"You have Osdium??" Kalem's voice echoed through the camp smithy, half-disbelief, half-awe, as he held up a gleaming, irregular slab of dark silver metal—so heavy he needed both hands to lift it, even with his enhanced strength.
The officer who had delivered it raised a brow. "You asked for the densest material available; this was there."
Kalem's fingers ran over the metal's surface. Smooth, almost glass-like, and yet radiating a kind of oppressive weight—as if it wanted to sink through the world itself.
He nodded slowly. "I was expecting some alloy or a refined core—not this. This is the stuff of legends. Do you even realize how rare Osdium is?"
The officer shrugged. "Logistics didn't question it. Someone in the central stockpile must've greenlit it. I was just told to deliver and sign."
Kalem watched the man walk away, then glanced down at the slab again.
"Looks like I'm lucky." His voice was quiet now—more to himself than anyone else.
He made his way to the forge, still warm from the last shift. The anvil glimmered with residue sparks. There were no master smiths here, no assistants, no apprentices. Just soldiers using what they had to fix or repurpose weapons.
But Kalem didn't need help. Not for this.
He tied back his hair, rolled up the sleeves of his worn shirt, and began to prepare the furnace. The heat from the bellows quickly reached the required levels—but Osdium was not like ordinary metals. It refused to heat evenly, resisting transformation, as if challenging its wielder to prove their worth.
Kalem didn't flinch.
"Let's begin."
He lowered the slab into the flames, adjusting the temperature again and again. It would take hours, possibly more. And so, as he waited, he began preparing the enchantment lattices—not drawing them on paper, but etching mental patterns, refining ideas he had been building piece by piece in the field.
Every weapon he had made so far had a specific function—each a piece of his growing arsenal. The fire sword for sweeping lines and crowd control. The whip for fast, flexible strikes. The crimson spear for precision and chain reactions. The resonance blade for disrupting spells and reinforcing formations.
But this one… this one was different.
This wasn't a weapon for technique.
It was a weapon for devastation.
Kalem started forming the base shape—pounding smaller Osdium shards together with rhythmic, precise strikes. Sparks burst with every blow, the hammer ringing like a deep war drum. Each hit sent vibrations through the anvil, through the smithy walls, through Kalem's bones.
Others in the camp peeked in, watching curiously, but didn't dare interrupt. Some recognized the intensity, others simply respected the silence that formed around a man working with purpose.
And the weight.
The weight was something else entirely.
Kalem shifted slightly as he lifted the forming mass with a clamp. He'd worked with heavy materials before—Dusksteel, Blackstone, Abyssal cores—but Osdium was in another league. Every lift was a strain on muscle and spirit. It absorbed heat like a void and retained pressure like a star on the verge of collapse.
Still, Kalem moved without hesitation.
This wasn't about ease. This wasn't about elegance.
This was about force. Sheer, unrelenting force.
He glanced at one of his design sketches, rolled up and pinned on a nearby wall—though half-covered and abstract, it showed something that resembled layered arcs and dual-density angles. A silhouette that hinted at a long haft, weight-distributing plates, and a devastating edge.
But nothing written confirmed the shape.
No one asked.
Because when Kalem worked, it was like watching a ritual—not of worship, but of willpower.
He began inlaying the first enchantments—small elemental nodes formed from cracked Howlcarver blades and powdered Dreadcore fragments. Not to empower the weapon per se, but to reinforce it. Osdium, for all its density, was strangely receptive to spectral vibrations.
Kalem used that.
Lines of silver and crimson spiraled along the haft-to-be, forming a channeling pattern. Not for projecting energy—but for condensing it. Storing it. Letting the weapon carry not just weight—but intent.
He paused only once, wiping sweat from his brow. Onyx stood outside the smithy, watching through the opening, occasionally snorting as if impatient. Kalem gave him a nod.
"Just a bit more."
Night began to fall over the camp. Soldiers were returning from the front, dirty, tired, bandaged. Some still stared at the forge on their way to the mess hall. They whispered.
"That the pseudo?"
"What's he making?"
"That metal's Osdium, isn't it?"
"What kind of weapon needs that kind of mass?"
Kalem heard none of it.
He quenched the shape slowly—not in water, but in an alchemical solution he had refined from abyssal ichor. The hissing steam filled the room with the scent of sulfur and iron. The glow of enchantment lines faded slightly, then pulsed again—more deeply, more fully.
The weapon wasn't done. Not yet.
But its skeleton was forged.
Kalem set it carefully on the rack, then leaned back against the wall of the smithy. His arms ached. His body trembled with exhaustion. But his eyes—his eyes stayed locked on the weapon.
He couldn't test it here. It would be dangerous. Even a swing might break the support beams of the smithy.
No. This would be tested out there. In the field. Against the worst the abyss could throw.
Only then would he know if it was truly what he needed.
He didn't speak aloud, but in his thoughts, the words were clear:
This isn't just to kill monsters. This is to make them fear me.
Even the big ones. Especially the big ones.
He looked to Onyx again.
"Tomorrow," Kalem whispered, "we test it."
And the forge fell quiet once more.