The Dark Lord of Crafting

For the first few hours of the night, Bojack helped me grind experience. The demon knew a spell that increased the rate of spawns, and I was able to slaughter a host of zombies, phantoms, and trolls in record time, as well as a single chimera. The killing spree brought me to level twenty, at which point the flow of experience dropped to a trickle. By level twenty-three, killing weak mobs didn’t bring me even a single percentage point closer to advancement.

We could stay in the ravine for days and it might never be enough to get me to level thirty, so I would work with what I had. On the off chance that it mattered, I crafted bookshelves out of planks, arranged them around the enchanting table, and filled them with all the tomes I had.

My one previous attempt at enchanting blank books had been underwhelming. The table gave me three options in the form of glowing runes, but I couldn’t read them. As I was deliberating between the first set of squiggly shapes, Bojack spoke up from behind me.

“Impaling, Mending, Infinity.”

I spun around. “You know how to read the runes?”

His ears relaxed, falling sideways. “To an extent. They are close, but not identical, to our runic System. Harmony binds, and Discord evolves, after all.”

While I wasn’t enthusiastic about our relationship in general, it was useful to have a demon around. Impaling had to do with throwing tridents in Maincraft, and though its applications would likely be more extensive in real life, it wasn’t my first choice.

Infinity was fantastic. When applied to a bow, it gave you unlimited ammunition. It was tempting, but without other enchantments, they would just be normal arrows, and I had a big supply of enhanced ammunition to draw from.

During the mob round-up, I’d tested out the three types from the treasure room. Red was Flame, it made zombies go up like a Wicker Man festival. White indicated Shadowbane, and Gray had a knockback effect, which worked great against anything with two legs.

Infinity was tempting, but mending was a necessity.

“How do I tell what level they are?”

“The brighter the stronger,” Bojack said, “the runes themselves do not denote a ranking.”

Of the three violet symbols hovering over the enchantment table, Mending had the weakest glow. Even so, with the randomized nature of the table, there was no way to be sure I’d get another chance at it before burning through all of my experience.

I selected mending, and the rune flowed down onto the cover of the book, burning itself into the leather. Switching it out for a fresh one, along with more amethyst to catalyze the exchange, I moved on to generating the next set.

After three more attempts, I’d collected enough enchantments to be satisfied that my sword would be able to perform. Aside from the first selection, the variety was mostly limited to enchantments I’d already seen. My new books included Unbreaking II, Protection II, and Sharpness I.

Protection could go on a shield, as my armor was already imbued with better magic than I could muster. Fighting the mobs had been illuminating in that it revealed the orichalcum set not only made me nigh invulnerable; it came with some additional perks.

Monsters that struck me ended up with cuts on their limbs. The feedback didn’t occur one hundred percent of the time, but it suggested there was a Thorns enchantment on at least one of the pieces. It had always been one of my favorite additions to armor in the game because monsters could literally kill themselves by hitting you.

My jumps were higher than even my improved Might accounted for, and came with gentle landings. Possibly an improved version of Feather Fall. My armor rating was up to twenty-five, which may well have been the maximum value the System would currently allow.

Mending went to the atreanum pick, so it would repair itself if I used it to mine valuable resources. Caliburn received Unbreaking and Sharpness as well as an official name after I crafted an anvil to give it one. Sharpness increased its damage to fourteen, and though it couldn’t fix itself, I hoped Unbreaking would keep it around for a long time. Breaking weapons hadn’t been an issue for me so far, they were usually replaced before they lost much durability, but I intended for Caliburn to be my mainstay from here on out.

Hoping to get the stats on my armor, I prepped the anvil to name my helm, but when I pulled the lever, all I got was a notification. It already had one.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Your aetheric presence is insufficient to rename this item.

[Helm of the Deep]

Orichalcum Helmet

Armor Rating: 3

Enchantments: Protection IV, Aqua Affinity III, Unbreaking III, Mending II

Durability: 100/100

So I couldn't name something that already had a name, or I could, but only if I was higher level? The enchantments were about what I’d been expecting. Repeating the process added the rest of the set to my crafting log so I could see what each piece had to offer. Thorns came with the chestplate, Heartguard of the Valiant, and Feather Fall was on the boots. Protection, Unbreaking, and Mending seemed to be the standard, and the only surprise came from the leggings.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Fire Resistance IV: This enchantment grants near immunity to heat and flame, though its protection is not without limits. Don’t go swimming in lava, for example, or make a habit of being struck by lightning bolts. Traveling to the surface of the sun is out of the question.

