Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Chapter 1410. Paoloʼs Gauntlets

Since Nädel currently had no big projects, he promised to make the boots, gloves, and lining for Moniqueʼs armor within the next couple of days, reassuring her that they would stay within the rough schedule for their outing.

“Tower master!” he heard someone call him when he was about to leave Nädelʼs workshop. It was one of the tailorʼs apprentices, or former apprentices. They had all reached the craftsman-tier, and it felt wrong to keep calling them apprentices.

“I finished the gloves you asked for,” he said with a bright smile, when Seth stopped to listen to him. It was actually the tailor who took up his order to make the gloves for Paoloʼs gauntlets. In his hands, the man in his early thirties held a pair of brown gloves.

They resembled smooth driverʼs gloves, ending right at the wrists, but they also had a special padding along the knuckles and fingers, making them also resemble modern fighting gloves used in sports. They matched the blacksmithʼs specifications exactly.

“Oh, what leather did you use?” Seth asked, appraising the gloves.

“I used the leather of Quintal Rock Ape, known for their disproportionate punching power,” the tailor explained his work at the blacksmithʼs inquiry. Although there were no options because of any special sewing technique, the gloves actually came with an active skill.

Surprisingly, it was one of the more abstract skills Seth had seen, simply because it mixed some very real metrics with the rather arbitrary numbers of the system. There was also no conversion rate mentioned in the skill.

There was no telling how good the skill was, even if it said “10 times of something”. Still, a free skill was a free skill. It was up to Paolo to find out how useful the skill would actually be.

“Good work, thank you...” The blacksmith paused.

“Drake, Sir. My name is Drake,” he said with a smile. Seth couldnʼt help thinking that it was a waste that someone with such a cool name actually ended up becoming a tailor. But he quickly shooed away the intrusive thought.

“Good work, Drake,” he patted the manʼs shoulder and took his leave. Seth had almost forgotten about the gloves, but they came just in time. With this, he would be able to finish Paoloʼs gauntlets before he started on Moniqueʼs armor.

The day was neither young nor old, so he had a meal and returned to his workshop, where he went to look for the enchanter after greeting Sivri and Cerberus. He found him inside the specially arranged enchantment lab.

“Hi Rùn. Are you done with the pieces for the gauntlets?” Seth asked, despite already knowing the answer. The genius was currently kneeling on the ground, setting up an enchantment formation. At the center was a simple-looking helmet. Rún was experimenting again.

“Of course. They are on the table over there,” the golem said, focused on his task. He pointed at the nearby table, where the crystalline plates were placed. The rose-colored crystal had taken on a violet hue after being enchanted and was glowing with a dim purple now.

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“Great. Did everything work out as expected?” Seth asked, picking up the plates.

“Although it was not a completely assembled item, there were only minor complications with the enchantment,” the golem explained, not looking up from his work.

“Thanks, then I will leave you to your own business,” the blacksmith said, understanding, and left the craftsman to his work.

While Seth and the rest of Minas Mar had been partying, Rún had already finished the enchantment of the armor plates. All that was left now was assembling the gauntlets and imbuing a soul to finish the new pair of legendary items.

The plates were quickly fused to the pair of new gloves, and Seth could start working on the soul armament. As for the soul, it was another one of those TanoʼMol had managed to collect during his outing in the Unclaimed Mountains.

It was no overly impressive soul, but it had a skill and a trait that could prove beneficial to Paolo. It was the most fitting soul currently available. Haymaker was exactly what the name said, a crude, unarmed swing that would raise physical damage by 75%.

In exchange, it would cause a 1-second slow, which left the user open for a counterattack. It was not the best skill, but usable when one knew how. The trait was the main reason Seth ended up deciding on this soul.

“Brute Strength” raised oneʼs strength by 25% and their physical damage by 10% when using no weapons are make-shift weapons. Since gauntlets didnʼt count as weapons, but armor, it meant Paolo would gain this benefit permanently when fighting barehanded.

Lastly, once the soul armament was forged, it was time for the enchantment. For this, he had chosen one of the few unique Olympian enchantments he had left. It was called “Eurynomosʼ Strike” and came in the shape of a Sigil that looked like a dark skeleton placed on an eviscerated vulture.

From what Seth could find, Eurynomos was a daemon, or a spirit of the underworld. It was described as a terrifying corpse eater, probably in charge of decay, stripping the meat off of the corpses, and technically keeping the place clean.

Since Paolo specialized in support and holy magic, while dabbling in pure physical melee combat, Seth thought it was a good idea to add another, meaner element into his attacks, in case Paolo ever met an opponent with a high resistance to holy magic and physical damage.

In Sethʼs opinion, Eurynomosʼ Strike most likely held the power of decay, similar to some of his ballads, but without the demonic inclinations. He never used it since he could either do it with a ballad or had better options.

The blacksmith had also deliberated on using “Menoitiosʼ Destiny “ which would have most likely imbued the gauntlets with lightning elemental damage, as Menoitios was a titan struck down by Zeusʼ thunderbolt.

However, Seth decided against that, because a thunder strike didnʼt quite seem to fit Paoloʼs image. A priest who could cause something like decay with his strike, on the other hand, held an interesting duality. As seen in some of his previous works, Seth quite liked pairing these opposites of healer and disease carrier.

It had been a while since he inscribed one of these sigils, so it should have been refreshing to watch the engraving cover the two soul gauntlets on its own, once the sigil was finished. But it was more unsettling than satisfying.

Instead of a specific, stylized pattern spreading from the sigil, it was like hundreds of flies, emerging from the tight sigil and covering the soul armaments, a tight pattern of flies and maggots. It was not nice to look at, so he hurried to continue.

Although he was having some small doubts, it was not enough to stop him at this point. Actually, his curiosity was the deciding factor. He wanted to see how it would come out at this point.

x2.

.

...always when he didnʼt expect it.