Dangerous Diamonds

This is a sugarcane farm. Nobody could tell him otherwise. Technoblade placed the last slab on the ground and admired his handy work. With perfect calculations, he filled the small area beside his pumpkin and melon patch with sugar canes.

"Ordinary people plant their sugarcanes in rows, but I have mastered the art of efficiency and planted them in a checkerboard fashion for maximum harvest!"

Cackling maniacally, Technoblade munched on a berry and waited for more sugarcanes to grow. These things were usually easy to harvest in quantity when he did not need them. However, they grew painfully slow at the start. Thankfully, Technoblade collected so many from the swamp that he could skip the duplication process.

"Only two more, come on…"

He did not feel like going to the negative mines without proper equipment. The admins did not tell him what troubles he might encounter there, but Technoblade's gamer senses were tingling. He needed to make enough bookshelves for powerful enchantments. His first goal after making a safe enough path to the deeper levels of the world was to grab enough obsidian and diamonds to craft an enchantment table. He had leather and wood. All that was missing was the paper.

Technoblade gasped in glee as the sun started to set as one last piece of sugarcane grew before his eyes. Unfortunately, that was all he could collect for the day. Reluctantly, he set his bed out on the grass in the safety of his fort. Just like that, another night passed without incident.

For a few days, Technoblade ran around doing miscellaneous chores in his territory. He prioritised collecting enough sugarcane to make paper and turning it into books. The enchantment room he reserved was coming together nicely. Thanks to the abundance of bone meal, he wasted them on the grass and gathered enough poppies to dye his white carpet red.

"I should probably get to making a wool farm," he admired his handy work.

The charm point of this enchantment room was the poorly made chandelier replication on the ceiling used to illuminate his jaw-dropping wanted poster. The enchantment table was simply a side-flex, as everyone knew. Any decent Minecraft player would have an enchantment table, right?

Thankfully, the enchantment table's crafting recipe remained the same. Technoblade remembered that forest fire from before and wondered if he could spare himself the dangers of collecting obsidian from the deep dark and just do a diamond run instead.

"It shouldn't take too long," Technoblade reasoned and packed his belongings for the obsidian trip. Since he was already bringing the special pickaxe, Technoblade decided to travel in style, fully decked out in iron armour, a shield and all the tools that would hurt monsters, including an axe and a sword.

It only took him a day to follow the cobblestone trail, with the path mostly obstacle free. Technoblade took no chances and dug himself a bunker. He slept the night off before monsters could appear and got to work the next day with his trusty water bucket.

The art of mining obsidian remained the same in both Minecraft and Aftercraft. The water will automatically convert any lava it touches into obsidian. All Technoblade had to do was find solid footing while mining so that he did not fall into the lava before it converted to obsidian.

The lava pool bubbled, and Technoblade observed the destruction it caused. The forest fire had died down, and only a few signs of life remained near the boiling pool of surface lava. He wouldn't want to live here, but it was a good place to get enough obsidian for his enchantment table and nether portal.

Technoblade sat in the water and mined obsidian for a good amount of time until it was dusk. He lost count of the obsidian he collected, but it was more than he needed. At this stage, he might be able to make a small wither killing chamber with the obsidian he had. However, the lava pool remained as active as before. Technoblade only harvested about a quarter of what was the initial lava source. It was a huge pool of lava that he might come back to later.

Sleeping the night off again and returning without incident, Technoblade was finally ready for the diamond run. He would mine redstone and lapis if it were safe. However, his main objective was to find two diamonds for the enchanting table as safely as possible and get out of there.

"I feel strangely naked, but let's do this."

With a full set of iron armour, a shield, too many golden carrots and apples, the special pickaxe and a lousy steel sword, Technoblade went down the long mining shaft he made. It was properly lit so that monsters would not make his mining tunnel a home.

The journey to the deep dark took Technoblade longer than he wanted as he insisted on making things very safe past level zero. He could no longer place any torches, and although he was still in a strip mine that he made, Technoblade went the extra mile of slabbing the bottom half and creating small safe shelters at several intervals.

Everything was going well with his golden carrots and regular pickaxe. Apart from special resources that Technoblade picked up, such as lapis and redstone found in abundance, he also collected the regular ores from the upper levels. Having a crafting workshop made things so convenient. Technoblade wouldn't forget the location of the furnace he left smelting somewhere in a strip mine or cave while he made progress.

Eventually, Technoblade heard the sound of monsters. He was so used to the regular sounds of zombies, but his brain picked up on nostalgic hisses of spiders, rattling of skeletons and the screeching of cave bats.

