The Dark Lord of Crafting

On the way to the mountains, I stopped by my original shelter. It had been taken over by fungus. The outside didn’t look too bad, though there were mushroom sprouts around and over the building. I harvested them all quickly and took a look at what was inside. The momma mushroom was taller than me, deep purple, and surrounded by a fog of spores. I did not doubt that this was the same kind of invasive species that had killed Esmelda’s mother. Rather than go inside and hold my breath to deal with it, I set the whole structure on fire.

Before leaving base, I’d broken down the coffin casing so I would have a ready supply of stone on the road and converted a stack of logs into charcoal using the furnace. Rather than waste the coal, however, I surrounded the building with grass and lit the tinder with flint, which I’d found during a recent dig. It was far more convenient than starting a friction fire. The flames sprang up almost immediately and spread to the logs a moment later. It hadn’t rained in a while, but even so, the fire grew so quickly that I had to wonder if crafted building materials were also extra flammable.

While I was waiting for it to burn down, I visited my point of origin. There was nothing special about it, and aside from the obsidian block in the ground, no sign that anyone else had ever been there. I had to waste a good bit of time looking for it, as the obsidian barely stood out from the earth, and there was high grass all around.

“You are not alone,” I read aloud. “Prove it.”

Beside the obsidian, I dropped three stone blocks in a short column and spent the next twenty minutes scraping a message into the top.

“Who dis?”

Not that I expected an answer, but it would make the spot easier to relocate if I ever needed to in the future. The super mushroom withered in the heat, though it was too wet to catch fire itself. Once the roof was gone, however, sunlight finished the job. It didn’t turn to ash like the monsters had, but it shrank and slumped and lost its color in the space of a few minutes. They needed darkness to survive.

But the mushrooms weren’t the most disturbing thing about the condition of my original base. The graves had been dug up. There was nothing left of the zombies that had died there but mycelium and bones. More importantly, my bodies were gone as well. It made me wonder if Bill had come back here for an extra dose of my skin, but there was nothing I could do about that now.

With nothing to burden me but a pack full of coins, I estimated I could cover something like thirty miles in a day. I wouldn’t have been able to do that in my previous life, but the System had made me faster and given me crazy stamina as a reward for not dying so much. I wasn’t at superhuman levels, but there was no telling what the next upgrade might do for me when I got there.

The mountains grew and grew, a long jagged line along the horizon, and there was still an hour or so left in the evening when I arrived at the base. I’d followed the stream, which grew as the land rose and I approached its source, a small pond and a waterfall at the base of a cliff. Trees hung their crowns over the water, healthy and green, and the spot looked so idyllic that I would have considered moving my main base there if the location wasn’t so out of the way.

I slapped the iron pick into my palm and got to work cutting out a section of rock to the right of the waterfall.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

[New Material Discovered: Slate]

A fine-grained stone, ideal for roofing and flooring. Slate is less durable than granite, but lovely to look at. So many colors!

The note about colors seemed odd, given that all the material I collected was the same mix of black and gray, but it was a nice-looking stone. I dug myself out a cubby to sleep in and noted that my pick was already showing some signs of wear. It looked like it had a lot of use left in it, but until I got more iron, it was irreplaceable, so I decided to make myself some more disposable stone tools to use instead. Using iron tools made mining faster, but I didn’t want to lose it yet in case I found a mineral vein.

After setting up a worktable, churning out a few more tools and a grass mat to sleep on, I took a dip in the pond. Instant regret. It had been a warm day, but the water was not. Still, I felt more comfortable after scrubbing off the sweat and dust of the hike before tucking myself in for the night.

A troll spawned. I might not have noticed, except that it spent half the night banging its fists against the wall of granite that I’d used to block off my sleeping chamber. It knocked off plenty of dust, but was unable to break through.

The next couple of days blurred together in a mining montage, during which, I discovered not a lick of harvestable metal. I might have had more success if I was exploring a natural cave instead of digging my way into the side of a cliff, but at least I got what I came for, a bagful of stone medallions. As an added benefit, I learned something new about the System.

Maincraft caves are full of mobs. They can spawn in any available darkness within one chunk of the player, and that includes areas you haven’t explored yet. As my tunnel lengthened and branched, I kept torches burning, but I still expected to hear shamblers popping up in the areas I left behind. They didn’t, and to test my developing theory, I deliberately built a few cells and left them dark while I worked to see if anything would spawn inside.

