Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

After moving the dwarfs into a more comfortable sleeping position, Seth entered his own workshop. In the corner was Cerberus diligently turning all kinds of raw material into weapons for the shop. Originally, the golem was meant to take a support role in the smithy, but Seth seldom needed a second hand.

Instead, Cerberus became the cornerstone of the Turquoise Anvil's weapon supply. With all the sudden and sometimes long breaks, the shop would have long broken down without the golem's steady production.

It was just a shame that Seth only gained a small fraction of the proficiency for weapons the golem finished alone. Otherwise, he would have probably already been a master now. Seth shrugged, these thoughts led nowhere, and he had something to do.

The first step to completing the Gloves of the Firespirit was to try and repair the soul of the fire titan. Its description mentioned that the soul was damaged by unknown means. Standing at his anvil, the blacksmith could finally thoroughly assess the damage.

He had already gotten the hang of refining a soul with <Spirit Forging>, but when he started working with the titan's soul, he felt that his abilities had gone through a qualitative change. He could quickly identify that there were two kinds of damage. On one hand, there were damages to the soul itself, and on the other hand, many of its core memories were fragmented.

Seth arbitrarily called these elements of the soul "core memories" because he found they were the most fundamental component in the forming and function of a soul's ego. Especially his excursion in destroying an ego had made this clear.

However, he didn't really know what these actually were, since he couldn't read memories. He could only roughly guess what exactly they did or meant. A vague example of how he saw them was like parts in a machine, or organs in an organism. Before he had seen them as impurities because common souls had at best only fragments of these complex workings left.

After checking his skill window and the perk list he found the reason for the recent change. Level eight of <Spirit Forging> improved his skills in helping the formation of an ego and helped him to create soul armaments with an ego.

This meant he not only had a chance to repair the titan's soul but also restore its ego. The problem was, how.

Seth had dealt with damaged souls before. For example, every time he extracted a soul from an item like his weapons, they would get slightly damaged, but these damages were only like bruises or cuts. Superficial damage that could be repaired by patching it up. They were like the first kind of damage to the titan soul.

On the other hand, it was normal for the souls of the dead or the harvested to have fragmented memories, however, they were never labeled as damaged. He realized the reason why only slowly as he kept investigating the soul.

The reason these souls were called damaged, was because they were not yet judged to be of a different state of existence. All the parts that constituted the unharmed soul were still there, just broken.

However, just like a wounded body, this state could further deteriorate. A body could die and become a corpse. But souls couldn't die. Instead, the judgment of the soul in the eyes of the system would change. In this case, once these fragments were lost their rank would probably fall below epic.

What also became clear was how lucky he was in the past. Or maybe it was a testament to the strength of a soul? Back then, when he came across a damaged soul like that of Evee's brother, he only patched them up without even seeing the problem of the shattered fragments.

He hypothesized that, just like how common souls could develop an ego, a damaged soul could probably heal itself, as long as its wounds were treated. But this came with its own problems. From what Seth could see, Evee's brother was not exactly the same as before, although the most important parts seemed to have been preserved.

An untreated bone could grow back together, but it might end up bent, potentially causing problems in the future. In general, Seth had no need to care unless it was important for the ego to be preserved.

But now, Seth had some ideas. He could either patch the soul up and leave everything else as is. Based on the fragments and intact memories, it would probably form an ego in due time. Another was to extract the shattered fragments and see how it would develop in the future, only based on the intact core memories.

The easiest was probably to completely cleanse the soul and turn it into a blank slate, merely meant as fire-elemental power supply. The hardest option was setting the bones. To puzzle the shattered pieces together as best as he could. This would make sure to not just restore an ego closest to the original one, but also quicken the reformation of the soul.

The last was most likely the method he could use to not just facilitate the formation of an ego, but to really create, or rather restore one. If Seth could go one step further and truly identify what exactly the different parts actually did, he might even be able to truly manipulate an Ego to fit its purpose in the future.

He had already done so when he made Wolfram but compared to his current perspective, his actions had been very rough. Effective, but rough. Wolfram's power was actually a far cry from that of the angel he was made of.

The more proficient he became in the manipulation of an ego, the more intelligence, and power he would be able to conserve in the future when he had to deal with unyielding or unsavory egos.

It was not just an important point for golems. Who would want a noncomplying ego weapon? Or an ego weapon that kept complaining about its former life as a human, or monster? A sword that chose its master was interesting in a fantasy setting of a story that followed the chosen hero.

However, he was a blacksmith. He had a business to run. If he made an ego weapon to sell, he wouldn't want it to be picky with its buyer or annoying to use. The Giant's Rod was a good example. It had an ego, but it was a simple one unlike for example Oz who had his own personality and thoughts and liked to talk.

Seth stopped mulling over the topic when he reached the question of whether it was ethical to manipulate the memories of a dead person, to turn them into an attractive piece of merchandise. He would simply judge how he felt about it on a case-to-case basis.

After all, it was all a question of the future, if he managed to succeed with the fire titan's soul. It was his first time, so he took his time to work as meticulously as possible. Seth studied the soul for quite a while to identify and sort the fragments that made up the different core memories.

With deliberate strikes of Charon's Obol to inject and guide his mana into the soul, he moved the fragments that were scattered throughout the soul. Unfortunately, it wasn't like a 3D jigsaw puzzle. He called them fragments, but there were no clear breaks and fitting seams that would give him a clue about how to put them together.

It was more like guiding wisps of smoke and shreds of energy, He could only group the together based on their characteristics, like the aura and feel they gave him. It was a lot harder than when he simply shattered the most sinister core memories of the angel's soul and worked them out of the soul.

He arranged these wisps into amorphous spheres similar to the ones that were still intact. Then he refined some of the common souls he had gotten from Tano'Mol and use used them to patch up the superficial damages to the soul.

Seth took a moment to observe whether there were any changes. Really, after he patched up the wounds, he could already see signs of changes happening within the soul. It might be a stretch to call it healing, but the amorphous blobs of fragments seemed to have become more cohesive as if they grew together a little.

The blacksmith didn't immediately continue working and instead took his time to closely observe the changes. He wanted to wait and see if it would really restore its ego, or AN ego before he continued to shape the souls.

It didn't take too long, he got the tower to teleport him a cup of cocoa while he waited. By the time he finished the cup, the description of the fire titan's soul had actually changed.

<Soul of a Fire Titan Iknaes (Massive, Epic, Ego)

The soul of the Fire Titan Iknaes, the Ashes, who fell into a dimensional rift and lost his life before he could realize what exactly happened. In life, he was a great warrior and fire kin comparable to an elemental.>