Chapter Four: Daytime
“King, great King! Please forgive your foolish subjects, please lead us to find our footing in this cruel world! Lead us to open up a new tomorrow…”
The white-haired village elder fell to his knees with a thud, and the people behind him all knelt in unison.
“Uh, ah, this, this…”
Mo Fangyuan was utterly confused. Hadn’t he just killed some monsters? What was with these people?
Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here?
The three existential questions echoed in his mind.
Little did he know how amazed the people were as they looked upon Mo Fangyuan.
His armor was battered, the area lay in utter chaos, all around him were the spoils dropped by monsters.
In this blocky world, a leader could be neither clever nor capable—but lacking strength was unforgivable!
As long as you had enough power to protect your people, no matter how incompetent you were, they would love you, support you, and fight for you!
It sounded absurd, but that was the reality.
In this monster-infested, perilous world, strength alone decided how people regarded you.
“Ah, um… I, this…” Mo Fangyuan gathered every ounce of literary knowledge he possessed, squeezing out words as if he were milking a dry tube of toothpaste. “I, Mo Fangyuan, shall truly become the king of this kingdom. I will lead you through brambles and thorns to open up a beautiful new world… From this day forth, this kingdom shall be named the Block Kingdom, and you shall all be its Block Citizens…”
He barely managed to finish what he felt was the best speech he’d ever given—mostly because it was the first.
Growing up, Mo Fangyuan had never participated in any academic activities; after all, those were always for the top students. He neither had the qualifications nor the ability to join.
As a result, his speech was halting and broken, but fortunately, the people of the kingdom had never heard any grand orations. Mo Fangyuan managed to bluff his way through.
“Hmm… Let the farmers continue tending the fields, the craftsmen keep making tools…”
Just as he was issuing orders, Mo Fangyuan remembered the monsters he’d killed. By now, under the sun’s rays, they should have turned to ash and become loot.
“Wait. All those who are idle, go to the fields and collect the monster drops. Bring them to the central square…”
He called back the dispersing crowd and assigned them a new task: to gather the loot.
Many hands make light work. In the game, collecting all the drops from those vast fields would have taken Mo Fangyuan a great deal of time. But with everyone helping, the monster loot was quickly gathered.
As per his instructions, everything was placed in the central square.
The central square had been built by the king’s grandfather, the former ruler. It sat in front of the castle and behind the residential district.
To Mo Fangyuan, this ‘central square’ was more like an ‘abandoned construction site.’
Years of neglect had left the cobblestone ground buried beneath dirt; rotten timbers, broken stones, and all manner of debris were scattered about.
For someone with obsessive tendencies like Mo Fangyuan, it was an eyesore.
“No matter, no matter—once we’re prosperous, I’ll renovate it… Besides, isn’t there a kind of special beauty in this?”
He forced himself to look away from the dilapidated square and focus instead on tallying up the night’s spoils.
More than three stacks of rotten flesh, dropped by zombies; two and a half stacks of bones, half a stack of arrows, five nearly broken bows—all from skeleton archers; a dozen or so gunpowder from creepers; over a stack of string and eleven spider eyes from spiders…
“All good stuff—rotten flesh can be turned into fertilizer to speed up crop growth; bones ground into bone meal to hasten harvests; string can be used to make wool or fabric, which is really useful… Spider eyes for brewing potions in the future, and arrows are strategic resources, must stockpile…”
Monsters were veritable treasure troves, making no small contribution to humanity!
“If only I could add a ‘monster girl mod,’ their contributions would be even greater…”
Images of Creeper Girl, Enderman Girl, Dragon Girl… made Mo Fangyuan’s mouth go dry.
“Black stockings, white stockings, school uniforms, lolis, queens, little sisters… lingerie, bust…”
He slapped his forehead, quickly halting the direction of his thoughts.
“I am a dignified man! A gentleman! How can I think such base, filthy thoughts?!”
“…At the very least, it should be the Ender Dragon Girl!”
Mo Fangyuan swallowed his saliva.
Though he hadn’t been able to fully protect the fields, Mo Fangyuan’s resounding victory still earned him the people’s deep respect, and the shadow that had hung over them lessened a little.
“Your Majesty, there are too many experience orbs… we don’t have enough glass bottles…”
The elder explained apologetically.
Making glass wasn’t difficult, as it only needed sand, but firing sand into glass required a great deal of fuel.
“Isn’t there a vast forest to the south of the kingdom? Can’t we chop wood?”
Mo Fangyuan was puzzled.
“Your Majesty, you may not know, but over a month ago there was an accident in the mine. Some miners broke into a cave where, for some reason, hordes of red-eyed zombies began pouring in endlessly. No matter how many we killed, more kept coming.”
“The mine has since been lost. Without it, we can’t obtain iron ore, can’t make iron axes. With just stone axes, felling trees is too inefficient to meet our needs, and making glass is out of the question.”
Not everyone had an arm like Steve’s, able to punch trees down in seconds. Most were flesh and blood, and needed tools to gather resources.
“Oh, I see…”
Mo Fangyuan didn’t bother asking why they didn’t just dig a new mine—after all, he knew the basics.
In the “Book of Miners,” it was written: the deeper you dig, the slower the progress.
Every hundred blocks down, the difficulty of mining increased exponentially.
The book described that once you reached two hundred layers below ground, even with an iron pickaxe it would take dozens of minutes to break a single block, and a fully durable iron pick would be worn out after only a few dozen stones in those conditions.
Moreover, miners toiling deep underground tired quickly and their hunger rose rapidly.
If they uncovered some strange underground ruin, the danger would only escalate…
This made it incredibly hard for humans to exploit underground resources, and progress was slow.
The Block Kingdom’s mine had only ever reached fifty-seven blocks deep, enough to yield coal, iron, and copper ore. Anything else required going deeper—a feat that had taken several generations of Blockfolk working persistently.
The redstone Mo Fangyuan dreamed of was said to only appear below one hundred blocks.
Clearly, building a mine was no simple task.
“The mine must be retaken!”
This was non-negotiable.
He patted the elder’s shoulder, imitating the solemn tones of TV leaders as he assured the old man he would resolve the matter.
But the elder grew anxious.
“Your Majesty, it’s not that… There are too many monsters inside. I think we should consider carefully…”
“It’s fine! Leave it to me!”
The elder was nearly in tears. He’d only wanted to report the situation, but the king was already rolling up his sleeves to charge in.
From his experience, the king was being overconfident.
The mines were nothing like the fields! The zombies down there were different—far stronger! He was sure there was something truly terrifying in those caves!
“Your Highness, perhaps I should take some men…”
“No need, my mind’s made up!”
Mo Fangyuan was getting annoyed—just a few zombies? He was a man who could roam free at night!
He ordered several people to store the categorized monster drops in the warehouse, then donned his equipment and confidently strode toward the mine in the northwest.
Confidence is peak performance!
The Block Kingdom’s mine was built using a combination of vertical shaft and fishbone mining methods. This allowed them to find every ore, but was time-consuming and resulted in a labyrinth of tunnels—without a map, it was nearly impossible to navigate.
He stepped over the planks blocking the mine entrance and leapt down.
At the bottom, a 3x3 spring awaited to break his fall. Don’t ask how a single block of water negated all fall damage—it was just the way things worked.