The Dark Lord of Crafting

As wonderful as crafting was, it came with an obvious limitation. Each tool, plank, and block, appeared in a standard size. While the System allowed for a greater variety of formulas than Maincraft itself, providing for the creation of things like knives, busters, and spears as well as the regular sword from the game, customization was still sorely lacking.

That’s where the Artisan skill came in. Crafted objects appeared, and then you modified them the old-fashioned way. It was fine for adding aesthetics, but hardly a stellar solution for a total rework. So far, I’d mostly used the skill for whittling. It gave me an instinct for how to use a knife to carve what I wanted to see, and my designs were getting pretty good. If I tried to make things like a real artisan would, instead of a crafter with a cheat skill, I suspected it would help me do that as well.

I didn’t want to.

My skill level was still relatively low, and I harbored no illusions that I would be able to work with orichalcum to produce a functional set of armor on my first try. Could you even melt down raw orichalcum with a regular forge? With months of practice and the System’s help, it would be at least theoretically possible to do actual smithing, but I needed a new suit today.

Reaching the forge platform, I counted ten blocks forward from the entrance and turned left. If you wanted to make sure something was never found, you didn’t put it in a massive, well-guarded vault, you dropped it somewhere random where no one would ever have a reason to look. Kevin’s armor was stored beneath an unmarked stone, four medallions in a hidden pocket. I retrieved them, stepped over the rail track that bisected the forge, and stood at my favorite crafting table.

My armor didn’t fit. When I tried slapping it on, the medallions didn’t activate, so I reconstituted the helm on the table instead.

It was beautiful. Gold-white, sleek, and decorated with a crown. The look was a blend of medieval knight and anime sentai. It no longer fit. For a while now, the growth of my horns had been just on the cusp of what would make me unhelmetable, and now we had crossed the Rubicon. Anything I put on my head would have to come with holes.

Drilling through the top of the helmet was an option, though an unattractive one. Orichalcum tools were required, and the standard set was not at all geared toward that kind of work. Even if I got it done, it would leave me walking around in a helmet and nothing else.

Jason’s armor had always been a tight, almost perfect, and I’d assumed that was because of its quality as well as the fact that the System generated equipment of a standard size for everyone. I was, or had been, a very average-sized dude, so I’d never had a problem with one-size-fits-all style gear. Gastard was able to wear the armor I’d made for him, though it didn’t fit him as seamlessly as it would have me, and Jason’s armor had been a bit smaller than anything I’d crafted myself, and it wasn’t just a height issue. My shoulders had broadened significantly, and my limbs had thickened.

Kevin, however, was both lean and on the short side. Did that mean his armor had always been a little looser than mine? I laid out both sets side by side on the platform and looked them over. Aside from Kevin’s version being painted black, and a few extra spikes, they were near copies of each other. It wasn’t a massive difference, but in a direct comparison, it was obvious that Jason’s armor was taller than Kevin’s.

What if the crafting System didn’t create one-size-fits-all gear, and instead, generated equipment that was sized to the hero who made it?

I took off my tunic and fetched enough wool to make a new one. Though they didn’t come with tags, it was plain that the fresh article of clothing was one size up from the original. I wouldn’t have to figure out how to reforge or modify the old set, I could simply make a new one.

While my supply of orichalcum was not unlimited, I had enough.

Soon, a third set joined the pair on the floor. It wasn’t nearly as pretty as what my predecessors had produced. The orichalcum had a lovely sheen, but the overall shape was blockier and less stylized. It was a suit of plate armor, as simple as could be. No crowns or spikes for me. However, it was noticeably broader than the other two, and I was relieved to see notches in the helm exactly where they needed to be.

The System provides.

The only real loss was the enchantments. There was no way I could replicate the panoply of effects on Jason’s armor with the resources at my disposal. Still, I could apply lesser versions of most of what had helped make me a nearly unkillable tank since first putting on his super suit.

I wanted to avoid losing levels, and Kevin’s orb had accumulated enough essence to apply what I had available. His collection of enchanted books wasn’t as expansive as I could have dreamed, but there were plenty of copies of low-level versions of everything I needed to go around.

Mending, Unbreaking, Protection, and Fire Resistance. No Aqua Affinity, sadly, but Feather Fall was available, as well as a much better selection of Thorns enchantments than I’d been expecting. I could put Thorns on every piece if I wanted, though it would mean cutting down on Fire Resistance.

Without the Fire Resistance on Jason’s armor, Bael would have killed me. And even though lava was not as common in Bedlam as it was in the Nether, I was still paranoid about the possibility of falling into a superheated pool someday. I’d pushed Kevin into a lava pit. These things happened.

The thing about enemies not being able to pierce your armor was that you could still be grappled. I would never forget being dragged into the water by that Kulu. Without Mizu’s intervention, that would have been the end for me.

The Thorns enchantment came with a chance of damaging anyone who hit you. Would it have been enough to keep those tentacles off of me?

By the time I was finished enchanting, the orb was down to its last mote of essence, and my armor had gotten a new look.

