We arrived at the source of the noise and found something that I did not expect.

Sitting on the grass black was a small child with long brown hair, crying her eyes out while calling for her parents.

The reason for her crying was standing calmly with his hand reaching out to the little girl. He only wanted to give a red flower to the small child.

"Lily! What are you doing here?! Does your dad know you're here?

The girl turned her face at us while still sobbing, and shook her head in denial.

" Your parents must be worried sick then! The whole village would be turned upside down looking for you."

Unfortunately, this observation did not help in calming the child down. It did the opposite actually, she started to cry more realizing how much trouble she got into.

Realizing what he did, Bobby calmed down and went to hug Lily. The iron golem seemed to understand that he was scaring the girl so he slowly retreated to give them some space.

He looked a bit sad from that rejection, and I completely forgot that they liked to give flowers to children. Nor did I think that he'll ever met one.

After a few minutes in the hug, Lily managed to calm herself down and looked back at the being that scared her, while holding strongly to Bobby's clothes.

"W-Who is he?"

"Him? He's the guardian that I told your father about. He protects the people in this village from the real monsters."

"Is-Is he friendly?"

"Of course the golem is friendly! Look, he just wanted to give you a flower, he didn't want to hurt you."

He said while pointing to the golem's arm.

The girl then tried to get closer to the giant, still holding onto Bobby's sleeves, and quickly took the flower.

"T-thank you mister golem."

The giant just simply stood straight and then went back to patrolling. Even though I'm pretty sure that the golems don't have emotions, I could see a light of satisfaction in his eyes when he was turning.

"Ok Lily, it's time to get you back to your parents. I'm sure they're worried sick now."

The girl just looked at the ground ashamed and nodded in understanding.

"Let's go then, it's going to be a speedy ride. "

He then drank a potion of speed and picked up the girl, and started to run at incredible speeds.

"Well, that just happened."

I looked around the village in case there was another surprise that I didn't know about, but the only notable thing was some fading purple particles, which made me more cautious.

After finding nothing, I decided to get back into the mine and finally use the new pickaxe.

I arrive at a 6-iron vein with determination in my eyes. I hit it with force until it finally broke, and instead of the usual ore, I got two.

"Now that's good to see."

I said that with a smile and continued to break the rest of them as well.

"I got 11 iron ores from this vein alone, not bad."

With the new helper in my hand, I went through other tunnels to break some other veins that I found.

After a few hours, I got back with an impressive number of 324 iron ores, 112 gold ores, and many other resources.

I then looked proudly at the riches that I just put in the chest.

"I think I can buy a small city with this many riches."

I joked to myself.

"I mined all the iron that found in those 5 days of tunneling, so I'm starting to get sick of mining now, probably I should start crafting some stuff to change the pace."

I then took the iron and started to make some swords and shields, since I didn't need to use that much iron for them.

Even if it was repetitive work again, it still felt nice to see the magic of crafting every time I made a new weapon.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

By the end, I managed to do an impressive number of 15 iron swords and 5 shields.

"That's not bad if I say so myself. How's my skills tab looking?"

I then opened up the tab.

_______________________________________________

SKILLS

_Crafting lvl 4

12.600/100.000

_Enchanting lvl 1

0/100

_Brewing lvl 1

0/100

_Trading lvl 4

9.500/100.000

_______________________________________________

Now that's some big numbers we have here. I even leveled up my Trader skill, which opened up the second row for the villagers. But only the first trade from the second row, I'll probably get the next trade in the next level.

But the Trading skill started to catch up with my Crafting skill, which mean that I was not using the crafting table often enough, or I didn't use my new level efficiently.

With every new level I got, I can use new materials for different recipes, I'm level 4 now so I can use one of the most often used item in recipes, the iron.

"Time to do some experiments."

After a few hours of testing different recipes that I could still remember, I arrived at the most efficient way to level up with as few resources as possible.

And the winner of that testing session was the almighty iron shovel.

For any tool I make, I get exactly 100 XP, while for every armor craft, I get another 200 XP.

And while the armor gives me much more XP, it's too costly in iron in comparison to any tool I could make. And the cheapest tool that I can make is the iron shovel with only just one iron ingot and two sticks.

