The Runesmith

Chapter 634: Soul Smithing Continued.

Slow, steady footsteps echoed through the star-filled void as a lone figure moved forward. He walked with the confidence of someone who had been here before, and the moment he reached the center, the memories returned in a rush.

“I have done all of this already. Boss’ magic is really working.”

Bernir had come back to the ascension space, and the trial was underway once more. This time, he did not waste a moment trying to decipher the phantom hammer. He moved smoothly between the smelter and the colossal anvil, one hand solid and the other a half-visible outline of shimmering white light that gripped the soul-bound tool as if it had always belonged to him.

He halted only when the platform ahead rumbled and a new pedestal rose from below.

“All right then. Let us see what you want from me this time.”

He wiped the sweat from his brow and stepped closer. The silhouette engraved into the stone was unmistakable: twin crescent blades, long haft, weight distribution favoring brutal cleaving power.

“That is a great axe. As certain as the watered-down ale in the tavern.”

The platform shifted beneath him in what felt like approval. Above, the cosmic sky shimmered and distant stars went dark one by one until they formed the same countdown he had witnessed before. This time he felt the weight of it at once. He knew now how ruthless that timer could be and he had no intention of losing seconds again.

“No time to lollygag.”

He nodded as he spoke. The two temporary skills he had received last time were granted to him almost instantly, and with that much time saved, he knew his chances of success were much higher.

“Let’s do this right.”

The Soul Sense within him pulsed, and the surrounding materials answered like a choir. He had spent days preparing for this test, using the fragmented memories to guide his understanding of what it required. The previous attempt had been a mess. He had stumbled through the process, unable to fully grasp what his skill tried to tell him. Now he approached everything with clear intention.

“This one looks promising…”

He picked up a chunk of dull black ore lined with faint silver veins and tapped it with the white hammer.

*Thump*

A deep note rang out. It was steady and heavy, perfect for something that needed weight and force.

“Aye, good for the head.”

Next, he lifted a shard of pale blue crystal. When the phantom hammer touched it, the crystal vibrated and revealed what he needed to know.

“Aye, you will hold the edge nicely.”

Finally, he examined a curved splinter of strange wood. The moment he held it, he sensed a presence that resonated with the other three materials.

“For the haft… but I’ll need ta treat ya first.”

Bernir rolled his shoulders and looked over the forge again. The entire setup remained annoyingly spread out with the smelter on the far left, the sanding wheels and quenching basin on the far right, and the anvil in the center. Whoever designed it had no interest in efficiency. 𝙧А𝐍Ộ𝐛ÊŚ

“Still the worst layout I’ve ever seen, but I can’t say the same about the quality.”

He glanced at his phantom hand. Deep within it, he could feel something stirring. Soul energy was calling out to him. Over the last few days, he had gone through Roland’s notes. They described various ways of harnessing magical energy along with related forces.

There was some kind of unified energy theory buried in the text that he still could not grasp, but one thing was clear. The method he was using was not very different from what Runesmiths and Enchantsmiths practiced. It was simply another way of transferring energy into metal to produce an enhancing effect.

Soon, he fed the chosen ores and the crystal into the hungry smelter. His soul sense guided him more clearly than before. Each material sang to him in strange notes. It felt as if he were composing a melody while crafting, and suddenly the pattern made sense. The smelter rumbled to life. Pale flames that looked almost silver surged within the chamber and cast ethereal shadows across the star-covered void.

“Easy now, keep the flames steady.”

Some new instinct had awakened. He could feel the melody within the smelted mixture reacting to the temperature. By listening closely, he managed to keep it within a range that would not disturb it.

He adjusted the heat using the controls built into the smelter. The flames stabilized and began to swirl in a slow spiral that drew out impurities in ribbons of black smoke.

“Melt properly, my little ores.”

Minutes passed in the strange timelessness of the trial space. The ore mixture eventually liquefied and reached the proper consistency for ingot casting. Once that was done, he let the metal cool while he turned his attention to the wooden haft. This part of the process was the simplest for him, as he was already proficient in woodworking and carving.

Eventually, the time came to work on the main part, the axe head itself. Shaping the weapon was not the difficult part. He had years of experience with this kind of work. The true challenge was learning how to infuse it with soul energy.

He marched toward the anvil, each step steady and practiced. The moment he set the ingot onto its gleaming surface, the soul hammer in his phantom hand reacted on its own. A soft, ghostly glow seeped from the tool as if it recognized the metal. If he remembered correctly, he would not have more than one chance to do this, so he had to make it count.

