Chapter 162: A Weapon to Kill a God

"Usually, it’s a man and a woman who meet under distressing circumstances, which eventually leads to a love story. But for a change, this time, it was two men who met in distress..."

"...and what began that day became a lifelong friendship. When I met your father, I was about to be dragged away by a group of cultists."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t expect the story to start like this."

[You’re worried about that? For a moment, with that pause, I thought this story was going somewhere completely different. He really needs to learn where to put a full stop.]

"What did you expect? Us meeting at some train station? True friendships are forged in the midst of hardship."

Siegfried looked at him. "Now, you wanted to hear about him, right? So listen."

Zac fell silent and became more attentive.

"It was a long time ago. Your father had just graduated from the academy."

"And you were already famous, I presume?"

"Yeah. I was already old enough to know better than to enter dangerous portals."

"So naturally, you entered one."

"Smithing materials don’t grow in marketplaces, boy."

[He has a point.]

"Of course you would say that. Remember when you threw me into a portal with a giant snake when I was just a newly awakened, powerless boy?"

[And look where it got you.]

Unable to deny that, Zac stopped arguing with the system.

Siegfried continued.

"I’d heard about a rare ore appearing inside a particular portal. Nothing legendary, but it had properties I wanted to test, and at the time, that alone was enough to get me interested."

"So you went in personally?"

"Yes."

"But I heard you weren’t much of a fighter."

"I’m not much of a fighter compared to people who spend their lives fighting. But don’t confuse that with me being helpless."

"But no, I didn’t go in alone. I hired a team to accompany me. Experienced people, strong enough to safeguard me from whatever threats the portal had to offer."

"So it shouldn’t have been a problem."

"Yes, it was a smooth run until a group of cultists ambushed us."

("...")

"At first, I thought they were inside for some other reason. Only later did I realize they were there because of me. They waited until we were deep inside the portal, then suddenly attacked."

"What happened to the team you brought?"

"The cultists had come prepared. They knew their abilities and weaknesses. It didn’t take long before every one of them was killed."

"How did they know all that?"

"Information leaks everywhere, kid. If you know where to look, you can always find the information you want."

Siegfried’s expression darkened slightly. "It was an ambush planned from the beginning. Other than me, none of them survived."

"Then why didn’t they kill you?"

"Because they wanted me alive. They planned to enslave me and turn me into their cult’s personal blacksmith."

Zac remained silent for a moment. "And that’s where my father came in?"

"I was getting to that."

"Your father had absolutely no business being there. The portal wasn’t restricted to veterans. It was dangerous but still manageable, and your father had entered with a group of young Variants looking for experience, fresh out of the academy."

"And somehow, we crossed paths while the cultists were trying to imprison me."

[And there it is. Genetic evidence.]

"What?"

[It seems attracting trouble runs in your family.]

Siegfried continued before Zac could respond. "Your father was the one who saved me from them. He has a stubborn streak that bordered on stupidity."

"He knew it would be a difficult battle, and it might even cost him his life. But when he saw them imprisoning me, he didn’t hesitate for a second."

"He went straight in and used everything he had to save me."

For a moment, his gaze seemed distant. "I’ve met countless variants throughout my life. Talented, genius, monsters with extraordinary abilities."

He looked back at Zac. "But your father was different."

"It wasn’t just his power that caught my attention. It was the way he fought. The way he adapted to every battle and the way he learned as the fight continued."

"Even at that young age, I could already see what your father might eventually become."

"Eventually, the cultists realized capturing me wasn’t worth losing everyone they had brought with them, so they fled."

"And my father?"

"He collapsed about thirty seconds later from exhaustion. For a moment, I actually thought he was dead."

"But when he opened his eyes, the first thing he asked was whether I was safe."

Siegfried gave a faint scoff. "It still bugs me to think how someone can be so self-righteously annoying."

"When I asked him why he risked his life to save me, did you know what he said?"

"He said that it was the right thing to do."

Siegfried paused. "And that’s how we met."

"So you became friends after that?"

"Not immediately. I thought he was a self-righteous idiot who would get himself killed sooner or later, and he thought that I was an ungrateful old bastard."

[Both seem accurate.]

"I paid for his treatment afterward, and he complained that he didn’t need it. After that, he started visiting me occasionally. Sometimes because he needed equipment, and sometimes because he had found some strange material and wanted to know what it was."

Siegfried continued.

"Whenever I had rare materials left over from a commission, I would experiment with them. Weapons, armor, mana equipment, artifacts... whatever interested me. And half of them even worked."

Zac raised an eyebrow. "What about the rest?"

"They exploded."

("_")

"And your father was usually my lab rat."

"Willingly?"

"Well..." Siegfried paused. "I may have cornered him using certain methods, but let’s not go into that."

("_")

"He had a passion for discovering new things too, so most of the time, he accepted being part of the experiments voluntarily. Eventually, your father became one of the very few people willing to test almost anything I made."

