Chapter 51- Repair of Legendary Hammer, Mjolnir 1
The system chimed.
[Ding~]
[Skill: Soul Capture — Ready]
[Do you want to capture the soul of the dead being?]
Leo blinked. The translucent blue text hovered in his vision, sharp and unforgiving against the haze of exhaustion. His mind struggled to process the words.
Soul Capture?
This was the first time the skill had ever activated.
He selected Yes.
Something dark and shadowy tore free from the dissolving corpse and shot into him. It was cool. Weightless. Yet the moment it entered, he felt its presence settle deep inside his body—quiet, permanent, and unmistakably there.
[Ding~]
[Collected soul: 1/10]
[Soul rank: Epic]
An Epic-rank soul.
From a low-level dreg?
Leo’s eyes widened slightly. That should not have been possible.
He stared at the empty space where the creature had stood only moments before.
Right before its final instant—right before it was destroyed—something had flashed through him. For the briefest fraction of a second, pure danger flooded his every nerve. His entire body had screamed at him to run. The sensation vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving only confusion in its wake.
Leo frowned, trying to make sense of the sudden, groundless fear.
Then, as if answering the question he had not yet asked, another notification appeared.
[Ding~]
[WARNING: The Inverse has noticed you.]
[One of its pieces destroyed.]
[It will remember.]
[You are now... known.]
A chill slid down his spine.
What does that mean—it noticed me?
Are they going to hunt me down?
[Ding~]
[Hidden Talent: 10% → 12%]
Another notification flashed. Leo still had no idea what this new talent actually was.
But as the percentage ticked upward—even with such a small increase—he felt the shift. A quiet stirring moved in the back of his mind. Something ancient. Something patient. Something that had been sleeping for a very long time.
While Leo was still processing the notifications, Surtr stood frozen.
The Destroyer of Worlds. The almighty Flame Giant. Scared stiff.
Leo had only felt a brief flash of danger and fear. Surtr, on the other hand, had witnessed everything in far greater detail.
Though he could not see the warning message on the system panel, Surtr had seen everything firsthand. His voice came out grim and unsteady.
"The commander of the Inverse army..." His words trembled. "It... it really saw you. Saw us."
"Heh? Huh... saw us?" Leo asked, unease and confusion clear in his voice.
Surtr continued, still shaking. "Right before the final moment of its death, everything was projected somewhere. I tried to follow the message being transmitted... and I saw the presence waiting at the other end. The commander... it has marked us now."
Leo said nothing. His face was equally grim.
Silence settled over the chamber.
...
Everyone was exhausted, yet no one moved.
They were not certain the creature was truly dead. Only after making sure it was gone did people begin to relax.
Warriors swayed on their feet. Holy priests leaned against the walls. Some fire and lightning users sprawled on the ground; others simply sat.
Freya was the first to straighten. She planted her sword tip-down against the stone and leaned on it, golden hair plastered to her face with sweat. Her armor was cracked along the left pauldron where a tendril of darkness had struck her, and a thin line of blood traced from her temple to her jaw.
But her eyes were sharp. Alert. Still watching.
Odin sat on a broken pillar, his single eye fixed on the space where the creature had dissolved.
The chamber was a wreck.
Scorch marks traced spiderweb patterns across the floor where the creature’s thrashing tendrils had struck. Three of the rune-carved swords had cracked during the battle, their carved edges split by forces they were never meant to withstand.
Leo moved among them, checking each one. His hands—steady now, the trembling finally under control—traced the hairline fractures in the damaged blades.
Three broken. Seventeen still holding. The binding matrix had done its job.
Finally, people began to move about.
After resting for a while, Leo decided to examine Mjölnir.
The hammer remained exactly where it had been throughout the battle.
He stood, walked toward it, knelt beside it, and activated Forge Sight.
The world shifted in his vision.
Forty-seven runes that once lined the hammer’s surface with living energy now lay broken and dead. Forty percent of the metal was gone—hollowed out. The strongest metal of Asgard, the Uru that formed the core of Mjölnir, had been eaten away by centuries of corruption.
It was barely holding together.
He deactivated Forge Sight and sat back. The numbers danced in his head: forty percent metal lost, forty-seven broken runes...
Behind him, Odin rose.
The Allfather pushed himself to his feet, exhaustion etched deeply into his face. He had been the main reason the creature could not break the barrier—supplying most of the mana required to keep it intact. The toll was unmistakable.
His movements remained slow and deliberate, the careful motions of a man carrying far more weight than his body was built to bear.
"Now that the corruption is gone, we can begin the repair work."
Odin looked straight at Leo.
