Leather armor would not cut it. I decked myself out in a new set of iron, and contemplated enchantments. Kevin's tools were better than anything I could craft, and I'd use the ax as a primary weapon. Taking them with me into Bedlam risked losing them, but Bojack assured me that atreanum could not be harvested with a simple iron pickax. The orichalcum pick was a must, so I was only going to have one shot at this, and I had to maximize my chances. All the best tools or nothing.

Killing Bill and a few other mobs hadn't netted me much in the way of experience, which limited my options. Bojack didn't like it, but I spent several hours mining to get myself up to level fifteen, at which point the experience I gained from harvesting stone dropped off sharply. Being a Survivor meant being prepared. Equipment was everything.

The demon watched me place amethyst blocks to power the enchanting room.

"I'm thinking torches," I said, "the more Shadowbane the better."

"No."

I glanced over at the word. Bojack was standing under the archway with his arms folded over his chest. He looked to be a few minutes away from tapping his foot with impatience.

"Why not?"

"The torch would dissuade lesser entities while attracting more powerful foes. You should seek to disturb the realm as little as possible while you are there."

"Well, that sucks." My level was too low for me to create enchanted books that were any better than the ones I already had, though that supply was dwindling. Most of the blank books were still at the farm, assuming they hadn't been looted, but I was down to my last two Protection I tomes. Converting my new equipment into medallions, I slotted the ingredients and quickly applied what I had.

The Protection went to the chestplate and leggings. My boots got Featherfall, and I put Aqua Affinity on my helmet, because why not? Featherfall had come in handy before, and though I hadn't had to fight in an aquatic environment yet, Bojack had informed me the atreanum deposit he knew of was in a Bedlam swamp. While swimming shouldn't be called for, I needed to be ready for anything.

Once the enchantments were applied and my gear was back on, I checked my status.

Name: William

Class Assignment: Survivor

Level: 11

Advancement: 12%

Attributes:

Might: E+

Speed: E

Presence: F-

Armor Rating: 21

Traits: Darkvision, Immunity to Poison and Disease

Even fully decked out in enchanted plate, my Armor Rating had never been that high. I'd assumed it capped out at twenty. In the game, your defence was represented by little chest plates over the health bar. The max was ten, but they were counted up in halves, so if that had been written as a number instead of a visual, the top value would have been a twenty. In terms of mechanics, it worked out to an eighty percent damage reduction.

Because of the modifications the Survivor achievement had made to my body, my Armor Rating was a three standing around naked. Obviously, damage reduction for me didn't work exactly the same way as it did in Minecraft. Whatever the System did to calculate how many hearts I lost when a zombie bit me was more complicated than that. But I was stoked to see the number go up.

I walked past Bojack and made my way back to the upper chamber where I'd dropped a work table. Six wood planks and one iron ingot converted into a shield, and I grabbed some fresh amethyst to recharge the enchanting room and add Unbreaking I to the item. I wasn't worried about my armor being ruined. I'd be decked out in orichalcum if this ill-advised adventure panned out. But the shield was wood, and its entire job was taking hits, so I didn't have to. It would fall apart a lot faster than my other gear without enhancement.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Are you finished?" Bojack asked as I strapped on the shield.

"I think so. I've been wondering, does using the Stargate weaken the veil?" A small excursion as a warm-up would have been nice. "Would it be bad if I hopped in, looked around, and came back to prepare some more?"

"A portal can damage the veil." He sounded amused. "Use it as freely as you like."

In the grand scheme, it likely wouldn't make much of a difference to the fate of the world if I hopped back and forth between realms, but anything that made it harder for Plana to maintain its integrity against the incursion of Bedlam needed to be minimized. I might do Bojack's bidding, but I didn't share his goals. We reentered the central chamber and stepped up onto the dais together.

"How do I turn it on?" I asked, looking the glossy monument up and down. There were no levers or buttons, and I already knew a spark wouldn't do it.

"Bleed," he said. "A few drops will suffice. Some of your essence will go to fuel the reaction, nothing you can't recover."

