Ch.148148. The Blacksmith (1)

About 10 minutes after encountering the Emperor’s Guard.

‘…This is the place.’

Bjorn arrived at the production district of Vulcanus, the blacksmith god, where Imperial Legion corpses were piled everywhere.

No, those weren’t Imperial Legion corpses.

On the half-melted shields stuck to flesh cooked by intense heat, Bjorn could see the emblem contained in the wisdom bestowed upon him by his master.

An empty circle, decorated with four thorn-like ornaments around it.

According to His messenger, that symbol represented the evil god, the deity of misfortune [ ], and was used by its followers.

In other words, the countless human corpses lying here now belonged to the corrupted legions of the Rom Empire—the Fallen Legion, who had succumbed to the evil god.

Even at a glance, there appeared to be thousands of corpses, and their condition was beyond horrific to Bjorn’s eyes.

The blessing of [ ], which had a higher mutation rate than other evil gods’ blessings, had grotesquely twisted the bodies of the Fallen Legion soldiers.

They looked as if they had been blown apart by overwhelming force, or their flesh had been thoroughly cooked and their armor melted by intense heat.

And Bjorn’s senses could detect that the further in one direction he went, the more corpses appeared to have been exposed to such intense heat that they had turned to black charcoal…

Bjorn was certain.

Beyond this, the blacksmith god was there.

The heat permeated with burning rage, the divinity, the godhood—all proved it.

Bjorn’s momentarily softened gaze hardened once more, and in his eyes burned a hollow vengeance whose depths could not be fathomed.

That vengeful spirit transformed into black flames that engulfed Bjorn’s body, and further caused the severed heads of gods and emperors hanging at his waist to vibrate.

[AAAAAAAARGH!!!!]

[IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS!!!]

[N-NO, NOOOOO!!!]

The heads, whose souls had long since vanished, screamed their final death throes in all directions according to the residual thoughts of the corpses.

Most of these weren’t simply screams of pain or terror, but rather howls against the horrific destruction of the soul—the annihilation of existence.

《NOOOOOOOO!!!》

Naturally, these death cries were the perfect sounds to provoke Vulcanus.

Though one could never say the 12 major gods got along well, even in jest, they did have some unspoken recognition of each other as equals.

Beyond merely despising mortals, they treated them like tools, and this tendency had grown stronger within the pantheon.

Moreover, these 12 major gods were deities of the divine lineage—they were family, and Vulcanus was actually the son of Juno-Sala, goddess of the household.

In other words, Bjorn’s actions were equivalent to not only making family jokes about estranged parents, but also beheading them, preserving their heads, and turning them into speakers.

No matter how evil they were… no, precisely because they were evil, they became even more enraged at the hardships that befell them.

WHOOOOSH!!!

From the distance, a distinctive one-handed hammer used by the blacksmith came flying.

The hammer—a divine weapon used directly by the god—had a rectangular head, glowed red with heat, and flew toward Bjorn wrapped in divine red energy.

“—Hup!”

CLANG!!!

With his greatsword raised in both hands, surrounded by an aura so intense the blade was invisible, Bjorn struck the handle of the divine hammer and deflected it far away.

And the hammer, which he expected would naturally fall to the ground, floated through the air before beginning to return in the direction from which it had come.

“So he’s over there…!”

This meant that Vulcanus, the one who had thrown the hammer, was in that direction.

KWAAAANG!!!!

As a return greeting to Vulcanus, who had abruptly sent his regards, Bjorn swung his greatsword and released ten massive chaos aura projectiles shaped like wolf heads.

Each blast contained enough power to completely destroy an entire building, and if a human were merely grazed by one, they might lose a limb.

Despite this destructive power, Bjorn called this a “greeting.” That’s because it truly was only about that level of force for him.

Step, step, step.

Bjorn felt the surrounding air gradually heating up.

Though the gods had suffered damage to their divine nature with the birth of “Pleasure,” it seemed they had recovered some of their power over time.

Compared to the goddess Anat, whom Bjorn had first killed, Vulcanus possessed the power of a demigod (Rank 0) at least three times stronger.

Vulcanus advanced, unleashing that power without restraint, melting everything around him…

‘…I think I can take him.’

For some reason, Bjorn felt confident he could kill this powerful god.

The being before him was, though wounded, undeniably a god.

A magnificent being who could split mountains with a few hammer blows, collapse armies, and command more than half the concept of “blacksmith.”

Yet despite such a being approaching, Bjorn knew.

If given time to recover, Vulcanus would become untouchable, but at least for now, if he could just swing his greatsword and somehow cut off the god’s breath…

He could definitely kill him.

※ ※ ※

After the two men approached until they could see each other clearly, they closed the distance and swung their weapons almost simultaneously.

The hammer and greatsword, each wrapped in powerful energy, clashed dozens, hundreds of times, sending shockwaves in all directions.

And amid these countless collisions, the overall advantage in close combat inevitably belonged to Bjorn.

Though Vulcanus pressed with his excellent physique and superior hammer, the god’s fundamental nature was that of a blacksmith, not a warrior.

He could swing his hammer with great force, but it wasn’t threatening; naturally, Bjorn, the superior warrior, could easily deflect his hammer strikes.

Yet despite this, Bjorn found it impossible to completely overwhelm the god Vulcanus.

‘What is making him so damn tough?!’

The reason was the overwhelming durability possessed by Vulcanus, the blacksmith god.

Before being the god of blacksmiths, Vulcanus was also the god of minerals and metals.

He utilized the fact that his body could be treated as metal, and as one of the world’s greatest blacksmiths, he had tempered his metal-flesh.

Naturally, Vulcanus’s body was unbelievably hard for a living being.

Moreover, what made things difficult for Bjorn wasn’t just this, but also the nasty special ability of that hammer.

At first, when Bjorn tried to block the divine hammer swung by the blacksmith god using his particularly large and sturdy pauldron (shoulder armor)…

Despite clearly infusing chaos power and aura to the bone, his right pauldron was torn like paper the moment the hammer touched it.

In other words, that hammer could freely destroy any metal it touched.

Fortunately, his greatsword could ignore this special ability because it was also a divine weapon, and the protective function of his amulet was still working.

If he hadn’t had the body-strengthening ability using runes on his armor, it would likely have become nothing more than a heavy burden.

However, Vulcanus ultimately couldn’t gain the upper hand in close combat. Noticing this, Vulcanus became pathetically enraged.

He was furious at Bjorn, who dared to stand against him despite his chosen people ideology, but regardless, Vulcanus’s response was quick and precise.

《Take this, you lowly creature!!!》

As the blacksmith god, he summoned a massive furnace in mid-air, opened its entrance, and sprayed all manner of heat-filled objects from within.

Molten metal chunks and red-hot liquid metal were just the beginning—he also unleashed the furnace’s heat and flames, hot winds, and even glowing red logs and coal.

These fireballs, summoned through magic power, were immune to dispel magic, but Bjorn calmly dealt with them.

“《Perfect Immune from Fire》.”

Casting a spell for perfect resistance to fire-attribute damage, he could completely block the weak physical force with his amulet and aura defense.

Thanks to this, Bjorn effortlessly broke through the center of that intense heat, swimming through the pouring red-hot molten metal, and then—

“Got you!!”

《Wha—》

KWAAAANG!!!!

Reaching out toward Vulcanus, who had been building up power beyond the molten metal, Bjorn grabbed his head and slammed it into the ground.