Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

A day later Seth arrived back in the valley. The half of the crown he left yesterday had turned into a big hill of dull shards towering over Seth and a small heap barely reaching his knees. The smaller heap of shards was obviously the <Enriched Necron>.

The blacksmith looked at the dull shards wistfully, they were not even accepted as a crafting material anymore, they were just powerless rocks now. They couldn’t even be cut like gems, since they were brittle like chalk. They would turn to dust when handled a little rougher.

“Hello, Tower Master!” Luft greeted him with a friendly smile. She seemed to be in a good mood. Having finished her homework in time.

“Hello Luf,” he greeted her, wearing his legendary armor as a hazmat suit to protect him from Luf’s toxic aura.

“Seth, you are back,” Rayki greeted him. The top half of the body was his exposed metal skeleton, the lower half still had some flesh in quickly decaying trousers. He looked at the couple suspiciously. What had they been up to for Rayki to look like this? No, actually, he didn’t want to know the answer.

“I will take these and start work on your vessel. It could take some time, so I will contact you when I am ready for the final step.”

The blacksmith meant it because this time he was not going to use the Golem Forge to quicken his work. Seth intended to do the whole process similarly to when he created the very first vessel for Al’Zalsar.

Only this way, the vessel would truly profit from his skill, the effects of Charon’s Obol, and the other crafting stations. Seth wanted to do everything perfectly with the best quality possible, to see how far his skills had grown.

The process alone was proof of his growth, as the current vessels and process and little to do with how they had created a body for Al’Zalsar. The way the vessel for the lich had worked, only worked because it was Al’s soul going into the core.

Later on, Seth understood that it was not just her high level and massive power that allowed Al’Zalsar to generate the option of a temporary fleshly body when Seth did next to nothing to allow for it to happen.

It was the soul structure, knowledge, and former existence as a Lich that allowed the sorceress to generate a physical body. The original vessel also heavily relied on this property of her being. All the later occurrences, like being able to summon the fire giant, rely on Seth’s skill as a <Golem Artisan>.

That was until he became a demonic bard and came up with a method to sing a body for a soul with the help of Oz. Theoretically, he could revive a soul without the vessel, just like the original formation was able to generate a golem from any material available.

However, then the soul would only be revived as a frail human or player. No matter how tough the human body could become, their bones would never be able to compare to the mystical metals that were drenched in magic or divine powers.

The resulting people would also be just as mortal as before since their souls would have no anchor on the mortal plane. The tough vessel allowed the Faer, he created, to live an eternal life, unless the vessel with their souls was destroyed.

One would need something like Seth’s Spirit Fire or the Soul Whisking formation to end their life. This way, Luf and Rayki could stay together for eternity, or until they got tired of each other. Ways to destroy a soul, living inside a very tough vessel were far and few between.

Hell-bent on making the best vessel possible, Seth began smelting the shards of <Enriched Necron>. Despite the refinement from Luf, they were still crystals, which meant he couldn’t just melt them down in the furnace.

Shard for shard he had to imbue them with his mana and the power of Charon’s Obol and made them malleable to fuse them together into bigger, homogenous pieces before he could start forging the part of the vessel.

The vessel itself had also seen great refinement, especially during the process of making a blueprint for Luf’s. The blacksmith still had an aversion to outright creating a realistic skeleton, part for part he created a delicate doll with over a hundred different joints to emulate the human body in a clean and effective manner.

This was actually the easiest step for the practiced blacksmith. What came next was the most time-intensive as he had to engrave all of the magic formations that would allow the vessel to move like a machine, when powered with mana.

Like this Faer could even move if all of their flesh was burned or rotten away. Otherwise, they could use their muscles to move, but in the end, the flesh was just decoration for the highly effective endoskeleton.

Seth didn’t decide against inlays of <Arcane Gold> or <Fairy Steel> to improve magic conductivity for the formations because it would have taken even longer and would have been more work, even if it would have been like him to do so.

This time he really made the decision because he didn’t want to compromise the pure power of the materials Luf had spent so much time refining and he had sacrificed so much of his <Necronite> for. It was better to rely on the specialized trait of the material, instead of introducing a foreign one.

To make up for this, Seth had even opted to rework all the individual formations on the vessel into one unified formation with many different parts. He was using his experience in creating the armor set to come up with a way to connect the formations and create a unified flow of power. The new option of <Enchantment> that allowed him to combine formations and enchantments was also of use.

While the forging of the individual parts only took a few hours in the morning, the bard spent all the way until deep into the night engraving and assembling the petite doll made of black crystal. As he looked at it, wiping away his sweat, he had to acknowledge that the vessel itself already fit in with Luf’s current style of existence.

He didn’t want to praise himself, but he felt that he had done a great job. This was probably the best vessel he had done so far, even more powerful and custom than Al’Zalsar’s. It was early morning by the time he finished, so he used <Lifestyle Magic> to clean away the dirt of the night’s work and crawl into his bed.

…

“Alright, Luf, are you ready?” The blacksmith asked the dead bride.

They were currently in Seth’s practice valley, which had already turned into a gravel plain. They were here because Seth didn’t intend to pull any stops on this production. He was going to use the Devil’s Wheel Fiddle to serenade Luf’s soul into growing a body like he did with Samuel.

It was also his first time working with a sentient soul that had a soul body. And he didn’t dare to soul-forge Luf or to infuse her into the vessel as he had once done with Evee’s hands. Although ti was similar, this was his first time doing so to a pure soul since the Soul Body was a trait Luf could not control.

There was much experimental about this method, but Seth didn’t think anything else would do justice to Luf’s soul. He was nervous but confident in his skills. The first step was to infuse her soul into the vessel.

After a clear from Luf, he began and grasped onto her using <Soul Infusion> and <Soul Capture> which allowed him to perform something like telekinesis on the soul. He could feel the massive power and prickly aura of death at the edge of his consciousness as he touched her using the ability.

The way the skills worked was hard to explain, but following his knowledge and experience with souls Seth began by binding the core of Luf’s soul into the golem core he had prepared beforehand. All the formations lead here and from this place, her mind would be able to gain full control over her new vessel.

Once the first connection was done, he continued in a similar fashion, treating her soul body like a living soul. The rest was a simple process of bit by bit, connecting and infusing the parts of the Soul Body into the corresponding parts of the vessel until nothing of the bride could be seen anymore and only a dark crystal skeleton stood before them.

Only one step was still missing to truly bind her soul to the vessel. Hardcore Skinny Dipping in the Waters of Styx. A huge sphere of water appeared and enveloped the delicate skeleton, fully binding and rebirthing Luf into the vessel.

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