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Achievement: Purifier (1)

You have defeated a Nemesis. The forces of shadow recognize you as their opponent. Increased resistance to Bedlam Taint, disease, and poison.

I stared at my status logs as I chewed through yet another beet. My hands were almost back to normal, and Gastard was still outside, having the time of his life. What the hell had just happened? Adrenaline, fear, and a little touch of crazy. I’d lost it. If Gastard hadn’t been there, the other shamblers would have eaten me alive. Of course, if Gastard hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place.

So Bill was a ‘Nemesis.’ Was that the technical name for a shambler that stole your face, or just a general term for powerful monsters? Would increased resistance mean I could survive being bitten by a shambler?

I was level sixteen now, so killing Bill had been worth some experience, even if that experience didn’t seem to count for anything. In Minecraft, you used your levels as a resource to enchant items, so maybe it would have the same function here if I ever ran across any enchantments to use.

Sitting on my coffin, I spent a few minutes in silence just getting my head together before going back outside. Gastard’s horse was in the shelter with me, restlessly testing the boundaries of its fenced area. Getting it down the steps had been precarious, but it was a well-trained animal, and I got the sense that it was more bothered by being separated from its master than the occasional moan from outside.

I’d rested long enough. My spear was on the ground near the entrance, so I picked it up and watched Gastard walk through the field of shambler corpses. He was making sure they were all dead.

“Have you had enough?” I asked.

Gastard gave me a hard look. “The forces of shadow are without limit. All we can do is destroy them as they come.”

“But we aren’t really destroying them,” I said. “Their souls or essence or whatever, it just goes back to Bedlam, and they respawn again tomorrow.”

The would-be templar shrugged. “Who is to say? They may return, but does the crossing weaken them? How many times can a soul be reborn before it begins to fray?”

That rhetorical question hit a little too close to home. I went to find Bill. He looked dead, but some of his tentacles were still twitching. I’d never bludgeoned a zombie to death, so maybe he wasn’t completely gone.

“Let’s call it a night,” I said. “Help me bring him in.” I could have carried him myself, but I didn’t want to throw him over my shoulder when one of those lamprey mouths could still latch onto me. Gastard obliged, and he held Bill’s legs while we brought him inside to deposit the body in one of the smaller cells.

I shut all the gates and sat back down on top of my coffin.

“You should be glad.” Gastard said, “We were victorious.”

“It doesn’t feel like victory,” I said. “I’m just tired.”

Gastard grunted, and sat beside me, laying his sword across his knees. Its edge was stained with dark, clotted blood.

“I was once in the service of Lord Godwod,” he said. “I won honor in his name, competing in tournaments, dueling on his behalf. My blood is not noble, but my father was a knight before me, and his father. This is their sword.”

He produced a handkerchief and began cleaning the blade.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The lord treated me like a son and showered me with gifts. I let myself be fooled. He has a daughter, and I was often at her side because he trusted me with her protection. We pledged our love for one another, and I asked him for her hand. He refused.”

“Is that why you left?”

“It is.”

It seemed like an overreaction to me, but maybe Gastard was a romantic under all that chainmail. He hadn’t gotten himself killed, and he’d found a place for himself among the lillits. He might have other jobs, but he was performing a similar function for the mayor, a personal man-at-arms. Boffin trusted him with keeping his daughter safe just as the lord had.

“You and Esmelda,” I said, “is there anything going on there?”

He looked up at me, his face flat. “What do you mean?”

“Uh,” I said, “are you like, together.”

His lips turned down at the suggestion. “I have loved but once in my life, and I love her still.”

“Sorry,” I said, “it’s none of my business.”

He grunted, returning to the maintenance of his weapon. “What of you? You came from another world, is there some love left behind you?”

“Not really,” I said. “Well, I had a family, but not romance. Not for a long time. Sometimes I would convince myself that I was in love, but I was just lonely and pretending.”

He paused, giving me a confused look. “Pretending?”

“It was more of an obsession than love,” I said. This was a subject I didn’t need to go into in detail. The last real relationship I had was when I was a teenager. When I was locked up, there were penpals here and there, girls who would write to me, or I would talk to them on the phone. But those relationships hadn’t been romantic, at least not on their end.

“Ah,” he said as if he understood. “Schwärmerei.”

“Sure, whatever that is.”

“Boffin has asked me not to bring Esmelda here again,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “He mentioned that. It’s too dangerous. I get it. I wasn’t asking about her because I was interested in her, I was just curious.” Was I just curious? She was adorable, but there was nothing between us. We barely knew each other. Esmelda just happened to be the first young woman I’d met in the new world, and the First Girl rule only applied in anime. Romance was something I could worry about after I wasn’t being attacked by increasingly dangerous monsters every night, and at that point, there were sure to be other options out there.

