As I was riding back to the Stargate, I had plenty of opportunity to look out at the islands of Bedlam, and they had changed. The desert island had drifted closer to the base asteroid, near enough that I could have fired an arrow from the landing platform and planted it in a dune. A wind tunnel worm writhed along the verge of the storm above it as if waiting for the moment it could reach out and swallow the base. It was hard to guess if it was an actual entity or merely an environmental hazard.

For all I knew, the storm itself was alive and conscious, a semi-substantial being that had grown to proportions that made the kulu a tadpole in comparison. "The Roost," AKA Dragon Ball Island, was so far off that I couldn't be sure it was the same celestial body, no more than a gray, sword-shaped scar in the void. In its place was a spherical landmass, covered from top to bottom in what looked to be actual trees, a first for Bedlam. It had the look of a tropical jungle, and there was pale light emanating from beneath the trees. While that was interesting, I was in no mood to explore. My mission was complete, and the full price had yet to be revealed.

The minecart squeaked down onto the platform track, and I threw on the brake before it could bounce off the steps and send me flying back to the first asteroid junction. Hopping out, I briefly considered harvesting the cart and taking it with me. But while it was possible for me to lose my equipment, everything on the base seemed to have been here for a long time, and I could be relatively sure it would still be here if I came back. Redstone tubes were tempting, but if the previous owner had collected any more, it was likely to be stored behind the runic barrier on the other side of the Stargate.

There was a lot for me to still do on this side, or at least to collect, but the only thing on my mind was getting back and figuring out what year it was. The pressure plate beside the entrance responded to my hand, and the interior appeared to have been untouched in my absence, however lengthy that absence had been. In the central chamber, the obsidian arc of the Stargate was silent and empty. While I didn't relish the thought of making the crossing again, I didn't hesitate to nick my palm and let a few red drops fall upon its glossy surface. It was the same as before, an eye-opening into chaos. Ten thousand swirling hues that could loosely be articulated as "purple." The scent of ozone, followed by raw eggs. Hints of otherworldly intelligences lurking just beyond the scrim of what we thought was reality. My heart rate didn't even go up. I'd have enough of this place. No longer in need of a demon to shove me, I stepped into the gap between worlds and let it swallow me. The transition didn't seem to last as long this time, or else I didn't care as much. Raw chaos eddied and churned around me, and then it fell away.

The portal room on Plana was dimmer than its counterpart in Bedlam, it was also occupied. Someone had brought down a table and chairs, and it appeared that I had interrupted a game. Cards were scattered over the table, along with dice and coins. A man in a green surcoat bearing the sign of Dargoth stood with one hand on the table, his mouth hanging open. He was extremely pale, a combination of shock and the result of a life spent under the eternal storm.

I heard receding footsteps to my right. The door to the southern hall was open, and a second man was throwing himself onto a ladder that would take him up to the domed chamber where I had first mined my way into this base. The man at the table wasn't armed, but as I came to the edge of the platform, he seemed to remember his duty.

"Stay where you are!" The words were strained. He still looked like he'd seen a ghost. "I am ordering you to remain in place until the Baron arrives."

"Whose the Baron?" I hopped down, already headed for the treasure room.

"Baron Gent. This ruin is under his authority."

That caused me to lose a step.

"Are you freaking kidding me? Gent is a baron again?"

The man's hands rose and fell like he wasn't sure what to do with them. He swallowed.

"He is the Baron of Westmine, yes, under the rule of High King Godwod, of Henterfell." His back straightened. "My name is Naifan Keeper, Captain of the Gatewatch. It is my duty to detain you until the Baron arrives."

"Good for you." I walked under the arch that should have led to the treasure room, only to discover that the hall was now a dead end. It hadn't been walled off by a crafter. The stone looked like it had melted, with areas creased like a curtain, dotted with solidified drips. Bojack. At least he'd been keeping people away from my stuff.

"There's nothing here," Naifan said, hurrying to catch up with me. "If you would please return to the Gatechamber, I'm sure the Baron will be along shortly."

"What did they tell you about me?" I asked, pulling a medallion out of its pouch and slapping Pickle Rick into my hand.

"It is not my place too—-" his sentence ended on a high note as the orichalcum pick appeared in my grasp. He instantly dropped to one knee, bowing his head.

"A thousand apologies, my Dark. We were told only to watch the Gate, and to inform the Baron if it ever activated. I had no idea it would be you who arrived." "What?" I glanced down at him. Naifan was shaking, utterly terrified. Did he think I was Kevin? Dargothians must have all heard stories about what their Dark Lord could do, and having weapons and tools appear out of thin air was definitely a Survivor signature move.

"A thousand apologies," he repeated, lowering his head further. "Please forgive my insolence. I was only acting on my orders."

No reason to tell him he was wrong, at least if he thought I was Kevin, he wouldn't get in my way.

