Coal

It was only then that he finally let out a breath, no longer as tense as before.

This wasn't a game, after all, and he wasn't the real, immortal Steve. Although he had already gained abilities like a game character, he wouldn't risk betting that he'd come back to life on the spot unless he had to.

This Skeleton was his first opponent since arriving in this world. Playing it safe wasn't a bad thing: at least he hadn't been seriously hurt, and he'd successfully obtained a bone, a source of Bone Meal.

Fang Bie struggled to get up from the ground. Even after a fight like that, his legs felt weak. But he quickly pulled himself together. This little skirmish was nothing. If he couldn't recover quickly, how would he deal with all the bizarre monsters waiting for him?

He still felt a sense of accomplishment. His approach might have been a little timid, but how could you call a scholar timid? He'd simply listened to his instincts.

Fang Bie cautiously poked his head out of the hole. Raising an Axe, he chopped down the tree that had been shading Little White—the Skeleton Archer's nickname—from the sun, then struggled to climb out.

He didn't have the kind of jumping ability an ordinary Steve had, where you could hop a meter into the air. He could only brace himself and carefully crawl out of the hole, which was far more difficult than climbing onto a table.

Killing the Skeleton had brought him a reward, but Fang Bie now felt that the plains were still somewhat dangerous. If he'd spawned in the middle of the ocean, he could have built his home far enough from land that monsters wouldn't attack him. Of course, that was assuming no especially powerful monsters showed up.

So far, Fang Bie had only discovered one other mod. That meant this world might not be made up of a single mod, but could instead be a mix of many.

He kept that in mind, though he had no idea how this mod combination worked. He'd probably come across other things in the course of his life here. In any case, he had plenty of time. He could figure it out gradually.

Following the way he'd come, he soon found his house. His Inventory was packed with all sorts of seeds, wood, Apples, and dirt. He also had some Sugar Cane, Mutton, and Wool, along with a few mushrooms that grew on the grassland and the Sand he'd dug up by the pond. He'd brought it all back with him.

The house wasn't large. Apart from a bed, a simple bedside table, and a chair to rest in, there was only a wall of chests.

As a textbook case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Fang Bie liked keeping things organized, both in games and in real life. It made things easier to find and helped prevent mistakes.

His house was still fairly small, and he hadn't built a whole wall of chests like the ones in the game. Instead, he'd simply filled one wall with them: sixteen chests, all neatly lined up.

This was another difference between the game and reality. In the game, two chests couldn't be placed side by side, because they would merge into one large chest. That meant another chest couldn't be placed next to them, only stacked on top.

But the chests Fang Bie had placed could form a row as long as he simply decided in his mind not to merge them. He didn't need to leave any gaps between them. It was another way reality had been adjusted.

He then sorted everything into categories. Stone went with Stone, dirt with dirt, food in its own chest, and monster drops in a separate one.

He also had to sort the seeds and the different kinds of plants and flowers. Fang Bie was quite good at organizing things. All he had to do was lightly touch a chest, and he could move the items on him into it with his mind. It didn't take much time.

The sun was beginning to sink, and it looked like it would set completely in an hour at most.

Fang Bie took a Wooden Pickaxe and prepared to mine some Stone from the exposed mountainside to make Stone tools and a Furnace.

He couldn't live on fruit alone, after all. The Mutton he'd brought back needed to be cooked, too. Even without coal, he could use wood as fuel for roasting. The game's food system wasn't especially advanced, but now that he'd discovered this extra Food Mod, it meant he could recreate most of the dishes in the world through the mod.

The hour he had left was more than enough to dig out some Stone from this bare mountainside, which had nothing to block the sun except for the row of trees he'd planted.

This was based on experience. As long as there were no places completely shielded from the light, monsters wouldn't spawn during the day. And if he timed it right and went to bed, the monsters that would spawn overnight wouldn't appear near him when he woke up the next morning. It was a way to beat the game, too.

Mining felt completely different from chopping wood. Each time he swung the pickaxe and touched the Stone, more cracks appeared on its surface. He didn't even need to dig with any real force. On the pickaxe's fourth strike, the Stone instantly shattered into a block covered in circular patterns, which floated above the ground.

That was because Stone turned into cobblestone when broken in the game. In other words, it was the Stone you dug up.

Fang Bie barely spared the block a glance. He still needed a lot of Stone, and mining one block took about twenty seconds—not too long.

He decided to use up the durability of the Wood Pickaxe in his hand, then make Stone tools. That would also give him a chance to roast the pieces of Mutton he'd brought back.

"What's this...?" Fang Bie noticed something black beneath the Stone he'd dug up. Hesitantly, he raised his pickaxe. The sky was growing dark, so he couldn't make out what it really looked like. He could only try mining it.

Just as he'd expected, after five or six swings, the Stone turned into a floating black block in front of him. Its name appeared clearly before his eyes: "Coal."

Fang Bie's face lit up. This was exactly what he wanted. He knew coal was fairly common on exposed mountainsides, but finding it for the first time was still exciting.

He looked at the stretch of black exposed beneath his feet and realized this must be an open-air coal deposit, with quite a large reserve.

He immediately tossed aside the pickaxe in his hand, pulled out a Crafting Table, and used the Stone he'd mined earlier to craft a Stone Pickaxe.

"Time's running out. I have to mine all this Coal before dark!"