Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Enrage at the sight of the bug suddenly appearing in their way Viggu charged forward, the legion following him. However, as he got closer, a demonic chant slithered into his ears. The whole army of bugs was swaying and buzzing in rhythm.

The oni could feel his heart tremble and his body weaken. What was this witchcraft? It didn't discourage him and only served to fuel his rage. The cowardly crawlers had actually been working together with the demon all along.

It had not made sense for humans to make trouble for them. They had been just a bait from the start. The bugs probably killed their scout, too.

Even if they had been lured here to die, even if It would take his life, he would take the demon with him! He had spotted a figure among the mages that was striking an anvil and was obviously the source of the chant. This had to be the maestro.

Without a second thought, he sped up, gaining distance to his comrades. He would use the Warhog might to charge through the enemy ranks and directly into the group of mages to kill the maestro. Yet when he reached the front lines of bugs, he was abruptly stopped by a massive shield.

Viggu intended for the Warhog to simply back the suicidal maniac out of his way, but instead, it came to a sudden halt, almost throwing him out of his saddle. A single man, wearing an abomination of an armor, had stopped them in their tracks.

The oni was stumped. A human that could match the power of the charging Warhog? Unbelievable.

Suddenly, there was a shadow slipping by the shield and hitting the Warhog's temple. When Viggu started to move, it was already hit a second time and stopped moving altogether.

Paralyzed in terror, it didn't move an inch. Fear was the only emotion the oni could receive through their connection. Things he couldn't understand kept happening one after another. The next moment, he had lost track of time, the two lines of enemies crashed around the two leaders at a standstill.

Viggu's warg riders crashed into the army of choppy moving crawlers. They were stronger than the bugs, but for some reason the bugs acted almost like undead, still attacking even if their heads and limbs were lopped off.

He got off the paralyzed Warhog to face the bearer of the shield. He was a massive knight, tall like an ogre, clad in thick heavy armor. Compared to the chunky armor and shield, his weapon seems almost flimsy. A dainty metal stick compared to the monstrosity holding it.

The oni grit his teeth. He was a general of Kozdam, a man who received the designation of a boss from the dungeon. He was not going to be intimidated by the thing blocking his way. With a quick thrust, he attack the head of the knight but was easily deflected by a barrier surrounding the man.

Clicking his tongue, the general kept attacking but all his attacks were blocked or deflected with ease. It felt like he was fighting a mountain, none of his attacks had any effect on his opponents. Unable to draw, he could not even put a scratch on the armor.

In the meantime, he could only watch from the corner of his eyes what happened to his men. They had the upper hand. It was expected as one orc could usually overwhelm ten of them easily, yet the wounds kept accumulating due to the unforeseen weirdness of crawlers

Even with the weird tune that kept interfering, there was no way they would lose. If only the roadblock before him was not so hard to handle. Where had the demon found such a being? He was exhausting his skills and power, without notable success.

Finally, there was a change in the situation. The oni had kept half an eye on his people. One of his officers, a reliable man he had known for decades, had forged a path of destruction through the sea of bugs and was about to break through. Even if he was blocked, his men were enough to put an end to the demon!

A moment later, his heart suddenly dropped. The mighty orc officer, that had just been turning insects into mushy pulp with his two war hammers, suddenly fell. A shadow had passed him and taken his head away. One moment a man of valor, the next moment a bloody corpse without a head.

Shocked, he realized that he was not the only one. Tens of soldiers perished by losing their heads before being swallowed by the mass of bugs around them. He stepped back and the armor didn't follow him, giving him time to assess the situation.

Then he saw them, standing in the air, still holding the heads of his men. The Anisoptera units of the crawler! But something was weird, as their front limbs now consisted of a pair of sickles like those of the Mantidae units, instead of the usual claws.

Viggu grew desperate. He had to take down the maestro and help his men. If the stupid music stopped they would have a chance. But no matter what he did, even when tried to ignore the knight and bypass him, he would always find himself face-to-face with this walking barricade.

"Fight me properly, or get out of my way!" he screamed anxiously.

Over and over his attacks failed and his path was blocked.

"That is not my job. I'm the bouncer that won't let you in, not the thug that beats you in the dark alley."

"What in the world was a bouncer!?" Viggu exclaimed internally, but he realized, that he would not be able to get past the man, without defeating him. The question was, how?

...

Seth hoped that Tekar would be able to manage with the makeshift horde of insect golems as a backup. The blacksmith had not only lazed around during the days after their raid on the hive. Like himself, the others also had filled their inventories with insect corpses.

There was no way he would ever be able to turn all the carapaces into armor, so the golem forge had been running all day long pumping out generic insect golems made up of a combination of dismembers corpses.

Seth didn't have any special materials for their cores for so many golems and didn't intend to use souls. This meant that the golems were purely powered on the mana they absorbed from the surroundings, which lowered the time they could be active.

Without a soul, they also lacked any growth potential. They were solely items with a fixed level. The only major improvement was that Seth used the Basic Automaton Core Circuit of Hephaestus which made them quite intelligent.

The only ones he used souls on were the Sickle Strikers, a mix of giant dragonflies and the big mantis sickles. For now, he used 300 or the Air Striker souls on the seed for Minas Mar's future aerial units.

While the simple golems were working on impeding the advance of the Orcs, the Sickle Striker went out to kill. They were the only ones that could collect experience after all. The experience from the kills of the simple golems went to Seth.

The blacksmith had already reached the dreaded lv.90 his friend talked about and the current situation proved to him quite vividly what they meant when they said that it needed a lot of experience.

The bard was passively gathering experience from hundreds of people and golems as he supported them with his song, but the experience bar was barely creeping along like a decrepit snail. At this pace, just how many monsters would one have to kill to reach lv.91 or even 100?

However, he didn't have much time to pay attention to these things, as he had to concentrate on said ballad that was sucking away his resources. Despite having a huge wealth of power thanks to his items and soul armaments, the epic ballad was equally as demanding in this kind of setting.

The music that could waste a normal demonic bard within a minute was hard to keep up for longer than half an hour with everything he had. It was not just that it was a very difficult epic-rated piece, but the numbers were over the top and the demon it called upon was quite ferocious.

The mental power it took to endure Kar'neth, the demon god of war, martial honor, strength, and murder was nothing to scoff at. No wonder Mäno'War, the original author, almost died after using it in a similar setting.

At least the gains were appropriate to the difficulty, as his had leveled up by two levels and reached level 9, and his reached lv.8.

The bard decided to slowly let the music wane away. With the Oathguard quickly catching up in levels, while the Faer also kept constantly growing, the tide of the battle was already turned in their favor.