Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Chapter 1419. Tree Staff (2)

After a short break, he brought the helmet over to the enchantment table to engrave the enchantment. For the physical helmet, Seth had chosen Minor Olympian Intelligence, while he would enchant the soul with Minor Olympian Willpower.

During the forging process, he had already left spaces in the decorations of the helmet, when he now weaved in the complicated circuit of the powerful enchantment. Once he finished adding the enchantments and further refined the decorations with his jewelerʼs tools, he added a suspension of owl leather before it was finally time for the plume.

The feathers of the Spirit Owl had only a small effect. He had ten feathers, and all of them together would grant a small amount of Willpower. Each feather came with the active skill , which allowed “a glimpse at the other side”. Actually, the skill allowed the user to gain the same sight as spirits and undead for a blink. Even all the feathers combined would only make it half a second.

Although the description sounded cool, it was technically just the worst version of the Life Detection enchantment. So the ethereal, pale blue, slightly transparent feathers were mostly decorative. They were actually quite pretty and fluffy, and kept moving gently in a wind that was not blowing in the corporeal realm.

They looked really nice, and as he was fixing them to the helmet, Seth realized how much of a pain in the ass this would be to soul forge and infuse. He still did his best, relying on the skills of the Radiant Forgeright to ignore his worries about what came later.

It was a good thing he had an excuse to procrastinate once he finished the helmet. Once the feathers were properly attached, he was able to set the helmet aside and give the soul refinery a visit. It had been a few hours now, and the crafting station had long since finished processing the souls he had put in.

The outcome was similar to the souls he had refined for Moniqueʼs armor. Most mage-related elements had coagulated into a trait. Manaborn was described as granting a talent in magic, improving magic damage, mana, mana recovery, and chant reduction. How much exactly would need to be tested.

Satisfied with the soul, Seth returned to the anvil to turn it into the mirror image of the physical staff. Toredʼs concise traditional design eased his work in this regard. Only the replication of the carvings took a moment longer, but it was incomparable to the feathers on the helmet that still awaited him.

With practiced hand, the soul staff quickly took shape and was soon ready for the last addition to Pipʼs staff. Once the soul armament was finished, the blacksmith immediately switched to the enchantment table. The enchantment Seth chose for her weapon was one of the unique Olympian enchantments, whose numbers were slowly dwindling.

The enchantment he chose was the Destiny of Phlegyas, one of the sinners who were being tortured in Tartarus. He was a king who set fire to a temple of Apollo, and as punishment, he was bound to a stone and forced to watch a feast, warning the participants not to despise the gods.

Olympians were not always cool about disrespecting them, albeit Phlegyasʼ crash out was understandable, considering Apollo had killed his pregnant daughter for cheating. However, Seth didnʼt dare to have an outspoken opinion, since he was on okay terms with said god.

The important part was that the effect of the enchantment was most likely going to be a mix of bin and either resource steal or burn. It was an enchantment that didnʼt fit many members of Minas Mar, which was the reason it was one of the few Seth still had.

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However, in this case, the blacksmith thought it would fit in just fine with the nature of the guardian tree as well as the way Pip had learned to fight. Seth had not much time to watch the children train, but it had a lot to do with manipulating plant life. It resembled the way April Vine, the plantmancer, had fought during the tournament.

The Sigil of the enchantment resembled a stick figure splayed out like an X, bound to a circle that probably represented the boulder. Although the motif was simple, the blacksmith felt the usual unnatural resistance and an increased mana consumption as he carved it into the tip of the soul staff.

Seth had not really given it a thought before, so he was quite surprised when he watched the Sigil spread its enchantment across the staff. It was as if additional scenes were added to the carvings along the shaft.

It was a pattern of pictograms showing lavish delicacies and drinks, as well as figures dancing and having fun. All of it surrounded the small figure bound to the boulder at the top of the staff. Unable to move, unable to participate, only able to warn them of his sin.

Unexpectedly, this had been one of the more graphic expansions of Olympian Sigils he had seen so far. He couldnʼt say that he liked the more chaotic pattern, but it telling an actual story was a little impressive.

The infusion of the soul staff was the easiest part, since there were no small or delicate parts to it. With his part done, Seth placed the staff into the Waters of Styx to be reborn and Pipʼs ultimate birthday present.

Surprisingly, Seth didnʼt get any points for modifying the finished item of someone else. He pulled the staff from the bubble of water and checked the freshly updated options.

The easiest to spot change was the rise in effects and stats thanks to Sethʼs that raised the effects by roughly 20% since he used and in upgrading the item.

Other additions were the effects of the soul. The staff now granted the trait Manaborn, 10,000 additional mana, and the active skill . For no cost and a 3-minute cool down, it was a skill that could freeze an enemy for up to 1 minute..

For every second the effect lasted, the target would suffer a Mana Burn of 1000 mana per second. If mana ran out or was too low, it would burn 1% max health every second. So in the best-case scenario, Pip would be able to burn 60% of an enemyʼs health if their mana was gone or less than 1000.

In addition to everything planned came the effects of the synergy between the staff and the soul. The first effect of the synergy was Guardian Life, which not only raised the power of buffs and healing spells on all allied creatures by 75% but also the userʼs defense and attack by 10% when protecting someone.

The second effect of the synergy was the active skill , which was like a copy of , with the small difference that all burn effects were actually steal effects that were distributed to the user and nearby allies.

While this would passively happen to a degree anyway when using , thanks to Disposition of the Guardian Tree, this skill directly converted the damage to healing effects for the party.

Seth checked and tried the staff for a while longer, testing the effects of Manaborn. The trait raised mana by roughly 15%, mana regeneration by approximately 20% and reduced the chant time by 30%. Seth couldnʼt quite judge how much it raised magic damage, since he didnʼt dare to use any magic in the workshop. He would leave that to Pip.

Finally, he was done doing all the tests he could think of and dared to do, and could no longer put off the helmet. Evening was slowly approaching, and Seth intended to finish the helmet today.