2 familiar people, July and Sam were standing in the middle of a wrecked village.
Sam was on his knees, crying, griefing. This was the same village where a dragon attacked it. It killed a lot of people, including Sam's blacksmith teacher/master.
Sam found his body, he was crushed entirely by a heavy force, like a tortilla. They couldn't recognize him because it was merely a huge red stain, but his clothes were unique and had his signature on them. Once he saw the clothes, Sam knew that it was his teacher.
"Sam, I am so sorry for your loss." July stood behind her brother and tried to make him feel better. She knows how it feels like to lose someone important.
Sam did not say anything. He was just in a deep thought for now. Thinking how any of this happened.
After an hour of grief, Sam stood up, grabbed a giant piece of broken plywood that was on the ground that came from a destroyed house.
He grabbed a piece of rock and carved a name and date on the plywood, and also added more words.
July, who was watching from the sides, knew what he was doing. She'd offer to help, but she knew he would like to do this by himself. Even when they were kids, Sam would always prefer to do anything by himself. Even now he doesn't let anybody help him unless he needs it or offers guidance to Jack when making weapons or armor.
{Here lies Master Blacksmith Sean.}
{Born March 2 1973}
{Died October 2021]
Sam wrote down his master's accomplishments, and also listed down his story as simply as possible. He didn't write down the day he died because he didn't know how that exact day his master died. But it did look very recent.
Sam placed the present that they got for him, for advancing to Master blacksmith. Shame he died before he could give him his present, which was a bottle of wine. It was nothing too expensive or special because it was all they could afford.
"Sorry teacher. I wish I could have given you this wine before you died. You always did love drinking, you fat bastard." Sam started to cry again, unable to control his tears. This was the man who taught him everything he knew about blacksmithing, he was someone important to him.
July hugged her brother from behind tightly.
Another day had gone by.
Will worked on his castle during the night, and slept during the day. His sleep schedule was all messed up now. Still he'd work tirelessly most of the day just to make even a tiny bit of progress on his castle.
The castle was looking a lot more like a castle now. It had 30ft thick walls, which surrounded the entire castle and stood over 50ft tall. Will wishes he could go taller, but somehow the walls would topple over like jenga due to its weight. Even with some weight support it wasn't enough. For now 50ft was the max he could build. And honestly building these walls was the easy part, for him at least.
On top of these walls had numerous towers, all which had several cannons placed for show, and diamond sentry turrets all around, completely protecting the castle from all sides. Will added details to the walls like stones cut into squares, like a typical medieval castle used for their archers to take cover.
Of course to Will it barely seemed like he made hardly any progress at all. In truth, he could have made so much more progress if physics weren't a problem. What he had a problem with was the ground where his castle stood on, it simply wasn't sturdy or tough enough to withstand literal tons of stone on top of it.
When he was building his wall, part of it collapsed and ruined most of his base, not even his pool was safe from the destruction. Honestly that made him feel just bad. He hated it when something like this happens, it's the equivalent of a creeper blowing up a portion of the base you build.
How he wished that he could build like in Minecraft or Terraria, without having to worry about actual physics messing up your builds. But unfortunately this was real life, not an awesome video game.
Adaline was running around, she was simply too bored to stay in one spot all the time so she wasn't near when the wall collapsed.
So Will had to do something he hated, get rid of everything and rebuild it all. This was the most annoying part to him.
The ground was now made of a mix of iron and granite. He needed his most durable minerals and rocks he had to build a solid foundation, this way even ordinary people couldn't dig down unless they had a powerful weapon.
On top of the ground he added a smooth floor, the floor was made out of smooth wood. Simply because Will didn't like to step in stone, and the smooth wood he crafted was comfortable to step on. Now the ground could withstand the weight of his walls.
As for the pool, he restored it but made major modifications to it like finer details with wood and smooth stone. He did like the pool and would swim in it when he felt stressed out. He planned on making a small beach filled with sand and whatnot, but it would have to wait.
Most of the stone he used was mined thanks to his golem, who had been working non-stop for days. It's amazing how one single broken and slow golem could make such progress. If it weren't for the golem he'd have almost run out of stone to use.
"Golem, how ya doin'?" Will came to check up on his golem. Until now his golem was not capable of speech, all he could say was 'master' like it's the only word that existed. But if he were to craft a better golem core the golem might have a larger vocabulary.
The golem had already broken 2 of his pickaxes, which were enchanted, exotic steel. So he crafted a literal diamond pickaxe, the handle was also made of diamonds. Currently he had not much use for the rare rocks other than to use it to flex on others. And he had already placed so many sentry turrets around his castle walls.
