We've been mining for an hour in silence, the only noise was the echo of our pickaxes hitting the dark block.
"Trader."
"Yes?"
"I'm bored, how many blocks do you need?"
"For an ender chest, I need eight, we have four already so we're halfway there."
"Do you think it would break faster if we all mined the same block?"
The conversation didn't break the rhythm of our mining, but I didn't respond quickly this time.
"I don't know honestly, but I think we could try."
"Finally a break from this monotony!"
"Undying doesn't stop mining your block, You're two-thirds done, it would be a waste of time if the experiment doesn't work."
She didn't say anything but nodded her head.
Surprisingly she didn't seem bored or tired, she needed to take another potion of regeneration a few minutes ago, but the pickaxe was still moving.
"Ok, I'll do wider swings and you'll time it so when I'm up, you're hitting down and vice versa."
Merey just nodded her head, fully concentrating on the block.
I started to hit more towards the edge so it could be easier for her to join.
A few seconds later two people were working at one block.
Slowly we got used to the swings and we didn't have any problems.
Around ten minutes later the block surprisingly broke.
"I can't believe this worked. The time must be halved since we both have the same power."
"I'm a genius indeed."
She spoke with a smug on her face.
"A genius indeed, but we still need three more blocks to get back to mining."
One hour later we were finally done with gathering the materials and ready to craft.
I gave everything to Undying and told her the recipe for the Endereye and the Ender's chest.
As instructed she placed everything on the table, and with a few hits, I had an Ender chest in my inventory.
"So what's so important about this chest that we had to work so hard for?"
While her body seemed a bit tired, Merry's voice did not show it.
"I'll show you once we get back to my base, I don't think you want to stay here for another 15 minutes to break it."
So we went back to the surface, while we were tired we did stop from time to time when we saw a dark tunnel with the potential of monsters.
When the monsters appeared, I let Merry deal with them. She will need a lot of combat experience for what is about to come, and she seems to enjoy it, or maybe she let's out the pent up stress.
I also taught her how to get items recognized by the system.
"Wait, so you're telling me that people from here will only take the string from a spider and its eyes just because it's the only item you can stack in the inventory? That's so wasteful and stupid."
"That's what most of the people do, from what I heard only the Coral Kingdom trades for other parts as well, but you have to understand something. Yes, you use eight blocks of plank wood for one chest, but it's so easy to grow wood here with the help of some bone meal. And even if you want to make one yourself, it would take hours of working for something vastly inferior to what the system can do."
"But if you master the craft I'm sure you can do something better than the system."
"That's probably true, but it won't be as quick or as cheap as the system will make."
"This is a weird system."
We slowly progressed through the caves until finally, we got back to my storage area, where I put down the Ender's chest.
"Well it looks cool at least, so what's so special about it?"
"Go look into the chest."
Merry opened the dark chest and tried to look for something but its inventory was empty.
"It has the same storage as a normal small chest but it's empty."
"What do you mean it's empty?"
With a shocked face, I went to open the chest and took out a golden apple while looking confused at Merry.
While I died and lost all my items in the stupid desert, I still stored some that I didn't need in the Ender chest, most of them being alchemy ingredients.
"Wha-how!? I just looked through it and there was nothing. How did you find a golden Apple?"
She quickly went back to check the chest in case she didn't see a second page or something similar, but it was still empty.
"Ok, you're playing with us, you took that out of your inventory."
"Why would I do that? Look I'll put the Apple back so you can try it as well."
I then put it back into the chest while she looked confused about why I did this, but still went to check to chest.
Only time find it empty.
"Am I seeing things? Undying please check this chest as well, I think I'm losing my mind."
Curious to see what was all the fuss, Undying went to check the chest as well but had an interesting reaction.
"I see, I think I get it now."
"Did you see the apple?"
"No, the chest is empty."
"Ok, that's it! Sorry Trader, it does look pretty but I think this chest is sexist and it needs to be broken."
"Wait, wait wait, don't do that! We just got it as well."
"I don't care, it's getting broken."
She took her pickaxe and was ready to hit but Undying spoke first.
"This chest gives you an inventory only you can use right? That's why we can't see the apple since it's in your storage area."
"Exactly! And not only that but whenever I break the chest or place another anywhere else around the world, I still have access to the same storage."
"" Ohh.""
"So it's something like a safe, I can see why this can be valuable. If I don't have enough space in my inventory but I don't want to leave precious items out in the open, I can just put it in here and it would be completely safe."
