While the three ladies took their seats atop the various furniture in the room, Seth summoned the enchantment table. He needed to enchant the pair of gauntlets. Placing the pair on the table, he used the function to project a template of the chosen enchantments onto them.
For the right gauntlet, he had chosen Pandora's Troubles, an Olympian enchantment he had unlocked not long after becoming a blacksmith. It had a chance to imbue an attack with one of the troubles released from her box. All, except hope.
4 pairs of eyes watched the engraving tool smoothly follow the templates, cutting grooves into the special material and creating fine, silvery cuttings. The spiraling by-products of enchantment kept falling like rain onto the enchantment table, as the blacksmith's hand moved quickly and precisely.
Watching the polished silver gauntlet being covered in magic and decorative engravings was surprisingly relaxing. When the engraving tool left his hands and returned to the table with a wooden klonk, the sound was as if it awakened them from a trance.
They didn't know how much time had passed by, but in what felt like a blink of time, the first gauntlet was done, and the blacksmith brought forth the second. For this one, he wanted to use Minor Olympian Dexterity to try and synergize with Dexterity of Athena, which was already an effect on the material.
Once again, the ladies were enraptured by the engraver gliding across the metal, dropping sparkling cuttings everywhere. The magic circuits and various patterns quickly crept over the gauntlet, finishing the item's body. Now, both gauntlets were enchanted.
"What happens to the shavings?" Fin asked when she awoke from her stupor. Her eyes were glued to the fuzzy, silvery wool, Seth was currently shoving into a bag as he cleaned the enchantment table.
"Well, I'm obviously collecting them, but they usually don't amount to enough to make anything worthwhile. I guess the best thing that came from shavings so far is Rún," the blacksmith joked a little, about the way the enchantment golem had partially procured his own materials to form his body.
"In this case, I intend to re-smelt them into the materials for the Aegis," the blacksmith added. Although the base armor was done with the gauntlets, there was still the Aegis, where he could reintroduce the waste from processing the other pieces of armor. He finished cleaning the enchantment table before unsummoning it again.
"Are you stopping for today?" Mina asked, sounding a little disappointed.
"Hmm, I guess I still have enough time today to do the soul armaments, " he judged.
Looking out the window, he saw the scene of the vast ocean glistening in the bright sun. The coast could not be seen anymore, but judging by the sunlight, it didn't seem like more than a few hours had passed.
"But maybe we should check on our navigator first. To make sure he gets along with our ship, you know." Seth checked his
At this point, he had a couple of cartographed spots, like the Demon Cave, where they arrived, in the mountains in the south of the continent, Blackfeather slightly north, Port Gula at the western coast, and Larida at the southwestern coast. From Larida, the was now a small, scraggly line going further west.
"Makes sense, it's been a couple of hours. If he did something wrong, we could still correct it," Monique agreed. "Or you, I guess..." she added, when she remembered that she had no idea how to pilot the flying ship.
They found Robin and Grodin on the bridge, chatting with each other. The bridge was the big central control room of the vessel. It had a panoramic window that allowed a 180° view of the front of the ship. Everything in the room screamed high-quality, from the polished wooden inlays to the golden measuring devices and implements.
"How are things going?" the blacksmith asked Grodin, who greeted him with a much better mood than at the start of their journey.
"Great! This is an amazing ship. I even found a function that allows conserving energy sailing against the wind, just like a sea-bound vessel," the knight said excitedly. It took Seth a moment to understand what he meant.
This was the explanation for why the line looked so scraggly. The wind was currently blowing toward the continent, against them. So Grodin, instead of taking down the sails and using just the ship engines, was zigzagging against the wind to stay on course.
"I see, well done. Do you have any questions I can answer, or are you good?" Seth asked to make sure. Grodin already seemed familiar with the foreign vessel. Maybe he was born to be a captain, instead of a knight.
"So far, I have no questions, thank you," the formerly grumpy knight said politely. Maybe he had not forgotten the current situation in Larida, but flying the ship seemed like a good distraction for the man.
"Good, I just wanted to make sure. Then, I will leave you to it," the blacksmith said. he was about to leave when he found Monique, Mina, and Fin enjoying the panoramic view of the ocean below them. It really was a nice view. Instead of immediately returning to the make-shift workshop, they stayed a while to enjoy it in silence.
"Well then, you guys can stay here. I will go finish the gauntlets," he said after a while, disrupting the moment.
"No, wait! You can't just continue without us!" Fin complained.
"Right, I will also come along," Mina insisted.
"It's not like you will be able to see a whole lot. It won't be fun to watch," Seth warned them. The soul armaments were next to invisible to normal people.
"That's for us to decide," Monique chimed in. As such, all three ladies returned with him to the makeshift workshop, where Seth summoned the anvil once again and brought out the two souls he had prepared.
For the right hand, he had prepared the
The trait "Golden Warrior's Offense" raised physical damage and aura damage for all weapons by 25%. "Golden Warrior's Defense" raised overall defense by 35% in general and doubled when blocking with a shield. And the third "Golden Warrior's Proficiency" raised the effects of all active attack and defense skills by 30%.
The traits offered a well-rounded improvement to the overall performance of a warrior, and Seth found that it would be quite fitting for the dominant hand. For the left hand, he had prepared the
The soul was actually quite interesting. Although there was only one trait and one skill, the trait had taken a weird direction. "Many Armed" actually allowed the user to generate an additional, ghost limb for every 250 points in Dexterity. It was not
It was a weird trait, and Seth had little idea how it came to be. Maybe it was because many of the people the souls belonged to were cybernetically enhanced or augmented. So maybe they had traits or skills of this kind, which then culminated and strengthened during the refining process. It was his best guess based on his knowledge of the origin of the souls.
Apart from the trait, there was the skill < Dexterous Fighter>, which seemed to be based on skills for dual-wielding. It raised the attack speed by 30% for the first and added another 20% for every additional weapon the user wielded. It went well with "Many Armed".
Despite his warnings, it didn't seem like the audience was bored by watching the blacksmith strike empty air, as he forged the souls into replicas of their future bodies. This process didn't take long, and it was soon time to enchant the souls.