Good to know that space travel was an option. I was as prepared as I was going to be, and though Bojack had remained stoic throughout my crafting sideshow, his impatience was growing palpable.

“Is that necessary,” he asked as I began converting the remaining books back into medallions. “We need to reach the other side of the Wastes by sunrise.”

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” I said, “and I don’t have paper to make more.”

Bojack snorted irritably. “Those are low stakes. The one who sits on the Throne of Shadows has as much paper as he likes. I won’t trade the wyverns for those books.”

It didn’t take that long for me to get all my goods back together. As we rose out of the ravine, the moon was at its apex, obscured by a few trailing clouds. The world rushed silently by, and the Wastes stretched out before us, a sea of rolling sands as black as the sky above.

Redroad stood out as a solitary stripe across the landscape, parallel to us. We didn’t fly close, but I could see that its texture had changed. A train track had been laid along its surface, and the supporting columns were reinforced. Kevin liked trains.

We didn’t speak as we rode, the wyvern's wings beating out the seconds of the remaining night. The first waystation appeared; a bleak spire in a bleak landscape, and soon fell behind. It was as far as I had ever voluntarily traveled into Dargoth.

A second waystation came and went, and the horizon changed. Dargoth’s eternal storm blanketed the sky ahead, laced with intermittent flashes like crimson veins amid the thunderheads. With the moon at our backs, and the first gray of dawn touching the sands of the Wastes, the wyverns brought us under the dubious protection of the clouds.

A third waystation stood sentinel at the border of the desert and the cracked clay of southern Dargoth. The railroad continued, splitting in two directions. We did not stop, though the wyverns lost some of their speed. Even under the storm, they were weaker during the day, and our headlong rush across the Wastes had taxed them, but Bojack didn’t let them rest until Mount Doom came into view.

A gray, treeless slope, blemished by a black stone fortress. Smoke rose in a vast column from the caldera at its peak, the source and the renewal of the unending storm. That was not our destination.

Ruins stood out against the flat expanse of the wretched lands, a degraded castle surrounded by the remains of an abandoned town. Bojack brought the wyverns down into the courtyard behind the curtain wall. No soldiers or servants waited there, whatever purpose this stronghold had once served was long neglected, but it was not completely empty.

“We wait here,” Bojack said, summoning a few phantoms that had spawned during our ride and lagged behind. They floated down, destined to fill the wyvern’s bellies, and I looked around.

All that was left of this place was stone. The door to the keep had rotted off, with only a few fallen planks remaining. No lights illuminated the windows higher up, and no plants sprouted in the courtyard. Even the fungal forests that spotted the wider landscape of Dargoth were absent. The air was dry and smelled of dust.

“What for?”

“Vepar,” his response was curt, and I paced to stretch my legs, tight and cramping from spending so many hours strapped to the back of a winged shark.

A few minutes later, the second demon entered under the half-crumbled arch of the courtyard. Having only seen him once before, I’d forgotten how unsettling his appearance was. Mottled, rubber skin, a lopsided skull, and a curtain of stubby tentacles covering his mouth.

The sight brought me back to the swamp, and my heart beat a little faster. This was no kulu, but the similarities in their anatomy were too numerous to be ignored. His long black robe trailed along the ground as he shuffled forward, the fabric splotched with pale stains.

“So we move at last,” Vepar sounded like he was talking with water in his mouth, “I thought the day would never come.”

“The plan hasn’t changed,” Bojack said, “it was merely delayed.”

“And what is the plan, exactly?” I asked.

The demons and I spent the remainder of the day in the courtyard, going over details. We discussed the layout of the citadel on Mount Doom, the presence of human soldiers, and what mobs I was likely to encounter, as well as Kevin’s schedule.

“He has been in Nargul of late,” Vepar said, “enjoying his toys. He returned a few days ago to reinvest the cauldron.”

“Can you explain all of that? Nargul? Reinvest?” The demons had been talking to each other as much as to me, and they both made regular references to things I had never heard of.

