THE EVOKER

The well didn’t just cave in; it inverted.

Polished deepslate blocks hissed as they rose out of the earth, grinding against the cobblestones with a sound like a giant’s teeth gnashing together. They climbed ten, fifteen blocks high, forming a jagged, obsidian-dark throne that towered over the village square. It looked less like a structure and more like a growth.

“That is definitely not in the wiki,” Mugs said, his voice cracking upward in a way that suggested he was finally considering the consequences of his dietary choices.

He was right. Standard evokers don’t get thrones. They don't get polished deepslate infrastructure. And they certainly don't have robes trimmed with pulsing violet light that seems to pull the color out of the surrounding air. The figure that rose from the central shaft was taller than a normal illager, its skin a pale, deathly gray that glowed under the village torches. It didn’t walk; it drifted, its feet never quite touching the dark stone.

It looked at us. Or rather, it looked through us, like we were just bad code it was about to delete.

「⚠ Boss: The Deep-Speaker」 「Current Objective: Survive.」

The Evoker raised its arms. It didn’t make the usual ‘wololo’ sound. It made a noise like a tectonic plate snapping.

“Move!” I yelled.

I didn't wait to see if they followed. I’ve spent enough time staring at blocks to know when the geometry of a room is about to change. A ripple started in the dirt—a line of dark, swirling particles that moved with terrifying speed. It wasn't random. It was a straight vector, aimed precisely at the pixel-center of my hitbox.

Snap-snap-snap-snap!

Iron fangs erupted from the ground, a row of massive, jagged metal jaws that clamped shut with enough force to ignore armor values. I dove to the left, the last tooth grazing my boots.

💔 Jax took 1 damage from [The Deep-Speaker]

“Jax!” Mugs screamed.

“I’m fine! Split up! Don’t let it line us up!”

We broke the triangle. Kael scrambled up the side of the library, her movements fluid and desperate. Mugs sprinted toward the fletcher's stall, his fishing rod already out. I stayed in the center, because someone had to map the math, and I was the only one with a high enough anxiety-to-logic ratio to do it.

The Evoker didn't care that we’d split. It raised both arms now.

Two lines of particles started. One headed for Kael, the other for Mugs. But as they traveled, they didn’t just follow their targets. They began to curve. They were intersecting.

“Kael, three blocks right! Mugs, back four!” I shouted.

They moved. The fangs erupted exactly where they’d been standing a second ago, forming a perfect ‘V’ shape that met at the throne.

“It’s not tracking us,” I realized aloud, my heart hammering against my ribs. “It’s graphing us.”

I watched the ground. Most mobs in Minecraft use a simple pathfinding algorithm: see player, go to player. If a block is in the way, go around the block. But the Deep-Speaker was playing a different game. It was using the voxel grid as a coordinate plane. The fangs weren't just attacks; they were lines of code designed to restrict our movement.

“Jax, we have company!” Kael yelled.

From the shadows of the deepslate pillars, three Vindicators stepped out. These weren't the standard ones we’d fought in the earlier waves. They didn't have the blank, staring eyes of a normal mob. They moved with a heavy, rhythmic weight, their iron axes held at a low guard. They didn't scream. They just started a slow, synchronized trot toward us.

I looked at the Evoker, then at the Vindicators, then at the ground.

The Evoker’s arms went up again. This time, the particles didn't form a line. They formed a grid—an overlapping series of 'X' patterns that covered nearly the entire square. It was beautiful, in a 'we are about to be turned into shrapnel' kind of way.

“Coordinates!” Kael called out, her bow drawn, her eyes darting between the charging Vindicators and the rippling ground.

“Mugs, X: 42, Z: 110! Kael, jump to the blacksmith’s roof! Now!”

I did the mental math. The fangs were spawning in a five-by-five offset. There were only three safe squares in the entire plaza. One was under a burning tree. One was inside a cactus patch. And the last one…

The last one was directly in the path of the lead Vindicator.

“Jax, I’m gonna get hit!” Mugs yelled, skidding toward the coordinate I’d given him. He was standing on a single block of grass surrounded by erupting iron jaws. The Vindicator was ten blocks away and closing.

“Hold it!” I yelled. “If you move, the grid catches you!”

