by Thad Ward
“It’s nothing,” Idalia said, though Ike could tell she was pleased with the praise. “It’s just nice to have a real patient for a change.”
Ike looked at the jars. One was empty after making the bandages. “Say, Idalia, how attached are you to that jar? There’s something I’d like to try out, but it might break.”
“Go ahead,” Idalia said. “You’re welcome to use anything here if it’ll help you. Besides, it doesn’t make much sense to stay attached to things when I’m trying to move on. You can’t take it with you and all that.”
Ike nodded his thanks and touched the jar, activating Harvest Enchantment. He watched as the hourglass-shaped rune on the lid flared with light before vanishing.
Mana: 2 / 9 (-1)
Timeless Jar has lost the enchantment: Preservation
Timeless Jar has been renamed: Jar
Jar’s remaining enchantment capacity: 1 / 1
You have learned the enchantment: Preservation
You have gained experience.
You have recovered 1 mana drain.
Mana: 3 / 10
“Aha!” Ike said. He was starting to understand his class. Enchanting items caused mana drain, which was permanent and reduced his maximum mana. Harvesting enchantments removed them from an item and let him reclaim drained mana. As a bonus, he’d also learn the enchantment if he didn’t know it already. He looked out over the other five jars and started to formulate a plan.
“What’s with that face?” Idalia asked, amused. “You look like you’re up to something.”
“Oh yeah,” Ike said, showing his teeth with a devilish grin. “This dungeon has been messing with me ever since I woke up. It’s high time I show it who it’s dealing with.”
Ike spent the next several hours in preparation. He started by casting Minor Repair on the door to secure Idalia’s room. The knob was beyond fixing, but at least the door would help hide his light while he worked.
Next up was food. Water was a given; Ike drank his fill from the basin, which helpfully replenished itself. He used Idalia’s surgical saw to break apart desk drawers, then used the tinderbox to get a fire going.
The food itself could only loosely be described as such. Ike took Idalia’s advice about which of the preserved herbs and spices were edible. He tried to boil them together in the kettle first. What came out was less like soup and more like potpourri or very strong herbal tea, aromatic but extremely bitter. He settled on grinding a few of the herbs into meal, forming them into crude biscuits, and cooking them over the fire. These only proved to be better because he could eat them faster.
Despite the meager nourishment, Ike was pleased to see his health and mana steadily tick upward until they were full again. It made intuitive sense; nourishment plus rest meant recovery in real life, after all. And while he had to wait the better part of an hour to recover completely, at least it didn’t take the days or weeks it might have in the real world.
Even as Ike sat recovering, he refused to be idle. Being an artificer meant using items to get things done, so he started by enchanting some of the surgical tools with Glow. As he’d expected, now that he knew the enchantment, this was as simple as selecting it from the menu.
Scalpel has gained the enchantment: Glow
Scalpel’s remaining enchantment capacity: 0 / 1
Mana: 9 / 9 (-1)
Surgical saw has gained the enchantment: Glow
Surgical saw’s remaining enchantment capacity: 0 / 1
Mana: 8 / 8 (-1)
Tooth extractor has gained the enchantment: Glow
Tooth extractor’s remaining enchantment capacity: 0 / 1
Mana: 7 / 7 (-3)
“Is there a reason you’re making my surgical tools shiny?” Idalia asked, quirking an eyebrow.
“Just moving mana around. I’ll reclaim it later. I’m worried about losing any excess mana I might recover when I harvest the enchantment on my cloak.” Ike pulled the garment off his back and activated the spell.
Mana: 6 / 7 (-3)
Scoundrel’s Cloak has lost the enchantment: Muffle
Scoundrel’s Cloak has been renamed: Cloak
Cloak’s remaining enchantment capacity: 1 / 1
You have learned the enchantment: Muffle
You have gained experience.
You have recovered 2 mana drain.
Mana: 8 / 9 (-1)
Idalia cocked her head to the side. “I don’t understand. Why don’t you want the enchantment on your cloak?”
