Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Seth sat in his room. Now all he could do was wait for them to make their decision and come back. In the meantime, he could finally get back to finishing his loadout. There were still a lot of things to make, but what Seth lacked were the fitting materials.

He had a lot of good materials, but he lacked the means to imbue them with the effects he really wanted for the items he needed to make. His standards had grown after he finished something like the epic set. He didn't want the other items to lack behind.

At this point, he really regretted having sold off the auction interface. Even if he asked the church to procure specific materials, it would take a long time. According to Samuel, the only Auction House on Urths was in Delta, where the Chrona Empire had taken residence.

~ You should just do what you can instead of wasting your time on worries. ~

Al was right. There was one thing he could do for now. Especially with her help.

Over the next two days, the three came back and agreed to join him. They joined his party one by one and decided to make a dungeon dive to get to know each other. It was like the time when he joined "Yulecat's Fur" to get to know them better.

They would not enter anything dangerous. First, they met in the adventurer guild of Y City. This was Seth's first time visiting an adventurer guild in Urth. It felt like a bank. No, it WAS a bank. It was one of the biggest banks of Y City that had been remodeled into the guild's main branch in this district.

The receptionists at the counters were separated from the customer with clear polycarbonate walls and the blackboards with the quests were fully digitalized touch-screen terminals.

Although Tekar, Link, and Alison were people from Y City and had fought here from the very beginning, they had little knowledge of the dungeons in the district. Dungeon business had mostly consisted of containing the dungeon breaks. Not preventing them.

The reason was the lack of small elite troops. Dungeons were mostly unfit for big groups or raids, so they were not able to clear difficult or high-level dungeons. The only choice was to wait for the break and overwhelm the monsters with numbers. The human wave tactics worked but demanded a great number of sacrifices.

The receptionist had a friendly business smile, Seth recognized it immediately. These were actual guild people, not natives of Urth. He was relieved that he could act as he always did in the guild.

It was a shame that they had no booklet with a comprehensive rundown of dungeons in Y City. The reason was that more dungeons kept randomly appearing and kept being closed all the time. The people of Urth were still quite rowdy and did not care whether the guild approved of destroying a dungeon core.

It was a direct consequence of the government's previous actions. The leadership did not listen to the guild at the start and had people shut down any dungeon that could be cleared to ensure the cities safety.

From a modern regular standpoint, this might have been understandable, but it was simply short-sighted from the perspective of people who understood the system. Closing all dungeons that could be cleared meant that there were no low-level dungeons left for players to train and gain levels.

This created another problem. It split the people even further into the elites who managed to get gain levels by closing dungeons and those who could not gain levels because there were no dungeons in their level range. This was why the number of small teams that could deal with greater dungeons was severely limited.

At this point, there were very few low-level dungeons in Y-City and most of those only survived because they had opened after the guild took over the management of the dungeons. It was strictly forbidden to close these dungeons. Adventurers who did would be expelled from the guild.

Seth asked for dungeons around lv.20 and the receptionist gave him a rundown of a very short list of options within the city. Considering the cities size this was pitifully few.

At least the kinds of dungeons were quite interesting compared to Namia. In the otherworld, the dungeons were a lot like you would expect from RPGs or fantasy games. In Y City many dungeons had taken over the subway stations or whole buildings. It felt more like urban fantasy or post-apocalypse.

The dungeon Seth chose was called "Third Hospital". It was the kind of dungeon that had floors with increasing difficulty. The hospital's first floor was an lv.10-20 area and perfect for a team-building measure.

The rest of the party made long faces when they heard what dungeon their new leader chose. They had encountered the horror more than once. The floors actually went up to lv.60. As such nobody had yet been able to clear this dungeon or properly decimate the monster population. That was why the Third Hospital had broken out several times in the past. What crawled out from there equaled some of the worst horror games in history.

Why had Seth chosen this haunted house of nightmares? It was the thrill. This was not a horror game so Seth did not have to fear artificial ammunition scarcity or scripted events. How exciting would it be to break through a horror game with pure violence? Seth did not think of it as much more than a haunted house. All of them had an almost 10 level advantage, what could go wrong?

