Failure.
No matter how much Theo wanted to deny it, that was the only way to describe the outcome of his proclamation, determination, and dedication when he finally threw them at the wall of reality.
'To think I've forgot about such a crucial element…' Theo thought as he woke up yet again, his stock of berries running rather low now that he started to use them separately for both eating and drinking.
Digging out the hole for the trap wasn't anywhere as problematic as Theo assumed it would be. With his ability to zone in on the digging, he could simply turn his mind off as he was about to start the job and then regain his consciousness with the bulk of it completed.
As long as the instructions for the job were simple and repetitive, Theo could count on his zoned-in self to get it done.
What he didn't account for was just how deep the layer of the dirt was. And as it turned out, digging out a huge, square hole as far down as eight meters didn't bring him anywhere near close to the layer of the underground stone.
Theo first discovered this miscalculation when he happily built a makeshift, dirt staircase to gain access to each of his storage chests—each tasked with holding the material excavated from a single layer they were assigned to…
Only to find out that all of them were filled with nothing but simple dirt.
A task that was supposed to provide Theo with both the trapping space for his project and the material necessary to complete the rest of the structure only managed to mark off the first out of the two goals.
As such, having no other choice, Theo cleared out his inventory by throwing all the stacks of dirt away before using up the rest of his berries for one hearty and tasty meal…
Before doing the most repetitive task of both the game his system came from and what his recent past was all about—he went back to the mines.
Thankfully, whether he was digging out ground or mining out raw stone, his ability to just zone in on the task saved him from the boredom of spending—quite literal—hours doing nothing but swinging his pickaxe.
What it didn't spare Theo from, however, was both the ramped-up rate at which he burned through his hunger and thirst meters and the purely physical exhaustion that came with mining for hours on end.
That's why, the very first thing Theo did once he not only completed his hole but then also mined two inventories worth of stacks of stone blocks… was to give up on the promise he made to himself and just go to sleep.
Now that he woke up, however, all thirsty, hungry, and demotivated, his choice—as reasonable as it was for someone under the constant threat of an attack by a boss monster over a hundred levels stronger than him—didn't seem all that appealing.
"If only I didn't slack, this damn trap would be long finished," Theo muttered to the audience of his very own ears before slapping his cheeks with his open palms and standing up from his makeshift bedding.
As much as he wanted to, Theo refused to allocate any real time to wallowing in self-pity in his schedule.
Especially now that he ran out of food and could feel the cold touch of hunger and thirst reaching out for his shoulder, he simply didn't have the time to spare for such folly!
"Well, I've got all the materials I need for now, at the very least," he muttered to himself before, just in case, taking a quick look into his inventory.
Popping up to the side, the inventory of one out of the total of now five of his base-located chests was filled with stone, just like the majority of his personal inventory.
There, however, a surprise lay in wait ever since his return from the mines, a surprise he was too tired before to even notice.
'Seven pieces of coal? Well, I can make charcoal with ease so it's not all that important, but…'
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Theo gulped his saliva as he stared at a different icon in his inventory he didn't really see before.
An icon that he was familiar enough with to recognize it at a glance.
'Is that a freaking iron ore?!'
Muffling out his shout of excitement in a bid to keep it to himself, Theo wasted no time rushing over to the furnace, stuffing it with wood and then placing the ore in the processing window.
A short moment of wait—a moment that seemingly stretched out into infinity for Theo—the first of the ore pieces vanished from the processing window, only to give birth to yet another item in the results window of the furnace.
'I guess there's no achievement for smelting my first ingot, huh?' Theo thought, staring at the new icon for a moment before sighing out and then moving it over to his inventory, mere seconds before the next piece out of the total of seven he somehow obtained would turn from ore into ingot.
[Achievement: "Hardcore stuff"]
[Reward: +5 inventory slots, increasing the odds of finding ore while mining out stone, +10% progress tick when using iron tools, unlocking new recipes!]
At first, Theo couldn't help but smile, feeling a sense of progress for the first time since… since his walls reached three meters above the surface, pretty much enclosing him away from all the threats lurking in the forest.
Yet, after taking a moment to think about it…
'Save for the growth of inventory and maybe the increased odds of random ore strike… aren't the other two pretty damn lackluster?'
For an achievement unlocking when he smelted iron for the very first time, how was the added tick when using iron tools any good given how he couldn't make them without this achievement to begin with? The same question applied to the new recipes—how was he supposed to use them if he didn't have the iron before?
In the end, however, growth was growth, whether Theo could find satisfaction in it or not. And while there was a portion of him that wanted to just wait for the iron to smelt to put it to immediate use…
"Is there actually any point in doing so?" he asked himself, watching mindlessly as the third piece of ore finally became an ingot.
He then shook his head.
"Yeah, there's no point. I went so far with a stone pick so I might as well just keep using it until I finish this project up. In this way, I can make the switch to the iron tools into a reward for dealing with that bastard of a rat!"
Theo took in a deep breath… before somehow convincing himself to believe in his own nonsense.
'As long as it gets me working, it's good,' he thought as he climbed up the walls only to then spend the next three hours adding the final touches to his project.
First, he filled in the empty spots in the foundation for his walls, spots that he couldn't fill while zoned in on the digging because he quite simply ran out of the stone for the task.
Then, after climbing back up to the surface, he added just another meter of height to his walls before then reinforcing them with another layer on the outside—just in case the Oilrat was somehow capable of breaking through.
With that done, he could then finally enter the last phase of building, starting by building a three-by-three pillar standing in the very middle of the trap, one that he then turned hollow on the inside once reaching the ground level.
Next came the wooden platform for the floor, supported by nothing but a single wooden beam attached to lone two blocks of dirt Theo left in the entire structure, making it just resilient enough to support his weight, but nowhere near to support the weight of that hog-sized monster.
Finally, for the second-to-last step of his project, Theo extended the pillar upwards, filling up its insides as he climbed up, only to then build the simplest part of the whole trap—one that could serve as the roof of the entire structure for the time being.
A massive cube of nothing but stone with the gap in the middle of exactly the same shape and size as the pillar Theo erected from the very bottom of his trap. And, to make dropping it down as easy as possible, the entire block of several tens of tons of raw stone was attached to the pillar itself… with just a single block of stone, a block Theo could easily reach while hiding away in the pillar's hollow inside.
Then, with the new day already rising outside of Theo's trap, he finally broke open the wall right at where the main chamber of his trap connected to the tunnel he built before getting his first sleep, only to then retreat straight back to his hiding spot within the pillar.
"Now, here goes nothing…" Theo muttered as he placed his hand against the edge of the pillar's insides, before gritting his teeth… and driving his hand down as quick as possible, cutting his inner palm open in the process.
A strong shiver moved down Theo's spine as the animalistic part of his brain sensed danger long before his system could adjust the threat level, long before the boss of the place could reach within the range of Theo's threat detection.
Before that could happen, however, Theo made sure to seal the entrance to his hiding spot, leaving but one block worth of empty space open, both for the sake of ventilation… and so that he could still access the trap's lock from within the pillar.
And then, right as Theo felt the first bite of the stinging pain in his palm, he came to face the absolute worst part about his whole idea of taking down the boss.
The wait and the anticipation to confirm whether or not just the smell of his blood was enough to bait him in… and then whether or not that Oilrat would be stupid enough to not only enter the tunnel leading up to the trap, but also slow enough to be helpless once the wooden platform would collapse down under its own weight.