They didn’t. Monsters only spawned at night, regardless of light levels. I already could have assumed that to be the case, because the cells in my shelters had always remained empty during the day. However, I’d expected caves to be different. In the game, monsters were so ubiquitous underground that it was hard to imagine moving through an unlit space and not having to deal with them.

I’d told Esmelda I wouldn’t be gone too long, and I did want to check back in with the town and see if there was any news on the Lord Godwod front. Her worry about Kevin having eyes on the mountain seemed to be unfounded. At least, I hadn’t noticed anyone watching me. In any case, I remained in a small area at the base of the mountain and spent most of every day inside my tunnel, so there would have had to have been scouts everywhere for one of them to come across me by chance.

The hike back to base didn’t seem to take as long as it had on the way out, and there were no signs of new fungal growth around my burnt-out shelter. All that was left was blackened logs, and a bone-white, desiccated stalk. Just to be sure, I harvested the remains of the fungus.

[New Material Discovered: Bedlam Wart]

This eerie, nocturnal growth is as mysterious as it is dangerous. A thriving colony is a sure sign of an area where the veil between worlds is thinning. Ingesting its meaty cap or breathing its spores carries the risk of contracting Bedlam taint.

A key component in the crafting of Base Elixirs.

Elixirs? There was a whole branch of crafting mechanics built around alchemy in Maincraft. But you needed a brewing stand to make anything, and one of the components for that could only be found in the Nether. Villages usually came equipped with a stand, among other workstations, but I had a feeling Erihseht would not follow that pattern. Still, I could always ask if they knew anything about alchemy. Adding potions to my tech tree would be a massive leap forward. At least now I knew that it was an option.

When I returned to my camp by Whiskeywend, a boy was there waiting for me. He was a teenager, and he reminded me of some of the kids I had worked with at Subway. His hair was sandy brown and fell almost to his shoulders, though it was squashed beneath a studded leather cap. His lean frame was evident beneath a muted green tunic, and a satchel was slung across his shoulder. The kid’s horse was drinking from the river, and there was a pennant flying from a pole attached to its saddle. The sign on the flag was an eagle over a rampart.

The young man jumped up as I approached. A knife hung from his belt, but it looked more like something you would eat with than use to kill someone.

“Hallo,” he called, “are you Will?”

It took me a second to process it. He was speaking Sprache, and I realized what I’d learned from Lichtweg was a more archaic form of the language. But it was close enough.

“That’s me,” I replied. “What can I do for you?”

He stood very straight. “My name is Emil, I am a messenger sent on behalf of the Margrave. He requests your presence in Henterfell.”

Margrave was a rank, though I couldn’t remember where exactly it fell on the sliding scale of nobility. I stopped about ten paces from the kid. “I’m not under arrest?”

“Arrest?” Emil looked baffled. “No, sir. I was told you were a master smith, and I was to bring you to the keep. The Margrave intends to offer you a commission. It is a tremendous honor.”

“Oh,” I said. Lord Godwod must have seen the sword I gave Otto. But how had he known I was the one who made it? Regardless, it was better than being accused of sorcery. It could still be a trap, but why bother, when he could have sent another team of men to capture me if he wanted to?

I looked at the sun. “I can’t go with you now,” I said. “But I can meet you at the church in Erihseht first thing after sunrise.”

He hesitated, looking dubiously at the shelter squatting in a hole in the ground. “I can stay here,” he said, “I don’t mind camping, and we can leave at first light.”

“Look,” I said, “if you don’t go back to town now, you’re not going to live through the night.”

He met my eyes, and gulped, taking it as a threat rather than a warning. The kid was probably used to getting rough orders from nobles, if not from smiths. He saluted, mounted his horse, and rode off at a quick clip.

There were still going to be problems, especially if the messenger insisted on staying with me all the way to Henterfell, but this had worked out a lot better than I expected. Apparently, a chance at Dargothian Steel was worth brushing a few accusations under the rug. As soon as I got to Erihseht, I could ask Esmelda and Gastard what they thought about the situation. Was this invitation an opportunity or a death sentence? And who was feeding information about me to the lord? Whatever the answers, it looked like I was bound for the city.