Chapter 134- Two Heirs

Chapter 134: Chapter 134- Two Heirs

"Cool down, old man. Sigil will explain everything. I need to take the little girl and the wolf to see Mama Death Guardian. Bye-bye!"

Leo took off in run with the girl and the wolf before Hugh could get another word out.

Hugh turned to Sigil, looking for an explanation instead.

Sigil replied plainly. "Hi. I’m Sigil...and I am undead. I was a dwarven blacksmith while I was alive, and Master gave me another chance to keep forging."

Hugh studied him. "So he turned you into an undead, then?"

Sigil thought it over for a moment before answering. "My memory isn’t complete, but I believe I asked him to. I was dying, for reasons I don’t fully remember."

Hugh nodded, accepting that. "Alright. Get to work, then."

With that, the two of them settled in and began forging together.

...

Outside, Leo crouched down in front of the girl. "Hey — how about we go meet a big sister who has similar powers like yours?" he asked gently, stroking her hair as he spoke.

The girl shook her head firmly.

"Don’t worry. She’ll teach you how to actually use your powers, so you won’t accidentally hurt anyone anymore."

At that, the girl finally gave a small, hesitant nod.

Leo lifted her into his arms and started walking into the tunnels, the wolf trailing along quietly behind them.

Partway through, Leo paused and glanced up at the wolf, which stood a full head taller than him. He hopped up and settled onto its back, urging it forward with a simple command.

Before long, they arrived at the chamber housing the death guardian and the death mana vein.

The girl stayed pressed close in Leo’s arms, one small fist clenched tightly around the hem of his clothes.

The guardian turned as they entered, her eyes locking onto the girl almost instantly. She could sense the undead mana throughout the chamber stirring with something close to joy, as though welcoming the girl’s presence.

She rose to her feet.

Her gaze never left the girl as she spoke directly to Leo. "Bring her closer. Let me get a proper look at her."

Leo nodded, climbed down off the wolf, and carried the girl nearer to the guardian, who leaned in close, studying her intently.

The guardian could feel the death mana vein itself stirring in reaction to the girl’s presence. She stood there stunned for a moment by the sheer intensity of that response. Finally she looked back up at Leo. "Where did you even find her? She was born with supreme-grade affinity for undead mana, and her physique appears to be tied to that same affinity as well. From what I can sense, her undead affinity might actually surpasses even my master’s — the Death Sovereign’s — at her age."

"Leave her with me," the guardian said, excitement creeping into her voice. "I’ll teach her myself, personally, and guide her properly."

The girl only gripped Leo’s clothes tighter, ducking further behind him, refusing to let go. She peeked out a few times, but each time she shook her head firmly, making it clear she had no interest in staying here. Her eyes had already started welling up with tears.

Leo offered the guardian a helpless smile. "I don’t think she wants to stay just yet. You’re welcome to teach her, though — have her visit regularly. I can bring her myself, or send Wolfy to bring her by, every day if you’d like."

The guardian looked visibly reluctant at that compromise. She circled Leo several times, trying repeatedly to coax the girl into staying, but the girl simply kept scooting around Leo’s back to stay out of reach. Before long, guardian and girl were chasing each other in circles around him, and Leo found himself growing dizzy just trying to track the two of them.

Eventually the guardian gave up with a sigh. "Fine. She will become my master’s successor. That much is decided, and final. But if she so much as gets a scratch under your watch, you will answer for it personally. Protect her properly," the guardian warned him sternly.

Leo nodded, matching her seriousness. He genuinely cared about the girl’s safety already; he had no intention of letting any harm come to her regardless.

The guardian produced a necklace and handed it over to Leo, instructing him to make sure the girl wore it at all times.

"What’s her name?" the guardian asked.

Leo shook his head. "I don’t actually know yet. She hasn’t said a single word to me since I found her." He deliberately left out the details of exactly how he’d found her, at the slave market — he didn’t want her hearing that story told so plainly in front of her, and decided he’d explain the full context to the guardian some other time instead.

The guardian handed over something resembling a memory stone, explaining that it would help the girl learn more about the undead path in the meantime.

Leo accepted it and passed the stone along to the girl.

After spending roughly an hour there, the guardian attempted to teach the girl directly, but she never spoke a single word throughout — only tilted her head occasionally and glanced toward Leo, leaving the guardian with no real way to tell how much, if any, of it was actually getting through.

"Fine. Take her away for now," the guardian finally said. "Come back once she’s worked through everything stored in that memory stone."

Leo nodded and headed back with both the wolf and the girl in tow.

Before long, they were back at the forge.

...

With Sigil now working alongside them, the pace of forging roughly doubled.

