Chapter 71- Soul Forging complete.
Leo froze as every hair on his body stood on end.
The devil energy he could have sworn he had burned away completely showed up again.
He could not imagine what would have happened if he had finished the forging with that energy still inside the armor and then bonded with it.
Would I have become a pawn to the devil as well? Wait...did I nearly become one already?
Horror gripped him.
His hammer hung motionless frozen in midair.
He forced himself to focus and examined the soul threads.
The shaman’s soul pattern was being pulled from two opposite directions like a rope in a vicious tug-of-war.
On one hand, Blood Steel’s killing intent was pulling at the soul thread, trying its best to devour the entire pattern, while on the other side a black devil energy strand had imprisoned the soul and made it its slave.
Leo regained his bearings and brought the soul-fire hammer down hard, striking both the metal and the dark energy in an attempt to free the soul threads from their grips.
The killing intent and the devil energy met the blow together. The black energy yanked the shaman’s soul thread away from the steel, and the pattern was halfway out of the plate once more.
"What the holy mother-fucking situation is this?" Leo shouted out.
"What’s happening?" Hugh asked in a serious voice, though his face was pale with fear. He had always been scared of souls to begin with.
"I don’t know," Leo answered with a frown.
He paused, thinking the old man might have come into contact with one of these, then asked, "Do you know anything about the devils?"
Hugh stared at him in shock. "You mean this is a devil situation happening right now? I don’t know anything about them. Sorry, kid." Hugh shook his head.
Leo nodded and turned his full attention back to the work. His foresight showed him the situation clearly now.
The shaman’s soul pattern was simply that of an old goblin shaman. There was no taint of evil twisting it anymore like before.
He saw the dark energy strand still clung around the pattern.
He frowned.
At first he had assumed the devil energy was trying to claw the soul back under its control. But its behavior was strange.
It was not attacking. It was gripping the pattern, holding the soul threads together when they were on the verge of tearing apart.
Leo almost thought he was seeing things.
He tried to burn the dark energy away with the eternal flame.
The moment the flame touched the strand, the soul pattern nearly collapsed. He stopped at once. The dark energy could not be destroyed without destroying the soul along with it.
He observed more carefully and reached a conclusion.
The shaman’s soul had been enclosed and trapped by that energy strand for so long that the strand, pressed so close to the soul, had nearly come to treat the shaman as its own.
Leo focused deeper, probing the connection. As he did, he saw that the devil energy strand had actually preserved the shaman’s consciousness and will. It had even shielded that consciousness from the grasp of the eternal flame.
The discovery shocked him...
He reached out with his own consciousness and probed further. Moments later his awareness entered the world contained within the strand.
....
Inside, the space was dreamlike, peaceful, and beautiful. A blue sky stretched overhead. Warm sunlight fell across green grassland at the top of a mountain. Below, the land rolled away in quiet valleys.
A goblin shaman stood there with a staff in hand, watching the scenery.
Leo came face to face with him.
"Do you remember who you are?" Leo asked plainly.
The shaman shook his head. "I only know I have been imprisoned for too long."
Leo nodded. "You were chained your whole life, and I cannot free you from that chain completely. Right now I am using your soul to forge an armor. When I tried, I found this devil energy linked to your soul. If I destroy it, you will be destroyed along with it."
He paused for a while, letting his words sink in.
"The armor needs a guardian—a soul to act as its guardian spirit. Are you willing to become that guardian spirit? Or you can simply choose to pass away. I will not force you."
Leo said it calmly, but anxiety sat heavy in his chest.
If the shaman refused, he would lose a vivid rank soul and all the work of the past few days would come to nothing.
Silence stretched...
Then the hunched shoulders of the shaman straightened. He looked at Leo and nodded, revealing a kind smile that still looked a little scary. He was still a goblin, after all.
With the shaman’s acceptance, the black strand released its hold on the soul. The soul threads reattached themselves to the metal. The black thread still tried to follow the shaman’s pattern, but Leo quickly encased it within the combined fires of the eternal flame and the soul fire.
He decided the strand itself was not pure evil.
He would try to harness its power.
Leo manifested a hammer made of eternal fire and soul fire combined and began striking the black strand into the metal plate.
The dark energy strand resisted, but Leo continued to rain hammer strikes down on it without pause.
