“The fire,” Esmelda said, “you aren’t burned?”
“Well, yeah.” I said, “It wasn’t normal fire, it was the zombie stuff. I think it only hurts them.”
She shook her head, confusion written across her soft features. “It burns. Or it is supposed to.” She looked back at the phantom Gastard had gutted moments before. It was no longer sizzling, and by all appearances could have been a strange fish that had found its way into the forest before being sliced open. “That flame is the essence of Bedlam warring with the light of this world, and it is as deadly as any natural fire.”
My hand felt warm. The elder sign had a bluish cast to it that faded over the next few seconds. There was no notification, but it stood to reason that the blessing of the elder sign did more than let me access System screens.
Esmelda touched her forehead with her index and middle fingers together, inclining her head slightly. Gastard knelt.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s this now?”
“The goddess has chosen you,” Gastard said. “Forgive my doubts.”
“It’s cool,” I said. “We don’t need to make a big thing of it.”
“You are one of her heroes,” Esmelda said, speaking quickly. “I believed it before, but this is proof above everything. Nothing like this has happened in centuries. There were others like you in the past. But we have been left to ourselves for so long. The people of Erihseht need to know who you are. You should come to church.”
“Church?” I said. That wasn’t my idea of a good time. While I couldn’t be an atheist under the circumstances, that didn’t mean I needed to go get involved in organized religion.
“Yes, there is so much Pastor Tipple can tell you, and so much we can learn from you in turn.”
“You said there were others like me. You mean other than Kevin?”
“The Pastor can tell you better than I can. Not today, of course. But…” she thought about it, “the morning after tomorrow, Gastard and I will come for you. We will bring you to the village. There are so many people you need to meet.”
“Is the mayor going to be okay with that?”
Her expression became severe. “I’ll make sure that he is.”
Gastard rose. “When I was young,” he said. “I wanted to be a ritter. A templar. To fight the shadow, and it was only a dream. I feel that day is approaching now.” He walked to the dead phantom and picked it up by its tail, then used his sword to hack off the gore that had slid out of its belly.
“Why don’t the dead ones burn?” I asked.
Esmelda touched her forehead again, her soft, oval face taking on a reverent expression. It had to be a religious gesture. “Its essence has returned to Bedlam, but the flesh is just flesh. Without its spirit, there is nothing to war with the light.”
“I will take this,” Gastard said, tying the phantom to the back of his horse, who didn’t appear to appreciate the burden. The animal snorted and stomped its hooves in agitation.
“You're welcome to it,” I said. “There are plenty more where that came from.”
I retrieved my hoe, then went under the rock outcrop to make sure there weren’t any more monsters waiting for an opportune moment to surprise us. It looked clear, so I came back out and started mining. It probably looked strange to them, me lightly tapping the stone with a tool until cracks appeared. Esmelda came closer so she could see me work, watching intently as the cracks spread.
When the stone vanished, she jumped.
“Where did it go?”
I showed her the coin that had appeared in my hand, and she picked it up, turning it over in her fingers.
“It feels like stone,” she said. “Does it work this way for everything you collect?”
“Every material has a different coin,” I said, “and then I just throw them to turn them back. I might not have to throw them, actually, I can also slam them down. I’m not entirely sure what the rules are, but it’s working okay so far. It might be a velocity issue. Nothing pops out when I drop my pack, anyway.”
“It is a miracle.” She placed the coin back in my palm, and I felt her fingertips brush against my skin. “If a strange one.” She paused. “Thank you, for before. You were trying to save me from the phantoms.”
“Oh, sorry about that.”
She smiled, and though she was already pretty, the expression made her beautiful. “You don’t need to apologize for a good intention, however unnecessary.”
“Esmelda,” Gastard said, having collected both the horses. “Your father.”
“Of course.” She stepped away. “He will wonder at the delay. We were only bringing you seeds.”
“You said you’ll be back the morning after tomorrow?”
“We will.” She glanced at the outcrop. “May your harvest be fruitful.”
“It will be,” I said. “This is exactly what I needed.”
The pair rode off, leaving me to my work. Mining stone was murder on my pick. The wood couldn’t handle it, and after collecting only ten coins, the head shattered. Splinters went flying, and one of them nicked my cheek.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s got to be enough.”
