Jack double-checked the music box recipe to make sure he wasn’t skipping any steps.

  The assembly itself was mostly familiar. If he ignored the comb and the pinned barrel, it was nearly identical to a Jack-in-a-Box. Same casing, same proportions. The only major difference was swapping out the spring mechanism for a comb.

  It wasn’t a comb in the traditional sense, though that’s what the system called it. It was just a thin strip of steel lined with rigid prongs, each tuned to a different pitch, like keys on a tiny, horizontal harp.

  He plucked the longest prong on the comb. It was low and resonant. Then the shortest—higher and sharper. As the barrel turned, the tin pegs would flick the prongs in sequence, producing music one note at a time.

  Fortunately, this was one of the components recyclers sold at the market. It saved him the trouble of commissioning it from smiths or of making it himself.

  He mounted the comb to the bottom of the box, prongs facing upward. He slid the gearbox into place, threading the shaft through the barrel and locking it into the housing. The barrel now hovered just above the comb, enough for the pegs to strike each tine in turn.

  He paused, staring at the barrel. This was the tricky part.

  When he'd used this setup to program the pot bots, pins represented zeroes and ones. But this was different. Here, each peg was a note. That made placement feel a lot less like programming and a lot more like playing an instrument.

  He leaned forward and grabbed the first peg. Sitting Wind was the melody he knew best. Moreover, recovering stamina was a must for any player. “C, C, E, G,” he murmured. He pressed the pegs into the grid. Every few placements, he stopped to play a fragment on his ocarina to jog his memory.

  Before long, nearly every row of the barrel had at least one peg placed.

  He gave the crank a turn and listened. The barrel rotated, and the tin pegs flicked against the comb.

  The notes were correct, but a few notes were off-rhythm. He made two quick adjustments, rewound, and played again.

  This time, the tune played cleanly from start to finish. The notes chimed softly through the workshop. Hearing the tune play through the mechanical box gave it a slightly dreamy quality, like the melody was wrapped in a haze.

  He closed the box and placed it on the table.

  Congratulations! You’ve crafted [Music Box].

  Crafting grade: C+

  +250 XP in Bard, Pottery, and Tinkering

  +2,700 XP in Bard, Pottery, and Tinkering

  A moment later, another message appeared.

  You’re the first to make this item. [Innovating Pioneer] activates.

  He let out a slow breath, satisfaction creeping in.

  The music box didn’t look like much. There were no decorative carvings, no polished ivory. No ballerina twirling on top. Just a sturdy, functional casing. The only giveaway was the small metal winder mounted on the side.

  But even so, this was the first music box in the game. And it worked.

  “Not bad,” he murmured, eyeing the triple XP bump. Music boxes were going to be great for grinding.

  He inspected the finished piece.

  Music Box (Rare)

  A box that contains a beautiful melody which, when played, inspires you to greatness.

  Durability: 19

  Item effects: This music box plays the song [Sitting Wind]. Play it to receive one stamina every 10(-5) seconds for 5 minutes.

  Innovating Pioneer bonus effects: The buff is twice as strong.

  Jack scratched his chin.

  Looked like the developers didn’t want music boxes to outshine real bards. Their buffs were capped at half strength by default. But since he’d discovered the recipe himself, [Innovating Pioneer] kicked in and canceled that penalty, letting his creations play at full power.

  He smiled as he typed up a message to Horace with the item’s stats.

  Jack: Think this will sell well?

  No reply yet. Horace was probably off doing something else, but Jack was curious what he’d think. A stamina regen buff packed into an item had to be worth something on the market.

  He reached for another empty box, ready to start on a second Sitting Wind, when something clicked.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Wait a minute…”

  His gaze drifted to the rows of clay vases lined up along the far shelf.

  “If I could make a music box that plays Clay Dome…” His eyes narrowed. “That could save me a ton of time.”

  Clay Dome made anything crafted from clay immune to durability loss while the song played. Jack had been stopping every other minute just to grab his ocarina and play the tune manually, keeping the buff active, and shielding the XP vases. What if he could automate that?

  He grabbed one of the spare pinned barrels—clay. Clay Dome could shield this. What if I make the whole box out of clay? Then he paused.

  “Ugh. The comb. The gearbox.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

  Those had to be metal. There was no way around it. A clay comb wouldn’t produce sound—it wouldn’t vibrate properly, if at all. The idea teetered for a moment, but he held onto it.

  His outfit wasn’t made entirely of clay either. It was part wax, part grass—but it still triggered Clay Dome. Maybe making the music box mostly out of clay was enough.

  He could mold the casing, the barrel, the shaft, and even the pegs from clay while leaving only the comb and gearbox as metal components. If the system judged the box the same way it did terracoated armor, Clay Dome would still stick

  That meant he could let it run on a loop. He wouldn’t need to stop mid-work to play a song just to keep his tools safe.

  He pulled a lump of clay from the bin and started shaping the components, already planning out each step in his head.

  It was time to cheat the system.

  *

  Rob ran over rocky ground, glancing across the road toward Amari. Thanks to being in the same party, they could see each other clearly. To anyone else, they’d be little more than faint shimmers in the air.

