'I was born yearning for the mines.'

Theo thought, right as he swung his pickaxe down against the stone floor in the corner of his temporary base.

Regretfully, Theo's pickaxe was still on the stone level—a level he could graduate from only by lucking out and finding a proper ore deposit for him to mine, smelt, and then use in lieu of the stone when crafting a new set of tools.

For now, however, all he could do was take his time, executing a total of seven swings per block of stone to excavate it, raising the number of stone blocks he had in the inventory by one while clearing out just a single block for the first leg of his current project.

The main agenda remained the same: to hunt down the Oilrat.

Only by doing so could Theo unlock the whole area and secure his ability to go out to gather resources he couldn't find underground. Or, at the very least, that's how things should work if said Oilrat really followed the rules of the game its health bar and choral music came from.

Still, whether killing the Oilrat would achieve Theo's goals or not… It didn't really matter. If it did, he could finally solve the most burning issue of lacking both food and hydration, even if by spending several hours a day doing nothing but gathering berries from bushes.

If removing the Oilrat from the equation would only serve to invite another monster into the area, however… Then there was nothing Theo could do, save for making the most out of the time it would take before another boss would migrate towards the area.

Regardless of what the long-term outcome would be, however, defeating the Oilrat was still a step Theo had no other choice but to take. And for that to happen, he had to prepare.

'Diggy, diggy hole…' Theo sang in his thoughts, only to find the task of swinging his pickaxe just a little bit easier once he started to do so to the rhythm of the popular nerdy-rock song.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap… poof.

With two blocks dug out from the corner of Theo's floor, he jumped down the hole he just made… only to then repeat the process, one block off to the side and then one block deeper.

Seven taps with his pickaxe, and a block of stone would vanish. Repeat it two times, drop down…

And then spend three minutes correcting the earlier mistake and extending each step for one additional block, slowly working towards the goal of excavating the most common and most efficient structure in the history of the blocky game—a staircase-bound mineshaft.

First, Theo just kept digging all the way up to the point where he exhausted all the space left in the one and only stack of stone he could fit into his inventory… Only to then realize his big mistake.

'Why do I even bother carrying everything in my inventory at all times, especially with how little space I have in it?' Theo thought, his eyes drawing to the "Axe 1/1" icon that occupied the equivalent of sixty-four blocks of stone.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The young man threw one last look at the freshly mined five steps of his mineshaft, only to then turn around and climb right back up to his base and approach the crafting bench once again.

'First, let's make a chest.'

This process couldn't be any simpler. The crafting recipe for the chest turned out to follow the exact same rules as the recipe of the furnace, with the only difference between the two being the material changing from stone to wooden planks.

To make temporary room in his inventory for the chest, Theo made sure to grab his axe out of it, only to then spend sixteen wooden planks, turning them into the one item that pretty much nullified Theo's greatest gripe with how his inventory worked.

And just like that, a moment in the building mode later, Theo's crafting bench and furnace now got a new piece of furniture to accompany them within Theo's base—a simple block of chest.

'I wonder if it follows the same rules as the chests in the blocky game,' Theo thought, only to roll his eyes and then reach his hand out in the direction of the chest.

Pretty much according to Theo's expectations, there was a total of ten fields' worth of space within the chest, allowing him to stash everything but his pickaxe and his shovel away, keeping said tools only for the sake of the task at hand.

'Before long, I will have to see how good those berries are at restoring my marks,' Theo thought, glancing over at his ever-decreasing hunger and thirst meters, only to then quickly look away, sparing himself the headache of thinking about it.

There was no use dwelling on the problems he had no means of dealing with. And so, instead, he quickly returned to his still shallow mineshaft before starting the catchy song in his mind again as he began to swing his pickaxe again.

In the end, however, mining out the necessary amount of stone for the trap Theo designed… was no easy task.

And Theo's forgetfulness didn't make things any easier for him, when the light from his furnace could no longer dispel the darkness of his mine-staircase, forcing the young man to go back, craft some torches, and then go right back down to continue the job.

But… as he continued to dig, the entire length of the song played out in his head, leaving Theo with nothing but silence and the hard work ahead.

'Thinking about this, I do need to know how many blocks I should mine, shouldn't I?' he thought as he neared the completion of the second full stack of the stone, with the first stack already saved in the chest back in his base.

This task, contrary to the song, took Theo quite some time to calculate, given how many times he had to redo the entire thing due to the lack of writing utensils necessary to actually write his findings down.

'For the tunnel leading up to the trap, I will need nearly a hundred and fifty blocks of stone, and that's all assuming I will settle on just one layer of blocks for each wall. For the trap room itself, and excluding the stone I would want to drop down on the bastard, it's nearly three hundred blocks of stone, once again, with only a single layer of blocks for every wall.'

Finding the numbers out only made the pickaxe in Theo's hand all the heavier.

In but one moment when the final number at last appeared in his head, the two stacks of stone he gathered with quite some time and effort… suddenly turned out to be but a drop in the ocean of what Theo needed.

'At the very least, the wooden platform necessary for the trap only needs like thirty or forty blocks of half-blocks of wooden planks,' Theo thought, seeking any sort of relief from his calculations that he could find. 'Still, that means…' Theo thought, only to sit down on one of the steps of his mineshaft as he heaved a long sigh.

'Excluding the two stacks I've already mined out, I still need what, three hundred and thirty blocks of stone more, huh?'

Once again, a heavy sigh escaped from Theo's lips… only for the young man to stand up, tighten his grip over the axe, and then bring it over his head before dropping it down on yet another cube of stone.

"Nothing good will come from just whining. Didn't I claim I was born yearning for the mines?" he thought, grinning when yet another stone vanished, only to be replaced by empty space and a dose of fresh air. "I better get back to work, then!"