Reincarnated as an SSS-Ranked Blacksmith Who Refuses to Forge Weapons-Chapter 227. Ideas are Harder To Kill

Five pantheons were watching the same sunset from different angles in places that were between divine ideas.

The God of Death leaned forward, resting its chin on one pale hand. It looked closely at the group of small figures on the island's western cliff, as if it had been waiting a long time for something to happen.

It said, "Interesting."

The Goddess of Madness laughed, and the sound spread out in waves that broke up the light around her. "I want to break him, and I want to see what he does with the pieces."

The God of Plague looked at the island from a distance, carefully figuring out its vectors and weaknesses with the calmness of something that had never had to hurry. "He'd be a great vessel for despair if you framed it right."

The Twins of Entropy spoke in a way that was always the same, with each word landing half a beat behind the other.

This made it sound like an echo of itself. "Or a very important lesson about what happens when people forget their place in the grand scheme of things."

They looked.

They made plans.

They got ready.

The blacksmith on the island, who had a prosthetic arm and was running at five percent, turned away from the sunset and walked back to the workshop because there was a new order waiting for him: a set of plates for the dining hall.

He had promised Thomas that they would stay warm.

The interior exuded a pleasant glow and a distinct scent of metal and salt, while Thomas, just next door, was in the process of preparing a delectable dish using herbs.

Dara was still at the bench, working on the same thing she had been for three days. She looked up when he came in.

"How do you know when it's done?" she asked. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Greg looked at the work she was doing. He pondered the question as he did all his questions: slowly and with full focus.

"When it does what you want it to do," he said. "Not what you think it should do, and not what anyone else thinks it should do."

"It's what you really, truly made it to do."

He tied his apron and picked up his hammer. The workshop was full of noise as he worked, and outside, the island called Home kept changing into what it would be, one day at a time.

Three years had a way of changing things without you noticing them happening one at a time.

Greg noticed it most in the mornings, when the sounds of Home waking up layered over each other in a way that had become ordinary: the kitchen fire crackling to life and the distant rhythm of Marina running her students through footwork drills on the eastern slope.

Seraphine's voice carried from the school building, where she had been teaching for the past year and a half with the focused intensity of someone who had been waiting her whole life to be allowed to share what she knew.

There were now 156 people living on this island, and on quiet mornings you could feel them all without seeing any of them.

The second year saw the completion of the fourth building. The third had a real school with real windows, and the fifth had a real school.

Thomas had taken over a corner of the kitchen building to create a bakery that no one had requested, but everyone quickly agreed it was necessary. Dorin had a favorite bench by the water where younger reincarnators would come to see him in the afternoons.

Sometimes they would ask him questions, and other times they would just sit with him. He seemed to enjoy both equally.

The air changed on a normal Tuesday morning.

Greg felt a pressure against the air that had nothing to do with the weather while in the workshop with two students. He put down his hammer and slowly straightened up.

He could see that the ocean was completely still through the open door of the workshop.

Dara stopped working and looked up. Wen was already facing the door.

Greg told them to "stay here" and then went outside.

They were on the beach.

They were all standing at different points on the beach, which was clearly planned. The God of Death was the easiest to spot right away.

He was tall, thin, and dressed in something that wasn't quite black but was the color that black wanted to be. By the time Greg got to the path down to the beach, the Goddess of Madness had already changed into three different forms, going from a little girl to an old woman and something in between with disturbing ease.

The God of Plague looked like a doctor, with a leather bag at his side that couldn't possibly hold anything good. The Twins of Entropy were kids who looked exactly alike and were eerily calm.

They stood with their hands at their sides, like students waiting for class to start.

None of them were fighting. The fact that they were waiting felt somehow worse.

There were footsteps behind Greg. He didn't turn around, but he could hear the Brotherhood gathering behind him.

Then he heard Marina's voice, low and tight: "Greg."

"I know," he said.

"We ought to—"

"No." He kept going. "Stay back."

"That's four gods."

He stopped at the edge of the beach and looked at them through the sand. "I know what it is."

The light from the morning sun was doing something strange to the water. "You can't really fight gods. You can only diminish their importance."

He heard Marina make a sound that was half protest and half something more like faith. Then her footsteps stopped.

Greg walked alone down to the shore, with Bork's clasp on his cloak and Mira's headband on his wrist. The fabric had faded softly from being in the sun and salty air for three years.

He stopped twenty feet away from the closest one and looked across at the God of Death. He appeared to be the leader, or at least the one most likely to initiate the conversation.

The God of Death named Morteus said, "Greg Greyson," and the sound of his voice made Greg think of soil being turned. "You've made one hundred and fifty-six problems for me..."

"Reincarnators whose cycles have been broken. Systems that should have turned over but didn't."

"You've messed up the natural order."

Greg kept looking at him. "You're right," he said.

Greg thought it was fascinating that the god seemed surprised by that. "Then you know why—"

"I'm not going to fight you." Greg said, "I'm not going to beg or negotiate."

"I'm going to show you why this is already over."

He turned around and pointed to Home behind him. The buildings were visible on the slope, the smoke rising from Thomas's kitchen, and the students at the edge of the training ground who had stopped moving and were watching in silence.