Chương 1465: 1464. Demon Dragon

---Next Day, Workshop---"Finally, time to begin," Seth announced, having assembled the needed materials to finish Cade's set within the next couple of days. Although the Soul Refinery would take a while to refine all the souls, he could start forging without worry. Since Rún would take on the part of enchanting the pieces, he was able to optimize the crafting process for most parts of the armor, except the one he was going to start with today.

Seth intended to start with Cade's helmet, as it was the only piece of the armor she had special wishes for. When they went over the blueprint, she had asked for the helmet to be customized. Apparently, she had seen Jonah's demonic mask in the past and asked for a helmet sculpted in a similar manner. Since Seth knew his limitations when it came to more creative designs, he wanted to get it out of the way first.

He had spent some of his evening designing it in the <Blueprint> screen, but now he had to forge it from dragon scale and bone. The fact that he couldn't use heat and had to rely on <Energy Manipulation> and the power of Charon's Obol made intricate sculpting even harder. This was why he planned extra time for it on the first day. There was another reason he intended to start with the helmet. Arcane Enchantments were quick. No, that gave the wrong impression.

While Seth only needed his skill to engrave enchantments into an item, enchanters need ample preparations to give an item an effect. However, while Seth needed a certain amount of time, depending on the circuit and material, to engrave the enchantment, the arcane enchantment was instant in comparison, once all preparations were complete. Rún had had ample time for the preparations, so once the forging was done, it wouldn't take long to enchant an item. This was another reason Seth started with the helmet.

It was the only item of the armor he already had a usable soul for, the epic soul of the dark elf wizard. When he finished the helmet and the enchantment golem was done with it, he could directly continue with the soul armament. Seth began by placing one of the prepared scales on the anvil. While he was out collecting souls, Cerberus had not just stood around, twiddling his thumbs.

His forge assistant, sharing all his skills, had already processed the remaining dragon scales into sheets of material over the course of the past days. Since the golem didn't need sleep, time was not an issue. Working through the night, the golem had finished processing all the scales even without Seth's help. Although this meant that the sheets had been done without the forging ballad, it was not really a loss.

The blacksmith had always done so to be on the safer side, but technically, it didn't help strengthen the effect, just because he sang it for longer. As discussed with Cade, the notes of the ballad of Harut and Marut filled the forge, while Seth began to forge the scale. Infusing his magic power into the scale to soften it, he started by splitting it down the middle. He only needed half the scale for a helmet. The rough form of a helmet quickly took shape, but this was also the easy part.

Once the helmet had its shape, he started forging the sculpted visor. When working on the mask for Jonah, he had been working with metal. That allowed him to take advantage of his <Pyromancy> to forge, weld, and sculpt the material. No, w however, he had to completely rely on forging techniques and various tools to come to a similar conclusion. All the while splitting his focus to sing the forging ballad he had only used twice or thrice in the past.

One could call it the end boss of this armor build, despite being the first thing he did. Cade had described the demon face she wanted as one with fierce, big eyes and long tusks that stood out from the maw. As if an ordinary demon face wasn't bad enough. Her description kind of resembled the look of a gorgon, so Seth took that as a reference. After all, he had just recently hunted one and worked on her head. He still had the sight in mind. No matter what he did, he couldn't get rid of it.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Despite his inexperience, the visor slowly took shape. That didn't mean it went smoothly, as the blacksmith had to constantly go back and fix details and proportions that were either wrong or had gotten warped as he worked in another place. 5 hours later, when he thought that he was almost done, he looked at the completed visor only to find that the symmetry was completely off.

Now, asymmetry to a degree was natural and often overlooked by the human eye, but what he had done was just ugly. It was supposed to be ugly, but this was the wrong kind of ugly. He had to put in another 3 hours to fix the places he was not happy with before he could finally look at the visor with satisfaction. After another hour, he had customized the helmet to fit the visor seamlessly.

