572. Brothers of the Forge

With the boss gone, most of the problems in the mansion were resolved. Even if it was a growing dungeon, it had nobody that controlled it now. Most ghosts had found their peace and only the few evil ones like the gremlin-like fellow still stuck around.

Sandra, Seth, and the Girl they found were more than enough to make a sweep of the mansion and find two more survivors. The blacksmith didn't know how many they had lost, but their faces didn't look good.

It was evening by the time everything was more or less finished and Sandra came over. She was already back to wearing her business attire.

"This concludes the deal. Thank you. In their name and in mine," the business lady said with a grateful bow.

"Nothing to thank me for. A deal is a deal. Are you sure you don't need anything else?"

She shook her head.

"We will come again later with more people to search and recover the missing bodies."

"Well, this is goodbyes then."

She saw him off and he used Home Call to return to Delta. The system church was silent, probably because it was night. He quickly returned to Minas Mar for a good night's sleep. His dreams were disturbed by the events of the day.

The blacksmith had no problem staying calm at the moment thanks to <Calm Reaction> and <Fear Resistance>, but this didn't mean facing a haunted mansion had no effects at all. Especially the thoughts of what the Sprite King had done to all those people.

However, he felt much better after sleeping over it. By the time he woke up, Mina was already gone. He felt it a little regrettable, but he also had something to do. With the souls in his bag, he was finally free to finish Forgeright and the Gloves of the Firespirit.

Seth planned to start off with the forging glove for two obvious reasons. Before he started on the fire gloves, he wanted to try and fix the damage on the fire titan's soul. The second reason was, that he clearly wanted to have the effects of the finished glove applied to all the works he would do from now on.

With that in mind, Seth brought out the forger's soul. The little workaholic brimmed with a will to work for all eternity. It was exactly what Seth liked to see. It was even better than the souls didn't have a complex ego, having another guy talking into his ear would get annoying.

Meticulously he shaped the soul into an exact copy of the gauntlet. With practice, he had become better and better in <Soul Forging> and was able to create a mirror that was hard to discern from the original. The only difference was that one was obviously only an incorporeal soul.

Then he got ready for etching the verse. He was not idle when he didn't have a blacksmith soul, he had already prepared a ballad. It was not a classic demonic work. He had looked around the library of the bard college for ages but never came across a song dedicated to forging.

There were many demons the demonic bards could call upon and they would often specialize in one or two. From those many great demons, there were very few that specialized in crafting and found no works dedicated to them.

At first, he thought that making items that could improve their crafts, was not the main focus of demonic bards. He would have kept believing in this delusion if Oz had not explained it to him. It was an unwritten rule, that demonic bards would write their personal poems to such demons.

All of them were unique and not published. This meant the blacksmith could not stand on the shoulders of giants for this and left Seth only the option to write one himself. Of course, it didn't mean he was lost.

The bard had already collected some experience in writing his own songs, although it was his least favorite part of this class. In addition, he had a lot of inspiration. Although he knew quite a lot of demonic ballads at this point, when h wrote himself, he found that he was pulled to the style of dwarven ballads.

His inspiration came from his time in Tored's smithy. Even though he sucked in normal ballads at the time, he still knew a lot of them and when it came to forging, he couldn't think of a better style than dwarven singing.

The mix of dwarven style and demonic language had unforeseen effectiveness when he devoted the song to Öggun, one of the few overlords of the forge.

<Brothers of the Forge, Epic>

It was the best ballad he made so far and even brought his <Song Writing (Adept)> to lv. 4. he had tested the ballad beforehand, by making a ring while singing it and engraving it on a simple vambrace and it had worked quite well. He had given them to Hoen and Wedan.

He also brought out a new acid Alison had developed. She had pestered him for almost half an hour about how much materials for a soul etching acid cost and how hard it was to develop something to harm something she couldn't even see. In the end, it was mostly bragging about her alchemical genius.

He sat down at the etching table and placed the soul of Forgeright before him. With <Channeling> activated, he grasped the brush and attempted to start drawing the demonic runes, when he noticed something wrong.

Öggun was a very passive demonic deity, but when he tried to use <Soul Trade> to see if he could further strengthen the effect, he actually got a response.

~Sing it.~

Was the gist of the mental message he received. If he wanted to improve the effects even further, Öggun wanted him to sing the ballad out loud while writing it. This was usually not necessary, even when what was being etched was a ballad and not a poem or verse.

However, the infernal scald didn't beat around the bush. If he could get even greater effects for singing while etching, he had no problem doing so. Augmented with all his skills, the blacksmith's voice rose and filled the smithy.

"Brothers of the forge rejoice! Swing, swing, swing with me Raise your sledge and raise your voice! Sing, sing, sing with me"

With powerful strokes of the brush, he carefully wrote the words at the same time as he sang them. After a moment, he felt the current of power flow through him thanks to channeling. The demonic runes were filled with power.

As he continued, he felt, even more, power flow in, but not just through channeling, but he heard another pair of voices sing along with him.

"Down and down the hammers strike, Forging sword and spear alike, Armor, Helmet, Shield, and more,

Hanging in the forge's store. "

In the adjacent workshops Wedan and Hoen, the two dwarven smiths, had started singing along with their rough dwarvish voices. The energy transmitted to him by their voices also flowed into the demonic runes and the Forger's soul started glowing like the embers of a forge.

Seth stayed calm. Originally, this was not a ballad that would make others sing along, even though the second sentence called upon them to sing along. There were a few reasons this could be happening, but it didn't seem to have an adverse effect on the two dwarves, which was why he decide to continue.

Writing the last rune, the song also came to an end, and then the workshop fell silent. Well, Seth's workshop did. He could hear crazy hammering from the other two. He would have to take a look later.

The result of the song was not a simple effect. There was actually the line <Blessed by Öggun> added to the description of the soul. Although the demon was not as dominant and well-known as Hephaestus, having the blessing of two higher beings combined on one forging glove seemed almost decadent.

He still did it. The blacksmith infused the blessed soul into the Forgeright gauntlet and finished it by quenching it in the water of Styx.

<Ding! You have created a piece of legendary equipment! All Stats+1>

Hearing the notification, his heart raced. His was his second legendary item. Checking his status, the experience for <Blacksmith> and <Enchantment> also made a huge jump and was just shy of a level up.

He stood there for a moment to collect his thoughts before he pulled the gauntlet out of the waters of Styx.

<Radiant Forgeright

Legendary

Phys. Damage: 500

Mag. Damage: 500

Phys. Def. :1700

Mag. Def. :1700

Durability:3000

1. Allows working with all materials.

2. Passive Skill: Absolute Focus

3. Passive Skill: Craftsman's Precision

4. Improves in Synergy with all Forging Equipment

5. Improves in Synergy with Skill: Blacksmith

6. Improves in Synergy with Skill: Goldsmith

7. Improves in Synergy with Skill: Golem Artisan

8. Improves in Synergy with Skill: Enchantment

9. Improves in Synergy with Skill: Reinforce

10. Improves in Synergy with Demonic Skills

11+100% Skill Effects

12. Improves the Performance of all Minerals.

A magnificent gauntlet created by the hands of Craftsman Smith with the help of divine and demonic intervention. Any Blacksmith would give a leg to call this gauntlet his own, but not just anyone is able to wield it.

Requirements: Blessed of Hephaestus, Craftsman Blacksmith or higher, Accepted by the Blessed of Ögunn>