I knew I was dreaming. An outcrop of sandstone extended ahead of me, terminating on a point. Beyond that was space. Galaxies wheeled, and nebulas blossomed amid a tapestry of sparkling stars. The outcrop looked choppy, distorted, like the output of early AI generated videos. The flipbook effect. A sign hung floating in the void, the words "Quit Game" in the 8-bit font of NES video games. I turned around.

There was a centaur, a cyclops; a one-eyed horse man. He was either annoyed or constipated. As he approached me, he flickered, the same low-resolution flipbook effect as the rest of the world. Behind him was another sign, "Continue." The entire set-up was deeply familiar. It wasn't just the words, which were stolen right out of the death screen of Minecraft, but the demi-human as well. I felt like I'd been here before. The memory teased at the edge of my mind, and I knew it was important, incredibly so. There was knowledge locked away in some burnt-out corner of my brain, but as soon as I got close to it, the scene melted away.

I was floating in darkness, a disembodied consciousness.

Had I died again? I didn't remember dying. Things had been going pretty well for me. The town was coming along, and Esmelda and I were living together in the shelter I had built for us. I'd finally been making progress. Why would the goddess choose this moment to take it all away?

The nothingness exploded below me, and for a moment, there was raw chaos. Light and shadow, ghostly, ephemeral shapes. Landscapes, weather patterns, living beings, the limbs and faces of entities born at an impossible scale. The galaxies were alive, moving like amoebas, devouring each other. A riot of color and sound assaulted my non-existent eyes and ears, and I felt myself rising and falling at once. If I had possessed a stomach, it would have ejected its contents immediately. As a mote of consciousness in an infinite cosmos, there was no action I could take. I was simply along for the ride.

The chaos formed a nearly comprehensible picture below me. It was still abstract, but I had the impression that two distinct sides existed, two competing patterns. One was jagged and harsh, fast moving and aggressive nebula; purple red and black. The other was more sedate, but also more solid, and composed of comforting pastels. Two different species competing for the cosmos.

Within the light side, I could make out a model of heavenly spheres. It reminded me of the diagrams medieval scholars had used to describe the universe. At its center was a green and blue ball that looked suspiciously like Earth, but there was no sun. Other worlds orbited the familiar planet, some of them normal looking, some flat or cubic. One was a Mobius strip, and another was clearly a tree. The farther out from the Earth-like planet they orbited, the weirder they got.

Tendrils of the dark side were tunneling into the system, many close enough to touch the outermost worlds. There were creatures in that darkness, unfathomably large; forms of madness, developing endlessly. The entities arranged on the other side seemed puny in comparison.

The vision dissolved, and I was falling. A world nearest the edge of the darkness expanded until it was all that I could see. Calling it a world was generous. It was basically half of a map with torn edges. A single continent dominated the center, surrounded by oceans that wrapped around underneath, with a moon and a sun of nearly equal size circling it in succession.

Without eyelids, I couldn't blink, but my awareness stuttered, and I drifted in the ceiling of a grand cathedral. A man dressed in armor styled after what Sauron had worn in the Lord of the Rings movies was sitting in a chair that looked like an even edgier version of the Iron Throne from Game of Thrones. Animals were bowing to him, a horse, a frog, a crow, and then he looked up. Though his face hid behind a coal black visor, I felt our eyes meet, and the scene vanished like those before it.

What followed was a series of jumbled images; a mountain crumbling, an army marching, more monsters than I could count. Shadow followed flame, leading a column of lillits in chains.

Then I woke up.

My bedroom was basic, just the bed I had stolen from the way station, a washstand, and a dresser Esmelda had gotten as a gift from Perrin Perrinson, the town's foremost carpenter. An Eternal Torch hung from one wall, its quartz tip bathing the room in white light. It was irritating, but having the light up through the night was the only way to ensure that mobs wouldn't spawn around me while I slept other than taking my siestas in a sarcophagus. The light didn't keep me up. For the nearly thirteen years of my previous life that I had spent incarcerated, total darkness had never been an option. Fluorescents were always active in the dorms, though they dimmed them after the evening count. Corrections officers needed to see you in your cell when they did their rounds, so I was accustomed to ambient brightness.

What bothered me was that Esmelda had to put up with my System nonsense. She was sleeping on her side, wearing a silk sleep mask Brenys had tailored for her. Her shoulders rose and fell peacefully, her long, chestnut brown hair pouring down onto her pillow. Our marriage had been a matter of convenience, and not much in the way of romance had ensued, but somehow, it worked. Our relationship felt natural, at least to me. That wasn't saying much, considering that before I met her, I'd been single for the entirety of my adult life. My previous relationship had ended after I got myself locked up, and prison had not been conducive to any kind of romance that would have interested me.