Gastard’s grunt was noncommittal.

***

The following morning, Bill was still alive. When I went to the cell to check on him, he greeted me with a burbling noise, and one of his hands brushed against the fences, though he didn’t rise. So you could knock a zombie unconscious, that was a weird thought.

“Good morning,” I said, “how are you feeling?”

The response was a weaker version of the insane laughter that had been tormenting me over the last few nights. Gastard had left with the sunrise, informing me that he would return with more iron if it was available. He suggested we should train together, and I was happy to agree. It looked like I wasn’t going to be leading a peaceful life in the near future, and my sword skills were in serious need of development. Not that I wasn’t grateful for everything my System had given me, but I wouldn’t have minded some System-based advantages to combat to go along with the crafting.

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I’d managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before he left, and I didn’t want to waste the day. The first order of business was cleanup. There were a host of shambler corpses to deal with, and that was a lot of leather to leave on the ground. It was a gruesome business, but at this point, I was getting desensitized to seeing shamblers stripped of their skin. The remains went into yet another mass grave, and I harvested all the mushrooms that had popped up in the area. Unlike my crops, they did most of their growing at night. Sunlight stunted their growth, but the mushrooms inside my shelter got bigger and bigger if I left them alone. The largest cap I’d seen so far had gotten as large as a basketball.

Once the cleanup was finished, I stripped down and stepped into the river. The cold was bracing, and I was quickly shivering, but I had soap and I was going to use it. The off-white paste left a lot to be desired. It wasn’t scented, and it was caustic enough that washing my undercarriage led to some discomfort, but I relished the sensation of being clean. After scrubbing my entire body with sand from the riverbed, I turned to my leathers, scrubbing and washing them as best I could.

Back to the rocks.

After jogging to the boulder site, it wasn’t long before I’d collected everything that was left of what was sticking out from the ground. It occurred to me that I’d gone this entire time without attempting any actual mining. In Minecraft, that was pretty much the first thing you did after you got the basic toolset together. But I had a feeling that the superstructure of Plana was very different from what could be expected of the gameworld, which was almost as expansive underground as it was above.

The outcrop did extend a good way beneath the soil, and I harvested my way down along one edge until I reached its nadir. There was still plenty of stone for me to collect, but it didn’t open up into a cavern. It was just a gigantic rock. Crafting new picks as I went, I continued to harvest until the only sign that a boulder had been there at all was the hole in the ground and a notification.

Hail, rockbiter! Your skill as a miner has advanced far enough to unlock new crafting materials. All naturally occurring metals are now within the reach of your pick. Start digging!

I absolutely deserved ice cream, but I could table the personal quest reward for now.

Naturally occurring metals?

Did that mean there were unnatural metals for me to find? This was it, I was about to enter the iron age. I didn’t even bother converting my new supply of coins to medallions, setting off at a jog with my pack jingling on my back as I went. I was quickly out of the woods, and my excitement led me to increase my pace, accelerating to just short of a sprint. The grass sped beneath my feet, and I enjoyed the sensation of the wind rushing across my face. It wasn’t as if I was moving at supernatural speeds, this wasn’t ninja running, but I was fast, and I was almost back to base before I ran out of gas.

People were waiting for me there, but Gastard wasn’t among them. They had brought a low wagon with bulky-looking cargo covered by a sheet. I was still catching my breath, my chest rising and falling as I walked closer, holding my knife.

A lillit woman came around the wagon with her hands on her hips, giving me a disapproving stare. She looked even older than Boffin, with a frizzy halo of white hair and deep wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Her face was shaded by a wide-brimmed velvet hat as green as a pine tree, and her dress was ridiculous. It was a patchwork of various fabrics and colors ranging from earth tones to splashes of sky blue, fitted perfectly to her slim frame, and sprinkled with pockets bulging with I had no idea what.

"Inti tard." She demanded.

“What did you call me?”

Esmelda appeared behind her. She was wearing a much simpler riding dress and serviceable boots that reached up to her mid-calf, and her hair was pulled back in a tail.

“She said you were late. Don’t mind her, she can be prickly.”

“Okay,” I said, putting my knife back in my belt as I came closer. “But how can I be late? And what are you doing here?”

“We just weren’t sure where you were,” Esmelda said, patting the older woman on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re back though, we can’t stay for long.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I mean, I’m happy to see you, but I’m pretty sure your dad didn’t want you coming out here anymore.”

“He doesn’t,” she said briskly, “but he isn’t the mayor of everything. There were a few things I wanted to bring you, and I thought you should meet Brenys.”

“Hi, Brenys,” I said, lifting my hand in greeting. She relaxed somewhat but didn’t say anything in response. “She doesn’t speak English, does she?”

