Sticks and Stones

The quest was simple, but Technoblade knew how nothing in any world was as simple as it looked. Punching leaves and dirt for sticks and pebbles might seem easy, but he knew better. With the admin's mail about the five status bars, it must be some kind of ploy to trick him into spending precious energy.

Technoblade had no food, shelter, armour, or means to fight hostile mobs. He was very killable. Even if he could outsmart the mobs that would spawn at night, he was still very vulnerable to unknown factors. He had to resolve the energy issues as soon as possible, but apart from that sheep he saw when he first awoke, there wasn't much around to help him resolve his issues. Technoblade did not want to risk his health by punching a sheep to test the theory. Hence, he came to a logical compromise.

He would only punch just enough leaves and dirt to find all the materials he needed to complete the quest with the least movement he could.

Technoblade scanned the biome he spawned in and looked at the squarish sun. It was approaching noon, and he had not made any significant progress. Any wise man would try to kill two birds with one stone. Hence, Technoblade did what any wise man would have done and started punching dirt first.

Punching dirt gave Technoblade several things. Firstly, he was able to confirm that he indeed had an inventory. Secondly, he now knew that not all dirt blocks dropped pebbles. He only got his first pebble on the third dirt block he punched. Also, every dirt block took him two seconds to mine by hand. It wasn't long, but it was critical in deciding if he could dig downwards in the middle of the night when he was ambushed by mobs. Also, dirt can sometimes drop things like seeds. Lastly, mining twenty dirt blocks by hand increased his fatigue by one, hunger by two and thirst by one point.

"Thankfully, I have all the dirt I would ever need to build a temporary shelter by nightfall," he grinned. "Technoblade lives another day!"

The crowned pig-human looked at the nearby tree with over ten pebbles in his inventory. It was possibly the only tree in the vicinity of his spawn area, and Technoblade did not want to eradicate its wonderful existence. He was not confident about getting all the ten sticks by punching all the leaves of one tree. Like pebbles, they might not be a guaranteed drop.

There wasn't much to miss in his spawn biome. There were only flowers and a dumb-looking sheep, nothing he would miss if he left this area. Technoblade thought for a while. Thankfully, there were several useful resources he could plunder before leaving permanently.

"They didn't say anything about catching fishes, did they?" he mused. "They don't look as sturdy as the sheep. I could try."

Back in Minecraft, fishes were a one-punch kill thing. Unless it was a pufferfish, there was nothing to worry about. The only problem was swimming around to murder them. His hunger would rise considerably. However, that problem could easily be solved by cooking his catch after completing his quest. He could easily harvest the wood needed for cooking them with the stone tools later.

"Back to basics, huh?" Technoblade smirked. "I'm returning to my roots and humble beginnings, but I'm not against the grind."

Technoblade was always known for his insane PVP skills and incredible tactics since he started making videos for his Youtube channel. He could play Minecraft using a steering wheel console, get full netherite armour in record time, save Philza from baby zombies and conquer the world. However, he never had a fun and relaxed 'Let's Play' series in survival. It was always a random video about him messing around on Hypixel and stabbing bad players while talking about life and making memes. Occasionally, he would do something else with a little more story sense in some short series, but no series was dedicated to story-telling.

"Maybe it is time for a change," he mused as he took a deep breath and plunged into the river to catch his dinner.

Smacking the salmon felt like bullying. They stood zero chance against his powerful slap and turned into a dropped carcass that automatically entered his inventory. In theory, if he smacked enough of these salmon, they should occasionally give him something good that would help his random seeds grow quicker. Unfortunately, the six salmon he punched did not give him any bones or bone meal. It was a shame but not entirely unexpected.

Technoblade swam to the surface for oxygen and scouted the rest of the river. There was another school of salmon not too far away so he could swim over. As the sun was right over his head, he had approximately another half day to secure food and build a temporary shelter before nightfall. Theoretically, he could punch a sheep to make a bed. However, there were too many unknowns in this new world. He had to err on a more cautious side to live longer.

By the time the king of blood secured almost twenty salmon, the sky had started to change colours. He rejoiced at the six bone meals obtained from smashing salmon with his fist but regretted how he made no progress with getting sticks. His saturation was also becoming low but not nearly low enough to tempt him into eating raw fish. Who knew if food poisoning was a thing in Aftercraft? Unless he was desperate, Technoblade would wait until he could cook them in some furnace for eating any.

According to his knowledge, the worst biome to be in at night was somewhere completely open, like the desert or the mesa biome. The terrain would leave him vulnerable with nowhere to hide, so Technoblade wanted to actively avoid them. Even if he had a temporary shelter, there was a high chance he would be killed the moment he left it in the morning. Moreover, he would not be able to make a run for it.

