30 – Little problems and, of course, upperground animals

He heaved a long sigh of relief at seeing that it worked. Placing it down, he then tried to make a stone pickaxe.

Nothing. Again, he felt his heart rate quicken. The few beads of sweat on his forehead multiplied, and his face reddened.

“No, no!”

He tried again. With wood first, then with iron and all the other materials he had. Nothing.

He then rushed to his Tinker’s construct room. Looking at the gigantic smeltery, where the lava-powered controller had melted down many ores, he felt dread encroaching upon him. He inspected the inside through the glass, worried that something had changed.

The thin lines where the different metals would not mix were still there. Minecraft mechanics still worked. Something had changed, however, and he was not still sure what exactly. Like with the sky elves, this world was making changes to itself at an alarming rate, following rules that Jacob did not know. And he didn’t like not knowing.

His trusty pickaxe was still in his inventory. This gave him a sense of safety, and almost out of fear he checked the tooltip for it.

Diamond-steel pickaxe

Outdated item. Minecraft mechanics disabled.

“What? Why? How?” He felt he was hyperventilating. “What is happening?” He could not stop it.

His panic only subsided for a moment, when it occurred to him that the other tools did not have this problem. they were all made with Tinker’s construct modded stations, while the pickaxe was the only one made with classic recipes.

Maybe those still worked.

To test this, he had to create a new pick and see if the process worked. He ran to the stencil table.

A small rivulet of molten alloy tricked down, painfully slow, inside the golden pickaxe head cast. Jacob, eyes red and wide, watched intently the metal as it cooled down. It was reassuring, to see it cool down at a noticeable rate, and in a few moments he was already removing the finished thing from the cast.

He ran at the tool forge, and created his new pick. Then he placed a stone block, and broke it. It was working.

“Okay, okay.” He felt his breath slowly return to normal. “It still works.”

He went to the tool forge again, and applied the usual modifiers to his pickaxe. It was calming, to do it, to watch the stats go up. Even the redstone now went in without issue.

But still, this was only a momentary respite. After he was done with his pickaxe he proceeded to meticulously try almost everything that he could remember from the game on the spot, and watched in horror as more than half of everything he tried failed miserably. At the same time, new recipes and new ways to use existing machines seemed to work where they shouldn’t have worked.

Things were changing. The two worlds were merging into one single entity, his ability adapting to the world he was living in.

“At least, this is my theory. This is a setback, but also a great opportunity. As long as I remain the only one with this overpowered ability, all is fine.” He told himself, and it seemed to work.

When he slumped into his bed, completely burnt out by the hours of extensive testing, he found that he fell asleep immediately.

He woke up, refreshed and definitely calmer than how he was before. He descended the many steps of the winding stairs of his tower, connecting his room to the ground floor, and went outside. It was day again.

“Shit. I missed the hunters!”

He rushed to Lumia’s tent, but on the way there he spotted several new wooden fences that were not there before. Inside each of them, two identical animals grazed and looked around in curiosity. He smiled to himself, and went towards Lumia’s tent.

“Jacob, good morning.”

“Hey, sorry I didn’t come yesterday. Bad day.”

She made a cute noise. “Aw, I know. I heard you. I’m sorry, come here.” She hugged him.

She closed his eyes for a moment, and enjoyed the feeling of another person so close to him. The heat, the smell, it was nice.

“So,” she said, breaking the hug. “you wanted to show me something with the animals?”

“Yep, come with me!”

On the way back to the animal enclosures, Jacob spotted a couple changed elves among the many working on the houses. They waved their hands at him, and he waved back. Somehow, this feeling was good and made him crave for more. It made him want to do more for this village, his own selfish goals be damned.

They reached the animals. Jacob went inside, and Lumia watched attentively. He got close to the first two animals, and tried to right click onto them with several different foods he had in his hotbar. Right clicking a living entity, absent a mouse and a computer screen, felt much weirder than doing so with a machine. Still, he kept going.

He heard a little surprised yelp from behind him, when little hearts came out of the two animals and a little one appeared out of seemingly nowhere.

“Now, all we have to do is wait for it to grow! I’ll do the other animals now.”

Lumia did not reply, and only watched in silence. When he was done with all animals, Jacob just gave instruction to be called when the little ones were fully grown and went away. He was used by now to Lumia’s shocked silences, whenever he did something too outrageous with his ability. In fact, he chuckled to himself as he went away.