Coal

Only at this moment did he truly catch his breath, no longer keeping his nerves as tightly coiled as before.

After all, this was not a game, and he was not the truly immortal Steve. Although he possessed the characteristics of a game character, he dared not gamble on respawning in place unless absolutely necessary.

This skeleton was his first battle since arriving in this world. Being conservative had its benefits; at the very least, he hadn't sustained any serious injuries, and he had successfully obtained a bone—a source of bone meal.

Fang Bie climbed up from the ground with some difficulty. Having just finished a fight, he felt his legs go a bit weak, but he quickly adjusted himself. This little skirmish was nothing; if he couldn't recover quickly, how would he deal with the strange and bizarre monsters that might appear later?

He still felt a sense of accomplishment. Although his cautious approach might seem cowardly, how could a scholar call it cowardice? He was simply following his heart.

Fang Bie quietly poked his head out from the hole, raised an axe, and chopped down the tree that had been shielding the Skeleton (a nickname for the skeleton archer) from the sun, then climbed out of the hole with some effort.

He didn't have the jumping ability of an ordinary Steve, who could leap a meter high with ease; he had to brace himself and carefully crawl out of the hole, which was far more strenuous than climbing onto a table.

Having gained something after killing the skeleton, Fang Bie suddenly felt that the plains were still somewhat dangerous. If his spawn point had been in the middle of the ocean, he could have built his home far enough from land to avoid monster attacks—provided, of course, that no particularly powerful monsters appeared.

Fang Bie had only discovered one other mod so far, which meant this world might not be composed of a single mod, but rather a mixture of many.

He kept his guard up, though he didn't know how this mod integration was achieved. However, he would likely encounter other things in his future life; he had plenty of time, so he would just figure it out slowly.

Following the direction he had come from, he quickly found his house. His inventory was already filled with various seeds, wood, apples, and dirt, along with some sugarcane, mutton, and wool. In addition, the mushrooms he had gathered on the grassland and the sand he had dug up by the pond had all returned to this house with him.

The house was not large. Aside from a bed, a simple nightstand, and a chair used for resting, it was filled with a wall of chests.

As a standard perfectionist, Fang Bie liked to organize and categorize things both in games and in reality. This not only made things easier to find but also prevented any major oversights.

His house was still quite small, and he hadn't built the kind of "chest wall" for storage seen in games. Instead, he had simply filled one wall with chests—sixteen of them, neatly stacked against the wall.

This was another difference between the game and reality. In the game, two chests could not be placed side-by-side because they would merge into a large chest, making it impossible to place another chest next to them without stacking them on top.

But now, as long as Fang Bie willed the chests not to merge, he could place them in a row without leaving gaps. This could be considered a correction of reality.

He then sorted these items into categories: stone with stone, dirt with dirt, food in its own chest, and monster drops in another.

He also had to categorize the seeds and various flowers. Fang Bie was quite adept at sorting these things; he only needed to touch the chests lightly to transfer items from his person into them using his mind, which didn't take much time at all.

By now, the sun in the sky had begun to sink, and he estimated it would set completely in at most an hour.

Fang Bie took a wooden pickaxe, intending to mine some stone from the open mountain to make stone tools and a furnace.

He couldn't survive solely on fruit, and the mutton he had brought back needed to be cooked. Even without coal, he could use wood as fuel for roasting. Although the food mechanics in this game weren't very advanced, the fact that he had discovered this extra food mod meant he could basically recreate most of the world's dishes through it.

The remaining hour was enough for him to mine some materials on this mountain, which had no cover other than the row of trees he had planted.

This was also based on experience: as long as there wasn't a place completely devoid of light, monsters wouldn't spawn during the day. As long as he timed it right and went to bed, he would wake up at the start of the first day, and the monsters from the night wouldn't spawn near him. This was also a way to "clear" the game.

Unlike the feeling of chopping wood, every time he swung the pickaxe against the stone, it would develop many cracks. He didn't need to use real force to mine; after the pickaxe touched the stone for the fourth time, the stone shattered into a block with circular patterns, floating on the ground.

This was because in the game, shattered stone turned into cobblestone—the stone that had been mined.

Fang Bie didn't pay much attention to the stone; he needed a lot more. It took about 20 seconds to mine one block, which wasn't too long.

He decided to use up the durability of the wooden pickaxe in his hand and then immediately craft stone tools, which would also be a good time to roast the few pieces of mutton he had brought back.

"This is..." Fang Bie saw something black on the surface beneath the stone he had just mined. He hesitated, raising the pickaxe in his hand. Because the sky was darkening, he couldn't immediately identify the true appearance of the object, so he could only mine it to find out.

Just as he expected, after swinging the pickaxe five or six times, the stone turned into a floating black block in front of him, and its name floated clearly before Fang Bie's eyes: "Coal."

A look of joy appeared on Fang Bie's face. This was exactly what he wanted. Although he knew that coal actually had a high spawn rate on open mountains, seeing it for the first time made him understandably excited.

He looked at the pitch-black patch exposed at his feet, knowing that this must be an open-pit coal mine, and the reserves should be quite substantial.

He immediately dropped the pickaxe in his hand, pulled out a crafting table, and crafted a stone pickaxe from the stone he had just mined.

"Time is running out; I must mine all this coal before dark!"