My System was weird. It played fast and loose with physics, and after I’d cleared out the wall and done a few conversions back and forth, I knew the numbers didn’t add up. Even without a scale, I could tell gold was heavier than iron, way heavier. Nine coins made up a token, and each coin converted to a single gold ingot. Nine gold ingots did not have nearly the same volume as a cubic foot of gold, so something had to be happening there. Maybe the gold blocks were less dense or partially hollowed out. If someone else melted one down, would there be nine ingots worth of gold there, or more? If there was more, than melting down blocks, converting them to ingots and the ingots to new blocks would lead to a source of infinite gold.

I doubted it would work, though that would go a long way to explaining where all of this wealth had come from in the first place. It was a note for future experimentation, but I was rich either way. One hundred and fifty blocks of gold stacked together to make the wall, which worked out to well over a thousand ingots. As both Gastard and Esmelda had suggested, it was more wealth than I could effectively wrap my head around at the moment, especially when there was a library to peruse.

Esmelda was already deep into the sorting process. She had emptied many of the shelves, and piles of leather-bound tomes rose ponderously above the tables along the center of the room.

“Those are all blank,” she said, pointing out the table nearest the entrance. “Most of the shelves are full of blanks, and a lot of these others seem like copies of each other.”

“You can read them?” I asked. Gastard was further in one of the aisles, checking book by book to see if a given volume had anything written in it, and he barely glanced up from his task at my arrival.

Esmelda put her hands on her hips, frowning down at the stack in front of her. “Not a word,” she said. “It isn’t Lillant, Sprache, or Kevinian, and I’m not sure if whatever these are written in even qualifies as an alphabet.”

“What do you mean?” I came to stand beside her and picked up a tome from the top of the stack. A rune stood out from the cover, the same kind of twisty style of sigil as the elder sign on my hand. The interior text reminded me of Korean, blocky-looking characters in neat rows. The pages were interspersed with diagrams that could have come out of a handbook for Qabala.

“They look like pictographs,” she said.

“I see what you mean.” I looked over the stack. “You said these were all copies?”

“I think so,” she said. “There are other books on the other tables. I organized them as well as I could, but some are so similar I may have gotten them confused.”

“Then we can afford to lose one,” I said, closing the tome and replacing it on the table before beginning to tap at the rune on its cover with one finger. The text of Esmelda’s books had been easy to harvest, but this worked differently. Instead of seeing the symbol vanish from the cover, I watched as the binding loosened, the edges frayed, and small tears appeared on the cover. Maybe I was destroying it, and the knowledge would be lost, but at least we had extra copies.

The tome continued to deteriorate until it looked like someone had tried to run it through a paper shredder, and then it exploded. A cloud of shredded parchment rose around my hand before drifting lazily back down to the table and onto the floor.

Esmelda opened her mouth to say something, but she paused at the telltale ding from my System and I tapped open my screen.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Achievement: Reader (2)

You've just mined your first Enchanted Book! This wasn’t any old tome. Each Enchanted Book is infused with a unique effect, which can be added to your equipment at an enchanting table.

Remember, each enchantment comes with its own quirks and features, so be sure to read the fine print. Then collect the gems and craft away! Once you finally get your act together, you’ll be ready to conquer dungeons or maybe even save the world. Available enchantments will appear in your crafting tab.

If I remembered correctly, crafting an enchanting table required both diamonds and obsidian. Both materials were present in the underground base. But enchanting anything in the game required lapis lazuli. There might be a supply of those blue gemstones stored in the chests, but I couldn’t get to them.

“An enchantment,” Esmelda said, reading over my shoulder, “what does it do?”

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

[Shadowbane I]

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Items infused with Shadowbane are anathema to the forces of Bedlam. Weapons will do extra damage to tainted opponents, and armor will be more resistant to their abilities. Just the presence of items carrying the Shadowbane enchantment can sometimes be enough to discourage lesser entities from attacking.

Below the entry was a diagram of a crafting grid. A book was at the center, and what might have been a diamond lodged in each of the four adjacent squares. This was big news. In Minecraft, generating Enchanted Books was like playing a slot machine. You put in lapis lazuli and blank books and got to pick from a few randomly generated options for what kind of enchantment would be the result. The diagram made it look like I could craft specific Enchanted Books whenever I wanted, as long as I had the required materials.

