Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Chapter 930. Eye of the Storm

Finally, it was time for the last item he was going to make with their spoils from Y-City, for now at least. This one was arguably the easiest since most of the work was already done. The item in question was of course the staff with the wind orb, Lyxiss had brought back.

The orb itself was already a legendary item and quite good on its own, so it was a little like cheating to use it as material for a staff, but it wasn’t the first time Seth had done this. The question was whether he would be able to get a pattern from the orb. Would he be able to forge the legendary enchantment?

Seth actually had its doubts, since it was not really the material of the orb that was legendary, but the enchantment a Master Enchanter had cast on it. Would his path be able to copy even this kind of stuff?

For a change, Seth had not chosen the wood of the Guardian Tree for the staff, but one of the materials he had read about during his research. Since he wanted to make items with more focused affinities, Seth bought the wood of a Whipping Willow. From the auction house.

Albeit “only” epic rates, it was very expensive for a simple reason, it was one of the few woods with a high affinity to wind, as it was actually a sentient tree that manipulated wind magic to fight off enemies with its long flexible branches.

The piece of he bought for a whopping 35 gold, was the best material suited for a light wizard staff. Of course, there were various metals with wind affinity, Seth could have used, but dedicated casters didn’t put a lot of points in strength. How were they going to wave around a heavy metal bar to cast magic?

The wood was suited best taking its durability, weight, and properties into account. Also, because his would come into play if he could smuggle in some carpentry. Not to mention the proficiency in carpentry he could eke out this way.

But before he started cutting, sawing, and rasping like a carpenter, the wood landed on the anvil. At his core, he was a blacksmith and one who was able to forge all kinds of materials. This was why the piece of wood he purchased would have, originally, been too short for a staff.

However, Seth could not only bring it into a rough shape before he started refining it with , this way he was also able to weave a forging ballad into the wood. The ballad he chose was one he already knew too well.

There were quite a lot of demons that called the power of wind and storms their own, but Seth chose one he already had contact with. Furfur was the demon of storm and lightning that blessed the Palpatating Spear he made for Azul. Since he had worked with it before, he knew that the demon was reliable as long as the price was paid.

With the wood on the anvil, a demonic tune started filling the workshop, supported by Oz, Gleobem, and Seth himself playing the anvil. At the solemn, yet sometimes uplifting song summoned storms within the workshop, the bard had made sure to close the door and contain the effects within his own rooms.

So only Sivri and Cerberus were able to hear the music, while only Sivri was really able to appreciate the sorrow and defiance in the song. As the blacksmith sang, the demonic rooms formed with the melody and sank into the wood he was forging and shaping.

Compared to the legendary and special materials he had worked with lately, manipulating the core wood of the Whipping Willow was a relaxed task. To make it malleable took a lot less mana using the Hammer and .

When reached the third stage, it had also become a lot harder to gain proficiency in, just like after becoming the master rank. Despite working with various legendary materials like the dragon scales, Scorpioʼs carapace, or most recently, the lower venom dragon fangs and the Mountain Borerʼs scale, its proficiency was barely above 90% at this point.

As Seth was shaping the wood and working in the balladʼs power, he could feel a change in the connection he kept up with . What the song was supposed to do was to passively increase the power of wind magic, technically increasing the materialʼs inherent affinities.

Originally, there was no price to pay for these souls. Furfur was not one of those demons that did outrageous things like ask for offerings or the sanity of the user. However, the stream of souls he had been continuously exchanging for the power flowing into the song was suddenly stopped, from the other side.

This was not part of the description he had read about in the booklet where he found this ballad for Furfur. Soon, something out of the ordinary happened as the stream of power from the demon increased, without asking for a price. The blacksmith knew this would not be free, but at this point, he did not stop.

He wanted to see what the demon was scheming and continued with his work. When came close to finishing the forging, he observed the changes that came with the additional power.

Usually, the demonic runes would sink into the material and the only visible effect would have been a darkening of the material to a certain degree. Although the bard could feel that the power had spread homogeneously in the wood, the dark pigments had stuck together and surfaced, almost like a tattoo.

He instinctively knew this was not an etching or an enchantment, but still an effect that was added to the material itself. The runes that now ran along the handle of the rough shape of staff read out a specific line from the song, but the bard couldnʼt fathom what exactly the effects would be in the end.

Following the forging, he began working on the staff with files, rasps, and sanding paper to refine and polish the surface. Except for the smooth handle, the blacksmith had carved, or rather forged, the staff to look like a soft spiral that ended in a sharp point, with a place for the orb at the top.

Despite taking away material from the surface like this, the dark runes were not damaged in the least. They only came out even more prominent, once he started polishing and varnishing the wood. The last step was setting the orb into the four prepared “claws” at the tip.

Since he had no problem treating wood like metal, this was not hard but he also added a dollop of epic glue he got from Bess, who got it from one of Alisonʼs underlings. While the glue was hardening, preparing the soul for the staff.

This time, Seth didnʼt have a hard time choosing what Soul to use. When he killed Azzo and her three colleagues, he got a demon soul of almost every element except water. With two demon souls of fire and one of wind, the decision was quite easy.

This one was not lucky enough to keep its ego, based on the rather unsavory situation he found the demon in when he went to kill it. It was not an ego Seth intended to preserve, which was why he didnʼt directly harvest the soul. Although the soul lost the possible ego and skills it came with, it still managed to preserve the trait, which was more than enough for the blacksmith,

Winds of Death was a passive trait that seemed to add something like a curse attribute to wind-type magic, that would also deal stacking damage over time to the opponent. Turning all wind magic into a curse that could also cause status abnormalities was not bad at all.

Originally, Seth intended to use the master-level durability enchantment and a mana-gathering circuit on the soul, but following his intuition on the sudden change, Seth put the durability enchantment on the tip, while he etched the same words that were displayed on the staff, along its incorporeal mirror image.

In big demonic runes, it spelled:

“I Am The Storm That Is Approaching”