by R. A. Mejia
As I read the description of the monster, I noted that the name I'd given one of the monsters in my head wasn't far off what its actual name was. I also saw that it had the Mutated prefix, just like the Mutated Moleikin had. The only difference here was that the changes between the base monster and the mutated version weren't quite as extreme. I wondered if it had something to do with the size of the Infernal Crystal. The one I'd looted from the Mutated Moleikin had been twice the size of this one. Did the size of the crystal affect the monster’s changes? Or were the changes simply a reflection of the crystal growth? How did the monsters become mutated in the first place? Was this a natural phenomenon in the dungeon? Like a rare monster in a video game being spawned? Or was this something else? I had so many questions and no answers.
A rustling in the tree line brought my attention back to the moment, and I realized that such a feast of free flesh would draw other predators and scavengers. I didn’t want to miss out on the chance for more XP, so I quickly ran back across the stream and climbed up to my elevated spot amongst the roots of the large tree. I'd just settled in when a single small fox-like animal with three tails slunk from the trees. It looked around carefully before darting to the corpse of the bull and digging in, tearing small bits of flesh and eating them. The fox creature was soon joined by several birds, and they began tearing at the many leftover bodies.
I was just lining up my shot, aiming for the fox, when a loud racket from the forest on the other side of the stream made me look up. I didn’t have a lot of experience in the woods, but that noise didn’t sound like any monsters I had heard before. A few moments later, a group came traipsing out from the shadowy forest.
Enemy Detected
The notification surprised me. It was the first time I’d gotten one that told me that an enemy was near. I wasn’t sure if it was the result of some new skill or something that was part of the Metalman frame, but I gripped my rifle tightly and kept it trained on them.
The group was made up of a goblin with leather armor and a large backpack, a troll in chainmail wielding a claymore in his hands, and a robed man whose hood obscured his face and prevented me from seeing what race he was. The three walked to the corpses in the stream and chased off the scavengers but not before the goblin darted forward and killed the fox that had been trying to flee. The troll poked at the corpses with his claymore but seemed bored when the monsters didn’t move. The robed one waved his hand and said something to him, and the troll stopped. The unknown one turned to the goblin and said something else, prompting the goblin to pull out a small knife and start to skin the bull. The troll helped, using his large two-handed sword to chop away at the dead monster until the large crystal antlers were free. The robed figure knelt by the corpses of the bull and the alpha and touched them. I recognized the swiping gestures of someone scrolling through the loot window that appeared, and while I felt annoyed that this trio was taking the spoils of my kills, I also knew that I wouldn't have been able to carry all the harvested materials and loot there anyways.
The hooded one rose from his kneeling position, and I clearly heard him curse, "Dark Ones!" He then went to each of the other corpses, examined their loot windows, and rose again just as quickly. It seemed to me that he was looking for something, and I somehow knew that it was the Infernal Crystal I'd already looted. Taking it wouldn't have closed out the loot window since I'd left other items. I was puzzled how anyone would have known that the crystal was there. Could it be that the group had come specifically for the Mutated Quartz Wapiti? Or was it just a coincidence?
I continued to watch from my hidden position as the robed figure became increasingly frustrated and the goblin and the troll looted and harvested materials from the wolves and normal Quartz Wapiti. Soon, the group took everything they could and filled the goblin’s backpack until it was twice as tall as the goblin himself. Then the robed man led the group back into the forest.
Once the adventurers were gone the scavengers returned and ate until everything else was gone. I shot a few of the birds and foxes, but they were only worth a few XP as they were level 1. I wondered if they only existed on this level to help clean up the kills or if they also provided a balance to the ecosystem of the dungeon floor.
After a fruitless hour wasted waiting for more monsters to come to the stream, I decided to move on. I went east into the forest, looking for more monsters to hunt or places where I could set traps.
I eventually came upon a group of miners digging into a resource node. I heard the familiar sound of picks hitting rocks and crept forward to investigate. I carefully worked my way through the dense forest to a small hill where I found two dwarves mining a grey rock that had green patches. I knelt and watched from a distance. Inspect told me it was tin ore that they were taking from the hill. I was surprised to only see the two of them. The mining team we'd put together had at least two guards to protect the three miners while they worked, and I wondered if the dwarves were part of a larger group or if they were just tough enough to go it alone.
I stood up, ready to leave the two to their work, when a branch snapped beneath my foot. The two dwarves spun at the sound, raising their picks defensively.
The dwarf on the left looked towards the tree line where I was hidden and shouted, "Come on out, you thieving Scavenger! We won't be bullied out of our ore again. You'll have to take it from us."
I understood what the two were referring to but didn't want any kind of misunderstanding. I put my rifle into my internal inventory, knowing I could recall it in an instant, and then stepped out of the shadows of the forest, hands raised up, and walked toward the two dwarves.