Of all the gifts my second life had offered, this one was the most precious to me. Esmelda was carrying our child. Love, a family, these things made magic powers seem small in comparison. That being said, I was still pretty stoked about the magic powers.

I slipped out of bed, moving cautiously so as not to wake my sleeping wife. Her lovely, heart-shaped face was half concealed by the silk mask, and I took a moment to watch her before letting myself out of the room. It still didn't feel real, our relationship, my powers. Everything was too good to be true.

The dream had not been my first. I'd been having it, or one similar, on and off for the last week. Mizu, the goddess who had sent me to this world, was giving me a warning. That was the only explanation. As ominous and confusing as these visitations were, a part of me found them comforting. The idea that something terrible was coming our way was the only thing in this world that made perfect sense to me.

The iron door creaked as it opened, and I paused, but the noise hadn't woken Esmelda. Beyond it was a series of short halls and barred gates, my crafting room and the escape tunnels. Digging was easy, and I was paranoid, so while we had a cozy, single room cottage on ground level as a decoy, our actual home was underground.

The equipment I had stolen from Kevin was still better than anything I could make. My crafting room looked very similar to the one I'd found in the way station, with each corner taken up by a piece of equipment; a furnace, the crafting and enchanting tables, and an anvil. My list of enchantments was short; Protection, Unbreaking, Feather Fall, Efficiency, Aqua Affinity and Shadowbane. Of those, all I'd been focusing on so far was producing as many Shadowbane torches as I could afford. To that end, I'd spent enough experience to reduce my level back under ten, and I had more than a dozen Eternal Torches ready to push back the darkness to show for it. Crafting the torches themselves cost a modicum of experience, with the enchantment process having taken the lion's share. The only difference between the enchanting table and the entire underground chamber dedicated to enchanting I'd found before was that the full chamber was more efficient. The cost in experience lessened when I used it instead of the table. Regardless; Boffin, Esmelda, and Gastard all had torches of their own, and the rest were around the shelter and protecting the farms. Regular light could prevent spawns, but the enchantment actually held mobs back.

Anvils were extremely useful in the game. They repair or enchant items, as well as name them, though that feature was just for aesthetics. Mine looked essentially like a blown-up version of the one in Minecraft, a big iron rectangle on a dark stand. I had no idea how much it weighed, but I wouldn't have been able to get it in my workroom outside of carrying it around as a medallion. Unlike the Mojang version, this anvil came with a set of slots cut out of its flat top, as well as a rotating lever on one side like the one attached to the worktable. I'd left it alone since bringing it into the room, as there had been no items in need of repair and I could use the table to enchant. But now I wanted to play with it a little.

It had too many slots. Two squares to place medallions, and one for output. That wasn't hard to figure out, as there was a plus sign engraved between the first and second square and an equals sign leading to the third. The slot above them was a thin rectangle, the name box. Only there was no way for me to type in a name. After giving it some thought, I tore out a page out of a blank enchanting book and wrote out a word in ink. I could harvest ink from books, but Esmelda had bought a few quills and bottles in Eerb for both of us. Running a town required you to write things down. Scratching out the letters with a quill was a serious downgrade from using a modern pen, but it got the job done. Rolling up the paper, I placed it along with the sword medallion in their respective slots.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

It was my sword, as I didn't want to risk Kevin’s disappearing in case the anvil used up materials on a failed attempt like the work table did. But when I pulled the lever, nothing happened. Either naming an item didn't work, which wouldn't have surprised me, or I'd used the wrong materials. At least the medallion hadn't vanished. Next, I wrote out the name again on the front of the empty tome and rested its spine in the slot. It fit snugly, standing straight up, and this time when I pulled the lever, both the sword and the book vanished. A new medallion appeared in the output slot in the same instant..

Ding

Tapping my elder sign brought up the status screen.

Status

Name: William

System Type: Survivor

Level: 14

Advancement: 37%

Attributes:

Might: E

Speed: F+

Presence: F (E)

Armor Rating: 1

Traits: Darkvision, Immunity to natural Poison and Disease

After making the torches, I'd recovered some of my levels by mining and clearing spawns from around the farm. Naming the item had brought me down from fifteen to fourteen. Aside from that, there had been no changes to my statistics since settling in Williamsburg except for the double entry to my Presence attribute, which had resulted from two recent achievements. I tabbed over to the notifications screen.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Achievement: Sheltered (2)

A real home? From vagrant, to peasant, to landowner, where will your journey end? Possibly in a ditch, but for now, you gain a bonus to social interaction while at home. Every man should be a king in his own house.

Achievement: Sheltered (3)

Congratulations, you have made yourself the cornerstone of a local community. A home is more than the roof over your head, it is the society that surrounds you. Gain increased respect and resources as your town continues to grow. The members of your community will naturally look to you for guidance, viewing you favorably as long as you retain your position.

