If You Wish to Defeat Me, Train For A Hundred Years

The journey home felt terribly long. Technoblade ran over the mountains and swam over the lava lakes, where he fell off the bridge. Thankfully, he caught a stray strider and saddled it. With the lure of a warped fungus on a fishing rod, Technoblade guided his moderately slow mount back to his wasteland biome.

There were pros and cons to riding a strider back. As the Aftercraft mechanics only tabulated distance travelled on foot over time to deduct stamina points, riding a strider helped to eradicate the need for sleep. His fatigue bar never depleted, and Technoblade rode all the way back.

Compared to the process of sprinting and sleeping continuously, the strider was slightly slower, but the journey back to his destination was more scenic. Technoblade left the strider trapped in a small walled-up lava pond before leaping through the portal. He had almost everything he needed from that direction, and thankfully, after returning to his portal, the nether biome tracker pointed in a different direction.

It was late morning when Technoblade returned to the overworld. His sheep looked as fat as he remembered them, and everything remained unchanged as if he had not been away for a week or more. Did time freeze in the overworld when he entered the nether?

Either way, the entire trip felt like a very long dream or nightmare, depending on one's perspective. If not for the amazing loot he obtained from the nether, Technoblade would brush it off as a lucid dream. It was odd how he never dreamt whenever he slept in Aftercraft. The sleep also felt incredibly short, but he was getting used to it.

Putting away the remaining gold, special arrows and ender pearls, Technoblade walked to the fortress where his horses roamed freely and saddleless. That wouldn't do. Even though he could not fish that many saddles, he had plenty of saddles to put on all his horses and the remaining ones on pigs still floating in that prison-like slaughterhouse now that he didn't need to breed them. He could definitely use a pig mount at some point to stay true to his lore.

After feeding his chickens and multiplying his sheep, Technoblade gained enough experience levels and returned to his mountain mansion. He looked at the two books in his hands and removed his boots.

Thankfully, clothes did not require washing and did not stink in Aftercraft. Technoblade could not imagine these smelling good after a sweaty journey in the nether. The sparkled as new as before, and everything that accumulated damage from his nether adventures was fixed up thanks to the mending enchantment.

"The final enchants to my boots before I upgrade them," he inhaled and placed them on the anvil.

Adding the enchanted books to the boots made the books disappear like usual, and Technoblade inspected the enchantments. Unlike depth strider and frost walker enchantments that conflicted with each other, soul walker and lava walker did not need to be toggled. It made sense, so Technoblade removed his fully enchanted diamond boots and carried them over to the smithing table after retrieving a netherite ingot from his chest room.

"This is it," he said. "I'll be the most powerful existence in Aftercraft after the system admin."

Hammering the netherite ingot on the smithing table and pounding it into his diamond boots, the armour piece glowed for a moment and transformed into a pair of netherite boots.

Equipping the final piece of armour to complete his battle suit, Technoblade heard the system notification and grinned. Of course, there would be a quest reward. Back in Minecraft, this was a major accomplishment.

Ping!

[Congratulations on completing the quest [Dark Knight]. You have been awarded 20 skill points!]

20 skill points! Technoblade almost could not breathe. Did the system admin know how difficult it was for him to farm all those levels and exchange them for actual skill levels in the shop? The reward for mindless hours of mining in the nether was worth it. Technoblade gladly claimed the reward and paused.

Besides his mining and speed skills, Technoblade's farming skill was the highest among the others. This wouldn't do. He needed more combat-related skills if he was going to conquer the nether fortress and defeat the ender dragon. The wither boss should be optional…

… or not!

Technoblade traced his quest tree and groaned. He needed to kill the wither boss to obtain the [Overworld Biome Tracker] skill to locate swamps and kill witches to obtain unborn villagers.

That officially sucked.

However, Technoblade refused to deal with tomorrow's problem today. Instead, he needed to focus on preparing for the tough battle ahead in the fortress. He had no idea if hoglins still resided in the crimson forest, but he wasn't going to take any chances.

"I have so many combat skills, and they're all trash," he declared.

Technoblade put together the list of combat skills he had and their current levels.

Shield: 5/50

Defence: 8/50

Speed: 50/50

Swordsmanship: 11/50

Archery: 3/50

He sighed. While he had no problems dodging and outrunning his enemies, killing them would take him forever, thanks to his lack of attack power. The netherite sword in his hand could deal more damage than his diamond sword, but Technoblade had yet to test it out on a tough foe.

"We shall wait for nightfall to measure our strength," he declared. Those twenty points must be spent wisely. The enemies of the fortress are trained, unlike the brainless monsters from the overworld.

Night fell swiftly, and Technoblade watched as monsters spawned outside his castle walls. Bravely, he flung open the fence gates and taunted the monsters nearby. Needless to say, Technoblade managed to gather an angry hoard in only minutes.

