Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Seth sat in Master Tored's workshop. The dwarf stood before him with a blackboard and piece of chalk. Seth looks questioningly at the motivated dwarf.

"Since your training officially starts today; we will do it right. Since you never had a formal education as an ori huma, I will start from the basics," he said and wrote down 7 words.

"As you probably already know, or not, the system knows 7 ratings:

Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Myth, and the outlier Unique.

You will find these in every aspect of the system. What do you think they rate? Strength? Rarity? Those are only partly true. What they rank are the requirements. My grandfather taught me that before the system descended materials had specific requirements that a blacksmith had to fulfill to be able to work with them.

Take <Dark Steel> for example. A metal so thoroughly soaked in darkness; does it make sense that you can simply forge it? During my grandfather's time, a blacksmith who wanted to work with it needed a high resistance against darkness. A high affinity with the earth was needed to work with mithril.

Constraints like these were common and limited the number of materials the different races and individuals were able to use. When the system came, they were categorized into the 7 ranks and now you only have to reach the skill level corresponding to the rank of the material. I´m starting with this, since you asked me about the reason as to why you were unable to use <Mithril>, when you were an apprentice. This is the reason." Tored made a short break.

"But classes and items are also ranked in the 7 ranks, this explanation doesn't make as much sense with those..."

"It doesn´t? A class is ranked by the requirement you need to fulfill to attain it. The strength simply coincides with the difficulty of conditions that need to be met. The only exception is "Unique", as this truly just means one of a kind. Items are usually ranked by the skills a crafter needs to make the item. But take what I say with a grain of salt. The system is no dead and rigid automaton, otherwise there would not be something as ambiguous as the unique ranks."

Seth nodded. He had experience with the system being quite flexible at times. From there Tored went off on a tangent about his grandfather who was given a unique class as an ori dwarf and how back then all the dwarven masters had to grind their classes because the system made them start from beginner and lv.1!

It followed a short history lesson of this continent and the structure of dwarven government. The dwarfs were organized in many small kingdoms with a dwarven high-king or emperor at the peak. Seth did not really understand why he needed to know this, until Tored started to explain their work from now on.

"I am telling you, so you won´t embarrass me later. We, the dwarfs of Ora, are officially tasked with supplying the imperial army with equipment. This means you will also take part in this order. Let´s get to work!"

"Wait! That's it? I thought you would give me basic education or whatever...?"

"I think this is enough? I will teach you about the rest while doing it. It´s a lot better to spend time working and learning instead of wasting it will talk." the dwarf said dismissively.

This was how Seth´s work under Master Tored started. And as the dwarf said, he explained as they went along with it. The first thing he did was to bring show him several ingots of a material Seth had not seen before.

"This is the metal that will make any demon worshipper pee his pants and make vampires cry for their maker.

<Blessed Purum, crafting material, rare

This metal is the crystallization of the blood of a holy being. It has a natural affinity with light element and the holy attribute and an inherent repulsion against the dark element, curses, and the undead. It has been blessed by several high-level priests to strengthen these properties further.>

The enemy in the north were the people responsible for that horrible curse and the allies of demons. Items made from this metal would be a devastating advantage.

"Unfortunately, we only have these few bars."

"What?!"

Even the dwarven empire that spread far and wide through the underground of the central mountain range, only knew a few mines where <Purum> could be found. As expected from a material that crystallized from the shed blood of a holy being. To further save time, the <Purum> Ora received was split among the craftsmen and masters to increase manufacturing speed.

"Is it really ok, to only use rare material to arm an army on such an important-" he bit his tongue as he got a slap to the back of his head.

"Did you just turn off your brain or something? I thought I just told you, that the rating is not always a solid indicator for strength. What do you think would be better in this situation than the blood of a holy being? Do you want us to get the blood of god to deal with a bunch of necromancers? Not to forget, arm a whole army with it?!"

"I-I´m sorry...?"