"Return to the Gatechamber," I said, "and warn me as soon as anyone shows up."

He scrambled to obey, leaving me alone with the wall. It was only two feet of basalt, and mining out an entrance took less than a minute. The treasure room was unchanged. Most of the amethyst blocks were still in place on the right wall, as I'd been removing them when they were needed for enchanting.

The gold blocks were all gone, but the coins were in a chest beside the entrance. I'd always wanted a chest full of gold coins, and a quick look reassured me they hadn't been looted. Not that gold was particularly useful as far as materials went, though it would allow me to craft clocks once I had some redstone of my own to fill out the recipe. Money couldn't help me right now.

All my resources should have been lost in the lake, but when I poured out my pack and my pouches on top of the diamond sarcophagus, I found that I had all the resources that I'd brought with me to Bedlam at my disposal, as well as what I'd harvested there. Mizu had picked up after me. It was a small blessing, but I would take it.

Four wood planks to a worktable. I hadn't noticed it before, but there was a bit of filagree around the rim of my worktables now. As my Artisan skill rose, the items I crafted would get fancier. At another time, I would have wondered if there was a way for me to take more deliberate control of the appearance of System-generated objects, but for now, I was only concerned with getting what I needed as fast as possible.

Four atreanum coins to work with, and if I tried to craft them as they were, they would be wasted. Metal needed to be smelted, so I set up a furnace beside the chest of gold and quickly realized I had a problem. Plenty of wood was available, but the furnace needed coal, charcoal, or lava to run. The wood could provide me with as much charcoal as I wanted, but not without at least one piece to get the furnace started.

I could always start a fire with flint and produce charcoal the natural way, but that would slow me down considerably.

"Naifan!" I shouted, and the man came running.

"My dark," he bowed, "how can I be of service?"

Did Kevin actually force people to call him "My Dark?" He was more messed up than I had ever imagined.

"In the chamber above these ruins, there used to be chests filled with coins. Are they still there?"

I'd thought his face couldn't get any paler, but he was now practically translucent. He shut his eyes as if he were expecting a guillotine to fall on his head at any moment.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"There are, my Dark. The Aychar left instructions that they were not to be touched. Some members of the Gatewatch did not take the interdiction to heart, and over the years, their contents have been reduced." Now he was squirming, poor guy. "Aychar" sounded familiar, but I couldn't ask what it meant if I was pretending to be the Dark Lord. "Though I have never taken any myself, I am guilty of misuse." Naifan knelt again, his knee hitting the floor so hard I heard a crack. "I am ready for your judgment."

Most of the resource tokens would have no value to a normal human other than as curiosities. But people liked keepsakes, especially if they were mysterious and easily transportable. The iron coins could have been sold as raw material. What would happen if you tried to melt down a resource coin? I'd never thought to try.

The card game. Had they been using my coins as gambling chits? I walked around Naifan and went down the hall to the Stargate room. The cards themselves were interesting, the designs looked like they were from an old Tarot deck. Simplistic, but still, somebody had put a lot of time into painting them. And the coins were my coins.

Grass, planks, sticks…and charcoal. I took what I needed and told Naifan to return to his post. He did so hastily. One unit of charcoal was more than sufficient to smelt four ingots. The furnace heated up, and I slipped all four into the slot on the top oven. After tapping my feet for a few minutes, the conversion was finished.

Atreanum ingots looked identical to Atreanum ore in coin form, but the pattern on their surface felt different under my thumb. More right angles. My materials log generated a new entry.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Atreanum: One of the five meta-materials, Atreanum grants distinct properties to any item that incorporates it. This material is primarily found in Bedlam, generated by the death of high-energy entities or the destruction of powerful artifacts. It is brittle, sharp, and unstable. Large quantities of this material disrupt local aetheric fields, and atreanum weapons are the anathema of magical entities of all kinds.

That was what I'd bought the ticket for. The brittle part is what worried me.

Four coins. Axes and picks required three blocks or ingots of whatever material the head was going to be made of. Hoes and swords took two, whereas shovels and knives only required one. While I would have preferred to make as many atreanum tools as possible, retrieving the armor called for mining diamond blocks, so crafting a pick seemed like my only option. It would leave me with enough left over for a demon-stabbing knife.

Three ingots across the top of the crafting grid, two sticks down the center. I pulled the lever.

The resulting medallion was engraved in the same fashion as my other picks, a crescent bisected by a line, but it appeared to be made of smoked glass. My status screen was still active, and it flickered over to a new notification.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Achievement: Crafty (5)

You have successfully crafted your first item utilizing meta-materials. Resist the urge to celebrate. For a Survivor of your age, you are well behind the curve. Quest log updated.

The System was back to auto-generating notifications, I assumed. By "age," it had to mean how long I'd had my class, which, from its perspective, was over ten years. Switching tabs only took a second.

