The Legend of the Meta-Defying Smith Who Saved the Kingdom

And yet, entirely undeterred and as fast as ever, a Unicorn raced forward and attempted to gore the Smith, perfectly targeting the weakest part of his armor in the shoulder joint.

Snap.

The tip of its horn broke against Oversmithed mythril, and the beast tripped, rolling over the ground and Dire Wolves and demons for some fifty yards before it stopped. It screamed, writhing on the ground for several seconds until a Steel Pangolin rolled through and put it out of its misery.

The Smith frowned. There were quite a lot of attacks that seemed able to get through his [Divine Lightspeed Haste]-granted precognition.

Most creatures seemed to move in slow motion around him, enough that he could move faster if he put his mind to it.

But some moved even faster than the foresight.

And it was hard to keep track of all the threats among the hundreds of thousands of enemies on the Plains.

He debated putting his Greatshield away: it was slowing him down, and occupied a hand. As he dodged backwards away from a spear thrust, he made up his mind. He swung the shield onto his back, where a [Fixation] enchantment held it in place.

And then the magical bombardment resumed, as the demons had been waiting for him to put his shield away.

Lightning. Ice. Solar. A kind of Poison derived from the Light aspect. Even a slug of mundane metal, merely accelerated with magic beyond the speed of sound.

That one he dodged, his foresight working perfectly.

If that had hit him, it would have torn him in two.

As for the rest…

[Perfect Enhanced Divine Retribution]

The enchantment covered his entire body, even with the shield on his back.

The armor was a set, and this was where a Smith shined.

Where enchanters struggle to link enchantments between objects, Smiths easily invoke the arcane symbolism of a set, granting the set effect-sharing and mutual reinforcement.

A Blue Iron armor set enchanted with [Water Resistance], forged by the same Smith with that intent, is stronger than random armor pieces thrown together, even when the enchanter intends them to be a set.

There is a synergy there that Smiths create.

And this synergy grows when the Enchanter is the same person as the Smith.

All this to say, even with his hand free, even with the Greatshield on his back, the Smith was still protected.

Another dozen golden-white lances formed above the army and descended a moment later, blasting a hundred demons with Holy wrath.

The Smith didn't stop as this all occurred.

He was still being pursued by spear wielding demons, and shot at by demons wielding all manner of bows: short bows, long bows, crossbows, and even a strange hand-held contraption for throwing spears that was disturbingly accurate and powerful.

But he finally got his hands on two of his one-handed War Hammers from his belt.

And in the next moment he whirled, smashing through two demons' heads.

And then two more.

He moved so fast the headless corpses of the dead demons hung in the air, gravity having yet to take hold and bring them down to earth.

In his right hand he wielded the Lightning Hammer.

[Appraisal]: Fulgur-saturated Compressed Lightning (Niobium-Titanium) War Hammer, Quality: Secret Master, Durability: 767 (Overcompressed) (Chilled), Enchantment: Fulgur Iudicium Contra Coniurationem—Secret Master (812)

The Lightning Hammer struck with the crashing thunder one would expect, but the lightning was not content to strike down just one victim. It leapt from demon to demon, spreading out like a web, slaying dozens of demons with each strike. The enchantment design incorporated aspects of speed and spreading and judgment and relations, and the lightning would leap from one person to their ally, and to their ally, and so on.

But the enchantment was too strong for any normal hammer.

Lightning is an element inherently resisted by the material world.

Although it flows better in metal, the metal still resists it, and the stronger the lightning, the hotter the metal becomes, until it melts.

Air subjected to Lightning becomes hot and can even burn.

Almost all wood struck by Lightning catches fire.

But the Legendary Smith was an expert in metallic alloys.

The titanium-alloy armor he had made for the Aspirant Knight's Tournament had been inherently more resistant to Lightning.

But there was another titanium alloy he had discovered.

This alloy, when brought to extremely low temperatures, ceased to resist Lightning at all.

It was a perfect conductor.

And it was the Enchantress who had presented the simple solution to the the problem of dual enchanting a hammer with both a Lightning and an Ice enchantment: don't.

The hammer had multiple Ice Jewels embedded in the handle, keeping the hammer at the necessary low temperature.