“No,” Esmelda said, “but wait for it.” She hopped up onto the wagon and pulled back the sheet, revealing several bolts of fabric, as well as a stack of parchments and an armful of books which she lifted for me to see. “I brought you notes.”

“You want me to practice speaking with her?” I asked, confused.

“Oh, no, not at all. But Brenys is the best seamstress in Erihseht, and she wouldn’t let me take all this cloth if she didn’t get to see what you can do with it with her own eyes.”

I looked over the trove, which I guessed to be a mix of linen and wool in gray and tan. “You brought me…fabrics? Why?”

Brenys looked at me sharply, then turned to Esmelda.

“Mhux iridu?”

Esmelda responded with a lengthy sentence in the same language and then explained the exchange to me.

“She asked me if you didn’t want it. You don’t look grateful enough to her, but I said you were just surprised. And the reason I brought you these is because, well, all I’ve ever seen you wear is the skin of koroshai. You’re wearing monsters, Will.”

And she hadn’t even seen the mask.

“Please tell her I appreciate it.” I gave the old woman a bow, and she accepted the gesture with a haughty sniff. Esmelda hopped down and handed me the pile of papers along with the books.

“What is all this?”

“I made some basic notes about Lillant and Sprache,” she said before looking away, suddenly shy. “I tutor the children of Erihseht most afternoons. It wasn’t too much trouble.”

“I can have these?” On the top page, I could see that there was a list of phrases written in English beside what must have been Lillant vocabulary represented phonetically. Flipping through the pile, the pages all looked to be in the same hand. It was a lot of work, and she must have had most of it prepared already, there was no way she could have written it all out over the last day and a half unless she had forgotten to sleep.

“It’s hard to learn on your own,” she said, “but there is a pronunciation guide here as well. I’m sorry I won’t be able to tutor you personally, at least not until we get things sorted out with the humans, but it will give you a place to start.”

“Thank you,” I said. “This is incredibly helpful.”

Her cheeks reddened very slightly, but she met my eyes. “You are a hero, chosen by Mizu. It is my duty as one of her faithful to aid you in any way I can.”

Brenys took a step closer and tugged on Esmelda’s hair.

“Għidlu jurini l-miraklu,” she demanded. Esmelda yelped and slapped at the old woman’s hand.

“Sewwa,” she said, exasperated. “She wants to see what you can do with the fabric.”

“No problem.” I unloaded one of the bolts of fabric and brought it to a spare worktable I kept by the garden. What tool would be best to harvest cloth, assuming I could harvest cloth? It would be embarrassing if this didn’t work, not to mention absurd if the System ranked textiles as higher on the ladder of difficulty than ‘all natural metals.’

Thankfully, after a somewhat lengthy silence as the two women watched me swat at the roll like I was trying to give it a gentle spanking, its outermost layer vanished, and a coin appeared in my hand. It was hard but had the texture of linen, and it was marked with a symbol that struck me as an abstract representation of a needle and thread.

I showed it to them, then slapped it down on the back of my hand, returning it to its original form, which draped over my arm, a yard of fabric.

Brenys was unimpressed.

“Stajt qtajtu aktar malajr.” She said, and Esmelda laughed.

“What?” I looked between them.

“She said she could have cut it faster. But that isn’t really the point. Please, show her how you make things.”

I was happy to oblige. After a few minutes of shaving yards off of the bolt, I moved it off the crafting table and took a gamble, arranging the coins as if I were crafting leggings with leather. It would either work or it wouldn’t. I got a ding as the item generated but didn’t summon my status screen to check what my System had to say about it.

The trousers were plain, but seamless, the color of raw flax. As I was looking them over, Brenys rushed up to snatch them off of the worktable. She turned the pants over in her hands and held them up to the light, a look of intense concentration on her face, all the while muttering in Lillant. I let her do her thing and stepped away from the table so she would have more space.

“Your friend is weird,” I said.

One side of Esmelda’s mouth raised. “Compared to you? Hardly. It sounds like she’s impressed.”

Brenys folded the trousers like an expert and clutched them to her chest before turning to face us. She gave a bit of a monologue for Esmelda, before unceremoniously seating herself back on the wagon. The pair of ponies that had pulled it ignored her, nuzzling through the tall patches of grass all around them.

Esmelda placed her hand lightly on my arm. “I should go,” she said. “But Brenys is very glad to have met you, even if she doesn’t seem that way. She says the fabric is not a gift, but she will accept more clothing in payment.”

“How much?” I asked.

“See what else you can make, I think she’ll be happy with a little variety. The rest is yours to do with as you will.” She jumped up onto the wagon so easily that I wondered if she had a better vertical than I did, short or not.

“See you around,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”

She sat beside Brenys and picked up the reins. “Of course,” she said, “ and if you’re not too busy studying, I wouldn’t be averse to a new dress.”

The horses wheeled the wagons around the garden, and I watched them go.