The stone pickaxe and shovel made digging way faster than before. When Marcus reached the stone layer again, he didn't hesitate, time to keep going deeper.
This time, though, he was a bit more careful. No more "real man mining" where you just dig straight down and pray you don't hit lava.
After filling half his inventory with stone blocks, he stopped and switched to branch mining again. Nothing new, just the old strategy: digging a main tunnel with branches extending out at regular intervals.
Time passed quietly underground.
Marcus looked at his completely full inventory of stone blocks and frowned.
Maybe he'd been too optimistic about how this would work.
Games were games, and reality was reality. In Minecraft, iron ore came in nice, obvious blocks that you could spot from a mile away. But in real life, iron ore was probably tiny particles scattered throughout the stone that would need to be refined. That would require some kind of tech mod setup like an ore sifter or something.
But even setting aside advanced technology, making an ore sifter would still require iron ore and other materials. He hadn't found any iron yet, let alone the other stuff he'd need.
After thinking it over for a while, he decided to try a different approach. This time, he'd use Vein Mining he'd unlocked.
He pulled up his skill interface and made a simple adjustment: set stone as the mining target with a 12x3 range.
This time, the digging was noticeably slower. He could actually see his hunger bar drop by half a segment as he worked.
Crash.
Thirty-six stone blocks appeared on the ground in front of him.
Nothing but stone. Again.
He kept expanding the search area, switching between different mining patterns and depth levels. Just when he was starting to wonder if this world even had the same ore distribution as the game, he finally spotted something different.
"Finally!"
As he got closer, he realized it was coal, but even that got him excited. Coal meant other ores should exist too, he just hadn't found the right deposits yet.
He walked over and started mining, but the moment his pickaxe hit the coal vein...
CRACK!
The stone pickaxe shattered in his hands.
Instantly, coal exploded everywhere in front of him, filling the tunnel with black dust.
"Shit, I forgot to turn off Vein Mining!"
The entire coal deposit had been mined out in one swing, leaving a massive dark cavern ahead of him.
He picked up a few pieces of coal from the ground and quickly crafted some torches. When he lit one and held it up, his jaw dropped.
The coal deposit was huge. Everywhere he looked, there were coal blocks scattered across the cavern floor.
But he wasn't focused on the coal, he was checking his experience bar. Despite all that mining, it hadn't budged.
That was different from the game. In Minecraft, mining usually gave you experience points.
He didn't fully understand why, but it wasn't a big deal. After all, there were plenty of other ways to gain experience in Minecraft, killing mobs, breeding animals, trading, enchanting. He'd figure it out eventually.
The important thing was that finding coal meant other ores definitely existed here. He just hadn't located the right veins yet.
He crafted a new stone pickaxe and got back to work. Since he was already down here, he might as well fill his inventory before heading back to the surface.
He combined the coal into coal blocks to save space, and by the time he was done, his entire inventory was packed. Even then, he'd barely made a dent in the massive coal deposit. There was enough down here to last for months.
When he finally climbed back to the surface, dusk was already settling over the island.
A hot pink boat was docked at the shore.
It wasn't large, but it looked seaworthy enough for longer voyages.
"I thought you'd run off," Alvida called out.
She was sitting in a chair on the deck, legs crossed, watching Marcus emerge from his makeshift mine entrance.
"You built this yourself?"
"You really think that highly of me," Alvida said with a smirk, patting the bench beside her.
Marcus didn't think much of it and walked over, hopping onto the deck.
"This was my first boat, the one I used when I started out as a pirate. I've been working on it all afternoon, and it's barely usable now."
As if to prove her point, she stomped on the wooden deck, which responded with loud creaking sounds that didn't inspire much confidence.
"Okay, leave this to me. I'll help you renovate it."
Night fell quietly as Alvida sat there, watching her old little dinghy gradually transform into a proper ship with clean lines and solid construction.
On the shore, Marcus looked at his handiwork with satisfaction. After years of playing Minecraft, he might not have been a master builder, but he'd definitely picked up some skills during those long sessions.
"Your Devil Fruit power really is incredible," Alvida said in awe.
She stepped onto the new deck, running her hands over the perfectly smooth wooden panels that somehow held together without a single nail or fastener.
"Of course it is. If you give me better materials, I could build something even more impressive."
"This torch shrinks when I pick it up and doesn't give off any heat, yet it burns continuously," Alvida marveled, holding up one of the torches Marcus had placed around the deck. "Tsk tsk… it really is a Devil Fruit power, huh?"
She could touch the flame without getting burned, and it had been providing steady light ever since Marcus started the renovation without showing any signs of going out.
While Alvida played with the torch like a curious child, Marcus was focused on a more practical concern. In the game, Minecraft boats couldn't actually move on their own, they were just static objects. But this was the real world now, not a video game.
A moment later, his worries eased when he saw the hull gently rocking with the waves. Apparently, some real-world physics still applied.
"Try testing the deck's durability," he said.
Without thinking too much about it, Alvida picked up her spiked club and swung it at the wooden deck. The block showed tiny cracks for a split second, but they disappeared almost instantly.
It had healed itself.
Alvida's eyes widened in surprise, and she increased the force of her next swing. But no matter how hard she hit, the wooden surface only showed minor cracks that vanished a second later.
"This?! How is this possible? That's way too strong"
"Try hitting it repeatedly, but don't use too much force. I want to see what happens."
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
Under a series of continuous blows, the wooden block finally reached its limit. After countless micro-fractures, it crumbled into powder and disappeared, without dropping any wooden planks.
Marcus watched thoughtfully. It took ten consecutive hits to completely break a block, and if there was more than a one-second gap between strikes, the block would instantly restore itself.
And that was just for wood.
Next, he placed a full cobblestone block on the deck.
Alvida looked at it with an expression that clearly said "are you kidding me?" but started swinging again anyway.
This time, it took twenty heavy blows to barely destroy the cobblestone, and only if each hit came within one second of the previous one.
Marcus was once again struck by how physically strong people in this world were. After all, Alvida had been punched by Luffy hard enough to send her flying across the island. In the real world, that kind of impact would've killed someone instantly.
But after just one meal, she'd completely recovered. While his Minecraft food mechanics probably helped, her natural constitution clearly played a big role too.
"What's wrong? Staring at my beautiful face and getting ideas?" Alvida teased.
She leaned on her spiked club and flipped her hair.
If she'd done that a day ago, it would've just been uncomfortable to watch. But with her current beauty, it was genuinely... tempting.
The night sky sparkled with stars, moonlight draped across the deck, and torchlight danced in the shadows. Just the two of them, alone on a boat.
Marcus rolled his eyes. Sure, Alvida looked stunning now, but they'd barely known each other for a day. Plus, he couldn't completely erase the mental image of her previous appearance.
He was definitely having trouble keeping it together.
And it absolutely wasn't because he was shy or too embarrassed to make a move. No way. Definitely not.
Seeing Marcus' expression, Alvida looked quite satisfied with herself. She stopped teasing him and walked over to sit beside him on the bench.
"We should probably talk about what comes next."