The new day actually greeted Seth with…rain? And not the nice kind of rain. Big heavy drops kept incessantly hammering on the roof and against the windows. When he opened the window, the rush was so heavy that it all mixed together to sound like a single overwhelming roaring.

It was so intense that he could feel it resonate in his chest. The he hurriedly closed the window.

“Well, looks like i will stay at home today.”, Seth talked to himself.

Originally, he was going to clean the neighborhood. Seth had wanted to scavenge for more food, while he could still expect it to be edible and clean up any undead, he might encounter.

Once he was able to make a good weapon and armor Seth wanted to go out and farm zombies. it was one of the things he never understood when watching movies or reading books around a zombie apocalypse. Zombies could not grow their number; they did not procreate. So why did people keep running away and hiding out in secure locations instead of cleaning them up and be safe for sure?

Anyways, since he could not leave, he would concentrate on improving his skills. Seth freed up a place in the massive living room and summoned the Spirit Furnace and the Water Barrel.

It was only a 45% success rate, but successfully melting down a rebar into the furnace fetched him a sizable ingot of medium steel and a big chunk of 10% proficiency on lv.7!

The stack of rebars he had collected the other day should have been more than enough to level <Smelting> to the next stage!

Seth wanted to see what new options he could get when <Smelting> reached the next stage, and then he could make a good weapon to farm mobs and raise his class level.

And that was pretty much what the following days looked for Seth. The rain never stopped, so he spent his days inside, ate, slept and kept making iron ingots. In these days he felt a strangely familiar connection between himself and the Spirit Flame in the furnace.

He remembered snippets of the night when he fought the zombies. Seth had felt this connection back then when he manipulated the furnace and fled through the firestorm that day.

It actually helped to make the furnace control a lot smoother! Until now this only happened when he leveled up the skill itself. Like this he actually had a higher success rate than the system stated!

It helped a lot in the beginning, when the success rate was still low. It saved him material and brought bonus experience, since he only got less than half the exp for a failed attempt.

But later on, it did not really lower the number of ingots he had to make by much, since the proficiency he got more than halved with every lvlup of the skill!

The ingots kept piling up on the floor beside the furnace. When he reached level nine on the third day, he became unsure whether the stack of rebars was actually enough!

However, Seth kept going! He still had the mediocre iron ingots and the jewelry! And then he would just start melting down any metal he could find in the apartments and the house. He would definitely get to the next stage!

It was not just the smelting skill that was growing. The longer he sat in front of the furnace and the deeper he stared into the flames while fiddling with the controls, the clearer he felt this connection to the fire.

<Ding! Passive Skill: Fire Affinity lv.5 has become lv.6!>

The notification pulled him out of his trance-like state and made him fail the attempt!

Frustrated he caught the molten metal in a mold and threw them into the water barrel.

In the evening of the third day his worries came true, the rebars were not enough to overcome this last level and reach ten! He was lv.9 and close to 40% when his last attempt failed.

Did he give up? No!

Did he take a break? Yes!

Seth had a doctrine, if you are frustrated you should eat! He totally didn’t just come up with that or something. He vanished into the kitchen and cooked up a simple but scrumptious meal.

“Just you wait…”, he thought and what followed was the replay of what had happened at the start of his journey. Seth scoured the whole house for any and all metals and materials and collected them in large heaps, in one of the other apartments in the house.

He obviously didn’t want to fill his living space with all this stuff. Overall, it was the same stuff he had found at his home, just larger quantities. Unfortunately, there were no residents who hoarded large quantities of metal in their homes.

Seth really hoped this was enough, the rain outside had grown stronger in the recent days, and he really didn’t feel like going out there at this time. If this kept going Seth would have to worry about the first floor being flooded!

Anyways, Seth got onto turning the miscellaneous scrap he had collected into neat little metal ingots he could stack like gold bars!

It could have guessed it. Despite getting an upgrade and being able to make <Medium-quality Iron>, or medium iron for short, from the stuff he had collected, he could barely register the proficiency bar moving after making one. The only silver lining was that there was almost no chance of failure at this point, and he could produce these a lot faster than the steel ingots.

End of day 3, his <Smelting> stagnated somewhere around lv.9 (70%), when he couldn’t keep going and went back up to his home to sleep.

Thunder so loud that it made the windows rattle audibly woke Seth up from his well-deserved sleep in the middle of the night.

The heavy rain outside had not become any weaker over time. No! It actually turned into a thunderstorm now!

Seth tumbled to the window to look outside.

“Fuck!”, he cursed when he saw outside. The streets of Deltan were really flooded by water! The rain was an almost impenetrable curtain that kept hitting the earth and made everything look like a blur.

Why did this stuff keep happening?! This was almost a desert when he came, where did monsoon rains suddenly come from!? Why couldn’t the apocalypse pause for a moment and give him ONE week of peace?! Was that too much to ask?

As he looked at the lakes worth of water falling from the sky Seth got the hunch, that he might have to leave this place soon.

Throwing several rude gestures with his middle finger at the weather, god and the world in general, Seth turned towards what was important now. Breakfast! Followed by grinding!

Since he did not know when the power grid would break down Seth had early on started eating the perishables in the fridge. With the breakfast most of them gone now, this was one worry less, if he had to leave.

The rain kept going strong, when Seth left the suite to keep smelting the metals. Today was the day!<Smelting> would definitely reach lv.10 and rank up!

He was actually surprised when he entered the room 2 floors below his suite, where he used to smelt yesterday. When his gaze fell on the heaps of ingots he had left in the room it was the first time he realized how much material he had actually smelted.

The piles of raw materials had visibly shrunk since he started, but there was still a lot. This gave him hope. Seth summoned the furnace and started his work.

Within an hour he had churned out several tens of medium iron ingots, and reach 80%.

Reaching 90% he actually ran out of raw materials, so he started re-smelting the <Mediocre Iron Ingots> reaching 97%.

He was so close! Next, he pulled out his booty! It was a sack full of precious metals he had ransacked from several building and also some jewelry shops. Seth had planned to try and sell these in Starta. Maybe modern workmanship could have fetched a good price?

It couldn’t be helped.

Seth started to turn the jewelry into small ingots of silver and gold, starting with those without gems. What he didn’t expect, was that these precious metal ingots gave him a good amount of proficiency, despite having a high success rate from the start!

Finally! After turning half of his treasure into ingots-

<Ding! Skill: Smelting(Beginner) lv.9 has become lv.10!>

<Ding! Skill: Smelting(Beginner) lv.10 has become Smelting(Adept) lv.1!>

<Ding! Congratulation! You have met the prerequisite to evolve one of your skills! Would you like to evolve Smelting(Adept) lv.1 into Fire Manipulation lv.1? Y/N >

Seth´s jaw dropped to the ground. he had worked so hard to rank up <Smelting> and now he could even evolve it? He thought for a mome-

He clicked yes instinctively and immediately felt the small bond he had been feeling lately become a sturdy bridge.

<Ding! Ability: Fire Manipulation lv.1 acquired, thanks to the synergy of Smelting(Adept), Spirit Blacksmith and Fire Affinity >

<Ding! Congratulation! You are the first person in your zone to obtain an ability! You are granted 5 Free Skill points!>

Not only did he get a cool sounding skill, but to top it off even an achievement reward! After calming down he looked for the skill in his skill window. It had replaced <Smelting>.

<Fire Manipulation lv.1

Status:Contracted

Contracted Fires: Soul Fire

The User can manipulate existing flames.

The User can create and manipulate flames using mental strength.

The User can enter a contract with specific flames to increase effectiveness. >