The notification about harvesting water turned out to be nothing world-breaking. If I swiped a bowl or a bucket at a pool of liquid, it would instantly fill, and I could then convert the receptacle along with the water into a coin. It was a more convenient method of storing potable water, for sure, but it didn't result in any source-block shenanigans. The System wasn't that crazy, at least.

"Can you explain shillings to me again?"

Esmelda, Boffin and I gathered for tea after Otto left the village with his ruffian retinue. His men had been lounging around the longhouse, and I had a feeling he would not be telling them about our spat.

While money wasn't my primary concern, I at least needed to get the rate of exchange down to help me keep track of things. I'd been relying on Esmelda to handle business with the townsfolk, but as Williamsburg grew and we started trading with Henterfell it was important for me to not make a fool of myself during negotiations.

Esmelda gave a long-suffering sigh. "It's simple," she said. “There are twenty shillings to a pound, and twelve pennies to a shilling."

"It is simple," I said, "but weird. Why twelve and twenty?" I was pretty sure it was the same monetary system practiced in medieval Europe, though I couldn't remember if the number equivalencies were identical.

Boffin cleared his throat. "The units were established by the first king of Drom. They've been using them ever since. It's convenient enough. Twelve and twenty are both easy to divide. In Erihseht, a lot of the townsfolk didn't use coins daily. Silver was only necessary for trade with outsiders and taxes for the Margrave."

"At least I don't have to worry about that."

"About taxes?" Boffin asked. "Won't Godwod be expecting a portion of the rents when you collect them?"

"Nope." I shook my head. "As long as he gets his chunk of gold, we're good, and I'm technically a knight or something, so I owe him military service if he needs it. We're watching the border for him, too."

Boffin sucked on his lower lip, exchanging a glance with Esmelda.

"Money might be better," she said. "We'll stand against the Dark Lord when he comes regardless of what Godwod wants, but he could call on you for a less noble purpose as well. Lords squabble."

"I'm not super worried about it. He thinks of me as a cash cow, not a front line grunt. But speaking of taxes, we should do something about Gent. Do you think I should visit him sooner or later?"

"Sooner," Esmelda said. "The longer he's left to himself, the more confident he'll grow that you aren't willing to assert your rank."

Boffin sipped at his tea, savoring it. There wasn't much left of the leaves they'd brought from Eerb. I could always add the crop to my farm, but not until I knew food was no longer an issue.

"If you intend to allow him to continue managing the land around his manor, you'll need to settle on payment."

"How much do you think?" I asked.

"I'd say a third of the rents would be more than generous," Boffin said, and Esmelda nodded her agreement.

"Sounds fine." It didn't really matter to me how much we got from Gent as long as he knew I was in charge. From what I'd heard, Williamsburg was already bigger and more productive than the hamlet around the previous Baron's manor. They were a side note. My cup was half empty and I downed the rest to get it over with. Lillit tea had a very distinct taste, extra bitter, and a tad fermented. Maybe we could start brewing beer as an alternative.

"I wanted to talk to you about the set-up of the town. It looks like it's spreading all over the place."

Boffin frowned. "We tend to spread ourselves thin. You have plenty of land, but people are competing for positions closest to the water."

"I'm worried about defense," I said. "Dargoth will come, and I can't afford to take the time to build a wall around everything we have now, let alone what's still being built."

Esmelda brushed a few errant hairs from her face and adjusted her comb to keep them in place. "There's always the mine," she said, thoughtfully. "If you open the ruins, that, along with the existing tunnels, would at least give everyone a place to shelter. We can start using it to store food as well, so it will be there if we need to use it."

Trapping the population underground would limit our options somewhat in the event of a siege, but the tunnels were more defensible than a keep, and I could connect it to one of the wells.

"We can work that out," I said, sliding my chair out. "Do you mind getting Dongle to send one of his pigeons to Henterfell about the gold? I want to get some work done at the farm."

"Of course," Esmelda said, "I'll see you before nightfall."

"Looking forward to it." Dongle had his hands in a lot of pies. Though his jewelry business wasn't fully back to speed, he'd gotten his hands on half a dozen messenger pigeons, and was acting as the local postal service.

They only flew to Eerb and Henterfell, but that was all we needed for the moment. He was charging for the service, but I hadn't expected him to do it for free. Running the town as something of a commune was fine for the short term, but eventually, I hoped all the lillits had thriving businesses of their own. I didn't want Esmelda and Boffin to be micromanaging all the resources forever.

At a brisk pace, it only took me about twenty minutes to get back to home base. I longed for the days of keeping exact time. The formula for a clock was four gold ingots and redstone dust. Redstone was sure to count as a meta-material, and if I ever got my hands on any, at least I knew I could use it now.

Brenys had come to fetch us before I'd done my harvesting for the day, so I saw a lot of vegetables ready to be plucked in my plots, but they might have to sit until tomorrow. My anvil was waiting for me.

A sword, a pick, a shovel, and an ax. Those were the tools that Kevin had left behind in the way station. I stored them in a chest in the bedroom, but I'd used them all since coming to Williamsburg, and not a one was showing any sign of wear. Whether because of the white-gold metal that composed them or an enchantment, their durability seemed unlimited. But now, I could know for sure.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The shovel would come first. It was the least important to me, and for all I knew, a basic anvil couldn't handle what made up these tools. I collected an armful of blank tomes and wrote the first names I could think of on their covers. Scrapper for the shovel, after the leader of the Constructicons from Transformers. Stormbreaker for the ax, because Thor. The sword's name was obvious, of course, but nothing great jumped out at me for the pickaxe, so if this worked it would be forever branded as "Pickle Rick." The medallion fit snugly in its slot, as did the first book, and I pulled the lever.

