Dead Man Walking: Living By Day, Dead By Night
Chapter 138: The Grim Forge

After the mission of eliminating the three remaining stalkers in Eliza's employment. Zane and the girls immediately retreated back to the safety of Gravestone. Or as relative as safety could be in this apocalyptic world.

Eliza, for whatever reason, had chosen not to send wave after wave of attack towards Gravestone, something that New Reno commonly had to deal with from Bart's attempts to break their resolve and weaken their forces.

The reality was that for every wave Bart sent towards New Reno, sure; the survivors lost people, but the resources gained from the successful defense only further bolstered the strength of those who remained.

In a way, it was like when the wolves attacked the weakened and sick buffalo at the edges of the herd, strengthening the unit altogether with the death of the weak. Zane, of course, did not know why Gravestone was left to its own devices, but it allowed him to conserve resources, and stock up on supplies. Something he considered himself incredibly lucky for being able to do.

And it was because of this stockpile of supplies, both in the forms of physical assets in the real world and those supplies he now had access to, thanks to the introduction of the inventory feature within his system. That Zane was finally able to construct something within the settlement that was incredibly useful.

Upon returning to the settlement of Gravestone, Zane immediately opened up that tab of his system, the new feature known as "Settlement Management." Almost as if he was playing a city builder mini game. The UI displayed the ability to build various constructs.

Whether it was defensive barricades, or actual buildings with a dedicated purpose. Zane now had the means to place down a work area, where if he assigned some of his awakened population to, they would receive instructions on how to perfectly build the structure, and recipes for the resources required.

There were many options, basic things like greenhouses, clinics, sentry posts, et cetera. Things that until now which had been relatively makeshift, and crude, had some form of complexity to them.

Unfortunately, they all required specific recipes to build, and at the moment, Zane only had one recipe which he acquired after unlocking the achievement Community Leader. Naturally, because of this, Zane's attention was attracted to this building.

---

[Building Type: Grim Forge]

[Description: The Grim Forge is used by an awakened survivor to manufacture weapons, armor, and other mappable items from materials scavenged by slaying Undead, or extracting them from resource nodes that appear within the post-apocalyptic world.]

[Requirements:

100x Wood

75x Stone

50x Cement

25x Cloth]

---

Luckily for Zane, it appeared that the items he and the population of Gravestone had scavenged could be converted into the necessary crafting materials required to build the so called Grim Forge by placing them into his inventory, and hitting a convert button.

Zane did not hesitate to attempt this by grabbing hold of some 2x4 planks of wood, where they instantly vanished into thin air, and appeared immediately thereafter within his inventory. It was a stunning thing to witness.

But After Zane did this with all the materials he needed, he had the ability to set down the foundation of the Grim Forge via a bird's-eye view on his Settlement Management screen.

After spending more than a few moments choosing an idea location to place the Grim Forge, Zane set it down. Where he was surprised to replace it glowing red, much like the UI which appeared within his vision constantly, almost as a form of augmented reality.

Upon seeing this, Zane stepped forward, and saw that he had an option to [Build] the Grim Forge. Immediately after clicking on this with his thoughts, Zane entered an automated state of building, where his body reacted unconsciously, using the materials required to build the Grim Forge to exact specifications, whether or not he actually knew how to do it consciously.

With his enhanced speed, as a result of his 17 (+5) Dexterity, what should have taken weeks, or even months, to accomplish with a fully staffed labor force took Zane approximately two hours to build on his own. If other awakened individuals helped him in the process, it would have taken even less time, but they sort of just watched in curiosity at what Zane was doing.

Once the Grim Forge was fully constructed, it was built in an architectural style that one might consider eerie… Something straight out of a fantasy setting, and a gothic one at that. The building oozed a thick green mist, almost like a supernatural fog.

The Forge itself was a source of illumination as a terrifying green flame was perpetually lit inside. No one except for the awakened dared to approach this new building that Zane had built in miraculous timing.

But Zane felt no fear. Instead, the eerie green fog was nothing but soothing to him, as he stepped forward and looked at the crafting screen. Nothing appeared however within it, instead there were bold red letters in front of his eyes that stated.

---

[No Recipes Detected]

---

Upon reading these words, Zane cursed beneath his breath. He was obviously not in a good mood when he realized he needed crafting recipes to build gear. That is until he realized he had another feature that might be able to help him in this regard. Zane instantly navigated his menu out of the crafting screen and instead to the store, where he narrowed down the available options to crafting recipes.

And sure enough, a variety of crafting recipes appeared within his vision, among them was one that instantly caught his eyes. It was a five-piece recipe for a set of level 15 Rare Medium Armor.

One that required him to fork over 25,000 gold to purchase all the recipes. Unfortunately for Zane, he only had 1,500 Gold even after all the Undead he had killed, including the Three Stalkers earlier in the day.

Each piece of the armor set was named after the Undead, which was required to be killed in order to gain the primary material required to craft it.

---

[Stalker's Helm]

[Stalkers Cuirass]

[Stalker's Vambraces]

[Stalker's Leggings]

[Stalker's Greaves]

---

There were also three other recipes sharing the same name, but these were meant for weapons and ammunition. Both of which required 5,000 gold each to purchase.

---

[Stalker's Short Sword]

[Stalker's Short Recurve Bow]

[Stalker's Barbed Arrows]

---

Evidently, when Zane checked his character screen, there were now slots for armor, weapons, and trinkets to be equipped. Of which only his neck slot was currently full. What was interesting, however, was that there were four weapon slots available, two for a primary weapon, and two for an offhand weapon.

Of course, it was clear to Zane who had played many RPGs in the past that this meant he could equip a one handed weapon in each hand. And that out of these four slots, two were meant for melee, and two were meant for ranged. Meaning that Zane could theoretically equip two daggers or short swords, and two one-handed crossbows, switching between them at a moment's notice.

There were of course plenty of other recipes that would be useful to Zane and his party, hell there were more than just recipes for armor and weapons, there were recipes required for buildings in the settlement management feature, as well as recipes for potions, et cetera.

However, Zane's immediate goal was to get the Stalker's set of equipment. After all, he had a feeling that if he and the others were to take on Eliza, they would all need to be fully geared if they wanted to survive the encounter, let alone defeat her.

With this in mind, Zane had a new goal in addition to his previous one. Level up, and get gold, so that he could properly equip his party, and maybe the second party that resided in Gravestone as well.