Almighty Pickaxe

"Water is for flowers. Love is for people. The night is for sleeping!" Technoblade groaned. No, that wasn't an original line. He remembered reading it from a manga called Obaka-chan Koigatariki.

That wasn't important. What was important was his fixed sleep cycle. He was finally able to sleep at nightfall and awake just as the first sun rays hit him in the face. There was no point in wasting precious daylight, so Technoblade got to work at once. Not having to eat breakfast in the morning because of a hungry stomach felt strange. The full hunger and thirst meters meant he could not eat even if he wanted to.

Whatever. He had gotten used to being unable to eat on some days when the doctors wanted to do some medical checkups. It was a little sad that he couldn't enjoy this privilege, but there would be more days to make it happen. He wondered what it would be like to eat cooked chicken over a campfire for breakfast instead of juicy berries. Sure, the berries had a slightly sweet taste, but he missed the smoky and savoury taste of barbecued chicken.

Checking his crafting recipes, Technoblade knew that he had just about the right amount of materials to make the one tool everyone in Minecraft needed - a pickaxe.

No, some other people would think that he favoured the sword over the pickaxe, but they were wrong! There is no other tool in Minecraft more important than a pickaxe. The possibilities that a single pickaxe could provide were ENDLESS!

No, he wasn't talking about getting expensive resources from the mines. He was talking about the versatility of using a pickaxe to smash people's faces. A sword could only stab and slash. An axe would hack. But a pickaxe… a pickaxe could smash. He lost count of the kills he had when equipped with a pickaxe. They never failed him.

Every four pebbles could be turned into a single cobblestone block, and Technoblade wasn't surprised to learn he needed two sticks and three cobblestones to create a single stone pickaxe. Aftercraft wasn't too imaginative despite the variations it had from vanilla Minecraft. Making quick work of the exchange, Technoblade changed only the necessary materials into his first tool and spent the next five minutes rejoicing for no particular reason.

"Look at this pickaxe. Isn't it magnificent?" he showed his first tool off to a nearby tree he punched yesterday.

The tree did not comment about it, but it might beg the Potato Lord to have mercy if it had emotions.

Technoblade laughed with an evil glee in his eye. The first tree he tried to punch hurt him. Now that he had an almighty pickaxe, it was time for revenge!

The first strike to the tree did not hurt, and hope bloomed in Technoblade's heart. He could see the small crack in the log that he was breaking, but it wasn't big enough to break the whole log. Hence, Technoblade did what he was good at and continued at it.

After way too many hits, Technoblade finally broke one wood log, and he rejoiced at the log he obtained. However, the happiness was short-lived when he realised there wasn't an actual use for it. He could only turn one log into some planks, and those planks could only make him slabs or sticks. There wasn't much he could do with just one log. He needed more to build the temporary shelter.

Groaning, Technoblade looked at his stamina bar. The action of mining for wood did not consume much energy, even if it took a ridiculous amount of time. In fact, it might be possible that he wasn't consuming energy at all, seeing how Minecraft calculated hunger consumption based on blocks travelled by the player.

"There's no point in overthinking," he reasoned. If circumstances are favourable, one should modify one's plans, Sun Tzu."

After breaking the first log, Technoblade positioned himself strategically to minimise movements so he could confirm his theory about stamina consumption in Aftercraft. Any bug the system developer did not fix was meant to be exploited.

After what felt like half a day, Technoblade rejoiced at how his theory was correct. Aftercraft did not calculate his hacking at a wood log as an action worthy of stamina consumption. If anything, his stationery position made them think he was idling. Even if his hunger and thirst went down, his fatigue did not rise. It worked strangely, but he was happy about it.

Log after log, the tree soon collapsed. However, it wasn't in the way Technoblade imagined it to be. Remember how Minecraft used to be a pain with floating leaf blocks after the trunk was chopped down? Aftercraft refused to have any of it. Despite standing on the stump of the tree, the Potato Lord yelped in surprise as the leaves surrounding him disintegrated with some rather disturbing sound effects. In seconds, all that remained around the stump he stood on was some saplings and sticks.

Using the almighty stone pickaxe, Technoblade finished the job and collected even the last wood log on the ground he stood on. If trees could disintegrate after all logs were chopped, he did not have to worry about spending needless energy running around to collect the drops over time before they despawned.

Hold that thought! Could items despawn in Aftercraft?

Ping!

[Your inventory is full and can no longer hold any new items. You may dispose of certain items to collect new items or expand your inventory slots. You may increase your inventory capacity by doing quests or purchasing them from the System Shop.]

Oh… that's right. Technoblade opened his inventory to look at the items taking up space. There was his trusty pickaxe, some saplings, the wood logs he collected and some sticks that fell from his recent activity. However, the other things taking up space included the juicy berries, his four remaining stone pebbles, the dirt blocks, and some uncooked salmon and bone meals.