Dashing towards safety and leading them to the mighty moat, Technoblade stuck out a virtual tongue and watched them fall into the water beneath. Although the skeletons could still shoot him from where they were, Technoblade came prepared.

Shutting the fence gates, he ran towards the walls where he dug a tunnel. There was just enough space for him to crawl through and stab at the monsters after he found a way to isolate them with a trusty fishing rod.

It took longer than Technoblade wanted to isolate a single zombie. He found out how his netherite sword took three swings to kill a zombie with the sharpness enchantment, one swing with the smite enchantment and four to six swings with other enchantment combinations. The looting effect remained constant throughout, and now Technoblade had more rotten flesh than he knew what to do with them.

"Specific enchantments give different damage boosts to regular mobs. I don't think these apply to blazes, although the wither skeleton might take more damage if I switched it up to smite on the sword."

The next thing he wanted to test was the shield skill. He could block the arrows from the angry archers just fine, but they do not always deflect the attacks back to the attacker. However, without a shield, the archer who shot at him took damage from the thorns enchantment.

"It's a shame thorns don't belong on the shield."

Yes, Technoblade tried to put enchantments that belonged to other weapons and equipment on different tools. Sadly, they don't work. Although there was more flexibility in Aftercraft regarding combat styles, Technoblade was still lacking in actual combat experience to level his combat skills without the pay-to-win method.

Grinding enough levels to upgrade his speed skill was a pain Technoblade did not want to repeat four more times for his existing combat skills. There had to be a better way.

It was easy to understand how to level the swordsman and archery skills. The more he swung the sword and killed things, the more experience he gained in swordsmanship. The more he shot arrows and killed things, the more experience he gained in archery. The Shield and Defence skills bothered Technoblade the most.

He had a rough guess about how to level the shield skill. The more he blocked attacks, the faster his skill would level up. However, what should he do for defence? It made little sense. However, it was important as defence minimised the amount of damage received. Although Technoblade had no idea how the calculations worked, he wondered if reaching level 50 in defence would make him invincible.

It was highly unlikely but having maxed out defence was probably required for killing the ender dragon. The system admins adjusted Aftercraft's difficulty level according to his equipment but not skill. Skills were the main character's buff, and seeing how he was the most intelligent creature he knew in this world, Technoblade humbly accepted the role of the protagonist.

"There's probably only one way to grind the defence skill," Technoblade sighed after testing out multiple theories from dodging and blocking monster attacks.

He even let them take a hit at him to see if he could increase his defence, but he couldn't tell if it was working. The only thing that did was give him trauma and confirm that he did not have a pain kink. If anything, he was so close to dying after that particularly deadly shot at his eye that he avoided it at the last moment, taking an arrow to his shoulder. Technobalde decided that enough was enough. He would rather grind levels by farming than repeat this dangerous levelling method.

Thankfully, he had twenty skill points, and Technoblade did not hesitate to pour everything into his defence skill.

After crossing level 25, he felt his body reinforce itself. He felt physically stronger, but nothing else apart from that. More importantly, Technoblade understood the assignment. To prepare well for a fight, he needed certain special skills. One from the shop in particular since his discovery appealed to him.

Come here," he cooed to the chickens and fed them.

Watching the experience levels rise, Technoblade prayed that it would be enough. He only wanted to buy the auto-eating skill that would be very useful in battle.

"Why stop at one?" he asked himself. "Why not everything?"

Indeed. There were several skills in the shop that Technoblade had his eye on since the beginning. In total, he needed over a hundred levels to purchase them all. However, he had time.

"What did I once tell Skeppy? Oh, yes. If you wish to defeat me, train for a hundred years. Nothing is impossible with dedication. If Saitama can become a world-class hero through sheer diligence, Technoblade can become a dragon killer in the next hundred years."

…

For a moment, the system admin wondered if Technoblade was truly going to train for a hundred years. The Potato Lord swung at the monsters with his sword and casually bashed them with his shield to finish them off. Luring them to the moat took more effort than killing them, so the mysterious entity watched as Technoblade went to sleep. Surely, the hundred-year training speech wasn't serious, right?

Unaware of the worries his speech caused, Technobalde went to sleep peacefully and woke up the following day to repeat his farming ritual. Technically, he did not need a hundred years. It would only take a hundred years to farm his skill levels if he used that dumb method from last night. Mobs spawned in dark areas and did not appear during the day because it was too bright.

"I need a monster farm," he declared. Although farm animals were easy to breed and slaughter, they did not give him the type of adrenaline rush and combat experience he needed.

With so many cobblestones in his inventory, Technoblade decided to build his monster farm up into the sky. Minecraft increased building height restrictions, which shouldn't be any worse in Aftercraft. Hence, the Potato King started constructing an ugly cobblestone stairway to the heavens.