blacksmithoftheapocalypse

335. The Expanse

After several days the caravan had finally left the terrifying forest behind. The travel on the ashen desert was hard. Dust would keep getting in their eyes and mouth. They needed to wear rags in front of their faces.

Once in a while, the carts would get stuck in the soft ground and it kept draining their stamina. but they realized how much easier it was when they reentered the thick forest.

Not only did they have to deal with finding their path in between the trees and shrubbery,...

334. Here be almost Dragons

Approaching the slimy, writhing sack Seth felt a little disgusted. Okay, not just a little.

~ Don’t be such a wuss and help it. ~

“Are you sure this is strong? It can’t even get out of its membrane...”

~ Yes, I am sure. ~

“Fine...”

The leathery membrane was about the size of a potato bag. He was glad for wearing gloves and he grabbed the membrane and held it still, so he could cut it open with a knife. A roundish head with big, sparkly eyes was stuck ...

333. A Snake won’t give birth to a Dragon

Time seemed to fly by as the colossus swallowed up all the prey and turned it into power to develop the child. Only when all the food was gone did the magic waves weaken.

According to the sorceress, it was now concentrating on funneling the energy into the child. Although Seth planned on killing the pseudo-swamp dragon right after birth, he did give it privacy and did not watch the process of childbirth.

He did this out of respect. Not because he was glad to li...

332.Tangled

Having some quiet time Seth checked the souls he had harvested from this raid. The 40 snakes had dropped 15 uncommon big souls. The biggest catch was the Patriarch’s soul which was massive and rare rated.

Seth and Puffles waited for almost 2 hours, but nothing happened. At least no giant pseudo-dragon returned to its crashed baby-making party.

Since nobody came back to see what all the turmoil was about, Seth was bold enough to return to the basin and dive for the rest of the bo...

331.Muddy Bonanza

Mud and water splashed as the giant snakes wreathed in pain and hurriedly unraveled their knot. The lake’s water became even murkier as they stirred up the mud at the bottom.

As the snake finally took some distance from each other, Seth saw one of his concerns confirmed. The swamp dragon was gone!

This should have been a piece of good news because there were only ordinary high-level giant monster snakes left.  Except that he did not know where the matriarch had gone!

...

330. Rolling in the Mud

Where were they? Why was nothing happening?

Seth had been waiting for two hours but nothing had come to take revenge! Was this title a joke? Where were the big snakes?

He had looted roughly 40 small souls from the riff-raff but nothing else of use or worth. This was not what he had expected.

When he came to the city, he expected it to be swarmed with juveniles at this point. Or maybe even adults. It had been a whole year; one would expect the population to boom or grow stron...

329. Deltan Again

<Ding! The Quest “A Mothers Last Wish " has been fulfilled by allied forces!>

“What?”

The moment he had accepted the quest for the soul, he was notified that it had been completed and the soul appeared in his inventaory.

<Caring Soul(big) Rare, Crafting Material

The Soul of someone who cared a lot about the fate of others and was always ready to lend a helping hand. >

The would of the mutated Hangingtree had also lost the corruption effect. He h...

328. Last Wishes

Seth felt a lot better traveling through the ashen desert. It was as if a weight had fallen off his heart, with all the trees gone.

Also, the constant trickle of kill notifications lifted his mood a lot. Many forest critters were losing their lives in his fire and Seth had raked in a good bunch of experience through this.

When the notifications finally slowed down, he had already reached lv 56. He had gained whopping 4 levels by starting a forest fire.

Two of the most recent...

327. Losing Home

“You have to leave this place as quickly as possible!” the dryad told the crowd that had assembled at her abode. Shocked and confused voices filled the atmosphere.

“I know this comes unexpected, but something happened, and I won’t be able to protect you.  I can feel a great darkness approaching. Those who have experienced the ritual know what I am talking about. Its seal was broken.”

Gasps could be heard, and Pip quivered in fear. It had been less than two weeks sin...

326. Scorched Earth

It was a terrible abyss Seth was staring into as he channeled the demon king of destruction, Abadon.

This was the “Ballad of Destruction”, one of the few pieces praising this mysterious figure.

The simplicity of the title could fool the reader. Its effects were rather profound. It roused the thirst for destruction of anyone that heard it and fueled itself from these desires. In exchange, it increased the destructive power of the bard’s attacks.