Sleep was a factor that made Aftercraft a lot trickier. His fatigue meter was close to 100% after swimming all afternoon. The potato king feared he would be rendered immobile and left for dead before getting his sticks. At the same time, Technoblade did not know how long he would be paralysed once that fatigue bar was full. In some other games, sleep would lead to an increase in hunger and thirst upon waking, although it recovered stamina and sometimes health.

Whatever. There was no use in considering so many unknown factors. His primary goal did not change, and he could deal with it later. As long as he remained near a source of water, hunger and thirst meters would not pose a huge concern. The temperature meter's indicator was green, signifying the optimum place to be if he did not need to find trees. He could always return to this area if he needed to set up his base when he gathered the basics.

As the sky grew darker, Technoblade quickly stacked dirt blocks in an area he could easily barricade himself from the mobs that might spawn when night fell. The river wasn't too far from him, although he had left the flower hill biomes for the plains. In the distance, there was a mountain with a snowy cap he wanted to visit when morning arrived.

The dirt shelter was tiny. It felt slightly claustrophobic living inside one from a first player's point of view. Although a two-by-two dirt shelter seemed ridiculously luxurious in Minecraft, living in one was a miserable experience in Aftercraft.

"This feels exactly like those tiny living apartments in Tokyo," he mused as he placed the last dirt block in the wall, keeping him safe for the night.

There was no roof as Technoblade wanted to spend his night admiring the stars until he could see the first rays of the sun, indicating daytime, so he could leave this dirt shelter.

Technoblade expected to hear the groans of undead walkers and the rattling of bones a few minutes after the sun completely disappeared. However, even as time passed, it continued to remain peacefully silent. Mobs should make some sort of noise after spawning, right?

Curious, he plopped down a dirt block and jumped up to take a peek outside. Alas, there was nothing in the vicinity! There were no zombies, skeletons, creepers or spiders. It was fine if the rarer mobs like witches, baby zombies and spider jockeys did not appear. However, he could not understand why the most common monsters weren't appearing.

"Where are all the mobs?" he wondered.

Ping!

The sudden system notification sound made Technoblade jump. He fell off his dirt block and thanked Aftercraft for not introducing one-block fall damage. That should have twisted his ankle in reality.

The mailbox icon at the top right of his vision was blinking with a small exclamation mark beside it. Heaving a sigh of relief, the puzzled pig-human blinked twice and checked the new message left by the system admins.

[Dear Player

Congratulations on surviving your first day in Aftercraft! It wasn't too difficult, was it?

Here's a little extra trivia about Aftercraft that you might find handy.

Did you know? Aftercraft was designed to be player-friendly. We believe in giving every player the chance to maximise their potential. The world's difficulty is directly proportional to the player's ability to deal with external threats.

The more powerful the tools and armour in your inventory, the more powerful the enemies will be.

Cool tip: Monsters will not spawn if you do not own any tools or armour. However, that also means you cannot get the loot from defeating them!]

What a random piece of useful information! Why didn't they mention this earlier? Technoblade wanted to sigh at the now useless dirt shelter he built. It was probably a good thing he did not have any tools or armour yet. Now that he knew he had the new player's advantage of playing Aftercraft in peaceful mode, Technoblade wondered if there was any way he could exploit the system to his advantage.

"The greatest victory is that which requires no battle," he quoted from memory. "I like how this works."

Not needing to fight was a huge advantage, and Technoblade could not thank the system more.

Time was something he used to constantly worry about. However, death erased this concern. He was technically immortal in Aftercraft because he couldn't grow old or die as long as he kept his meters within acceptable ranges.

"At least there are some perks to dying," he chuckled. He had all the time to enjoy this new world, explore, grind, relax and read the detailed guidebook attached to the first System Admin Mail.

Preparation was everything. Technoblade liked preparing everything he could possibly need to prepare for any battle. He loved the feeling of a complete victory without missing a simple step. This made him recall how his father often told him that it was his greatest strength and sometimes his biggest weakness.

When executed perfectly, Technoblade achieved jaw-dropping victories. However, if he overlooked something or had external factors throw a wrench in his plans, panic sets in and not all of his improvisations worked. His brilliant strategist mind only worked when he was calm, and the system admins of Aftercraft seemed to know it.

"Might as well take a stroll while I can," the pig-human shrugged. He might be fatigued, but as long as he had no armour or tools, falling asleep in the middle of the open plains should not kill him.

Hence, his long trudge towards the snow-capped mountains in search of sticks began.