Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

They thought about the problem that presented itself before them. Well, the problem was not that hard to solve. The primary problem was that she lacked hands to cast with. Everyone already had the same idea and was staring at Seth.

It was Alison that boldly spoke what everyone thought.

"She needs hands, can't you make her prosthetics?" she asked Seth.

The blacksmith in question was sweating buckets of water. He probably could. But he didn't know how. He had to make them usable for casting, too.

"Maybe? I don't know, ok? I had some ideas, but I don't know whether they would work. I have no idea about anatomy or undead. How am I supposed to make a prosthetic that allows an undead to cast magic? The only probable idea I have could hurt her and not work at all! Let's ask the oracle!"

The last thing he wanted to do, was worsening the situation. He opted to ask the expert.

~Don't call me that. ~

"Expert of Undead Anatomy!"

~ I don't know if that is better...but spit out your ideas."

Seth listed the options he came up with.

His first thought was obviously making mechanical hands and connect it to Evee's sinew or something. Did undead even use sinews and muscles to move? The problem was that he was far from a universal genius. The idea sounded great, but he had no idea how to actually build such a hand and connect it with her biological functions.

His next idea was to maybe make a hand using enchantments, like those edgy MCs that would lose an arm and exchange it for a silver artifact arm later on. But he didn't need Al'Zalsa to know that his enchantment skill was far from being able to make that.

~Yep, with your skill it would be impossible. It might even be hard for me to succeed first try. 1 hour would not be nearly enough. ~

Al'Zalsa still commented. The rest of the party was silently listening. These were the two ideas they also had. But none of them was a clocksmith and knew how to do it.

Seth's most promising idea was to make a gauntlet and infuse part of her soul into it. This was the idea with most uncertainties. He thought that maybe she would be able to move it, because of undead properties. He didn't know whether this would get in the way of her skills. He didn't know if this would enable her to cast magic. Worst case he could damage her very soul...

~ Stop worrying so much. Souls are more robust than you think. Let me take a look at her. ~

It followed several seconds of silence. The party looked around cluelessly. Evee was nervous, ever since she heard a foreign voice in her head.

~ Oh, she's an immortal witch, no need for worries. Though my advice would be that you make a skeletal hand and new arm bones. Those would work better. ~

Seth grimaced when he heard this. He had avoided this topic on purpose.

"I have no idea how a skeletal hand looks like in detail."

~ Aren't there a lot of corpses outside. Just dig one up and get some hands for reference. I don't see the problem. ~

He did his best not to show it, but he really didn't want to doctor around with rotting human remains. Undead and killing them was one thing, getting close up with a corpse was ...unsavory. He was seriously considering dropping the quest here.

It was hard to withstand Evee's and the party's sparkling eyes when they heard that he could do something so cool. he felt really unwilling, but sometimes one had to make sacrifices.

Link, Tekar and Evee went down to the graveyard. Tekar looked at the bone spikes at the end of her arms.

"Did you really dig these all? Alone?" he asked worriedly. She looked away with a hint of sadness in her eyes. "I had a lot of time..." was her only comment.

She showed them where she had buried a female zombie. It was a shallow grave not much more than the corpse covered with rubble.

"We are really very sorry. We will bring them back later! Promised." Tekar said before they took the two forearms from the grave. They came back and found that Seth had already summoned his smithy.

He unwillingly took the two limbs from them and put them on his worktable. The boney were covered in dirt and rotten flesh. Seth could deal with clean bones, but this was really nothing for him.

With a sigh, Seth used <Blueprint> and modeled a pair of skeletal hands based on these two examples. Like this, he would not have to deal with this longer than he really needed to.

When he was done making a blueprint for "Artificial Skeleton hands" Tekar and Link brought the arms back to their original owner. As a material, Seth chose <Magic Steel>. He had considered using the uncommon snake bones before until he realized the extent of this endeavor.

There were 27 bones per hand in addition to ulna and radius for the forearm. 29 per arm! Seth needed to make almost 60 bones... If he used the bones, he would have to use <Energy Manipulation lv.2> and the skill of Charon's Obol. Seth also refrained from using smithing ballads.

He had no concentration to spare since he needed to use <Soul Infusion> and <Spirit Capture> at the same time. To begin with, he got the idea because Evee gave him a similar feel like his items or Al's phylactery.

Maybe it was because of Evee's skill <Immortal Soul> that detached her soul from the well-being of her body. From what they found out from Evee and their great sorceress. If she had enough mana <Auto Revive> would create a whole new body for her, if her original was destroyed.

The skill would recover the best state before death. But Evee got her class after losing her hands, so her best state would have been without her hands.

Using his skills, he could pull out a part of Evee's soul and infuse it while roughly smithing each bone one by one. It was a lot harder to keep the piece of the soul separated and mixing it into the material. Using his skills on a still living sentient soul was a great challenge.

He also had to ignore Evee ambiguously moaning beside him. Every hit with the hammer or tug with his skills provoked a reaction from the young ghoul queen. She had fallen unconscious when Seth had started pulling out pieces of her soul.

Using the jeweler's table, he refined and fit them. When they were smooth and fit together in a way that satisfied Seth he walked to the waters of Styx and started dunking them into the water barrel.

"What now?" Seth asked looking at the pile of metallic bones on his workbench.

~ Remove her crippled ulna a radius. You will see it then. ~

"Tekar, you do it." Seth delegated this important task. Tekar sighed and pulled out what was left of Evee's forearms.

What happened next was something the party had never seen before. He had no chance to take a step back when the bones escaped from the workbench and shot towards the unconscious girl. The arm bones took their place and the hand assembled itself.

Now Seth understood what the sorceress had been talking about. It was like those Skeletons that kept reassembling themself if you did not break them with special means.

After a few seconds, a new pair of steel gray skeleton hands with a blue hue had assembled at the end of Evee arms. After her Souls had reassembled with her body the girl woke up. The first thing she did was touching her face and rubbing her eyes with her new hands.

Her drowsiness turned into soon turned into shock and joy as tears started flowing again when she realized that she had hands! For the first time in almost one year, she had a pair of hands. She could not stop using her fingies like a newborn.

"I guess this solves our first problem, huh?"