The Dark Lord of Crafting

I used up the last of my ingredients replenishing my stock of potions. Might and Swiftness, Leaping, Healing, and Regeneration. My overall level had been dragging since it hit the twenties. Regular crafting and mining didn’t do anything for it anymore. I’d been able to avoid using my experience for enchantments because of the orb I’d gotten from Kevin that absorbed monster essence, but as I wasn’t killing monsters on the regular anymore, it was nearly exhausted.

There was no particular reason for this to matter to me. In Maincraft, being level thirty meant you could create the highest level of Enchanted Books and use them on your equipment, and was planning on seeing what the table would give me once I did hit thirty. Otherwise, I’d just been using looted books.

The sun was rising as I made a final batch of Might potions. They required koloss blood, and I could always get more of that if I killed a troll, but I was also running low on bedlam wart to craft base elixirs with. The brewing stand bubbled away as the reddish-purple potions settled and reached the end of their transition, and I turned the knob to dispense the soupy liquid into a waiting set of glass bottles. It was something I’d done dozens of times. After the initial novelty had worn off, brewing potions had become boring and routine. I didn’t have to do anything other than pour in the ingredients and wait.

It hadn’t seemed practical to try craft potions during the day. The brewing stand might have fit in a wagon, but it also got hot enough to constitute a fire hazard, so for the last two days, I’d gotten up early enough to spend a few hours brewing before the army got moving again. When I unclipped the bottles from the stand, my System notifications went crazy.

I was accustomed to hearing the occasional ding, but this was like a malfunctioning doorbell. They just kept coming. I stuffed the bottles into their assigned compartment in my backpack and slapped my hand to activate the System Screens. The ringing stopped.

Achievement: Crafty (8)

Congratulations! Your alchemize skill has reached level fifteen, unlocking three advanced potion recipes.

Potion of Harming: The opposite of healing. Avoid consumption.

Potion of Invisibility: Upon imbibing this potion, the alchemist will become invisible for ten minutes. During this time, the user is undetectable by sight, including enhanced or aetheric vision. Sounds and scents are not masked, and equipment is unaffected.

Potion of Turtle Master: The user will gain turtle mastery.

Sufficient essence has been accrued for System Initialization. Class assessment complete. Entity status assignment pending.

Equipment is unaffected? Did that mean I had to be naked to be invisible? What a gip. As if it had bothered to give a proper description for that one. The other two were practically useless. Potions of Harming worked fine if you added a splash effect and tossed them. It wasn’t exactly a grenade, but it was the next best thing. I didn’t need the notification telling me not to drink them though.

My eyes drifted down to the bit at the bottom. In what way had my System not already been initilized? My original death had been over a decade ago, and as many complaints as I had about the System, it had been operating the entire time. Entity assignment? The demons called monsters lesser entities, and I was pretty sure I’d seen the word used in System messages before. Yet another thing the goddess wasn’t going to explain to me.

The notification screen flashed, scrolled, and brought up a new message.

Welcome to Eternity.

You have completed the tutorial phase of your Stage 2 assessment. Thank your mentor for their wisdom and guidance, they deserve it. Below is a copy of your assessment, which has been forwarded to the Aetheric Sentinel of your local cluster.

Name: William

Class: Survivor Assigned

Mentor: Calvin

Affiliation: Sector 13 (Earth)

General Proficiency

Skill Utilization: Somewhat irregular. The subject was slow to reach proficiency in the use of his class skills, focusing almost exclusively on Miner. Significant gaps between initialization and unlock for subsequent abilities. Some creative applications were noted.

Resource Management: Moderate. Subject is somewhat cautious in the allocation of available resources, and has consistently utilized simple materials, but has largely failed to pursue advanced formulas and materials.

Combat: Much improved. Adequate performance with traditional weapons. Hindered by substandard training methods. The subject is sometimes reckless but possesses a capacity for forethought and lateral applications that are worth fostering.

Interpersonal Dynamics

Teamwork and Cooperation: Much improved. Subject has spent the majority of his tutorial phase in solitude, and exhibited signs of antisocial tendencies, but has recently begun to show that he is capable of working with others. Further assessment is necessary.

Leadership: While displaying no particular flair for leadership, the subject is comfortable with authority. Capable of diplomacy, though barely. His tendency to address challenges alone has led to an underutilization of subordinates and allies.

Moral Conduct

Alignment with Faction Ideals: Inferior. The subject delayed his initial assignment for over a decade and has repeatedly fallen short of the standards associated with Purifiers in training. Taint accumulation detected.

Decision-Making: Impulsive, but possessed of moderate native intelligence. Highly adaptable and pragmatic, but hindered by a tendency to act without sufficient consideration of risks

.

Environmental Impact: The subject has failed to moderate his aetheric influence. Plana’s veil has weakened throughout this stage, though not to an irreparable degree.

Review

While not an exceptional candidate for advancement, the subject shows potential. The risk of corruption is moderate, but not disqualifying.