Thinking that this was like a minecraft system instead, it would make sense that a diamond pickaxe would actually be very, very good, right? No.
Will never thought about this, but that single diamond pickaxe his golem had, was worth more than most people would make in years of hard work.
And even though he was a bit reluctant to use diamonds to make a diamond pickaxe, it was worth it, as a mere collectors item that is. Will is the type of player who did not like to spend his more valuable resources, unless he needed to or if he was just bored.
"I wish I'd known how brittle diamonds were before…" Will teared up a bit. This was actually his second diamond pickaxe. The first one shattered into pieces like glass, which surprised Will beyond shock, because he, like millions of people alike, thought that diamonds are the hardest minerals in the world and therefore are unbreakable.
"Well, at least I added some enchantments to it, so it should be a bit tougher now. There's no way it should break now. And Alex lied to me! He said that 'Diamond Is Unbreakable' but it's clearly not. I wonder why he said that in the first place. Think it was anime related, about a bizarre adventure. Eh, it doesn't matter. For this time that diamond pickaxe is truly unbreakable-"
*Shatter*
The sound of something breaking into pieces broke Will's heart. Minecraft, his favourite game of all time, lied to him. Now he knew why Terraria doesn't use diamond tools or armor, aside from making it into a diamond staff or a lightsaber. It's because diamonds are useless as tools.
"Master." The golem returned the broken diamonds pickaxe to Will.
"..." Will.
Diamonds are incredibly hard, but not tough, there is a difference. For example, if you scratch a diamond it won't have a scratch on it. But if you hit it against a hammer, it will shatter into pieces. Like steel, if you scratch it, it will have some scratch marks on it, but if you hit it with a hammer it won't break or shatter.
Even with the enchantments added to the diamonds pickaxe, it broke so easily.
"Master." The golem replied in a hoarse tone. Seeing that Will did not say anything, he got worried.
"I am… okay. Let's stick to steel for now. Let's look at your supplies. Oh wow, you found 3 more!" Will saw what his golem mined, and he had found 3 low tier mana ores. He changed subjects to avoid how stupid it was on his part to craft 2 useless diamond pickaxes.
"Add this to the other 8 you found in the past 2 days, it's enough to make another golem… although..." Will seriously did not want to make another golem from scratch. Just thinking about it made him stressed out, like college does to any student.
Apart from how difficult and stressful it is to build one, it would take a lot of his time from building his castle. And he thought that by the time he already finished making another golem, his mining golem would have already mined enough mana ore to make another golem.
"Yeah, screw that. I'll just wait until Adaline can make enough trees so I can make another blueprint."
That was Will's plan, to use his blueprint ability to make golems without having to do any of the work, like copy and paste.
He placed the mana ores in his inventory, because they were too valuable to be left in his base, it just felt safer this way. And the best part is that they could not be dropped even if he were to die with them in his inventory.
Looking at the mana ore in his inventory, Will felt like it was a waste if it were to just sit there for god knows how long.
"But… hm… I wonder how long it'll take to get enough wood to make another blueprint…"
"Master." The golem said.
"Hm? Oh, right. When your pickaxe breaks, pick another one from that chest." Will pointed to a chest, which the golem opened and took out an enchanted steel pickaxe. Will had crafted over a dozen maxed out enchanted steel-exotic pickaxes. He only crafted diamond pickaxes because he thought it would be better, and he was wrong.
Will looked at the brown book and saw what else he could craft using the mana ores. Mana ores are valuable to sorcerers because it benefits them, and Will has never heard of a sorcerer who uses mana ore weapons.
Thinking that he could sell these weapons for a lot of money, Will threw that thought away because it was stupid. Money was worthless to him. Right now what he needed were materials to craft powerful weapons, building materials and whatnot.
And there is another crafting recipe he had been curious about, mid-tier mana ores. It took 10 low-tier mana ores to make one mid-tier mana ore, the same equivalent it took to make a single low-tier golem core.
"Ah, let's do this."
Will crafted the crystals in his hands and turned them into a mid-tier mana ore. His brown book flashed brightly as he had unlocked several new crafting recipes. Once he crafted the mid-tier mana ore his brown book shined.
{Mid-tier mana staff}
{Mid-tier mana bullets}
{Mid-tier mana cloak)
{Mid-tier…}
Like before, the mana ores could be used to craft weapons and ammunition but better. And a new crafting material added was clothing, not armor but simply light clothing like mana clothes made out of cloth or silk. It was an improvement from before.
{Mid-tier mana shirt}
{Mid-tier mana pants}
{Mid-tier mana…}
The mana clothing was pretty enticing, but it benefited sorcerers the most, and Will has no mana. He didn't even know why this was here in the first place. It's not like Terraria where he could use mana or spells.