He drove the dark strand deep into the layers of metal plates, forcing it into the lattices. Leo kept hammering while heating the metal until the strand was fully integrated into the armor itself.
When the strand was gone, it left behind a mark: a skull with two long, protruding horns.
With the matter of the dark devil energy settled, Leo returned at once to the soul forging.
The blood steel no longer strained so hard to devour the soul threads as its blood aura had weakened significantly once the dark energy that amplified it was separated.
The rest of the procedure went smoothly. The soul pattern fully merged with the armor.
[Ding~]
[Item Forging Completed]
[Item: Blood-Chanter]
[Rank: EPIC]
[Type: Armor]
[Quality: Flawless]
Attributes:
DEF +750
STR +100
DEX +20
Effects:
[Base Passive — Guardian’s Ward: Absorbs one lethal blow; recharges via sustained damage.]
[Base Passive — Armor self-repairs rapidly, draining user’s mana.]
[Active — Aegis-Blood Synergy Shield: Deploy a shield equal to 2× health points.]
[Blood Frenzy] (Active)
Below 30% HP
Damage dealt ×1.5
Strength and Dexterity/Agility increase by an amount equal to the % of HP you are below 30%.
Below 20% HP
Damage dealt ×2
Strength and Dexterity/Agility Agility increase by 2 times the % of HP you are below 20%.
Below 10% HP
Damage dealt ×2.5
Strength and Dexterity/Agility Agility increase by 3 times the % of HP you are below 10%.
Below 5% HP
Damage dealt ×4
Strength and Dexterity/Agility Agility increase by 9 times the % of HP you are below 5%.
Devil Energy [0/0]
[Devilization]
[When the Devil energy is sufficient you can transform into a devil with boosted stats]
[Stat boost unknown.]
[Warning! Might influence the player’s mind. The intent to kill will be maximized in this state.]
[Guardian Spirit]
[Goblin Blood Shaman]
[The goblin Blood Shaman is a sentient soul. It still retains its capabilities as a shaman. With enough mana supply, the goblin shaman can independently cast protective spells.]
[Soul bound: Leo Stone]
Leo read the description twice, letting the words settle like the final cooling of forged steel.
"Hahaha! Epic rank again!"
He turned to Hugh with a wide, shameless smug smile, holding the armor up so the horned-skull mark caught the forge light.
"Aigoo, what can I do? I’ve been forging Epic rank after Epic rank. I think I’ve almost forgotten how to forge Rare rank or anything below."
He delivered the line with full dramatic flair, chest puffed, voice dripping with self-satisfied exaggeration.
Hugh, who had been turning the armor in his hands and was halfway toward a genuine compliment, stopped short.
A thick vein stood out on his forehead.
The admiration on his face curdled into pure irritation.
"You little—" he started, then clamped his mouth shut, exhaling hard through his nose.
Leo only grinned wider, still riding the high of the successful forging, clearly enjoying the reaction.
While Leo was still poking at Hugh’s temper and celebrating...
.....
In the real world.
Inside the training room of the fencing salle, an old man sat on an upside-down wooden bucket with a long practice stick resting across his knees.
Master Rook’s brow was furrowed so deeply the lines looked carved into stone.
He stared at the empty training spot where Leo should have been standing. His nostrils flared with every breath, as if he really were breathing fire.
This was the second day. Leo had already missed one full session.
All the trainees moved around the edges of the room like nervous mice. No one spoke above a whisper.
Every soft clack of practice blades, every shuffle of feet, felt dangerously loud.
They kept glancing at Master Rook out of the corners of their eyes, terrified that his foul mood would finally spill over onto whoever was closest.
"Just you wait, damn brat," Rook muttered through gritted teeth, the stick creaking under his tightening grip.
"They say everyone should be given three chances. So I will wait one more day. If you don’t show up tomorrow either, I will visit your house, drag your lazy ass out, and hit you until you cry and beg for mercy."
An ugly smile twisted across his face—half pure anger, half anticipatory satisfaction.
The disciples felt cold chills run straight down their spines. They tried to stay completely out of his line of sight, shrinking against the walls whenever his head turned.
Inwardly every one of them was cursing Leo with quiet, creative intensity for missing his scheduled classes and forcing the rest of them to walk on eggshells while the old man sat there radiating murderous aura.