I spent a minute sorting through my coins and crafting a fresh worktable so I could replace all my wooden tools on the spot.
Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting
[Stone Shovel]
Formula: Stone Block (2) Stick (2)
Damage Rating: 3.5
Speed: Slow
The heaviest shovel, for use with man hands. Stone tools will last longer than wood and be less likely to break when used improperly.
I set the shovel aside. I’d gotten good use out of the wooden one, but digging out the basement of my new shelter had been enough for it to show signs of wear. Everything needed to be upgraded eventually, but right now, all I wanted was a pick. Fortunately, it was the next step up.
[Stone Pick]
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Formula: Stone Block (3), Stick (2)
Damage Rating: 3
Speed: Slow
A pick of destiny. This tool marks your ascent into a new realm of resource gathering, including basic metals. Stone tools will last longer than wood and be less likely to break when used improperly.
A blow from my hoe had done little to the phantom, so there really was something to these damage ratings. Iron. That’s what I needed. But for now, I could make do with what I had. Mining was faster with the new pick, though still not nearly as fast as chopping wood or slapping grass. After collecting nearly one hundred cubic feet of granite, it looked like a giant had taken a bite out of the outcrop, and I could tell my fresh pick was nearly at its limit. It was so run through with cracks; it looked like a block just before it popped, so I dropped it and took my coin collection home.
There wasn’t enough time left in the day for me to plant all of the seeds Esmelda had brought me, but I hit a square of dirt with my hoe and shoved a random seed in the soil as a test. The little tree sprouts didn’t look any bigger than they had been when I left, but trees took a long time to grow anyway, so it was amazing they had developed as much as they had already.
Shortly thereafter, I was prepared to face the night. I cleared out the cells. With luck, Bill would spawn in one of them and be trapped. Then I fiddled around for a bit after a snack of a mushroom and nuts. The stone I’d gathered sufficed to work my way all the way up the ladder of tools; dagger, ax, and sword.
The weapons were unbalanced, and heavy enough to wear out my arms with a few swings, but they looked good. The stonework was so smooth that it might be mistaken for a dull metal at a glance.
In Minecraft, you can’t forge armor out of stone. The lowest quality defense comes from leather, which is almost more work to gather than iron, and completely inferior. Stone, however, could be converted into things like bricks and slabs and stairs.
With one coin in the center of the grid, I pulled the lever.
[Stone Button]
A basic operational mechanism, after the button is attached to a surface, it can be activated by touch or with a sanguinum signal.
Oh yeah, buttons. As a Minecraft player, I hadn’t gotten that deep into making automatic farms and sliding doors, but the mechanics were familiar to me. Was there redstone in this world to power devices? Sanguinum had to be the equivalent. This was the most direct one-to-one conversion of a Minecraft function that I’d seen yet. It opened up the possibility of some impressive builds, especially considering this was a world without technology. Lights, elevators, automation. Would sanguinum serve as an infinite power source? In the game, using redstone that way wasn’t a big deal, but in real life, unlimited electricity was a serious cheat.
The button looked identical to the one I’d already made of wood. I rubbed it between my fingers. The surface was rougher than most of the other items that crafting generated, but the edges were flawlessly rounded. An entire square foot of stone had been remade into this little thing. The System wasn’t terribly concerned with conservation of mass and energy, but that had been clear enough already.
What could it be attached to? My shelter didn’t have a door, as I just sealed the entrance every night, but there were fence gates aplenty. Pressing it against the gate did nothing, and neither did throwing it like a coin. I kept messing around, trying unique positions, until it clicked into place against the fence post where the hinges of the gate attached.
The same crafting force that kept my log house together glued it in place. Trying to pry it free by hand was a lost cause, but in the process, I pressed the button, and it sank into the wood. The gate swung open.
I pressed it again, and it popped back up. The gate swung closed. Oddly, the gate no longer opened normally. It fixed in place unless the button was pressed.
Ridiculous.
Two blocks got me a pressure plate. It was a two inch thick floor tile, and it worked the same way as the button except that had to be placed on the floor. Three blocks got me six slabs, the same way it had worked with wood.
