Irony Bucket

Strip mining was never the fun part of the game. Technoblade didn't do it unless he absolutely had to. It was a monotonous and brain-numbing process almost as bad as farming potatoes. Yet, it was necessary for progress.

It wasn't difficult to find ores like coal and iron ordinarily, and with the aid of the system admins, Technoblade was hoping to walk into a vein of ores the moment he found a good cave somewhere in the mountain. Sadly, he could not find a single cave opening around his base of operations.

"You leave me with no choice," he sighed. "I'll mine into a cave system if that was the last thing I did."

It was a promise. He would make a mine through the mountain if there were no cave systems. The system admins could not blame him for transforming the insides of this mountain into swiss cheese if he did not find what he wanted.

With a mighty pickaxe in one hand and some torches in his other, Technoblade started mining downwards from his home base. It made sense that the best ores were deep beneath the earth.

As he mined, he decorated the mineshaft with torches, doors and stairs. He made a wider corridor than any sane Minecrafter would when they were strip mining but the inventory space did not limit the number of stacks he could carry with him. Technoblade watched as the number of cobblestones surpassed the number of Juicy Berries he owned. At the same time, he was levelling up his mining skill from the repetitive task.

The Potato King started disliking cramped spaces since he came to Aftercraft. After learning it the hard way by bumping into the ceiling of his narrow shaft, he made the headspace unnecessarily taller even if bumping onto the stone ceiling did not incur any damage.

With slow and steady progress, Technoblade eventually came across his first ores. To his dismay, it wasn't iron.

"I can use some coal," he admitted. It might not be what he was looking for, but it was useful.

While mining, Technoblade realised that his experience levels were slowly rising. Coal ores dropped experience in Aftercraft even if experience orbs did not show. The discovery made the gamer in him rejoice. He could purchase more useful skills to make his Aftercraft experience smoother.

As Technoblade mined, he came across more coal deposits and lost track of time until he smelled the decaying stench. Startled, he checked the surroundings and realised zombies were groaning nearby but not in his lit-up mineshaft.

"There must be a cave nearby!"

Normally, he would do everything to avoid those stinkers. However, they were now a great Aftercraft compass for a nearby ore depository. Who was he to pass up on such luck?

Following the stench of death, Technoblade counted the number of tools in his inventory. He did not have the full set of tools with him as some less common tools like hoe and axe were in the chest above in his homey cave. That was probably for the best. He did not want to deal with a horde of undead on his tail.

Listening and sniffing for a direction, Technoblade finally found himself face to face with an ugly zombie after breaking part of the wall. The realistic image of a rotting corpse scared him badly enough that Technoblade turned around and screamed while he fled.

Fortunately, the zombie made no effort to move from its spot as Technoblade was clearly not worth the chase.

After gathering his lost wits, the God of Blood approached the stinky zombie and poked at it lightly with his sword. The zombie growled and started trying to reach for him through that one-block hole in the wall but failed as its arms were too short.

"Hahaha! You thought you could outwit me? Think again!" he cackled and hacked those arms off.

The severed limbs fell onto the ground and quickly disappeared into thin air as Technoblade threw a torch in and finished the weak fella off. Technoblade spotted his first vein of iron on a wall in the huge unlit cave with a light source.

Happily, Technoblade forgot all about the zombie earlier. If anything, the success of finding iron made him excited. No, it wasn't for the bucket, although that would happen eventually. If anything, Technoblade was excited about making his first pair of shears for a bed!

"Smelt all that iron," he told the crafting workshop and selected coal as his fuel source now that he had some.

"No more sleepless nights!" he rejoiced and explored the cavern with gusto.

It was ironic how Technoblade had to find iron to complete his farming quest. Eventually, all these quests would be completed as Technoblade made himself a comfortable base of operations. However, the sequence of quests and difficulty levels the system admins decided on made Technoblade wonder if they truly understood gamers.

Not all sandbox players were tempted by unlocking quests and completing them to get an achievement. Not everyone would complete them in the same order even if they tried.

"Copper?" he asked and mined some of the ores.

It wasn't part of his caving objectives, but he would take what he could get his hands on. With enough inventory slots, Technoblade realised this was a bigger cave than he initially thought. With over fifty pieces of iron in the smelting queue, Technoblade could get out of the cave and return for the rest later. However, he was Technoblade, and he did nothing halfway.

"Onwards!" he lit a new unexplored passageway and mined the next coal depository to restock his depleting torch supplies.

Even after exploring for a long time, Technoblade only saw a bunch of different ores that could only be found in a modded version of Minecraft. He mined things like tin, lead and silver. He could find some gold, but they were few. Yet, Technoblade did not see any lapis or redstone, which was strange.

"Will I even be able to find diamonds?" he wondered.

After spending so much time in the cave, the Potato Lord finally torched up every nook and cranny he could find. The occasional zombie that appeared was swiftly decapitated, and he had all the iron he could possibly need in a while.

After no luck finding diamonds, Technoblade called a tactical retreat to gather more information about the shiny ore he liked seeing in Minecraft. With all the iron in his inventory and the levels he gained from mining, it was finally time to do some crafting and shopping.