Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

"Wow, did he just pull out beasts from the bags on his belt?" Evan, their resident tamer and Chosen of Hermes asked excitedly. Seth had a rough idea of why he was excited. Although Evan's pet space had more slots for creatures because of his class and blessing, it was still restricted.

This meant that, unless he wanted to travel with an army of beasts, he had to choose wisely which ones to take along in his pet space. The blacksmith looked over to Yu, curious about the answer. The blacksmith also wanted to know.

In the system they needed a high-ranked enchanter or sorceress like Al'Zalsa to create a spatial item like his Legion, that could also keep living creatures. However, Hao Li had a full belt of little bags that were able to hold living beasts.

Yu grimaced, seeing all the eyes on him.

"I only know that they are called beast pouches. I heard they use them to nurture their beasts, but that is all," Yu admitted his lack of knowledge. "Well, he did mention that they aren't seen often outside of their plains.." Seth thought to himself. All this meant, that they would have to talk to Hao Li about it.

If it was a technology they could use for themselves, it wouldn't just be Evan who benefited from it. Ellen would also be able to bring even more of her slimes with her and it could also be used for golems, Faer, or even people.

...

The 17th fight of the first round featured another urthan chosen and a cultivator with a similar specialization as Cormac Payle, the chosen of Hephaestus. The woman called herself Sarfine Venlen and she was the chosen of Freya, while her opponent was called Long Jian and used the cultivator version of automatons, puppet beasts.

The battle was very exciting for the audience to watch, although the Long Joan barely moved. The main fight was between the exotic beats puppets he kept pulling from his spatial ring, and Sarfine, who had summoned the Cats of Freya to battle alongside her.

Her summons were divine beasts and were both lv.99 powerhouses that had not appeared during the preliminaries. She was just within the rules of the tournament, with her two summons, yet she was on the losing end.

"I heard that skilled puppet cultivators were able to preserve the cultivation base and skills of their specimen, but this is quite surprising," even Yu commented in awe.

Long Jian's puppets all ranged in the 90s when judged by a system skill, but each of his creations was almost able to keep up with the lv.99 divine beasts. This was because they benefited from the same effect as golems. Since they were not alive, they lacked most weaknesses of a living beast in addition to having their bodies augmented and strengthened by precious materials and mysterious techniques. As mentioned before, it was not too different from Seth's way of making golems.

"Are there a lot of powerful creatures like this in the Voracious Cloud Continent?" Seth couldn't help but ask. In his eyes, the techniques used to strengthen the puppets were not that advanced, however, the raw materials they were made of were extraordinary. Although Yu said that very precious minerals for forging had become incredibly rare on the continent, they didn't seem to lack powerful beasts and associated materials.

"There are various regions ruled by beasts, where few people dare to tread. This kind of collection would have come at a great cost," Yu didn't deny that there were many beasts, but he didn't forget to mention the danger. It wasn't like just anyone collected this many beast corpses.

"It must have taken a long time to collect this many," the cultivator added.

No matter the case, Long Jian was able to secure his victory after a fight that lasted almost a full hour. It was a hard fight for the Chosen of Freya, however, it was hard to tell whether it was an easy or hard victory for the puppet master. The cultivator had not shown any signs of emotions during the battle, making it hard to gauge, how much of his power he had shown.

The 18th match was a lot less spectacular. The match was between two participants of the Pathworks. One was an elf with a similar fighting style to Lydia, a mix of melee combat and using the bow for close and mid-range shots. His opponent was a man in a dark cloak who didn't reveal his name but called himself a Priest of Corruption.

The fight ended in a surprise win for the latter. When the elf attacked, the priest suddenly swung a crude and rusty saber at him. The elf intended to block the attack with his bow, only for the bow to instantly rot away upon being touched by the blade. The bow's owner immediately followed the bow's fate. The second the saber touched him, he rotted away in a matter of seconds, becoming a puddle of dark sludge on the arena floor.

With the priest ending his fight immediately, they had made up for the time lost in the previous fight and the tournament was back on schedule. Despite his ominous name, he garnered great cheers from the audience, because of his overwhelming performance.

Fight 19 was disturbing, to say the least. The cultivator Jin Kamin didn't get much of a chance to show off his skills before his opponent, the chat lovingly dubbed the Maggot Priest. The creature calling itself Okrot Na and his it's appearance in a big bulky robe used divine magic based on maggots.

After a short fight, where they exchanged punches, Jin Kamin died the horrifying way of being eaten by parasitic worms from the inside out. It was not pretty to watch and nobody in the audience started applauding until Umi prompted them to.

Nobody knew where Okrot Na came from, nor did he reveal much of himself. However, whatever deity he worshiped, the power he used was no joke. Just their intimidation factor was already out of this world. After this little horror show, it was finally time for the last fight of the first round.

It was close to midday and they planned to have a break and a show before drawing the next round's match-ups. However, currently, all eyes were on the two similar combatants that had entered the arena.

One figure Seth had already grown acquainted with. Hannibal Cho the man who punched with his feet, It was finally his turn, but his opponent was not an easy one. The footfist was up against a chosen of Urth, whose fighting style was very similar to his own.

Mathias Bartholomew was the Chosen of Balder and a former refugee from Beta who found refuge in Delta and later moved to the Tree Stations. Similar to cultivators like Dumm Ting and his opponent, he excelled in hand-to-hand combat. As the god of peace, Balder didn't grant any weapon skills or fighting skills, however, Bartholomew had found his way to exploit his blessings for the best results.

In the preliminaries next to no weapons or skills were able to harm him, despite not even wearing any armor. Of course, he didn't reveal his skill or how they worked, but everything suggested that he had at least inherited some of Balder's invincibility.

From the preliminaries, the people of Minas Mar guessed that he had similar defensive capabilities as Tekar gained from his two unique classes. But he had more additional skills. He was able to heal his wounds in addition to his proficiency in weaponless combat.

Everything so far promised this match to become an epic slugfest.