The Dark Lord of Crafting

As occupied as I had been by the workroom, I had neglected to search his bedroom. The bed frame was oak, carved with spirals and waves, and time had covered the white silk sheets in dust. Kevin had a comfy study nook, with a deep seated leather chair and a bookshelf. All the volumes the shelf contained were blank, so my initial excitement at the possibility of uncovering new enchantments was quickly dashed. Enchanted diamonds provided continuous illumination, planted where the walls and ceilings met in each corner of the room. Were they torches that had been buried in the stone, or another distinct formula? While I was considering whether to dig one out, I noticed a shadow on one wall where a single pale block jutted out about an inch.

Digging out my spear medallion, I converted it into my hand and used its butt end to press the block. It probably wasn't a trap, but you never knew. Triggering the pressure plate caused a section of stone to its left to swing back on a hinge. It was his closet.

Kevin had left behind a nearly complete set of tools; an axe, a pick, a shovel, and a sword, all crafted with materials I didn't recognize. Their handles and shafts were composed of the same gray wood as the work table, heavy, hard, and with almost no grain to the touch. The metal components had been forged out of an off-white metal marbled with gold veins. Having crafted a sword out of gold myself, it was obvious that he had used something else to make these tools, but my System wouldn't tell me what it was unless I broke one of them down for materials.

Was this repository a backup in case he died and had to resupply? Did that mean he had a spawn point nearby? I glanced at the bed. Sleeping on a grass mat hadn't changed my spawn point, but I had never tried an actual bed. Could it really be that simple? Not that I wanted to reset my spawn point in the middle of the Wastes, but if it worked, I could change my point of origin to somewhere other than a random field. There was nothing unusual about a Maincraft player setting up outposts as he traveled, but along with the resources that had been left in the workroom, leaving all of this behind for anyone to find seemed like a preposterous oversight.

Still, I would not start second guessing my windfall now. Was this white metal the equivalent of netherite? Diamond? Aside from what they were made of, the tools could have been carbon copies of those that I produced, with the exception of the sword. My swords had blades three and half feet long, and about two inches wide. This weapon was shorter and thicker than that, and displayed a level of craftsmanship that was lacking in the other tools. The crossguard was overly ornate, two bundles of metal spines, and the pommel was adorned with a jewel. It was a diamond, and a mote of red light floated in its center like a particle of dust in a glass of water. An enchantment, but I had no idea what kind of enchantment.

No matter how long I patted the tools, they did not convert into medallions. My mind jumped back to an old notification, and I pulled up my status screens and scrolled through until I found what I was looking for.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Hail, rockbiter! Your skill as a miner has advanced far enough to unlock new crafting materials. All naturally occurring metals are now within the reach of your pick. Start digging!

The phrase, "naturally occurring metals," had stuck out to me at the time. There were metals I could not harvest, and whatever Kevin had made these tools out of was one of them. Did all alloys count as being not "naturally occurring," or was this metal inherently magical? Where had it come from? It wasn't a question I was going to answer standing around in his bedroom. I wrapped the tools in a bedsheet, tying the bundle with strips of cloth, all except for the sword. It was too wide for my sheathe, so I made a beltloop for it out of grass rope and hoped for the best. Gastard was taking a catnap down with Marie in the barracks, but I had too much to do to join him.

Climbing up to the roof of the tower presented me with a grim tableau, the result of Gastard's efforts during the night. Zombies were piled along the ramparts, as well as a handful of phantoms. It looked like he'd killed about twenty monsters over the course of the night without me. The corpses were bad enough, but now they were being eaten by birds. The scene gave me a visceral reminder of the flock I'd come across feasting on one of my own previous bodies, but these weren't crows. They were buzzards, but bigger than buzzards. Condors. Those that were perched on the crenellations looked as tall as lillits. When they stretched, they had wingspans of at least ten feet. Yellow eyes regarded me over long, sharp beaks. They had bald heads, but their feathers were inky black.