  They ran apart as a cautionary measure. Two rogues running side by side kicked up more dust and stirred the environment more. Even a noob could tell when high-level rogues were moving if it was a large group.

  Up ahead, sounds of battle echoed off the stones. A dinosaur let out a guttural grunt—followed by the sharp whistle of arrows and the heavy twang of a crossbow. It repeated every few seconds. It was likely a crossbowman.

  The dinosaur’s cries weren’t timed with the shots. Others were attacking between volleys. That meant three, maybe four fighters in the group.

  Amari raised a hand and motioned to take the long way around. Rob followed, weaving through a narrow gap between jagged boulders. As they cleared the bend, he caught a glimpse of the scene. Four players, all over level forty, were working to bring down a male iguanodon.

  These kinds of detours had added hours to their route. But so far, no one—and nothing—had spotted them.

  Part of it was how carefully they were moving. But it was primarily thanks to their gear.

  His and Amari’s outfits were a patchwork of sand-dusted tones, designed to vanish into the rocky landscape. Specialty gear like this wasn’t easy to find—and definitely wasn’t cheap. Between the two of them, they’d spent nearly everything they had to buy it.

  “We’ll sell it again, barely used. Except the boots. Those always lose value,” Amari had said with a shrug.

  Rob glanced down—his boots had already lost five durability points from all this running around. He’d be lucky to resell them at a fifty-gold loss.

  Still, it had been worth it so far. They’d made it all the way to the edge of the Frontier without so much as a single glance in their direction.

  As they moved, Rob’s mind wandered. It was hard not to.

  His life had changed completely in the last few days. He’d quit his job, fallen in love and found out his uncle was dying. He couldn’t remember a week this eventful. Maybe when he’d first moved here from Portugal. That had been quite the week, too.

  He thought of Marie—her laugh, the way she tilted her head when she was trying not to smile. They’d had a great time back in Providence.

  She hadn’t texted in a couple of hours. He thought of messaging her himself, but she was probably wrapped up in conversations with her connections in guilds.

  He hadn’t heard from Jack either.

  He was still upset that he was the only one in the entire team who hadn’t met this mysterious Holly.

  Who was she? Why hadn’t Jack told him anything about her? Now that he thought about it, he didn’t talk about Lydia anymore. Not since… Rob wasn’t even sure when that had stopped.

  There was a lot he didn’t know right now.

  As he thought and ran, they left the area with the stone towers and deep red canyons behind. Now they were cutting across a rough stretch of land scattered with tall boulders, sharp ridges, and only the occasional scraggly bush. Visibility dipped in and out. It was the kind of place where something dangerous could be waiting just beyond the next rock.

  They kept their eyes peeled and ears open.

  Something shifted. A subtle tension crept into the air. The air tasted different. Gone was the dry smell of dust. Instead, there was a faint, sickly sweetness. The smell of carrion.

  Rob slowed to a stop. Amari, about twenty meters away, had come to a halt as well.

  Amari gestured up. Rob gave a quick nod and hopped upward. The moment his eyes cleared the rise, he spotted it.

  A Baryonyx, nearly three times his height, stood in a sunken hollow. Its scales were dull brown with darker stripes that rippled as it moved. It pawed at something hidden from sight by a boulder. Maybe it was eating a carcass or digging a nest. Even at this distance, Rob could feel the pressure rolling off it. The pressure coming off it wasn’t normal. This thing was an elite.

  A message pinged quietly across his interface.

  Amari: Hi, Rob. Let’s split and take the long way around this elite. Baryonyxes can get quite aggressive. Stay as far as you can.

  Rob: Roger that.

  He braced himself to drop back down, but froze when the dinosaur jerked upright.

  Even at this distance, Rob could see its nostrils working, the subtle tension in its posture. For a moment, its eyes passed over the ridge where he crouched.

  He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just waited.

  Then, the dinosaur looked in the direction of Amari, who was also motionless. After a few never-ending moments, with a rough huff, the creature turned back to whatever it had been doing. Rob released the breath he’d been holding. That had been close.

  It would have sucked to be one-shot by a level 45 elite, just as they were about to enter the Hinterlands.

  They kept moving. The terrain continued to change—rocks giving way to loose sand, and then to deep, golden drifts that stretched beyond the horizon. The brush disappeared, the colors flattened, and the road beneath them dissolved into dry grains.

  Eventually, the rocks thinned out entirely. There were no more boulders or shrubs. Just endless dunes, stretching in all directions. The heat had grown heavier, warping the horizon.

  His interface blinked.

  You’ve been inflicted with the debuff: [Sun-Stroke].

  You’ve become more vulnerable to debuffs. You spend stamina more quickly.

  Drink a bottle of water every hour, or the debuff will worsen.

  Amari’s message came soon after, confirming what the debuff already told him.

  Amari: "We’ve made it. The Sand Sea."

  Rob: “Too bad we’re only halfway to the Dune Hills.”

  Amari: “I know. Stay alert. And try not to stir too much sand as you run.”

  The two kept running. Rob just hoped that nothing would catch them before they got to scout the location of their future village.