Plep.

Ding.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Scrapper

[Orichalcum Shovel]

Damage Rating: 6

Speed: Average

Enchantments: Unbreaking (II), Efficiency (I)

Durability: 99/100

Orichalcum is a rare meta-material said to result from the fossilization of the bones of the greater entities of Bedlam. Harder than steel or even diamond, it is one of the most sought after materials in all of Eternity.

Well, that wasn't an overwhelming amount of information, but at least I knew what to call it now. The new material appeared automatically in my logs, as did the enchantment, as if I had harvested a book. Did that mean I could make more of them? Unbreaking tomes had come with the underground base, but not an unlimited supply, and this was a higher level version. The shovel itself was intriguing; it did as much damage as my iron sword, and was just as fast, so I could fight with it in a pinch. With its durability at ninety-nine, it might not last forever, but considering the hundreds of blocks of dirt it had excavated for me already, I didn't have to worry about it breaking soon.

That had to be because of the quality orichalcum. Going up one rank in an enchantment couldn't have that much of an effect on the lifespan of a tool. Assured that the other items wouldn’t perish because of a quirk of the System, I named the other three in quick succession. The ax was about the same as the shovel, though it did twice as much damage. The other two, however, came with benefits.

Pickle Rick

[Orichalcum Pickax]

Damage Rating: 6

Speed: Fast

Durability: 92/100

Enchantments: Unbreaking (II), Efficiency (I), Fortune (I), Mending (I)

[Fortune I]

Tools imbued with the Fortune enchantment help guide the bearer to valuable materials. Looking for diamonds? Try waving your pick around and see how that feels. While Fortune will not lead you to a specific material, you will feel a stronger tug toward rarer resources than iron or coal.

[Mending]

Tools imbued with Mending will never break as long as they are put to good use. They absorb some of the essence that would otherwise add to your pool to repair themselves. If you waste them hacking away at worthless materials, however, the enchantment will have nothing to fuel itself and durability will not recover.

Excalibur

[Orichalcum Sword]

Damage Rating: 10

Speed: Very Fast

Durability: 100/100

Enchantments: Unbreaking (II), Shadowbane (II), Looting (II), Mending (I)

[Looting II]

Weapons imbued with looting will absorb additional essence from entities, storing it for later use.

Mending was essentially unchanged from how it worked in the game, but the other two were way off. Fortune was supposed to give the player a chance of receiving extra drops from the blocks they mined. It was one of the most useful enchantments in Minecraft, but the altered version wasn't bad either. I had felt no tug in particular while using it, but that just meant there weren't any rare resources nearby in the areas I had been mining. All the gold that had been below was now in my coffers, but I could try holding it next to the diamond case to see how dramatic the effect was.

Pickle Rick's durability had dropped. I'd mostly been using it to clear passages out of the rock. Mining basalt gave me some experience, but apparently, what it offered wasn't significant enough to feed the mending enchantment. It was something to monitor.

Looting was supposed to be the same as Fortune, except it worked for mob item drops instead of blocks. As mobs dropped nothing when they died in the real world, the change made sense, and it explained what the gem was doing. Most of the essence the sword had absorbed from killing monsters at the way station was still there. It had stopped glowing, but the gem had originally been a clear diamond, and now it was as red as a ruby.

“Storing it for later use.” Could I use the essence in the sword instead of experience to enchant items? That was a major win. I'd been so set on pumping out Shadowbane torches that I'd never bothered trying to make new enchanted books. There had been no need, given the supply that we'd collected from the library of an earlier Survivor. But now I had three new enchantments on my list, and no way to replicate them unless I could craft more books.

Amethyst had worked fine for enchanting my equipment, so it should do the same for tomes. I spent a few minutes getting supplies together, piling blank books beside the enchanting table and digging out my amethyst coins before trying it. As soon as I placed the book alongside the crystals in the table's slots, glowing runes appeared in the air above them. That was new.

The runes were violet, as translucent as my screens, and completely unintelligible. Drawn in similar brush strokes to the elder sign on my hand, they were each as distinct as they were complex. Dozens of lines went into each, curves and sharp points, their forms giving no hint as to their meaning.

Creating enchanted books was a somewhat random process. The game gave you choices that would hint at what the final product would be, and I assumed these three runes were the choices written in alien characters. I touched one at random. It was warm, though insubstantial. The other two vanished. When I pulled the table's lever, I had Excalibur in my other hand, and the amethyst coin popped out of existence as well. The rune floated down onto the cover of the book.

It stayed there a moment, a thin tendril of smoke rising from the leather as it inscribed itself, and then faded. The symbol had changed slightly, and now I recognized it: Protection (I). Several questions presented themselves.

Would the table only generate enchantments I already knew? Did my current level matter, or only how much power was in the sword? And most significantly, did I need bookshelves?

Checking my status screen, I found that my level had not changed. The gem's color was nearly the same, but the tip had become clear. The sword worked. I had a ready supply of experience to enchant with without reducing my overall level. But what about the bookshelves?

In Minecraft, surrounding an enchanting table with full bookshelves increased the level of the enchantments you could access. I looked around my workroom. Things would need to be shifted around a bit, but I could definitely fit in some shelves. And I would need more books to fill them. At least zombie leather was easy to come by. Esmelda could get me a parchment. I sighed, thinking how yet another project was not what I needed right now. But upgraded enchantments were exactly what I needed when the next demon showed up. There were still crops to harvest. It was going to be a long night.