It Takes a Village to Raise a Child

Although Technoblade had never been a parent, he was a big brother to his siblings. It wasn't easy to raise children, and as the mayor of Orphania, he understood the importance of proper upbringing.

"We need to baby-proof everything!"

Nothing in Orphania was safe. Carl was a war horse that could stomp any monster to the grave, and he roamed freely. The prison-designed slaughterhouse wasn't appropriate for underaged eyes. There was also a moat that orph– children could fall into if someone carelessly left the fence gates open. Trees could easily fall on their heads if someone chopped the wood and the path to his mining base was not monster-proof.

There were so many things to remodel in his existing base of operations that Technoblade wondered if it would be easier to raise the children in a different place instead. Geniuses were made and not always born, so maybe there was something he could do. According to the Aftercraft logic, villagers lived forever. That also meant Adam and Eve would forever be fertile and in heat. He did not need many couples to create children. If anything, he preferred not to go down the incest path. It was disturbing.

Having one hundred siblings sounded better than inbreeding, and Technoblade wanted to keep his conscience clear.

"I'll just make them a nursery. The older siblings can raise their younger siblings on behalf of Adam and Eve. It's not like they need childhood, right?"

Childhood was a luxury. Orphania did not need that. Technoblade only cared for legal slaves, and as the mayor of Orphania, what better way to spread his propaganda than brainwashing these innocent villager babies into thinking their parents abandoned them?

Orphania was the perfect town name. He bet the system admin regretted ever giving him the power of controlling NPCs. Too bad they can't stop him now.

The house looked lovely, and Technoblade wanted to keep it that way. What would be a good way to lure the baby villagers into his nursery? Villagers loved their beds, probably more than their potatoes. Technoblade did not blame them. If he had a more comfortable bed in Aftercraft, he would probably never get out of it to work.

Ahem! He digressed. He could easily build a secret waterway beneath the lovely cottage to lead the unsuspecting babies out after bedtime. Like all conventional villager breeders, Technoblade only needed to place a bed within sight of the baby villager but out of reach. They would fall for the trap easily and be transported to the nursery Technoblade intended to raise them in.

More importantly, that nursery had to be worthy of increasing the quality of future villagers. That meant Technoblade needed to make plenty of books. His new education policy for Orphania as mayor would be "a book for every baby" because they did not need childhood.

Thankfully, he had enough materials lying around to craft enough bookshelves to fill a library. Yes, he would disguise the library as a nursery. What do children like? Colourful toys? Squeaky sounds? Perhaps milk? He wasn't that inhumane to orphans under his charge.

The safest place for the new nursery was underground. No monsters could get to his villagers if there were no easy entrances. As long as he lit the place up adequately, they would remain safe for a very long time unless someone decided to cross over to the dark side.

Grabbing his tools, Technoblade decided to dig the waterway first. He could decorate and expand the nursery later. Surely, baby villagers would not object to rapids, right? The soul sand that Technoblade collected from his nether trip was coming in handy. Bubble elevators still worked, although filling every block with a water source was a little tedious because Technoblade did not have kelp. It took effort, but it was worthwhile.

The idea was simple. Technoblade did not want to make a conventional villager breeder. Overpopulation was a big problem, and Technoblade knew he could not keep up with babies turning into rebellious pillagers. Adam and Eve would continue making babies if they had enough food and an extra bed in their love nest. Unfortunately for Technoblade, these horny folks could pop babies out like mushrooms overnight. It did not require nine months.

The bed had to be manually broken when Technoblade did not want them making babies. He might find a better solution for that in the future, but for now, all Technoblade wanted to do was dig thirty blocks down and create an underground nursery.

Once he was twenty blocks deep, Technoblade added water streams so the falling babies would survive the long fall. Then, they would be pushed up a water elevator leading to their new nursery that Technoblade had yet to construct.

Using ugly torches to light the place temporarily, Technoblade started mining a circular pattern for the nursery room. There would be no doors out for now because Technoblade did not know what kind of jobs he wanted to assign these villagers. However, he knew that the 'defects' who were not wearing brown when they grew up needed to die.

Although Technoblade did not know how he would sort grown orphans by the colour of their clothing, he considered creating a useless roulette dispenser and various villager disposer traps to entertain himself by the day.

"Eh, I'll get to it later. Time to add the bookshelves and slap on the carpets. The guidebook only mentioned housing for villager breeding and job mechanics. Anyone in the nursery who does not have a job and isn't Adam or Eve doesn't need human rights."

In short, they would have to sleep on carpets instead of beds. However, there was a chance they would turn into pillagers and murder the rest of their siblings if not given enough food, water and clothing. It was a headache for now. The fact that even children need to be fed irked Technoblade, but it made sense.

Children needed one loaf of bread a day, and adults needed two. Both children and adults had to be near a water source within twenty blocks and needed to wear a full set of leather 'clothes'.

Although he could understand how leather armour became leather clothes because of how useless they were for defence, he did not have that many cows to dress the NPCs. Adam and Eve already cost Technoblade forty-eight pieces of leather. That's way more cows than Technoblade had eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner since he arrived in Aftercraft.

Why didn't villagers eat steak? Why must they only eat bread? It conflicted with his need for wheat to breed more cows to get their skin to make their clothes. It was so inefficient that Technoblade wished the system admins would allow him to customise their diets.

"Are they going to have my head on a guillotine if I made them eat only cake?" he chuckled at that absurd idea.

Ping!

[Thank you for your valuable feedback! All villagers will be frozen during the system update. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.]

Huh?!

That… wasn't what Technoblade was expecting. Did they really think feeding his villagers cake was a good idea?

…

Looking at the empty room he was mining, Technobalde wondered if he should continue this villager business or abandon this project until the system admin updates it. It did not change how he still needed to complete the other half of his mission in the nether.

"Maybe I'll come back to this later," he sighed and realised a different problem. He had a way up to the nursery but not out. In wanting to trap the villagers, Technoblade unintentionally trapped himself. Thankfully, he had a pickaxe, and they did not.

It took him a while to finally return to his mountain mansion. Technoblade yawned and went to bed. He would unpack all his nursery building materials and start preparing for his wither hunting expedition.