“This is incredible,” Esmelda said, “with something like this, “you could even rival the demons.”

Gastard came around the bookshelves to see what we were talking about. “What have you found?” He demanded.

“These books will allow me to enchant our equipment,” I said. “This one specifically helps fight monsters.”

He stood stock still. “And the rest?”

“Let’s find out.”

Oddly, absorbing an Enchanted Book did not allow me to read the others. The language in which they were written remained foreign, and the symbols on the covers gave me no hint as to their contents. One by one, I destroyed a sample from each stack of magical tomes to add what they were to my enchantments tab.

Shadowbane did not exist in Minecraft, but the rest of the Enchanted Books contained effects that were familiar to me. Unbreaking increased the durability of my equipment, and Protection would improve the damage absorption of armor. Feather Falling made dropping from a height safer, and Efficiency improved mining speed. Aqua Affinity was the only one that seemed significantly different from how it worked in the game.

[Aqua Affinity]

The effect of this enchantment varies according to the equipment it is applied to. A helmet infused with Aqua Affinity will allow the wearer to remain underwater for a longer period, while boots will allow them to swim faster. For best results, consider complete coverage.

There were supposed to be other enchantments that had those effects, while Aqua Affinity just allowed you to mine faster underwater. But if the System wanted to consolidate enchantments, that was fine by me. To my surprise, one book did not contain an enchantment at all but instead added a new recipe to my formula tab.

[Eternal Torch]

Refueling a fire can be a real hassle. Tired of having your torches burn out? Give the Eternal Torch a try, and you’ll never be without illumination again.

Warning: Crafting this item requires essence.

The recipe was the same format as it would have been for a normal torch, except that instead of coal, it called for a gemstone in the top slot. Unlike the enchantments, this was something I could try to make immediately. If it required a specific gem, that was going to be a problem, but digging out the attic had gotten me some quartz to work with, and if I was lucky, any crystal would do. The note about essence was a little concerning, but it wasn’t like I could afford to let it remain a mystery and wait for more information.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “let’s try to do some magic.”

We headed for the crafting table I had set up outside of the Stargate chamber, and Esmelda and Gastard acted as witnesses to the incredibly anticlimactic crafting process. Stick in the middle slot, quartz above it, I pulled the lever.

The result was a torch, but not a torch. Instead of a piece of charcoal burning at the top of a stick, there was a glowing gem. The light was noticeably weaker than a normal torch would have been, about three-quarters as bright, and there was neither heat nor flame. I let it sit there for a moment, taking it in, and Esmelda picked it up, a look of wonder on her face.

“A new miracle,” she said. “Will it truly stay like this forever?”

I checked my status screens.

Status

Class Assignment: Survivor

Level: 23

Advancement: 3%

Attributes:

Might: E

Speed: F+

Presence: F

Armor Rating: 9

I hadn’t been paying much attention to my overall level, but I was pretty sure the progress to the next level percentage had just dropped. It looked like my experience was the “essence” that the note had referred to. Crafting certain items, and undoubtedly enchantments as well, would come at a cost. It put a limit on what I could produce, but it didn’t come as a surprise, as that was essentially how it worked in the game. At least now I could be sure what that metric was for. The iron breastplate had done wonders for my armor rating. There was no new information available about the torch in the logs.

“It looks like it will last forever,” I said. “The glowstones have been around for who knows how long, and they’re still shining.“

“Sorcery,” Gastard said, gruff and glowering.

“A blessing is a blessing,” Esmelda said. “This is a gift from the goddess, not sorcery.”

“Perhaps,” Gastard frowned, scratching at his burgeoning beard, “but the runes, and now this, it feels like dark magic to me.”

“Magic is magic,” I said. “It’s how you use it that counts.”

Esmelda’s expression became grave. “No, Will, it isn’t. Some powers are tainted. There are forces in Bedlam that twist men into monsters. I think the kings of Drom are foolish for treating all magic as if it were the same, but some things are evil at their heart.”

“Okay,” I said. Everything this place offered came from the same System that I had come with, so I wasn’t worried about any of it suddenly turning me into a demon. “Noted. You guys want to see if I can mine that diamond box?”