Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Once the really important matters were taken care of, Seth went into the building to solve the little mana problem. Evee's <Auto Revive> needed a whopping 500 mana to activate successfully. <Recover> needed 200 mana to be used.

Seth went ahead and started forging soul armaments. He used medium-sized souls and started with gloves. After finishing the second glove he suddenly got a notification.

<Ding! Your skill Spirit Forging lv.1 had become Spirit Forging lv.2!">

He felt relieved, that making soul armament was enough to grind this skill. The problem with his class skills was, that they did not show a proficiency bar like the other skills did. Level 2 had no perks, but it became easier to define details and the performance got a tiny bonus.

Seth forged five more soul armaments from medium-sized souls and- wore them himself. He would give Evee the two gloves he made first and the older pieces he exchanged for the new ones.

Seth also took the time to enchant the soul armament. He infused a few more souls to strengthen them because he wanted to keep the regeneration of bonus mana. The enchantment was nothing fancy, just a simple willpower upgrade that increased his willpower by 125.

This gave him the confidence to avoid the headache, even if he went a little overboard. He unsummoned the smithy and returned to the outside.

The girl had recovered enough to sit at the fire together with the party.

"Evee, come over here for a moment."

He had told the party everything, but if they saw him hand out candies to newbies, they might ask for some too. No need to trigger that nuisance. The girl's eyes became big and round when he showed her the glowing transparent armor pieces.

"Take these and wear them. They give a great amount of bonus mana."

When equipped with the armor it was visible for a short moment as a kind of ghostly armor and then sank into her skin.

"I really worked! My mana shot up by almost 700 points!" she exclaimed in surprise. The next moment she was encased in bright light. Her wounds vanished and her flesh regrew as color returned to her skin and eyes.

At first, her arms only recovered to stumps but she used <Recovery> and the flesh crept up over the foreign bones forming a pair of fair hands.

In a matter of seconds, the ghoul queen had turned into a healthy looked girl with ash brown hair and big brown eyes. Nonbelieving she stared at her hands and touched her cheeks.

"I- I'm alive again! I can feel! I have hands!"

It looked like it worked, but there was one thing Seth found suspicious.

"Where are the skeleton hands? Did, did they really substitute your original bones?" he asked puzzled as he had not seen what exactly had happened.

~ Yeah! She literally had fists of steel. ~ Al commented chuckling.

"Did you know about this?"

~Of course. I have seen a few immortal witches in my time. Slowly exchange parts of their body for stronger materials and items was a custom among them. Since they are not reliant on their body for survival, they can do some pretty amazing stuff to strengthen themself without getting any kind of health issues. ~

Seth dreaded his future. Would this girl ask him to exchange her full skeleton for high-rated metals? He didn't deny that it sounded interesting but... Oh well, maybe he would be able to find a medical model of a skeleton. One made of plastic. He would not mind that.

"Oh well. One problem solved. Let's go out and greet the Party, Evee." he said, and they returned to the party. They stepped out into the daylight and Evee shuddered when she felt the sun's warmth for the first time in almost a year.

"Guys say hello to Evee. The alive version."

The party looked at her with great surprise and there was a certain glimmer in Link's eyes which provoked a sharp jab of Alison's elbow in his ribs. Her gaze was murderous and told him quite clearly to leave the girl alone. Seth and Evee joined the party at the fire.

"Okay guys, here's the plan. We gonna get some easy experience."

The first step was interrogating their sweet little prisoner who had finally managed to stop sneezing. Seth's interrogation method was crude, to say the least.

"Look what I did to your friends." he pointed to the corpses solidified in poses of terror and pain that laid on the circular field of cooled molten stone. The molten metal of their items had burned deeply into their flesh.

"Tell me where your hideout is and how many of you are there."

The man struggled and tried to look away. He shook his head and stayed silent. Seth grabbed the priest at the nape and shoved the squirming man headfirst into the charred remains of his friends.

"I told you to look. Take a good look."

The skin was charred but the meat below was still juicy. As he was pressed against the body's surface, the still hot juices leaked and ran across his cheeks. The priest could not help but vomit. He retched and coughed for several minutes completely emptying his stomach on the remains. Seth waited until he was done before crouching beside him.

"I can assure you, that I can give you a fast and painless death or let you die an even worse one than them. The only question you should answer yourself now is, are your comrades worth the torture?"

"P-please spare me! I- I only joined them recently! I just wanted to survive!"

"Hum hum. Let's make a deal. Do you see the young woman over there? If you tell me everything you know about this Raider Association or whatever they call themself, I will leave your fate in her hand. Maybe she will have mercy?"

Evee looked completely innocent and was not recognizable after turning back into a human from an undead. Hope grew in the bandit's eyes when he thought that a young girl might really spare his life! He willingly told them everything he knew.

The location of the hideout, their overall number, and the number and size of teams currently dispatched to search for the undead. He told them everything he knew and even drew a map of the hideout for them.

When the bandit finally fell silent, he looked at Seth expectantly. The other nodded and kept his word. He stepped aside and handed Evee a blood drinker stiletto.

"It's your choice whether he will live or-"

Seth had not finished talking as the stiletto already pierce the man's left eye. The glimmer of hope slowly dimmed as life left the body. Another 5% was added to Seth's experience bar.

"Oh, I earned a point in intelligence?" Evee exclaimed in surprise.

"He-He lied. He was among the first group of people that attacked us. And he did some of the worst stuff afterward. "

She explained herself when she saw the party staring at her in surprise but did not give any more details. Seth sighed.

"You should have let me finish talking. You could have gained more stat points if you stabbed him some more. Now it's too late."

"Oh! That reminds me that I should distribute my points!" she exclaimed and became busy with her status window. Afterward, she explained that her status points were reset upon revival. She had regained the points that were automatically distributed while she was an undead.

She followed Alison's advice and put about a third of them into intelligence and distributed the rest on endurance, agility, and willpower.

In the meantime, Seth explained what they were about to do to the Party and they came up with a plan.