The Smith's gauntlets, meanwhile, were enchanted with a number of Ice-nullification and heating magics.

And the spread of [Fimbulwinter] was also aiding in keeping the hammer cool.

This hammer was the acme of all Lightning weapons.

And with each swing, another dozen demons lost their lives, judged for the crime of standing opposed to the hammer's wielder.

The Demon Lord witnessed this, and ordered his head Priest, "Conduct the ritual."

In the Smith's left hand he wielded the Gale Hammer.

[Appraisal]: Tempest-saturated Compressed Gale (Green Titanium-alloy) War Hammer, Quality: Secret Master, Durability: 799 (Oversmithed), Enchantments: Tornado Strike—Secret Master (450), Gale-force Tailwind Haste—Secret Master (399)

The Gale Hammer represented a compromise. Green Titanium alloy is not the best material for Air enchantments. Wood does surprisingly well, and paper even better. Metal, being heavy and dense, has poor synergy. Green metals do much better, but still not as good as wood.

But a wood hammer would explode upon impact given the force with which the Smith was striking.

As it was, only the hardest and strongest metals could withstand the force of his full-power [Hammer Strike], even before enchantments. Substrate compression and Oversmithing helped, of course.

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Another compromise was the dual enchantments: [Tornado Strike] and [Gale-force Tailwind Haste]. [Tornado Strike] incorporated aspects of speed, force, and acceleration. [Gale-force Tailwind Haste] incorporated aspects of speed and acceleration as well. But both enchantments had mutually-reinforcing aspects of chaos.

Where light-element-based invocations of [Haste] grant greater speed, they also necessarily impart an aspect of directionality.

It becomes much harder to change directions, and with greater speed comes greater momentum, exacerbating the problem.

Air-element-based invocations of [Haste] are not as fast, but they impart chaos, and enable rapid, unpredictable changes in direction.

With the Gale Hammer in hand, the Smith found it much easier to dodge the spear thrusts aimed at every weak point in his armor.

He could almost keep up with his foresight.

And demons fell before him like stalks of grain before the reaper.

For an hour this continued, as the sun rose above the localized blizzard that covered most of the battlefield.

The Smith was slaying a demon roughly every second.

The demons had, somehow, adjusted to his [Spell Jamming Field] and hastened themselves anyway. Perhaps by potion, perhaps by enchantment, perhaps by some other means. But they were able to avoid his hammer that much longer, force him to dodge and abandon offense that much more, and time dragged on.

And his magic power storage wasn't infinite, either.

He had to reduce the magic he channeled into his Greatshield, though he couldn't cut it off entirely.

Both of his Holy Enchantments were tremendous drains on his resources, yet utterly vital to his continued survival.

Another hour passed.

The Smith was relying heavily on mana generated by [Fimbulwinter] and his [Ice Absorption] enchantment.

He was still depleting his resources, but at a sustainable pace.

He continued his slaughter until almost noon.

Slaying one demon per second was too slow. In four hours he had slain some fourteen thousand demons, plus the roughly six thousand that had been slain by divine retribution and his Mountain Bastard War Hammer. Plus perhaps another couple hundred demons taken by surprise when their monster allies had become enraged and lashed out in a berserker frenzy.

Twenty thousand demons slain was barely a tenth of the assembled forces.

He managed to keep the entire army pinned down, racing up and down the front line at incredible speed, barely keeping ahead of clouds of toxic gas the cowardly demons produced to try to poison him.

But he was growing tired. Ever so slowly, fatigue was accumulating.

He couldn't stop fighting.

He could see the walls of the city behind him had collapsed in places. People were crawling over the rubble, fleeing.

If even a single demon got in there, with their strange magic that removed Classes, the people would be defenseless.

If he didn't keep the demons pinned down here until he finished killing them all, they would reach the Royal Castle and slay the Royal Family.

The Kingdom would be lost.

And with the Kingdom, his wife and children.

It was these thoughts that gave him strength. Rather than distracting him from the battle at hand, they focused his intent.

Not a single demon could get through.

Little by little, he reduced his [Levitation] and relied more on his legs.

He still had his Endurance and Strength boosts. Relying more on his physical body would help conserve magic power.

