The Dark Lord of Crafting

Salenus was big, way bigger than seemed necessary to contain the monster core. Elemental core? The giant wasn't a demon. They had all come in a standard shape and size so far, humanoid with animal features. Since the colossus was made of rock, thinking of it as an elemental made sense. It was also the first mob, if it counted as a mob, that I'd come across with a physical core. So that was another distinction.

"This seems like a…monumental task," I said, pausing to see if anyone would comment on the pun.

They didn't. Esmelda and Leto were back with me, and Gastard, somehow, had made a friend. He was going over the finer points of swordsmanship with an Atlan warrior. The man didn't speak more than a few words of English, and Gastard didn't know any of their language, but the pair seemed to get along like old chums. They'd fought side-by-side, so maybe it was a soldier thing.

"Do you think you could contain it in something smaller?" Esmelda said. She was gripping Leto's hand like she thought he might run away, and he halfheartedly attempted to tug it free. A part of me resented Gastard for usurping my opportunity for a dramatic fatherly hug after Leto's curse was gone, but it would have felt weird doing it now. I really needed to work on my relationship with my son. Maybe we could play catch or something.

"I don't know," I said. Putting the core in a coffin would have been my preference, but it probably didn't work that way. "Whoever made this originally must have gone big for a reason."

The orb was at my feet, and Torgudai was nearby, monitoring the growth of stone scales along its surface. His long white braids were hanging around his face, and he pulled his fur cloak around himself as if it was the middle of winter instead of a comfortably cool fall day. He looked exhausted.

"The secrets of Salenus are lost to the ages," his voice was still hoarse, barely above a whisper, "even if you can repair it, the magic already is lost."

"I haven't seen any runes," I said. “It might have to do with the stone they used. This looks like Warpstone.” My memory suggested that the System’s description of the material had been utterly useless, but I knew what Kevin had used it for, so I checked the materials log again to be sure.

[Warpstone]

Rare to nonexistent in most realms, Warpstone is a type of rock found in some of the more solid regions of Bedlam. It is unusual in that it has a minor dampening effect on the powers of Discord. The influence of a single block is unnoticeable, but in large quantities, it can be useful for constructing long-lasting structures in unstable realms. If you plan on establishing a foothold in Bedlam, the attempt will most likely end in an undignified death, but enough Warpstone will at least give you a durable platform to return to on your next ill-advised adventure.

Warpstone diminishes, though it does not completely nullify, the likelihood of entities traversing the veil.

[Bedlamite]

The soil of Bedlam, this rock is porous and brittle and serves as the primary component in most of the islands in that accursed realm. Generated by Pebbleheart giants, fresh Bedlamite is a sure sign that one may be in the area, as they leave a trail behind them like a snail leaves slime. If you see a mountain moving around, get out of its way. Pebblehearts are usually neutral when encountered in the wild, and not to be trifled with.

Pebbleheart seemed like an overly friendly name for the titanic elemental that had been chewing up people like doggy treats minutes before, especially when the other mobs had proper names like Koroshai and Kilohoro, but okay. The Warpstone entry had changed. Did having my System “unlocked” mean it was finally going to start giving me more helpful information? Jeez, now I was going to have to go back and reread everything.

I turned to Torgudai, pointing at the core.

"Can you keep this thing pacified while I work?"

The orkhan closed his eyes as if calculating what it would cost him to do so. His back straightened, and he nodded.

My first step was to collect most or all of the Warpstone that had scattered around the area during the Pebbleheart's breakout. There was a lot. Some were in large chunks, but many blocks had broken off individually, and others had sheared into fragments. While I worked, Torgudai sat cross-legged with the core in his lap and his gem resting atop it. The shaman muttered a chant that resulted in a pool of light just large enough to contain the core. While his magic didn't completely prevent the sphere from generating matter, he was significantly hampering its growth.

Putting humpty-dumpty back together again required some inventory management. My storage ring only came with nine slots, and most of those were taken up by items I liked to keep handy. Shadowbane torches, tools, weapons, and the orb that absorbed the essence of monsters I killed for enchanting purposes. Bedlamite had already taken up the space normally reserved for my pick, and I'd dropped the extra coins after that stack filled out.

I made room by taking out my tools and converting them into medallions to be stored in one of my many pouches, then set about harvesting stone. A zombie appeared, and the Atlans had it down before Astaroth could bring it under control. They could kill as many as they liked. My last demon didn't have the right spell set to keep monsters alive during the day, and I didn't need to collect them anymore anyway. There were over thirty Eternal Torches in my inventory, each one imbued with a Shadowbane effect.

Popping them out in a pile at my feet, I called Batu.

"The monsters hate these," I said, "pass them out."

The young Orkhan had gone to check on Erdene as soon as the battle finished. It looked like she was alive, but barely. The ox had hit her hard.

