“My lord,” his strange disembodied voice echoed around the room, “We have made good progress. There is something you might like to see.”
“Mmm,” Alix mumbled in reply. “Give me a moment,” he said, trying to think of anything to get the skeleton out of the room while he dressed.
“Of course, my lord,” Mr Bones replied and promptly left.
Alix tried going back to sleep, but between Tifayn’s nakedness pressed up against him, and the curiosity at what the skeletons had found, it was impossible. He unwrapped himself from her embrace, but she followed him out of the bed, proving she had been awake the entire time. She was completely unashamed of her nakedness as she stretched in the morning light, although she had nothing to be ashamed of with a body like hers. He tried not to stare as they dressed but his gaze kept returning to all her curves.
“You don’t happen to have any coffee around here, do you?” he asked Tifayn when they were both dressed. The thought of another cup of what she called tea was already making his stomach churn.
“No, I don’t have any coffee, only tea. I have heard the nobles in Galdea prefer to drink coffee. It is pretty expensive, but it should be possible to get hold of some if you really want it,” she replied. He heard the unspoken If we had money and his thoughts changed from the secrets hiding in the north tower to how he could get hold of some coin.
“I guess we can’t send the skeletons into town to buy some. I’ll see what stock of potions I have once I’ve cleared more of the grounds, then maybe I can sneak into town and sell them. I’ll sell as many as I need to get some coffee. Maybe I could even buy some beans and we can grow some of our own.” Even as he said it he realised what a foolish thought it was. He had no time to be growing coffee beans. If he had money to spare, he needed to spend it on more important things, like a new pair of clothes, or some proper food.
“If it is something master enjoys then I will make sure to find some beans, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go to Galdea. King Azuran will have made sure that everyone knows your face and they will all have been instructed to deny you service.”
“I could grow a beard I guess, or make sure to cover myself up well. I could pretend I am horribly disfigured or something.”
“You will look even more conspicuous if you are walking around with your face covered. The people don’t take kindly to demons either so I would have difficulty traveling there as well.”
“Is there any other way we can make some money then?”
“There are a few small villages near the mountain that I have traded with before. We will make less money there but it will be safer.”
“Great, let’s do that then,” Alix said, wondering why she hadn’t mentioned the villages sooner. He had thought he had been abandoned miles from civilisation. “I’ll go and see what Mr Bones wants to show me, then I’ll get in a full day clearing the grounds.” The thought of waking up to a cup of coffee was enough motivation to get him working double time.
Tifayn led the way out of the room and they found Mr Bones waiting for them silently outside. He set off ahead, leading them down the grand staircase to the ground floor. Alix could instantly tell a difference in the place. The majority of the debris had been cleared, the skeletons able to work tirelessly through the night, and the newly uncovered passageway Mr Bones led them down was freshly restored. It still needed further repairs the further down the passage they went, but they stopped before they had to start traversing the piles of rocks the skeletons hadn’t cleared yet.
Mr Bones led them into a room he hadn’t been able to reach before but it was one he had known was there after loading the castle blueprints into his map, one he had been eager to reach.
The Armoury.
The sleep left him in a rush at the thought of finally getting a good weapon.
“They wanted to see if any of their old weapons remained but it looks like most of them have been looted,” Mr Bones said. Half a dozen skeletons worked inside organising what remained. There were a few tarnished pieces of armour and some weapons that looked like they had been blackened in a fire. “I apologise for this, my lord. I regret that I wasn’t awake to stop it from happening. Unlike the Library and some other areas of the keep, the Armoury was never under any protective spells or traps.”
“Is there anything here that can be of use?” Alix asked instead. Had Mr Bones really just dragged him here to see these scraps? What had happened to all of the old swords and the other various weapons and armour of the old Darknights? He had expected there to be a Darknight’s Greatsword lying around for him to inherit, but the once grand room was now full of shelves, empty apart from dust and debris.
“Of course, it can all be of use. With the ring you should be able to break it all down into core components. The blades and armour are old but they were made with the finest materials. We will work on making our way to the forge next. Take this for now,” Mr Bones replied, passing him a sheathed blade. “It is small but the only thing left that managed to weather the centuries.”
- Acquired Azurite Knife
Alix quickly checked the knife’s stats, but it didn’t look like it had any special abilities. It had a Power rating of twelve, but he didn’t know what that meant. He was just glad that it wasn’t single digits. “Does it…do anything?” Alix asked, just in case he was missing something.