This is an automated message, do not reply.

“What?” I said, reading as fast as I could, trying to make sense of what this message implied. My entire experience had been a test. A test for what? In what way did any of this qualify as a tutorial? The assessment itself wasn’t too far off. I hadn’t been an exemplary hero in a lot of ways, and I had been muddling through every challenge I’d been faced with since arriving on Plana. I really was supposed to have had a mentor. There wasn’t any time for me to process this revelation, because it was followed by another one.

Your tutorial phase is complete. Class assignment, Survivor, confirmed. Aetheric Core formation initialized. Core traits identified.

Entity Rank: E

E-rank entities require the support of a patron to retain coherence through iterations. They have limited aetheric sensitivity, and their cores are vulnerable to spiritual manipulation. Full System access granted.

Status

Level: 1

Progress to next level: 0%

Attributes:

Might: E+

Speed: E

Presence: E

Curse of Weakness: While under the effects of this curse, your physical

attributes will gradually decline. With every passing night, Might and Speed will incur a cumulative penalty.

Skills

Harvest: 30

Artisan: 12

Alchemize: 15

Tamer: 7

Inscription: 0

Aetheric Sensitivity: F

A perceptual trait that allows an individual to detect, interpret, and understand the subtle fluctuations of essence in their surroundings. This trait is essential for gauging the presence and intensity of spiritual energy in both living beings and inanimate objects within the environment. Users can sense the presence of essence in their vicinity, allowing them to perceive living beings, enchanted objects, or areas imbued with spiritual energy.

At the lowest rank, sensitivity is low. Only powerful auras will be registered, and perception is limited in both scope and subtlety to general magnitude and alignment.

Elemental Affinity: F (Water)

Neutral Alignment (Patron: Mizu)

Those with a neutral alignment have not been formally claimed by either Harmony or Discord. They receive neither the benefits nor the limitations associated with either pole.

Tainted Purifier

You have faced the forces of Discord, and your core has been marked by Bedlam. Lesser entities aligned with Discord are as likely to submit to you as respond with hostility. Those aligned with Harmony will be naturally suspicious.

I had trouble focusing on what I was reading. I felt drunk and high, and not in a good way. My stomach was churning, and my head was spinning. Turning away from the brewing stand, the shelter I had erected the night before was only a few paces away, but that was too far. The camp was beginning to stir, and I could see Malphas bringing in trolls and shamblers from the monster regiment so they could be leashed to the wagons for the day. I fell flat on my face, tasting dirt. Of all the things that could go wrong from not wearing my helmet, this was not one I had been expecting.

Something was happening inside of me. My blood was made of sparkles, and those sparkles were gathering around my navel. The sensation was so intense that I curled into a ball. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it wasn’t pleasant either. The seconds stretched out, and my awareness dimmed. My eyes were closed, but I knew there were people around me. Esmelda’s

presence felt faint, though incredibly familiar. Gastard was somehow more solid while being less distinct.

I felt a cool hand pressed against my face, and I blinked. Esmelda was crouched over me, worry creasing her brow, and fear bright in her wide gray eyes. The sparkles in my belly swirled in a vortex coalescing on a single hot point, and I felt the world turning around me. Esmelda was speaking, but I couldn’t hear her, it was like she was too far away.

Then it was gone. The dizziness receded, as did the nausea and the heat. The point in my stomach where all that energy had come together felt empty and light.

“I’m okay,” I said. My voice low and groggy like I’d just woken up. Esmelda didn’t look convinced.

“What happened? Is this the curse?”

“No,” I said, “something weirder.”

Gastard stepped in to help me up, but I waved him off. The sick feeling was gone, and my head was clear. He looked me up and down as I rose.

“If not the curse,” he said, “then what?”

His eyes fell on the screen floating above my hand, and I tapped it off. They needed to know about this, but it wasn’t a conversation to have in public.

Malphas had paused fifty paces away, mentally directing the monsters to their positions in the supply train, and he was watching me. I threw him a casual salute and strode into the shelter I’d made for them the previous evening like my world hadn’t just turned upside down.

It was just a stone box with a few bedrolls. Leto was working his way through a hardtack biscuit, chewing with determination. He looked up as I entered, and his eyebrows drew together.

“You’re sweaty,” he said.

“Thanks. Your hair’s a mess,” I said. It was getting long, and it was thoroughly askew. I patted the top of his head and sat on the ground beside his bedroll, resting my back against the granite blocks of the wall. He shrugged.

“Who cares.”

Esmelda entered a moment later, and Leto’s mood dropped as soon as he saw her face. He shifted away from me on his bedroll and brought his legs closer in. Gastard arrived a moment later with Fladnag on his heels. The former hero slept in his wagon instead of in my shelters, but he was never far off.

“Gastard said you collapsed?” He didn’t sit.

“I hit level thirty this morning,” I said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Fladnag’s eyebrows rose. “You hadn’t already?”

“What does that mean?” Leto asked as if I’d told them I’d been hit by another curse.