I watched the Evoker’s feet. Every time it cast, a small puff of violet smoke appeared at its base before the fangs traveled outward. It was an origin point. In a game of geometry, the center of the circle is the only place the lines don't cross.

“New plan!” I shouted, dodging a Vindicator’s overhead swing that shattered the cobblestone next to my head. “We can’t stay in the open! It’s boxing us into the edges!”

“We’re already at the edges, Jax!” Kael snapped, releasing an arrow that bounced off a Vindicator’s raised axe. The mob didn't even flinch. It just kept coming, its gait steady and inevitable.

I looked at the throne. The Evoker was preparing a massive, arena-wide fan of particles. It was going to cover everything from the well to the village walls.

“Go to the throne!” I screamed.

“Are you insane?” Mugs asked, dodging an axe-swing that took a chunk out of his wooden shield.

“It’s the only place the fangs don't spawn! They start at his feet! We have to get inside his minimum range!”

“ Jax, there are three Vindicators between us and that throne!” Kael leaped from the roof, landing in a roll. “And I have four arrows left!”

The Evoker’s arms reached their peak. The violet light was blinding now, a terminal hum filling the air. The ground began to vibrate so hard that my hunger bar started to jitter.

“Trust me!” I yelled, though my own brain was currently screaming that this was the worst idea in the history of the server. “Aggro the Vindicators! Lead them into the throne path! We move on the snap!”

The Vindicators closed in. We were backed against the rising deepslate walls, the iron-clad killers in front of us and the graphing-calculator of doom beneath us.

“On three!” I shouted.

One.

The Vindicators raised their axes.

Two.

The ground turned violet.

Three!

We surged forward. We didn't run away from the monsters; we ran straight through the gaps in their formation, sprinting toward the dark, rising throne. Behind us, the world exploded into a forest of clashing iron as the entire village square erupted in a symphony of snapping fangs.

We were running into the mouth of the boss, surrounded by melee squads, with no exit left.

「⚠ You have entered the Dead Zone.」 「Difficulty: [DEEP]」

“Well,” Mugs panted, his shield raised as we hit the base of the deepslate throne. “We’re here. Now what?”

I looked up at the Evoker, who was looking down at us with a very clear expression of 'how dare you.'

“Now,” I said, “we see if it can hit its own feet.”

The Evoker didn’t look down at us. It looked through us, its gray hands weaving a complex, circular pattern in the air.

Then it made the sound. Not a wololo, but a high, glitched-out shriek that sounded like a hard drive dying. From the dark gaps in the deepslate throne, three gray, winged shapes flickered into existence.

"Vexes," Kael said, her voice dropping an octave. She adjusted her grip on her bow. "Vexes are bad. Vexes are very, very bad."

In vanilla Minecraft, a Vex is a small, flying pest that can phase through solid walls. These weren't vanilla. They were larger, their iron swords glowing with the same violet energy as the Evoker’s robes. They didn't drift; they snapped. They moved in instant, jagged bursts of motion that left trails of smoke in the air.

"I got 'em," Mugs yelled, casting his fishing rod. The hook flew toward the nearest ghost, but the Vex simply pulsed once and turned translucent. The hook passed through its chest like it was moving through fog. "Hey! No clipping! That's cheating!"

The Vexes ignored him. They dived. One slipped through the roof of the library and emerged through the floor planks right beneath Kael’s feet. She leaped back, narrowly avoiding a slash that would have taken half her hearts. Another sped through the solid deepslate of the throne and lunged at my throat.

I raised my shield. The Vex didn't bounce off; it drifted through the wood and iron, its sword emerging on the other side to poke me in the chest.

💔 Jax took 2 damage from [Vex]

"They're phasing constantly," I said, backing away until my heels hit the throne. "We can't block them. We can't trap them. Kael, can you hit the caster?"

"I have four arrows, Jax. If I miss, we’re down to Mugs’s rock collection."

"Take the shot," I said.

Kael exhaled, her posture going rock-still despite the chaos. She tracked the Evoker's head as it hovered five blocks above us. She released. The arrow was a perfect arc of precision—until the third Vex moved. It didn't even try to dodge; it threw itself into the path of the arrow, its body turning solid for a fraction of a second to absorb the hit. The Vex shrieked and vanished in a puff of smoke, but the arrow was gone.

"Three arrows," Kael whispered.

