Mo Shao didn’t have any particularly strong feelings about this.
After all, it was common knowledge that Magical Girls were beings driven by idealism, not to mention she was a part-time Witch as well.
With a talent like “Pathfinding,” who could say what kind of incredible things she might develop in the future?
Moreover, having this ability… she already had some ideas for what she would do later on.
—A courier. Or more accurately, cross-Phantom Realm transport into the Real Realm. That business was extremely lucrative.
However, she set that thought aside for now; it was just a hypothetical plan, and she would have to see how the specific situation played out later.
As for her weapon… it was a staff that looked like a cross between a broom and a thruster at its rear, with a grey gemstone at the front that curved like a blade.
It felt as if her motorcycle account from her previous life had been flattened into a staff. It was quite a decent weapon.
Right now, it could be used to fire simple magic missiles, and it possessed an ability that was excellent for the early stages—Flight.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have much energy in her body at the moment. She could probably only use it to hover for a few minutes; if she flew at full speed, she’d fall right back down.
—Still, she could fly, at least.
...
As for right now… she would dismantle this entire village first. In this world, it was first come, first served.
Well, even though she only had two Live-binding slots, she still had ways to make it work.
A Live-bound [Chest] was an object from Minecraft, which was roughly equivalent to using [Steve's Bare Hand].
It could break down structures into block drops. However, she couldn’t simply absorb the dropped blocks into her body since she wasn’t actually Steve.
Switching to a villager account wouldn't help either—unless she waited until they naturally evolved into the state of the “Annoying Villagers” later on.
And even if they did evolve to that point, they still weren't as good as Steve.
While dropped blocks couldn't be picked up directly, they could be retrieved once she Live-bound them.
By taking advantage of this, she could stuff them into a chest and then cancel the Live-binding, effectively allowing her to store her goods through a loophole.
The only problem was that she didn’t have a four-slot Crafting Table. This meant she couldn’t progress everything further; she could only gather these initial resources.
...
Fortunately, this was still easy to resolve.
—Because there were Crafting Tables in the village. As long as she could make some tools, she could proceed with the rest of her operations.
Still using her temporary Live-binding technique, she moved materials one by one onto the Live-bound Crafting Table and placed them in the correct positions.
The Crafting Table was indeed extremely useful in the fantasy apocalypse.
With it, she could turn a Minecraft-related Phantom Realm into various materials and basic items.
However, it was only useful for crafting things from Minecraft. If she wanted to manifest certain Minecraft “exploits”—like string dupers and such—she would need Steve's account. Furthermore, to make those exploits affect reality, she would need the power and tier to project that influence.
After all, in reality, certain conditions still had to be followed—such as energy levels and hierarchy.
Besides, she hadn’t seen a Steve in her previous life either… she had no idea where that person was off making their fortune.
...
Speaking of which, Crafting Tables eventually became quite common later on.
After all, they were incredibly easy to craft. Once you had one and found some trees, you could basically duplicate them infinitely.
Anyone who got their hands on a Crafting Table and had a moment of kindness would simply duplicate a whole bunch of them.
The subsequent spread was somewhat uncontrollable, so in the later stages, the living conditions for residents of the apocalypse were actually quite decent.
—The real question was how long they could survive.
That was because high-intelligence monsters also knew how to use them. They could equip all sorts of things onto low-intelligence monsters.
—In fact, the monsters even had an advantage.
Because humans only had one Live-binding slot and one Dead-binding slot.
If they hadn't changed accounts, their Dead-binding slot was already occupied, which meant they could only handle one Live-bound item at a time.
As for the monsters… they belonged to the Chaos side.
They didn’t care about Live-binding or Dead-binding; they merged everything into their bodies—though they were prone to sudden death due to conflicting laws.
But they had numbers on their side, and they had all sorts of biochemical viruses and other things that enhanced their “survival.”
The Scourge, the C-virus, parasites, giants, the blood cross, chimera ants, bio-ghouls…
There was nothing you couldn't imagine, and nothing you wouldn't encounter. Therefore, it was easy for monsters to cultivate a Guking later on, and their numbers were massive.
So, she had to quickly gather a wave of items and find a safe place to store them. She still had work to do tonight.
—After all, monsters would start spawning at night.
...
While most resource gathering in the village didn’t require tools, she did need a wooden pickaxe to get stone.
Everything else could be handled with her bare hands, but for the sake of speed, Mo Shao crafted a set of basic stone tools.
In the end, she managed to collect and organize all the resources here before nightfall.
At the same time, she kept trading back and forth with the group of villagers.
—And the final harvest was bountiful.
She obtained a pile of miscellaneous items and stuffed them all into her chests. Minecraft was like that; development was ridiculously fast.
Unfortunately, these things were only useful in the early stages.
After all, no one had Steve's account, and there were far too many bizarre and terrifying things in this world.
As for Minecraft mods…
Well, you had to encounter the corresponding Phantom Realm for those, and the probability of that was honestly low. You never knew what you’d run into.
What if you encountered a Titan? Wouldn't that just be asking for a wipeout?
...
Finally, Mo Shao set up a large chest and tucked it inside the village church. She planned to farm monsters here tonight.
She would gather a wave of materials first.
Dusk arrived. After sealing the church door with blocks, Mo Shao began to take stock of her gains for the day.
She took the renewable resources and stuffed a small amount of them into her storage bags. Storage bags were used for these miscellaneous small items to save space, and she had prepared many of them.
After all, once Minecraft tools were taken out, although they could still mine things in block form, every item was an individual unit.
They could be stacked—but you couldn't find items that were exactly identical.
In times like this, she had to use storage bags to carry the junk.
She had beets, potatoes, carrots, and wheat, all over a stack each, along with some pumpkins and such.
Unfortunately, even these Phantom Realms were affected by being in reality.
For instance, Minecraft time had been synchronized with real-world time, meaning a day was no longer just a few minutes long.
This meant many things—like the growth rate of crops—were much slower. But that was only relatively speaking.
Maturing in two or three days, and being able to accelerate it with Bone Meal, was already an incredibly heaven-defying yield.
Moreover, this influence was only relative; in some massive Phantom Realms, they could still maintain some of their original rules.
...
Emeralds, redstone, iron… she kept them in block form whenever possible, as she didn't have much storage space yet.
Mo Shao also found a donkey and strapped a chest directly onto it, tethering it with a Lead. She would use it when it was time to slip away later.
This thing didn’t need to eat and wasn't afraid of most terrain, making it far more useful than various vehicles.
And at least it could carry more things. If she hadn't only found one donkey, she would have wanted to start a whole caravan.
One could only say that the village was indeed exaggeratedly rich. After raiding it once and then aggressively trading with the villagers by refreshing their professions, she was loaded.
—After all, achieving this kind of development in Minecraft after a short while was quite simple.
In fact, if the time hadn't been synchronized with reality and delayed her farming, she could have developed even faster.
Sadly, such good development opportunities only existed in the early stages.
Before long, they would “wake up” from this instinctual “standby” mode as they were gradually influenced by the rules of reality.
When that time came, they wouldn't be so easy to deal with anymore.
Whether they leaned toward the Order side or the Chaos side, they would develop in a direction similar to the “Annoying Villagers.”
They would become smarter, harder to exploit, more prone to attacking enemies actively, and would start employing all sorts of schemes and conspiracies.
Thus, if one wanted to take advantage of these former “NPCs,” the only chance was during these first few days after the “server launch.”
—This was the so-called Golden Development Period.
Rate on N.U.
