Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Seth had 8 attribute points and decided to put them all into intelligence. He felt good with the rest of his attributes, so it did not hurt increasing his INT to 28. Still, this meant he could only forge the tooth for 36 minutes.

He also tried to see how much he needed to forge the snake ribs he had. The effect it had on the ribs was tremendous and so was the mana consumption. Forging bones got rid of the porous structure within the bone and made it solid like ivory. This huge change cost 15 mana per minute, three times as much as the teeth. The performance of the resulting weapon was a lot better than when he ground it from the bone, but only comparable to the tooth. The only upside was, that he had a lot more material.

Seth´s mana regeneration was also not the greatest, so for every half hour he forged like this, he would need to wait two hours to fully recover.

He had wanted to raise a little more before he tried to forge souls, but with things like this, he decided to just try it.

The first possibility that gave him, was to freely change the size of the soul. As an incorporeal substance, it was not bound to a specific size. As such he could use a single soul to make something small like a ring, or something big like a shield. He just needed to forge it into shape.

Charon´s Obol made the otherwise intangible souls tangible and they felt like a tough material under the hits of the hammer. It was like forging a steel ball, just that the souls only needed the slight touch of the Soul Fire to soften. He used a small soul to make a simple bracer and dunked it into the water of Styx. He had expected some special announcement, but it was only the regular notification that he finished an item.

Common

Magic def.: 15

1. +10 mana

A simple soul armor piece. Can be worn as is or infused into a physical bracer.>

Soul armor gave bonus mana?! When Seth thought about it, it made sense. From what he understood of souls until now, was that they were a kind of energy source. His experiment with creating a permanent enchantment with showed that souls had mana and mana regeneration! Undead were the same, how could undead have unlimited stamina and not die, despite not eating or drinking anything? He did not know where the energy came from, but this solved his mana problem!

Maybe this was the reason, why the hammer even had the option? Had he made it as an uncommon hammer, he would probably have a full armor made of souls and a great pool of mana by the time it grew to be rare.

Like many other skills, < Soul Forging> had no progress bar, but making soul armor gave proficiency in . The simple bracer gave him 0,3%. Did this change with the soul use? Seth made another bracer from the , he still had from experimenting.

Common

Magic def.: 125

1. +77 mana

A simple soul armor piece. Can be worn as is or infused into a physical bracer.>

77 mana and 125 magic defense! The armament made using a medium soul had roughly 8 times the effects of the small one and gave 3% proficiency in . This was great, he could easily solve his mana shortage like this.

And once his grew further, he would also be able to make even better soul armament. As long as his skills grew it would be a virtuous cycle and he would become stronger and stronger. All he needed were the raw material... Of which he had not many left. He barely had 20 small souls left now. Just enough to make some more experiments.

He tried infusing some of the small souls into the first bracer and he could see the defense and additional mana increase by 8 on average with every soul he infused. After 9 souls the left bracer had attained stats comparable to the right bracer.

Seth tried equipping them and they sank into his skin. He could not see it, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he could feel that he wore the armor. It did not feel like regular armor, but more like a soft and warm sleeve enveloping his arm. In his status window, he could see the second layer of item slots appear. These were the places the equipped soul armor was shown.

At this point, his mana had regenerated and with the 2 bracers, he had an additional 154 mana and 249 magic defense. There was something else he wanted to see, so he forged two of the snake ribs into saber blades. It was fast since the ribs already had the right curve for the weapon.

This empties his mana reserve and Seth could observe his mana regeneration. After raising his INT he needed a little less than two hours to regenerate his mana, so it was roughly 1% a minute. What happened was that he needed maybe 13 minutes to get to 154 and then it slowed down. The rest needed the 2 hours to regenerate.

The mana regeneration of the soul armor was almost 10% per minute. This was a crazy speed for Seth, a blacksmith. He had no skills to increase his mana regeneration as a caster class had, but now he had a rapidly regenerating additional mana pool.

It was a shame that he had no active skills that used mana. It was like pearls thrown before pigs. But Fin would massively benefit from this. It was finally something he could make for the fairy as soul armor had no set size and did not block any item slots.

The last thing he wanted to try was engraving the soul armor. How awesome would it be, if he could technically enchant himself? If he could find the right enchantment, he could turn the soul armor into a growth time of sorts. As long as he kept fusing in souls, the enchantments could grow stronger and stronger.

Reality put a stop to his premature dreams. The regular engraving tools could not leave a single scratch mark in the soul armor. They could not even touch it and went right through. After being depressed for a moment, Seth remembered the perk list and Charon´s Obol. It was not impossible to make tools that could change a soul. So maybe he would get something like this later, if he leveled his or far enough?

Unbeknownst to him, Sarina had snuck into his room and had watched him and the up and downs of his mood for the last hours. Seth almost had a heart attack when she took a deep breath.

"is something troubling you? What are you working on?", she asked interested. She had seen him switching back and forth between forging bone and vigorously hammering thin air. It aroused the question of whether Seth had lost his mind or was really working on something she could simply not see. In the end, she could not suppress and curiosity and asked. Seth was dumbfounded for a moment.

"Ok, but you have to swear not to tell anyone. "

"I will never tell anyone!"

"Pinky promise?"

She swore the holy oath and made a pinky promise with him, so Seth simply told her what he was trying to do and tried to keep it as simple as possible.

"Can´t you just use those invisible things to make something to work in them?", she asked innocently.

"That's it!"

The scales fell from his eyes. Of course. Of course, the hint was in the description. Soul weapons can damage souls directly. It should be possible to make an engraving iron from a soul! He pulled the small girl into a tight hug and she kept giggling as he thanked her and praised her. What an intelligent girl she was and whatnot.

After praising her to the high heaven he went back to the anvil. He used one of his remaining souls to try and forge a graver from it.

Common

A primitive tool to engrave patterns upon souls. >

It was really a success, even the system acknowledged it as a tool. He tested the new tool on a fresh bracer he made from a small soul. He used the enchantment he had gotten from the ancient bronze scrap. It was supposed to raise defense and health.

The result resembled his experiment on the sword. The mana pool was simply too small, so the mana regeneration was unable to keep up with the consumption of the enchantment. This happened despite the enchantment needing a lot less mana per minute when it was directly engraved on the soul.

Not enough mana? No problem. It needed another two souls and the enchantment permanently worked. In exchange, the bonus mana would regenerate slower. It depended on whether the enchantment used the same amount of mana as was regenerated. Seth was curious, what would happen if he reforged this bracer?

He heated the bracer a little in the forge and the first hit of the hammer smoothened out the engraving, destroying the enchantment. He had no problem turning the soul into a simple ring. It was a good thing, he could salvage souls with little loss.

Common

Magic def.: 25

1. +34 mana

A simple ring forged from a soul.>

There were more ideas he had, but he had not enough souls and other material to do it with clear consciousness.

The last thing he did, was to fuse his last souls into the ring and strengthen it further.

Common

Magic def.: 145

1. +141 mana

A simple ring forged from a soul.>