Once again, I was draped in shambler skin, my one consolation being that this time, I didn’t have to feel it. Monsters came in all shapes and sizes, and Vepar provided me with cloth to add to the disguise. Vepar and Bojack both, by virtue of being demons, outranked any human officer in Dargoth, and no one would be inspecting the small horde they brought with them to the gates of Mount Doom too closely.

The aychar, harbingers, whatever they chose to call themselves, were entitled to collect minions according to their rank. Bojack had won himself a measure of clout for the service of griefing me out of existence, as well as being put in charge of babysitting Godwod and overseeing the ongoing conflict with the Free Kingdoms.

I thought they could bring monsters into the world on their own, that was one of the things Bojack had been unwilling to clarify, but it was difficult. They needed to make use of areas where the veil was damaged or weak, and that made them reliant on people like me and Kevin to replenish their ranks.

It seemed like Mizu’s solution to the Bedlam incursion, sending heroes, was as much a cause as a cure, but it had to be more complicated than that. If demons had no other way into the world, there wouldn’t have been any need to send heroes to fight them in the first place.

Traveling on foot, marching at the speed of zombies, was vastly inferior to flight. Hoofing it to Mount Doom took as long as the entirety of our previous journey, despite being a fraction of the distance. My main complaint was the heat.

Dargoth was sweltering, and Fire Resistance’s job was to protect me from damage, not to keep me comfortable. The padding under seemed to resist being soiled, which was nice, but it left me stewing in my juices.

Kevin’s kingdom was so reminiscent of what I’d always imagined Mordor to be like that I had to wonder if he’d done the landscaping himself. The earth looked like it had been gone over with a blowtorch, and my boots crunched on the dry ground with every step. The train tracks didn’t help us, and no locomotives were in sight, the road itself was simply hard soil scraped flat. Wind brushed up clouds of dust and ash across our path.

Human settlements existed in Dargoth, but I had no idea where, or how any city would sustain itself in a blasted, ruined land like this. Kevin simply could not be growing that much food in his basement to make up for an environment this destitute.

At least feeding the monsters was no mystery. They didn’t need to eat as much as natural animals would have, but they did require some sustenance to keep going. They weren’t picky. The shamblers preferred meat, but they could chow down on just about anything organic, fungus included. The trolls were more particular, but they would tear apart the shamblers for snacks when the demons let them. It was the circle of life.

I walked among a field of zombies as we approached the fortress built into the mountain, a structure large enough to qualify as a city in its own right. Vast gates at the base of the mountain groaned as they reluctantly opened to admit us. Behind the walls, trolls worked huge iron wheels wrapped with thick iron chains to operate the gates. I couldn’t help but feel that there was something in the air here, a wrongness like what surrounded atreanum, the thinning of the veil.

It wasn’t a sensation I’d experienced before, but I’d never been so close to another Survivor. Once we were past the gates, Bojack went up a rising road to the right toward Kevin’s fortress, while Vepar and my group went under an arch that led underground. The tunnel was large enough for a wagon train, opening onto a colossal hall.

A massive cavern, its full scale hidden in shadow. Wide, granite columns upheld a soaring ceiling, dwarfing even the trolls. Torches high on the walls highlighted glyphs carved into the stone, stark, geometric figures that drew the eye back into darkness.

The floor was a series of chiseled stone blocks, each marked by a spiral pattern, extending hundreds of feet to the end of the hall, marred here and there by claw marks. On either side of us, the walls were cut back into alcoves, stalls for groups of mobs, cordoned by fences.

There were armies in the shadow. The voices of the mobs echoed in the great space; the moans of shamblers mingling with the hoots of the trolls, punctuated by the screeches and growls from deeper regions that I didn’t recognize.

While men had stood at the arch, there were no humans in sight in this gigantic hall. Vepar led our group to an empty pen, pressing a stone button beside the gate.

I entered with the zombies slowly filing through the gap. Under the influence of a demon, the mobs were docile, going wherever they were led. Vepar shut the gate and drew close to me, the zombies ambling out of his path.

“The Dark Lord will meet with Orobas in the throne room after Bael gives his approval. If you climb from the end of this pen, you should reach a hall connected to his forge.”

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Kevin didn’t bring mobs into his workroom, and soldiers weren’t allowed in any of his personal spaces, so if I could sneak in, it would be a chance to have some alone time with the Dark Lord. Neither Bojack nor Vepar were intimately familiar with whatever traps or defenses were in place to protect the private rooms, as they had never been summoned to attend Kevin there, but they were both of the opinion that the security was negligible. It had been a long time since anyone threatened Kevin.

We had arrived close to dawn, so random spawns wouldn’t be a problem. We weren’t being watched. Bael had a private tower, but he viewed Mount Doom as his fiefdom and other demons rarely lingered there.