"Hello," I said, trying to sound friendly. "I'm sorry if I disturbed your work. I hadn't meant to startle you and didn't mean any harm. I'm not a Scavenger. I'm an Artificer."
The dwarf on the right looked at me in surprise and said, “It's a talking golem. Will wonders never cease.” Then he turned to the one on the left and said, “He's not the one that robbed me. It was a little goblin and a troll."
The two lowered their picks, and the dwarf on the left said, "Sorry, Artificer. My friend here was robbed yesterday of all the ore he'd mined, and I vowed to not let it happen again."
I slowly lowered my hands. "No problem. My name is Repair. My class is Artificer. It's a kind of crafter."
The dwarf of the left nodded and said, "I'm Timli, son of Simli, son of Rimli." He gestured to his friend and continued, "This is Bob, son of Bob, son of Bob."
"Lot of Bobs there," I said while thinking of several Bob's your Uncle jokes.
Bob nodded. "Yeah, my kin weren't that original with their names. You should see our family gatherings. Bobs as far as the eye can see."
I was not sure what to say to that, so I switched topics. "Well, sorry you got robbed. That happen a lot on this level?"
Both dwarves nodded, but Timli answered. "It's become more common in the last few months. Not that I see the point. Nothing but a bunch of nickel, tin, and iron on this level. You'd make more coin killing monsters."
"Then why are you mining it?"
"We have to get our mining skills up if we're gonna have a chance to get good ore on the lower levels," Bob answered.
"Plus, we're working our way through some bronze smithing recipes. We'll use the tin ore and some copper to make the bronze," added Timli.
"I haven't seen much bronze in the city. Plenty of poor-quality copper, middling iron, and some steel, but little bronze, although it would be a perfectly good material for weapons and armor."
Bob raised an eyebrow at me. "You are rather well-informed for a golem. Not many bother with bronze when there are so many iron nodes in the dungeon. But we know it is harder and more resilient than iron when properly made."
I knew that they were right, but I’d already moved past the usefulness of bronze and onto steel. Still, I wasn't going to talk down about another crafter's choices. "Well, I'll leave you two to your work then. I have more monsters to kill."
&
nbsp; "Good hunting to you, golem. Keep an eye out for those bastard thieves."
I waved as I moved past the two back into the forest in search of more monsters. It worried me that adventurers would turn on each other, but it didn’t surprise me. After all, any time someone had something valuable, inevitably someone would appear to try and take it away.
Chapter 22 - The Everwoods Witch
After many more hours spent killing monsters, I’d collected enough monster parts and other loot to fill my pack and gained a good bit of XP towards my next level. I decided to call it a day and made my way through the forest of the dungeon field and toward the tunnels that led outside. The sky was already dark, and the steps up to the city center less crowded as I left the dungeon. I wasn’t sure if Greebo was still power leveling Manny and the Twins, but didn’t want to waste the time searching for him when I was sure he had things in hand. So, I sold off my loot to the closest vendors. I got decent prices, but I was more concerned with just unloading it all to recoup the costs of making my ammunition. As I was unloading the monster parts and cores, I came across the Infernal Crystal in my inventory and recalled my agreement with the Everwoods Witch to bring her any of these types of crystals if I found them in the dungeon.
I collected the silver from selling my loot and left the market outside the dungeon, traveling through the North District, where the goblins, trolls, and other dark races lived. Unlike the rich spacious stone buildings of the Eastern District, these were made of old wood, and the apartments were stacked on each other to cram as many people into them as possible. I made my way through the dark broken streets and winding roads, behind a series of stores to a decrepit looking shack. Even during the bright day, it always seemed to be covered in perpetual shadow from the buildings surrounding it and at night the small wooden structure was completely hidden except for the small amount of light that leaked from the window with the picture of a cauldron.
The haunted-looking place was the home of Evanora Everwoods, a literal witch, and the only person in this entire district that helped the residents with their healing. The city’s other healers were either too expensive or would not come to this neighborhood to help the people here. Evanora was the one that healed Greebo of the life-threatening curse that he’d been given, and she was the only person I knew that had any information on the Infernal Crystals.
I knocked on the door of her shack, causing the ill-fitting windows to rattle as I did so. I heard wooden floorboards creaking as someone came to the door.
“Who be there?” asked a voice that I recognized as the witch’s.
“It’s me Repair,” I answered.
The door opened a crack, light spilling from the room behind it, and I saw Evanora peek out and look around before fully opening the door. The decrepit looking woman gave me a sharp-toothed smile and waved me in with her long-fingered hands. “Hello, Metalman Repair. Please, come in.”
She turned and walked back into the house. I followed her inside and closed the door behind me. The house looked like it was a small shack from the outside, but was surprisingly large on the inside. It was still made of wood, but there was a homey comfort to the place. A fat pot-bellied iron stove that sat along one side of the room was lit and a stovepipe funneled the smoke through the roof. The stove not only gave off warmth to fill the home but enough light that I could see that the walls were lined with shelves that were littered with books, scrolls, plants, potion bottles, and other alchemy and herbalism equipment. Drying plants hung from the rafters, and in the middle of the room, there was a couch and two chairs.
