Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Behind him were three others of similar level. A pale, haggard person with big golden frog eyes and slimy green hair. He wore a coat decorated with shells. The next one was a bipedal creature covered in fur. It wore a pair of dirty leather pants, but it would have been a reach to call it humanoid. The last one was a man who looked like he was carved from wood. Similar to Dig, they were tied up and held down by teams of golems.

Was this the “court” that the drunk shoemaker was talking about before falling asleep?

“After many difficulties, we caught them in a Satellite City North of Y-City.”

With its distance to the central city, there have been many more people who survived the Scene's purge. Ultimately this did not help them. Coldly and objectively the orc general described the state they found at the place.

Vegga spoke of venues for blood games, where people were forced to fight and kill each other. Scenes of torture so graphic even Seth felt shocked. People who died from throb vines penetrating and growing through their bodies, turning into bizarre works of art. Heaps of gnawed-off bones. Flooded underground facilities turned into submerged caverns and filled with drowned zombies.

“When they attacked us in the same ways, it became overwhelmingly clear that these creatures and their underlings were the perpetrators,” Vegga Gorz finished his horrid tale. The orc golem behind him had been nodding here and there, when he judged these deeds harshly during his explanation. Even these orc-turned-golem felt aversion to such practices.

“Aww, what with the shocked face? Are you our judge? Are you going to spout some nonsense about justice now, before executing us? Save it! The only thing I regret is that there weren't more pets to play with!” Dimblood mocked him with crazy laughter.

The others didn't seem as enthusiastic about the cause, but they all looked at him in defiance. And fear. But mostly defiance. Some people would have condemned killing captives, but not Seth. Not after everything he heard. As the leader of Minas Mar, he was also technically justified in punishing people in some circumstances. But this was not about justice. This was greed with a smidgen of revenge.

“Don't worry, this will only hurt for a moment,” Seth said without engaging in a battle of words or ideals.”Let's see what the soul of a twisted little shit like you looks like.”

The maximum level of <Spirit Capture> came with two perks. The first was that Seth was able to widen the area of effect for capturing the souls of undead and those close to death. The other perk was “Soul Robbery”, a single-target attack that allowed him to even harvest the souls of the living and healthy. However, it had a chance to fail if the target was too strong.

Dig's eyes ripped open wide when the blacksmith struck his chest. His hand wearing the Wraithguard, formed like the bloody claw of a bird of prey that descended to grasp his meal. There was no blood or wound in the cobbler's chest, but he felt like the claw had caught his heart.

His defiance, his confidence, his animalistic joy for the suffering of others, he felt his very self being pulled into a void. His limbs went limp. Sound vanished. His eyes were blind. His world became dark, cold, and silent.

Dig Dimblood wasn't the only one in a whirl of emotions. Seth's heart also raced, when he pulled out the soul and appraised it.

<Soul of Dig Dimblood (Massive, Ego, Epic), Crafting Material

The soul of a Lepresean, a greedy fairy cobbler with a fondness for sadistic and lethal mischief. A species with a peculiar connection to money and fortune. Soul retained 98% of its original skills and memory.>

“peculiar connection to money and fortune.” Fortune! In other words luck! It became cleared when Seth searched through the skill list and quickly realized that he finally had the fitting soul for his Lucky Trinket Ring.

The skill list revealed three peculiarities about the Lepresean. The first was the trait “ Lepresean's Fortune” which raised the luck attribute by 25. The second was the ability to temporarily raise his luck by sacrificing something of worth, such as currency or a treasure. Lastly, there was something called a Geass.

The Lepresean had to serve whoever caught them until they managed to flee, in exchange they gained the power to become invisible when not observed and <Treasure Detection>, as skill that allowed them to sense precious objects.

This was the first time Seth heard about this. The geass was listed separately and was neither skill, ability, nor trait. The bard looked at the rest of Dimblood's group. Was this what made the creatures that appeared after the awakening so “weird”. The was only one way to find out. One by one, three more corpses were added to Dimblood on the pavement.

Unlike Dig's, they fell just short of being massive, meaning he earned three big ego souls. All of them were epic rated and when he checked the skills, he found all of them had a geass.

The hairy beast was called a Troll, which confused Seth a little, but he accepted that it was probably Urth's version of one. The soul's description called it a crude and violent beast, fitting most trolls he knew. The troll's geass was a 90% immunity to physical damage, but in exchange, it would turn into brittle stone under the direct sunlight.

The haggard beast with the froggy eyes was called a Shellcoat, a creature that indulges in drowning its victims. Its skill was all water-based and in geass was that it would lose no stamina in water, in exchange for only living off the flesh of sentient beings.

Lastly, the wooden man. The soul description called the creature a Forestscratt. Judging by it's skill, one could call it a wood sorcerer born from a forest. It had a high affinity with earth and water, with magic for growing trees and plants. Its geass was that it would not lose mana inside a forest in exchange for being severely weakened outside of woods.

These four examples were enough for Seth to make a guess about the geass. The closest he knew in the context of the system were Traits. But unlike traits which usually had a specific effect without a price, a geass came as a trade-off.

One got an ability or power that was strong to the point that it might even circumvent the established rules of the system, but in exchange, it came with a great disadvantage. Something like a 90% reduction of physical damage, or resources like mana and stamina not running out were already in the realm of legendary effects, despite their holders not even passing lv.110.

This explained the rule-defying witness reports he heard about. Some effects of geass worked like a bug or glitch in the system. A creature that could keep casting spells without depleting mana? Anyone would find that weird.

After dealing with the captives, Seth had Vegga Gorz and his colleague, the two bosses, give him an update on their progress. The golems had been working faster than he expected, already widening their circles to the north, west, and south.

Especially the south with the ruins and slums that had already been abandoned before the fall would take a long time to clean up. They avoided the East because of Baker's warnings. The Golems were here to grow, not to be repeatedly beaten. There was no need for risks.

“We have also collected more loot,” Vaggi Knurz, the second golem general with a massive soul, mentioned as the guided him to a mountain of treasures. The golems had no crates or other things to store the items and jewelry, so they had piled it up to an almost 10-meter-high mountain.

Despite holding a lot of trash, too, Seth felt a little overwhelmed at the sight. He gulped.

“ I guess, I will have to sort this out before returning...”