He almost had it dialed in, the break-even point of magic power consumption and magic power regeneration, when [Fimbulwinter] was dispelled, just minutes before solar noon.

That was when the Smith noticed.

Noticed that a full half of the army wasn't even attempting to advance.

That half the army had been keeping him pinned down and occupied, while the rest of the army participated in a grand ritual.

No, not just one grand ritual.

Six grand rituals.

The water magic of [Fimbulwinter] was drawn into a ritual that had been performed in the very center of the blizzard it had formed, and undine essence was thick in the air in that location.

The Smith narrowed his eyes even as he hurried to shift direction, the wind pushing him to turn, his feet sliding and drawing huge furrows in the ground.

Not just undine essence.

That was…

The Great Spirit, Undine of Water.

She was still in the process of forming, a giant feminine figure dozens of yards tall, composed of water and ice and mist.

The Smith pushed, harder, harder on his enchantments.

He stopped holding back.

If a Great Spirit were summoned…

He wasn't sure if he could take it down.

He wasn't sure what that would do to his enchantments.

He kept his Lightning Hammer in hand.

The ability to spread lightning on each strike would be enhanced by the undine essence that enveloped the ritual and its practitioners.

But he switched his Gale Hammer for another, pulled from his [Spatial Storage].

[Appraisal]: Salamander-saturated Compressed Red Tungsten War Hammer, Quality: Secret Master, Durability:956 (Oversmithed), Enchantments: Enhanced Scorch—Secret Master (672), Desiccation—Master (244)

It wasn't the perfect tool for the job, the Scorching Hammer.

Fire is not an aspect well suited for fighting monsters.

The Legendary Smith's [Enhanced Scorch] prioritized heat over flame, and [Desiccation] enhanced this effect by reducing moisture in the target, reducing Fire Resistance.

It was the desiccation that the Smith desired most in this case.

He had to disrupt that ritual before it completed.

A streak of light shot across the battlefield, smashing straight through shield walls of demons whose sole purpose was to delay him even a moment longer.

And then the Smith was among them, hammers whirling and striking so fast the air tore with whip-like cracks.

The air was wet, and then electrified, and then hot.

It grew incredibly humid and staticky-dry in equal parts in the blink of an eye as the Smith converted magic power into heat and dryness.

The Great Spirit's form wavered.

Re-solidified.

More demons died.

And then—

The ritual collapsed.

A great mass of water that had previously composed the Great Spirit Undine's corporeal form fell to the earth and washed out in all directions, flooding the nearest thousand demons who had been helping empower the ritual.

The Smith was already gone.

As fast as he could, he whipped out his Mountain Bastard War Hammer again, and slammed it down, striking the entire area where the Great Spirit Sylph of Air was being summoned.

She pushed back.

The winds gathered at the ritual site and pushed up, resisting the magical force of a falling meteor—

But it wasn't enough.

The strike landed, and quickly the Smith repeated his blow twice more, deepening the crater.

And before the winds could even burst in an explosion, he was gone again.

The Mountain Bastard War Hammer tossed into Spatial Storage.

Magic bombarded him again, chunking down his magic power reserves as divine retribution again struck into assembled demon forces.

But they had learned, by now.

The demons who launched their strikes were a distance away from their comrades, knowingly giving their lives to hinder the Smith.

Even as his body raced to the next ritual site, the Smith reduced the magic he was circulating through the Greatshield.

If the demons were going to isolate themselves, he didn't need such a flashy counter-attack.

He simply needed the protection to keep him going.

All that magic power was instead diverted to his greaves, and his Gale Hammer, and even as his arm moved oh so slowly to toss his Lightning Hammer into [Spatial Storage] and withdraw his next, he was among the ritualists summoning Great Spirit Gnome of Earth.

Gnome was a squat, humanoid-shaped stone golem standing some thirty yards tall.

It was nearly fully formed, but the Smith was like a hurricane. He whirled and smashed his way through every single ritualist and expanded outward in a spiral, tearing through lines of demons empowering the ritual, and Gnome collapsed into a burst of sand, burying those nearby.

The Smith leapt away, flying through the air over hundreds of shield-bearing demons, swapping both hammers as he flew.

It was growing hard to see.