The Evoker didn't stop its weaving. Above its head, a massive, glowing fan of violet light was forming. It looked like the world’s most dangerous peacock tail. The fangs were charging for a 360-degree sweep.

"Mugs, do something!" I yelled as the two remaining Vexes circled us, diving in and out of the ground like sharks in water.

"I'm trying! They're too fast!" Mugs swung his rod wildly. He was backing away, tripping over the ruined remains of a garden path, when his heel caught on the rope of the village bell.

CLANG.

The heavy bronze bell swung once, a deep, resonant boom echoing through the square.

The Vexes stopped mid-air. Their wings stalled. Their gray bodies flickered and suddenly turned opaque, their skin becoming as textured and solid as a standard zombie. They clapped their hands over their non-existent ears, drifting downward as if the sound had physically increased their gravity.

"Wait," I said, my brain clicking into gear. "The sound. It's a vibration mechanic. Every time the bell rings, it disrupts their phasing. It forces their hitboxes to stabilize!"

"Are you sure?" Kael asked.

"The server isn't letting them calculate transparency while the sound file is playing! Mugs! Keep ringing the bell!"

"I love this job!" Mugs grabbed the rope with both hands and started yanking it like he was trying to wake the dead.

CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.

The two Vexes fell to the grass, shivering and solid.

"Kael, now!"

She didn't waste a second. She pivoted, her iron axe in hand since she refused to waste another arrow. She stepped into a swing, catching the first Vex as it tried to crawl back into the dirt. The ghost shattered into XP orbs. I stepped forward, my sword connecting with the second one just as the bell chime began to fade.

📦 Jax obtained [Vexing Powder]

"Vexes down!" Mugs cheered, still pulling the rope.

"Mugs, stop!" I pointed up.

The bell had bought us the Vexes, but it hadn't stopped the Evoker. The fan of violet light above the Deep-Speaker had reached its full size. It wasn't just a spell anymore; it was an atmospheric event. The Evoker’s arms snapped down, and the entire village square turned black as the ground began to ripple not just with lines, but with a solid tide of iron teeth.

"Oh," Mugs said, letting go of the rope. "That looks… permanent."

The fan was closing. We were at the base of the throne, the only safe spot left, but the Evoker was finally looking down. And it was smiling. Its hands were glowing with the final discharge. We were pinned against the throne, and the wipe-move was half a second from firing.

"Jax?" Mugs asked. "Do you have a coordinate for 'not dying'?"

"Working on it," I said, my eyes dartively scanning our inventory. "Working on it."

The violet glow wasn't just light anymore. It had become a physical pressure, a static charge that made the hair on my arms stand up. The fan of light above the Deep-Speaker’s head was a solid semicircle now, arching over the throne like a halo of jagged glass. Beneath us, the dirt was vibrating so intensely that the grass blocks were popping off the soil and turning into items.

I checked the status bar. The raid meter was a angry, bleeding purple.

「⚠ Final Siege: 98% Charge.」

"Jax," Kael said, her voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm register she saved for when we were about to lose everything. "That spell isn't a line. It’s a radius. When it hits one hundred percent, there won't be a village left to defend."

"I know," I said. My fingers were flying across my hotbar. I was counting the ticks. Minecraft runs at twenty ticks per second. The pulses on the Deep-Speaker’s hands were hitting every ten. We had maybe six seconds.

The three Vindicators we’d dodged earlier had recovered. They were forming a line five blocks out from the throne, axes raised. They were the wall. The Evoker was the artillery. And the fangs—those rotating, snapping iron jaws—were circling the throne in a tight, three-block perimeter that made a melee approach suicide.

"Mugs," I said. "We need the Slingshot."

Mugs looked at his fishing rod, then at the massive, swirling vortex of doom above us. "Jax, last time I did that, I accidentally threw you into a cactus."

"Different math! The velocity is different!" I stepped back, giving him the proper angle. "If I try to walk over there, the Vindicators stop me. If I jump, the fangs catch me mid-air. I need to be a projectile."

"What are you going to do?" Kael asked, her bow drawn, her last arrow notched.

"I'm going to ruin its pathfinding," I said. "Mugs, on my mark. Hook me. High arc."

Mugs didn't argue. He didn't even make a joke. He just nodded, his face setting into a rare mask of absolute focus. He cast the line. The hook snagged my chestplate with a metallic clink.

