Please read the author's notes.
Discord: https://discord.gg/K7f8qGpvuk
pat.treon:/Keanu_Eugene
CHAPTER START---
---Minutes before The Angel arrives...
Sitting on a bed in Babel hospital, Yang stares out at the setting sun through his window.
Below he can see the orange torch flames littering the rooftops below. Towers were hastily but properly built to provide overwatch along the district closest to Bable.
Adventurers anxiously waited and prayed that they wouldn't have to act. They prayed for Yang Shen to save them yet again.
These level 1 and 2 adventurers were tasked with leading the monster out of Orario through the north road if it breaches the surface.
Sitting up in bed Yang has his left hand -his stump- on the bedside table. Airmid carefully but nervously operates on it, carefully removing the metal and preparing him to receive a replacement.
At the foot of his bed sat Freya, a small frown on her face as she scrutinized his features.
His face was calm, stoic even, but eyes vigilant, almost agitated...nervous, he was pissed.
To most, he would seem almost relaxed, but she could read him like a book, a book written for slow children.
"Being angry doesn't help anyone," Freya says.
"You expect me to be anything else?" Yang asks. Airmid stiffens at his sharp tone, but continues working, Freya notices yet makes no issue of it.
"This is how us gods feel, every time our adventurers enter the dungeon," Freya says. "We're so fragile, weak, helpless. Only really protected by the fact that killing us stains the soul. We're utterly useless in most of the problems adventurers have."
Yang narrows his eyes at her, "Is this your way of cheering me up? Thalie is fighting a monster that---" he glances at Airmid, pauses, then continues, "fighting a new Great Quest. I'm stuck here waiting for a new hand, if she loses I lose two members of our family, so yeah, I'm pissed."
'Our family?' the thought almost causes Freya to smile, but she knew smiling now wouldn't help the situation.
"Well you do a wonderful job of hiding it, from most," Freya says.
"I let it slip, with how my magic works, and bye-bye Orario," Airmid winces at the thought.
Freya smiles at him, "your team has done the impossible nearly every expedition, I'm sure you'll manage this time as well. Besides, Thalie is a Valkyrie---"
"She doesn't like you calling her that, you know that."
"Not exactly her choice now is it," Freya teases. "You've said it yourself countless times, without your team, you would have died ages ago. And you've also told me that they're monsters in their own ways, have some faith."
Yang sighs and lays his head back against the wall. "You're right, we'll be ok..."
Only a few moments later Freya stiffens, jumping to her feet and looking around curiously.
"It's starting," she says.
"You can tell," Airmid asks, Yang only raises a brow.
"It's Ouranos, the divine enchantments on Babel are reinforced, and..." Freya waves her hand toward the other half of the room for a Divine Mirror to appear. "He's allowing us to see, the entire world is watching, standard procedure for such threats...it gives the survivors all the information we can get, should things go poorly that is."
Yang grumbles, "so much faith in us."
As Airmid finishes preparing his arm, the trio sits on Yang's bed to watch the battle.
Seeing The Angel completely ignore the first volley of magic causes Yang to frown, "Arcanum..."
"I didn't think that it was true," Airmid says, blatant fear in her voice. "It really is a corrupted fallen god who entered the dungeon."
Hearing this Yang doesn't react, but Freya chops Airmid with her hand on the doctor's head, "don't sound so afraid. You're literally sitting beside the only level-9, have some faith."
Airmid pouts and rubs her head, "right, sorry."
As they continue watching the fight they see Urga completely disintegrated upon contact with The Angel. Then all the adventurers begin scrambling to run away.
"It worked," Yang says, seeing Thalie's divine spear able to make contact with and hopefully harm The Angel.
But the next moment, this trio was beyond confused, especially Freya.
Both mortals had their heads shift from the divine mirror to the ceiling, an overwhelming sensation of persistence, a desperate need to survive flooding them, invigorating them. A sudden shot of adrenaline coursing through their bodies and minds.
From their position on floor thirty, they look upward, as if they could see all the way to floor fifty-one.
All sentient begins across the world, and even those within the dungeon experienced this same sensation.
Freya's face was a mix of bewilderment, amazement, and blatant disbelief.
"That's impossible," she mutters. Her divine gaze peered through the floors moments later to see Hephaestus running through the halls toward their position...
---2 Days before The Angel arrives...
Welf sat at his design table in his forge. The previous design for Yang's metal hand was laid out in front of him. Crates of Alatreon Ingots are stacked at the side of his table and a pile of crumpled paper at his feet.