The System had rewarded me for helping build a town. It made me a little uncomfortable to think that the way the lillits treated me was partially because of a benefit of my class. Mind-altering effects were morally dubious but there was nothing I could do about it, and there was no way to know how much my Presence score played a role in daily interactions with the people who had settled on my land. Attribute scores seemed pretty arbitrary. It was always satisfying to see numbers go up, but hard to guess what they really meant. Relative to Might and Speed, F seemed to be an average score for an adult human male in good shape, someone who exercised, but wasn't a gym rat. My attributes were well above average, but still within human limits. I knew I could easily beat Gastard in an arm-wrestle; we had tried, but it wasn't like I could rip his arm off. With Presence functioning as an E with the townsfolk, that probably gave me the built-in charisma of a celebrity, but my followers would not jump off a cliff simply because I asked them to. At least not yet.

Scrolling down to the bottom of the list, I found the new entry.

Achievement: Crafty (3)

Using an anvil is the first step on the road to becoming a master smith. This hunk of metal is the perfect tool to modify or repair existing items. Try out different combinations of materials to see what works. What have you got to lose? Well, components, obviously, but aside from that?

Achievement: Reader (3)

You have collected your first named item. Any named item acquired will be recorded in a new tab of your journal, along with its attributes.

So did the anvil ruin materials the same way a crafting table or not? Maybe you needed to put components in both slots for the waste to occur. The phrase "modify or repair" stuck out to me. “Modify” might have been a reference to the naming process, but then what was that note about trying out different materials? It was possible the anvil could do a lot more than I had assumed. Why naming my sword on the anvil counted as a "Reader" achievement, I had no idea, but I was excited to finally get a little more transparency from the System. So far, the only information I had gotten on items I crafted was the very basic descriptions that got added to my logs whenever I crafted a new one for the first time.

There was indeed a new tab, but the information it provided was a disappointment. I had, of course, named the sword "Sting."

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Sting

[Iron Sword]

Damage Rating: 6

Speed: Average

Enchantments: None

Durability: 85/100

My logs already recorded the Damage rating and Speed of weapons that I crafted, and I could get a general sense of how close they were to breaking just by looking at them. I'd gone through plenty of picks and shovels, but I hadn't broken a sword yet. I'd used this one in a few fights before liberating Kevin's, and it looked like it would last for quite a while before repair became absolutely necessary. Being able to see what enchantments were active on a given piece of equipment was a minor point for items I enhanced myself. I'd almost stepped away from the anvil before I realized how nifty a feature this actually was.

Kevin's tools were a mystery. I could use them, but I didn't even know what he'd made them out of. If the anvil could give them a name, it would serve as a roundabout Identify spell. My excitement at the prospect fell as quickly as it had risen. In order to modify the tools, I had to first convert them into medallion form, which had so far been impossible. My Miner skill had been stuck at level twenty-nine for what felt like forever. The advancement percentage had ticked up ever so slowly as I dug out new sections of the mine. While I didn't know if the next level would allow me to work with whatever material Kevin had used for his tools, raising it was the only method I knew of unlocking new materials. It would take as long as it took.

Since settling in Williamsburg, I'd been dedicating less time to mining than grinding my Artisan skill. It needed to be higher in order for me to craft more complicated apparatus like pistons and powered rails, and I was keen on building some automated functions into my workflow. It also gave me something to do while hanging around the farm, waiting for crops to grow. But this took priority. I was right on the edge of advancing Miner to thirty, and as long as there were no interruptions, I could probably raise it by the end of the day.

I went to tell Esmelda where I would be, but stopped in the hall as I heard someone banging on the trapdoor in the floor of the cottage. Few people came to visit the farm. I'd made it clear to the townsfolk that it wasn't safe to do so, especially not this early in the morning when there could still be spawns around. It took me a few moments to unbar the gate that led to the stair, and the banging grew more insistent.

"Whose there?" I called.

"Brenys, you smelly oaf! Open up!"

The seamstress, Esmelda's aunt, wasn't afraid of monsters. It was hard to be sure if that was bravery or senility at work, but I pressed the button that flipped up the trapdoor and found her staring down at me with her hands on her hips in the room above. Her green felt hat was askew, a wild bush of gray hair branching out from underneath its brim. Her wrinkled face was stern and disapproving.

"Took you long enough," she said. "Don't you have any manners? I could have been eaten while I was waiting for you."

"That's why no one's supposed to come here," I said. The cottage door was closed, and I didn't hear any zombies moaning outside. But you couldn't be too careful with spawns. They'd surprised me before. "What's up?"

"Someone had to come," she said. "There's a man in town looking for you, says he works for Gent."

A day of uninterrupted mining was looking less likely by the second.