When Batu came to collect the torches, I gave him a healing potion for her as well. He eyed it dubiously.

"Man," I said, "do you really think I'm going to poison you at this point?"

He shrugged. "You are devious."

"Well, thanks, I'll take that as a compliment. But give it to her, okay? I figured you guys were friends. Would you rather see her die than take my help?"

His jaw hardened, but he accepted the potion. And after he saw that it worked, I handed out my entire supply. There were more wounded Atlans than I could help, but I wanted them to see me as an ally, and saving as many lives as I could was a good start.

Just gathering all the materials took most of an hour, even with the harpies helping me spot loose stones. The Atlans appeared not to be bothered by the presence of large talking birds and largely ignored them, but they weren't fond of Astaroth.

My demon had his hood up and was trying to be as innocuous as possible standing with Esmelda, but they knew exactly what he was. I looked up at a shout from one of the Atlans. The man had drawn his sword and was taking it upon himself to do something about the servant of Discord in their midst.

He ran forward, and Gastard got in his way, disarming him with a swift, practiced maneuver. For a second, I thought his attitude toward Astaroth might have changed, but then I realized he had probably taken the charge as a threat to Esmelda. The man snarled at Gastard but backed off at a word from Torgudai.

"Leave it," the shaman commanded, still hunched over the Pebbleheart core. "We are in a truce."

At my best guess, it might have been around two in the morning. With the torches handed around and Astaroth on monitor duty, there shouldn't have been any major threat from the spawns. The harpies never tired of eating phantoms, and zombies were dispatched as soon as they appeared.

We'd had a troll with us on the last leg of our march to the monument, and I had no idea what had happened to it.

Astaroth had kept the monster docile, but maybe it had gotten squished during the Pebbleheart's first steps. With an inventory full of Warpstone, I stepped up to the monument and considered my options. It wasn't as bad as it had appeared at first glance.

The front face of the monument had split down the middle, but the rest was intact. Though there were some broken edges, most of the blocks had popped out intact along the lines of their connected planes, as if someone had kicked through a wall of Legos. The real issue was reaching the higher sections, as the split extended up around two hundred feet.

I had wood in my pack, but not that much wood. Fortunately, planks would attach to the face of the structure, so I didn't have to construct a full-on scaffold. Esmelda stepped close to me as I stood there trying to visualize what the minimum viable platform would be.

"Are you going to ask for their help?" She said.

"With this? No, they would just get in the way."

She smiled, thinking I was joking, though I was just hyper-focused on the task at hand. "Erdene might come back with us. If not her, then there are other shamans. We may finally have another weapon to use against the demons."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "They'll be a lot more inclined to work with us if I can get this fixed, though. Otherwise, that core is going to be a continual problem."

"You can repair it," she said. "This is the work of someone like you."

I nodded, appreciating the pep talk. The fact was, simply putting the pieces back together might not be enough. My class came with a rune-related skill that I knew nothing about. Any special sauce a previous Survivor might have put into the monolith was beyond my reach. Still, there was nothing to do but try.

Walking over to the worktable, I spent ten minutes sorting through coins and converting logs into blocks into planks. Once I had as many as I thought I would need, I began building my steps. Rock steps would have worked as well, but planks were longer, so they would give me a broader

ledge to stand on with less material. Because Salenus was entirely made up of crafted stone, all I had to do to lay the first plank was slap a coin against a block a few feet off the ground. It popped into position, and I added another plank against its edge so the ledge would extend out far enough I wouldn't have to worry about my balance.

Working my way up the side of the monument was slow going. The ledges had to be staggered so I could climb from one to the next, and I extended every other section so that the planks stuck out across the gap in the monument like a set of particularly ill-advised diving boards.

Only when I reached the top did I start laying bricks using the point-and-click function of the Storage Ring. The range wasn’t amazing, but at least I wasn't at risk of dropping resources two hundred feet to the ground.

Thinking about it, I looked down, and that was a mistake. The ground, and the people on it, were a long way off. A sense of vertigo came over me, and I swayed in place. It shouldn't have affected me like that. I'd flown way higher on Noivern and it hadn't bothered me. Standing on an unsupported plank triggered my danger sense in a way that being strapped to the back of a soaring wyvern never had. A snack had gotten me back to full health, so the fall probably wouldn’t kill me, it would just suck.

My inventory was half-full of Warpstone in stacks of sixty-four. Pointing at a missing block just above my head, I mentally selected the first box and pressed down on it with the phantom finger. A bluish cube plopped into place, fitting snugly among its fellows as if it had never left. One down, several thousand to go.

There were a lot of YouTube videos about mega-build projects in Maincraft. They could be really impressive, like a statue of a celebrity the size of an in-game skyscraper. People also recreated entire landscapes from other settings or turned the Overworld into the Nether, or vice versa. I'd never attempted anything like that. My brother and I had shared a realm where we built ourselves a big base, and I'd used lava to turn the mountain it was on into a volcano, but it had been nothing like the time investment of some projects I'd seen online.