I walked to the end of the tower with Kevin's sword in my hand, and the birds watched me come. They were croaking and cawing among themselves in a fashion that sounded suspiciously like a language, and a couple of them took to the air as I approached, giving me a clear space to overlook Redroad. The demon's mist was visible a few miles off, hovering over the road. A rope bridge was swinging across the gap I had left in the road behind them. It was a pretty impressive feat of engineering,, on their part, and bringing the monster's across must have been an ordeal. The outlines of wagons they had been forced to leave behind were barely visible from my vantage, and the mist wasn't moving. I had a single day to prepare, and hopefully, to get a few hours of sleep before they started marching again.

"So you guys harpies, or what?"

The nearest birds glared at me, but didn't answer, pausing only briefly in picking at the zombie remains. I'd always assumed that animals would get sick if they ate tainted meat, but they seemed to relish it. Keeping an eye on the harpies, I stood between two crenelations and organized my materials. There were plenty of loose coins in my pack, and I didn't want to place the wrong block. With an armful of granite coins, I slapped the first of them against the edge of the roof, and a new stone popped into place. Because the entire tower had been built out of crafted stone, it was easy to affix new blocks, and I set about building a lip that extended out over the ramp that connected the way station to Redroad. Because of the curve of the tower, I had to use a little extra material to create a flat shelf protruding from the roof. It was ten feet across, and I used all the stone I had left from deconstructing a chunk of Redroad to extend it out.

The harpies stopped eating to watch me. They didn't approach, and those that were in their air stayed well above, but I had clearly gotten their attention. They continued to cough and croak at each other as if they were discussing my odd behavior. Initially, I'd been worried that they would attack me, and I'd worked with my hand on my sword, but I eventually put it back in its loop. The harpies showed no sign of aggression, and my overhand soon stretched thirty feet out from the roof. It shouldn't have worked, but the crafting force held it together. If Redroad was any indication of how much weight the seal between the blocks could handle, I could have extended the overhang more than twice that far without risking its collapse.

When I walked back to the roof, one bird alighted on the crenelation ahead of me. It was even bigger than the others, at least five feet tall, and it had a ruff of white feathers around its neck.

"You are not the Dark Lord." Its voice was surprisingly smooth, and distinctly feminine. If I hadn't been watching its beak move, I would have thought there was a woman hiding behind the rampart to talk to me.

I stopped, and reflexively raised a hand in greeting, only to drop it again as I realized she couldn't return the gesture. "Yeah," I said, "not any kind of lord. I'm just visiting."

The harpy quirked her head to one side. Her eyes were violet instead of yellow, assessing me with the hard gaze of a raptor. "The Dark Lord is the only one who can build this way. How is it you share his power?"

"A blessing," I said. Were harpies pro Mizu? That seemed unlikely. Best to keep it vague.

"A blessing," she mimicked me so perfectly that I had to wonder if she really was female, or if that was just the voice model the harpy used to facilitate human speech. She could clearly do a man's voice just as well, but she switched back to a female voice when she continued. "This tower belongs to the Dark Lord, and he will punish you for altering it."

"I was going to get punished already," I said, tapping the overhang with my boot. I'd replaced my leggings with iron, but I was still wearing the tainted boots, because they had a Featherfall enchantment that I didn't want to lose. "Do you work for Kevin?"

She ruffled her feathers in annoyance at my question. "Never. The flock is free of him. There is a demon on that road, man with blessings. The demon will kill you if it comes."

"Do you know a lot about demons?"

"Enough to keep the flock away. Their powers change, but they are all the same."

I glanced back at the fog. "I'm planning on fighting," I said. "Do you have any advice for me?"

The harpy shrugged its wings and shifted its weight from one clawed foot to the other. "You left an offering for us. We are not enemies, nor are we friends. If you fight, kill as many as you can, and leave their flesh out in the sun so that we may feast. That is my advice. We will not hinder you, nor will we help. Tell me, blessed one, are you the one who thinned the veil?"

According to my System, I made it easier for monsters to enter the world just by existing. "It's not a choice," I said. "They appear, and they try to eat me. I would prefer the veil stayed the way it was."

She made a rattling noise like a crow. "good, good. Then I hope you survive. you bring new flesh into this plane, and we are pleased. Survive if you can, and we may speak more in the future."

"Wait," I said as she flapped her wings. "What's your name?"

The harpy lifted into the air, and as she swooped by me, I heard the word like a whisper.

"Celaeno."