Despite always giving one-hundred percent, the skeletons seemed to be filled with even more blood lust than usual.
Something had dared to hurt their master, and their desire for revenge was even more inflamed by their fellow undead joining them for the revenge crusade.
All four of them charged madly down the hallway, including Blue. It was an all-out attack with zero concern for self-preservation.
The blacksmith statue was free from Anya’s [Prostrate] ability, and prepared as its enemies charged towards it.
Not that the statue knew, but the first skeleton coming was Red.
Red jumped up high with its hammer raised above its skull, bringing forward a downward swing going right for the statue's head - yet it never landed the hit.
*BOOM!~*
The blacksmith’s stone hammer swung sideways, easily smashing Red into the wall - but Blue followed right after and landed a heavy hit, catching the statue completely off-guard.
*Crack!~*
A critical hit.
It was like Blue had planned this, using a weaker skeleton to take the hit so it would be free to deal damage.
A large chunk of stone bounced off the statue’s shoulder as half of its jaw was shattered away.
The blacksmith's metal hammer in its other hand was almost completely stone now, and it swung it back quickly.
Blue knew the hit was coming from its second hammer but it didn’t care, it had done its job: cause massive damage, protect its master.
*BOOM!*
Blue was like a ragdoll as it smashed against the other wall, ending up on the opposite wall to Red.
Since the hammer was mostly stone now, it only did normal damage and Blue miraculously survived. Since the blacksmith superweapon turned to stone, the threat of the blacksmith was essentially over.
The statue continued to march towards Jay, while Sweeper and Lamp were ignored as they hacked away at the statues arms and legs, chipping away some more of its health along with some stone fragments.
All the damage was taking its toll on the statue. It was on its last legs and was slowing down. It began to realise the plan to kill the necromancer had failed; each of its swings were getting slower and weaker as its life force began to leave its cold stone body.
Its last metal hammer had finally turned to stone; the curse was complete.
It quickly realised it wasn’t going to make it through this, but this didn’t mean it couldn’t take a few more enemies with it.
*BOOOM!!!!*
Vengeful indignation and bitter hatred almost seemed to create an aura around its body as it suddenly smashed both hammers into the ground, implanting them into the earth.
The blacksmith gave up its hammers.
Next, it grabbed two of the skeletons. Years or forging made its grip unbreakable.
Sweeper and Lamp had no choice as they were crushed against its body while it jumped into one of the stone ore containers.
All the skeletons could do was wriggle against its strength.
Red and Blue were trying to free their comrades as they stood at the edge of the stone container and smashed away at it, but it was all for nothing.
The wall suddenly opened and a familiar orange glow flowed out, accompanied by heat.
Slowly but surely, the stone box flipped backwards; the blacksmith, two skeletons and two bone-metal hammers all fell into the intense heat coming from the wall.
[Your skeleton has been slain]
[Your skeleton has been slain]
[800 Exp]
“Dammit…” Jay thought as he saw the notifications.
“Pretty lame way to die.” he pursed his lips.
Crafting those two bone hammers cost him two metal ingots. Sure, losing two skeletons was annoying but it was now considered a small thing to Jay. Hundreds of thousands of skeletons remained in his gauntlet, but he would have to leave the dungeon again if he wanted more of the hammers.
Anya was quite pleased with the large experience boost, but she saw Jay only frowning after the notifications. They split the experience, but it was still a lot nonetheless, so she assumed it was because of all his skeletons suffering.
“Hmm, he must really care about his skeletons.” she thought, deciding to say nothing about it.
“Hmm…” Jay looked at the forge area, an idea crossing his mind.
The glowing lava was mesmerising as it floated up and down on top of the enchanted stone cube.
“I only need some ingots to make more hammers right? So why not?” he thought as he approached it.
As Jay drew near, the heat coming from it was intense. His face was immediately dried out and some traces of steam wisps were leaving his clothes.
Jay grabbed what seemed like an industrial ladle from the tool rack near the forge. Pulling out the two chunks of sparkling ore he grabbed, he dropped them in but realised it simply wouldn’t be enough.
For a moment he frowned, but then he looked at all the tools around him and his lips began to curl. Unlike the stone weapons, these were still made of metal. Jay was glad that Helvetia’s curse only affected weapons.
With a smile he hopped around and grabbed them, adding them to the large ladle he was going to melt them all in.
If the blacksmith could see Jay now it would probably forget all about helvetia’s revenge and come back from the dead just to murder him.
These were his precious tools, his life-long accomplices that he took care of, and which took care of him. Now they were being used to make more poorly-crafted hammers for some undead - they wouldn’t even appreciate them. How could someone do this?
As Jay brought the ladle near the floating lava on top of the rune-covered cube, the lava all moved as it responded to the approaching ladle. It turned into a bowl shape so the ladle could sit on the top.
“Not bad,” Jay thought with a nod, “Helvetia sure was advanced.”
He placed it in, and it only took a moment before the contents all became a silvery liquid.
There was some gunk on the top but he scraped it off; he wasn’t sure what it was, but his instinct told him it was probably trash.
Jay looked around and found some moulds to pour the liquid into. None of them had hammer shapes but there was something shaped like an ingot so he opted for that.
Thankfully, Anya waited patiently as she watched. She didn't have much else to do, but it wasn't like she had a choice either; without Jay she would definitely not get this far.
The molten metal flowed into the moulds with ease, it was quite straight-forward.
A few moments later his ingots were crafted. He had some liquid metal left over but he just left it in the ladle.
[Helvetian Steel Ingot - 84% Purity] x 2
“Eight-four percent?” Jay frowned as he analysed the ingots.
He could see the tiny flakes from the sparkling ore in it, but it seemed that there simply wasn’t enough for any meaningful change. It was probably what made up the other 16% of the ingot, or at least some of it.
“Perhaps I can’t analyse too much about the ingot, maybe I just need some more blacksmithing experience?”
Still, he couldn’t complain as these were steel; much stronger than the iron bars he purchased from Lillian at the guild.
“I wonder what the hammers will be like.” he thought as he sat down and prepared to craft his new weapons.
