The star was cold, even through my gauntlets. Frost was forming on my fingers as I held it. Its radiant core had an almost physical pull; I could feel my awareness being drawn into it, the world around me fading as the glowing flower within the crystal unfolded endlessly.

I dropped it. Whatever it was didn’t matter right now. Gastard was slumped over on the wet ground, his armor in pieces, dark blood soaking through the back of his tunic beneath jagged shards of diamond.

Summoning the chest from my inventory, I threw it open and started unwrapping potions. Not a lot of boosters, though I had an Invisibility left, but that wasn’t what I needed. I grabbed a Healing Potion and turned to Gastard.

He was unconscious, so I carefully laid him on his back and removed his helm. It was damaged anyway. His dirty blonde hair was matted and wet. A fragment of the interior of the helm had cut his forehead badly enough to leave a hanging flap of skin, the drawback of making armor out of crystal, and half his face was slick with blood. It looked bad, but it wasn’t the real problem.

The end of the Wither’s tail was still poking out of his stomach. We’d been through this with Esmelda. He could drink a potion first, and then I’d remove the spike and give him another. I could get his mouth open, but pouring liquid into an unconscious man’s throat was generally a bad idea.

Was he even breathing? Couldn’t tell. But he didn’t need to drink a Splash potion.

I was out.

“Kevin!” I shouted. The former Dark Lord paused with his hand outstretched. He had moved behind me and was reaching for the Wither’s star. “Splash Healing? You got any.”

“I used them all.” He didn’t drop his arm, and he was looking at me like he was waiting for me to command him not to pick up the rare resource. This was not the moment to test me.

“Bring that here,” I said, and started rifling through Gastard’s belt. Miraculous as it seemed, he had exactly what I was looking for in an otherwise empty pouch. Why hadn’t he used it against the Wither? That wasn’t too much of a mystery. He was a sword-first thinker.

I smashed the bottle against his chest, and red mist bloomed around us, sinking into his skin. My heart bar partially refilled, so the potion obviously worked, but he didn’t wake up. Kevin brought the star, his hand clenching so tightly around it that its points pricked into his skin, and I snatched it away from him.

I put it in the Storage Ring.

Maybe the spike was preventing him from healing. Rolling Gastard onto his side, I put my hand around the broken end of the bone and pulled. The sound of its ridges dragging through Gastard’s flesh was sickening, and fresh blood dripped from the wound, though not as actively as it should have.

Was his heart not beating?

I forced open Gastard’s mouth and poured in a potion.

“He’s dead,” Kevin said. “His essence is already gone. A hit like that does DoT.”

Damage over Time. It hadn’t been an instant kill. If I had been faster, or if Gastard had possessed the presence of mind to drink the potion in his pocket as he went down…

I pulled him up into a sitting position, supporting his back with my arm. Red liquid poured from his mouth, mostly wasted potion. He hadn’t swallowed, but he also wasn’t choking. My heart was beating in my ears, the aftereffects of the battle and magical stimulants still coursing through my veins. Despite the adrenaline, I felt calm. My mind had pulled back from the situation, from myself, and it was like I was observing a scene in a film.

“You should keep mining,” Kevin said, “or give Digger to me and I’ll do it. More mobs are going to come.”

He was right about him. I focused on the aetheric sense, reached for Gastard, and felt nothing.

My hands moved of their own accord, harvesting Gastard’s boots, which were the only piece of his set still in reasonable shape, and collecting his sword. My inventory needed to be shuffled around a bit to give it a slot, but I couldn’t risk losing it, even aside from the essence Gastard had already imbued it with; this had been his father’s weapon. He’d never forgive me if I left it behind.

“What are you so freaked out about?” Kevin asked. “He’ll be back.”

I shut the lid of my chest and popped it in the Storage Ring. “You said Towk could claim our souls if we died here.”

“Yeah, well. He might. Whatever, man, I was trying to be nice.”

“You’re bad at it.” I walked back to the pit. “Come down here with me.”

With Gastard gone, I couldn’t let Kevin out of my sight. Not that he would get very far in this swamp without equipment, but I couldn’t underestimate him. There could be material here he could use to give himself an edge, or if nothing else, to make himself more of a nuisance.

Before the fight had started, I’d harvested a single block of a new material. There was more amid the bedlamite. Not a massive vein, ten blocks, ‌and that was it. Durin’s Digger was giving me a weak pull, another deposit farther away.

<<<>>>

Viridium

A meta-material with unlimited potential. While Viridium will not accept enchantment, each item crafted from this meta-material develops in its own fashion relative to how it is utilized. When worn, it will continually absorb essence from its bearer, as well as the environment, becoming more and more akin to what it believes it is meant to be.

<<<>>>

“Do you know anything about this?” I asked Kevin, and he shrugged.

