The Next Step

"Oh, it's starting!"

Keita, otherwise known as Yama in the game, was currently casually playing in the Minecraft server. He had decided to try out the minigame known as Build Battle, and he had already given both Survival Games and Skywars a go, but they were a bit too violent and hectic for his personal tastes.

Being the third minigame he had tried, Build Battle was one that he had taken a personal liking to. The game was pretty stressful with the timer and all, but it was overall really fun in his opinion. It not only was fun, but also allowed him to put the building skills he had nurtured to the test.

Finding himself teleported to his own building area, Keita quickly brought his hand up to look at the chat.

『Theme: Gaming』

"This... is my time!"

In the previous two rounds he the theme had been House and Island respectively, and he was honestly not too confident when he was building those. During both of those rounds, he hadn't managed to get into any of the top three places.

However, this time around, he was someone who owned a lot of things that had to do with gaming, so he naturally was pretty confident in himself. The question now was what the hell it was that he was going to make. 'Gaming' was a pretty vague theme, a lot of things could relate back to gaming.

"Alright, I guess I'll make a console! Wait, no... that's far too simple. Others would definitely think of doing the same thing." Keita quickly dismissed that idea before holding his chin in thought. "I'll build a character from one of my favourite games, that should be pretty unique!"

With his decision set in stone, Keita quickly opened up the creative menu before selecting all the necessary blocks that he would need. Looking at the timer, he saw that he had already wasted almost an entire minute just thinking of what to build.

"C-Crap, I better move...!"

The character he was building was from one of his favourite games, that game being a mobile game that he has been playing for quite a long time now. The character he was making was one of the characters you could get from a draw.

Due to the lack of available time given to the players, Keita obviously had to rush his build. The same was obvious for the other players, five minutes was really no time at all. After finishing, he flew back to take a good look at his creating.

"I mean, it's not bad... I think." Keita muttered to himself as he looked at his build up and down. It was certainly not the best, but it was the best he could do in the available time. So, he was happy with what he had accomplished. "I doubt I'll get into the top three though. Man, there really are some incredible players in this game..."

Keita waited for the rest of the seconds to count down as he recalled back to the previous matches. He thought that he was pretty good at building, but some players builds that he had seen from the previous two matches had really blown his mind.

He remembered vividly this one player going by the name of 'Revelation' having built something that completely outmatched all others. It was during his first match, the one where the theme was 'House'. The guy had built a full-on modern mansion, and he couldn't help but cry a bit when he imagined his little wooden house next to that masterpiece.

"I wonder if Tendou plays... I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask."

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After working for a few hours, both Reiji and Yuta decided to go out to instead of just ordering food and/or just bring it back to the place to eat.

With how much they wanted to work on the game, they just ate while they worked, so getting to eat outside instead of just at their place was a rather refreshing experience. Over the past few days, they had decided to work on a particular new game mode of sorts for Eden.

The project was going to be a rather big one, but if their estimations were correct, they should be able to complete everything by the end of this week, so in five days or so. The system was truly a major help in this matter, otherwise who knows how long it would take.

Aside from that, the sales for the game had completely skyrocketed over the past few days after they released the ability to play multiplayer. On top of them having the ability to make their own servers as well, Minecraft really was taking the game market by storm.

At the current time, their total sales had reached an astonishing 145,000, which is around seven times the amount it was a few days ago. Of course, compared to the actual Minecraft this was nothing, but it was still a mind-boggling number for people as young as them.

"What should we eat?"

"Hmm... don't really want fast food, we've been eating way too much of that these past few days." Yuta grumbled a bit as he held his stomach. "As crazy as it sounds, I'm getting sick of it. Let's eat at a proper restaurant today, doesn't need to be fancy though."

"Sounds good. Let me check what's popular around her-."

Reiji stopped whatever he was going to say as both brothers had to come to an abrupt stop just as they were about to turn the corner. A few figures suddenly dashed out from the same place, almost running straight into them due to how close they were.

"S-Sorry!"

"W-We're sorry! Y-Yun, wait for me...!"

The two that had almost collided with Reiji and Yuta were both females, and from the short moment both brothers got to look at their appearance, the first girl had blonde hair while the other with light purple hair turned into pigtails.

"That purple-haired girl looked around your age, big bro." Yuta couldn't help but comment as both of them watched the two girls run off into the distance. "Though, can't say that I recognised that uniform from any school though... or was that a suit?"

