Depths of the Overworld

It's been a relaxing few weeks since your adventures in the Nether. Mining is much easier with your Netherite Pickaxe, and though the villagers have no further need of iron or diamonds, you're content slinging your tool through deepslate, melting away at the rock in search for valuables.

Then you see it. This... infection creeping through the cave, spreading as creatures die near it. Most would fear such an environment, but from experience you know it must be home to an enemy of great power. So you venture in. It quickly becomes evident that silence is needed as you roam through the "Sculk," lest you anger the blind guardians that wander.

Eventually, the cave leads into an Ancient City. Dark, gloomy, and seemingly abandoned. You're sure another smithing template can be found here, but what creature holds the key to this next material's power? You pale as you realize the guardian himself, The Warden, must be the great power here.

With great preparation, you find a way to safely kill the blind behemoth, leaving you with his heart. It still beats despite being separated from its now dead host. Soon after, you also find a template in a chest. The template seems to be made for a Sculk Gem.

You decide to return later with a Night Vision potion. Clearly it'll be difficult to find this material that likely blends in so well with its environment. And perhaps... a Netherite Hoe? After all, Sculk-related blocks seem to break easiest when using the farming tool.

After hours of searching the floors, walls, and ceilings of the cave surrounding the Ancient City, and even some adjacent Sculk-infested caverns, you find it. It's almost reminiscent of the Soul Sand you used in summoning The Wither. Breaking it, you extract a Soul Fragment, and take a moment to ponder the ethics of forging a living soul into a tool.

But it's not like you can bring the soul back to the realm of the living, so you combine some souls with some redstone and behold a Sculk Gem. The forging technique has become routine, and it isn't long until you behold a Sculk Sword.

Perhaps it was greedy to craft a sword before a pickaxe, but beholding it, you wonder if it could extract souls from monsters. After all, even if the chance of a successful extraction was low, it had to be better than trying to find another Soul-Infused Sculk in this wretched place.

As with the previous two materials, you decide to forge the full set of Sculk Equipment. You're curious as to its abilities.