Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Blood gushed from deep gauges as the skills and spells of the adventurers rained on the beast. But no matter how many wounds they slashed, there were no signs of the fight slowing down.

While the teams were exhausting themselves slashing at the immortal nightcrawler, others were watching in shock as the beast kept healing. However, Seth was in a stupor for a different reason.

The spirit blacksmith was unable to make out a soul in the beast. So far he had always been able to see the souls, or the traces of a soul using <Soul Capture>. He was unable to do so this time. Seeing a living, moving creature lacking a soul caused an unfamiliar and deeply disturbing sensation in him.

It hit him harder than he would have expected. He was okay with golems having no soul, but when it came to other beings... Even the undead had souls! But this wasn't an undead, it was clearly alive, a living being moving without a soul... What happened to it? How was it alive without one?

The beast's movements and regeneration finally started to slow down, after several hours of the siege. The adventurers did not get away unharmed, in the end, most people present in the camp had to join the fight to drive the beast into a corner.

When the fight finally came to an end, the creature looked like it was dismantled alive. Only when almost half its body mass was destroyed, did it stop moving and regenerating. Cheers broke out in the night, as the exhausted adventurers celebrated their hard fought for victory.

Seth only felt even more confused. It seemed like there was nothing wrong with the experience they had gained, despite the creature lacking a soul. What was going on?

"Are you still there, Leana?"

"...Yes." "Don't tell me these things are supposed to be this strong."

"They are not."

The blacksmith could hardly ask her about the missing soul without revealing his skill, but he was sure it had something to do with it.

"Can you get me the guard captain?"

Leana used the chance to take the next steps quickly. Since she had seen everything with her own eyes and everyone was already assembled she wanted to have a meeting right away to talk about the changes. She didn't reveal what Seth and she had talked about but used the raid on the worm and the missing teams as an excuse to cancel the quest. The objective of finding out what cause the tunnels were cleared and everyone was promised a compensation for canceling the quest. Although badly damaged, Chrona also purchased the body of the night's worm above market price "to investigate it".

"We have to investigate the anomalies first. Before that, we can't ask you to risk your lives in this way. You will be contacted once the investigation is finished and informed whether the quest resumes or not," she finished the meeting.

The teams were scheduled to stay the rest of the night and set off on their way back to Delta in the morning. Until then they were questioned whether they noticed anything weird during the fight. Most had nothing valuable to say, but some mentioned that it was not simply called a dungeon worm, but its name had a bunch of characters attached to it, though they could not quite say what they meant.

In the morning, only the people of Chrona and Minas Mar stayed in the camp, Except for some escorts that guided the teams on their way to Delta. With the guilds of Delta gone, only Seth and his team were left to map out the tunnel system.

As confident as the blacksmith felt in his armor and the ability to travel safely, he had been spooked by the sight of the raid on the soulless beast. If things had not moved so quickly, he may have been willing to cancel his offer.

Seth was one of the people that would proudly accept being called a coward. There was nothing important at stake for him, so he saw no reason to risk his life. Previously, he had thought of mapping the tunnels out personally but now... Well, he still had to go in person, be he was going to be more careful about it.

The guard looked on in confusion as he released s warm of scout golems into the tunnels. If this could fill the map of the map skill Chrona would have done it from the start. Items that could interact with system skills were rare and hard to make.

Seth had heard that the few people able to make items such as the very precious map table needed to fulfill high requirements, of which the lowest were to be a master enchanter and a high-ranking member of the system church with a priest class.

The blacksmith had no chance to fulfill such requirements, which was why this was not his intent in the first place. The golems were sent on a reconnaissance mission. They would find and tail the individual worms.

This method would not be of any help to Chrona when hunting them, but it was a great help for Seth to avoid them. Since he could sense his golems, he would be able to evade the worms, while running full speed through the tunnels.

He knew that Alniyat worked from the other day, and he was going to raise the speed significantly. Although the legendary armor piece could manipulate his chance to meet danger, he had no idea how well it worked if he ran into danger with his current speed.

Seth had only gotten a glimpse of what he was currently capable of, but if he concentrated on just running, he felt like he could outrun a car in the city. Half an hour after the swarm of golems went in, the bard check his equipment and went to one of the yet-to-explore entrances.

He had updated his <Map> earlier to make sure he would not do any redundant work. He equipped Antares, immediately being covered in a skin-tight barrier, and held the shield in front of his chest. The next moment he was gone from the eyes of the spectators. Only the quick staccato of his step echoes from the entrance and quickly grew quieter in the distance.

Seth had trained semi-diligently to be accustomed to his speed in battle, but he had never really tested the limits. The unnatural smooth and round nature of the tunnels, together with his speed made it feel like an old video game. As if he was a spaceship, flying through a gorge, just without evading obstacles or collecting power-ups.

Continuously increasing his speed, he quickly noticed that he wouldn't be able to deal with the speed, without the <3D-Maneuver Assistance>. Especially bends, or sudden dead ends threatened to put an abrupt stop to his speed run of the Dungeon Worm nest.

The activation of <3D-Maneuver Assistance> released him from 2-dimensional movements. Still, curves with almost 90° angles in any direction, would have probably broken his legs or joints, if it was for the 80% damage reduction.

On longer stretches, he would open and check the <Map> to check his progress. He tried to check the map and the position of his golems as often as possible, to make sure he wasn't going to run into the worms.

The beasts did disturb him, but this was not the reason he evaded them. He could beat them, but the consequences were a big loss. The easiest solution he had to deal with them was to get Wolfram to turn them into metal.

However, similar to the other methods he could think of, it would make the reason to hunt them completely obsolete. The materials would be lost, or so damaged they lost their use. Whether this was just an excuse so he wouldn't have to face something that disconcerted him, who knows?

After two hours of running, he found that the golems were congregating in a single place. What was going on? After deliberating for a moment, the blacksmith gave in to his curiosity and followed the signals of the golems to see what was going on.