"Almost?"

"Don’t push it."

"Years passed. Your father became stronger and stronger, reaching heights very few people in human history had ever reached, even threatening to surpass all of them."

His voice softened slightly. "And not long after that, he got married. That was when I met your mother a few times."

"A few years later, you were born, and then your sister."

Siegfried looked at Zac. "I heard you don’t remember much about your life in the capital."

"I don’t. I don’t know what happened or why, but I only have brief glimpses of it."

Siegfried remained quiet for a moment. "I still remember seeing your sister when she was a baby. She was small and loud."

"Well, that part hasn’t changed," Zac thought.

Siegfried’s expression shifted. "And that visit was when things changed."

The faint smile on Siegfried’s face faded.

Zac’s eyes returned to Siegfried, waiting for him to explain the sudden change in his expression.

"When I was a child, the village I lived in was raided by monsters."

Siegfried’s voice grew distant as he recalled the memory.

"Variants came to our aid. By the time everything was over and the monsters had been driven away, the entire village was celebrating them. People spoke about how powerful they were, how extraordinary they were, and how they had come as our saviors."

"But I wasn’t looking at the variants."

Zac listened quietly.

"My attention was entirely on the weapons and artifacts they carried. Especially one young man who wielded a spear."

Siegfried paused. "It was a golden spear with immaculate craftsmanship. Even as a child, I couldn’t take my eyes off it."

"Unfortunately, the spear broke during the battle."

"After everything had settled down, I approached the man and asked if I could see the broken spear up close, and he generously handed it to me."

Siegfried smiled faintly at the memory. "I examined every part of it. The metal, the structure, the craftsmanship... Even broken in half, I found it fascinating."

"The man noticed how enthusiastic I was and how much I appreciated the work that had gone into making it."

"So he gave it to me."

Siegfried looked at Zac. "Who would have thought that young man would eventually become the chairman of the Variant Association?"

"Whaaa...t?"

[Ahaaaa... The connections in this lore.]

Zac raised an eyebrow. "He’s the current chairman of the Association?"

"Yes."

Zac stared at him for a moment before making the connection. "So that’s why you gave him your masterpiece? The spear that supposedly surpassed S-rank?"

"What? How do you know that?"

"What do you mean? It’s all over the internet?"

"Oh, old people like us only use it to watch funny videos."

"Anyway, it was a gift. He was the first person who truly ignited my passion for blacksmithing. Giving him that spear was my way of repaying him for starting that fire in me."

"So the rumors weren’t exaggerated."

Zac’s expression sharpened. "A weapon surpassing S-rank really does exist."

"It does."

Siegfried’s expression became serious again. "But that isn’t why I told you this story."

He leaned back slightly.

"Listen."

"From that day onward, I swore that I would become the greatest blacksmith the world had ever seen. I wanted to reach a level no one else in the field had ever reached."

"And as luck would have it, when I was awakened, I received a blacksmithing profession. And later, I joined Ironforge Academy."

"During my time there, a new portal was discovered. Inside it were the enormous ruins of what had once been a famous ancient city of blacksmiths."

"The city itself had been reduced almost entirely to ruins, but the knowledge buried inside it was something blacksmiths would have fought over."

"Blacksmiths from all over the world rushed there. They wanted to explore it, excavate whatever remained, research its techniques, and find anything that could advance their craft."

"And I was no different. But being only a student. By the time I finally received permission to enter, most of the valuable discoveries had already been excavated by the people who came before me."

"I searched those ruins for weeks and found nothing."

"Until I discovered a journal."

Zac’s attention sharpened.

"It belonged to an ancient blacksmith and had been buried deep inside a tomb."

"The journal was barely intact. Half of its pages were missing, and many of the ones that remained had deteriorated so badly that they were almost unrecognizable."

"Then how did you read it?"

Siegfried frowned.

"Kid, if you keep interrupting me, I’m never going to finish this story properly. Age hasn’t exactly been kind to my memory. Keep breaking my flow, and I might leave out something important."

"Okay, okay. Fine. I won’t interrupt anymore."

"Good."

Siegfried continued.

"The language used in the journal was almost completely unknown to us. But there were still illustrations and diagrams. Forging sequences, material structures, and measurements."

"Over time, portions of it were slowly translated. But still most of the journal was useless without the missing pages."

Siegfried’s expression gradually changed. "But there was one section. One particular entry I have never forgotten."

"It described a metal."

"Not some extraordinary rare ore or an exotic alloy that people would kill each other over because it could make a sharper sword."

"This was something else entirely."

"The journal described it as a material used to forge weapons for beings far beyond anything humanity had ever encountered."

Siegfried paused.

His next words came slowly.

"And at the very end of that section, there was one surviving description of what weapons forged from that material were capable of."

Zac stared at him, and Siegfried met his eyes in a dramatic fashion.

"A weapon powerful enough...

...to kill a god."