Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

It was finally time for Seth to make his own hammer. This was a step any blacksmith would have to make, to really graduate from being a beginner. The process was like a ritual. In the case of Charon′s Obol, it really was ritual!

The blueprint for this hammer was special. It was not an option he could just click and use to train the process of making a workpiece like the other blueprints. He could only use this once and it had no guiding function. It came with instructions for the assembly and sketched for the shape of the parts. It described a specific breathing technique that had to be used during the forging and the way other materials like souls or candles needed to be placed in a formation around the smithy.

He had bought most of the stuff needed for the set-up in Oriekot the day before.

Seth not only needed to prepare this set-up but had to maintain the correct breathing technique while forging the hammer in free creation. Oh yeah, and he had only one shot to get it right. Everything had to work first try because the blueprint would vanish afterward!

He was glad that he waited to do it until now. It was not just that his skill just ranked up, but also that he had gotten a lot more comfortable to just do things in free creation. After making this many weapons in the recent weeks he felt like he was in the best condition he could be in to have only one attempt on this.

Seth had prepared three <Dark Steel> ingots and he decided on the <Coal Wood> for the handle. The only ingredient he had that was not rare was the <Soul(big)> from the juvenile. He hoped it was enough to get a rare-rating from the start! He didn't know how much material and souls the hammer would need to grow, so he hoped he could save some by starting a rank higher!

Just setting up everything took an hour, but the young blacksmith could finally start making the hammer. The first thing he did was welding the 3 ingots of <Dark Steel> together to make the billet for the hammerhead. He immediately noticed the difference to regular steel. It was a lot tougher to move and shaped the material.

Welding them together was a requirement of the blueprint. This needed to happen while following the mentioned breathing technique. Just welding the rare metal together had taken him a lot of energy and brought him close to exhaustion. It did not make it easier, that he needed to infuse the soul into the material at the same time!

But he also noticed something unusual. When he noticed it, he checked his status and saw that his mana was slightly fluctuating between full and missing some points. Following the breathing technique controlled his mana flow and sent out a small bit of magic power with every hit he did with the hammer.

When the three pieces were finally welded together, he took a short break to put some attribute points into strength and dexterity, bringing both to 60 and endurance to 50. He hoped this would help him to manage the next step. Forging the hammerhead.

Charon′s Obol roughly resembled the other hammers that came with the <Spirit Smithy>. One face was flat and square with rounded edges to forge smooth and level surfaced. The other was round and mildly curved to move more material and roughly shape it. Unlike the normal hammers in the smithy, it had steel langets riveted along the elongated handle like some polearms to strengthen the connection and handle.

On top of this, he needed to forge two stamps. Seth needed to stamp specific symbols onto the body of the hammer. One was a circle with two beads; one at the top and the other on the bottom of it, directly opposed to each other. The other symbol was a reversed V with a small circle fit into the bottom.

He had long put his clothes away and his body was drenched in sweat as he slowly forged the unruly metal into the shape he wanted. The only cloth he still wore was a headband that kept his sweat from flowing into his eyes. He had not forged like this for a long time. He lost his sense of time; the doors were locked and nobody could disturb him. His only focus was on the piece of steel that was slowly taking shape under his hands

He drank water and stamina potions in big gulps during the short breaks he took before he kept going. The next step after shaping the hammerhead was the stamps. To save time he used <High-quality Steel> and made 2 square bars where he engraved the negative of the symbols on one end.

When he heated hammerhead again until it was glowing red and punched in the reverse V on one side half the souls that were placed within the formation of this ritual made a step towards him! The same happened with the other half when he punched in the circle. He quenched the hot piece and the souls rearranged again! The 20 souls that had seemed randomly placed at the start, formed a perfect circle around hammerhead.

Seth's heart had jumped a little every time the souls suddenly moved closer to him. However, he easily calmed down after reminding himself that this was most likely part of the ritual. Next up was the <Coal Wood>. It matched the <Dark Steel> not just in color and rating but also in affinity.