The greater the des...

325.Excessive Leaf Blowing

Whether the forest moved to protector or hunt didn’t matter.

Seth was prepared for genocide.

“Tell the caravan people to huddle together and protect themself. I can’t guarantee for their lives.” Seth barked at Marcel.

Confused the guild leader looked like he wanted to ask something, but he held back the question when he saw Seth’s gaze. The glint of madness was enough to hint for him to hurry back.

He had barely run half the way when the whole forest was illu...

324. Fleischwölfe

Seth’s party was camping in the dark, far away from the camping site. They had their portable barriers and the wall called Puffles to keep them safe over the night.

In the distance, the entire campsite was illuminated in the shine of fires. The travelers were spread on the ground beside the fires, sleeping while enjoying their cozy warmth. Only the night guard was awake, but their concern was directed at keeping the fires alive more so than keeping an eye on the surroundings.

It...

323. Unexpected News

“It’s been a week since  they left, eh?” Jack and Monique sat at the edge of the Oathguard’s training field and observed the recruits. The explosive beauty was drenched in sweat and had only sat down beside Jack Felton to relax a little.

After Mina and Yulecat’s Fur left days had become incredibly stressful at first. Monique and the others left had to take on all the high-caliber dangers on their own because the Oathguard was not fit to fight anything above level 60 that ...

322. Blacksmith who cried Wolf

“Aw, again just rations?” Wedan asked bummed. Lynri mourned along with him.

Seth returned to his fellowship who weren’t too happy about the decision either. He didn’t know why they suffered so much. He really liked the jerky and bread. He had even shared his last snacks with them.

“A traveler can’t always choose what they eat. You should be happy you are being fed at all.” Duhu scolded the two. As a dimensional traveler, he knew the meaning of starvation.

~ You...

321. ...my old Fiend

They shot signal magic into the sky to call back the scouts who had flown ahead. After they traveled a while longer it was decided to set up camp when the day became dimmer. The first night of their journey was approaching and when one looked at their first day... good preparations were needed for the night.

One of the scout teams did not return even after several hours. These were their first losses and they already happened on the first day no less.

They parked the wagon in a de...

320. Hello Forest my old...

On the morning of the third day after conquering the stronghold a caravan of almost 2000 people was ready to set off into the unknown. Despite initial estimations, the forest had already taken grasp of the outer courtyard and was creeping on the walls of the castle.

The mighty walls built by slave hands were already crumbling under nature’s advance.  The previously deforested area outside the stronghold was already filled with lush big trees.

On the wide outer courtyard, a ...

319. Through the Grapevines

----------Delta-------------

“What did you say?” Monique put down her weapon.

Team 1 of the Fild Service had just returned from dealing with a high-level threat in Delta. Minas Mar was busy even with the new Oathguard finally joining the subjugations.

The field generators and finally arrived not too long ago but the authorities were still hard at work setting them up. For this they actually prioritized other regions first, leaving Minas Mar to protect their part of the c...

318. Dealing with Stuff

Seth woke up in a soft and warm bed. He had drunk a lot, but the hangover was manageable. He still remembered that Lynri had helped him walk... Looking around he found that she had brought him to one of the big rooms that previously belonged to the higher priests.

Someone had gotten rid of the dead body and changed the bedding. It wasn’t the bloodstained mess he had left. Sleeping beside him was the priestess in question.

Sleeping beside him was the priestess in question!

...

317. Taking over the Place

As expected, the adventurers found the gates under siege by the outer guards, some warriors, mages, and controlled workers. The present freed people had a hard time resisting the charge but with the reinforcement of adventurers, they could start picking out the guards in the crowd.

While archers and magicians pulled their attention with long-range attacks and flashy magic, the assassins and thieves among the adventurers left the stronghold and infiltrated the enemy forces unseen.

...

316. Somewhere Else (7)

According to her map, she should have come across Epsilon already, but she kept traveling through an almost primeval-looking landscape filled with all kinds of giant and lately mutated seeming beasts and lizards.

At first, they had simply strong bodies and some had poisons but now more and more often they showed magical and mystical abilities that made her fights harder and harder.

She still had not found where the flying person had come from and the doubts in her kept growin...