“Nargul is a city,” Bojack explained, “the largest human population in this region, and the site of an extensive mine. The cauldron is the source of the storm, the magic of which degrades the artifact over time. Maintaining the cauldron is one of the few duties the Dark Lord does not neglect.”

“We will come to Mount Doom with an offering for Bael,” Vepar bubbled, “and you will hide among the lesser entities to enter the pens below the mountain.”

“Then I dig up to his forge and we ambush him, right?” The demons nodded, and I pressed on to a follow-up question. “Are there lillits in the citadel?”

“What does it matter?” Vepar’s tentacles stirred as he raised his voice, and one of the wyverns hissed in response. The beasts were napping and didn’t appreciate being disturbed.

Bojack had made a seat out of one of the broad stones that littered the courtyard, fragments fallen from the walls. It had molded itself for his comfort, complete with armrests, more a throne than a chair, given his size. Bojack was the largest demon I’d met. Vepar, though alien in appearance, was a few inches shorter than me.

“A few,” the horse-man said, “he keeps them as personal servants. The rest are in Nargul. They are not the ones you care for.”

He was wrong about that, I cared about all of the lillits. They had become my people. Still, I wasn’t going to go rushing off to Nargul to help them. The quickest way to improve their condition was to get rid of Kevin. Then I could order their release. It wasn’t as if the demons had any preferences or prejudices when it came to the treatment of the mortal races. Human and lillit lives were equally unimportant to them.

“Just asking,” I said. “What else do I need to know?”

We continued to talk, there was nothing else to do while we waited for night to descend and mobs to spawn. That was the tribute Vepar had mentioned, which would go to Bael, the head demon, who operated as Kevin’s manager.

The offering would grease the wheels for Bojack to seek an audience with the Dark Lord under the pretense of requesting aid for Henterfell. According to the demons, Kevin had shown no interest in expanding the empire in over a century, and as he was the commander-in-chief, major military operations required his, or Bael’s, approval.

“What can Kevin do?” I asked. “What powers does he have that I don’t?”

Bojack and Vepar shared a glance, and the horse-man made a noncommittal gesture. “The Dark Lord has not visited a battlefield since before I entered this world. He favors a greatsword and makes use of potions to enhance his capabilities. From what is spoken of his performance, he is neither a skilled tactician nor combatant, relying on his equipment to overwhelm his foes.”

We had that in common then. It was a very strange set of circumstances that could cause me to regret not investing time into the alchemy aspect of Maincraft. That part of the game had never interested me much, and aside from making use of the occasional healing potion, I’d never bothered with it.

Healing, Water-Breathing, Darkvision, what else was there? Google would have made this so much easier. Playing the game had been a lifetime ago, a hundred lifetimes, if you wanted to get technical, and my memory had more than a few holes poked out of it.

Neither Bojack nor Vepar knew much about the alchemy aspect of the Survivor System, though they mentioned Kevin had been fond of throwing poison bottles at groups of enemy soldiers when Dargoth was still becoming Dargoth. Poison, at least, was one thing I didn’t have to be too concerned about.

“Is there any chance we could catch him out of his armor, or sleeping?”

“Hardly,” Vepar burbled, “the Dark Lord rarely sleeps.” Bojack’s lips turned up at the mention of this quirk.

“The One Who Knocks punishes him for his disobedience,” he added. “He is plagued by nightmares, unable to rest. Insomnia weighs on his mind, making him spiteful and foolish, but even though he does not fight, he is rarely without his armor. Paranoia has made him cautious in that regard.”

Given that we were currently plotting his downfall, the paranoia could be justified. Demons couldn’t be trusted any further than their self-interest. It grated on me that I was in the position of taking Bojack on his word that Esmelda and my son were okay, but it wouldn’t be long before the truth came out.

If Bojack didn’t fulfill his promise to let me see my family after Kevin was deposed, I was going to break my oath and do what I could to make things right before the curse made me an invalid.

Since we were keeping the mobs to bring with us to Mount Doom, there was nothing for me to do that night but try to rest. No god of chaos was sending me nightmares, but I wasn’t sleeping much better than Kevin. After laying down with my pack under my head, I became, if anything, more awake.

The night passed slowly, but it did pass.