Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

"You done?", was his only comment when she reached him. She nodded with a refreshed smile and squeezed some blackish thick blood out of her hair.

The dead kraken smelled terrible and so did the little fairy, Seth could not help but frown. No matter how desperate they got, he would never eat this thing! He swore in his heart and overcame his disgust to touch one of the half-burned tentacles to loot the beast. He felt the slimy robust skin for a moment, before it appeared and a few neat leather sheets in his inventory. What was left behind were sickening dark gray tendrils of meat still oozing the viscous purplish blood. The head ache was killing him and this sight did not make it better.

<Kraken Leather, Crafting Material, Common.

Sturdy leather of a corrupted desert kraken. Good for robust leather armor or boots.>

"Let′s leave.", he said and left with a fast pace, but the stench seemed to follow him. Oh right, Fin was following him.

"Se~th... you wouldn\'t have water for me? Ple~ase?", she asked in a pitifully. She looked and smelled truly miserable. Wasting water was a crime in the desert... but this smell was worse. Seth could feel his sanity decreasing the longer he smelled it.

"Ok, come here."

Fin landed. Seth took out one of his water bottles and started dousing the fairy. She hurriedly started to wash and scrape away the nauseating blood. She still smelled terrible, but it was a lot better now. If he had deodorant with him, he would have showered her in it.

And so, they continued their journey, Fin following several meters behind Seth.

The two traveled through the night and stopped at the big rock formation Seth had found with auto map. When the first rays of the morning sun bathed the sky in a pink hue. Fin claimed that fairies did not need much sleep, so she stood guard. She confidently told Seth to sleep a few hours.

Unexpectedly the heat did not bother the blacksmith with his fire resistance, as much as Fin anticipated. He easily slept a full 8 hours, all the way past noon. Fin on the other hand started overheating with her tiny body in the boiling air.

The little fairy was close to fainting when Seth finally woke up and found her panting and sweating on the ground. She was not able to respond, but tenaciously stayed awake.

"What a good guard you are. Sleep now.", he said and picked up the smelly little fairy. He folded a piece of cloth and laid her onto it. She immediately fell asleep. Seth did not doubt her ability, but penetrating the innards of a giant sex- ...sea - sand monster! probably took a toll on her.

The following hours were uneventful. After a satisfying meal, came the boredom of looking at the unchanging sand fields his biggest enemy. The hot and dry air felt comfortable on Seth′s skin and this gave him an idea. Didn′t everything in the desert normally hide during the days heat? So, this should be the safest time, right?

Seth felt a little bad, that he still avoided the little fairy because of the smell, despite how hard she had worked. He wrapped her in the piece of black cloth and put her into the inner pocket of his cloak. Seth had put away his armor while resting and wore his travel clothes now. As long as he kept his hood up, the sun could not hurt him!

With the sleeping fairy stored away, Seth fell into a comfortable pace and started jogging through the desert. It reminded him a lot of his first journey. It was a little harder to run on sand, but his stats had grown, so it made no difference to him.

Seth did not know whether his assumption was right or not, but he did not meet a single monster.

"Puah!"

Seth heard a tiny voice exclaim and felt something struggling in his pocket. Fin finally managed to unwrap herself and her deep red head out of his pocket.

"You! Seth! I- Fin nearly suffocated in there!", she shouted with tears in her eyes. He didn\'t buy into her cute act, she still smelled of the blood of the monster she brutally slaughtered in front of his eyes.

" Why are we moving? wuagh!", she asked and gagged as hot desert air and sand, but most importantly her own smell, suddenly filled her lungs. He explained his ingenious idea to move during the day, since he the heat was no problem, as long as he was shielded from the sun!

Fin could rest in his inner pocket during the heat of the day and take over guard, when Seth got tired. He had actually thought, that it would be quite cool to have her on his shoulder, but she still smelled like rotten fish and she would not last long in this sun.

Seth estimated the heat to easily reach boiling temperature when the sun stood high. The fairy would be cooked if she stayed outside.

It was a boring journey of several days. Fortunately, he had <Map>, otherwise he would have been hopelessly lost. They met some desert snakes and scorpions the side of cats, but nothing like the kraken in their first night. It made Seth suspicious whether it was really random, or the systems god had thrown him there on purpose... Either way, he could not change it now.

The beasts they came across were not a big deal for Seth, but they also only gave a pitiful amount of experience. The kraken had actually gotten him 80% of the way to lv.14, despite not being the one killing it in the end.

Fin had explained that party settings to him. A party could freely choose how the experience of a jointly killed mob was distributed. As the party leader she had set it to 80:20, so Seth got 80% of the experience of mobs they killed together. Since Fin′s level was a lot higher than his, this was actually in his favor in case they killed stronger monsters, like the kraken!

On the third day the desert started to change. The dunes grew flatter and spots of dry dirt peeked out among the sand. Even the temperature steadily lowered little by little. Ruins started to litter the landscape, like the dried-up bones of an ancient civilization. They only appeared on the map after he used auto map.

It was a lot different from Deltan. When Seth had arrived in Deltan, it had become a partly destroyed modern ghost city with all life sucked out of it. This were ruins like you would see them in archaeological documentaries. Build by the bare hand of many people in hard labor. Even in pieces, it still radiated the life and history that had seeped into them during their golden times. They induced a foreign fascination that modern buildings simply lacked.

Sanded smooth by the desert winds they still defied time and stood like the desiccated skeleton of gigantic beast in the middle of nowhere. I stared with the outlines of building and shallow broken walls and the further they went; the more was left of the former glory. Sand covered what was once paved roads and intricate mosaic floors. Barely discernible reliefs still covered the ruins of once luxurious facades.

"How big must this city have been in its heyday?", Seth mumbled mesmerized. His fingers wandered over the shallow reliefs of people and beasts and he stopped from time to time to take a closer look. Even Fin had left his pocket to stare amazed at the scenery.

"Maybe a hundred thousand? Maybe a little more or less...", she whispered unwittingly. Which brought her a weird look from Seth.

Before they knew it, they had completely entered the ruined city. The sand on the streets was almost gone and the facades on the side had retained much of their glory.

"Hey, look!", Fin suddenly shouted and pointed at the inner yard of a building. there stood a structure that completely differed in style and material from the surrounding ruins. it looked a lot more like the architecture he had witnessed in Strata. The sign dangling above the broken door showed a compass rose and just read "Guild".

"It′s a branch office of the adventurer\'s guild!"