“Never found any,” he said, reading the entry with interest. “You can let me try to use it. I’ve got a quest for crafting meta-materials, and this is the last one I need. If I get another unique formula, it would be a win for both of us.”

“I’ve got the same quest,” I said. “No way you’re getting any of this.”

He pouted, and I scrolled down to find the other new entry in my Materials Log.

<<<>>>

Heart of the Hollow King

These crystals form over millennia of slow accretion in areas where ambient essence is sufficiently tainted by Discord. They can be used to craft a Hollow King, a rare mob that attracts Hollows and absorbs them into its body to increase its power. Though Hollow Kings can assert influence over lesser entities, they accept no authority but their own, and are as likely to attack their crafter as anything else they see.

The Heart of the Hollow King is highly volatile.

Do not drop.

<<<>>>

I flinched at the warning. I’d already dropped it once. At least the ground here was soft.

So the Wither was called a Hollow King. Other than that, it was pretty close to the Minecraft version. They dropped Nether Stars when they died, and those could craft beacons, structures that gave players bonuses when they were nearby. I had to assume there was potential for a Survivor equivalent of the beacon as well. Not that I was interested in building any permanent structures in this swamp.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Another healing potion put me at full health, and an arrow zipping through the stalks told me it was time for us to go. Hollows were incoming.

“So, are we going back?” Kevin asked.

“Not until we find atreanum.” The viridium sounded like a double-edged sword. Unique items that drained your essence if you used them. I’d craft something with it for the Quest reward when we got somewhere less hostile.

Leaving Gastard in the swamp was not an option. He’d get a new body when he respawned, but still no. If nothing else, any zombie that got to him would have a shot at becoming another Bill. I hadn’t thought about my doppelgänger in a while. The last time I’d seen him had been in Bedlam; the other swamp. Maybe he’d gotten trapped in the time dilation and eaten by the Kulu. That would have been nice.

I used the Elytron to zip me back up to the mushroom cap where we’d left the other wyverns. It would have been too difficult to climb while carrying Gastard’s body. After removing the planks that had kept the wyverns in their box, I wrapped him in cloth and tied him onto Epsilon’s back.

“You take Gamma,” I said. “I’m on Delta.”

The three wyverns were similar enough that I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart without the benefit of long familiarity. Gamma had a wider mouth, and Delta’s demeanor was calmer. He took direction better. He wasn’t Noivern, but if we had to do any fighting in the air, that was the beast I wanted underneath me.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Kevin sulked. “I haven’t found any other metals on this island.”

“Digger’s got a bead on something,” I slowly waved the orichalcum pick in an arc, feeling for the direction of the pull. “We keep looking until there’s nothing left to look for.”

We didn’t have to fly far, a couple of miles over the uneven canopy. Reds, browns, and purples passed below us. The fungal jungle could have been a work of Jackson Pollock.

I’d never liked modern art.

A fist of bedlamite rose a hundred feet above the canopy ahead of us, draped in thick layers of moss. Spores poofed as we landed and I checked out bearings. The pull of the rare material was almost directly below us, and it was strong.

The wyverns got a new stable. We wouldn’t be taking any of them with us. Some mobs ate each other, but we hadn’t encountered any that could threaten the wyverns in the skies above this island, so they were safer by themselves than with us.

“What are you doing?” Kevin asked as he saw me carrying Gastard’s body further up the pillar.

“Burying him,” I said. The wyverns, tame as they were, would have definitely eaten him when they were out of my sight. And leaving him out would just attract other monsters.

“You’re wasting time.”

I ignored him. It was only a few minutes of hiking to the top, and I cleared away the moss before encasing his body in basalt. It occurred to me that out of all the coffins I’d crafted since arriving in Plana, this was the first that would actually be one.

“Rest well,” I said, patting the smooth blocks. “I’ll see you soon.”

Kevin was impatient to get moving again, though that didn’t stop him from nagging me as we made our way down to the canopy.

“It’s just us now,” he said. “I need better equipment. You should try to make something from viridium. I could use it if you don’t want to. Take one for the team.”

Team? No, thanks.

We reached an outcrop without a straightforward way to descend further, and I chose that moment to drop a worktable.

“You’re really going to?” Kevin’s mouth dropped.

“You can have steel,” I said. “I didn’t bring any orichalchum.”

“It’s better than leathers.” He held out his hands as I sorted through coins. “I’ll make them. My stuff looks better.”

I gave him a long, blank stare.

“C’mon,” he said. “It’s been forever since I got to make anything, and I’ve been good, right? I got you out of that pond, didn’t I? You could've drowned.”

He had helped, and I wasn’t sure why. If he had chosen that moment to run away, I couldn’t have ordered him not to, and the Wither, the Hollow King, would have finished Gastard before going after him. Kevin could have made it back to the wyverns and gone his own way. I’d given him a standing order not to leave me to die if it came up, but that would only delay his escape, not prevent it. The Curse of Paralysis was as limited as the Curse of Weakness.

