Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Over the following days, Seth spent some of his time on the side coming up with a way to help them. After talking again with Mina, he came to the conclusion that their invisibility was purely a visual effect since Mina could still use her ears and nose to find them.

The blacksmith couldn't make them something like his own Argos Eyes that could see through the illusion, which would probably work against them, however, he had a better idea. A really stylish one.

Seth used a part from the Titanoboa's few blacksmiths would think of using. Using some of the pit organs and the advanced enchantment of Life Detection that was also on one of his earrings, he created the ultimate facial accessory.

A mustache that allowed to detect enemies with infrared and magic. Everyone looked better with a mustache. It had no other function, but it couldn't be worn with a mask, so he made a special one for Jonah.

The man with a trauma of losing his magnificent full beard would finally be able to wear one again. A magical full-beard to detect them all. He even gave it a voice-changing function, just for Jonah.

"Are serious?" Monique exclaimed when he handed her a magnificent mustache when he came for a training session.

"Take it or leave it."

He didn't say anymore and only smiled at her, facing her incredulous look. Jonah on the other side was really happy to switch his mask for a voice-changing, detection beard. He could finally talk! And have a beard!

Unwillingly, Monique donned her new equipment, gaining the power mustache. Seth also brought some blindfolds for them, as they needed to get used to seeing with their newly acquired facial hair.

Seth used these training sessions to get used and play around, not just with Flame Aura, but also by combining it with the flames of the Trignis Gloves. He slowly found out about the different characteristics of the three new flames,

The salamander fire was closest to normal fire and he didn't find the difference for quite some time, but when he tested the Flame Absorption, he found that the salamander fire was the most compatible with this skill. Absorbing fire he started with the salamander fire had a noticeably better effect than any of the other special fires he could use.

The draconic titan flame on the other hand had an overwhelming destructive power. It was not as powerful as the spirit flames, and not as clean, but in Seth's mind, it became the best candidate to deal with serious damage in a normal situation. Because, despite lacking in many areas compared to the spirit flames, it had a great advantage. It didn't burn the souls of his victims, which meant he could use it to farm experience AND souls.

Lastly, there was the fire of Phlegethon. It took some time to find the special characteristics of this one. Maybe also because the blacksmith only researched it on the side. Phlegethon's fire was not as destructive or had a special compatibility with other skills, but it was much gentler and had a refining, or rather a cleansing property to it. It showed its greatest use in the smithy. The probability to mess up material refinement in the furnace was drastically lowered. It took Seth a lot less concentration, to refine even high-level materials.

Still, he only spent little time on these things. Most of his time over the past few days went into familiarizing himself with the properties of the dragon scales and the scorpion carapace. This was especially important to decide on where to use the seven dragon scales.

The power of the dragon scales was relatively simple. They granted a high defense against pretty much everything. Whether it was physical, magical, or elemental damaged, they gave an extremely high protection against all of it.

Seeing that the scales were relatively simple, it was maybe even more important to explore the power of the Carapace of Conflation. Because of the ritual, it went through, the scorpion's shell had become a very complex material. Its most basic traits were scaled toward agility, earth affinity, movement speed, and obviously negation of weapon damage.

With Seth's ballad and the following ritual together with Apollo to force the demonic power back out, it was bestowed with affinity to darkness and demonic power, as well as the divine power of Apollo.

These powers had a high chance to allow the blacksmith to aim for skill-improving properties. He was sure that the demonic energy as it was, would improve his skills as a demonic bard. However, the divine power of Apollo was different. The power was not as present as the demonic power and very diverse because of the many divinities Apollo held and Seth was unsure whether the power of Apollo would be able to show any kind of strong effects this way.

Facing this dilemma, Seth decided that it would need something like a catalyst to trigger these powers of Apollo in a specific item. Since it was called the Carapace of Conflation, he decided to use demonic etchings to bring out specific parts of Apollo's divinity. This required a lot of planning beforehand to make sure he could gain the most from these properties.

He spent almost a week coming up with the blueprints he needed for his new armor set, exactly because he needed to research what catalysts to use on which item.

Only after thoroughly planning everything out, did Seth start with the armor. The first step was creating the material. The basic properties of the two materials did not depend on their mass, which was why Seth began by making a composite material made of a thin layer of dragon scale and a thicker layer of the carapace.

Despite the rank up of his <Energy Manipulation> and the ability of Charon's Obol, it was a hard to accomplish feat. The two high-tier materials took a lot of mana and concentration to be hammered into thin uniform sheets. Fusing two such sheets together was comparable to forge welding steel.

He had to take extreme care to make sure that they contained enough mana to make them malleable and stuck together. Especially, since he could not afford to mess up. He didn't worry too much about the carapace, but there were only seven scales.

With the ratio he decided on, one scale was enough material for a pair of vambraces and a pair of pauldrons. Completely exhausted he had to sit down and drink some potions to rest. He had started two hours ago and barely managed to turn one scale into four sheets of material for the mentioned armor parts.

The resulting material was a mix of the black scorpion shell with a demonic red hue and the faded grey of the dragon scales. The system simply called it a legendary composite material.

In addition to the strenuous forging process was also that he kept on singing the forging ballad he had decided on. There was a principle of too much magic getting into each other's way. This was especially true when it came to magics of vastly different types. However, the restriction was a little less grievous when it came to effects that could be considered more neutral and those of the same kind.

His all-time favorite, the damage reflective ballad, counted as a rather neutral magic and had little chance to get in the way of anything. It also was similar to the inherent effects of the materials used, which was why he decided on this when it came to the vambraces and the pauldrons.

Gulping down water and potions, Seth came to the conclusion that he wouldn't be able to process all the scales to material in one day. There was just no way. After experiencing how hard it was, Seth he could process only one scale per day, at best.

But it didn't mean he had to stop there for the day. Even though he didn't have it in him to process another scale, he had no problem starting on the first armor piece. Since he preferred to finish the pauldrons after the cuirass, he would start with the vambraces,

Although he would usually have the Trignis Gloves on the hand slot of the status window, nothing could stop him from equipping the vambraces manually. This was because, unlike gauntlets, gloves did not cover much of the forearm.

The blacksmith intended to customize his vambraces in a way, that they seamlessly fit with his gloves, to give him optimal protection, without losing any advantages.

Once he had recovered enough he return to the anvil. From two of the four sheets, he cut the rough shape of the armor plates he needs. To accomplish this, he used a thin spirit flame like a plasma cutter before he proceeded to hammer them into shape, all while singing the ballad of damage reflection.

Since he hoped to tickle out the effects to improve his skill, Seth used dyed Minotaur leather to attack the armor plates to. With the raw body finished, he had reached the point where the two vambraces would stop being the same.