The Dark Lord of Crafting

At first, having my shelter surrounded by monsters every night had made it very hard to rest, but by now the moans of the shamblers had become my sleep sounds. Not hearing them, and not being startled awake by phantoms every few hours, was almost more unsettling. I woke in absolute darkness and wished I had previously designated a place to pee. I didn’t hear any monsters, but I didn’t want to go wandering the tunnel blind either.

My status screen gave me just enough illumination to see the worktable, and I’d set aside the necessary coins before going to bed, I could have told them apart by feel if I had needed to. Charcoal was smooth, and sticks had a wood grain texture.

I squinted my eyes against the sudden appearance of the torch and took it with me up out of the tunnel. My footsteps seemed absurdly loud, and I paused every few moments to listen for the telltale shuffle of zombie spawns, but I was alone. The tunnel seemed longer than it had on the way down, why couldn’t I see the entrance?

By the time I reached it, I realized my mistake. It was pitch black outside. I’d woken up early, and if I had been too deep for monsters to spawn before, I wasn’t now. Whatever appeared outside could follow me into the cave, and it wouldn’t despawn when the sun came up.

I hurriedly set about blocking the entrance with planks. It wouldn’t hold against a troll, but it was faster than using stone, and I could already hear a moan from somewhere outside the reach of my torch. The first zombie came within sight when I was about halfway done closing off the entrance.

There was nothing special about it, just another long-armed hunchback with misaligned teeth. The way I hacked it down would not have made Gastard proud, but it got the job done, and I quickly finished sealing myself in. Walking back to the designated safe room presented me with a new problem.

It was obvious in retrospect, but the issue didn’t occur to me until it was too late. I was relying on absolute darkness to prevent spawns, which apparently, it did. Carrying a torch, however, created a moving stretch of dimness and shadow where monsters could appear. I’d simply gotten lucky on the way up.

A shambler slipped into reality ten paces ahead of me.

“Shoots and leaves,” I swore, placing the torch on the wall so I could grip my sword with both hands and tried to use the extra weight of the stone blade to behead the thing in one stroke. The tunnel wasn’t an optimal environment for a wide swing, so the angle was off, and I ended up burying the edge of the blade in its shoulder beside its neck.

The shambler made a retching noise and pressed forward. I tugged out my sword, twisting as I did so, and it grabbed onto my arm. I was wearing my leathers, but not the mask or my gloves, and it wasted no time in chomping down on my left forearm. I gritted my teeth against the pain, dropped the sword, and pulled my knife to drive the point into its skull. The shambler collapsed, but it had taken off a solid chunk of skin with that bite, and the wound was pouring blood.

Retrieving the torch, I sprinted the rest of the way to my safe room, shut the door behind me, and poured some water over the head of the torch to put it out. The darkness did not feel safe, but I knew it was better than casting shadows. Even using my status screen as a flashlight was too much of a risk, so with one arm bleeding, I felt through my pack for the last of my bread. Those coins had an odd feel to them, kind of rubbery, and I slapped one into my hand to convert it into a loaf.

I shoved it into my mouth, nearly choking myself in the process as I tried to chew and swallow at top speed. It felt like a waste of good bread, not even bothering to enjoy it, but this was a triage situation. You didn’t stop to savor health potions, even if they were springy and delicious. I felt the pain recede and tenderly examined the bite. It was wet and warm, but the skin was back.

How was I supposed to know when the sun came up? With the adrenaline still pumping through my veins, I wasn’t about to go back to bed. Begrudgingly, I made my way back to the entrance, running one hand lightly along the wall to keep myself on track. There were some small gaps between the planks and the top of the opening, so at least I would be able to see when the sun came up.

There were already shamblers knocking on my door, and I heard a phantom swooping not long after I arrived. Still working by the feel of the coins, I carefully stacked up a pillar of stone to reinforce the plank barrier in case a troll showed up. After that, I didn’t want to just sit around and wait for the sun to rise, so I decided to try mining blind.

Moving ten paces down the tunnel to avoid accidentally breaking out, I produced my pick and started tapping at the stone. Not being able to see what I was harvesting meant this was not a good way to look for iron, but at least I would have something to show for the wasted time. Stone still added to my skill level, and I was looking forward to what the next advancement might be.

I didn’t bother counting the coins or trying to keep them organized, but I kept going until my pick broke and immediately regretted it. That was the last of my iron. What if I needed a metal pick to mine ore? Rather than heading back to the safe room and trying to craft a stone replacement in the dark, I kept going by hand. It was boring and slow, but it gave me something to do, and it wasn’t too long before the first gray of morning began to show through the crack above the planks.

After removing the barrier, I took a quick jog around the mine to check for leftover monsters. There was a shambler chilling out in one of the shacks, so I killed it, dragged it outside, and lit it on fire. Burial was not an option now that I knew exactly how dangerous the mushrooms could be. Esmelda and Gastard found me roasting the monster in a pile of logs. I’d chopped down a couple of nearby trees to restock on wood products while it was burning.

“It didn’t work?” Esmelda said. She tied off her horse to a post by one of the shacks before coming forward to touch my arm. There were still some flecks of dried blood around where I’d been bitten.

“It did,” I said. “As far as I can tell. I need to do a run-through of the mine to make sure, but it looks like the mobs don’t appear unless there’s light of some kind nearby. There’s probably some convoluted philosophical point to be made there, but I don’t know.”