I had a fresh leather pack over my shoulder, but I was keeping my tools strapped on instead of storing them in medallion form. The shovel and pick were on my back, and the ax was at my hip. I pulled it out, and then must have spent too much time examining its edge for Bojack's liking.

"You are forbidden from assaulting me, or even planning such an assault." He said, stepping back. "Merely deciding to do so will be enough to enact the curse."

It had crossed my mind. The ax wasn't Shadowbane, but the meta-material could hurt him. If he hadn't reacted that way, I wouldn't have been sure.

"I get it. No killing you." Though if I did, couldn't I break the oathblade before the curse took me out? For now, our agreement helped me as much as it did him. He was a wealth of information, and I didn't think I could sneak into Mount Doom and kill Kevin on my own. At least that far, we shared a goal. Not being able to go after Esmelda hurt, but the safest world for her and the rest of the lillits was one where Kevin was out of the picture, however it happened.

"How far away is this magic swamp?"

Bojack relaxed, brushing off his toga as if brushing away the idea that he had been in danger. "The environment shifts. But despite its breadth and depth, in a sense, every region of Bedlam is near to every other. Space and time are warped, and you will do well to avoid the extremes of both. Distances shrink, and your predecessors may have used the realm for travel. You could walk for a day in Bedlam, enter another portal, and return to Plana on the other side of the wastes. That brings me to my next dictum. You may not use any portal to leave Bedlam other than this one."

"The distance thing makes this sound more and more like the Nether."

Bojack's mouth twitched. "The Dark Lord uses that word as well. He has his own portal, but he rarely uses it. Bedlam does not suit his sensitive nature."

"Sensitive nature" was not a phrase that would have been on my bingo card of things a demon says about the Dark Lord, but okay.

"What about time? You said that warped too? How warped?" Did this have something to do with why Kevin was a thousand years old and making 20th century pop-culture references?

“Days flow more swiftly in Bedlam than it does on this plane, though the variance is not severe." Bojack made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. "Time bends the closer you travel to either pole, Discord or Harmony. It moves faster here than in the realm from which you came. Bedlam is unstable enough that it can move faster or slower, and there are pools of extremity even within Bedlam, places where the laws break, and madness reigns. It is possible to live a year in one of those pools when only a day has passed here.”

Hyperbolic Time Chamber, here we come.

“If there are places like that, and you have access to them, why don’t demons use them to train and become the perfect versions of themselves before attacking a new world? You’re all immortal, right?”

Bojack actually shuddered.

“To enter one of those regions is to invite dissolution, or something worse. They are almost inescapable, and exceedingly unpleasant.”

“If no one comes back, how do you know anything about what goes on inside them?”

“Almost inescapable. It is said the One Who Knocks first emerged from such a pool." Bojack looked away. Was he uncomfortable? "There are stories of others. But you would do well to consider them black holes.”

I rounded on the demon. “How the holy fudge do you know about black holes? Do you have demonic astronomy or something?”

Bojack whinnied. Was that his version of a laugh? “The Dark Lord is the one who made the comparison, and I assumed you would share his frame of reference. But we know more of what is possible than you have dreamt of, or could imagine, human. Our kind was born in the seas of chaos, while yours evolved in the slow morass of concrete reality. Regardless, if you want to return to see your family again, avoid the distortions."

"How do I know if I'm near one?"

"There will be signs. Bedlam is in constant motion. Watch what the air carries, and the native entities. Do not enter a region that appears to shift at an impossible pace, or any that appear frozen."

This sounded like a major issue, but I had always planned on exploring Bedlam at some point, and now I felt lucky that the flint and steel hadn't worked. Going in without this warning could have been a disaster.

I pressed the blade of my ax into the meat of my palm and pulled. It barely stung. The cut wasn't deep, but blood welled up. More than the few drops that had been called for.

"Last question. What happens if I die?"

"The anchor will draw your soul," Bojack said. "You cannot escape me so easily."

I held my hand over the base of the portal and let the blood drip. As soon as it touched the obsidian, the air within the circle opened like an eye, revealing pure chaos.