{Advanced-tier mana ore}
{Crafting ingredients: 10x mid-tier mana ores}
That was the equivalent of 100 low-tier mana ores.
"Dang, 10 mid-tier mana ores. That's almost like 100 low-tier mana ores!" Will said in surprise.
If someone heard him, he'd correct Will by saying, "Actually it's exactly 100 low-tier mana ores."
{Low-tier golem core}
{Crafting ingredients: 10x low-tier mana ore/ 1x mid-tier mana ore}
Fortunately for him, he could still make golem cores even if he crafted a mid-tier mana ore.
There was another list of new crafts he almost missed, it was at his exclusive system crafts section.
"Hello. What is this?" Will was surprised to see the new exclusive crafts he unlocked, well two to be precise.
{Portal chest 2x}
{Only exclusive to the system user. A portal chest can only be accessed by the system user and only the user. Store any item you wish like any normal chest, and only you will be able to retrieve it. Both chests are connected to one another so they are both the same chest.}
(Think of it as an ender chest but only for MC.)
{Warning: Be sure to place this chest where you are sure you want to keep. Otherwise it'll be impossible to move it from that spot you placed it. Only way to remove it is by destroying it, and you won't get back the materials used to make this item.}
{Crafting ingredients: 8x mid-tier mana ore, 100x iron chest(s)}
(Summoning stone 4x}
{Able to summon any living being by your side wherever they are and whenever you wish. Place one stone on the being you wish to summon, then crush another summoning stone to summon that being. This will not work if that being you wish to summon does not wear it when you crush the stone.}
{Warning: It is a consumable item, meaning one time use. Once you crush the item you won't get it back, and the stone that the being had on it will also be destroyed once it is summoned}
{Warning: Does not work on dead beings like living statues, zombies, vampires, and so on. Can ONLY summon living beings.}
{Crafting ingredient: 2x mid-tier mana ore, 1000x smooth stone}
"So… an ender chest, and a summoning item. Sweet. But damn they're expensive as hell." Will sucked in a breath of cold air. He just couldn't imagine himself using the summoning stones and wasting precious mana ores like that.
They are indeed useful crafting items, but it's not something he could afford right now.
It was like the equivalent of consuming something more precious than netherite, or nether stars.
"I need more golems if I am to craft these items sooner rather than later. I can't imagine what more items I would unlock if I craft a high-tier mana ore. Adaline! Oh crap I forgot I was down in the mines."
Will ran up the stairs, it was just so many damn stairs.
He saw Adaline just lying around. It seemed like she was doing nothing, but right now she was doing her best to expand and keep the greenery alive, again.
"Adaline, we're going to the forest! Yeah, I know it's late, but we're working at night now. Why can't I simply mine? Because someone told me to not mine at night! No, he didn't say anything about not cutting down trees at night. If it makes you feel any better, for every tree I chop down, I'll plant two. That way I can come back and cut even more trees, and then I will plant 2 more for every single one I chop. Also I am doing this because I just remembered that I once donated to Teamtrees."
Will had spent so much time with Adaline that they developed a deep bond and could speak to each other even without Adaline being able to speak, at least he hoped he could understand her. It would be really helpful if she could talk, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.
While still tired as hell, Adaline ran to the forest with Will on her back.
Once they arrived in no time, Adaline fell on her side and slept like a log.
"Thanks, girl. I've been meaning to use this for some time now… ah goddammit!" Will took out from his inventory an enchanted diamond axe.
"I am so dumb. I forgot this was in my inventory. Gah, it's whatever."
Will crafted the diamond axe the same time as he crafted the first diamond pickaxe. At that point he didn't know how useless diamonds actually were. He kept it in his inventory because he thought it would prove to be useful, he was wrong. It cannot even be used in battle properly.
"Hopefully it doesn't break as easily as the diamond pickaxe did."
Will swung the diamond pickaxe at the tree, and surprisingly the whole tree came down in one swing. This was only possibly due to the enchantments he added.
"Oh, cool! Maybe it isn't so bad after all."
{Diamond axe}
{Durability: 77777/100000}
The diamond pickaxe already had cracks in them from just one swing. It was the first time he used it, and it was a bit more than ¾ away from breaking. In a couple of swings it'll shatter entirely
"..." Will threw the axe away. It didn't break but several pieces of diamonds scattered everywhere like broken glass.
Despite the huge durability it had, it wore down quickly when it was used like that.
"Even with those enchantments, it's that weak. Well, luckily for me, I brought some steel axes." Will came prepared and brought extra axes with him just to be safe.