"Boy, you have done something no one ever dreamed of succeeding at. I admire your tenacity and courage. You shall be forever be a respected blacksmith in Asgard. Begin the repairs when you have rested enough."
With that, Odin left the chamber. The guards and priests followed.
Only the blacksmiths, Freya, and Leo remained—along with all the materials Leo had asked Freya to arrange.
Freya approached from behind. She had cleaned the blood from her face and re-secured her armor, but the crack in her pauldron remained—a reminder that even gods could bleed.
She knelt beside the hammer and placed one hand flat against its surface. Her eyes closed. When they opened again, something bright and fragile shone in them.
"My brother took that hammer into battle against the Inverse," she said. Her voice was steady, yet Leo could hear the fracture lines beneath the surface. "He was young. Reckless." She smiled—a small, sad thing. "He told me the hammer would protect him. That no darkness could stand against the it’s storm."
Her hand tightened on the metal.
"He didn’t come back."
The chamber was very still.
.....
Leo broke the silence.
"The Inverse knows about me now as well. And the creatures—and everything you fought during the invasion—were only low-level soldiers."
His expression was serious as he continued. "I saw the memory of this creature. There was a massive army of billions composed of these formless things. But at the front stood another humanoid army that shared some similarities with them. These creatures were being controlled by them..."
A pause.
"...And there was a commander who commanded them all."
He could still feel the chill running down his spine at the memory.
"So maybe I only saw a single battalion led by a single commander. But there may be many similar battalions, entire armies, and higher-ranked beings above them. These creatures were just scouts—sent to create mayhem and gather information. The real Inverse is still coming."
Horror filled Freya’s eyes.
The blacksmiths who heard him shook, already imagining the terror such a force could bring to Asgard.
Elder Thrain stepped forward. "Leo, how sure are you of this?"
Leo simply shook his head.
Elder Thrain’s forehead was covered in sweat. A single low-level creature had already given them so much trouble. An army of them—and higher beings beyond that?
He didn’t dare imagine.
Leo continued, "As I delivered the final blow, the entity—or their commander—took notice of me. I have been marked."
The words landed like a bomb. Panic rippled through the group.
"But don’t worry," Leo said. "They won’t attack us immediately. We don’t know where they are, so we will have time to prepare."
He looked at Freya. She nodded and left to relay the information to Odin.
Leo sat back down with the blacksmiths. They began moving around the hammer, inspecting it carefully.
He checked his status.
Thirteen percent Hidden Talent. Seventy-two percent Spiritual Integrity. One soul collected out of ten. Gungnir on cooldown for forty-eight hours. Log-out disabled. Twenty rune-carved swords—three broken.
Okay. Not too bad.
Leo approached Mjölnir again.
Now that the creature was gone, the hammer was free. But a new problem had appeared—one he had not considered.
"We might have a small problem."
The blacksmiths’ attention snapped to him.
"The corruption wasn’t just sitting there," Leo explained as he touched the hammer. "It was holding the hammer together. Like putting a splint on a broken bone. Remove the splint, and the bone collapses."
Faces paled.
"We need a new splint—temporary reinforcement while I fix the runes."
He looked up. "Can someone collect and bring me all twenty swords lying around here?"
The blacksmiths quickly gathered them.
Elder Thrain, Master Kael, and Lady Silva watched with bated breath, thoroughly impressed by Leo’s way of thinking.
He extracted the binding runes from every sword—including the broken ones. Then he took the three broken sword fragments, called upon Eternal Flame, and fused them into one. Into that merged fragment he pushed the extracted runes.
"These won’t fix the hammer," he said. "But they’ll hold the matrix together long enough for me to carve the permanent solution."
Lady Silva adjusted her glasses. "Patch the cracks, then rebuild. It’s how you repair armor after battle. Same concept, different scale."
Leo inserted the fragment into Mjölnir and began working on the binding runes. Carefully he drew them across the hammer, connecting the broken runes already present. Where metal had been lost, he used the fragment as bridging material.
Soon the runes were complete. The hammer emitted a faint brilliance.
Okay. Now I needed to begin the real repair.
Another problem immediately presented itself: how should he repair it?
He could not simply melt the entire hammer down and recast it. Surtr had seriously recommended that method, but Leo knew his blacksmithing skill was not yet high enough to create a new hammer of this level. That option was off the table.
The next idea was a rune that could act as a binding agent between new and old materials—a rune of synthesis and binding. That seemed the most viable path.
But how were they supposed to insert metal into the hollow parts of the hammer?
After thinking for a while, Surtr suggested melting the new metal and letting it flow into the voids on its own.
It sounded feasible—yet the metal density would be low without proper tempering.
So what should they do...?