The treasure room wasn't empty.

As Levi and his battered team burst inside, they came face to face with a lobsteroc, bird claws firmly planted on the floor, brown-shelled lobster claws clicking to either side in a steady rhythm, huge brown-feathered wings folded behind its back as it stared down at them with beady eyestalks.

Levi already had his sword slicing down in a Destructive Slash before he registered that the creature's nametag had a neutral border, not the hostile one, and it took a moment longer to notice that it was named.

Dax: Level 18

(Roc-Lobster)

It caught his descending blade in one claw, but the force of the slash tore into it, leaving a deep gash and dropping its health substantially.

It made no move to retaliate.

Levi blinked at the lobsteroc. The lobsteroc stared at him, its clicking faltering as it regarded its attacker, then its injured claw in turns.

"Dax, you're supposed to be keeping time, not fooling around," grumbled a voice, and the lobsteroc immediately resumed its former rhythm, stepping slowly aside with an air of affront, its eyes swiveling to follow Levi in clear disapproval.

Levi found himself staring at a man with his eyes hidden behind goggles, mouth half concealed within a short and somewhat scruffy beard. The stranger sat at the table with gloves, goggles, and a variety of crafting implements. As Levi watched, he carefully placed a Beast token into what looked like a pile of sawdust, handling it very delicately with a small pair of tongs.

Javier Jennings: Level 26

(Tamer/Tinkerer)

Levi's grip on his sword tightened, though he didn't like his chances against someone this high level. "Are you with this group that's been kidnapping Awakened?" Levi demanded.

The man looked up, startled, then immediately glanced back down to be sure he hadn't knocked anything askew in his surprise. "Careful, you could have caused an explosion," he admonished. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

Levi advanced another step. "Are you one of them?" he demanded.

"One of who?" Javier set down his tools and leaned back, giving Levi a good once over. "Level seventeen, eh. Well. I can probably work with that. What are you looking for? Augments, by the looks of it?" Then his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Why are you here alone? Did your escort get themselves killed?"

"I— no, I'm not here for... whatever you're selling.” Levi wasn’t sure if Javier was deliberately playing dumb, or if he could possibly be that oblivious. Either way, the man irritated him. “I need to find the people that are being held here. Do you know anything?"

"No. I do my work and I'm left alone. People come through..." he shrugged. "Need things, sometimes."

"I need information."

"Do you?" The strange man raised his goggles, giving Levi a squinting perusal. Then he waved a hand. "I can't help you, okay. I don't know anything."

“Well, I’m going to be hanging around here for the next half hour while I recover, so we have plenty of time to figure out what you do know.”

“Don’t know much.” Javier replaced his goggles and leaned down over his project. “Mainly just do my work.”

He started layering thin round objects, like metallic scales, over the token and the sawdust.

"So you know nothing about what goes on here?"

Javier shook his head without looking up. "People come, people go, none of my business. Old ones clearing the place, new ones in training, eh. Either they need something from me or they don’t."

He placed a square of stiff leather overtop of the pile, then struck it all hard with a hammer, thuds sounding out in perfect sync with the clicking of Dax's claws. Sawdust flew in all directions at the repeated impacts. Then he flipped the entire contraption over in one swift motion.

The crushed token had combined with the wood shavings under pressure, making a mottled brown sludge. Javier immediately grabbed a pair of flat-edged scrapers and hastily spread the sludge out until it covered all the scales. It began to visibly set as he moved, the corners posing an obvious challenge as he struggled to force the substance into shape.

Then, no more than ten seconds after his furious motion began, he leaned back with a satisfied exhale.

As much as Levi wanted to grab the man and shake answers out of him, it was clear that Javier wasn't going to cooperate and unnecessarily inciting violence against someone nearly twice his level would be the height of idiocy.

He took several slow, calming breaths, while Javier contemplated the object before him and Dax clicked out the seconds.

"What are you making there?" Right now, it looked most like a plate or shallow bowl, though only about five inches square.

"Scale armor." After thirty seconds Javier began to poke and tug at each scale, verifying that they were fully fused and nothing was loose. Once satisfied, he set the piece on the floor beside him, where it clinked against other pieces there already.

Next he swept the scattered wood shavings back together into a pile before flattening them out again into a circle like he'd started with before.

Levi watched with mild interest as Javier repeated the entire process, placing the token, then the scales, then the leather, every motion clearly practiced. Placing the scales was the most time-consuming part of the process, as he sometimes shifted or rearranged them two or three times before he was satisfied, but within five minutes he'd created another small section. He set this one aside as well, then gathered together the sawdust again.

Levi's interest began to wander as the repetitive cycle continued.

"I like your minion there.” He finally broke the silence. “Do you have more, or just the one?"

Javier didn’t look up. "I have more. Dax keeps me company without much fuss. Some of the others are..." he glanced at Levi's entourage, wobbling one hand from side to side. "You know how it is, I’m sure." He carefully picked up a Beast token from the table beside him, setting it gently atop the wood with his tongs.

Levi checked his health, barely over half. He wasn't going to use another of his precious few restoratives until he really needed it, so he would be lingering here a while longer yet.

"What kind of wood is that?" Levi asked.

"Snapwood branches, sixteenth inch shavings." He set aside his tongs and began layering more scales.

"And the scales?"

"Hyhea-ironium alloy."

Levi hadn't encountered that particular ingredient yet, but given how may possible crafting items any given dungeon could provide he doubted he'd seen even half of what they had to offer.

"Have you done this before?"

"Yes, once. It did not work well. This time, it will be better."

"How could it not work? Did you turn off system assist?"

Javier finished placing the last scale, then looked up at Levi with an unreadable expression. "You are not a crafter. You do not know what you're talking about."

"I am, and I do."

The man waved a hand toward Levi's nametag. "Tamer. Nothing more."

"I haven't chosen a crafting subclass, but that doesn't mean I can't craft things."

For the first time, Javier’s calm tone carried the undertones of true passion. "You think we simply rely on the system and get results worth anything? That is for beginnings, not for true creation. You want to make gift store trinkets, then yes, follow your system assist. If you want art? Resist it."

Levi raised his eyebrows at that. "You mean... you're crafting with system assist still turned on, but actively fighting its guidance?" He'd never do that. Either he used the system and followed its recipe to the letter, or he turned it off and did something experimental and weird like the circlet he was building for his lens. "Isn't that confusing?"

"What else am I to do? I am not a manufacturer, I'm a creator. I refuse to be drawn into the same patterns as everyone else."

"You can turn it off when you don’t need it."

"You are not a crafter, only a dabbler. You think to tell me how to do my job?"

"In your recipe interface, where it says 'system-guided crafting', focus on that with the intention of making it change from a square into a circle. A blue circle, specifically."

"It is a line of text, not a square."

"Right, but you need to think of it as a square, then make it blue and circular."

Javier slammed his hammer down on the scales four times, then flipped it deftly over and dragged out the beast-snapwood sludge to cover the underside of the collected scales.

"Did you try it?" Levi pressed.

"No." Javier finished testing the piece and set it on the floor with the others.

Levi exhaled, irritated. "I may not have a crafting class myself, but I've been friends with some very advanced tinkerers. This isn't something I came up with myself, but it's something you should know if you're going to continue creating. Please, just try it."

Javier scowled, resetting his pile of sawdust. "Fine. If it'll shut you up. One minute. I'll play your mind games for one minute, then you're going to never speak of it again."

Levi's lips twitched in a tiny involuntary smile. "Agreed."