A such they went on a 35-minute walk to enter the southern district. The third hospital could in no way be called small. It was a giant complex and offered all kinds of treatment before the apocalypse. From what the guild staff told him it sounded as if the patients and staff had been turned into the monsters when the dungeon initially formed during the apocalypse.

There was a safety parameter around the hospital in case something unexpected happened and the entrance was guarded by black suits. From the outside, they could only see darkness behind the rows and rows of empty windows. The glass doors of the main entrance stood wide open; inviting people to come in and die.

Seth wore his new equipment while using parts of the black knight armor to cover the missing pieces. The others wore their original items because Seth wanted to see their genuine performance before deciding on what items to make for them.

Tekar wore a bulky set of steel-plate armor. It looked like someone welded armor plates from a tank together and made Tekar resemble some generic bulky robot from an anime.

Link, the gourmet hunter, was better off and wore a tight leather outfit. The main piece seemed to be a dungeon drop with the effect of increasing agility by 5 points. The rest was probably made by a tailor but had a good performance. Tailors seemed to do better than blacksmiths in this new world. Just how far could the clothing industry go once they started to mix skills and technology.

What might have happened to this world if Seth had not returned? Would they develop superhero suits that buffed the wielder? Seth really liked the medieval style, so a world where people wore skintight superhero suits as equipment seemed like a cringey nightmare. He might be able to accept it, if worn as proper underwear below a suit of armor, though.

Alison, the wizard girl, wore the same outfit as during their first meeting. Was this her only set of clothes, or did she visit the auction in work attire? She also carried a common staff that helped her save 5% mana per spell. But it really seemed more fit to whack the monsters really well.

Seth had left Mary and Jane at the church since this dungeon would be too dangerous to take the two along. They approached the entrance in silence. There was nothing visible from the outside. Only after they stepped in and the doors closed behind them did they get a good look at the hospital.

He felt reminded of A City where everything had been overgrown and destroyed in a matter of days but looked like it had taken decades. Even so, this was a perfectly functional hospital just 8 or 9 months ago, now it looked abandoned and run down.

Dim light fell in through the dirty and broken windows. Dirt covered the tiled floor and flakes of paint and plaster had detached from the walls making everything look blotchy and damp. The air smelled stale with a hint of hospital and mold.

"Link, can you scout ahead? The rest will go in a line. Tekar in the front, then myself, Alison, and Puffles takes the rearguard."

"S-Sure..." answered the gourmet hunter. He did not seem very confident as his eyes kept jumping left and right. Was he really that afraid of this place? Actually, Tekar was not much better. Although Seth could not see even an inch of his skin, his movements had become choppy and robotic after entering the dungeon. The only one who kept a neutral expression was Alison in the back who kept observing their surroundings.

Puffles was completely unaffected by the horror location. The Ivicer never saw a horror movie or played a horror game. The concept of a hospital was completely foreign to it. Seth had put the caterpillar at the end because its physical strength had improved quite a lot after the last evolution. Not only could he take the role of a healer, but also act as an off-tank. Puffles' physical prowess rivaled Seth's when fully buffed, despite having a lower level.

It just showed that a divine race was no joke. It also meant that he did not need to worry about outgrowing Puffles later on. If the Ivicer ever grew to the size and power of Cerno Bolk, that giant Ivicer from before, they could easily raid most field bosses with just the two of them.

Link came back, sweat covered his forehead. Seth had to stop with the daydreaming. They were in a really creepy dungeon right now. He was really supposed to concentrate.

"There is a group of five patients in the front, around lv. 17. Maybe we should take another route and look for some weaker ones or a smaller group...?" he asked nervous.

"Why are you guys so afraid? All of us are around lv. 30. These creatures should not pose a problem to you even without fitting equipment."

"You have not fought these things yet. I don't know how the fights in that other world looked like, but the fights are totally unbalanced here. The level and strength are completely independent of another."

It was Tekar, the tall black robot-looking man who answered in a solemn echoey voice. It reminded Seth that levels were not always an accurate representation of strength. He was the best example. In Ora, he had strength rivaling a B-Rank adventurer, despite being only half the level.

Seth nodded to show that he understood and turned serious. Maybe this would not be as easy as he thought.