Marcus stared at the lapis lazuli in his hand, then fed it directly into the transmutation tablet. The conversion rate wasn't great, only 324 EMC points. Seeing that familiar number made his eye twitch. He had a feeling that in the future he'd be spending way too much money on microtransactions. What really surprised him was that lapis was actually cheaper than gold in this system.
That made sense when he thought about it. In Minecraft, gold was pretty much useless for anything except making golden apples. But in the One Piece world, gold was actual currency with real value.
Putting those thoughts aside, today seemed like a perfect opportunity to see just how deep he could dig.
After all, ever since getting the transmutation tablet, it had been ages since he'd done any serious mining. And with Vein Mining unlocked, going deeper would be ridiculously easy.
But considering that he might need to build some kind of shelter or base here later, he decided to dig down in stair formation, about ten blocks deep at each level, and expanded it into three massive underground layers. Each floor was roughly the size of a basketball court.
He installed glowstone as the primary light source throughout the complex. Much better than torches, since those could easily be destroyed or stolen by enemies.
After finishing the basic infrastructure, he got down to some serious excavation work.
He lost track of time completely. When he finally stopped to wipe sweat from his forehead and grab some roasted beef, he realized it wasn't from exhaustion, but from heat.
Just like in real life. The deeper you go, the hotter it gets.
He took a deep breath, trying to stay calm as he assessed his situation.
"Oxygen levels are dropping too, though I haven't triggered the suffocation status effect yet."
Marcus checked his inventory. He now had ten full stacks of 1,000 blocks each, cobblestone, basalt, and various other stone types. And that was just the building materials. If he counted the iron ore, coal, gold, flint, and other resources, his rough calculations showed he'd already dug down more than 13,000 meters.
Theoretically, he was now somewhere beneath Fish-Man Island, maybe even deeper.
Even so, he still hadn't encountered any lava, though the temperature had definitely increased significantly.
"How much deeper can I actually go..."
He debated whether to continue. He had a strong feeling that if he went much further and ran out of oxygen, something really bad might happen. But giving up now felt like a waste of all this effort.
He gritted his teeth and kept digging.
But after only another kilometer down, the temperature had risen to nearly unbearable levels. It felt like being trapped inside a steam room cranked up to maximum heat.
Breathing heavily, he started feeling lightheaded, clear signs of oxygen deprivation. His status bar now showed bubble indicators, the same ones that appeared when players were underwater in the game.
The bubbles were depleting very slowly, but they were definitely going down.
So this is my limit? Fourteen thousand meters... that's as far as I can push it right now?
The heat was becoming dangerous. Marcus knew he needed a solution fast or he'd have to abandon the expedition entirely.
That's when he remembered a classic Minecraft trick.
He continued digging underwater, hollowing out a rectangular chamber, then placed a door inside the flooded space.
Sure enough, the area occupied by the door blocked out all the water, creating an air pocket. Not only could he breathe normally inside this shelter, but the temperature was bearable too.
"Holy shit! It worked? Did I just exploit a game mechanic in real life?"
"Wait, that's not a bug," Marcus laughed to himself.
Now that he had a safe breathing space, he dug out four holes nearby and created an infinite water source.
He plunged his entire body into the cool water.
Instantly, the scorching heat around him dropped back to normal temperatures. MC water obviously couldn't be evaporated by natural heat, didn't generate oxygen, and maintained a constant comfortable temperature regardless of the environment.
After that sweltering underground furnace, soaking in the water felt amazing.
Using the door technique, he continued his descent. Soon he'd reached a depth of 15,000 meters.
This time he didn't stop because of environmental problems, but because he was stunned by what he discovered, gold ore everywhere.
He'd read before that the deeper you dug toward the Earth's mantle, the richer the gold deposits became, but he hadn't expected to find entire veins of pure gold ore at this depth.
"Did I just hit the gold layer?"
"If I keep going deeper, won't the concentration actually decrease again?"
