Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

An afternoon later they had come up with a way to integrate either magic crystals or monster cores into the golem as additional power sources. It made sense to use the power cores of the monster themself, but it was not possible for some.

The Magic Crystals or magic nuclei used for staffs were a good substitute for those cases.

Using Al's advice, Seth went ahead and created the second prototype.

This monkey had the beast core, of one of the big monkeys, as an additional power source. Having the soul linked to a monster core and increasing the mana pool this way was almost the same as it worked for living beasts.

Using the beast core, its bearer could naturally absorb and store mana from the surrounding. With this golem was no longer dependent on just the mana of the soul.

Maybe Cerberus also had a very powerful core, explaining its huge might?

Although the core was not a major weakness, like on a traditional golem, Seth gave it a thick shell of reinforced <Magic Steel>, making it the best armor part of the golem, but not the only one.

As the blacksmith had mentioned, he did not share a necromancer's sentiment. A naked skeleton was not pleasing to his eyes. Sure, it looked cool, with all the complex inlays covering the bones, but he was a blacksmith.

Ultimately, Armor looked better. As such the huge skeleton was covered in a huge plate armor made from the monkey's own reinforced leather. The armor covered most of the body and was thoroughly fixed to the bones.

This way, the huge monkey skeleton, had turned into an imposing giant Monkey Knight. It was literally called that, when Seth used <Blacksmith's Eyes> on the Golem.

<Monkey Knight lv.45

Trait: Unlimited Stamina

Race: Monkey-Golem

Age:0

Affiliation: Minas Mar

Durability: 1000/1000

Mana: 1900

Strength:360

Dexterity:140

Agility: 270

Intelligence: --

Willpower: --

Endurance: 500

Personality: --

Defense:

Physical: 11370

Magical: 4600

Poison Immunity

Mental Immunity

Status Anomaly Resistance: 25%

Magic Resistance 50% >

Despite looking like a knight, its sentience still resembled that of a monkey, and it would not use a weapon. Instead, the monkey fists were reinforced with gauntlets for dealing devastating punches.

Seth linked the soul to the leather armor which turned the epic armor into a part of its body. This meant it could regenerate with the monkey's mana. Seth went easy on the or armors enchantments since he needed to keep the power output in mind.

As such he mostly added simple enchantments like additional Strength and Agility. He also added the "Feather" effect, which could lighten the weight of an item.

When he finished the prototype of the monkey knight, <Golem Artisan> became lv. 4 and <Engineer> became lv. 2. Of his other skills, <Enchantment> profited the most from his experiments and closed in on craftsman level 4.

The only thing that wondered him a little, was that he did not get a notification about creating something like artificial life, ever since he finished Al's body. Despite the fact that these monkeys knight already possessed basic sentience, they were still called golems.

Previously, the system could not tabulate the achievements, because he had used the divine metal for Al's frame.

What was needed for it to count as artificial life? Was it to create an individual with sapience or a fleshly body? Maybe it was both. Maybe there was more to it?

In the end, the system said he was the first on Urth. Then what was about Xen Biologies? Didn't they do a lot of shenanigans that could count a crating artificial life...?

What was the difference between him and them?

The souls! It had taken him a moment before he realized that his talent should be quite rare. Taking a dead soul and literally reviving it. Modern science could grow a body and magic could probably find ways to have a soul possess or inhabit it.

But how many people were there that could grant a true rebirth? His Waters of Styx, that could truly bind a soul to a body. There couldn't be too many people that had something comparable.

This meant, ultimately, he would have to succeed in making something like Al again. A living body, with an ego. and a soul, baptized by his waters of Styx.

Monkey 2 was a big step for him personally, but Seth had barely made progress if his ultimate goal was replicating Al'Salzar's case. He was just beginning to catch up with his predecessor's skills and Seth didn't know whether the predecessor ever did something like this.

This wasn't all. A living, breathing body was just an intermediary goal.

In his mind, Seth was already thinking of the future.

Once he was confident in his golem arts, he would find ways to incorporate the skills of the Infernal Scald. There were a lot of things one could do with the help of demons, and he felt that he had barely scratched the surface.

He had never any great interest in studying before, except when it was a topic, he was interested in. Now, this was a topic that completely enchanted him. Just seeing what he already could do and the thought of how much more there might be in the future-!

There was no way he would get bored any time soon.

Returning back to the present, Seth looked up at the monkey knight. Yes, the future was the future, now his immediate goal was improving this and finding a way to make real bodies.

<Golem Artist> came with the techniques to generate a body for a soul and Seth knew, thanks to the sorceress, that it should be possible to generate a fleshly body. All that was left was the how, or rather the why it worked.

The newborn golemmancer was rather satisfied with his new skeleton-golem technology. These were a lot more useful than the elemental golems that came with the early levels of <Golem Artist>

Because of this, Seth decided to...grind a little in this direction and see what direction <Golem Artist> would take in the later levels.

<Golem Artist lv.4> introduced golems of mixed elements. Such as a Magma Golem, or a Storm Golem. To Seth this almost felt like creating elementals at this point. But it also came with improved versions of previously introduced golems.

It was undeniable that these golems also became more complex. The spell arrays for these golems were very complicated and introduced options for mechanical joints and bearings bringing the form and range of movement of the golems closer to that of an automaton.

Like his own experiments of changing shape and size, these new additions were steps to improve the efficiency of the golems. This made Seth curious how far his predecessors had gotten in his lifetime. Was Cerberus his magnum opus or did he manage to make something even more impressive?

Thinking of his co-smith, Seth got motivated to continue. He would start with raising <Golem Artisan> and see where it went on the later levels.

He had to keep in mind, that the prepared blueprints were not everything there was to the skill. After all, even he could do a lot more with the individual arrays of the initial blueprints than the blueprints suggested.

Adding Al'Salzars knowledge and blueprints on top of it, all he really lacked was the experience with the topic at this point. But that was not a problem, he did not lack materials to gather it after all.

Seth had another 4 big monkey souls he could turn into monkey knights and then...

He could not hide the excited smile that crept over his face.

Then he would go bigger.