I looked down at the head rolling on the floor that used to belong to the man named Carol Simpson.
"You could've watched it from afar like you did before, but you really needed to attack me without a reason, seriously what did you expect?"
After I got back from the mining trip with all the new knowledge. I took a day to rest and spoil myself a little, then I went back to selling sticks to get more emeralds.
Sure I had the money to pay for the boat, but that didn't mean it would be done, I still have to wait around until it's finished.
And since I didn't want to do stay and do nothing, I decided to level up my Trading skill.
That's why in the morning I kept selling sticks to make a new budget for other trades.
But I started to feel watched recently, and with the monocle of truth, I could easily identify that the businessman was behind it.
There was nothing wrong with that, I attracted a lot of attention with my weird stall.
But with time he kept being more pushy, and he sent some thugs after me that luckily, Siren was strong enough to deter, I didn't have enough evidence that It was him but I was suspicious.
And today he outright attacked me!
I didn't even do anything to you man, why did you start throwing fists?
So I finished the thieves and came to deal with the problem itself.
There's only one interaction we had until now, so nobody would suspect me for killing him.
Nobody even saw me getting to his room, it would appear as if one day he just disappeared without a reason.
I took everything out of his inventory that was valuable and looked around the room until I saw the recently opened letter.
After I read it I raised my eyebrows a little.
"Looks like my cover is blown, maybe the ID wasn't a good idea after all. But before they would catch up, I would be deep into the sea, and they would be too distracted with the invasion of the Piligers."
I burned everything that was related to me and called for Violet.
"Violet, can you please throw this body into the canal or the sea?"
The Endewoman suddenly appeared beside me hissing with displeasure but still took the body and teleported away.
Ever since I went sea mining, she's been cranky, probably because I found a new toy and she couldn't follow me into the water.
But there's nothing I could do about that, I tried to solve the issue with potions or other means but nothing worked.
For some reason, there's something fundamentally wrong with their body that gets damaged when water touches is it.
My only fear is that she won't come with me to the sea because of the water, and while I don't know too much about her, we've been through a lot together even if I didn't see it, and I trust her to keep me safe as I do with her.
"I wonder what she would request of me in the end?"
I shook my head at that thought.
I made a promise and I intend on keeping it, I just hope it would be a reasonable one or something I could make in the first place.
"Today marks the end of the week, I should meet with Siren once again and pay for the full ship."
But there were still a few hours until it was our time to meet, and I still had the iron ore on me that I needed to make it into iron blocks.
I looked at the riches in my inventory and let out a sigh but still smiled.
"Looks like I'll have to make a base of mine after all, I can't trust the chest at the hotel to be safe."
The question is, where should I make it?
I can't build one underground since the horse would hate it, and I can't build one on the sea since it would be out in the open for unwanted eyes.
That only left me with two options.
Buy a house in here or build one myself in the woods?
If you asked me this question before, I would've chosen to build a house in the woods.
But since I got such a generous donation not too long ago, I think I would buy a house on this land and hide a few chests in there.
I took out my horse and started to look around the place, but I didn't know what was for sale and what was not.
"Hey, do you know any houses in the area that are being sold?"
"Wha? Why would I know that, if you want to buy a house or land go to the central office and ask there."
I thanked the random stranger and walked towards the central office.
I hoped I didn't have to come back here since they didn't seem to keep secrets very well, but I had a plan for this.
In front of the blue building, I quickly put the dark armor on and entered without anyone seeing me.
There weren't a lot of people waiting in the line like last time, so I could go to a receptionist to ask about homes.
But I'm pretty sure I'll have to sign some papers to get there, and I don't want to attract any more attention to myself than I already have, so I went in the back where I found a big room filled with labeled chest.
Permits, Personal info, Laws until I finally found what I was looking for.
Home/Land sales.
I opened the chest and found a few homes already, but not as much as I expected from a city.
There were only 10 homes ready to be sold.
5 of those were out since they were in the slums confiscated by the guards since they belonged to criminals.
3 more were taken out since they were either unreasonably pricey or too big for me to use as a temporary base.
And that left me with 2 homes, of medium size in a safe neighborhood and I didn't have to worry about being asked too many questions.