“The veil is weaker in shade than in darkness?” She shook her head slightly. “That would have never occurred to me.”

“It burns well, at least,” Gastard said. He scratched his chin. It looked like he was growing out his beard.

“Yeah,” I said. “And the smell is not as bad as you would think.”

Esmelda wrinkled her nose. “It’s bad.”

We lit up a few new torches and went down into the mine. The passages were clear, so I showed them the crevice that led to the vault chamber. Gastard had to remove his cuirass to squeeze through, but Esmelda slipped in without seeming to even have to touch the stone on either side.

“What do you think this is?” I asked.

“It could be natural,” Esmelda said, though she looked doubtful. “Was there any sign of water here, or is it completely closed off?”

I gestured to the open space. “No gaps but the one we came in through, unless you see something I don’t.”

Gastard scuffed the floor with his boot. “It almost seems polished,” he said.

I watched Esmelda walk around the perimeter of the chamber, her dress swishing around her ankles, and then she froze.

“Did you hear that?” She asked.

“What?” I glanced at Gastard, and he shrugged.

“Koroshai,” Esmelda said. She dropped to the floor and pressed her ear against it. “They are below us.”

I followed her example, feeling the coolness of the rock against my face, and hearing absolutely nothing. Gastard stomped on the space where he was standing, moved, then stomped again.

“It's solid,” he said.

I sat up, rummaged through my pack, and slapped a stone pick into my hand. “I’m going to dig down a bit, any objections?”

My companions moved back to the entrance of the chamber, and I went to the space where Esmelda had paused. I mined out a three-by-three section, one block deep, and finding nothing, dug further down. The floor of the chamber was four feet thick, but there was something below it.

As soon as I removed the first block of the bottom layer, I was met with open air, and I heard a moan. I motioned for them to come closer, and the torchlight revealed a passage beneath us. Its illumination reflected off of a pair of milky eyes. The shambler reached for me, its mouth yawning, but the opening was too high for it to touch.

I dropped my torch down into the darkness. The shambler was standing on a smooth floor of what looked like expertly placed tile.

“I’ll fetch my bow,” Gastard said.

“If there are no shadows down there,” Esmelda said, her voice quiet, “how did a koroshai appear?”

“Maybe I was wrong,” I said. “But I don’t think so.”

Esmelda stood by as I mined out a larger section of the floor, creating steps that led to a two by two opening. A couple more shamblers joined the first. The sight of the trio raising their arms and swaying made me snort.

“What is it?” Esmelda asked, peering over the hole.

“It’s like a rock concert,” I said, “er—a performance. These are my fans.”

She gave me a disapproving look. “This is nothing to joke about.”

I smiled at her. “I disagree.”

Gastard returned with his bow and quiver and proceeded to take potshots. The fact that they were staring up at us made it relatively easy for him to hit them in the face. One after the other, the zombies dropped.

“I need a bow,” I said. Though I was perpetually relieved that I’d never had to deal with giant spider mobs, it did mean that I wasn’t going to be rewarded with any spider-silk string drops in the foreseeable future. “What is that bowstring made of, Gastard?”

He gave me a questioning look.

“Hemp,” he said, “why?”

“What else can you make them out of?”

He reeled off a list like I had asked him something obvious. “Flax, rawhide, silk. Almost anything. If I was in the wild, I could make a new string out of sinew if I had to.”

“Sinew,” I repeated. I’d had a vague idea that it was possible to do that just from reading novels, but I hadn’t considered the implications. Rather than heading back up the mine to my safe room, I plopped a new crafting table in the corner of the chamber. It was a waste of wood, but I liked having them scattered around wherever I might feel like trying something.

“What are you doing,” Esmelda asked, coming to stand beside me. The formula for a bow was ingrained in my mind from a thousand iterations of the game. Sticks in the top, bottom, and left center slots. Three strings down the right side of the grid.

“Something ridiculous,” I said, checking a pocket of my pack for the one type of coin I had never had a use for. Shambler meat. I didn’t want to eat it, and it had never seemed like a viable addition to any crafting recipe I knew, but here we were.

I placed the leathery coins in the slots that would have gone to string and was rewarded with a pop as a fully functional bow sprang into existence on the table and my System dinged. Esmelda had seen me craft enough now that she didn’t even bat an eye.

“What was that other noise?” She asked. “It sounded like a bell.”

“My notifications,” I said, tapping my elder sign to summon the screens.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

[Tainted Bow]

A functional, though, somewhat reprehensible, weapon. A bow is a must-have tool for any aspiring survivalist, as handy for hunting as for battle. Tainted weapons are less durable but pack an extra punch. Use responsibly.

Leather probably would have done for string just as well now that I knew the System accepted these kinds of substitutions. But all my leather came from the same source, so the result would still be tainted. Gastard had suggested linen, and I had a few leftover coins if I needed a backup, but I wanted to see what this extra punch comment was about.

“A message from the goddess,” Esmelda said, reading over my shoulder. Her eyes shone with excitement.

“If you say so.” I tapped off the screen before showing off my creation to Gastard. He gave it a test pull and frowned.

“A heavy draw,” he said. “You will exhaust yourself unless you train diligently.”

“As long as it works,” I said, taking back the weapon. “Could you lend me some arrows?”

He nodded. “You wish to explore what lies below us?”

“Sounds like a party,” I said.