The next link in the chain was bricks, and that was as high as it went. The bricks were interesting only in that they were separable. In the game, a block of bricks is still a solid block with a distinct pattern on its face. This was a block that divided into an equal amount of bricks. They stacked like logs, and the crafting force would seal them together if I placed them exactly on top of each other, or exactly halfway off. It was basically Legos.
However much strength it would take to unseal them was more than I had. I tried throwing them, dropping them, and pulling them apart. The seal didn’t budge. However, when I tapped the paired bricks around the edges where they met with a pick. They fell apart. I’d never had a reason to break apart logs that way. I could just harvest them back into a coin with an ax, but after a little experimentation, the pick worked on them as well.
There was a moan behind me. I’d been so engrossed in playing with my new toys that I hadn’t noticed a shambler had spawned in the first cell. It wasn’t Bill, but it was free leather.
The zombie pressed itself against the cage like it wanted to get stabbed. It was the perfect opportunity to test out my new sword. Extra weight mattered little when I was simply jabbing it through a monster’s exposed neck. The edge of the blade did not suffer for being stone, it was almost scary how easily it went in. The zombie’s moan cut short, and it collapsed. Opening the cage, I poked it a few more times to make sure it was dead, and dragged it out of the cell before shutting the gate.
My eyes fell on the latch that kept it shut. None of the zombies had been smart enough to figure out how to open one yet, but they weren’t locked. If Bill appeared, I would wager all my accumulated coins he would know how to reach through the bars and unlatch the thing.
Good thing I had buttons.
To improve security, I placed a button beside each gate and crafted a case for them out of wood slabs so no pesky tentacles could slip around to press them. Then it was back to business.
The sounds of my nightly visitors had already begun outside, so I picked an unused corner of the basement to bury the newly skinned shambler. Looking down at the misshapen frame, a mass of nearly bloodless musculature run through with mycelium, I had a thought. I’d made only one attempt to harvest meat, and it had failed, but my Miner skill had been lower then, and the resources available to be collected had since expanded.
Not wanting to touch its exposed flesh more than I had to, I retrieved my knife, and spent a few moments stoically tapping the edge against the dead shambler's thigh.
Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting
[Tainted Meat]
Rich with the flavors of the swamps of Bedlam, this meat is the quickest path to becoming a vegetarian. Consume at your own risk.
I wasn’t going to eat it, but I was delighted to learn that if I ever killed a cow, I could now harvest its meat as easily as I did any other resource. After I was done with the shambler, it was down to bones, bits of fungus, and unnameable organs that apparently didn’t count as meat. I buried it all. While I finally had enough leather to finish my outfit, there was one more thing I wanted to get out of my granite blocks.
Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting
[Furnace]
Ah, a warm welcome to the world of crafting, survivor. The furnace is a crucial tool in your journey towards ascension. A gateway to the art of smelting, capable of transforming raw ore into forgeable material. This is a must-have for any aspiring blacksmith or armorer. Oven, crucible, and best friend, this device is a bridge between subsistence and success. Treat her well.
It appeared as a medallion, a circle of stone engraved with a simple image of a flame within a square. My chest was to the right of the worktable, so I threw the medallion down on its left, and the furnace appeared in front of me. It was five feet high, and built like a dual oven. The doors and hinges were all smoothed stone, and there were no inner mechanisms or heating elements I could see, just two empty chambers. There were, however, coin slots on the side of the ovens, and a catch like the change dispenser on a vending machine.
You could do a lot with a furnace in Minecraft. Smelting ores was a necessity for advancing beyond the stone age, but it would also cook food, and transform certain blocks. Assuming its function was the same, I could turn sand into glass, and logs into coal. There were also some more obscure uses, like turning a cactus into green dye, but smelting was its primary function. I didn’t have any ore to throw in, but I slipped a log coin into the lower slot, and the furnace instantly grew warm.
When I opened the lower oven, I was met with a roaring blaze. The heat blasted me in the face, and I shut the door before my eyebrows could get singed. Lacking ore, I slipped another log coin into the top slot, and the furnace got to work. The log was floating upright in the top oven as if it had been caught in a gravity bottle, flames rippling up and down its exterior, but the heat was too intense for me to watch the process in progress.
A minute after I closed the oven, a new coin popped out of the furnace and rolled into the dispenser. It was black and unreflective. Charcoal.