Being undead, Sigil never grew tired. Hugh had apparently started trying to keep pace with him, matching swing for swing at the anvil, but where Sigil kept hammering away without the slightest hint of fatigue, Hugh was gasping desperately for breath.

Leo watched the two of them work for a while.

Sigil showed absolutely no sign of slowing down, turning out weapon after weapon in steady succession, and the quality of each piece kept climbing as he went. Leo used his forge sight to inspect the growing stack, and confirmed that the pile, from bottom to top, climbed steadily in both rank and quality.

He glanced over at Hugh next, who was drenched in sweat and gasping for air. Eventually Hugh couldn’t take it anymore, setting his hammer down and dropping to sit on the floor. He stared at Sigil and muttered, "Monster."

Still catching his breath, he thought grimly to himself, Damn it. Maybe I should just become undead too. He shook his head and let out a long sigh.

"Hahahaha, old man, looks like Sigil just handed you your own ass on a platter," Leo said with a laugh as he walked further into the forge. "You really can’t compare your stamina to an undead’s. They don’t get tired. And besides, you’re getting up there in years."

"Tch," was all Hugh could manage in response, clicking his tongue in irritation.

The little girl wandered over, tilting her head curiously at Hugh sitting there on the ground. The instant she got close, the heat radiating from the forge seemed to retreat entirely, and Hugh suddenly felt a bone-deep cold settle over him, as though he were about to freeze solid.

He shivered, confused about the sudden temperature drop, and turned to see the little girl standing right beside him.

Hugh looked her over, remembering everything Sigil and Elona had already described about her, and very nearly let out a scream like a startled child — he managed to swallow it down at the last second, though he did scramble backward on instinct.

Leo let out a laugh. "Relax. She’s just a kid."

After that, the three of them — Leo, Sigil, and Hugh — settled in together and continued forging in earnest, starting first with a batch of Rare-rank items.

Hugh and Sigil managed to produce a fair number of pieces between them, though most landed somewhere between Common and, at best, Rare rank.

The wolf curled up nearby, and the little girl eventually drifted off to sleep nestled against its thick fur, while the two cubs finally worked up the courage to climb on top of the wolf and settle in for a nap of their own.

The Eternal Forge stayed lit for a long stretch of time. Its fire burned steadily, the eternal flame glowing bright straight through the night.

...

A full day later, rows of finished equipment sat laid out neatly across the workshop — Rare-grade pieces in one row, Common-grade in another, Uncommon set apart in its own line.

Leo counted through the Rare pieces. "Thirteen finished. Six more should round things out nicely. The Epic-rank pieces are still going to take a while longer, though."

He checked over each Rare piece carefully; every single one turned out genuinely unique in its own way — some carrying undead affinity, others infused with black flame attributes, each distinct from the last.

With that assessment done, Leo turned his attention to the Epic-rank work ahead of him.

...

Meanwhile, within the lightning chamber, another girl was struggling through her own training.

A massive column of lightning churned and crackled in the air around her.

It was Cindy — the one carrying Legendary-grade affinity.

Lightning, as it turned out, was not an element that simply took orders. Cindy had learned that the hard way, on the very first day of her training.

Unlike the little death-affinity girl, Cindy was older although still a child, and the guardian here saw no reason to hold back in her teaching methods because of it.

The lightning guardian stood at the far end of the training space, wreathed in crackling light, and pointed toward the massive column of lightning looming in front of Cindy. "You need to convince it. That’s the only way this works."

Arcs of lightning skittered around the chamber, filling the air with a sharp, electric tang that made Cindy’s teeth ache just from proximity.

She held her palms out, straining to draw out the lightning that had been steadily building inside her own body.

The particular strand of lightning the guardian had her working with was a deep purple — one of the three most powerful lightning types known across the cosmos, a legacy left behind by the Commander himself.

The guardian continued. "If you manage to tame it properly, there’s a real chance your affinity could be upgraded, from Legendary all the way to Mythic."

I really do hope you can tame it, the guardian thought quietly to herself, and take up the mantle as the Commander’s true successor.

Cindy threw everything she had into taming the purple lightning, but nothing seemed to work. The lightning proved far too dominant, far too tyrannical to be reasoned with.

The raw energy contained within that purple lightning was well beyond anything a true beginner could hope to control.

Watching her struggle, the guardian finally called her over. "I can see you’re having trouble. Looks like I’ll need to teach you a proper lightning circulation method first, before we go any further."

She raised a finger and touched it lightly to Cindy’s forehead, and a sudden surge of new information flooded directly into her mind.

[Ding!]

[Epic-Rank Lightning Circulation Method learned.]

...