Once again, I sat across from Captain Virik in the mess hall. A handful of lizardfolk miners stood around the table, listening intently.

I leaned forward, using hand motions to clarify my story.

“…so I backed up to the boss basilisk, and then spun around and cast my Flash spell. This blinded the beast for a few seconds, which meant it couldn’t turn me to stone. While it was stunned, I hit its face with a bolt of fire. Then I struck it with two bolts of poison, and then it died.”

The miners clapped. Virik shook his head slowly.

“Whenn the minne door closed,” he said, “I gave you up for dead. But the basilisks are gonne and you are here. Againn, we owe you a great debt.”

“You know what I’m looking for. Can you make me the items?”

Virik pointed to another lizardfolk seated at the table. “Kiliz is our chief armorer, annd though we finnd the items utterly disgraceful, your request is his first priority.”

Kiliz didn’t look pleased, but he raised his stylus. “Virik told me what you wannt, but I nneed details. Materials, weights, and dimennsionns.”

“The material is easy. Everything needs to be made of silver. Not a silver alloy or silver plate. Pure silver.”

I spent the next twenty minutes describing the precise shapes of the items I was looking for. Kiliz made a disgusted face at several points, but he never refused me.

After I finished detailing my request, I looked intently at the armorer. “How long do you think you’ll need?”

Kiliz set down his stylus and looked at everything he’d written. Then he sighed.

“If we work all nnight, we will have everythinng for you at dawnn.”

⚔

I spent the night in a wooden hut that had belonged to one of the petrified miners. While lying on the cot, I thought about my attack on the temple. I hoped that silver could hurt werewolves, but I wasn’t certain—this game had no reference manual. It was possible that the blacksmith’s work wouldn’t do me any good. If that was the case, I was going to die horribly.

At dawn, three knocks sounded on the door. Captain Virik stood next to Kiliz, who held a knapsack in one hand and a small pouch in the other. I smiled and beckoned them both inside.

Without a word, Kiliz handed me the knapsack, a dour expression on his face. I opened it to see it filled with crossbow bolts, all gleaming in the morning light.

“Sixty bolts,” Kiliz said. “All pure silver.”

“Why do you nneed so manny?” Virik asked.

“The beasts I’m hunting are smart and fast. I’m not sure these will be enough.”

I pulled out five of the bolts, and they were precisely the same size and weight as the other bolts I was carrying. I slipped the bolts into the slots of my bandoliers, and when I was finished, my character sheet said I had 60 +1 silver bolts. Perfect.

“And here are the other items you requested,” Kiliz said.

The armorer set down the pouch, his head lowered.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“These are the most dishonnorable weaponns I’ve ever seenn. After this labor, I must bathe myself and beg forgivenness from Eothis.”

I couldn’t argue, so I simply smiled as I took the large pouch from the blacksmith. I checked its contents.

“Perfect.” I tied the pouch to my belt. “It’s been a pleasure working with you. If you wouldn’t mind, though, I have one more request. Nothing dishonorable this time.”

Both lizardfolk set their teeth. Despite their protestations of gratitude, they’d clearly hoped to have seen the last of me.

“Yes, Dylann?” Virik asked.

“I need to get back to the Baildril. Can you get me a horse and a rider?”

“Of course,” the lizardfolk captain said, letting out a sigh of relief. “That will be easy to arrannge.”

⚔

I traveled from Zelenkh to the Baildril on the back of a brown meadowsteed, my hands around the waist of a lizardfolk soldier. The soldier didn’t speak as we traveled south, and I was grateful—my thoughts were focused on werewolves. I had no quest to slay Palomir and his confederates, but quests had stopped mattering days ago. I couldn’t go on with the game until the they were dead.

The rider dropped me off at the eastern edge of the swamp. As before, there were plenty of flowers for alchemy, but I didn’t care. If silver couldn’t kill the werewolves, no potion in the world would save me.

I continued northwest for the better part of an hour, lost in thought. I vividly remembered my panic from two nights prior. Palomir and his friends had overpowered me, cut me for their dinner, and hunted me as part of their sadistic game. They’d broken my will to resist and driven me to the limit of mortal fear, but they hadn’t killed me. And they were going to regret that.

As soon as I saw the temple on the horizon, I took a deep breath. As before, a humanoid figure stood between the columns of the entrance, as still as a statue. It was too short to be Kolien. Judging from the red hair, it had to be Berthar.

I loaded a +1 silver bolt into the crossbow and approached the temple. Once I got within shouting distance, I took a deep breath.

“Berthar!" I cried. "Dinner’s here!”

“Delightful!” The dwarf laughed. “The prey returns to the predator!”

Berthar raised his fists above his head and grew until he stood at least seven feet tall. After transforming into a red wolf, he dropped to all fours and sprinted.

The beast ran impossibly fast—despite the distance, the red blur would reach me in less than a minute. I knelt, aimed the crossbow, and waited. I’d only get one shot, and if I missed, I’d be dead. If silver failed to wound the beast, I’d be dead.

“Come on, Konrad,” I whispered. “The first rule of building a fantasy world is that nothing’s unbeatable. If you put werewolves in the game, they need to have a weakness.”

Berthar’s triumphant voice filled the air. “You should never have come back!”

The figure flew toward me. I just barely made out the bright yellow eyes and the white, pointed teeth. Then I fired.

I heard my bolt strike something, and I was rewarded with a high-pitched scream.

I stood and quickly loaded another silver bolt. But when I looked around, the wolf was nowhere to be seen. I heard soft weeping, and as I searched the area, I saw a naked dwarf lying on the ground twenty paces away. Tears of relief ran from my eyes.

“Thank you, Konrad,” I whispered.

Looking closer, I saw that my bolt was lodged in the dwarf’s collarbone. His health bar had fallen to a third, but it wasn’t dropping further. My bolt had wounded him and had transformed him to his humanoid form, but it hadn’t been lethal. Interesting.

“End this, p-p-please!” Berthar wept. “The agony… is unbearable."

Part of me wanted to mock the dwarf. After all, he’d argued about the best way to carve me for dinner. Part of me wanted to kill him immediately. But I had questions.

“Can you still turn into a wolf?” I asked.

Berthar pressed his eyes shut as tears flowed down his face. “I… I can’t even move.”

“Did you know you were vulnerable to silver?”

A head shake. “I’ve touched silver countless times. But when it pierces the skin, the pain is beyond all endurance. The agony…”

I formed a hypothesis. When silver pierces a werewolf’s skin, the enchantment ends and the beast returns to its humanoid form, but the beast doesn't die. What would happen if the bolt entered the werewolf’s heart?

There was only one way to find out. I loaded another silver bolt and aimed at the dwarf’s chest.

“Heart,” I said.

Berthar screamed as the second bolt entered his chest, and then his entire body burst into flame. In moments, all that remained of him were ashes. +2,100 XP!

2,100 experience points seemed far too low for killing a creature so close to being invulnerable, but I didn’t care. Only one thing mattered—if silver through the heart would kill Berthar, it would kill the rest of them.