28 – SUBTLE CHANGES HERE AND THERE

He right clicked the gigantic machine, the action coming to him almost naturally after spending so much time in this world. The idea of right clicking when he wasn’t holding any mouse in his hands was absurd, and yet here it had its value.

The machine stirred to life. He could already taste the sweet taste of end-game, of all his precious gear stored inside that infinite storage. He could almost see it.

Error: items required.

“What?”

He right clicked it again.

Required items: Dragon Egg.

“No!” He yelled. He could not believe this.

“This is not how it’s supposed to work. This isn’t how it was in the game!” he started to panic.

He breathed for a few moments, trying to rationalize what was happening here. Some things were bound to change in a real world, as compared to a Minecraft world, right? Still, he had no idea why the machine even needed a dragon egg to work.

“Okay. Okay. Let’s calm down, and build a road map that takes me all the way to the end. Shall we?”

When he came out of his tower, Jacob had a disheveled look and vacant eyes. The brightness returned to his face when he saw that all around the gigantic mountain of marble, stone and various materials, there were many elves and a single dwarf working. Several build sites could be seen scattered through the island, where the foundations for the new buildings were being constructed.

He smiled, and waved at Gyhlot.

“Hey there, how’s it going?”

“Lad… you and your stupid ideas. Do you even know how much work this is? We don’t all have special abilities like you do!”

He gave the dwarf a look. “Looks like you’re having fun to me.”

“Never said I wasn’t. But it’s a lot of work, and elves aren’t really suited for this kind of labor.”

“Yeah, I noticed. I guess I’ll have to do something about that.” He said, and slowly walked away.

He toured the many new foundation sites all across the floating island, and took note of how they were organizing the coming buildings. His tower was built upon the river, on top of a gigantic bridge made of grey stone. All around, the many kinds of white marble the elves were using was cut in large bricks and was already outlining several square and round foundations. He grinned. He already liked what he saw.

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“Oh, Jacob!” Lumia said, slightly startled as she saw him strolling around after spending so many days shut in his tower.

Back when Jacob shut himself inside his own tower, to satisfy his crafting frenzy, the rest of the village had to figure out themselves how to proceed.

“I guess he’s gone now.” Lumia said.

Gyhlot looked at her. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “When he shuts himself in, there’s no way to reach him. There’s no way to know when he’ll come out either.”

The dwarf sighed. “Odd fella, that one.”

Lumia smiled faintly.

“Okay, then. We have our orders, and the city isn’t going to build itself!”

One by one, Gyhlot had all the elves come to take some tools and to show him what they could do. It wasn’t much, at the beginning at least, but they were all willing to learn and to work hard to build their new white city. It took a couple days to get all the things started, but once the real work began, he could already see that there was no stopping the elves. They were motivated, and despite their racial traits that made unsuited for this kind of work, they gave their all. Whatever it was that pushed them this hard, it was admirable.

Lumia, meanwhile, took on the role of town manager. While her mother was the de-facto chief, she was the closest person to Jacob. All her running around, carrying his orders and messages made her quite well-known among her people. So much so, that they would come to her whenever they encountered a problem, seeing her as much closer to them than her mother or Jacob himself.

One morning, she woke up as usual, and prepared for another day of hard work. The food supplies that Jacob had left were about to run out, and their gardens still had to bear fruit. It was incredible to see how fast plants were growing on this island, due to the special way dirt behaved whenever Jacob placed it, but it was them who planted the gardens and not him. So, while the trees grew to full size in a day or two, the gardens were growing much slower than that.

Today, she would have to organize the first hunting expedition down at the forest. The first time anyone of her people ever went down since they left their old village. She went to her mother’s temporary tent, to talk to her about that, and immediately noticed that many of her fellow elves were looking at her. She paid it no mind, and went inside the tent.

“Mother!” She almost yelled, shocked.

Tyla looked at her sideways, but then her face too assumed a shocked expression. Both of them, in fact, had changed during the night.

Jacob looked at Lumia, and noticed that something was odd. It was definitely her, the voice was the same, the features were the same, but… she was also different.

Her skin was much paler, so white in fact that it looked like it was made of clouds. Her face was soft and smooth, and light blue hair flowed down like a waterfall on the sides of her head. Her eyes were dazzling sapphires.

“Lumia? What—what happened?”

She smiled seductively, and did a little twirl to show off her body.

“You like what you see?”

Jacob’s cheeks reddened.

“I—I do. But, how…?”

“I’m a sky elf now!” she jumped in happiness.

“Woah. That’s fantastic! I had no idea something like this would happen—”

She jumped at him, and hugged him tight. Her face close to his ear, she whispered.

“Thank you…” her breath was hot, and set his sensitive ear almost on fire.

His heart thumped in his chest.