315. Through the Fire and Flames

The courtyard filled with fire, blood, and the thick of the battle suddenly changed. In a surreal moment, for just a second, all flames stood still. Those who blinked missed the moment and opened their eyes to a battlefield almost devoid of fire.

Even the demons stared in a stupor as they lost control of their own fire and the flames condensed into a wave of terrifying heat that swept over the courtyard. Without harming anyone it continued on its path and vanished in the depths of the d...

314.Predatory Caterpillar

The walls crumbled like cake as Puffles rushed up the tower, leaped off the tip, and... flew. Like a dragon, he cut through the air and charged at the formations left in the sky who kept pulling up all kinds of metals to constantly create angels.

The Ivicer had far surpassed the Holy beast Seth had met in the ruins of Ivice and was close to 20 meters long, comparable to a train on legs. Puffles was still smaller than the giant leader of their race Cerno Bolk but...

313. Of Angels and Demons

They were completely exhausted and now they were confronted by an army of chimeras, a bunch of fresh angels, and something on the scale of an endboss. To make matters worse, the formations did not stop sucking in metal and creating more angels.

This was their hour of despair mere moments after they saw victory at the horizon. Many were heavily wounded and the pressure of the throne’s eyes pinned them to the ground.

He had survived and endured being a slave for decades....

312. Nothing good happens past 2 am

Although the storage couldn’t compare to the diversity of Tored’s treasure trove of materials, Seth was very much satisfied with the contents.

The theocracy must have had a way to reliably produce <Artificial Adamantium> because there were tons of the precious metal here. Almost 150 bars were divided into several crates like the one he was given to work with.

On top of this there were several boxes of <Dark Steel>, <Magic Steel>, stacks of different woods, an...

311. Eventful Night

Marcel, the leader of the Volcano Guild, and Elza, from the Moutain Guild, stood side by side among the group of captives that had previously been abducted and split into Warriors and Magicians.

They had lived the last two weeks as puppets; forced to follow any command of their captors. Marcel had mostly stood guard, day and night. Even when he felt like passing out from fatigue, the alien curse kept him awake.

He had already been close to losing his sanity. But he felt like he st...

310. Things that go thump in the night

In the upper floors, dark figures had appeared and carefully snuck around the rooms of the high-ranking priests.

On the second to highest floor one of the figures that had spoken with Meno got ready to assassinate the Chained Apostles stationed in the stronghold.

It entered the first room. It moved towards the bed like a shadow his dagger at ready to strike the sleeping apostle. But before the dagger could take the life, the figure stepped back in surprise and confusion.

The...

309. Making a Plan (2)

“Maybe we should start off with introductions? My name is Lynri. “

He thought for a moment but ended up telling her his real name.

“Seth.”

He took into account that she might have some kind of curse magic working on a person’s name. But... with the high magic protection he had, he decided to take the risk and be honest.

“Seth?... Alright then, Seth. How can I help you and what do you have to offer?”

“What can I offer you?”

“Well, of cour...

307. Sand in the Gears

He had been wrong. There was no nucleus in the dungeon. The whole underground was filled with an army of chimeras and nothing else. Had they really put the nucleus on the upper floors?

Seth spends some more time in the dungeons looking for another staircase or door but found nothing. He started ascending the stairs again. If it wasn’t below, it had to be above.

When he arrived back on the ground floor, he noticed ha the sky outside was already brightening again. Just how lo...

307. Making a Plan

~So... what are we doing now? ~

The situation had escalated in a weird direction. Seth was sitting in a small room. The furnishings were spartan with only a cupboard, a desk, a chair, and a slim bed.

On the said bed laid an unconscious nun. The well-endowed priestess was tied up with her own blankets. Seth simply sat there on the chair and intently stared into the void thinking about what to do now.

There wasn’t a lot of time. The nun probably had duties. People would noti...

306. The Dungeon

Hermes had just entered the Pathworks and was on his way back to Olymp. He had come personally instead of just sending a projection. He wandered along the dark passages when he felt a presence behind him.

“Ah! H-Hekate, I didn’t expect you to arrive this fast. I’m sorry I gave that lockpick your name, but it’s just a- Argh! Ugh-”

A hand with a vice-like grip had snatched him from behind and slowly lifted him off the ground. The blonde youth craned his neck and found hims...