In theory, the process was simple. He needed to use the white hammer to shape the ingot into the axe blade. With each strike, he had to feed a precise amount of soul energy into the metal. The materials already held a good amount of soul energy, and he needed to bring that energy in tune with his own. Once both aligned, the desired effect would occur, and the weapon would gain something similar to a magical enchantment.

In practice, this was an exhausting task. A new resource bar floated before him and it shrank with every hit. As it dropped, his body strained harder. If he pushed the limit, something bad would happen. He did not know what exactly, but his body remembered the warning from the previous trial. This energy was tied directly to his soul and draining too much too quickly risked harming it. Fortunately, the materials were saturated with their own energy, so he would not need to rely heavily on his own reserves.

“All right then.”

He raised the white hammer.

*CLANG*

He brought it down. The sound reverberated across the void. Stars flickered out in response, and the process of shaping began. One blow, two blows, and then the third. The process was quite tedious because he constantly needed to take breaks to heat the metal in the forge again. Yet after some time, he realized that the design of this forge carried a purpose.

“This soul-infused metal… it does need pause to settle.”

After a few hammer strikes, a short reprieve was required. When it was time to return it to the heat, he felt a strange connection between the souls within his craft, and it seemed as if the weapon carried its own emotion. Each time he struck it, he stripped away the negative ones and focused on the positive ones until they fused into a single whole.

“Haaa… This is… astonishing…”

Bernir wiped the sweat from his brow as he looked at the nearly finished axe head. It felt different than before. The work was not yet complete because it still needed to be sharpened and attached to the handle, but he could already tell that he had succeeded.

“This cannot be it, though… It still needs more oomph.”

It was time for the finishing touches. Bernir lifted the half-finished axe head, its surface shimmering with particles of silver-blue light that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Even without Soul Sense, he could feel a strange power emanating from it.

“Aye… still missin’ the edge and the handle.”

He glanced up toward the star-covered void. Only a few remained, which pushed him to hurry. He turned toward the platform on the far right and rushed to quench the axe in the special basin. The liquid inside was neither water nor oil but a strange solution that complemented this new method of soul craft. The moment he dipped the axe in, the substance began to shimmer.

“Ack, my eyes!”

Bernir turned his head away but kept the axe lowered so the process could take hold. Only once the metal hardened and settled did he move on to attaching the wooden handle. With a few firm swings, he wedged the wood into place, the haft and head aligning with a satisfying thunk.

“Easy… easy now…”

He muttered to himself as he tightened the top into place. The haft pulsed faintly in response, the soul energy within the treated wood synchronizing with the crystalline alloy of the blade. Then came the final step, sharpening. He brought the axe to the grinding wheel and set it spinning.

“Now this is peculiar…”

The sound was nothing like the harsh scrape he expected. Instead, the weapon seemed to sing to him with a tone that was strangely pleasant. Just as before, the axe guided his hand as he worked. If he held it at the wrong angle, the sound shifted at once and revealed his mistake.

“Oho… now what is it doing?”

When he finished and the grinding wheel stilled, the entire axe began to pulse. A white symbol appeared above the blade without warning. It shone for several seconds before sinking into the metal.

“That was no rune. Some kind of glyph instead?”

Bernir had seen countless runes and enchantments in his life, yet he did not recognize this one at all. The symbol remained visible to his soul sense but vanished from sight the moment he let the skill fade. Traditional runic enchantments always left some visible mark on the metal. This new soul forging did not, which might make its effects difficult to identify.

“That should be it.”

He nodded, lifted his creation, and looked toward the sky. Nearly eighty percent of the stars had already vanished. If he failed now, there would not be enough time for any adjustments. Bernir hefted the finished axe in his mismatched hands, set it into the display pedestal, and waited.

“… Is it not supposed to do something?”

The fit was perfect, yet nothing happened. He frowned, puzzled by the stillness. For a moment, he wondered what might be wrong. From what he had learned here, soul weapons received their enchantments in a manner completely unlike runic ones. Instead of being assigned specific effects, the weapons themselves chose what they would become, guided by the nature of the materials used to forge them.

The essence of soul-crafted items came from the materials themselves. The ores, crystal, and wood he had chosen resonated with one another. In truth, he had not made the choice at all. The materials had chosen for him. It felt as if their spirits were calling out to each other, eager to be made whole again.

“Hm?”

