Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

~Notice: The Spatial passage is currently unstable. It is recommended to channel additional energy to stabilize the pathway.~

The Tower notified him as he arrived in the lobby, where a wobbly blue gate was slowly forming. Despite being wobbly, it was more stable than the nightmare ride they had opened after their flight from the Stronghold of the Theocracy.

"Stabilize it then, Tower."

Seth answered brusquely, staring at the teleport gate slowly taking shape. While he was looking, the others arrived, either by foot or teleporting in with the help of the Tower. Quite a few people had assembled aside from the Lords, like the members of the field teams, but surprisingly Pip and the other children had also found their way here with Karina. Seth didn't know Evee was so popular among the young ones.

Soon after the portal was stabilized the figure of a tall knight stepped through it. Edward, Evee's brother was the first to return, followed by Evee, Master Mountain, and the rest of the expedition team. All of them were full of smiles and nobody was hurt.

Up to this point, Seth had expected the worst somewhere in the back of his mind. Yes, it was an irrational fear, taking into account the immeasurable power of Master Mountain and Evee's army of undead.

But when he learned something then that Urth was a world of "what ifs" and one should never be too confident in their power. So far he had fared well with that approach, but he was always glad when everything worked out.

"Welcome back. " Seth welcomed them.

"Thank you, it's great to be back," Evee greeted back with a relieved smile. It seemed like the past weeks were not easy on her.

"Evee, is everything alright? Why did you come back so quickly?" he asked Evee for the reason they didn't follow the original plan.

"It's nothing bad, it's positive in fact. We came back because there is a good opportunity that came to our doorstep. It was actually Yu's idea to come back and report to talk about how to proceed."

"I see. We can talk later. You should rest a little first."

"Thank you:" she said with a genuine smile. She seemed really exhausted.

After Evee had time to rest, they were all sitting together with drinks and listening to her story and telling her what happened on their end.

It was no wonder that Evee seemed exhausted. The immortal witch had really started moving mountains after returning to the Holy Land, and it didn't mean she had a hard time working with Yu.

The little workaholic went a step further than just building the teleportation hub in the rinky-dink little cave Seth had dug out to hide materials. The other Lords stared at her in awe, as she explained how they not only found a crossing of Dragon Veins thanks to Master mountain, but she started a full-scale construction project.

Using the army of immortal beasts, she didn't just keep the area safe but also started a quarry under the advice of the masons in her company. While the bigger beasts acted like construction machines under the guidance of the craftsmen, they salvages stones and laid the foundation for a proper magic tower.

It was just the foundation and far from the scale something like Minas Mar had, but it was built by erecting a function and fortified Wizard Tower as a base of operations. What this entailed were not only plans of basic facilities for mages, but also barracks for troops and defensive measures like the empowerment of mages that would hast long-range skills from its upper floors.

"When did you even get plans for something like that?" Seth asked a little baffled.

One couldn't say that the blueprint for something like a Wizard Tower was any less valuable than those for a Teleportation Hub. Even the weakest mage towers counted as fortified military structures with high offensive and defensive capabilities.

"W-Well, I actually found most of it here. I found quite a few blueprints and theoretical papers about our own tower and the subject in general in the library and I had the tower ego help me a little to come up with my own design."

Everyone was even more flabbergasted after her explanation. Although they all lived here and knew how powerful the structure was, none of them could really understand the ins and outs of Minas Mar. Was Evee actually an arcane genius? To be able to make her own blueprints and think about building a tower herself..

"And you understood all of them?" Alison asked eagerly. With her title as a bookworm, she was always into absorbing knowledge to strengthen herself, however, that didn't mean she could always understand everything right away.

"O-of course not!" Evee exclaimed flustered. "I understood only some of them and then had a lot of help from the Tower ego to synthesize my ideas into something actually working," she explained hurriedly.

"So you actually are a genius mage!" Monique put their thoughts into words.

They could all see how flustered Evee became, which made teasing her with it even more fun. Still, they all meant it genuinely. It was one thing to see Karina, a dryad, use her powers to grow a whole city, but Evee being able to even attempt to build a magic tower was even more impressive.

Karina, and Seth too, many of them had skills others couldn't emulate, but magic was different. One didn't need a special class to comprehend magic theory, what one needed was some powerful gray matter.

Even a Master Enchanter or an Archmage wouldn't necessarily be able to comprehend how to build a mage tower. This was one of the reasons why the blueprints were so expensive and rare. It was something anyone could do in theory, but only a few people could truly succeed in it.

When they finally had their fun teasing Evee, the conversation finally reached the opportunity Evee had mentioned before.

"As you can imagine, our activities didn't stay unnoticed. The other smaller forces around seem to have built an alliance and intend to raid our base."

She had explained earlier that they had occupied one of the dragon vein nodes in the former territory of the hive. It was one of the destroyed dungeons they had left behind. But they were not alone there.

As the famous phrase goes "Power hates a vacuum." Aside from forces from smaller dungeons that bordered the big territory, monsters from the Pathways had also quickly taken up residency in the place that the bigger forces shunned.

The Orc Kingdom Kozdam, The Maestro, and the Dragon Newts had not made any advances on the Hive's territory, probably because all the dungeons in the area had been destroyed. Since they heavily operated on the Dungeon God's system, the place was technically worthless to them for now.

On the other hand, these smaller powers bordering the land, or that didn't rely on dungeons, happily took possession of the free land.

"Their forces aren't really strong with the highest ground troops barely reaching lv.70. They are far from a threat to us, but Yu had a good idea and I agreed with him. Didn't we have a lot of new recruits who couldn't accompany us to the Holy Lands? And didn't we get a whole bunch of new ones with our independence?"

She didn't have to spell out her idea, everyone got the hints when she talked like that. She was right. On the past expedition, only the elites of the Oathguard did come along since they expected to fight only dangerous and high-level opponents

Besides the veteran members of the Oathguard, there were now also many new recruits. Not just in the Oathguard, but also among the members in their new subsidiary guilds they accepted. Since the subsidiary guild had mostly taken up residence in Tree Station One, the people of Sigma, that had moved there previously, also came to mind.

If what Evee said was right, and there were a great number of beasts in a save level range for grinding, for their lower-level allies, then it was a good idea to make use of them, instead of wiping them out just like that.

That they could only entertain this thought was thanks to the completed Teleportation Hub. They wouldn't have to let outsiders into their own halls to take them to the Holy Land. Although the teleport became a little unstable over far distances, the other side just needed something that could stabilize it from their end.

Something like a branch of the System Church that could connect to outside teleport attempts. The structure was already there, the only thing to keep in mind was the Adventurer Guild. They could never let them find out, that Minas Mar not only swiped their materials but also set up their own hub with it.

Finishing the talk about a bright immediate future, they reached the point when they had to inform Evee and the other of what had happened in Agra and the decision that had come to in their absence.

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