It was time for the grinding wheel of Sisyphus and this time he channeled the feelings Sisyphus might have felt. Grinding the wood into shape only worked painfully slow. Despite the potions he had been chugging down he was fatigued, and his arms felt heavy. Watching the wood be grinded away dust particle by dust particle felt as if it was chipping away at his own will. How long had he been working now...?

He tumbled towards the engraving table with the finished handle in hand. Inlays were also part of the handle. In preparation, he has training making inlays in the polearms he made. <Goldsmith> had gained some experience from that. He had chosen <Ancient Bronze> for the inlays. They were not categorized as enchantments, but he didn′t want to skimp on the materials after coming this far!

He felt terrible, but once he sat down at the table he was completely focused again. It took a lot of strength and time to cut and undercut the channels for the inlays. Inserting the wire was the easier part. Not everything was good. The fatigue had its cost and he often had to fix mistakes and rework the channels for the wire to stick firmly. He had not felt this frustrated, ever since he got this class. But there was light at the horizon. The last step was to smoothen everything by hand with the files and polish the handle.

The entire process came finally to an end. He returned to the anvil, where the hammerhead waited. It was time to fit the two pieces. Seth had to grind and readjust a little, but soon head snuggly fit onto the handle.

Seth had fused about half of the Titanoboa′s soul into the head. Now, he infused the other half into the handle. Like before he could feel that it was a lot easier to infuse the soul into organic material. He nailed on the langets, and with a big sigh of relief, he fortified the connections with a dark steel-wedge.

Surrounded by a circle of twenty souls Seth went to the water of Styx, this would completely attach the soul to the hammer and finish the piece.

As he submerged Charon′s Obol in the water it started glowing in an eerie dark blue and the souls around him and the materials places for the ritual rushed into the barrel, fusing with the hammer!

< Ding! You have finished your first class-exclusive item. +3 DEX +3 STR>

<Charon′s Obol

Rare (Growth)

Damage: 220

Durability:3000

1. The damage is raised in dark places.

2. +5% dark damage Mana Cost: 20 per minute

3. Slow Digestion

Like the coin needed to pay the ferryman Charon, to bring the souls to the underworld, this hammer is needed for a Soul to find a new purpose in the hand of a Spirit Smith.

Charon′s Obol is used to directly forge and damage souls. +50% chance to stagger +10% damage to armor

The Hammer grows by feeding on souls and materials.

Charon's Obol can forge ANY material but consumes mana corresponding to the change in the structure of anything that is not metal. Only works on the Anvil of Tartarus.

-Other options will be unlocked upon growth- >

He did it... HE DID IT! He had finally finished his most complicated creation so far! And it had a lot of additional effects! He sat down and leaned against the anvil. All the tension left him and the fatigue kicked in. With a tired smile, he checked the beautiful hammer in his hands. It was so dark, it looked like a piece of the night sky in his hands. Like the portals of the Pathwork. Only the dark blue aura along the edges gave it depth.

Damage in dark places would be handy in many dungeons. The additional dark damage was also interesting.

Dark elemental damage was a kind of undirected curse. It could randomly cause a wound to hurt, fester, rot. You could call it the element of damage over time effects! The cost was high, but the effects were interesting.

Slow Digestion was a skill that was created by a synergy between the snake soul and its growth attribute. It slowed the digestion of materials Seth feeds the item and in exchange increases the effectivity of digestion and lessens the amount of material he needed by 20%.

And the biggest perk would be the option that was unlocked by the higher rating. He could forge any material. The possibilities became endless! He would be able to forge all kinds of monster materials now. Bones, teeth, claws, wood, and all he needed was... mana. He looked at his pitiful 200 mana.

It didn′t matter right now.. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the weight of the hammer in his hand, the pain in his arms, and the fatigue washing over him.

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