It was a sign of a cave nearby, and Technoblade used his ears to mine towards it. He could hear the party he wasn't invited to, and it sounded like six, excluding the bats.

"What are six monsters compared to the entirety of L'Manburg?" he scoffed and bravely dug into what was the only wall left between him and the party.

Crashing into someone else's party was alright. Technoblade did it enough times, especially in Sky Wars, where he broke beds and bombed the place. He was a master tactician with steel balls and was feared by all. However, he did not expect to be immediately launched into a cult full of professional assassins.

The combination of attacks launched at Technoblade caught him by surprise. Luckily, he had enough sense to deflect the worst of everything using his shield as he retreated. The skeleton's aim was deadly and knocked him back several metres, taking thirty percent of his health with just one shot. Technoblade would probably die from such a critical hit without the iron helmet.

The zombie was faster than he remembered it to be. If anything, the monster vaguely resembled Hulk as it bashed into Technoblade's shield, numbing his arm with sheer power. Technoblade ran like a coward and blocked the monsters from following him with blocks. However, he miscalculated.

Skree!

The flapping of many tiny wings followed Technoblade in his tunnel as Technoblade blocked arrows with his shield. The skeleton shot the super-strength zombie, and they started fighting it out. However, something still climbed past that narrow passage, and Technoblade paled as he was drained of blood from the overly aggressive bats.

"Technoblade never dies!" he yelled and whipped out an axe to take care of the overly large spiders dripping with venom. One bite, and he would be in a very precarious position.

The cave spiders were more dangerous than the bloodsucking cave bats that Technoblade had no idea what they were.

Sparing no resources, Technoblade ate his golden apples and bashed bats into the walls with his shield. He also hacked at the greenish spiders and shuddered at the horrible sounds they made. Don't spiders like this only exist in the land of kangaroos? Aftercraft must have chosen the worst place on Earth to model this reality after.

Thankfully, the bats were almost as weak as silverfish. They were fast and annoying but had low health. One shield bash was all it took to mute them forever. In some ways, he was reminded of mosquitoes. Unfortunately, he doubted that Aftercraft had vampire bat repellents. More annoyingly, none of these mobs dropped anything.

Even after battling three cave spiders that climbed walls and spat venom, Technoblade did not receive a single piece of string from them. What was he doing wrong?

After sealing off the dangerous mineshaft, Technoblade retreated back to the safety of his mansion. He slept the trauma off and decided to re-strategise.

"There's no need to get into caves to find diamonds, right?" he reasoned.

Indeed, diamonds might be hard to spot and rare to find during strip mining. However, it was still possible and a safer option than running around in dark caves with death lurking in every corner. Not to mention, the mobs were superpowered there.

Unloading all his mining goodies into chests, Technobalde procrastinated a little before finding those dangerous diamonds. He had the magical redstones now, and it was time to upgrade the pumpkin and melon patch into something a little less manual. He wasn't Wadzee. Planting melons by hand every episode of a hardcore series is just insane.

Gathering all the materials made Technoblade realise one more thing. To craft certain important redstone components like the observer, he needed quartz.

And there was only one place to get it from.

"I hate myself," he groaned.

…

Should he risk it and enter the nether with only mere iron gear?

No! Technoblade shook his head as he cleared a convenient hole in the mountain next to the enhancement room. He wasn't suicidal. Aftercraft could very well be a hardcore type of reality with no respawn mechanics. Even if he could afford to make a respawn anchor, it wouldn't activate if he couldn't recreate his body after exploding into bits.

"I need diamond gear for that level of crap at least," he swore. "And full netherite if I'm killing the dragon because diamonds are just too basic."

That's right. He was only going to do this the Techno way, and if it meant scheming to get those diamonds, he would do it. There was no sense in engaging in a meaningless battle when nothing could be gained from it. Spiders that didn't drop strings, skeletons that died with their arrows and bones, zombies that only gave him concussions and bats as annoying as mosquitoes are things Technoblade didn't want to experience ever again. He wasn't getting paid enough for it. No, he wasn't even getting paid.

"Never again," he told himself. He wasn't running a charity here.

Gearing up again, Technoblade abandoned the redstone project. He'd deal with that after he made his full enchanted diamond gear to collect some quartz.

"Time to find those diamonds."

Brandishing his pickaxe and munching on a golden carrot, Technoblade flew down the flight of stairs. If Aftercraft wanted him to grind for resources, the admins probably found the right soul. Technoblade was a master at grinding for resources. On Skyblock, that was exactly how he won his crown and earned the title of Potato King.

"This will take a while."