“That sounds like a good idea. Anyways if you need me I will be in the courtyard, I am going to be adding in the defenses there.” Inovia told me as she vanished, leaving me in the observation room by myself. Maybe in a bit, I will walk around and see what Inovia has done with the place.
I brought up the three dimensional model of the control room to try and locate the forge. I was in my observation room, which was the furthest room on the left of the control room. The forge was located a few hallways across from the hall of the gods and looked to take up a vast amount of space. I decided that the best place to teleport would be just outside of the Hall of Gods. From there, I can walk over to his forge and take in the scenery of the control room. I haven't spent much time here, so it will be nice to see what's been changed.
I activated my teleport function and appeared in front of the massive wooden doors that signified the entrance to the Hall of Gods. It was also the heart of the control room. I turned to the right and started to walk through the room that was littered with defensive structures. Large handfuls of soldiers were handcrafting pieces that were being attached to the large defensive formations or were doing patrols. Those were system spawned demi-gods. They were powerful defenders, but they were not permitted to leave the control room for any reason. Their only purpose was to defend this place. I doubt you could even call them truly independent beings, but they looked happy enough crafting and working on defenses. I continued my walk through the sizeable defensive hall, and suddenly something caught my eye.
Some of the demi-gods were very ghost-like floating above the ground and were see-through with a very light blue haze coming from them in waves. Curiosity overwhelmed me, and I walked over to them. One of the floating ghosts saw me, and then all the soldiers surrounding him straightened up. The one on the right was a skeleton that was clad in heavy plate armor and had a long sword strapped across his back. His entire body was covered in shining plate, only leaving his head visible, which was composed of bone that looked like it was charred from a constant exposer to fire.
“Hello, commander.” The lead skeleton bowed before me, causing his armor to rustle together. The voice that came out of it was dry and sounded course, almost as if water never touched the bone that composed its body. However, its voice seemed to be magical, since there was no source of flesh on its body, at least from what I could see.
“Hello, all. I only stopped by cause I was curious about the gentleman over there.” I gestured to the floating soul, who bobbed his head and floated down to me.
“What is it you require, commander?” The soul asked. His voice sounded like a whisper and echoed quietly in the air around me.
“What race are you?" I asked as I looked over his floating form.
“Sir, I am a Nazghoul.” The specter replied with a fair amount of uncertainty in his tone. He was probably confused about me asking him, which I don't blame him about that. This was my first time seeing something like this, my self.
“Wait, I thought Nazghouls were just undead, like zombies and skeletons.”
“Well, during the conversion event, another tier was added, and that's the soul. Our society is based around that of flesh, that of bone and now that of soul, sir.” The specter eyed me with a bit of confusion in his eye.
“I am sorry if that was rude. I just haven't seen the soul yet. My apologies.”
The specter shrugged, “Its no problem for me, sir.”
I nodded and dismissed them with my hand. “Sorry for the interruption gentleman, You can continue with your work.” The group of Nazghouls bowed and went back to work and whispered to each other while they were building some fortifications.
I hummed to myself quietly as I walked through the rest of the defensive chamber and through a door that was on the far western part of the room. So a soul can become a sapient creature, that was not something I expected to see, but I can appreciate it. The Nazghouls are certainly unique creatures. I waved my hand over the panel on the right, and the door caused it to fracture into dozens of pieces and sink into the frame, revealing a long metallic corridor that stretched down the lengths before stopping at a distance intersection.
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I walked through, and the door came back behind me like a waterfall. In the distance, I could hear the sound of a hammer smashing into metal and a deep throaty hum that was resonating in tune with it. I walked further into the hall and the theme of the hall started to change from its common futuristic appearance to something more primal. Walls turned from metal to walls of lava that flowed down somewhere into the floor. Heat radiated from it with a steadily increasing amount the further into the halls I walked. Fire lined the ceiling and constantly flickered with a life of its own. However, at the end of the hallway was a large open room.