He scratched his head. Even though he already had plenty of gold for current needs, it could still be converted into EMC points. At 432 EMC per gold block, if the quantities were massive enough, it might be worth the effort.
He activated Vein Mining and got to work.
Half an hour later, he wiped sweat from his forehead. Mining at this depth carried serious risks, whenever he stepped outside his door-protected air pocket, not only was breathing difficult, but the heat was suffocating.
"Looks like I'm really reaching my limits here."
He quietly sold off five full stacks of 1,000 gold ore each to the transmutation tablet. And that wasn't even close to everything, the gold layer was far richer than he'd imagined.
His EMC total had climbed to about 2.16 million points.
"I didn't even get a third of what I'd need for a Devil Fruit... this is really that expensive?"
He scratched his head, and kept going.
Two hours later, his EMC balance had reached 11.31 million points.
It wasn't that he wanted to stop, but he'd literally mined out all the gold in this layer. Expanding the search area in any direction only yielded regular stone.
He pulled out a grilled steak and started eating while considering his options.
"Dawn should be coming soon... keep going deeper, or call it quits?"
He decided to push his luck, he'd already come this far.
Another hour of dangerous deep mining later, he finally had no choice but to head back to the surface.
He never did find a lava layer, which was deeply disappointing. Instead, the combination of suffocating heat and oxygen deprivation whenever he left his door shelters made deeper exploration nearly impossible. And the further down he went, the fewer valuable ores he found. At this point, going deeper wasn't worth the risk.
Even so, the fact that he still hadn't found lava after reaching more than 20,000 meters underground was baffling. It didn't make sense. In his final attempt, he'd even used Vein Mining to blast straight down in one massive excavation, completely breaking a diamond pickaxe in the process, and still no lava.
The whole situation was bizarre. It was scorching hot down there, but no molten rock anywhere.
Scratching his head in confusion, he finally made the long climb back to the surface.
He emerged just as dawn was breaking across Whiskey Peak. He'd been mining all night without realizing it.
Alvida and Kira were waiting for him at the mine entrance, both looking concerned.
When Marcus appeared, Alvida said, "I was starting to think you'd died down there. If I hadn't seen that faint light flickering from time to time, Kira would've already gone down to look for you."
"I... I really was worried about you," Kira spoke.
"I wanted to see if I could reach the lava layer," Marcus explained, "but no luck. The heat and lack of oxygen made it impossible to go deeper."
"Lava? What do you even need that for?" Alvida asked curiously. But her attention quickly shifted. She leaned closer, asking, "So? How much did you manage to get?"
Marcus knew exactly what she meant. "A lot. Let me calculate... roughly 13,000 standard gold ingots."
Alvida felt like she was having a heart attack.
Thirteen thousand gold ingots. In the One Piece world, each one was worth about 200 million berries.
She started counting on her fingers but quickly gave up.
"2.6 trillion berries," Kira supplied the answer, swallowing hard. "That's... almost enough to rival the Gold Emperor."
Marcus waved his hand dismissively. "You're thinking about this wrong. Gold's value comes from scarcity. If I actually dumped this much gold into the world economy, the price would crash completely. That 2.6 trillion figure is just theoretical."
Alvida's lips twitched. "Even with the worst-case market crash, you'd still be worth 1 trillion. There are maybe five organizations richer than you right now. And this was just one mining expedition. If you did this a few more times, you'd probably become the wealthiest person alive."
Marcus, however, didn't feel excited about the wealth. After all, from the moment he'd gained his Minecraft powers, he'd already realized that money would never be a limiting factor for him again.
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No chapters for the next two days. There's a poll ongoing, and until it ends, I won't be writing anything.
Why the poll? The latest chapter (133 - NSFW Version) sparked a lot of discussion, more than usual. I need to know whether I should revise the previous chapters to remove the interaction between Marcus and Person X, or keep it as it is but with no further NSFW content.