With Pickle Rick in hand, and my Mining skill at level thirty, regular stone blocks disappeared at a touch. Still, this hall was more than fifty feet high, and a big build was a big build. There was no way for us to be sure about the timing.

Bojack had to talk to Bael first, and then Kevin would come to the throne room when he felt like it. I could be relatively sure that I was digging straight up, but the demons were only broadly aware of the layout of the citadel. Once I got close to Kevin’s rooms, the Fortune enchantment on my pick could direct me to rare minerals, which would likely be concentrated in the forge, but a lot of this was guesswork.

Stone blocks vanished as I swung the pick, and I worked my way up in a spiral. There was lava somewhere, and that worried me. Digging straight up or down in Minecraft was a good way to die. The forge overlooked the cauldron, and the cauldron was hanging in the caldera. We were starting at the bottom, and it was a long way to go.

Eventually, Pickle Rick started giving me a slight tug, hinting at the presence of rare materials. I shifted the path of my stairs, building it deeper into the mountain before resuming my climb. I ran across a vein of iron, but that wasn’t what was triggering the Fortune enchantment.

The pick was still telling me to go up. How long I spent mining, I had no idea. The orichalcum held out, and any durability loss it suffered was counteracted by the iron vein. My arms felt tireless, and I was on a mission. As boring as the process was, this was what would get us to the end game. Harvesting stone, blank, featureless blocks, over and over and over.

I wasn’t even bothering to store the coins, letting them slip from my hand as they collected in my palm. There were thousands of blocks in my pack already, and Kevin undoubtedly had stores of resources that would make my hoard seem like a hobby.

Eventually, the tug on my pick leveled out. I hadn’t reached a passage, but the enchantment was telling me there was loot to be had ahead. It was as good a sign that the forge was near as I was going to get.

When I broke through into an actual passage, I was met with a soldier in full iron plate wearing the Dargothian insignia on his shoulder.

“My…my lord,” he stammered, “I heard something in the walls. I..I didn’t realize.” There hadn’t been another Survivor to contend with since before this man was born. When he saw someone in fanciful armor cutting through the walls, the natural assumption would have to be that it was Kevin working on a project.

“As you were,” I said. I quickly finished mining out an opening so I could step into the hall. It was a U bend, with the corridor ending on a turn about twenty paces away on both sides. There was another guard at the corner on my right, studiously trying not to look at me. I held the pick out like a dowsing rod, it was telling me to go left.

The first guard was still staring at me, so I affected a less casual tone.

“I said as you were.”

He saluted and walked stiffly over to the opposite corner from the other guard to resume his watch. There couldn’t be two dark lords wandering the halls, so this charade wasn’t going to hold up for long, but I ignored them both and followed the tug.

It led me to what initially struck me as a museum for clocks. The center of the chamber was dominated by what looked like a miniaturized version of Big Ben, with four analog faces. Sanguinum lines ran from the base of the tower to smaller clocks and dozens of what appeared to be automated systems around the room involving pistons, stamps, hoppers, dispensers and sensors all working in synchrony.

Much of what they were doing was out of view, but I heard the clink of coins being dispensed on one side of the room before being shuttled along a track via a minecart. At the end of this Rube Goldberg set-up was a chest sorting system, and when I checked its contents, I found that it was gradually being filled with a kind of coin that was new to me. It was metallic, but with a wooden edge, and marked with what my brain told me was a hashtag, though that couldn’t be right.

I took one of the coins to an open section, threw it down, and was rewarded with a complete section of railroad track. It was only a foot long, but wide enough to accommodate an actual train. Kevin had managed to automate at least some aspects of crafting, opening the door to truly industrial-sized projects.

The reason Fortune had brought me here was quickly apparent. In addition to the assembly line, there were sanguinum-powered lamps instead of torches. There were also several whole blocks of the material stacked in one corner. They weren’t stone blocks with mineral veins, but actual pure redstone.

As interesting as the room was, investigating the mechanics could wait until after I was king. Aside from the hall I’d entered from, there were two other doors in the room. One was behind me, oversized and barred by a system almost identical to the locking mechanisms identical to what had been present in the waystation.

The other door was normal looking; crafted from pale wood with a regular brass handle. I let myself through and explored the area beyond. Kevin had a factory complex. There were several other automated chambers like the one I’d left behind that I didn’t stop to examine.

Making my way back to the locked door, I found a coin resting in a dish on a stand beside it. The coin converted into a notched stick that fit perfectly into the lock, and after it was turned, the chains and gears spun and wound to undo the bars that were blocking the door.

The next hall that ended in a blank wall, but as approached it, I felt a pressure plate sink under my foot. Jumping back was an unnecessary reflex. Instead of poisoned arrows or a swinging pendulum blade, the plate triggered pistons to split the wall open like a set of sliding doors, revealing a softly lit chamber beyond.