide who to send to help," the blacksmith assured him seriously. "I hope you can repeat what you told us to everyone once they are assembled."

This time's meeting did not only include the lords, but every noteworthy member of Minas Mar, like the Field Teams, Karina, Pardo, Felton, Drosi, and some more members from the Oathguards and Chimeras.

Taurio repeated his story in more detail. He described how these immortal soldiers appeared seemingly out of nowhere and cut off the city in a matter of minutes. He followed it up with their attempts to fight them and their deployment of sorcery that could actually weaken Nas'Korn's barrier. When he finally ended with his journey and arrival in Minas Mar, the room was silent for a moment.

"I volunteer to go, and I'm sure the other Chimeras are with me," Pardo, the orc-headed bear chimera stated.

"I would also like to go," Azul said. " If Azul wants to go, Team 3 is with her," Lydia joined her.

The chimeras had spent the longest time in Mount Agra, so it made sense that they had a stronger attachment to the place. Enough for half of them to decide and stay there permanently. Although Azul had stayed with Minas Mar, for a while now, the Chimeras were her people, so her wishing to join was also logical.

The overall sentiment was obviously in favor of helping their allies. Most of them had spent some time in Agra. Seth had not forgotten the fact that they were only able to claim Minas Mar thanks to Nas'Korn, however-

"It's nice that everyone wants to jump into the meat grinder, but we should first come up with a way to deal with immortal enemies."

When Seth was going to douse the mood with such a statement, it was Alison who got the jump on him and stated the obvious. Even if they went to fight, it didn't change that they wouldn't be able to do much more than the locals.

"How about sending the golems or the Faer? They are also technically immortal." Jess suggested.

The fire mage had accompanied the Faer on several attacks against the Hive and was still impressed by the regenerative ability. Similarly, the golems had also seemed indestructible during their final battle in the Holy Land.

"Wouldn't that just turn it into a never-ending battle?" James threw in.

Seth kept tapping his fingers on the table as the thought to himself and listened to the others argue. There were only a few ways you could really beat an immortal enemy. Do something to them that would completely incapacitate them once and for all, or

~Let me go. The great me will simply burn them to dust.~

Or completely exterminate them with nothing remaining. Of course, it came down to their kind of immortality. Seth found that often enough, it sufficed to destroy their soul. Yet, the bard had the foreboding feeling, that it wouldn't be that easy.

"Don't their abilities sound a lot like the zombie virus that is running rampant north of Delta?" Monique voiced what Seth had been dreading.

Although they didn't act like mindless beasts, the way Taurio described them, with high magic resistance and supernatural regeneration and revival, it reminded Seth of the infected he had seen.

"Wouldn't it be easy then? If we use the soul-cleansing membrane on them, would they quickly collapse?" Link asked naively.

"We don't even know if they are the same... Even if they are it wouldn't be that easy to set up such a big formation..." Seth commented.

However, a soul-whisking formation would probably be able to kill anything within it, given enough power and time. Maybe it wasn't the worst idea.

...

"Are you serious?" Cromwel growled at the bloody branch manager of Delta's Zeontech Laboratory.

The monstrous old man had left a trail of dismembered bodies on his way here, the private escape tunnel for essential personnel. He spent the last 30 minutes interrogating him about the current state of Zeontech and the world.

"You seriously want me to believe that The Scene not only managed to infiltrate Zeontech, but also managed to take control over Y-City? They are even in the middle of turning Delta into a puppet state..?"

Cromwel had a hard time believing some criminal organization that only formed after the apocalypse had this kind of power. No matter what he believed, the bloody man nodded hurriedly. He had a hard time speaking with most of his teeth missing.

This was a problem. He couldn't go against them alone. How was he going to get his revenge when The Scene already controlled most of what was left of their world? Maybe if he went to Beta? Wasn't it taken over by fishmen or something? Maybe they would help him get his revenge? The mad doctor didn't care if it meant destroying the leftover districts.

"What would be the quickest path to Beta?" he mumbled in thought.

"The Thrri Rroude?" the manager answered, thinking he asked him. "The What?"

With his bloody finger, the manager wrote "The Tree Route" on the concrete floor.

"What is that?"

The manager quickly scribbled a short explanation about Minas Mar and their trade route on the floor, accompanied by his hapless mumbling and hard-to-understand speech.

"They declared their independence in this kind of situation?.. Maybe I don't have to go all the way to Beta."