"Kael, that TNT I tucked into the deepslate shaft when we were in the well?"

"The 'In Case of Total Failure' block?"

"Exactly. It’s six blocks deep in the throne’s pillar. You see that gap in the polished deepslate? Two blocks below the Evoker’s left foot?"

Kael squinted. "It's a half-pixel gap, Jax."

"The arrow hitbox is smaller than the visual model. It’ll fit."

"And the fuse?"

"The violet light is an energy source. The server is treating it as a redstone signal. If you hit the block, the charge will trigger the TNT. But you have to hit it the exact moment I hit the water."

"Why the water?" Mugs asked, his arm tensing as he prepared the pull.

"Because the Vindicators are heavy. If I can create a high-velocity flow, I can push them out of the kill-zone and clear a path for the explosion's knockback."

「⚠ Final Siege: 99% Charge.」

"Now!" I screamed.

Mugs pivoted. He didn't just pull; he used his entire character’s momentum, sprinting backward and jumping to maximize the casting-reel’s tension. I felt my feet leave the ground. The world blurred.

「⚔ Mugs dealt 0.5 damage to Jax (Kinetic Displacement)」

I was soaring. I passed over the rotating ring of fangs, the iron jaws snapping shut inches below my boots. I flew over the heads of the Vindicators, who looked up with slow, baffled AI-confusion.

High-point of the arc. I looked down. I saw the whole village—the ruined library, the burning fletcher’s shop, the black obsidian pillar Mugs had made. It was all a mess. It was beautiful.

I looked at the ground, switched to my water bucket, and aimed for the center of the Vindicator line.

Splash.

The water hit the grass and instantly behaved like a physical force. In Minecraft, water flow is a predictable algorithm, moving eight blocks in every direction from the source. But because I’d dropped it from a height of ten blocks, the 'impact' physics gave the initial spread a momentary boost. A wall of blue surged outward.

The Vindicators, programmed for heavy melee, didn't have the buoyancy to resist. They were swept off their feet, sliding hopelessly toward the village square.

"Kael!" I yelled, my head barely above the rushing water.

She didn't move. She didn't breathe. She released the string.

The arrow didn't just fly; it cut through the air, a single pixel of iron and flint. It hissed past the Evoker’s glowing robes, thudded into the deepslate gap, and connected with the primed TNT.

The throne didn't just explode. It shuddered.

The violent energy from the charge was focused by the blast, turning a standard TNT explosion into a purple-white shockwave. The throne cracked. The polished deepslate blocks turned into falling sand entities. The Deep-Speaker’s arms snapped wide as the 'cast' was interrupted by the displacement.

A massive 「⚠ CRITICAL INTERRUPT」 message flashed across the sky.

The Evoker tumbled. It fell from its high perch, its robes flapping like a wounded bird, and landed hard in the muddy square, right in front of Mugs.

But the fangs didn't stop. They were still there, a rotating, jagged circle of iron protection that surrounded the boss even as it struggled to stand. The ring was spinning faster now, a wall of metal teeth that would shred anything that got within three blocks.

"It's wide open!" I yelled, scrambling out of the water. "Mugs, hit it!"

"I can't get close!" Mugs shouted back. He was backing away as the fangs snapped at his toes. "The jaws! They're doing three hearts a tick!"

I looked at the raid bar. The 'Final Siege' charge had reset to five percent, but it was climbing again. Rapidly. The interruption had only bought us a window.

"Kael, more arrows?"

"Empty," she said, her iron axe already in her hand as she sprinted toward us. "Jax, we can't break the ring!"

The Evoker stood up. Its skin was flickering. It raised its hands again, the violet glow returning to its palms. It was about to restart the grid. If it did, we were done. We were too close to the blast, too low on health, and the terrain was a disaster.

Then Mugs did something that wasn't in any plan. He didn't look at the fangs. He didn't look at the math. He looked at the Evoker, and then he looked at his health bar.

"Jax," Mugs said.

"What?"

"You said I’m the 'Kinetic Displacement Specialist,' right?"

"Mugs, don't—"

"Best job I ever had," Mugs said.

He didn't run around the ring. He didn't try to time it. Mugs raised his shield, held it in front of his face, and charged.

He slammed into the rotating fangs. The sound was horrifying—the crunch-clank of iron teeth meeting wood and bone.