Fladnag stepped further into the shelter as Gastard took up watch by the door. Malphas hadn’t come any closer, but there was no telling what the demon was thinking after he saw me fall. “It means he has reached the next stage in his advancement. As far as you’ve come, I assumed you did that long ago.”

“I hadn’t,” I said, tapping my screen back on and cycling back through to the assessment. “This life didn’t come with an instruction manual. This thing says I was supposed to have a mentor.”

My eyes fell on the name. It hadn’t registered before. I felt anger rising into my throat, and my jaws clenched.

“Calvin. That’s you, isn’t it.”

Fladnag blinked rapidly, his mouth dropping open. “Oh, no. They assigned me to you?”

“Looks like it,” I said. Could he really not have known? That was one hell of a slip-up for the HR department of the celestial bureaucracy.

Fladnag’s face fell, and he massaged his stump. “I never hear it anymore. Without my hand, I can’t access the screens. I never thought Mizu would try to use me that way. Not since I turned my back on her path.”

“Did you have someone?” I said, “Someone to teach you about being a hero?”

He nodded. “I did. It was Frodo, he never shared his true name, but he arrived before we did. Nadia, David, and I began our journeys at the same time, and he was waiting for us.”

“Must have been nice.”

Fladnag reacted like he had been struck. His eyes widened a fraction, and his hand clamped down on his stump as his face tightened. For a moment, he seemed at a loss for words, and when he did speak, there was heat behind his words. “You sound like a child. Your journey has just begun, and you know nothing of what we faced, or what it cost us. Frodo’s guidance was invaluable, but it did not make things easy. Mizu has made a mistake. Hardly her first.” He paused, forcing himself to relax. “But I failed you, even if I did not know that I failed. I’m sorry you were alone.”

I let his words roll over me. Fladnag’s choices had meant consequences for me, and I still didn’t fully understand why he had made them. Not using his power was one thing, but cutting off his hand? That was a choice I had trouble imagining making. There was nothing we could do about the past, and I had to agree, this was Mizu’s mistake. Could the goddess not see what was happening on Plana? That didn’t seem possible, given that she had intervened on my behalf once already. But that had been in Bedlam, so maybe the rules were different there. It almost seemed like she was shooting blind.

I called up the screen. “It says I’m an entity now. What does that even mean? I felt something happen inside of me, that’s why I collapsed, but I don’t know what it was. I feel normal now. It says I have an aetheric core. What the hell is that?”

A core was something out of cultivation novels, but that didn’t seem setting appropriate. Nothing I had seen suggested that people could meditate and train in martial arts to become superheroes, my System didn’t work like that, or I was going to be pretty annoyed if I was just finding out now that it did.

“Another word for your soul,” Fladnag said. “It isn’t a physical object. All beings have them, and for most mortals, they are indistinct. Forming a core merely means that your soul has become more substantive. The part of you that survives when you die will be more solid, though it is not physical.”

“But am I still human?”

He let his hand drop. “It depends on what you mean. Your body is human,” he glanced at my budding horns, “broadly speaking. And bodies are vessels for the soul. You are the same now as you were before, only more so.”

I closed my eyes. Esmelda, Leto, Gastard, and Fladnag, all of them were still there when I did. He was the most present of all of them. Aetheric sensitivity wasn’t sight, it was more like my awareness was stretching outside of my body, expanding to fill the emptiness, and running up against obstacles, some more substantial than others. My mind kept trying to interpret it in the framework of my existing senses. They had distinct flavors, levels of brightness, and noise. I could hear Malphas approaching, though I wasn’t hearing him. His essence was as potent as Fladnag’s, but sharper, and somehow oily.

I stood up.

“Hail,” Gastard said, greeting the demon well before he arrived at the shelter, warning us that he was coming. Esmelda looked like she had a lot of questions, but she kept them to herself for the moment.

Malphas stopped a pace outside the door. Gastard was in his way, but he spoke through the man as if he wasn’t there. “The wagons are ready to move.” He said.

That was it? No accusations? Since the moment the curse activated, I’d been waiting for the demons to jump me, but none of them had shown any sign of suspicion. “We’re ready,” I said.

The day had just begun, and we could talk more on the road. Nothing the System had told me would change the plan going forward. It said I had full access now, whatever that meant, and my skill list had a new entry. I could guess what Inscription was for. We’d encountered runes that carried magical effects before. The Bedlam portals, and the force field that had kept me away from the loot of the underground base. A survivor had made those, and I could too, if I ever found a manual. Maybe I could try copying the runes back at Williamsburg. It was a project for another time.

The edge of the storm was visible from where we had camped, a curtain of light. In a few hours, the demons would have to begin siphoning their power to maintain a mist that protected the monsters from sunlight. The further we got from the storm, the more vulnerable they would become. Fortunately, the effects of the curse were gradual. Might and Speed had both dropped, but not far. For one more day at least, I was strong enough to do what needed to be done.