Day 47
Busy couple of days. Went back to Eastside yesterday in order to deliver my "goods". I will admit, I felt like a kid who had barely done his homework and had to present in class next day.
I regret remembering that now.
Anyway, the Eastsiders seemed genuinely surprised that I had actually gone through with my promise, and didn't seem to mind the subpar quality of my "products" all too much. Kind of strange – you'd think I have already showed them I'm a trustworthy guy, but I guess there's still a long way to go.
(When leaving the village, I saw that one of the kids was too close to a huge crevice that led to an equally huge ravine beneath. I made sure to shoo him back to the village, then filled the hole up with some planks. Note to self to check it out jn the future, cause it looked like there was a sizeable cave too.)
After that, stopped at my base to grab some stuff, then went to Westside. I haven't mentioned this before, I'm sure, but the village is situated right by a rather large lake, and the only way to it from my direction is through a pretty narrow patch of land. Well, as I got there, I found only a huge hole in the ground, filled with water both from the lake and the adjacent river. Pretty obvious what kind of trouble had creeped through here and was now forcing me to make a bridge too. I completely forgot my first-day pains of trying to force a semi-useable crafting bench together out of a bunch of mismatched planks, but hey – atleast I had an axe to help me this time instead of bare hands.
Did eventually finish it and got to the village. I had come for only one reason, actually: to check if the people here had any problems with their clothing, like in Eastside. Found the same fellow who had initially greeted me all those days ago (figured he might have been the head of the village); the man actually was not, but he did assure me that none of the people had any trouble with that. Asked him how was that possible, since I haven't actually seen any trained leatherworkers, and he explained that they bought clothing and other supplies of similar sort from a couple of wandering traders.
To be fair, Westside in general seems to be much better off than Eastside in terms of wealth and things like that, so I can see them being able to deal with crazy trader prices. Even so, I did tell him that I recently "learned" the art of leatherworking (may have embellished my skills a little bit), and could help them with that, should there ever be need.
Afterwards, I tracked down the weaponsmith, traded some iron while making small talk about the state of things in the village, then, at the end, decided to push my luck and tried asking his name too; if Rasheed from Eastside was willing to open up, then maybe this guy as well? We've been making deals for some time, after all. In response, he told me "he just so happens to have a small test" for me to take, handed me one of the iron ingots I had just sold him, then asked to follow him.
I didn't have to wonder what was happening for too long – he brought me straight to the village's Iron Golem, at the main square, who was watching a bunch of kids play in the grass and, well, he looked really roughed up: cracks and blast marks all over its torso, and an arrow stuck deep in where there normally would be a knee. The weaponsmith then instructed to approach the Golem slowly from where it could see me, then hand it the ingot. I followed his advice: slowly walked into the Golem's field of view (the way its head snapped to me the instant I did is something else), slowly took the ingot from my belt and slowly "offered" it to the thing. This entire exchange was like I was trying to tame an actual wild animal by bribing it with food; and again, the way Golem was staring at me, that comparison probably isn't far off.
After a few tense seconds, the thing extended its long "arm" towards the ingot and lightly touched it. I watched the as the iron literally came alive, slowly losing the ingot form and flowing into the golem's hand (jerked my hand back in surprise, but at that point it didn't matter). Soon enough, the entire ingot was sucked into the Golem's hand, and it began repairing itself. What a show it was! The cracks were mending right before my eyes, the old, weathered layer of steel being replaced, the nicks and marks slowly disappearing. I turned around for a second, just to see that half the village was watching the golem – clearly I wasn't the only one captivated by this happening. The sharp CRACK turned my attention back to the Golem, and I watched the arrow in its' leg getting snapped and pushed out.
Then the weaponsmith approached, and he was smiling. I don't remember if I've ever seen him smile before. He shook my hand, said that I am trustworthy, and finally introduced himself as Thuur. Thuur told me that he is in charge of keeping the Golem "alive and operational", and that this was a tried and true "test of trust" of his for any "newcomers": apparently, Golems, even if they aren't exactly alive, have some sentience and are great judges of character – they only accept iron for self-repairs from somebody they personally see as trustworthy, and that it's nigh impossible to fool them. So, I passed his little test with flying colors. All's well that ends well, right?