Only then did the song end, and he handed the finished helmet over to Rún, who took it to his enchantment laboratory, adjacent to the workshop. The blacksmith had already spent 9 hours on the helmet, which was short for a legendary item, but long for the blacksmith, who was able to rely on his crafting stations to increase his crafting speed. Yet, he was not done. While the golem was busy enchanting, Seth already began working on the soul armament.

He had no intentions to give the weird torture wizard a chance to negotiate with him. The bard intended to overwrite the soul's ego with an automaton circuit from the start. He directly began forging the soul into a copy of the demonic helmet. Relying only on his memory, he couldn't do it perfectly, but he wanted to get as close as possible until Rún returned. He could fix the differences once he had the helmet back.

His worries were unnecessary, considering it didn't even take half an hour before the golem returned with the helmet. Now, it was enchanted with the effect of Crystalline Mind, which not only lowered casting speeds by 15% but also increased mana and resistance to mental status effects. With his pattern back in his hand, the soul forging became a breeze.

And then, after an unexpected 13-hour day, the blacksmith finally finished engraving the Generic Automaton core circuit he had learned from the chosen of Hephaestus on the soul helmet. It was finally time to infuse it and dip it in the waters of Styx. With that, the first armament was already done. <Ding! Your skill <Enchantment(Master)> lv. 3 had become <Enchantment(Master)> lv. 4> <Ding! You have created a legendary ego item! +100p Power of Existence> <Ding!

A synergy of powers had changed the effects of your item! > Seth was slightly surprised. On one hand, his <Enchantment(Master)> had finally leveled up, on the other, he had not expected a synergy. He wanted to check his skill, but he was too curious to see what exactly had synergized. <Demon Dragon Helmet Legendary, Ego Sky Dragon Armor Set 1/10 Phys. Def.: 2200 Mag: Def: 2400 Durability: 6200 1. Negate 60% magic damage 2. Negate 40% physical damage 3. Demon Dragon Magic 4. Sorcery of the Great Tower 5.

Trait: Dark Scion 6. Crystalline Mind 7. Passive Skill: Power of the Dark Wizard 8. Passive Skill: Heretic Incantation 9. Active Skill: Sinner's Fall Sky Dragon Armor Set: 10/10 Magic Singularity: Mana Regeneration is Doubled. +10 000 Additional Mana Cast Time for magical Skills, Abilities, Spells is halved. An imposing helmet forged by Master Smith, the first Master Blacksmith and Master Enchanter of Urth. Created from the legendary Heart Scale of a Sky Dragon.

Using demonic and mysterious means, it had been further enhanced to make it the first choice for a caster with no good in mind. > Looking over the effects of the helmet, Seth found two additional skills and... the Sky Dragon Magic had actually changed. Not by much, but the name was different. Sky Dragon Magic raised mana by 1000, lowered spell costs by 20% and increased magic damage by 70%. The new addition was that the damage of dark magic, demonic magic, and curses was doubled, instead of only 70% increase.

It might have been influenced by the Sorcery of the Great Tower, which was the name of the effect granted by the forging ballad, or the trait "Dark Scion". The former granted +50% to the power of magic 10% chant reduction. The trait from the soul granted 20% affinity with darkness and increased the power of dark magic by 40% in addition. The two additional skills were <Heretic Incantation > and < Sinner's Fall>. The first lowered the cost of dark magic and curses by 25%.

The latter tripled the power of the next spell, but rendered the user unable to move their legs for 1 minute. The remaining passive skill was the same as seen on the Aegis. It allowed the usage of the spells and skills retained in the mage's soul at his level. This included passive skills to increase mana or magic damage, but also in mastery in dark magic, curses. But like the one on the Aegis, the wearer could only ever use one at a time.

Looking at the demonic-looking helmet and its dark options, Set judged it a great start to this armor build. Lastly, he checked the changes in his fresh skill level, but there was not too much to see. <Enchantment(Master)> lv. 4 brought some new enchantments with it. Like on previous levels, there was a small list of new Olympian Enchantments that focused on specific combat arts, like pygmachia for unarmed fighting or dorastimos for spearmanship.

He would have to test them when he got the chance to, maybe that was not too far away... But this was it for today. It was time to catch some Zs.