Even what I was doing now was small compared to what some guys had done digitally. Of course, it took longer to build things in real life than in the game, but not that much longer. Blocks appeared where I pointed, though I had to be careful about misplacement and switch platforms as I went. For the segments that had cracked or sheared, I had to harvest those fragments and replace them with fresh blocks.

When I got to the bottom, I would be short of material, but I could craft the shards back into blocks at my work table to finish. The work quickly became boring. My inventory emptied long before I reached that point, so I refilled it with coins from my pack and continued. The harpies came in close to the monument, snatching phantoms out of the sky that would have otherwise tried to bump me off my perch.

The moon fell, and the stars faded. When this finished, we could finally return to Mount Doom. By now, Orobas had to know that I had broken our oath. He had the oathblade in his possession, and I assumed there would have been a change in its aetheric signature or whatever the moment the System cursed me. The only question was, would he free Kevin immediately or allow me to make amends?

The longer it took me to get back, the weaker I would be, so waiting could be to his advantage. Besides, it was unlikely that Kevin would reward the demon for letting him go. Bojack had been instrumental in overthrowing the previous Dark Lord, and Kevin was a dick. He might thank Bojack at first, but he would hold a grudge. As soon as Kevin was sure he could get

away with it, he would kill the demon and replace him with one who hadn't betrayed him.

It was in Bojack's self-interest to bring me back to the dark side, and I could be relatively certain he would try negotiation before resorting to letting Kevin go. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be ready to fight. There were an awful lot of monsters in the chambers below Mount Doom. Those freaking spider scorpions, he was definitely going to bring those out to play.

Ugh.

Gremory was there as well. That was a two-demon minimum for what we would have to contend with when we got back, and I couldn’t expect to get a free shot at beheading them. He was going to take Zareth hostage, too. It wasn't like I was best friends with the vizier, but I liked the guy, and Bojack would use every tool at his disposal to make me listen.

Sneaking in was the best option, but that would involve a bit of tunneling, and Bojack would sense me when I got close. It was almost dawn when I climbed down to craft the Warpstone shards back into full-fledged blocks. My System dinged, and I nearly swooned.

Esmelda and Gastard both rushed over to check on me. "I'm fine," I said, "just light-headed."

It was more than that, though. It felt like I'd just given blood, way too much blood.

"You've been without sleep for days," Esmelda said. "You need rest."

"We all have." I pulled up my screens again to see the bad news.

Might: F+

Speed: F

Presence: E

“What does it mean?” Esmelda frowned.

“F is within normal human range.” I was still above average, but things were getting tight.

If the decline continued this way, I would be crippled by the time we arrived at the mountain, if I could even move at all. My armor felt heavy in a way it never had before.

"It's happening too fast," Esmelda said, touching my wrist. "We have to get you back now."

"This is almost finished," I said. "Let's pretend it didn't happen until I'm done."

She didn't look too happy about it but agreed.

"We caused the titan to be released," Gastard said. “It would be dishonorable for you to leave without sealing it."

That, and the Atlans wouldn't take kindly to my leaving the job undone. Re- crafting the blocks didn't take long, and there were only a couple hundred blocks left to fill in. Gray light crossed the plains, and the sun peaked over the horizon, but it wasn't a hopeful sight for me. Every day brought me closer to being at the mercy of the same demon who had tortured me for so long he'd gotten bored with it.

When all that remained of the break was a small door, Torgudai brought the core inside the monument and left it there. The interior was bare, with a flat floor of the same blue stone and a lot of empty space. In the monument's darkness, the Pebbleheart core glowed like a massive coal. It had covered itself with a thin layer of gravel, but its crimson essence shone through.

I closed it off.

"How do you know it's safe?" Leto had wandered over. There was no sign on his face or body that he had nearly died the night before. But the experience of being held captive had to have affected him. I took one gauntlet off, intending to place a comforting hand on his shoulder, but stopped when I saw how I'd changed.

They were hairy, not completely covered in fur, but certainly shaggier than I remembered, and my nails had grown out, thickening into fresh white claws. So that was what the itching had been about.

"Well," Esmelda said, her eyebrows raising at the sight, "that's unfortunate."

"Oh," Leto said. "Cool."

At least he wasn’t freaked out. Before I could think of something to say to Esmelda, a thunderclap rolled across the sky. There was no storm, no clouds. It came from the direction of the sun.

A silhouette was outlined against that brilliant circle, thin and wide. A pair of wings. For a second, I thought it was a harpy coming at us from a dramatic angle, but it kept getting bigger.

Bigger.

Torgudai let out a breath, and the Atlans took up a cheer. "The Great Eagle!"

"The Great Eagle has come!"