Helped the farmer lady after that – saw her walking straight into the village's well with a blank face. Not harmed thankfully, probably just lost in thought. She thanked me and said that she was trying to work on a new, "golden quality" source of food for me to try out specifically, then rushed off. I mean, her super-stew's saved my life already, so I am really inclined to try out whatever it is she's got planned.
After that, I headed to Northside – it has been a very long while – but not before making a small detour to my base and grabbing the anvil I had. I intended to not only extend the same offer I had tovthe other two villages, but to try and get the local armorsmith's help.
I arrived to the village to find most of the people – bar the Greencloak guys - performing some sort of a ritual, and not in happy mood. Apparently, they were grieving their own Golem, who had died the previous night trying to defend one of the greens, and as such, the village was now unprotected. My plans to try and pass the same Golem trust test were shot down, sadly. Someone had even started rumours that the trio had actually planned all of this, and the rest of the village had kicked them out.
On one hand, I could understand them being upset, but on the other hand….those were just rumours. Sure, the Greencloaks were unpleasant and uncooperative, but they've been essentially sentenced to death on somebody's opinion alone. I don't know.
What I do know, however, is that this is partially my fault. Not the Greencloaks –to be fair, I don't think they would be kicked out if their track record with the rest of the villagers wasn't so bad to begin with; no, it's my fault for not keeping up to date with Northside. For all I know, the night the Golem fell, the entire village could have been wiped out. As it turns out, Northside is easily in the worst condition of all three settlements, and what kind of Huntsman would I be if I didn't help? The armorsmith, whom I sought out after finding out about all of this explained that the Golem deaths aren't too rare, and new ones eventually do get formed again in a span of a few days; but for those few days, the villages are easy prey for monsters – zombies especially.
That's why I deviated from my original course of action and spent the evening reinforcing the area where I could. I did not have a lot of material to work with, so a huge chunk of time was spent digging up enough cobble and chopping up enough trees (and the nearest forest wasn't exactly close) to create appropriately solid walls. Once the night hit, I spent the entirety of it patrolling, lighting up and defending the place to the best of my abilities.
Once the morning had arrived and I was sure that no more mobs would come creeping out if the shadows, I went straight to armorsmith for the "help" I originally came for. See, despite how banged up my set of iron armor was, I wasn't ready to just write it off, since the pieces still had fairly decent enchantments on them. I wanted to ask the smith to demonstrate first-hand how to go about repairing severely damaged armor – even if I still had the System guide for that, time and time again it was proved to me that just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you can actually do it; so I'd feel a lot safer trying to mend my armor after an actual practical demonstration. And for a small, symbolic price of two emeralds, the man did just that.
(I could swear the look he gave my anvil once I'd placed it was almost melancholic. Or nostalgic – it's somewhere along those terms.)
After a hearty rundown and a handful of demonstrations on what to do in the most common cases (since my iron armor was technically composed of a lot of small iron plates, the repairs consisted of either replacing those plates with freshly forged ones or straight-up welding the damaged spots with molten iron like some sort of a patch), I headed straight home after people assured me they'd be able to deal with a few Golemless nights (but I will be coming back in the nearest future! Can't put things off when lives are at stake. I hope the Green Garbs find a new home safely).
Once home, I started the repairs on my armor. And, as is customary now, something had gone off-the-rails wrong. You see, I started working on my chest piece first. Given how the majority of the damage was large, but fairly narrow lacerations on the plates, I would only need to replace those, and maybe do a little bit of welding in the spots where the plate connection could be compromised; so I made appromximately the same plates with a single ingot, clipped the damaged ones out, inserted the fresh ones and tried to hammer them in.
Except as soon as I hit the chestplate with the hammer, it bounced back so hard I almost dislocated my shoulder, straight out of my arms and into the wall. What's more, I myself was dis-located from my spot on the floor straight towards the freaking ceiling. That kind of thing did not happen to the armorsmith, but obviously…sometimes I feel like I'm the universe's punching bag.
