Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

"This was your doing, Seth!" the bearded god said angrily. Hephaistos was cranky because Seth had not chosen the class he had offered. The three gods were currently sitting in the little cinema dimension and watched the highlights of Seth's life.

"I have no idea what you are even talking about." the god of chaos said with an ambiguous smile.

"oh, yeah. Sure "Trith". You totally didn't get involved." the blacksmith god snapped sarcastically.

"No, I'm telling you I really didn't do anything..." Seth said slightly annoyed.

"Sure~ I will belie~ve you. When That fairy turns into a flying pig."

"She definitely eats and behaves like one." Hades gave a mean comment.

Both looked at Hades who kept his expressionless face and munched popcorn. Maybe they were being played...

The door was blown open and an angry magician shadow walked in.

"I warned you last time! I revoke your viewing privileges for the next 4 months. SETH!"

Hephaistos looked at the god of chaos with a betrayed look. He had almost been played and turned on his own uncle, but it WAS this donkey face who did it in the end.

"oh, c'mon! Don't look at me like that. You two can still choose a private champion! I had to do something."

Hades didn't seem to give a flying flip about what they were doing and kept munching popcorn as Seth sucked in almost 200 souls. Let others play, he was winning anyway.

Seth, the god of chaos and destruction, was pulled out of the room by the system god ripping at his ear. Hephaistos had a thoughtful look on his face.

"He's not wrong uncle. Both of us can choose one additional champion. When are you going to do it?"

"No need to hurry. There are still a lot of gods that wait for the right time. Once that world has developed some more it will probably come a time of Champions."

Hephaistos nodded. He had not partaken in many of these system games, but he too had experienced that many Gods choose the same opportune time to choose their champion, which always led to a great struggle and competition.

It made it all the more interesting to see how already established champions will react to the invasion of fresh blood.

He was secretly glad to have chosen Seth and ended up sharing him. He had two seats in the first row for that stage and could watch people in both positions.

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Originally, they were going to visit a restaurant and celebrate Seth's new class, but they lost their appetite after the altercation at the entrance of the church.

Watching two hundred corpses dissolve into smelly black goo was not very helpful before having a meal. Instead, they immediately returned to Minas Mar, leaving the dirty job of cleaning up the mess to the old priest.

"Are we going to get new Armor now?"

"Seth promised! Seth promised!"

The two immediately started bugging him right after they returned to the tower. They kept up their image in the city, but all facades fell when they were alone.

"I will start soon, but not today! Let's forget what just happened and go celebrate."

He couldn't really blame them as he had indeed kept promising to make them personalized stuff for a long time now. Seth kept putting it off until he had the fitting skills and materials. Now he also had an ample resource of souls.

He had come to realize something important. The legendary rating was still far off into the distance. Even when he used epic materials to the best of his skills, he had been unable to get above epic. He didn't know what the reason was, but he had plateaued.

He had written to Tored about it, and it was in this way that he found out about his misconception. The legendary and mythical rating above epic were very special ranks one could not make easily even with legendary or mythical materials.

The rank above Epic was called Relic and was like a kind of prototype for a legendary or mythical rating. These items were judged to have the needed requirement to grow to a legendary or mythical rating.

In Tored's assessment, it was required to be at least craftsman level or fulfill very special conditions to make relic gear. Especially since one needed to be a craftsman to work with legendary materials.

As for the how a relic grew into a legendary item, nobody really knew the specifics.

The dwarf had not told him much about the higher ranks because he had been a far cry off of being able to reach these back then. He actually still was.

It became exponentially harder to grind his crafting skills the higher the level went. Seth knew that he was actually leveling really fast compared to traditional blacksmiths who needed decades to reach the master or even the craftsman level.

But he was just a human. Even with the system's theoretically increased lifespan, he didn't feel like he had the leeway to go at things slowly. And he didn't want to make the world more dangerous for him and his people by singlehandedly raising the average standard of equipment.

That's why he hoped that his new class and the upgrades it came with would be enough to enable him to create relic gear with his current level.

Seth had experimented quite a bit in the last 3 months to make sure that the inscription and the enchantments did not get into each other's way if he used one on an item and the other on a soul.

With Al's help, Alison was even able to come with a recipe for an ink that could allow Seth to etch and inscription onto a soul armament. The main ingredients were a soul and the crushed nucleus of a high-ranking undead.

Thanks to this he also found out, that the power behind inscriptions had a higher affinity with the soul armaments as they came from demons. With this, his chosen modus operandi became to always make soul armaments and put inscriptions onto them, while he put engravings onto the items, he would infuse them to.

But even then, he could not blast past the epic rating. If even the new class didn't change this then he could only make the best possible epic items for the Lords of Minas Mar.

This was an issue for another day, not now. The three entered the cafeteria where the grinding crazed gourmet hunter was having the time of his life turning ingredients into food.

Link had gotten a lot better in the last three months and could now use rare ingredients to cook. Almost all his dishes were able to give permanent increases to stats and attributes sometimes even to several. It was just that food made of rare ingredients was not enough to increase their main attributes anymore.

But Seth had already gotten various resistances and attribute increases from Link's superfoods. At some point, Link would be able to use epic ingredients and then they would get another huge boost in permanent improvements.

It was another reason for the formation of the Oathguard. The beasts that the parties of the Field Service currently needed to hunt to keep leveling all produced rare and epic materials. Since the parties currently lacked a hunter, they would often get only the best materials of a prey and not everything.

This meant that they brought back mostly epic materials. Currently Seth and Otto the Pharmacist were the only ones with levels high enough to utilize epic materials.

The Oathguard would take over the job of farming mostly rare ingredients to allow Link, Alison, and Evee to grind their skills and hopefully catch up with the Field Service's prowess.

Besides the Oathguard they also planned to take in one or two more alchemists or healers to deal with the increased influx of materials.

"The Turquoise Anvil" was slowly turning into a high-end establishment for adventurers of a higher level and their stocks of potions kept being emptied out. Alison and Evee needed some help to meet the customer demand in the future.

Seth had no problems producing uncommon or rare weapons and even armor, thanks to Cerberus who could keep making blanks and standard pieces all night long. All he needed to do was finishing and refining the products which he normally used to train his etching and master poems.

His prowess did not go unnoticed by the demonic side of Delta. People of the bard academy and other demon bard had soon found out he was happily selling wares with demon inscription. Their reaction was rather cold.

Even though he used inscriptions on weapons and armor, in their eyes this was just copying other's works as he used traditional works and nothing original. Seth had tried to come up with his own works but he was simply lacking.

Now that he was an Infernal Scalde with <Song Writing> he hoped he could shine. If it still didn't work, he wouldn't care. The traditional texts were more than enough for his own purposes.

Seth, Mina, and Fin were soon joined by the rest of the members of Minas Mar who slowly returned from their own duties to enjoy a meal. They all congratulated Seth, and everything escalated into a party deep into the morning of the next day.