This room had a stone floor. However, most of the stones were crushed into pebbles with the occasional large rock thrown into the mix. The far wall was a giant stone cliff face that seemed to stretch upwards into eternity. Large gouts of lava poured from holes that littered the surface of the cliffside and ran into a massive ocean on the bottom. The sea of lava stretched into the far distance, and the occasional fire sprite would float around and disappear into the molten stone before resurfacing once more.
Ferrarus sat in the middle of the room in front of a large dark steel anvil. His fist was morphed into an oversized blacksmiths hammer, and he was slamming it against a red hot blade. His other hand was the shape of a human hand, and he was moving his fingers like a conductor each time the hammer struck the blade. With each gesture, the blade would light up, and a stream of dark dust-like particles would begin to be pulled into the air and floated over to a large pile of excess material.
His body changed from originally copper to the shining surface of freshly polished stainless steel. His body was smooth, yet it was still massive and hulking. Each time he needed to get new material, he would tear a chunk off of his body and mold into the shape that he desired before he began to sculpt again. His humming grew in intensity with each crash of his hammer.
I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall as I watched him work, enthralled with his movements. After a while, I cleared my throat, “ Ferrarus! I need your help real quick.”
He stopped his hammer mid-swing and turned his futureless face to me. “Oh! Welcome to my forge, Overseer. What can this old soul do for ya today.” His voice was gruff and deep and had a thick accent to it, though I could not quite place where the accent came from, it was unique.
“I stopped by to put in some request for some personal equipment, and also an artifact. Are you free to help me?”
He grabbed the sword he was working and stood up. The ground parted beneath his feet as his weight pushed through the Peebles on the floor. He walked over to a cooling rank and placed the blade down before turning to me. “Of course. I do not require sleep, so I always have time. Whatcha ya looking fer?
I uncrossed my arms and walked over his forge and looked over the dozens of pieces of equipment that he had racks, marveling over its beauty. ‘Well, hopefully, something that complements my class and paths of power. I walk the path of the monster, yet I am a ghost, and I am a god of oblivion and a transdimensional deity.”
“Hm, I sadly don’t have any metals from the oblivion path or the transdimensional path. However, I do have some materials that some souls have discovered recently. However, I will give ya some metals, see if you can influence them with oblivion, or transdimensional mana; it will give me some extra stuff to work with. The first step I will take is building a chest piece, any specific request?” He asked. I could hear the excitement building in his voice at the prospect of having a new project.
I froze and thought it over; how did I want my armor to look. After mulling it over for a bit, I pulled off my cape and walked over to him. “Attach this to it. Other than that, I have no real preference for what you do. Just make sure it protects me.” I walked over to him and handed him my cape. “Oh! Before I forget, can you make the armor fit both this host and my real form? So I can switch at will?”
“It will be tricky, but I can manage it.” Ferrarus took the cape and placed it next to the anvil, and stood up and walked over to massive piles of metal ingots that lined the back part of the room. “Any specific metal you want to try and alter?”
“What is the metal that you are using to create my chest piece?” I asked in response.
“It's a metal called soulsteel. It's made from the infusion of ethereal mana and a specialized steel that is only found on the eastern continent. You can find other versions of soul steel elsewhere, but it lacks the strength that this one does.” He told me as he reached into the pile and brought a steel ingot that was grey and had black grain lines that were flowing through it. “This is the base version of that steel. See if you can infuse mana into it while I work.” He tossed a set of two ingots through the air that I gracefully caught them both and placed them in the ground in front of me.
“So I know how to infuse mana with other objects, how do I do it with metal,” I asked him as I sat down and crossed my legs and stared at the ingots.
“You need to channel your mana into it. However, some metals don’t take to mana well and will reject it, others will absorb it, and it will alter its properties. Don’t be mad it fails on ya. It's all apart of the process.” Ferrarus told me as he rested a metal ingot on the anvil. This ingot was a very watered down white color, with the black grains turned a soft muted grey with bits of it being transparent.
I turned my attention back to the ingots that sat in front of me and cracked my fingers. It was time to get to work.