💔 Mugs took 4 damage from [Fang Ring] 💔 Mugs took 3 damage from [Fang Ring]

His health bar plummeted. Ten hearts. Six hearts. Two hearts. His shield shattered into splinters, the 'Broken Tool' sound effect ringing out like a death knell. But the knockback from the fangs didn't push him away. Because Mugs was sprinting, the forward momentum canceled out the backward force for a single, glorious, impossible second.

He broke through the perimeter.

He was inside the ring. He was standing eye-to-eye with the Deep-Speaker. Mugs didn't have a sword. He didn't have his rod. He had his bare hands and the half-second of invincibility-frames you get after taking damage.

He punched. Not a standard 'left-click' punch. He used the momentum of his charge to deliver a sprinting-knockback hit right to the Evoker’s gray chest.

The Deep-Speaker’s eyes widened. It was a 0.5 damage hit. It was nothing. But the knockback—the sheer physical displacement—carried the boss backward, right into its own rotating line of fangs.

The Evoker shrieked as its own spell turned against it. The fangs clamped shut on the boss, the iron jaws dealing massive, armor-piercing damage to the caster. The Deep-Speaker was thrown backward, tumbling across the village square, away from the throne, away from its power source.

Mugs stood there, gasping, his health bar a flickering, solid red.

❤️ Mugs: 🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤💔

One half-heart.

The most dangerous player in the village was currently a slight breeze away from a respawn screen. The Deep-Speaker was on its back, its shield-ring dissipated, its robes shredded. The violet glow was fading, replaced by the pale, cold gray of a dying mob.

"Kael," Mugs whispered, his character leaning forward as if his hunger bar couldn't even support his weight. "Finish it."

The Evoker tried to raise a hand. It was too late. Kael was already mid-air, her iron axe glowing with the first rays of the actual sunrise.

She didn't miss.

The iron axe hit the Evoker’s chest with a sound like a heavy door closing for the last time.

For a heartbeat, the server seemed to freeze. The Deep-Speaker didn’t disappear immediately. It stood there, its gray skin fracturing into a thousand glowing purple cracks, its eyes wide with the shock of a mob that had forgotten what it was like to lose. Then, the cracks reached its center.

The Evoker shattered.

It wasn't a standard puff of smoke. It was a physical shockwave of light that rippled through the village, washing over the scorched library and the ruined wells. Behind it, the two remaining Vexes—still shivering from the bell’s chime—evaporated mid-air, their iron swords clattering to the grass as nothing more than useless loot.

The violet raid bar at the top of my screen didn’t just empty. It disintegrated, the pixels flying apart like glass.

「⚔ Kael has made the advancement [Vengeance is a Dish Best Served with Iron]」

A massive shower of XP orbs erupted from the center of the square, a fountain of glowing green jewels that clinked and hissed as they flowed into our levels. I watched my bar climb from twelve to eighteen in a single, rolling breath. But none of us were looking at the levels.

In the spot where the Deep-Speaker had fallen, a single item hovered just above the mud. It was small, golden, and looked like a tiny, wide-eyed person with folded arms. It glowed with a soft, pulse-like light that seemed to say not today.

"Is that..." Mugs started, his voice a rasp. He was still standing on half a heart, leaning against a charred fence post.

"Totem of Undying," I said. I felt my shoulders drop six inches. "The real deal. Not a dungeon fake."

The sun finally crested the horizon, the orange light bleeding over the hills and hitting the village. As the first proper ray touched the square, a new sound filled the air—a triumphant, melodic chime that sounded like every bell in the world ringing at once. Above our heads, glowing green sparkles began to rain down, drifting through the air like magical emerald dust.

「🏆 Jax has made the advancement [Hero of the Village]」 「🏆 Mugs has made the advancement [Hero of the Village]」 「🏆 Kael has made the advancement [Hero of the Village]」

Door by door, the village began to breathe again. The fletcher, the librarian, and the farmer poked their heads out, their 'hmm' sounds transitioning from the frantic, high-pitched bleats of the raid to the satisfied, low-rumbling grunts of safety. They began to wander into the square, ignoring the deepslate pillars and the obsidian ruins as if they were just new, slightly aggressive landscaping.

Kael walked over to the Totem. She didn't pick it up. She looked at it for a long moment, then looked back at us. Her armor was shredded, her helmet missing, and her inventory was a graveyard of empty glass bottles and broken sticks.