“Hop on one foot,” I said.

“What? N–” Kevin froze, his eyelids twitching.

“Just checking.” The oath was still in effect. Gastard’s ability was binding Kevin beyond death. Did that mean the One Who Knocks hadn't captured his essence? At the very least, no one had torn apart his soul. He was a hero, he would come back.

To stave off a tantrum, I passed Kevin a handful of resources as soon as he unfroze.

“Have at it,” I said.

He crafted a full set of steel plate, a sword, and a shield. His insistence that his stuff looked better than mine wasn’t wrong. My equipment was made from superior materials, so he couldn’t match that aspect, and my tools had once been his, but the effect of a higher Artisan skill was undeniable. His armor came with fluting, excessive ridges, and decorative inlays.

His gaze fell on my shield with a look of jealousy. “I don’t have enough XP to do the runes.”

He must have gotten experience from dousing magma blobs, but he hadn’t taken part in the Hollow King fight, or done much else in the swamp that would earn advancement. We could face just about anything where we were going, and I did want him to be useful.

“Take this one,” I said, tossing him my already half destroyed shield. He frowned but didn’t complain, which was big of him. My level was back over ten, and the Looting Orb was half full. We’d killed plenty of monsters on the way here, and the Hollow King had been worth a significant uptick on its own. A couple of minutes later, I had a fresh wooden shield to slip my arm into.

Kevin had been frowning at his sword while I worked, no doubt silently bemoaning its mundane nature, and as he clipped it on his waist, my hand went automatically to my own.

There was nothing there. I’d retrieved the buster and popped it back into the Storage Ring, but Caliburn was at the bottom of the swamp, in the hands, or tentacles, of god knew what.

I took a deep breath. We could go back. Retrieving it would delay us by a few hours, which wouldn’t be too significant in the scheme of things, but the thought of doing so—

“Expletive!” I kicked the worktable hard enough to knock it off the cliff. It bounced off of a mushroom and disappeared further down. Whatever, I had plenty of wood. Falling in the water, feeling myself sink, it had been too close to what had happened to me before. As far as I knew, that pond wasn’t a time sink, and there was no Kulu waiting at the bottom to drag me deeper, but still.

My hands were shaking. I didn’t want to go back.

“Dude,” Kevin said, “did you just yell, ‘expletive?’”

“I left Caliburn, my sword. Lost it in the pond.”

“Ick,” Kevin grimaced, “how good was it?”

“The best I could make when I made it. Xanthium.”

“So you want to go get it?”

I shook my head. “I’m going to craft a new one.”

Caliburn was valuable, and it had served me well, but I couldn’t bring myself to dredge a swamp to get it back. There would be other monsters, and I’d have to block off the water and drain it in sections. My new armor didn’t have Aqua Affinity. Hours was a conservative estimate.

Kevin looked out over the dim sea of fungus, lit here and there with eerie greens and whites.

“Probably shouldn’t have kicked that table then.”

I crafted a new one, and then a furnace. A phantom did a flyby, and Kevin killed it. He didn’t question me as I inserted coins into the furnace and stood there glowering as it smelted the viridium. It stole essence from its bearer, and the Looting Orb absorbed extra for me to use. Maybe they would cancel each other out.

“Hey,” I asked, “where did you get the Looting Orb? It wasn’t a drop, was it? And what about the Storage Ring? Did that come from another hero?”

“Nope and nope.” Seeing that we would be here until the furnace had done its job, he plopped down on the edge of the outcrop, kicking his legs like a kid sitting beside a pool. “Those are unique formulas from quest rewards.”

“So you can make more of them?”

“Nah. Well, sort of. The unique part means you can only have one at a time. Since you attuned the ring, I could make myself a replacement, though.”

The first viridium coin plinked into the dispenser, and I picked it up. It looked like copper rusted green. As an ingot, it wasn’t much to look at, rough and greenish-brown, somewhere between orichalcum and cerulium in weight.

Two of them would make a sword. When the second coin plinked, I brought them both to the worktable. Center top, center middle, and a stick below. I pulled the level.

<<<>>>

[Viridium Sword]

Damage Rating: 8

Speed: Average

Weapons crafted from viridium are Hungry. They absorb essence from those they strike, or if they go unused, their bearer. Absorbed essence will allow the weapon to approach Perfection only when fully repaired. Fortunately, such blades recover lost durability provided they have sufficient aetheric resources to do so.

<<<>>>

It was ugly, but also kind of beautiful; gray and brown metal eighty percent covered in a suspiciously organic looking pattern of pale green rust. The edge, pitted and cracked, was still sharp. There was nothing outstanding about its stats, but it sounded like they would improve.

Viridium couldn’t be enchanted, but it came with Mending and Looting baked in, as well as the evolution factor.

Perfection. Capital P. What would that look like?

Ding.