Taking a new sheet of paper he starts another improved design.
SNAP!
The pencil shatters in his grip. And Welf snarls along with it.
"RAH!" he slams his hand on the table and breaks it into pieces. Taking short ragged breaths to try and calm himself down.
"Wow," Hephaestus says.
Welf turns to his side to see her standing there with a tray, a few sandwiches stacked atop it along with what he assumed was a bottle of ale. He takes a deep breath and calms down, not liking the worried look on her face, "sorry, how long have you been there?"
"Long enough to see that you're not ok," Hephaestus walks over to him and looks at the broken table, where she'd usually sit to bother him while he works.
"Right," Welf easily moves one of the crates for her to place the tray. Moving the meter-wide wooden crate that weighed more than ten tons as if it were nothing.
"Sometimes I forget how strong you are," Hephaestus muses as she takes a seat, watching him move another crate to sit opposite her.
"Level-7 has its perks," he shrugs. "And I'm still by far the weak on...physically at least."
"And what has you so bothered that you're breaking things?" Hephaestus hands him a sandwich, the look in her eyes being enough of a command for him to eat. It seemed she wasn't in the mood to have him zoning out and going days without eating...again.
Welf quietly eats a few bites before speaking, feeling much calmer now. "I don't know what to make."
"I thought you were just making a new hand."
"I am, but, the strongest materials we have can't handle The Shard, nothing can. So what am I supposed to do? The only thing that we know for sure can even hurt The Angel is Thalie's spear," Welf sighs. "The only thing that can save you...is something I didn't even make." He'd rarely felt this useless before, and now sitting beside her he certainly has never felt this powerless.
"Well, what inspired you before?" Hephaestus asks, shockingly composed for someone who was being hunted, her faith in her executives was unshakable.
"What?" he gives her a confused look.
"Mosoka, what inspired that? I'd imagine it had to be something great for you to create the first unbreakable Magic Sword."
Welf takes a few more bites as he considers her words, "our dreams. It means 'dream chaser', it was meant to help us accomplish our dreams. But you already kno---"
"Just play along. It was made to accomplish your dreams. And did it?"
"Yes."
"Ikari?"
Welf glances toward his workstation, seeing his main weapon, a magic Sword Breaker combat knife, "I was angry, so I names it 'Wrath'. It was meant for me to kill Rakia's army."
"And that worked?"
"Far too well, it was more difficult to stop killing, but Yang stopped me..."
"Thalie's golden spear, Hokori?"
" 'The Banner Rod', so Thalie could protect her family, and kill anyone who threatens us," Welf chuckles. "And she wanted to fly like us..."
Hephaestus nods, silently watching him eat for a moment before she speaks, "seems like you can do anything you set your mind to, so what do you know is unbreakable, because that's what you need to match, to surpass."
"Nothing is unbreakable, I'm on a team with Yang, he's broken Durandal and can definitely shatter Orichalcum like stone now that he's level-9."
"That makes your job easier then," Hephaestus shrugs. "Make something new, envision something that can never break, and make that."
"You make it sound soooo easy."
"You three have a habit of making these impossible tasks look easy, apparently you even fooled me, now get to work," she gets up to leave him be, giving him a quick kiss for good luck. Taking only two steps away she turns around and glares with her one revealed eye, "after you finish eating..."
A few minutes later Welf is standing in front of his forge. A small fortune of Magic Crystals is used to power this special forge for such a big project, raising the heat to a point that anyone aside from himself, Yang, or Thalie, would likely die from stepping inside the room.
Shirt off, Ikari in one hand and his specially made hammer in the other, Welf gets to work.
Generating even more heat and controlling it perfectly to soften the Ingots he feels his magic being strained.
His pupils dilate as he fully zones out. Instincts taking over, allowing inspiration to take form.
Almost two decades of smithing, since he was barely four years old, all for this moment. His absolute greatest creation, what would make his name unmatched in the history books by any other smith.
By even Hephaestus herself.
He mindlessly begins hammering away, and hundreds of thoughts collide with each impact.
CLANG!
'What is unbreakable?'
CLANG!
'Nothing is unbreakable.'
CLANG!
'Something has to be!'
CLANG!
'Yes...there is something, I remember...'
CLANG!
'He told me, but what?'
CLANG!
'My friends need me, Hephaestus needs me, my family needs me.'
CLANG!
'What is beyond The Angel?'
CLANG!
'Beyond Yang Shen?'
CLANG!
'What can neither of them break?'
CLANG!
'What can keep us moving, keep us moving forward, what can help us survive?'