He'd completely forgotten about the fish and bone meal. However, that would explain the lack of inventory space. He might not be able to afford campfire chicken for a while, but at the very least, he should be able to make some progress getting food with better saturation than berries tonight if he worked fast.

Inventory space was the biggest overpowered ability he had in Aftercraft. Without it, he was simply a homeless pig-human without anything to his reputation. Thankfully, there was a way to expand his inventory space. According to the [Achievements] tab, he had some easy one-time quests that gave him extra inventory slots upon completion, and the easiest of them was the [Basic Tools] quest.

"Make all five basic tools of Aftercraft? You got it, system."

Marching to the exposed stone at the side of the mountain, Technoblade mined away and watched as the durability of his pickaxe slowly went down. He did not know how many cobblestones he needed, but after turning the four remaining pebbles into one piece of cobblestone, Technoblade wondered how he would turn in the quest without enough inventory space to hold a sword, pickaxe, hoe, axe and shovel at the same time.

"Maybe if I throw some items out and collect them quickly enough, they will not disappear," he reasoned.

After all, he would have more than enough inventory space after completing the [Basic Tool] quest. Eighteen inventory slots meant that Technoblade did not have to selectively prioritise the things he needed. He could make a chest to dump out the items he did not require immediately, but it wasn't unlocked in the recipe book yet. Perhaps he was missing some materials to unlock that function. Either way, Technoblade was stuck with what he had.

"Two for the sword, one for the shovel, three for the axe, maybe three more for a new pickaxe, and two for the hoe. I think TapL will be proud I made a hoe this early into the game," he mused.

Crafting has never been easier. Technoblade felt as if he was using an auto craft mod with the Crafter Workshop function. All he had to do was place an order for the items he wanted, let the system withdraw the items from his inventory and wait until the item was completed.

Yes, there was a small wait time for crafting the items he wanted. It was not instant. However, it made more sense. If it took time to smelt items, why wouldn't it take time to craft them? Aftercraft made a little more sense than Minecraft, and Technoblade wasn't complaining. Instead, he checked his recipes to see if he had any luck with a furnace or campfire. Unfortunately, there was none.

"I'm probably missing something again," he sighed, but the dejection did not last long as crafted tools started popping out from his chest and onto the ground before him.

"My tools!" he exclaimed and quickly decided to toss out sticks, saplings, dirt and bone meal to make space.

Sighing at the close call, Technoblade looked at the gravity-defying items on the ground. Instead of falling onto the ground as ordinary objects, they remained inventory-sized and bobbed above the ground while rotating like a hologram around him.

Ah, there was no doubting it. Aftercraft was a very advanced version of VR gaming that Technoblade did not know about yet. Why else would this sort of thing happen?

As none of the items disintegrated when they left his inventory, the Potato Lord quickly checked his [Achievements] tab to turn in the [Basic Tools] quest.

Ping!

Once again, Technoblade received a new mail from the system admin, and he checked it out at once, eager for his reward.

[Dear Player

Congratulations on completing the [Basic Tools] quest! You may check the other quests available in the [Achievements] tab to be completed whenever you are ready.

9 inventory slots have been unlocked upon successful quest completion. This is a one-time quest. You may not claim the reward again.]

True to their claim, Technoblade's inventory space increased by another row. This also meant all the items on the ground came right back into his inventory. It was convenient how he had a five-block radius that sucked up any items floating on the ground into his inventory. However, thanks to that, it looked like a mess.

Technoblade spent some time rearranging his inventory and noticed a tad too late that time crept up on him. The sun was setting again, but he had tools in his inventory this time. Without a chest to dump them out, mobs would spawn. Technoblade could easily toss them aside and risk losing them to the despawn mechanics forever to avoid a night with the undead monsters, but it wasn't worth doing that.

"A fight it shall be," he resolved and looked at his options. The house wasn't ready, and he did not have enough blocks to build a temporary shelter. Moreover, he had no idea what sort of mobs he would encounter. Hence, the best option was to build upwards.

"He who knows when to fight and when not to fight shall win. Sun Tzu, the Art of War. Also, high ground is always better, but not always in the literal sense," Technoblade mused as he stacked the dirt tower up and made himself a cosy platform.

The dirt shelter he ditched on the first night was too claustrophobic, so he made a wider platform, sparing just enough dirt to make a one-block tall barricade around the platform. There were two reasons why he wanted the higher ground. The first reason was to better understand the mobs that would spawn with stone tools in his inventory. The second was to test the despawning theory.

Night enveloped the sky in darkness, and Technoblade held his breath. He wasn't fatigued enough to be forced to rest, so it would be a rather long night with the mobs, something he never imagined would happen before he acquired a set of armour and a bow. However, the Blood God in Minecraft wasn't afraid of anyone.

"Bring it on," he challenged and waited for his opponents to appear.