I looked at the name of the owner and the place it stayed at and chose whoever was closer.
I took the book with me and went on my way not leaving any evidence behind.
Half an hour later I was in front of a beautiful beach house and knocked on the wooden door.
*knock knock
A minute later I heard footsteps getting closer and opening the door revealing someone I didn't expect to see.
The bald man who is building my ship.
I did not expect to see this person so soon.
"What the, who are you? Wait I think I remembered you in the weird cloak, it was Light or something similar. How did you find me, what do you want from me?"
The man was on guard ready to close the door at any moment leaving me in tense silence.
"Sorry if this came as an ambush, I didn't expect you to be here. I just came when I saw you were selling a house."
"Why would you come then? There should be an office representative dealing with all of this paperwork."
"That's the reason I came. I wanted to buy it from to source so I won't be leaving any paperwork behind."
The bald man narrowed his eyes while looking from side to side.
"So you want to get the house off the record."
"Precisely, and I'm willing to pay 5 diamond blocks now if you give me your signature."
He started to whistle impressed at the blocks of diamond in my hand.
"Are you sure you have enough money since you ordered an expensive ship as well? Did you manage to get the iron as well, since we would need it soon?"
He didn't seem to be on guard anymore just plain curiosity since I'm making a lot of big purchases in a short time.
"Don't worry, I'll get your money and iron blocks with no problem, I just came here for the house."
"Alright, I don't see any downside to this deal. I get more money than originally intended and don't have to pay the taxes. Give me the papers and ill sign."
I gave him the papers and he quickly signed them after a quick check. Then he was kind enough to grant my request to present the house since I didn't know the exact location.
We walked for a while until we arrived at the front of a tall white wall.
"This is your new home, it's 100x100 blocks large, surrounded by a 3-block sandstone wall which I know is not the most resistant, but you don't need to worry in those parts."
Then we walked through the front gate and saw that it had a lawn with a medium-sized house in the middle.
It was also made with sandstone and glass, two stories high, and a lot of room to walk around in.
"This is the perfect house, thank you once again, sir, we will meet again tonight and bring you everything else."
"There's no need to thank me, just say hi to Siren from me."
With a final wave, he left me to my new home.
"Well that was fun, what do you think Violet?"
My monster friend appeared beside me showing her disapproval.
"Yeah, it's too small for you and it doesn't have any Redstone, but we only needed to store our items. Plus, if you want to, you could make any contraptions you want on the lawn as long as nobody sees you."
This seemed to change her mind as she was suddenly happy about the new home.
I could only smile and shake my head.
First things first, I got my horse to the new home.
Second, I placed all the ores I got on my mining trip and took two out potions.
Speed and Luck.
I knew I intended to use the luck potion only when I gathered a mountain of diamonds.
But it would take too much time to do that, so I decided to use it now with the little diamonds then I found and the mountain of iron that I had to get the most out of it.
Worse case scenario I'll buy more diamonds from the villagers with the emeralds I'll get from the trading tab.
My pickaxe was ready, I drank the speed potion and I felt like everything else moved slowly around me, then I drank the luck potion and felt something that I never felt before.
Something in me and outside of me seemed to increase in size, not only that, but I felt that the pickaxe in my hand was warm to the touch, like there was an affinity between us.
Also, as I looked at the ores in front of me, I could feel like they were absorbing the energy that I and the pickaxe were producing.
I didn't know what it was, but I couldn't stay and study this feeling since it was very short lived.
So I started to swing my pickaxe already seeing great results.
By the end of this, I managed to get enough iron to pay the ship and still have some leftovers.
If I did this from the beginning, I wouldn't need to trade sticks!
This luck potion is much more powerful then I expected, and I really need to ask Flora for another one.
I looked at the sky and saw that it was almost dark.
"I have to quickly make a few blocks of iron otherwise this would be for nothing."
I placed a few furnaces down, placed all the iron inside with coal as fuel, and as soon as the iron was smalted I took it out and made it into an iron block.
An hour later I had 20 blocks of iron.
Bearly a fraction of that I had, but there wasn't enough time for all of it to smelt and craft it.
So I took all the diamond and emerald blocks with me, and left to meet with Siren.
I didn't want to be late after all.