The only downside is that I don't have a reason to make that many shovels, nor can I afford to try to get to the next level now, since all the iron that I have now, will have to be used for the armor and weapons.

"Well that sucks, but at least I know what to strive for when I'm finished with this quest."

With everything done, I decided to visit the surface and see if Bobby managed to get back from his escort mission, but when I climbed the ladder I found out that it was already dark outside.

"Well, if he's not here now, then he'll be back tomorrow. Let's check on the church then."

I went to the tallest building in the village and knocked on the wooden door.

No response.

I then carefully opened it and saw that nobody was home.

"So he chose to sleep at his friends village, maybe I should visit him as well, to introduce myself. And with how often Bobby is visiting them it must be a pretty good place.

I chuckled at my joke and then looked around the room once more, and my eyes landed on the brewing station.

"Hmm, maybe I should try to make some potions, I'm sure Bobby won't mind if I borrow some of his ingredients."

I checked his barrel to see what he got, and while it wasn't much, it still had enough for me to try. I took out some nether wart and entered the brewing station inventory.

Luckily there were still some blazes left to heat it. I filled a bottle with water, put it in one of the empty slots, and added the ingredient on top.

After a few minutes of waiting, the potion was finally done. I checked my tab to see if I did it right, and the brewing skill had some new XP.

"I mean... it feels kind of underwhelming, why does Bobby make it look so hard that you need to go to the academy."

I then looked at the barrel to get some more nether wart, only to realize my mistake.

"So that's why is so complicated."

While his stock was enough for what he needed, I remembered that you could use a lot more ingredients for different potions, even if his level didn't allow him to make them yet.

It was easy to make potions, but getting the materials was another story, especially if you didn't have connections or money to get them.

So the academy wasn't all about teaching, it was also a place to make connections with each other, a pretty ingenious plan.

But if I think more carefully now, schools in my world also had that purpose, or more exactly the colleges had that role.

If you studied at a cheap or expensive college, you still learned the same thing with the exception that the teacher can do it better from one side than the another.

But when you pay more money, you don't have access only to better teachers, but also to other students that are rich or have the potential to be rich. So if you made the right friends, you could be set for life without a worry.

Bobby didn't have that luck, or maybe he did, but it also got the wrong attention, and because he didn't have powerful connections, enough to defend him, he missed the big opportunity.

"That's such a shame, he tried his best as well."

I decided to stop here. I didn't want to use all the limited ingredients Bobby had.

But before going to bed I also wanted to check what was on top of the church. I climbed the latter only to be disappointed to find a single block of soul sand with some nether wart growing on it.

"So this is his farm, much smaller than I expected. But maybe this was all he could take from the academy before he was expelled."

But even if this was sufficient for him, I think I could make a better one.

With a new plan in mind, I quickly went to the portal room and saw the piglins causally eating some of the bread that I gave them.

"Hey there guys, can I ask you for a small favor?"

"If it's not too complicated, we are willing to help Explorer."

Undying Flame responded. For some reason, she calls me The Explorer, and if I think about it Bobby calls me The Trader as well. Nobody in this world seems to knows my name, not even the system.

That was truly bizarre.

"It's nothing too complicated, I just wanted a few blocks of soul sand. Here's an iron shovel to make it easier, and if you get some bones and don't need it, you can also give them to me."

She nodded, took the shovel, and went outside the base.

I looked more carefully around the base and saw a few changes. They replaced some of the cobblestones with nether bricks, which looked way better than what I did, so I hopped they'll keep doing it.

But with them gone, I also had to start my preparation.

So I quickly run to the church and dug a small room under it, I took some stones that I smelted and made them into stone bricks.

With those, I started to decorate the room and light it up with some lamps.

"Now I only need the soul sand and to plant nether warts."

I looked proudly at what I did, I used stone bricks, stairs cases and logs as the decorative books and I really liked it how it turned out.

" I wonder what reaction he'll have once he finds out that he has a new basement, Hehe."

I then got the sand filled with souls from the piglins and put it in the new room, planted the magical crop, and went to my house to sleep since I was very tired from all the activities I've done in one day.

"I think I overdid it for today. Hope I'll manage to catch Bobby's reaction tomorrow."

I closed my eyes and darkness started to embrace me.