To prove to myself that I haven't gone crazy or become cursed with some painful inability to repair stuff, I carefully set out to treat my Protection II iron leggings instead. And the outcome? No flying hammers, no flying Jaunes. An almost perfect repair job (even if I'm pretty sure I still can't wear them without the plates chaffing my legs.)
What could possibly be wrong with the chestplate for it to react the way it did? I inspected it closer, and what did I find? In addition to the same Protection level it had a nice little "bonus" in "Thorns II", which I had completely forgotten about.
Right there and then I learned that, apparently, not all enchantments are created equal. "Thorns", whenever the armor piece gets hit, seems to hit the attacker back. So, while I'm pretty sure it was partially responsible for keeping the pig-people of the Nether off me, it doesn't actually discriminate, so I myself am treated as an attacker and that makes it a very challenging task to actually repair the armor. Very much a double-bladed sword, at a first glance.
I still had the option of forging a fresh-new set of armor, and then using the little manual thoughtfully provided by the System to re-enchant that new set with the same powers and save myself the trouble…but I thought better of it, because on closer inspection of the "Thorns" piece, the spot where I'd hit with my hammer appeared way too damaged for the amount of force I hit it with. I hit it again (and yes, the exact same thing happened. Ouch.), then tried the same with the leggings. The results spoke for themselves: barely a dent on the legwear, but a much more pronounced dent with freaking cracks around on the chestplate. Sure, the cracks were tiny, but still!
The enchantment was doing something to weaken the armor itself; so, like, a double edged sword, but the edge facing you automatically gets sharper. I'm not very good with metaphors, but the point is it looks like "Thorns" does more good than bad; maybe it's the reason why the pig-people's swords tore through my protection like hot knife through butter.
So with the prospect of my enchanted chestpiece belonging in a trash-can – because of said enchantment - I had all the incentive I needed to try and get better enchantments; for that, I needed to upgrade the Enchanting Table with a couple of dozen of new words, and that meant a lot of free space for all the bookshelves. I did have an idea earlier to dig out a basement for my humble granite house, so all the stars aligned for me to do it.
So that's exactly what I did this entire day – dug a nice area underground for me to use for more powerful enchanting. Certainly not a job that can be done in a single day, but so far it's coming along quite nicely; only need to expand it a little bit more, and I 100% can fit all the bookshelves I could possibly ever need. The one issue was all of the dirt overhead, just below the floor of my house – there were tiny specks falling constantly as I was working, and while to me they were annoying, but harmless…for the books they could be anything but. One solution would be to dig out all of the dirt , but that would be a bit too much work. I found a workaround after a little bit of thinking – slabs.
They stop dirt from falling down? Check.
Give enough room for a proper ceiling? Check.
Can cover twice the area than with blocks? Check.
As for what to make them out of, I decided to go with some smooth stone. Just because it looks pretty, and I had extra lying around. Sometimes, that's the only reason a person needs, right? Well, that, and the fact that it doesn't get scorch marks from high heat – blast furnaces sometimes get as hot as lava, it feels like, but the stonework inside stays as pristine as ever. Awesome. In a few days' time, it's going to be a more-or-less official Chateau d'Arc Enchanting Room!
Sadly, had to cut my digging efforts short to visit Northside before nightfall - thankfully, with a huge load of building material this time. I would have stuck around the village for the night as well, but the villagefolk convinced me they had it covered. Probably for the better to be honest - after a whole day of digging and two nights without any rest, plus the poopy "armor" I have and I wouldn't be any good in combat. Still, if I find the village ransacked tomorrow because they didn't "have it covered", I'm going to be pretty angry. Right now, the only thing that's been keeping me awake to write this entry is "Stal" playing on repeat (at least when I don't forget to restart the disk) - the freaking flute is an assault on my senses.
Well, time to end it and head to bed.
A fairly effortless and somewhat rushed chapter, because I'm starting my trade studies tomorrow, and try to guess who, despite almost an entire year in lockdown, actually has zero experience with online classes? Being lightyears behind my peers is something of my speciality.
Also, again, don't read too much into the names. Not yet, at least.