Ike shrugged. “I do, and I’ll put it back on in a minute. This way I can learn the enchantment and use my reshaping spell to harvest the excess material. It doesn’t work on magic items, but an ordinary cloak is fair game.”
Ike used the scalpel to cut the cloak horizontally in two, then cast Minor Reshape on each piece, adding his stone to the portion with the hood. When he was done, the top of the cloak had become a cowl with the stone integrated as a fastener. The excess fabric had been shaped into a very basic satchel. He completed the plan by enchanting the cowl with Muffle and giving it a less provocative name.
Cowl has gained the enchantment: Muffle
Cowl’s remaining enchantment capacity: 0 / 1
Mana: 4 / 7 (-3)
Idalia leaned down to admire his work. “I see. You put your light source on your chest so you can see in front of you but keep your hands free. Plus you have a bag to carry items with you now.”
Ike nodded. “That’s the idea. Of course, now that I’ll have a hand free, I really ought to use it to carry something.” He walked over to the desk and cast Minor Reshape again, molding the top of the desk into a circular shield with a handle. It wasn’t much better than a buckler, really, but it was the most he could manage within the one-kilogram limit.
“You’re very resourceful, Ike," Idalia said. "I’ve heard tell of artificers, but I never knew your kind were so handy."
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Ike said. He packed the satchel with the tinderbox, bandages, a jar of water, and a scalpel. He considered the other surgical tools, but none of them were suitable as weapons and he couldn’t reshape metal. He likewise left the mortar, pestle, scales, and tea kettle for now; they might be useful at some point, but they’d only weigh him down in the meantime. He’d reconsider them all when he came back after finishing the quest.
Ike sat down on the floor, laying his equipment out in front of him. “The final touch is enchanting everything,” he said. “I won’t have any offensive or defensive abilities I don’t enchant in advance, so my fight starts here.”
Ike opened the enchanting window for each item in turn. Most of them could receive one enchantment. Oddly, the breeches didn’t. Ike frowned at that. “No magic pants, I guess.”
With the cowl and stone already enchanted, that left him with six options: The tunic, the belt, the boots, the bat, the shield, and the satchel. If he added his personal mana to the mana he could reclaim from items, he had eighteen mana to work with. Of course, if he used all of it to enchant, he’d have none left to cast spells. Minor Reshape had already proved useful for improvising a weapon in a pinch, and he was also likely to need Minor Repair. Ike resolved to use nine for enchanting and keep the other nine for spells.
Of course, the key to Ike’s plan was the hidden manual entry field he’d discovered while enchanting the stone. He only knew four enchantments at the moment: Glow, Minor Combo, Muffle, and Preservation. Preservation wasn’t useful to him right now, and he wouldn’t need multiples of the other three. Then again, he wasn’t sure how the two new enchantments even worked.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Ike said as he stared at his enchantment window. “They’re all open source.”
“Open what?” Idalia asked. “What are you even looking at?”
Ike made a mental note that NPCs couldn’t see his interface. “I’m, uh, concentrating on enchanting these items. And I can see how the two enchantments I just learned work. It’s a bit like reading a list of instructions.”
“Okay,” Idalia frowned. “I don’t understand. Is that important?”
“Profoundly,” Ike said, scanning through the code for Muffle. “Think of it like food. If you get the prepared dish, that’s closed source. There’s nothing you can do but enjoy the meal and guess at how it was cooked. If you get the recipe, though, that’s open source. Now you know exactly how it was made and you can tweak it to make something new.”
“New enchantments?” Idalia asked. “Just by reading the – what was it – source of those other two? I’ve never heard of anyone making enchantments like that.”
Ike cracked his neck and studied the code intently. Just because they were weak enchantments didn’t mean they were simple, and it was always harder understanding someone else’s code than reading your own. Still, there was a lot he could work with here.
“Hello world,” Ike said with a smirk.