"Yes, you should be! Disrespecting such a precious metal like that." the dwarf rebuked him seriously.

Then he explained to Seth the plan. The craftsmen were tasked with making the armors, the masters were going to make the weapons. They would make spear tips from <Mana Steel>, a metal refined from <Blue Iron> with a high affinity to any magic and able to retain different traits.

These spear tips could be blessed by a priest and would be able to retain this power for longer than most other metals, while channeling a user´s magic at the same time. So, all skills or magic used with these weapons would also retain a slight holy attribute.

In addition, similar to how Seth used <Mithril> as inlays for Mike's sword, they would use the <Purum> to make inlays at the tip of the spear's blade. Just getting in touch with this metal would work on undead and demons like the sun on a vampire. Or so Tored told Seth.

"You will take care of the inlays. Here, take this." the dwarf said and handed him a small scroll of paper. Seth instantly knew what it was, an Enchantment Scroll. The first time he had heard about this, Seth had thought these were random scrolls that would put a random enchantment on a weapon. Things like this existed as dungeon loot.

But in reality, these were scrolls created by enchantment masters and were similar to skill books or scrolls and instantly taught the user a specific enchantment, if they possessed the corresponding skill. Seth had seen a few of them, but he never used one. Their price was astronomical. It was cheaper to simply buy a weapon and sacrifice it to the skill, to learn the enchantment.

A master like Tored giving it to a disciple was the only way to get them for cheap. These scrolls took an ungodly amount of mana and time to create, hence their price.

<Banishment, Enchantment

Deals damage to a demon's connection with the material world. >

"What exactly does it mean to deal damage to a demon's connection?" Seth asked the dwarven confused.

"Oh, yeah, another basic thing to learn, heh." he scratched his head, trying to come up with a way to explain. He pulled out the chalk and the blackboard

"Demons are a little special. They are independent of the Pathwork, just like dungeons and angels and many gods. A demon normally enters a foreign world by being summoned there and they would make a contract with the summoner to stay connected, like an anchor.

Banishment directly deals with damage to this connection. When the chain that connects the demon to the anchor breaks, the Demon is literally banished from this world." accompanying this explanation was a set of cute chalk drawings. The old dwarf was really good at drawing chibis with chalk.

"And like this we have all our enemies covered. The weapons will deal damage to the undead, to demons and anything with the dark or unholy attribute," he said with a big smile and signaled him to start working. First Seth needed to turn the <Purum> ingots into wire. In the meantime, Tored was already cranking out the spear tips made from <Mana Steel>.

The first step of making these inlays was to cut a channel into the base material. For this Seth used an engraving tool from the large variety in Tored´s shop. This one was made of mithril. The <Banishment> circuit was made up of mostly line work and still judged as a simple enchantment by the system. Technically Seth was able to make them as a beginner. Technically that was.

It was a lot more complicated than the enchantments he had tried before and he had little experience with making inlays. His first few tries failed when he made mistakes while cutting the channels for the wire. Tored actually had to re-smelt those tips. But the dwarf did not blame him but encouraged him to keep trying.

It took Seth a week before he stopped wasting the master's spear tips. He still made mistakes, such as cutting the channel too deep, or too shallow. But these could be fixed and did not lead to failure. It helped a lot that Tored was there to show him his mistakes before he finished and failed the enchantment.

After cutting the channel came undercutting the sides of the channel. Another chance to make a lot of mistakes, but again. Seth really felt the difference of having a tutor look over your shoulder. If he had been alone, he would have failed dozens of these before getting it right. Lastly came setting the Purum wire into the prepared channels by hammering it in and filing the surface flush.

The only silver lining despite all the failures was that the experience he got for finishing these enchantments was a lot higher than before. And in this one week of failures, he had already closed in on the rank-up in <Enchantment>. If you took into account that the needed proficiency kept almost doubling on level-up, he had earned as much proficiency in a week as he had in all of the 4 months before when he tried on his own.