"Who knows..." Reiji stared for a moment before shrugging. He then looked down at his phone. "Doesn't concern us though. So, how about this place called Trattoria Festa? From what it says here, it's a pretty popular Italian restaurant, at least in this area. Though it appears to be located in the more rural area of the city."

"Italian?" Yuta blinked in surprise. "I mean, why not? Haven't really ever eaten much Italian food, so should be an interesting experience."

"Cool, let's get a move on then."

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It took some time, but they had finally managed to locate the restaurant that Reiji was talking about. On the way, they had to ask for some directions from a few of the locals around the area, the map on the phone honestly proved to be more of a nuisance than it was helpful.

On top of that, the trip was honestly a lot longer than Reiji had initially anticipated. They had to take multiple rides on the trains before finally arriving, the restaurant was literally pretty much out on the very outskirts of the city.

"I'm starving..."

"At least we made it." Reiji replied in a blank tone, the small grumbling of his stomach was also evidence of his current state as well. Looking up at the yellow sign, there were a simple set of letters printed on that spelt out 'Trattoria Festa'. "This was pretty isolated, literally in the damn forest..."

"Why did we choose this place again...?"

"Because it looked interesting. In any case, let's go in." With that, Reiji gave a small sigh before walking forwards and pushing open the wooden door. "Good morning."

"It's still morning...?"

"Welcome to our restaurant!" As soon as both of them entered the restaurant, they were immediately greeted by a young girl no older than Reiji was. She had rather long green-hair tied into twintails as she donned a simple yet elegant attire fitting for a waitress. "Please take a seat!"

"Thank you, let's go... Yuta?"

"..."

Confused, Reiji turned his head to look at the younger brother, only to see him seemingly staring at something on the wall near the entrance. Looking as well, Reiji's face went blank as he saw what appeared to be a massive crack in the wall with what looked to be a knitted green banner poorly covering it.

"This wall..." Yuta muttered as the green-haired girl behind them seemingly stiffened up as an incredibly nervous look appeared on her face. Yuta then turned to face her while raising his hand to point at the wall. "Why is there a massive crack on it?"

"Th-That... umm." The girl was trying her best to give out an answer, but she was ultimately failing at doing so as all she could get out were silent mumbles. The other employees in the building all overheard the conversation and also silently stood with nervous looks on their faces. "W-W-Well, you see...! Uhh...!"

"Whatever the case..." Yuta sweatdropped at the girl's actions. Soon after though, he gave a small thumbs up. "Gotta give it to whoever did it, it's pretty impressive work. Though, it's good that you didn't accidentally smash down the entire wall in the process like my brother had done some time ago. Props to you."

"Yuta..." Reiji turned to look down at his brother with a dark look in his eyes. Raising his fist, Yuta was soon knocked down onto the floorboards with an obvious lump now present on the top of his head. "Shut up."

Coughing in his fist, Reiji turned to look back at the green-haired girl who, along with the other employees, all stared at him with their mouths agape.

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The days had quickly gone by, and nothing much has changed aside from the sales of Minecraft going through the roof as usual. Despite there having not been any new updates for the past few days, the popularity of Minecraft was as high as ever and still rising.

During this time, Reiji and Yuta hadn't really gone onto the game themselves, instead they had been working hard on the project they wanted to complete for the server. The feature they were going to add, or more specifically a game mode, was Minecraft Maps.

This of course included things such as Adventure Maps, Parkour Maps, Puzzle Maps, and so on. There were a massive variety of different kinds of maps that Minecraft players could choose from, in their old world that is. For now, the brothers had been working on one specific map.

"Alright, the final boss has been completed. We're good to go big bro!"

"Sweet, just send me over your completed file." Reiji spoke with a small smile. The file he had requested soon appeared on his screen as he dragged it into his own software. Soon enough, the software soon displayed the entire in-game map within the file. "A few tweaks... there we go! I think we're ready to release it out onto the server."

"I'll do the server announcement then, you update the server files."

"Gotcha."

The map they had created was something from way back in the day, and it was without a doubt one of their, if not, their favourite adventure map of all time. It's certainly a bit outdated nowadays, but it was still a hidden jewel in their eyes.

With a few clicks and taps, Reiji pressed the export button after making sure to give the map a name.

The file was named... Herobrine's Mansion