The Everwoods Witch motioned to the couch and said, “Please, sit down. Your people don’t eat or drink, but do you mind if I make myself some tea?”
“No, I don’t mind,” I answered. The cushioned couch groaned as I said down, not used to supporting such a weight. Evanora puttered around, putting more wood into the stove and stoking the fire. She pumped water into a kettle, put it on the stovetop, then she sat to my left on the cushioned well-worn chair and looked me up and down with a penetrating gaze.
“You seemed to have gained a few levels since I saw you last, Repair. How have you been?”
I thought about everything that had happened to me since I’d last seen Evanora. The gnome council, their challenge, my efforts to use my class abilities and crafting to give me the edge to meet it. All the struggles and successes. The way people in the city treated me as an unthinking construct and property to some other person. The few people that treated me like a real person: Greebo, the goblins, and Niala.
Yet, instead of unloading on her, I gave her two thumbs up and said, “I’ve been well. I’ve had my troubles, but I’m hoping that I can overcome them soon. It’s sometimes a challenge to deal with the people in this city. They often treat me differently, like I’m less than human.” Then I thought about the many races in this world and corrected myself. “As less than a fully thinking, sentient person.”
“Do you think being made of wood and metal make you any less of a person?”
The question made me pause. “It certainly feels like other people feel that way about me sometimes. But for myself, I’d have to fall back to the adage, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ I know I am a person because I know I am.” I shrugged and my thoughts turned inward for a moment, and I wondered what it meant to be sentient. Was it the physical sensations? The ability to self-reflect? The capacity to plan and think of abstract ideas?
The tea kettle started to whistle then and the witch got up and took the kettle off the stove. She puttered around and produced a teapot, a teacup and a saucer from a cupboard. She added some leaves to the pot and poured the hot water over the leaves.
The almost ritualistic way she made the tea, in such a precise manner, made me realize that everyone has an order to their lives. A kind of programming to their actions and routines. Whether what I did, how I moved, was pre-programmed in some magical language by ancient beings or was the result of centuries of genetic inheritance did not matter. I was who I was. It did not matter if someone else considered me a person. Only my own self-knowledge that I was a real person despite not being made of flesh and blood.
Evanora Everwoods returned to her seat, and her eyes closed, and she seemed to relax slightly as she took a long sip of her tea. “That’s just what these old bones need on a cold night like this,” she said, a small smile coming to her face as she put the cup back down on the saucer. She returned her attention to me. “I’m sorry if I asked a question that bothered you. I’ve just always been fascinated by the legends of the Metalmen and often wondered how they viewed themselves. Whether they thought of themselves as a unique culture or the servants of the ancient ones that created them?” She looked away for a moment, as if considering more questions to herself, then smiled as she took another sip of tea and looked back at me. “But you didn’t come here to satisfy the curiosity of an old woman, did you? How may I help you, Repair?”
I pulled the black, fist-sized, Infernal Crystal from my backpack and held it out for her to see. “I’ve come to trade this to you for more magical training.”
She put the teacup down, leaned forward, took the crystal, and stared intently at it. “You found another one? Where did you get it? Tell me everything.”
I proceeded to describe the fight with the Mutated Quartz Wapiti and the Shadow Wolves and how the crystals came from larger, more powerful versions of the normal monster.
“There’s another thing. It may be nothing, but there was a group of people that seemed to be looking for the mutated monster. They seemed upset at not finding something, and I think they were looking for the Infernal Crystal. How they knew it would be there, I couldn’t guess. But it was something I figured you’d want to know about.”
“Another Infernal Crystal? That is unprecedented so early in the dungeon. I would not expect to see that any before the twenty-fifth level of the dungeon, and even then only over the course of many weeks,” Evanora said as she shook her head. “That you
have found two now, and that someone is searching for them tells me that something is amiss in the dungeon and that you must find out what it is.”
“What do you mean? I just came to trade the crystal to you for magic spells.”
“I mean that you have stumbled upon something that either no one else has seen or has been unwilling to report. Perhaps it has something to do with your Metalman nature, but these mutated creatures seem drawn to you. You must find out why these dungeon monsters are changing.”
“Why do I have to? What’s in it for me?”
The witch raised an eyebrow as she took a sip of her tea before answering, “What is it that you’d want? It may be a very dangerous task.”
I thought about what I needed. “I have to reach level 8 as a challenge set by the gnome council. I need money to fund my crafting and create my mechanical companion and frankly I need more power.”
“I can set a quest for you, but I can’t just give you all that you ask for,” she said and then pursed her lips. “Though I can shape the reward to be in line with the risk you are taking.” Her eyes glowed white for a moment and a notification appeared.