Journal Quests Notifications Materials Crafting

Quest: Kevin.

Objective: Kevin.

Reward: Your geas will be lifted.

Quest: Complete one hundred enchantments to unlock your reward

Quest: Craft items with all five meta-materials to unlock advanced options.

I'd completely forgotten about the enchantment thing. The Quest Log was so useless that I never looked at it, and that one had popped up during my original exploration of this site with Esmelda and Gastard. There was no associated counter visible on any of my screens, but presumably, the System was keeping track. Most of my enchantment work had been Shadowbane torches for safeguarding Williamsburg and the farm, and I estimated that I was still another fifty or so off from reaching the goal. I'd eventually get there going about business as usual, grinding experience and enchanting items purely for the sake of racking up numbers could wait until I had my family. As for the meta-materials, I didn't even know what they all were.

Orichalcum was the superdense white-gold metal that seemed to be the peak medium for crafting tools and armor. Atreanum was one of the five, and my notifications had mentioned sanguinum before, which had to be the technical term for redstone. That left two more. Was there Netherite, like in Minecraft? Did lapis-lazuli count? It wasn't something I could address right now. The pale, aquamarine light of the glowstones in the Stargate chamber didn't reach the treasure room. Beleth's eyes had made me less reliant on torches. My view of the room was all in shades of gray, and depending on what time of day it was, spawns might be an issue before Gent arrived. When I slapped the pick medallion into my other hand, I was rewarded with a mostly normal-looking tool.

A wooden haft, smooth-grained, and a simple head with a three-inch blade flaring out on the front end. The spike was thinner than on the other versions, suspiciously reminiscent of an insect's stinger. It would certainly puncture a zombie's skull if it came to that, but I wasn't going to be fighting with a tool that came with the word "brittle" in the description. Especially not one as hard to replace as this.

Even in the darkened room, the atreanum was outlined in shadow. A reverse glow. If I had been waving a torch, there would have been no reflections or highlights on its surface.

With gentle taps, careful not to abuse my new tool, I began to harvest the diamond blocks that had kept the suit of orichalcum armor from my hands for so long. Cracks formed slowly, and the runes within the blocks flared to life. Their golden auras cast me in shadow, but the pick cut through that meager light, refusing to be touched. The cracks began to recede, and my throat tightened.

I'd lost ten years for this tool. It had to work. As I continued tapping, the runes flickered, and the regeneration of the block began to lose ground. Spiderweb fractures filled the cube from edge to edge.

Plep.

The diamond became a coin, and the runes running around the frame of the sarcophagus disintegrated into yellow motes of light, fading like embers shedding their last defiance to the supremacy of the void. Without the protection of the runes, the diamond was just diamond, and I switched to Pickle Rick to clear the rest of the blocks and save the durability of the atreanum.

Once the top of the case was removed, I wasted no more time in unequipping my current set. Harvesting it off of my body was quicker than removing it the old-fashioned way, so I swiped until my chest plate, leggings, boots, and helm had reverted to medallions and set them aside. Now that I could get close to it, the orichalcum armor looked somewhat more complicated to put on than anything I had crafted.

The plating was more complete, with hardly a seam in sight, and it included a set of gauntlets to go with the extended bracers. Every piece was carefully articulated with overlapping plates that made the more flexible sections look more like dragon scales than traditional plate armor. Rather than try to figure out how to take it all apart and put it back together, I converted the set to medallions and slapped each item onto the appropriate part of my body.

I'd never actually tried donning armor that way, and it worked out better than I expected. Starting with the chest plate, I found that it fit me snugly, but not tight enough to limit my movement, and the interior was padded. The gauntlets, which came along as a part of the chest plate, felt like they had been made for my hands. As I flexed them, admiring the intricately jointed fingers, I noticed the elder sign painted onto the back of the right gauntlet.

Tapping it summoned my status screen, just as it would have if I'd been able to reach my tattoo. Checking my armor rating could wait until the entire set was on. Facepalming a medallion onto my forehead felt a bit silly, but it worked. The helm fit as perfectly as the gloves, with a visor that hinged at the center so I could uncover just my eyes or my mouth if I wanted. The extra moving parts seemed like a weakness in the design, though with equipment this magical, that probably didn't matter. When the whole suit was on, it didn't feel any heavier than leather, and as I walked around the treasure room windmilling my arms, it didn't limit my mobility at all. This genuinely was power armor.

It also came with a convenient set of loops and clasps around the waist for tools and pouches. I clipped the thermos onto one.

"My dark!" Naifain ran down the hall and skidded to a stop when he reached the hole in the wall. Seeing me in the new regalia caused him to forget what he'd been doing, his mouth hanging open as took in the design of the helm, which was ridged in a way that gave the impression of a platinum crown.

"Yes?" I said.

"Your pardon," he dipped his head, "but the Baron has arrived."