"The village is a total loss for at least ten patches," she said, surveying the obsidian pillar that now dominated the skyline.

"I prefer to think of it as 'historic character,'" Mugs said. He tentatively ate a piece of dried kelp, his health bar beginning its slow, agonizing crawl back toward safety. "Plus, the dungeon gave us a soul-sand elevator. That’s an upgrade."

"It’s a disaster," I said, though I was already opening my notes to calculate how many blocks of deepslate I could harvest from the throne. "But it's a standing disaster."

I walked to the center of the square and picked up the Totem. The golden weight of it felt strange in my hand—a physical proof that we’d actually survived a max-tier raid with nothing but a fishing rod and a few terrible ideas. I turned to Kael, expecting her to demand it. It was her axe that landed the blow, after all.

Instead, she was staring at the fletcher. The villager had wandered up to her, his green 'Hero' sparkles intensifying as he reached into his trade-bag. With a grateful hmm, he dropped a full stack of arrows—sixty-four glinting, feathered shafts—at her feet. At no cost.

Kael looked at the arrows. She looked at Mugs, who was currently trying to use his fishing rod to reel in a stray chicken.

She picked up the stack. She didn't say anything. She walked over to Mugs, split the stack in half with a quick inventory gesture, and dropped thirty-two arrows in front of him.

Mugs stopped. He looked at the arrows, then up at Kael. "I don't even have a bow, Kael."

"You have a rod," she said, her voice dry but the corner of her mouth twitching in what was almost a smile. "You can throw them. I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it annoying for someone."

Mugs beamed. "I'm going to make it so annoying. You have no idea."

I walked over to them, the Totem held out in my palm. The green sparkles were still falling, making the whole square look like a dream. "What do we do with this? We only have one. Standard loot rules say we should roll for it, but..."

"You keep it, Jax," Kael said.

I blinked. "Me? Kael, you were the DPS. Mugs was the... whatever Mugs was. I just did the math."

"Exactly," she said. "You're the one who’s going to spend the next six hours down in that hole trying to figure out where the Deep-Speaker came from. You're the one most likely to fall into a lava lake while taking notes on polished deepslate. You need the extra life more than we do."

Mugs nodded aggressively, his health bar finally reaching the halfway point. "Plus, if you die, who’s going to give me coordinates for the Slingshot? I can't just be throwing people into the void, Jax. That's a huge liability."

I looked down at the Totem. I looked at the dark, 2x2 shaft of the dungeon that was still sitting right where the well used to be—a cold, organized invitation to a much deeper problem.

"Whatever is down there," I said, "it’s smarter than the game is supposed to be. This raid wasn't a random event. The Deep-Speaker was testing us."

"Good," Kael said, her iron axe disappearing into her inventory as she began to survey the horizon. "I like tests. They have clear win conditions."

"And loot," Mugs added, picking up a stray poppy from the grass. "Don't forget the loot."

I tucked the Totem into my off-hand slot. I felt the steady, golden heartbeat of the item against the palm of my character’s hand.

I looked at the shaft. I looked at the two players standing next to me—one who was too smart for her own good and one who was just the right amount of brave-and-stupid. We were a mess. We were a disaster. We were the worst team on the server.

"I'm going down there," I said. "I’m going to map the whole thing. I’m going to find out who built that throne."

"Wait for me to get a new shield," Mugs said.

"And I need arrows," Kael added. "Real ones. Not fletcher charity."

I looked at them. "You're coming?"

"Jax," Mugs said, throwing his fishing rod over his shoulder. "You have no idea how hard it is to find a group that doesn't kick me for 'excessive lava usage.' I'm not letting this go."

Kael just gave a short, sharp nod toward the sunrise.

"Fine," I said, my heart feeling slightly fuller than the ten red icons on my HUD. "But if we die, I'm writing 'I told you so' in everyone’s death-book."

「SYSTEM MESSAGE」 「The Spawn Raid has concluded.」 「Village Standing: Rescued.」 「Current Party: Jax, Mugs, Kael.」 「Next Objective: Descend.」

I turned toward the deepslate shaft and started crafting a stack of torches. The village was safe. The sun was up. And somewhere, deep beneath the bedrock, the dungeon was waiting.

It was time to get to work.