12 – A NECESSARY EVIL LAIR BASEMENT

The inside of his house was completely empty, Jacob noticed with a hint of dismay. He had invited the elven woman inside, but now he realized that he was completely ill-equipped for this. In order to fix the problem, he hastily took out his 4x4 crafting table and made chairs and a table, placing them next to the lit fireplace.

Lumia watched patiently, while the other woman seemed very interested.

“You do have a strange ability.” The woman said.

Jacob looked up from where he was still crafting. “Ah, yes. Tyla called me a Player, because my ability is similar to a game I used to play?”

“A game? How can games do things like that? Did you imagine that things appeared out of thin air, until one day they did?”

“It was a video—uh, I never considered that you don’t know what they are.” And now that he thought about it, how did Tyla know? “Never mind that.”

“Oh, okay. Anyway, I’m Vileen, nice to meet you.”

“Jacob.” He shook her hand. It was soft and nice, yet strong. The touch lingered for a moment longer before the two parted. “What can I do for you?”

“I heard you were attacked by the monster. How was it like?”

Jacob looked at her, then at Lumia. “Is she a friend of yours?”

She giggled. “Yes, she asked me to see you after I told her of the incident.”

“Oh, well. I didn’t see it very well, it was dark and I was mostly thinking about running away. But it had glowing red eyes, and a black fur that covered all of its gigantic body.”

“It must have been scary…”

“It was. It definitely was.”

The conversation then devolved in random pleasantries. This woman was most likely a girl like Lumia who, despite their adult appearance, must have been the local equivalent of teenagers. Not that he was so much older than a teenager, but still he recognized the behavior when he saw it.

“It’s been nice, meeting you, but I have to go now.” She said, dragging Lumia away too, giggling.

Jacob looked at them sideways for a moment. “Sorry I couldn’t offer you anything to eat.” He added, to which they waved their hands.

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Now that he was alone, he could finally take some time to think. He was feeling much better today, and in fact building his house made him want to do more.

Firstly, he crafted an anvil and placed it. Then, he put the broken piece of armor on it, added one iron and one blue metal ingot, and hammered it once.

Achievement unlocked: repair work.

The armor absorbed the ingots, and the damage mended itself instantly. Satisfied, Jacob stored the armor again and took out a light blue pickaxe made of the same blue metal as the armor.

Irtax pickaxe

It was faster and stronger than an iron pick, but less than a diamond one. It would be fine for what he needed it to, however. He crafted some ladder with his sticks on the regular crafting table, then he began to dig straight down at one corner of the ground floor room.

He went down ten blocks, or ten meters, then started to expand the space into a large underground room. He placed torched to light up the area, quite thankful that they neither extinguished nor did they consume oxygen or produce smoke, and then placed the ladder to get back up.

A trapdoor on top kept the whole vertical stairway hidden. For now, it was just a basic wooden trapdoor, but soon enough he would replace it with a password locked iron one. Going back down, he placed new workbenches and a furnace.

He crafted for a while, consuming most of the rarer materials that he had in his inventory. The result however, was quite satisfying. He now had several machines from the mods he used to play with and was ready to begin the process that would eventually lead him to higher tier gear.

He looked at the pulverizer, standing immobile in its blocky façade. He facepalmed.

“Of course, I need power.”

Going back to his workbench, he heaved a sigh in annoyance and tried to remember the recipe for a generator. Already being able to do this much without any tool to help him was quite a feat, but now it seemed that his luck was about to run out.

He tried different combinations of furnaces, stone blocks, redstone and other things, to no avail. In the end, after what felt like a thousand tries, he kicked the workbench lightly.

“Come on!” He scrambled the pieces with his hand. “If this works, I’m gonna cry.” It didn’t.

“Okay, then. Okay. I need a recipe book of some sorts.”

The problem was that he could not remember a mod that added a recipe book. He used to play with the NEI, or not enough items mod installed, which provided a useful overlay with all the recipes. Said overlay was missing here, and no matter what he tried it just seemed to not exist in this world. But, at the same time, he was aware that there were many things that were new to this world and didn’t exist before. Abilities, and even magic, he heard Tyla say.

He already witnessed it first hand when he encountered an ore he did not recognize. This world was much more than just his Minecraft experiences. This world, it seemed, was truly endless. Therefore, postulating that something like a recipe book existed was not too far-fetched. He only needed to find it, and if there was something that his Minecraft experience taught him, was that there were places where he could go and find exactly what he needed.

He went up the stairs, and noticed it was nighttime. Loud noises were coming from the central plaza, where fires were burning and some smoke was rising. There were people chatting and laughing, having a good time.

Before he took even one step in that direction, however, a loud wail and a howl reverberated from the distance, deep within the forest.