CLANG!
'Ahhh... that's it... that's exactly what he told me.'
CLANG!
'Yang said it so long ago...the only thing that can't be broken.'
CLANG!
'Beyond the understanding of even the gods.'
CLANG!
'The greatest strength of us mortals.'
CLANG!
"Arghhh!" Welf howls in pain as he falls back, clutching his burning arms to his chest.
He was covered from head to toe in sweat, barely able to keep his eyes awake. Mouth dry and stomach growling.
He glances over to the Forge, seeing it completely cold, and shattered. The massive slab of Orichalcum was divided down the middle, most of it melted into slag and already cold.
Welf followed the destruction down to the floor, pieces of Ikari were scattered at his feet.
Then he followed the destruction further, and saw his hands.
From fingertips to forearms they looked cracked. As if he were a marble statue about to shatter, white light peers through the cracks. He flexed his hands, no longer feeling the pain, and he touched the glowing cracks in his flesh, feeling them completely solid and smooth, as if they were tattoos.
Focusing on them he intuitively knows what to do, and steadies his mind.
The white light fades back into his skin, and instead, massive scars remain where the cracks were. As if he'd been branded by something. Burnt flesh carved nearly half a centimeter deep, clear rivers left for the power to flow.
"WELF!" Hephaestus barges into the room, out of breath and panicked. She looks around as if expecting something.
Welf gives her an exhausted look as she approaches, still remaining on the floor. She is immediately kneeling at his side, inspecting his arms.
"I'm fine, I think..."
"You think?" Hephaestus asks, looking as if she were moments away from crying while inspecting his arms.
"Talk later," Welf lays back on the floor and just stares at the ceiling, a massive smile on his face, far too tired to properly express how happy he was. "I can't move...can you get the hand to him, he'll need it."
Hephaestus suddenly remembers why she rushed in here. Feeling a surge of divinity permeate the world, then tracking it back to here, to his forge.
She hops to her feet and rushes over to the forge, seeing an abyssal black metal hand. As if it were consuming all the light that touched it.
This was it, this was the Divine Item that bolstered everyone. The urge to survive Thalie and the others felt in the dungeon, the same feeling everyone in the world felt when it was made, all from this one item.
The result of inspiration taking form, of a man so determined to help his friends that he breached the laws of the world. Reaching higher than any other being has ever before and creating his own divinity, a feat that earns the envy of all gods, even the chief goddess of creation herself. Goddess Hephaestus.
Hephaestus removes her eyepatch to give it a proper appraisal, yet her mouth hangs agape, unable to put words to this impossibility.
"How did you do this?" she asks, clear wonder in her voice. "Even I can't create divine items outside of heaven, and I'm the chief goddess of crafting...how the fuck did you create divinity as a mortal!" There was a mix of jealousy in her voice toward the end.
Welf chuckles on the floor, peeking at her to see her mixture of anger and amazement. "You can't tell, can you?"
"Tell what?"
"What the inspiration was, your Appraisal Eye can normally tell, but you can't understand this, right?"
Hephaestus folds her arms, "right, and?"
He forces himself to sit up and look at her, a wide smile on his face, "the only unbreakable thing in this world. Yang told me that the gods could never understand, because you're immortal."
"What is it?" Hephaestus demands.
"Life's desire and desperation, to survive," Welf says. "There is nothing we won't do to preserve the one precious life we have, immortals like you can never understand that..."
They stare at each other for a while before Hephaestus chuckles bitterly, shaking her head. "Leave it to the damn ecologist to come up with some crap like that," she glances back to the prosthetic, "but apparently he's right, and you made the proof."
"Take it to him, he'll need it when The Angel is here in a few days," Welf says. "I just need to sit here and...maybe take a nap." He raises his arms for her to see. "Channeling divinity is hard work, you know, for us who can make divine items," he teases.
Hephaestus snarls and rolls her eyes at him. "You're so damn lucky I love you, and I am proud of you, but I'm still jealous," she turns around and grabs the arm. It was ice cold to the touch, and unlike all their other equipment felt weightless.
Hephaestus took it in her arms and crouched down beside Welf, giving him another gentle kiss, "I'll be back for you, Divine Smith Welf Crozzo, Yang's been waiting two days for this so I should hurry..."
Welf near completely zoned out at the words 'Divine Smith', grinning like an idiot, only coming to his senses after she bolted out of the room and was sprinting down the hallways.
"Wait...two days?"
END CHAPTER---
Our boy Welf making unexpected gains, if you reread the last chapter this explains a lot :)