Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

After assuring the man and his daughter that he sent someone to look for their aunty and sending the Parrot of Doom for Mike's reinforcements, Seth was free to return to the workshop the following day.

Although there were no pressing matters, it didn’t mean that he intended to slack when he had materials waiting for him. The next project was the broken shield they had brought back from Y-City. The shield was made from the scale of a legendary beast that resembled a pangolin.

It was a single scale already the size of a Kite shield. The craftsman who fashioned the shield originally had not done much more than smooth the surface, engrave a few enchantments, and attach a handle.

While the broken hammer had nothing but its material going for it, since it was enchanted by a magician, Seth was able to extract the enchantments from the shield. They were master-level enchantments to increase the durability of the shield, as well as the strength and endurance of the user.

It was a unified circuit, but after learning the generic Automaton Core Circuit of Hephaestus through hard work Seth was able to extract the three individual enchantments from the unified circuit. Apart from the material itself, this was the biggest gain.

From the beginning, Seth was able to unlock blueprints for items by raising his <Blacksmith> level, but not <Enchantments>. His <Blacksmith’s Eyes> now <Eyes of the Maestro> had allowed him to learn enchantments by disassembling or just appraising items later on.

Most enchantments he currently knew were the ones he had collected during travel abroad in a different world. These were all up to the journeyman tier, the level he was at when he had to return to Urth. He had also bought a bunch of items from the auction house to try and augment his knowledge. He had a good set of craftsman-tier enchants, but items with master-tier enchantment were all at least relics, as such they were rare and expensive.

Lately, the blacksmith had done his best to learn the demonic etching to make up for his lack in high-grade enchantments and he had used many of his Olympian enchantments for the legendary items he created so far. As such he never really cared about the lack of master-tier circuits.

However, now he saw the error of his ways. Although the enchantments obviously cost a lot more mana to be maintained, they also had a far greater effect. Currently, his normal enchantments like strengthen attributes added 70 points to the respective attribute or 100 if he used combined ones, this was with the improvements through his various skills and skill levels.

This combined circuit was able to raise strength and endurance by 80 and improve the item’s durability by 1000. Once extracted he had the single circuits that could raise strength and endurance by 100, as well as raise the item's durability by 1500 as base values. As such, these new enchantments alone already made Seth very happy.

As for the scale itself, the materials effects were called Ground Defense and a skill called <Earth Escape>, but there was a catch.

< Mountain-Borer's Scale (Broken)

The scale of a legendary Mountain-Borer, a beast resembling a giant pangolin that is not only said to dig massive tunnels and burrows even through the hardest of stones but could also become one with the earth, like an elemental.>

<Ground Defense (Unavailable):

The wearer's physical defense is tripled as long as they are in contact with the ground>

The skill worked similarly to a magician’s Blink or Seth’s <Scorpio Escape>.

<Active Skill: Earth Escape Cost: 500 Mana, Cooldown: 30 seconds (Unavailable)

The user can become one with the earth element and travel through the soil to escape

Requirements: In contact with an earth elemental surface

Range: 5 meters in any direction except up. >

Both the skill and the effect were currently unavailable, because the shield, or rather the scale, was broken. This also meant Seth couldn’t just break the scale in lots of parts to make several items with this effect.

The blacksmith actually found it intriguing that now, as he had more examples of legendary materials, they all showed their unique properties based on the legend they stemmed from. At least this was Seth’s assumption.

For example, when he worked with the dragon scales, it did not matter whether he changed their shape or split up their material, the damage negation was an inherent quality. On the other hand, the effects of materials like <Adamantium> or this scale had external traits based on their legend that worked as restrictions or exceptions.

For <Adamantium> it was the makeup of its alloy that allowed him to fake it for a lower price. For this scale, it was a restriction that stipulated that it had to be intact to show its potential. Seth was sure there would only be more legendary materials with these kinds of external traits and not less.

So far, he was lucky with his materials given by gods or refined through special circumstances. Whereas one could call those, too, an external trait. He mused about the topic for a while, before he got back to the item in question.

Ultimately, he had to repair the scale and recycle it into a usable shield. The blacksmith also already had someone in mind for the new shield once it was finished. Although Tekar was the prime target for anything and everything defense, the shield was going to Bement, this time.

Since the revived adventurer and vassal of Seth had joined Field Team 4, Jonah’s team, as the main tank, he also needed at least one legendary item. Also, the pangolin scale was very light, so it didn’t fit Tekar’s specs.

The man needed a massive, heavy shield to optimize the effects of his class and skills. Bement on the other hand was not fully specialized in defense and would do better with a light shield that could keep him agile in battle.

With practiced movements, Seth started swinging the hammer and singing his forge song. The choice of forging a ballad was obvious, since it was a shield Seth chose Old Faithful, the ballad of damage reflection for a Damage Reflection of 40%.

The first step was getting the scale back to shape. The kite shield-shaped scale had been broken into two parts. Starting from an impact crater in the middle that had an uncanny resemblance of a fist imprint, the crack split the shield from its lower tip to the upper right edge.

Seth used Charon’s Obol and <Energy Manipulation 3> to infuse his mana into the legendary material and slowly made it malleable on the edges of the crack. In this place, he needed to forge weld the two parts back together.

This took the longest and the most energy since there was a lot of material to move. This gave him enough time to redevelop his respect for the vampires since one of them had smashed this shield with their bare fists.

Vlad's and Genevieve's people were a legendary race of vampires like the rumored Progenitor that would always be mentioned in fantasy stories. However, not every individual was a legend from birth, like dragons. But like Puffles, they would grow to become legends simply with age and talent.

For example, Vlad and Genevieve were not the oldest, but still the strongest vampires of their people. The vampires didn’t like talking about it, but it seemed that the few vampires that were legends had fallen during their fight with the Beyond. Showing how they had just faced the Tip of what the Ethnarchs were capable of.

Once the scale was back in one piece, Seth also took the time to smooth out the smaller cracks, dents, scrapes, and the old enchantments left from its time as a shield. After he was done with that he was left with a clean, fresh scale he could turn into a shield.