And just like he promised Adaline, for every tree he cut down he would plan 2 saplings. By the next few hours, those saplings he plants would grow up into fully grown trees.
By the time he was done it was already sunrise. He couldn't collect enough wood to craft another blueprint. Cutting down logs was just slow and even more boring than mining by hand. Now he knows what his next golem is going to do.
Meanwhile…
Inside the kingdom, Sandra woke up feeling refreshed but lazy.
Now that she knew that Will was in this world, she felt much more relaxed. Still the idea of going back to their world, to their families and homes hasn't wavered at all. She wanted to go back.
After completing her morning routine, she heard a knock on the door.
*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*
"Come in." Sandra said.
"Psst, Sandra, come with me." A girl about Sandra's age peeked from her door and whispered to her.
"Olivia?" Sandra was surprised to see one of her classmates. Her and Olivia were at most classmates, not even friends.
Olivia was a dark skinned girl with twintails. She was short, very skinny. Her clothing that she wore was a long, plain, pink, silky dress that covered her entire body except her arms and face. She was even wearing her running shoes which did not go well with her dress.
"Come." Olivia waved her hand at her.
Sandra complied with Olivia and both entered a giant room in the kingdom which was another room.
Inside the room were 90 other people, all of which are heroes, and all of which were confused and talking among themselves. Most of them didn't even know why they were here in this room.
Sandra saw a familiar face and walked towards him.
"Bruce, what's going on?" Asked Sandra.
"Dunno."
After 3 more heroes arrived, a young man floated up in the room and said loudly, "Okay, everyone, friends, our time has come." It was a tall, short haired blonde man, with a dumb look on his face. He had a large forehead, pimples on his forehead, and so many freckles across his face. He had an irritating face that would make one want to punch him. He also had a fit body sort of.
"We're gonna die?!" A short person said. People heard him and were getting hysterical.
"No, you idiot! Our time has come to decide when we all have to venture out!"
"Oh… you woke me up this early for this? Right when Shaun finally gave us a break from his military training." Chandler, a chubby young man said.
"Yeah, what the hell, Colby!"
"Look!" Colby, the one who was flying, said out loud to quiet them down and to get their attention.
"If we all stick together, we all have a chance of surviving an attack. I say we all unite, and attack the monsters that are outside of these castle's walls! Who's with me?!" Colby raised his hand up high, and only the short man raised his hand. No one else did.
"Yeah, I think it's better if we like, never leave the castle. I am not going out there. So count me out." A fairly tall girl said and left the room.
"Yeah, count me out."
"What the hell's the matter with you? What do you think this is, a game? It's real life!"
"Come on, guys! I gathered all of us here on the same day that Victoria left the kingdom after the king threw her to some group. God knows I'd rather die than be with her. And also because I think it'd be cool to kill some things like zombies or whatever they have here."
"Well, when you put it like that, it still sounds stupid." Everybody else left the room until it was just him and another hero.
Colby was one of the most popular kids in middle school and high school, because he was the clown/jokester of the school. He thought that with his popularity, and the fact that everyone knew him and he knew most of them, he thought they'd all join him. But no. The heroes didn't care if he was popular or whatnot, he was not gonna be able to convince them to fight while risking their lives for no reason at all.
Colby did want to go out to fight because he thought it'd be cool to kill goblins, slay dragons, protect the people, and whatever cliches he could think of.
But, he did not feel brave enough to venture out alone with only his short friend, who is named Ali.
Perhaps if he could unite the 90 heroes he'd stand a better chance of surviving. If he had a powerful weapon or ability, he'd be confident to do it himself, but his hero ability is just being able to fly. In his mind it wasn't a great ability at all.
And as for weapons, he only carried a simple pistol because it's what the kingdom could afford, it's not even enchanted.
He wasn't as crazy as Josh is, who just ventured into the dangerous world the first chance he got, but he was indeed envious of his powerful and useful abilities.
"Damn. I thought that it would go well. Those damn cowards!" Colby said, angrily at them. Not realizing how much of a hypocrite he is himself.
"So are we going out or what?" Asked his short friend, Ali. Ali was like Colby in a way, very popular among his classmates and school, and had fairly good looks unlike Colby. However his short height is what was unique about him. He also had some type of charm in him.
"Fuck no! What are we, stupid?"
"Yes!"
Then Colby would have to find himself still stuck in the castle because of his fear. When he saw that huge dragon that attacked the kingdom, he literally shit himself. There is just no words to describe the fear he felt that time. That's why he doesn't want to go out unless he is surrounded by a powerful group of heroes to protect him and fight with him.