Published at 7th of February 2023 10:58 am

Chapter 67: The Soul Forge

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"That is why, as of tomorrow morning, I will be closing my doors for a few weeks." Arwell Lychester declared, "I feel it is my duty as a father to spend time with my daughter, as should you all spend time with your families. I will keep my store open for the night, but come morning and you will find the store closed."

Merlin realised what the slimy individual was trying to do. Although he was just one of many stores that provided goods in town, he had the most variety when it came to his stock, and also generally held a monopoly on some of the more obscure items and parts that nobody really thought of until they needed it. He was making an attempt to harvest as much coin as he could while everyone was in a bad state of mind, before running away to safety.

Merlin checked his own inventory, and figured he wasn't really aching for any items at the moment, rather he had a few items laying around he didn't think he would even use anymore, such as the remaining ball bearings and his sling.

Merlin walked passed Lychester while thinking that he would probably have a better chance of killing him as soon as he left the safety of town in the morning, which was in about four or so hours based on the position of the moon.

It was at this moment that he saw a very familiar individual angrily stomping down the street, making his way towards the eastern gate with a handful of followers. It seemed LordKyle was finally released from jail after being locked up for a couple hours.

Merlin waited and watched as the player started being disrespectful towards the guards standing in the eastern gate instead of asking them to move aside nicely, making the already unhappy guards even more annoyed at his behaviour.

Merlin smirked to himself as he made his way towards the soul forge near the business area of town. Much like the one in Lycoa, it had the appearance of a blacksmith's workshop from the outside, although this one fit in more with the town's overall theme.

As he entered the building, it also reflected a similar structure to the other soul force, namely massive obsidian obelisk in the middle of the workshop, as well as a couple other stations for crafting or soul manipulation.

Merlin walked over to an NPCs who was idling away at the counter. "Hello, I'd like to use your soul forge."

"Of course, we've got a couple at the back there, just to your right, feel free to use them at any time." The NPC directed Merlin to a similar looking gold encrusted pedestal that featured a flat plate on top of it. "You can come to me if you need any help!"

Merlin thanked the NPC and walked over to one of the soul forge stations. The soul forge in Lycoa only had a single forge, but this building had four, and cities or larger towns typically had a lot more. As Merlin rest his hand on the tablet, a window appeared before him, showing him the various options of the forge that he could utilise.

There was the option to modify his soul vessel, a feature he had already utilised back in Lycoa, and didn't imagine using for at least a little while longer, especially because he had just acquired his third soul.

Another option of the forge was accessing his soul receptacle, his global soul storage. When you collected souls, that you couldn't absorb, or that you refused to absorb, you could bring it to a soul receptacle to store away. There was also the option to extract a soul from the soul receptacle, but this was most often used for trading or selling souls. One thing to note was that you couldn't trade or sell a soul that you had already absorbed, as they were already attuned to you, similar to bind on equip weapons that you found in other games.

There was also the option to swap your absorbed souls around, allowing you to swap which one was considered the origin soul, or trading souls with your soul receptacle. It was possible to store all your absorbed souls in the soul receptacle, leaving all your slots empty, but it was generally pointless to do so.

Another option, one of the most important ones, was the option to forge souls together. This had a few uses, but the most common one was forging two different souls together to get a new soul. There were a few restrictions for this, with the most important one being that the soul had to be at least level five to be used in upgrades, which depending on the soul, could be a little time consuming to achieve, as each soul had different methods of acquiring experience. When forging two souls together, neither of the parent souls were consumed, rather only a small percentage of the experience bar for each was used in the new soul's creation.

Another use of forging souls together was instead forging two of the same souls together, causing the highest traits of each soul to take over, including the soul's experience and level. Unlike forging two different souls, both parent souls were destroyed in the making of the new soul, and there was no level requirement on either soul.

This was useful for example when you acquired a soul from a level three monster at an early stage in the game, and then had spent weeks levelling it up, only to find a monster soul from a level forty monster of the same type.

The level forty monster's soul would have higher base stats, but would start at level one. You wouldn't want to waste your time levelling the new monster soul up. So instead of grinding the soul out, you could instead merge both souls, grabbing the experience points from the soul you had been using all this time, alongside the stats of the stronger soul, to create a much more powerful soul.

There were a few other options of the soul forge Merlin didn't need to bother with just yet, one of them being the option to forge souls into items. It was a process similar to enchantment in a sense, but depending on the soul provided, and quality of the materials, you could possibly forge active or passive abilities into tools, equipment and weapons, allowing you to utilise the power of souls without having to waste a soul slot.

Merlin picked the option to move around his souls, when the window opened, it showcased that he didn't have any souls stored in his soul receptacle, so he instead focused on the window that showed his absorbed souls.

┌───────────────────

Origin Soul: Fighter

Soul Slots: 3

1: Class Soul: Fighter

2: Class Soul: Thief

3: ★★ Race Soul: Rose Wight

└───────────────────

Merlin chose the rose wight soul and swapped its position with the fighter soul, effectively setting his rose wight soul as his origin. He then backed out of the window, receiving a prompt asking him if he would like to confirm his changes, which he accepted.

When the window closed, Merlin stepped away from the forge and made his way out of the building, waving goodbye to the NPC before he stepped out.

Now back out on the street, Merlin made his way towards the the northern gate. It wasn't as heavily guarded as the eastern gate currently was, and Merlin managed to leave the town without any issues.

He currently had a few hours to spare, so he wanted to try play with the thorn vine skill while making a plan to finally complete his promise. As soon as he left the town guard's sight, he summoned a ball of light and then made his way into the forest. Moving in deeper towards the bandit camp, he kept his eyes open for any enemies that came out at night, namely wolves and goblins in this area.

He soon found a small clearing in the forest, there seemed to be a small abandoned camp directly in the middle, consisting of a couple makeshift tents and a campfire between them. Merlin decided that this would do as a place to camp out for a while, there weren't any goblins around, but if he stuck around there was a chance some would appear. He sat down on a large rock and cast ignite on the campfire, a few embers appeared, which quickly spread to the dry leaves and twigs that were already present in the campfire.

Merlin remembered a couple friends mention that the initial part of learning to control a new limb was envisioning it moving as you wanted, and overtime you would develop the ability to control it instinctively. Merlin generally got the idea when it came to limbs such as tails or wings, but this was something that he could supposedly summon anywhere on his body.

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