Mario's arrival in the Twilight Forest had the same effect as dropping a brick through a stained glass window. The tranquility that had persisted for eons was now broken by explosions, the screams of dying monsters, and the sound of a diamond pickaxe tearing through stone.
"Finally! Real cooked pork chops instead of that processed garbage from the corner store!"
Holding freshly grilled meat straight from the furnace, he bit into it. His hunger bar, which had dropped by two drumsticks, instantly refilled to maximum after a single chop. The taste was incredible.
"Still need to find some ravens to make a magic map. This mini-map's range is pathetic."
Ravens were small black birds found throughout the Twilight Forest, often gathering near obsidian pillars. He spotted one such pillar in the distance, topped with a block of lapis lazuli.
As he approached, three ravens were roosting on the ground near the pillar's base. Startled by his footsteps, they flapped their wings and cawed loudly, trying to take flight.
But their speed was less than impressive, about as fast as an arthritic pigeon with one wing. He pulled out his double crossbow, a targeting reticle appearing in his vision. He aimed at the loudest raven and squeezed the trigger.
With only 10 HP, the bird exploded into smoke the moment the bolt struck, leaving behind a single black feather that drifted to the ground.
"First kill drops a feather. My luck's looking up."
The other two ravens weren't getting away. He switched to his diamond sword with Looting III, the enchantment would increase feather drop rates significantly. The problem was, the damn birds just kept circling overhead without landing.
"Fine. Let me mine this lapis first, see if that brings you down."
He placed cobblestone blocks to create a pillar next to the obsidian, climbing until he could mine the lapis lazuli from the top. Standing more than thirty feet up, he looked at the circling ravens and got a beautifully terrible idea.
He leaped from the top of the pillar, diamond sword extended downward. The blade caught one raven mid-air before it could escape, and two feathers fell alongside him as gravity did its work. Thanks to his Feather Falling IV boots, he only lost a single hit point from the landing.
"God, I love enchanted gear."
He collected the feathers and looked up at the last raven. "You get to live. Consider it your lucky day."
Now it was time to craft the magic map. The recipe required a Magic Map Focus, which needed a raven's feather, torchberries, and glowstone dust. He already had glowstone from his Nether expeditions. All that remained was finding torchberries.
Scanning the landscape, he soon spotted a "crack" in the ground and headed toward it. Torchberries were common underground plants in the Twilight Forest, glowing faintly yellow. Breaking them dropped a single berry, but shears allowed for intact collection.
The crack turned out to be the entrance to a shallow cave, and sure enough, glowing torchberry plants clustered right at the opening. He stepped inside and harvested them all. The berries were edible, they restored minimal hunger but granted a five-second "Glowing" buff that outlined you in light.
Might be useful for confusing enemies in dark places.
With all materials collected, he used a crafting table to create a blank magic map. Holding it, he mentally activated the item, and the previously blank surface revealed the surrounding terrain in surprising detail.
Looking closely, he noticed the Naga Courtyard just to the west. He glanced in that direction, a predatory smile crossing his face.
"Let's deal with the snake first, then go mining."
---
Ten minutes of jogging brought Mario to the outskirts of the Naga Courtyard. He immediately began placing cobblestone blocks, building a pillar to survey the interior from above.
The courtyard was kind of impressive, various pillars engraved with strange patterns, and at the center was a cage-like spawner. The moment he entered the courtyard proper, that spawner would transform into the boss itself.
He built his way into the courtyard. The instant he crossed the threshold, the spawner vanished in a flash of emerald light, replaced by a massive serpentine creature.
The Naga was huge, way bigger than it had seemed in the game. Its body was composed of connected block segments, each one about the size of a truck, with visible gaps of several inches between them. The whole thing had to be at least sixty feet long.
The serpent's basketball-sized eyes immediately locked onto him. With a hiss, it began slithering toward him, smashing through every pillar and decoration in its path.
"Okay, that's... that's a lot of snake."
He pulled out his crossbow and took aim at the creature's massive head. The bolt struck it, and the Naga suddenly froze mid-charge, its eyes narrowing to focus on the tiny human who'd just shot it.
CRASH!
The block Mario was standing on exploded, and he plummeted to the courtyard floor. He tucked and rolled, coming up in a defensive crouch just as the Naga's eyes turned blood-red.
The boss charged with its mouth wide open, revealing rows of teeth. He barely had time to raise his shield before, BANG!
The impact sent him skidding backward several feet, his boots tearing trenches in the earth. But the shield had done its job, he'd taken zero damage. The Naga, meanwhile, looked confused, its eyes crossing as stars and dizzy particles swirled above its head.
Three-second stun. Make it count.
Mario switched to his diamond sword and charged forward. The blade bit deep into the Naga's skull with each strike, and the boss' health bar dropped rapidly. Explosive sounds echoed from the creature's tail as segments of its body shattered and disappeared, every 10 points of damage removed a section, making the Naga faster but shorter.
The three-second stun wore off quickly. The Naga shook its head, then whipped its body around in a circle. The tail caught Mario across the chest, but his netherite armor took the hit like a champ. He lost maybe half a heart of health.
Good armor was the difference between life and a very messy death.
Thanks to his Hunter skill's attack speed boost, his strikes came fast. The diamond sword was a blur as he circled the Naga, attacking whenever an opening appeared. As the first boss of the Twilight Forest, it wasn't particularly complex, as long as you blocked its charges with a shield, victory was almost guaranteed.
But "almost" was doing a lot of work in that sentence.
The Naga's health dropped to critical levels, but now it was moving three times faster than when the fight started. He couldn't keep up with its speed, so he couldn't land consistent hits. He had no choice but to wait for another charge.
The serpent circled him, looking for an opening. Then it made its move, another full-speed charge.
BANG!
Shield up, brace for impact. The Naga slammed into the barrier. But the boss was stunned again, and this time he didn't waste the opportunity.
He brought the diamond sword down in a overhead strike that cleaved through what remained of the Naga's health bar. The massive head crackled with breaking sounds before exploding into smoke and pixels.
At the center of the courtyard, where the spawner had been, a loot chest materialized.
"Not bad. Easier than fighting vampires in tight spaces, that's for sure."
He walked over to the chest, slightly out of breath but grinning. Boss fights were fun when you had the right equipment and knowledge. He opened the container and examined the contents.
The main prize was a Naga Trophy, a green, glowing piece that could be worn on the head and would make miniature boss sounds. He held it up, examined it, then made a face.
"Yeah, I'm not wearing glowing green shit on my head. That's a hard pass."
Though maybe it would've been popular back home. My cousins had some questionable fashion choices.
The chest also contained more than a dozen palm-sized Naga Scales. Equipment crafted from these scales came with built-in enchantments, truly a valuable resource for upgrading gear.
He held one of the scales up to the light, watching it shimmer. A thought occurred to him.
If I remove the datafication from this scale, could I forge bio-armor with special attributes?
Ivan and his father had already developed the arc reactor, the workshop refrigerator was running smoothly now. But only the weapons systems for the battle suit had been completed. The armor itself was still in development.
These scales might be exactly what they need.
Mario pulled out his magic map, planning to search for a Hollow Hill. These locations weren't just filled with minerals, they also contained countless treasure chests with rare items. