The Dark Lord of Crafting

The phantoms spawned first. Their cries made the hair on my arms stand on end, and when one of them slammed into the gate, it startled me so badly that I jumped. Double-stacking the fence gates made them tall enough to block off the entrance completely. There was no room for the mob to slip in, so it flapped its wings and floated away after slapping the posts with its tail.

Did I really want to open it? If I wanted to kill a lot of zombies, I was going to have to either go outside or let them in. The gate at my back was open, so I could retreat and slap the button to shut it in an emergency. I was more worried about getting surprised by a phantom than the zombies themselves, given how much faster the flying mobs were. As long as I had them in a chokepoint, however, I thought I could manage this.

I opened the front, stepped back, and held up my spear. It was a recent addition to the arsenal, and there was no Maincraft equivalent. But there was no room for slashing a sword in the hall, and it would be better for dealing with the phantoms. The formula for a spear was one stone block and two sticks, arranged diagonally across the crafting grid. I’d wasted a not insignificant quantity of wood and stone to discover that combination, but I was happy with the result. The generated item was six feet long, with a thick shaft and a simple, though somewhat oversized, spearhead. It was awkward to hold, given how heavy the stone end was, but I had my knife as a backup. Its damage rating still wasn’t as high as the ax, but you couldn’t beat the added reach.

The phantom returned shortly after the gate opened, preceded by the creepy wail. It dove in so fast that I didn’t have the time to react, but my spear was already angled up, and it drove itself onto the point head first.

The impact made me take a step back as the blade went into its jaws and poked out through its back. The phantom’s tail whipped once, scratching the log walls, but then went still. I lowered the spear and pressed down on its body with my boot to pull out the weapon.

One down, but I could hear more still in the sky. The next few minutes went by in tense silence before I heard the first moan. A zombie shambled its way into my tunnel and I missed my first shot at its head. It didn’t exactly dodge, but it stumbled out of the way as I tried to poke it. I had to back up to get a good angle, that was the drawback of spears, and this time I got it in the chest. The point went in, but the zombie was fine with that. It continued to press itself forward onto the shaft of my weapon.

That was what the knife was for. I let go of my spear and hacked at its neck. The stone blade was sharper than the wooden equivalent, and the extra weight gave it additional momentum. If it had been human, it would have bled to death after the first blow, but I had to grab the top of its head and slash at its neck until its spine was severed to finish it. It still wasn’t clear to me if the zombies had a health bar like I did, or if the head chopping was the only way to kill them. The zombie held onto my arm, and a tentacle came out of its cloak to nip at me, but all it got was a mouthful of leather.

The sleeves of my tunic didn’t cover my forearms, but I’d taken the time to tie leather covers around them for extra protection. A single leather coin was worth a full yard of material, which had been more than enough for me to engineer some basic bracers and cut out strips to tie them on with. It hadn’t affected my armor rating, but it made me feel better.

Fighting with the mask on was surreal. I felt like a serial killer. The second mob was down, and so far, I was uninjured. After freeing my spear, I moved the shambler's body closer to the entrance so the next one could trip over it. As soon as I had shoved it into place, another phantom swooped in, and I was not prepared.

It slammed into me, and I could barely keep my footing. It floated back, abandoning all pretense of natural flight, and the pointed barb at the end of its tail jabbed forward. The tunic blunted it somewhat, but the tip punched through and punctured my belly. The pain was sharp and immediate, but adrenaline kept me moving, and I slashed at it with my knife before dashing into my shelter and slapping the button to shut the fence.

Though it was bleeding freely, the puncture wasn’t deep. I’d went more than a decade in prison without being shanked, but here we were. I wasn’t worried about dying from it unless the phantom tails were also venomous. This was an opportunity for one more experiment. Removing my tunic and the mask, I grabbed a couple of carrots and started eating.

I’ve never thought of carrots as being appetizing on their own, but this wasn’t about hunger. I power-chewed my way through the first one, and the pain in my abdomen receded. The bleeding slowed down to a slow leak, and by the time I finished with the second carrot, it had stopped completely. I washed away the blood with some water from my basin, and there was no other sign the wound had occurred. No scar, not even a pink mark.

In Maincraft, eating food healed you.

"Captain’s Log: I don’t care what anyone says. Maincraft powers are OP."

Gastard’s biscuits might not have been magical, but crops I grew myself were imbued with the power of game mechanics. My spear was still in the hall, but it only required a few moments to craft a replacement. Risers of stone slabs had replaced my ladders, so I could now stand at any of my windows as well as the entrance to poke at mobs through them if I wanted to.

The phantom had flown out of the hall, so I only had to kill one more zombie before I got back in there. When it swooped back in again, I was prepared, and it died the same way the first one had. Knowing that I could heal myself made me a lot more confident about taking on the mobs. When I wasn’t fighting them, the spawn rate had seemed overwhelming, but taking them out at a chokepoint as they appeared took a lot of the pressure off.

How many zombies spawned over the course of a night? If it was dozens, that still only added up to one every twenty minutes or so. They were coming faster than that, but most of my time was spent waiting for the next one to appear. Corpses piled up at the entrance, and it was almost boring. Maybe Gastard had had the right idea, and I should have let him out to fight them the night we spent together.

Then Bill showed up.

He walked up to the entrance just beyond the bodies, real casual. Where did he keep getting pointy sticks? Did he stop by the forest before approaching my shelter, or were they considered a part of him, like the pieces of my skin he had added to himself?

His laughter put my teeth on edge, absolute Joker tier. He swiped his makeshift weapons as if inviting me to come out and play. I lunged forward with my spear, and he hopped back out of range.

“Can you talk?” I asked. “Or do you still just make noise?”

He grinned at me. His teeth looked more human than those of the other shamblers.

It didn’t look like there were other zombies around, and I couldn’t hear any phantoms. It was probably a stupid move, but I wanted to kill this guy again, so I stepped over the bodies of his comrades to face him.

The moon was full, and it cast the field in a silver, otherworldly sheen. Bill came at me faster than I expected, and I barely sidestepped his initial charge. His stick thrust into the space where I had been. I pivoted on my heel, thrusting the spear towards his midsection, but Bill twisted, avoiding the point, and grabbed the shaft of my weapon. He wasn’t moving like a zombie at all.

I yanked the spear back towards myself, unbalancing him, and followed up with a quick jab aimed at his face. He ducked, rolling to the side, coming up in a crouch. He was showing off. What the hell? Who even rolls in an actual fight? He held the stick up in a taunt, a lesser version of my spear, and laughed again.

Now that I got a good look at him, he was even more human than I remembered. His extra skin hung from his shoulders like a cloak, but his arms and hands looked like those of a normal human.

I thrust again, and he hopped out of the way, then came in under my spear. I knocked him on the side of the head with its shaft, but it didn’t stop him. He poked at my face, scratching the mask, and I backed off. He took the opportunity to get between me and the entrance to my shelter. Not good.

I charged him, and he got out of the way. He jabbed me in the back as I went by, but the point didn’t penetrate my tunic. I hopped the shamblers and got back into the hall just as a phantom screamed its way in a swoop through the space in front of the entrance.

Bill didn’t follow me in, and I shut the gate before the phantom could circle back around. We faced each other, and he giggled. That was enough for one night.