“An Azurite blade doesn’t need to do anything, its benefit is that it is resilient and it will never dull or break under duress from a lesser blade,” Mr Bones explained. “It will serve you well until the forge is running again.”
Drawing the blade from the sheath, he found it was crafted from a sinister black material that shone with an oily gloss. Streaks of bright blue cut through the material in lightning like patterns. Despite the small size of the blade, Alix felt safer already.
“Thanks, this should help with clearing the grounds as well. Some of the weeds out there are as tough as old trees. Do you know if there are there any other tools around here I can use? I should probably see if I can craft simpler things first and get some practise in before moving on to blades. Maybe I will be able to find some ores to help with that, or at least cut some wood to light the forge.”
“There is a storage room we just uncovered by the front entrance that looked like it had a few serviceable tools inside.”
“Great, thanks,” Alix replied, leaving the skeletons to their work while he went to find the tools. They were making swift progress, and he began to feel pressure to keep up with them. His accomplishments so far didn’t feel like enough. He had to work harder. Still, it wasn’t his fault there had been so many distractions.
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The door to the storage room opened noisily on dry hinges. The room was musty and everything was covered in dust and cobwebs, but he found a selection of rust covered but useable tools; a pickaxe, an axe and a range of shovels and hammers. He grabbed a hammer to start with.
“I will leave you to it then,” Tifayn said once he was armed with his new tools. “I will probably go foraging later to replenish the stores. I wasn’t expecting you for a few months yet so I hadn’t stockpiled enough. I guess it is lucky that we don’t need to feed an army of skeletons as well.”
Alix breathed a sigh of relief as Tifayn walked away. At any second he was worried he would say something to alert her to the two hiding in the north tower, or that she would suddenly reveal that she could read his thoughts. He had yet to think of how he would broach the subject with her, but he was going to have to think of something soon. Brant would recover in a day or two and he was eager to question him.
Once outside, he forced himself not to look towards the north tower. He felt like he could feel eyes on him with every step he took. As calmly as he could, he made his way to another overgrown corner of the grounds he was eager to clear.
The outer wall was a large series of interconnected curves and angles, hiding nooks and new grounds around every bend. There were even other smaller walls that cut across the grounds, separating them into different areas. The one he wanted to work on looked like it had once been quite a spectacular place, a garden for rest and relaxation. There were paths and courtyards, stone ornaments and benches, but all was now overgrown with tall swaying grasses, ferns and other bushes he couldn’t name. A few ponds and streams cut through the grounds, but they were thick with weeds, the water at best a sluggish trickle.
Alix lost track of time as he worked, the Azurite blade cutting through everything with ease. He was surprised at just how many materials he managed to harvest from the overgrown mass. Blackberries that had grown wild and out of control produced Thorns and Blackberry Fruit, which he was able to dismantle into Blackberry Seeds the constant Aloe, which every plant seemed to produce in different quantities,. Thorns hadn’t been in any of the recipes he had read, but if it was harvestable then it had to have some use. He couldn’t see what good it would do to plant the seeds, so when the Dismantle option appeared again, he checked it out.
- Obtained Seed Oil
Alix didn’t know if that was a cooking or potion crafting ingredient, but it sounded more useful than the plain seeds. Clearing the blackberries exposed a courtyard paved with flagstones, along with a stone bench that was green with moss. He managed to tear it off in one large carpet, but he was disappointed when it yielded nothing but a small amount of Aloe. With the bench cleared, he took a short rest, and he found himself facing the north tower and its dark windows. The slates that had been loose and falling off the day before had miraculously realigned themselves.
Unable to sit peacefully with the thought of Tifayn or someone else watching him, he soon got back to work, and came across another familiar plant, although it wasn’t the familiar one he was hoping. He was harvesting things so quickly that the process had become automatic and he only stopped to check on what he had collected every so often, but one thing caught his eye due to its odd normality. He was expecting to find fantastical herbs and plants, but instead his activity log read:
- Obtained Wheat
It was then he realised that all the bread he had seen had been purple. So far he hadn’t thought to ask Tifayn why she cooked such loafs, he had just assumed that different ingredients existed here, but with wheat growing in the grounds, he would have to ask her why she wasn’t using it.
