Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

As his last task of the day, Seth took the parts of the hammer and smelted them down in his furnace. The station roared with pale blue fire, as if it was happy to be fed such high-quality metal. The <Adamantium> was a worthy opponent for the furnace, as it took almost two hours for the parts of the hammer to turn into a shining liquid.

Seth opened the drain at the bottom of the furnace and let the liquid metal flow, filling three of his ingot molds. where he would leave them to cool off. As he watched the shining metal in the molds, he suddenly got the notification that he had gained the enchantment for <Adamantium>.

Befuddled, the blacksmith opened his status window to check it by clicking on his legendary path. As it turned out, not all effects would simply work by slapping on the “enchantment” afterward. To counterfeit the power of <Adamantium>, he needed to add the power of existence during the smelting process. This step alone actually excluded most monster materials and minerals.

There was another special note about it. Like most of them, the degree of power that would be copied depended on the power of existence poured into it, however, it also mentioned that it depended on how similar the material already was to <Adamantium>.

Was his because <Adamantium> was a man-made alloy created through a special method and not a naturally occurring material? In that case, why was it not the same for <Olympian Silver>? After all, this was also a material that needed to be refined through a special process-

Maybe it was this! Seth felt like he was starting to understand a little about the use of this new power and realized what it meant that it was a power unshackled from mortal standards. The effects of legendary materials depended on the legends surrounding them.

With his power he could copy their specific pattern and imbue an item with the legendary signature of material he had already recorded, imitating the original power. This was truly manipulating reality; this was what it meant to be unchained from mortal shackles on the path to legends.

It also reminded Seth of one of the stories he heard about how people started creating enchantments. According to that story, people learned and refined the natural patterns in nature that were able to guide magic power to create certain effects. His power as a forger was similar as he technically observed the naturally grown legends and created something with the same effects.

This was the reason for the little addendum. There were no shortcuts when trying to imitate the power of a god or the legend of a beast. But legends that were based on mortal work? They had short cuts given the circumstances of the legend.

Seth guessed that <Olympian Silver> for example was probably an exception because it was the process of refinement that made it legendary, not the final composition of the material. As seen by the fact that there could be different kinds of <Olympian Silver>, depending on the silver he refined.

In this case, his process of forging would imitate this process of refinement to create the effects of tripling the power of magic and skills. Since the act that needed to be faked was always the same. Like with god or legendary beasts, there was no reason why it would be cheaper at any point.

However, <Adamantium> was legendary, not legendary because it depended on some god, came from a specific beast, or went through a mythical process. It was legendary because of its special alloy composition and the properties this originally caused.

It was its recipe that made it legendary, so maybe this was why the process of counterfeiting it, needed to happen during the production of material and it would need more energy to change the base material to resemble <Adamantium> the further it was away from it.

The counter-thesis was that it would get cheaper the closer the original material was to Adamantium... All this thinking led Seth to a single thought. He rushed to the storage, looking for the <Artificial Adamantium> he had once looted from the Theocracy of Chains.

He had left them in storage for the others to use, but if his memory served him correctly, there should have been a few ingots left. Although his Power of Existence was only generated slowly, he had just gotten a little boost.

Although Seth initially wanted to save up to raise his Level of Existence first, it had already risen to 1 when he created the saint and slightly improved with the bride and the Khopesh set. He was still far away from reaching level 2 as that cost a whopping 2500 points of PoE. Seeing that that goal was far far off, the blacksmith just had to test it to see what it would cost to get rid of the artificial modifier.

When he found them in the storage, he found to his dismay, that only 3 and a half bars were still left of the epic material. Their new employees had not held back, as there were still roughly 150 bars when Seth stored them here a few months ago.

He was only disappointed for a moment, after all, he just wanted to test something. He could still curse at them for being wastrels if he found out that it was really cheap to use Power of Existence to turn the bars into legendary <Adamantium>.

To make a long story short, obviously, it was not. Seth succeeded in creating a bar of “Adamantium”. The forgery with the same power as the legendary materials had cost him 600 points of PoE. This was pretty much all the points he had managed to accumulate since he stepped onto his path. But thanks to the Khopeshs he was not broke and still had a meager 250 points to his name.

The blacksmith wasn’t quite sure whether he should regret his decision, but he decided not to be hung up about it. He now had four ingots of <Adamantium> to work with, but since he already registered the method for it as a Legendary Forger, was there a need to rush and make an item right now?

Seth thought of the grand prize of their tournament. Initially, he wanted to make a sword for it. Swords were the most popular weapons currently on the market along with spears. They had also wanted to offer the choice to make a custom weapon if they brought the materials.

But wouldn’t it be better to simply offer a custom weapon to the winner from the start? Since Seth didn’t need to make a weapon to register it, he could leave the ingots aside and make a weapon of the winner's choice from it. Wouldn’t this lure even more people to their tournament, than offering a fixed weapon?

Looking at the clock, it was getting late. A set of swords, four ingots of <Adamantium>, and Seth came to understand a little more about his new ability, it was safe to say that this was a productive day. He was just about to close the workshop for today when a messenger knocked on the door.

He nervously jumped back, when Seth suddenly ripped the door open.

“You are new, right?” Seth simply asked after a moment. The messenger twitched.

“Ah, yes, Tower Master,” he answered hurriedly, afraid that this was the calm before the storm.

“Let me bet, they said something along the lines that I'm a choleric workaholic that chews out anyone that interrupts my work?” the man's expression as if he was dying said it all.

“Calm down, you got pranked. You also don't have to call me Tower Master every time. Just speak casually to me, but stay polite. I'm still your boss,” he patted the man on the shoulder as he stood up.

“If you will excuse me, I will go take a look at what is so terribly important.”

...

“Mary, what happened this time again?” he asked the Chosen of Hestia, who was working overtime again.

“We were just contacted by a messenger from Arget Nore. They want to move up the date for the meeting.”

“Why?” Seth asked, surprised. He wasn’t unwilling to move it up, since he chose the date relatively arbitrarily.

He was finally in the enviable position not to feel rushed about everything. Although the world was changing, seeing with what ease they managed to deal with the Scene, the blacksmith dared to feel a little confident when facing this world of catastrophes.

“Well, the situation in Delta is tipping. After Leana brought forth her evidence, that arrogant little weasel was relieved from his position as representative of Delta. Without his support and the new replacement being a harder nut, the current leadership is slowly crumbling.”

“Okay, but what does that have to do with Arget Nore?”

“To say it lightly, the people are not happy to have the undead in the city, playing civil all of the sudden. There are protests and armed skirmishes that the current leadership can’t contain. It’s not just about what they did in the past.

Lately, a group of chosen and their parties originally from Gamma have been rallying people against the undead, because they keep people in Gamma as slaves. I don’t have to mention that the undead are already hated by everyone from the start. The situation is only worsening up there.”

Seth couldn’t say he had any sympathy for the undead empire himself. He also had his own not-so-positive encounter with them in the past. He was lucky to survive back then. On another note, this was not the first time Seth heard Delta was like a powder keg.

First, the demons start their internal riots, then the people. Things were finally looking a little brighter for Delta’s future, with the Scene gone, but people just had to find a way to ruin it for themselves and others.

“Are they afraid someone could go too far and kill them if they stay too long?”

“Exactly.”

“Fine then, I will meet them tomorrow,” Seth said with a shrug.

He just wanted to see what they had to say.

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