Inferna's fire caught my left wing.
The pain was immediate—white-hot, searing, blinding. My elytra membrane burned, the grafted wings screaming in protest. I spiraled toward the void, fighting for control.
"YOUR WINGS," Inferna observed. "THE PAIN OF THEIR CREATION. I REMEMBER."
"You remember nothing," I gasped, stabilizing my flight. "You weren't there."
"I WAS THERE IN SPIRIT. YOU POUR YOUR PAIN INTO EVERYTHING YOU CREATE. INTO ME."
I didn't answer. She wasn't wrong.
---
Year 0.5 - Year 1.
The bolt lock was just the beginning. But this discovery came later than it might seem—I needed a crafting table first, and those weren't easy to find in the wild. It wasn't until I reached my first village that I could truly experiment with the difference between game logic and manual crafting.
Once I realized that manual crafting bypassed the game's rules, I started experimenting systematically. What could I create that the game didn't provide?
Tools: Yes. Manually forged tools were stronger, more durable, more efficient. They also required more time and skill to create—but I had time, and I was developing skill.
Weapons: Yes. A manually forged sword could hold an edge that vanilla swords couldn't match. It also couldn't be enchanted through normal means—but that was a problem for later.
Armor: Partially. I could reinforce vanilla armor with manual additions—plates, straps, joints—but I couldn't create armor from scratch. Not yet. The game's code was too deeply embedded in armor's functionality.
Blocks: Yes. Manually crafted blocks fell when placed—they obeyed real gravity. But they were also stronger, more resistant to explosions, more real.
Items: Sometimes. Simple items worked. Complex items failed. The game's code rejected anything too far from its logic.
I kept notes. Detailed notes. I filled books with observations, theories, experiments. I was building a manual of a system that shouldn't exist.
---
The gravity difference fascinated me.
Vanilla blocks floated when placed in mid-air. Manual blocks fell. Why?
The game's code, I theorized, treated vanilla items as part of itself—subject to game logic, not real physics. Manual items, created without the game's crafting system, existed outside that code. They were real in a way that vanilla items weren't.
This had practical implications.
I could build floating platforms with vanilla blocks—bridges to nowhere, sky bases, impossible architecture. But those platforms were fragile, permanent, game-logic constructs.
Manual structures required support. Foundations. Real engineering. But they were flexible, solid, real.
I started combining them—using vanilla blocks for structural support and manual blocks for the visible surfaces and decoration. The result was architecture that shouldn't exist: floating islands with real mass and sky castles that looked truly magical. These were impossible structures that felt so much like fantacy, yet were only made possible by exploiting the boundary between the game and the world.
It was my first real breakthrough.
And it led to my second.
---
Year 1. The enchantment table.
I'd avoided enchantments for months. The game's system was random—you placed an item, spent XP, and got whatever enchantment the game decided to give you. No control. No choice.
But I needed power. The world was getting more dangerous. I'd dream of bosses—monsters that made normal mobs look tame. The Ender Dragon. The Wither. Things that required more than just strong armor and a sharp sword.
I built an enchantment table. Bookshelves surrounded it, increasing its power. I gathered XP—grinding mobs for hours, days, weeks.
When I finally placed my sword on the table, symbols floated around it. Purple runes, incomprehensible patterns.
And something strange happened.
As I reached for the symbols, I noticed they moved. Not randomly—they responded to my attention. When I focused on one, it brightened. When I looked away, it dimmed.
I reached out to touch one.
It drifted toward my finger.
I could move the symbols.
---
The discovery changed everything.
The symbols weren't random. They were a language—each symbol representing a concept, a power, an effect. The game's enchanting system was a code, converting that language into magical effects.
But if I could learn the language...
I spent weeks experimenting. I learned that symbols had to be arranged in specific patterns—wrong arrangements collapsed, costing XP without producing results. I learned that each enchantment had its own symbol sequence, its own grammar, its own rules.
Most importantly, I learned that I could write enchantments manually. But there was a rule I discovered through painful experimentation: I had to master ALL existing enchantments before I could create new ones. The game's code required complete understanding before allowing modification.
Not just the enchantments the game provided—though I learned those too. But NEW enchantments. Combinations of symbols that had never existed in the game's code.
The first custom enchantment I created was simple: a minor durability boost that lasted longer than vanilla Unbreaking. It took me four hours to write and cost fifty XP levels.
But it worked.
I'd found a way to bypass another of the game's rules.
And this one was magic.