It was even edgier than Kevin’s.

The bracers, pauldrons, and helm were now studded with spikes, as well as blades that looked like the tips of box cutters. There were more of those down the outer sides of the legging, a couple on the boots, and the backs of the gauntlets looked like the business end of a flanged mace. It was time to suit up.

Armored once more, I felt like myself again. I’d come to relish the feeling of being encased in metal, and being without it had been like walking around naked. Pacing, hopping, swinging my arms, everything felt right. The fingers of the gauntlets came with tiny openings, just enough for the tips of my claws to poke through.

What would it be like to kill Berith with my hands? The thought was enticing. Eating people was wrong, but what about eating a demon? There were no moral implications there, right? My mouth watered at the thought.

Bad.

Bad. Bad. Bad.

Had to do something about that. I went to see Kevin, and the former dark lord gave my new getup an appreciative stare.

“Nice,” he said after I mined a block out of the front of the cell so we could talk face-to-face. “You should paint it black.”

“I’m not worried about the color scheme,” I said. “Listen, I’m about to kill another demon, and I don’t want to change anymore. Are you going to help me or not?”

Kevin smirked, his gauntness, and the dark veins on his face, made him uglier than he had ever been. Naked in a box, half-crippled by taint, he was still standing like someone who knew he had the upper hand.

“Are you going to let me out?”

“You’ve murdered heroes for a lot less than what I’ve done to you,” I said, “how can I free you if I know you’re going to betray me the moment you have a chance? And that’s leaving aside all the other crap you’ve pulled over the centuries. How could I ever justify doing anything other than keeping you locked up or griefing you out of this world?”

“Do you care about that stuff?” His smirk didn’t falter, and I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. Too satisfied, too knowing.

Did I care? In my former life, I’d been friends with plenty of people who’d done terrible things. Most of his crimes were literally history. But not all of them.

“I need you to tell me something,” I said, “and I want an honest answer. What is it with you and the lillits?”

“What do you mean?” His smirk dropped away, replaced by bemusement. “You’re more into them than I ever was.”

“I married one.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. They’re tiny. It’s weird, bro.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and circled back.

“Why did you go out of your way to capture them? You stopped expanding Dargoth a long time ago, but you invaded to get the lillits. What made them that important to you?”

“Not that important,” he shrugged. “The Eternal Engine needed operators, the smaller the better to work in the crawl spaces. I tried using children, but they sucked at it. So I was like, hey, didn’t I used to have hobbits? Where are they now? And I went and got them.”

My mind ground to a halt on the “tried using children” phrase. It was good to know that whatever the demonic influence was doing to my brain, Kevin could still disgust me.

“Kevin,” I said, “you can understand why I can’t let you out, right? You keep saying stuff like that.”

His good eye blinked, the black one could only twitch.

“Like what?” He asked.

“This was a bad idea,” his oblivious malevolence was enough to make me facepalm. “I’ll figure things out on my own. See you around.” I moved to fill the wall back in.

“Wait.” He said, throwing his hand down into the gap as if to hold it open. “Don’t go yet. You can make me take an oath.”

I looked at his hand, the withered crab claw that it was. “I’ve thought about that. It’s not enough. Oaths can be broken, and the curse is slow.”

“Are you stupid?” Kevin snapped. “Use a better curse!”

He was completely serious.

“The oathblade comes with a Curse of Weakening,” I said. “Are you telling me there are other options?”

“Not the blades,” Kevin rolled his good eye, “you have a Knight of the Realm. He has the Oathsworn skill. It’s better. Do you not know anything?”

“You killed everyone who could have told me how any of this worked.”

“Huh,” Kevin pulled his hand back. “I guess I did.”

“How did you know about Gastard's class?” That was not information I’d shared with him, and as far as I knew, he hadn’t spoken with anyone else since his confinement.

“He was here with you. I saw him and the Heir.”

So Kevin could tell what class someone had by looking at them. It must have been another side-effect of having a cursed right eye. When he saw I was still about to replace the diamond block, he spoke again, desperately launching into an explanation of how Gastard could increase the level of his skill to the point where it would be sufficient to bind him. It was the first genuine advice he had ever given me, and I listened until he was finished.

“Thank you,” I said, “I’ll look into that, and then we can talk again.” Gastard was never going to agree to be Kevin’s road to freedom, but I was definitely going to discuss the possible uses of Oathsworn with him. Nothing Kevin could tell me would give me a solution in time to deal with Berith.

Fortunately, I thought there was a way to kill at least one more demon without worsening my condition. Bael’s death hadn’t resulted in any new monstrous features for me, and he was the only demon I’d killed with an atreanum weapon. Agares had taken a dagger to the neck, but it had been one of my swords that finished him. The magic-eating quality of the meta-material might do something to interrupt the overflow of demonic essence that occurred when they were killed.

It wasn’t a sure thing, but it was worth an attempt. The only problem was that all my atreanum knives had broken into useless bits, and I had no more raw material to craft fresh ones. What I did have was an atreanum pick, along with the hope that the tool could make it through one fight before it shattered as well.