Both girls understood the value of Ender's chest, and its full potential will be reached when I put some shulker boxes in to make it larger.
But that's a plan for the future, now I only need this chest so I have access to all the alchemy ingredients I stored to level up my Brewing skills.
"Do you need help with anything else Trader? If not I think I'm going to have to leave, my stuck potions are running low and it could be dangerous if I stay here."
"Ah, sorry Undying, I don't need any more help, thank you for coming with me, say hi to Bobby if you meet him."
"It was no problem Great Chief."
With that, she left in a hurry towards the portal room and got back to her home dimension.
"So what's the plan for today Great Chief?"
Merry said in a cheeky tone, and a smile on her face.
I guess that's her way of getting revenge for the chest prank.
"Well, I planned to continue my underground base, before moving towards building the fortress on the surface. After I'm finished with all of those I'll do some grinding on my skills. But with you here I think I'll have to make some changes, what do you want to learn about?"
"I was thinking of getting a few levels on the Crafting skill so I can make my weapons. What would be the most efficient way?"
"Oh, you came to the right person for this here's what I know about the Crafting system and what you can do at what levels."
I tried to explain what you can craft with and what you can't, how much experience you get for certain items, and what's more cost-effective to craft.
But it all can be summarized like this:
- Experience requirements for each level
Lvl 1 0/100
Lvl 2 0/1.000
Lvl 3 0/10.000
Lvl 4 0/100.000
Lvl 5 0/1.000.000
Lvl 6 0/10.000.000
Lvl 7 0/100.000.000
-What you can roughly craft at each level
Lvl 1 can craft wooden tools
Lvl 2 can craft stone tools
Lvl 3 can craft food
Lvl 4 can craft with iron
Lvl 5 can craft with redstone
Lvl 6 can craft gold tools
Lvl 7 can craft diamant tools
-What to expect the grind to look like
Wooden tool- 10 xp
Stone tools- 50 xp
Iron tools- 100 xp
Gold tools- 300 xp
"Wait, this will take me ages to get to the good stuff, and you didn't even mention at what level the Nethorite tools at. How can I make my items and save the world at the same time?"
"Yeah, it's one of the hardest skills to master, unfortunately. As for Nethorite items, I can only guess it's on the same level as diamonds, since nobody can go higher than level 7 in any skill."
She sat down in disappointment thinking about what her next course of action will be.
I gave her the space to think and went to arrange the new items I just got. I still needed to finish my base after all.
A few minutes later she came to me with a final decision.
"I decided to focus on Enchanting, our world has its way of crafting things, potions can be similar to drugs, and trading is pretty self-explanatory but we don't have something so magical like Enchanting. And if I'm in another world I'll learn stuff specific to another world not the same thing as my old world."
I gave a big sigh, of all the options she could choose it was the exact one that I knew the least and had the worst memories of learning it.
I only know four enchantments Fortune, Unbreaking, Sharpness, and Curse of Biding.
Of course, I'll teach her only the first three, I don't want to get her in trouble with the knowledge of the cursed book.
Fortunately, I do have everything that I know written in a book, so I can teach her the language before starting to enchant.
"I don't know a lot about Enchanting, and what I do know has a very weak base. Here's what I can do, I can teach you the alphabet, and the few enchantments that I know, but you'll have to go to the Sandstone Kingdome to learn everything else. The royal family will gladly teach you anything you want to know, but you'll lose most of your freedom, you can also try to find a tutor but I don't know too much about that. But if you do go to the Royal Family, don't ever mention my name."
"That's weird, but I guess I'll stay with you for a while to get used to this world, then go to an academy from the Sandstone kingdom to learn further then save the world, yeah that sounds like a common trope I can get behind."
She still sees this world like a fantasy story where the main character is her, which leads her to not take this world's dangers that seriously.
And I can't blame her, I also thought this world was just a game until I died. Even when I got revived and now know that I still have one more life to spare, that was an experience that I never want to go through again.
I still don't recognize this world as my new home, but I do recognize that it has its dangers even if it looks easy.
And now with a new danger rising, the world will get more dangerous and further away from what I know.
My only hope is that my friends will be safe, and I'll get strong enough to protect myself and everyone I care about.
"Well, let's get you a pen and some paper to learn how to write once again. But this time you have to be stuck with the same handwriting all your life."
I smiled at her innocent hopeful look.
She doesn't know for the next few weeks she'll just learn at a first-grade level of writing each character individually.
Maybe It would be fun to teach after all.