You have achieved a World First: Original Enchantment
Chapter 4
Clearing the dungeon
G ood luck, Ike,” Idalia said with a wave. “Come back in one piece, okay?”
Ike closed the door to Idalia’s room behind him and faced out into the darkness of Austrin Fortress feeling defiant and, yes, maybe even a little excited. After hours of careful preparation, he was ready for anything this place could throw at him. He tightened his grip on the bat and shield and strode forward, his movements silenced by the effects of his cowl.
Ike chose to follow the thief’s blood trail. It was easy to see in the light of his stone, which worked a lot like one of those right-angle flashlights designed to fit in a shirt pocket. He quickly realized it didn’t illuminate anything behind him, and that the things in his hands cast significant shadows if he held them up. He made a mental note to figure out a better placement for it at some point.
The way Ike figured, there were only so many reasons a recently-alive person would venture into a cursed fortress filled with undead. Maybe the thief had been after lost treasure, or maybe he had been trying to sneak through to the other side. Idalia had mentioned this was a pass, after all. Either way, the thief had to have found a way in, so maybe retracing his steps would lead Ike out. Ike didn’t want to leave before completing Idalia’s quest, but he’d want to know the way out eventually.
As Ike walked, the temperature in the air gradually dropped. He barely noticed at first thanks to the new enchantment on his tunic.
Minor Cold Ward hadn’t taken much work to figure out. It was just a constant change to one of the wearer’s game attributes, not unlike how Muffle lowered the noise attribute of gear. It didn’t even have any special activation logic beyond wearing the tunic. Of course, letting the enchantment work automatically and constantly came with a trade-off in power.
It had been a boring but practical choice. The dungeon was cold on its own, so the enchantment made Ike a little more comfortable. If Idalia had been any indication, some undead could inflict cold damage, as well, so it made sense for the sort of enemies Ike was expecting. And he didn’t have any sort of bedding yet, so chances were good he’d need to sleep in the elements at some point. It wasn’t an exciting enchantment, but dying from exposure wasn’t exciting, either.
Despite Ike’s resistance, the temperature continued to drop. The wind picked up, as well, and he abruptly found himself staring at a rickety bridge of wooden planks around 25 meters long suspended over a deep ravine. Above him was a clear night sky filled with stars. Far off to his right, he saw a similar, shorter bridge spanning the chasm. Across the bridge in front of him was an entrance much like the one he was standing in; presumably, the bridge was wholly contained by the fortress.
Ike regretted looking down. His stomach jumped into his throat. More than the sight of the drop off was that feeling of vast empty space beneath him, a pit so deep he’d have plenty of time to be terrified before he died.
“Well, shit. I didn’t think about falling damage,” Ike said, pointedly looking upward. “At least I know one way out.”
Ike hesitated for a few seconds, shook his head to psych himself up, and stepped onto the bridge. It creaked and swayed beneath him. He clutched at the rope handles on either side. They were difficult to grip along with his bat and shield. He added another mental note: Make a loop or a sheath to stow them later.
Ike was stepping carefully, gradually testing each plank with his weight, which proved to be a wise strategy when one cracked in half beneath him. For a split second, his foot was hanging out in the open air of the chasm before he quickly pulled it back. He took a deep breath and continued the excruciatingly slow crossing, realizing about three quarters of the way that he’d have to cross it again when he came back for Idalia. “Something to look forward to,” he muttered with a hint of hysteria.
Ike was relieved when his feet reached firm ground on the opposite side. He had to make an effort to release the tension in his muscles. He felt like catching his breath but had no desire to do it here, so he pressed forward. The single open corridor back into the fortress left no other options. After rounding a bend, he reached a door that stood slightly ajar.
The trail of blood went under and beyond the door, and Ike could see more blood on the handle. He caught a glint of metal from the floor and reached down to retrieve a bloody lockpick, considering it before stowing it in his satchel.
Lockpick acquired.
That’s when Ike heard the squeaking. It was loud, coming from several spots beyond the door, and accompanied by a sort of scraping, scuffling noise. He peered through the crack in the door and saw red eyes staring up at him from the shadows.