The Wheat had the Dismantle option so he selected that and the Wheat was converted into Wheat Flour in his inventory. He made sure to hold some back so he could replant it. He had collected a large variety of seeds now, enough to start a respectable garden. He didn’t really have the time to become a farmer, but they still needed to eat, and he could probably delegate a few skeletons to the job.
There was a greenhouse on the far wall that would be of help if he could clear the way. It looked like it was in sore need of repair though, but he didn’t know how he would get hold of glass out here. Maybe he could scavenge some broken windows from the castle. He didn’t need to use all the rooms anyway. As long as he had a warm bed, he would be fine. All the other comforts were just a bonus.
The grounds continued to fight him as he worked his way deeper. In a dark corner he came across a large patch that once harvested revealed itself to be Abyssia, something he had been on the lookout for so that he could finally craft some Antidotes. He stocked up with as much as he could and then carried on deeper into the overgrown grounds.
He came across a patch of grass that he almost stepped through, until he noticed the edges of each leaf glinting in the sunlight like the edge of a sharp blade. With the Azurite blade he carefully cut down a few leaves and fed them to the ring.
- Obtained Steelgrass
“What is Steelgrass?” Alix asked the ring, after trying and failing to dismantle it any further.
“It is pretty self-explanatory, is it not?” the ring replied with its
usual level of usefulness. “It is a forgeable component. With the junk the skeletons found in the armoury, you should be able to make something half-way decent if you throw in some Steelgrass, or if you harvest enough of it you can turn it into a blade by itself. If you had used your Analyse skill it would have told you as much.”
“A blade of grass? That would be pretty cool. Maybe I could practise making one of those before working with rarer components.”
Alix tried to carefully harvest as much of it as he could, but he still finished with both hands covered in tiny nicks. It was a handy component but it wasn’t really something he wanted growing out of control. Once the grounds were fully cleared, he would have to keep an eye on its regrowth.
Some of the bushes he moved on to were almost as thick as wood but the Azurite Knife managed to cut through then with ease. Some of the thicker pieces produced Fibre, something he could use for crafting rope, or hopefully clothes if he could find a crafting recipe for them. When he got tired of working with the knife, he took out the hammer. It was about time he practised harvesting other materials.
The rocks turned out not to be as exciting as the plants. There wasn’t much they could be broken down into other than Sand. For some stupid reason he thought he might have been able to work the rocks into blocks for the castle, or find gold in the rubble, but despite feeling like he had fallen into a Harvest Moon game, things weren’t going to be that easy. He would have to look elsewhere for proper building materials, or valuable gems. The Sand might be of use in the forge, but for now it was just weighing him down. He felt its weight greater than all the plant materials combined.
One rock cracked open at the swing of his hammer. It was dark and knobbly, picked from a stagnant stream he was trying to clear, one of a few water features he wanted to get running again. The two halves opened in his hand, revealing a purple crystal centre. He tapped the surface with the hammer and a new item appeared in his inventory.
- Obtained +10 Purple Fluorite
Fancy.
Alix almost asked the ring what he could use it for once he noticed it couldn’t be dismantled, but he stopped himself and tried out the Analyse skill instead.
“Analyse,” he said, while focussing on the Purple Fluorite in his hand.
- Can be processed by a Lapidary
Well that was helpful…
Now that he knew what it looked like, he tried to find more, but the stream was empty. It looked like he couldn’t do anything with it anyway. He cleared the overgrowth and it gurgled back to life, the centuries of grime washing away.
Alix switched back to his knife and continued to clear the path to the greenhouse. He had always wanted a garden but back in the city there hadn’t been any space for one. Now he had plenty of exotic new seeds to try and grow, but he didn’t know if he could justify the time tending to them. Even if he established a garden, it would be long dead by the time the next Darknight showed up.
A curious flower produced Poppymilk but he didn’t think it would be anything he could use to mellow Tifayn’s tea. It was an ingredient he had read about in Practical Potions, one that had many restorative properties.
He was mere metres from the greenhouse, one that looked like a long glass mansion, when he heard a voice calling across the garden.
“Alix!” the voice called, a man’s voice. He had only heard a few voices in this world and recognised it instantly, although it was the last one he had expected to hear.
Alix looked across the garden and spotted Leon entering the open gates on top of a wagon, waving frantically.