Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Chapter 1290: A professional chase

---Minas Mar---

Seth was actually a little nervous. This was only the second addition he ever created for the . Also, he had made the alchemy station, Neloth, completely from the maestro's souls, without adding any corporeal materials. But that was not all he was worried about.

In preparation, the blacksmith had talked with Sivri about her production process, but as one could expect, she didn't know herself how Forgebrand created her. This meant this one was solely for Seth to explore, however, he had an inkling since he had Sivri and Cerberus as examples.

In their essence, they were ordinary Golems, with every part of their body infused by the soul that is controlling them. Most importantly, they solely relied on the ego of the souls and had no automaton circuit or anything in the regard.

Technically, they were golems with everything a golem needed, except a control center that was connected to everything. In this regard, they were quite similar to the very first iteration of Golems he learned to make based on Forgebrand's original designs.

The golem seeds created by engraving souls, that were able to create a functioning golem body by drawing in materials from their surroundings. However, those had been very inefficient as the bodies created were generic and rough golem creations that could never fit the soul controlling them.

As Seth understood it, Forgebrand had improved on this with the golem forge. The golem forge could take the former body of the souls, preserve it and strengthen it, and then Forgebrand could have infused the soul into its former body, one that was most fitting to it.

The bard glanced over at Sivri and Cerberus. If there was one thing that had kept bugging the blacksmith, then it was that with every skill he had unlocked and every piece of the that was added starting with the Golem Forge, he felt like Forgebrand was trying to cheat death and revive someone.

He had heard quite a bit about the dwarf from Ceres. Forgebrand had been righteous in his earlier years, but also cruel in using his skills as a form of punishment for the wicked he slew. He also met him during the first and only time he died in a dungeon, but that wasn't a very informative meeting.

Why did he think that this goal was to revive someone? Using the golem forge to create a “perfect” body and adding the function of the Soul Refinery, that allowed him to strengthen and refine a soul with high precision. This was far beyond just trying to create powerful golems.

However, the most important factor was the golden dwarf currently hammering on an accessory. Maybe Seth didn't have the highest EQ, but he wasn't dense. Seeing how Sivri talked about him, it was clear there was something special between them.

Why would he turn someone precious to him into a slave of his skill? Probably because he had no other choice. Continuing from earlier, if the Golem Forge was able to create the perfect body by preserving the old one, what was he supposed to do if he didn't have the old one?

In this regard, Seth actually had an edge over his predecessor, simply by the fact that he randomly chose a fitting secondary class. The power of a demonic bard allowed him to combine Forgebrands techniques with the will of the soul itself, allowing the soul to create their own, most fitting body, given enough power.

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Though he couldn't take full credit for this, as the spark of the Idea came from his encounter with Al'Zalsar, a person with a soul and an ego so powerful she could materialize her body herself, given a proper medium. This was what gave him the idea to try and supplement power and ego to the point he was able to create the Faer and Asterion as artificial living beings.

Forgebrand didn't have that.

So what could Forgebrand do, as he couldn't leave it to the souls to heal and grow a body of flesh and blood of its own? Seth's assumption was that he created Sivri as close to the appearance she had when alive and infused her soul into this body made of epic , then added her to the to preserve her until he found a way to revive her properly.

It was safe to say he failed, though he didn't know whether he died to early, or lost his way before he succeeded. Although it was a depressing story, feeling sorry or curious for Forgebrand's life story wasn't the point for all of his reflections.

What all of this culminated in was Seth's intention to not just copy how his predecessor had created Sivri or Cerberus. Although the soul Augur Ursson had been cleansed by the System to give it as a reward, at least this was Seth's assumption, he wanted to honor the man's poor fate and at least give him a proper body.

If this meant that in the end he would fail to incorporate his new enchantment assistant into the that he was okay with that. Although the potential of failure still made him feel nervous, it would not change the fact that he would have another capable enchanter at his side that would help him decode the mysteries of the Cloud Continent's artificers.

Carrying the bars of Tored had prepared for him, Seth stepped to the forge. Wearing the Wraithguard and Radiant Forgeright, he welcomed the familiar warmth of the soul flame blowing against him.

For starters, he placed 10 bars in the fire. Once they were up to heat, Seth started swinging Charon's Obol to meld in the soul and draw out the bigger parts for the inner frame of the Faer. In the past, Seth had always chosen one of the most durable materials at his disposal for this. Then he would have made up for a lack of conductivity by using inlays of metals with a higher mana conductivity for the enchantments.

Lately he would opt to use something like which was good in both. The reason he usually chose strong materials was that Faer could easily regenerate their soft tissue, but fixing damage in their frames would sap away their mana, meaning they would become inactive quicker, if the metal was easily damaged.

But this was of no concern now. For his enchantment assistant, Seth chose to make him purely from the most conductive material, disregarding the lack of durability. After all, he was not meant to fight, at all. There was no reason to optimize the assistant for combat.

On the contrary, the golem needed to be able to move and control his mana as minutely as possible when enchanting, which needed proper mana conductivity. The better the material for it, the smoother they would be able to cast their magic and skills.

Another advantage of highly conductive metals like was the ease of forging. Not only did it heat up quickly, but also reacted well to . With Seth's experience over the past years, forging the bigger parts of the frame took barely one hour.

However, he was far from over. The lion part of this built would happen at the jewelry station. To ensure the smoothness of operation and movement, Seth intended to put special care in refining and polishing the frame parts, before engraving the magic circuits that would allow them to move.

Although the blacksmith had never been neglectful of this part, he had never put much effort into fully replicating the full range of movement of a human skeleton. Since people usually didn't use the full range of the more delicate construction of their body, like their hands, this wasn't a problem, either. They had usually been at the level of Al'Zalsar's vessel, and the sorceress never had a complaint.

But he wanted to put in the extra effort, to make sure there would be nothing, but his own skill levels holding back the golem in his work. This way, after several more hours of sitting at the jeweler's table, Seth finished all parts for the most delicate frame yet.

Looking at the clock, he let out a deep sigh.

“How quickly the time goes by, if you do something you enjoy. I will go to bed. See you tomorrow, Sivri.”

With the parts finished, he decided to move engraving them to the next day. There was no need to pull all-nighters at this point. He had done more than enough of those in the past weeks.

“Good night, Seth.”