Just as he was about to take the weapon back, something finally shifted. The axe rose on its own and began to turn slowly in the air. Its blades glowed with faint streaks of silver blue, and the glyph embedded within it revealed itself and began to shine. The light formed a gentle radiance that spilled into the surrounding void.

“What is it doing?”

Bernir stared in confusion. The glow pushed into the emptiness and created a ripple. Something began to take shape within it, something familiar.

“A door?”

A wooden door appeared, the kind one might find in a forge, hardly different from the one he kept at home. He paused and looked around, noticing that the distant starlight continued to fade. Time was still slipping away, and the trial was far from over.

“Of course, this is a tier three trial. It was never going to end with a single axe.”

Wearing a solemn expression, he stepped forward and grasped the handle. Bernir’s fingers tightened around the wood. It felt solid and unmistakably real. It was not an illusion, and through the tiny cracks in the wood, he could almost see something beyond it.

“This…”

He swallowed hard, then pushed the doors open and braced himself for whatever waited on the other side. The door swung wide with a creaking groan that should not have been possible in a place without air or hinges. A warm light spilled from within this space. He recognized it at once. It was the glow of forge fire.

“A smithy?”

He stepped inside and glanced around. The instant he crossed the threshold, the air shifted. It was clearly a forge, yet something distinguished it from any he had seen before. The same tools he had used in the void rested here, and he understood that this was likely where the next trial would begin.

With interest he went around to check the place. All the hammers, tongs, and tools a blacksmith could want or need were here. He could even tell that the solution used to quench the axe was present, along with the same anvil he had worked on just now.

“At least everything is closer together now, but what will they have me make?”

As he wondered about his purpose here, he heard footsteps approaching from outside. He glanced toward the sound just as the doors burst open and a person rushed in.

“Chief!”

“Chief?”

Bernir repeated after the young man who had entered. The newcomer looked like a dwarf, younger than Bernir, and the way he addressed him made one thing clear.

“It is just like the boss said.’

Roland had warned him about certain trials, ones that placed a person inside a fully populated illusory world, far more elaborate than the earlier challenges. The fake residents were not new to him, but the scale of the illusion was something else entirely.

“Ah, yes, I am the Chief, of course. So what is the issue, apprentice?”

Bernir was not sure how to speak to the young dwarf. He reminded him of a younger version of one of the Union dwarves he did not particularly like, Bamur the enchantsmith who had caused plenty of trouble for him and for Roland. To make matters worse, a younger version of Dunan stood just behind the apprentice.

“Chief, the lord is asking for you. We should not keep him waiting!”

“The lord? I wanted to look around this place first, but perhaps it is better to meet this lord.”

After rubbing his beard, he nodded and asked one of the dwarves to guide him. In this scenario, he appeared to be a well-known blacksmith in a city that looked strangely familiar. It resembled Albrook, his hometown, mixed with a few other places he had visited in his younger years.

As he made his way through the city he took care to observe everything. The place had taverns and even a fully functioning marketplace filled with crafting materials. If this world was truly as his boss had described, then there was likely more to it than simple crafting. Tier three blacksmiths were considered masters of their trade, and with that mastery came responsibilities that involved making important decisions. He had been given a fully equipped smithy, with two apprentices who probably needed to be managed.

“The Master Blacksmith is here, My Lord.”

When he reached the mansion, he was guided inside by a butler. The scene unfolding before him was slightly unsettling because the lord looked familiar yet also unusual. His face appeared to be a mixture of Arthur and Roland, as if the two men had somehow produced a strangely blended child.

“Ah, you have called for me, My Lord?”

“Master blacksmith, I have a request to make. My knights are in dire need of soul-rendering weaponry and armor that can protect them against the phantasms.”

The man had started talking and was making little sense, yet Bernir continued to listen. He kept his back straight as the lord paced in front of the tall windows. Outside, the sky was unnaturally cloudy and the talk of phantasms went on while the sun remained hidden, leaving the city in shade.

"The neighboring baronies have fallen. Those who survived spoke of weapons sliding through the creatures like mist. Our steel cannot harm them, and our shields cannot stop them. You are our only hope!"

‘Now this is a trial.’

A chill ran down Bernir’s spine as the lord continued. He made the situation sound grand and terrible. It was up to Bernir to outfit several knights with equipment that could defend against these strange phantoms. He had managed to craft one piece, but he was not sure how he would manage the rest. These soul items behaved unpredictably and the effects their enchantments produced were mostly unknown to him. If he was to pass this trial, he needed to uncover their secrets before the enemy arrived.