Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Over the next few days, the force of Golems started spreading further and deeper into Ypselon and Y-City. After their initial combined combing through a big stretch of ruins, the army splintered into smaller teams led by older golem knights that used to follow Wolfram.

24/7 these golems kept on fighting and raided dungeons on the predetermined routes Seth and Mark Baker had decided beforehand. The smaller groups would keep merging to raid higher-level dungeons and split up to get smaller ones in the vicinity, purging the ruins on the way.

According to bakers Scouts, there were fewer people, the closer one got to Y-City. Because of the dense placement of the small and greater dungeons, it had been completely overrun once nobody managed the dungeons. This was why Seth felt that it was okay for the golems to move on their own, the chance to meet people was minuscule.

Meanwhile, Seth kept track of them using his skills, while he followed the the main group, whose sole goal was to reach the rendezvous point where all groups would merge back together before closing in on the former association and the places Baker suspected armories.

These places were very close to the city center, where they suspected the greatest resistance. It was close to the sleeping Leezekai, whose antlers could be seen surfacing from the cityscape from miles away.

Most of the scouts Baker sent here didn't make it back, the few that made it spoke of of creatures they had never seen before. Schools of terrifying specters, hauntingly beautiful creatures that would rip a man to shreds with their bare hands, gnomes so fast and strong, that whoever caught their attention did not make it.

All of them were creatures that were most likely connected to the awakening of the slumbering realm, since even the System Church had no records of these creatures, making them unique to Urth. As this was the most dangerous, as well as their target area, the blacksmith wanted all of his troops assembled before entering, so the individual groups couldn't be picked off by powerful beasts.

On the fourth day after entering Y-City, Seth found that his worries had come true much earlier than expected. Two-thirds of his troops arrived, followed by trails of repurposed trucks and cars filled with loot and pulled by golem horses. The leftover third of the orc golem army was caught up tens of kilometers away from the meeting place.

The bard had noticed that more and more groups stopped in that vicinity but only realized the problem when they had not moved for several hours. This could only mean one thing. There was someone or something holding the golems back. Something strong, or resilient enough to have over 1000 golems fight it for hours.

“I will have to go and take a look,” Seth decided and summoned several of his crafting stations that were not needed back in Minas Mar. Sivri was intelligent and could take the command of the army, but she was not exactly strong, this was why he summoned Cerberus as her bodyguard. To summon him, he needed enough stations present for the place to be recognized as his smithy.

“You should start sorting and re-distributing the equipment in the meantime,” he left a few words for the golden dwarf, before he got on Vegr, one of his golem griffins, and flew to the place where he could sense the group of golems that were being held up. He was about halfway there when he heard the haunting song of a bird.

he heard the notification.

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It was a beautiful melody. With his experience as a demonic bard, he was able to identify that this bird song was incredibly potent in lulling their victim to sleep. Too bad he wore Laraweg which negated all mental status ailments, The song had no effect on him.

Looking around for the bird singing this tune, Seth felt like the song was kept from close by and a far distance away. He couldn't spot the source, but what he noticed was the changes in the city below. Corpses of monsters and humans alike started leaving the buildings and assembled on the streets, moving in the same direction he did.

“Necromancy?” Seth mumbled a little confused. Since they walked in the same direction, Seth decided to follow and keep an eye on them. It was then that he finally caught a glimpse at a weird beard. It wasn't big, the size of a hawk maybe. What was weird was that he couldn't gauge the distance as it seemed both far away and close by at the time. He didn't hesitate.

Was it close? Was it far? Didn't matter.

“Heart Seeker,” Seth mumbled and activated the Mind Reaper Bow's skill. A bright arrow of light left his bowstring and trailed toward the beard, aiming for its heart. Trying to make him fall asleep? He took that personally. Seth didn't need to know how far the target was away, he just needed to see it, to hit it with .

Hit in the chest by the arrows of light, the bird fell like a stone, landing on the rooftop of a building. Seth swooped by to get the body and soul. . The size wasn't impressive, but he had not expected the soul of such a bird to be epic-rated. Deciding to look at it later, Seth returned to the sky.

When he got back on track and looked down, he was met with a confusing scene. The horde of undead had fallen silent again, returning to being inanimate corpses, now strewn across the streets. What was going on? Did the golem kill the necromancer?

No, even then, the awakened undead wouldn't just fall over. Thinking about it on the way, the only logical conclusion was the bird. When it sang he felt sleepy, but the dead rose. He would have to check the soul of the bird later to make sure. If it was true... as a demonic bard Seth couldn't help but feel intrigued.

He was now closing in on the place the golems gathered and suddenly heard the same song again. Another bird was singing in the vicinity! Before he could find the bird, he finally found his missing golems. They were surrounded by undead monsters and people. In turn, they were surrounding another creature.

The outer ring was made up of flashing scaled golems, valiantly fending off and ripping apart reanimated corpses. Toward the center, the fight turned inward. At the center of the crow, sling spells and trade blows with the armored golems and about 20 elites.

Many of the armored golems would be knocked down in a single hit. While the armor was broken, the golems would be able to mend themselves as long as their cores were okay. Their cores were made of and infused with a soul, it took a lot to destroy just one of them. This way they could join the fight after spending several minutes on the ground, creating a constant back and forth.

Fighting like a berserker was a creature that resembled a dwarf, but overall bigger than regular dwarfs and slightly slimmer. It was unnaturally pale, with snow-white hair and beard. The mouth wide open as it chanted spells, was filled with teeth like needles

Focused, Annoyed

878/1000 HP 230 000/578 000 Mana

…

Race: Nem Marvoʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ No(ᴠ)ᴇlFire.nᴇt

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Since the level difference was “only” eleven, Seth was able to see more details of the status with .

These numbers were frightening, especially the Mana. Also, it was fighting this many golems and had barely suffered any damage... But something was weird. Although the armored golems had a hard time just buying time, the twenty elite golems made from lv.80 orcs with big souls kept chipping away at Donnchadh's health without being pushed back.

This had been going on for hours, but Seth was able to observe Donnchadh's health go down in real-time. There had to be something more to this than what met the eye. After a while, the battered dwarf-like creature finally slumped down, its health had hit zero.

Instead of dying and awarding point, however, it was suddenly enveloped by a dark aura and its wounds started healing rapidly, filling its sickly pale body with fresh vigor. Donnchadh was ready to go on.