“Nothing like running tests in a live environment,” Ike said, sticking his bat into the gap and levering the door open.
The creatures on the other side wasted no time obliging Ike’s request. The first launched itself at him, a gray blur in the darkness. He took a swing and missed, causing the furry form to retreat. He could see it at the edge of his stone’s light now: A giant rat that could put New York City’s best to shame. Two more entered the light at each side of the first, gnashing their teeth and looking for an angle of attack.
“Come on guys,” Ike said. “You don’t want to eat me. I’m sure software developers taste awful. Like energy drinks and frustration.” He backed a few steps into the corridor, hoping to draw them in one at a time.
The first took another chance, charging in for Ike’s leg. Now that he had a better idea of its size and speed, his attack connected, sending it headfirst into the door. It squealed and recoiled, drawing one of its forelimbs up against its body as it skittered away. Ike chased it a step or two before letting it go. His bat was enchanted now, but the effect was useless on the rat, so there was no sense in being cavalier.
“Next customer,” Ike mocked. As if on cue, a second rat charged. Rather than going for his legs as the first had, this one leapt for his head, causing Ike’s counter strike to go low. He brought his shield up to intercept and caught the rat’s torso. It scrambled against the edges of the shield before falling and retreating.
Ike didn’t have time to consider if he should pursue, not having seen the third rat right behind the second. It jumped at him as well and would have hit his midsection if the first rat hadn’t dragged the shield down along with it. The third rat met the shield head first, letting out a resounding thwack. Suddenly, a flash like lightning lit up the corridor and the room beyond.
Ike’s latest attempts at enchanting had been a series of trials and errors, mostly errors. He could code out anything he liked, but he had no control over the game balance. Sometimes he received a notification that the enchantment simply wasn’t allowed. Other times the notifications told him that his Enchantment skill was too low. Eventually, he figured out that he couldn’t produce a strong enchantment that was also cheap, easy to trigger, or long-lasting, so he’d had to get creative.
Blinding Break had been one of the fruits of that experimentation. It was essentially a different version of Glow at the same low
cost. Instead of being activated on command, however, it only activated when the item was damaged. And instead of being constant, it only lasted a split second. Because of these trade-offs, the light it produced was orders of magnitude brighter.
Ike hadn’t been ready for the attack and caught some of the effects himself. He blinked away the spots from his eyes to see that the rats were in much worse shape, having taken the full force of the flash. The one in front of him whose face had been against the shield when the flash had occurred was twitching on the ground, apparently stunned into unconsciousness. Ike stomped down on its neck a few times and twisted his foot to break its neck.
You have gained experience.
Taking that as confirmation of the rat’s demise, Ike stepped into the room to find the remaining rats. The first rat was nowhere to be seen, but he found the second scrambling blindly against a corner, its ears and nose twitching as it tried to pinpoint him. Ike brought the bat down once, twice, and a third time. The rat squeaked and sprayed blood with each strike before lying still.
You have gained experience.
Ike wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked around, not seeing any other immediate threats. “Well, it went better than my first fight, at least.” He took stock of his equipment, noting that his bat’s durability was still full but his shield had lost a point. It didn’t make sense to repair it yet. Considering that he hadn’t lost any health or mana to the rats, he nodded his approval. “Okay. Yeah. I’ve got this.”
Ike’s stomach growled. Idalia had assured him that the herbs were nutritious, but that didn’t make them any more satisfying. He needed calories. Something with some meat on its bones.
“Well, I guess I brought this for a reason,” Ike said, taking the apothecary’s scalpel out of his satchel. He looked at the two hairy corpses and gulped. He dragged the second rat back into the hallway and closed the door behind him so he wouldn’t be disturbed while working.
“You start by taking off the skin, right?” Ike grimaced. He’d never field dressed an animal before. He didn’t even understand the term; dressing in the conventional sense meant putting clothes on, not taking flesh off.
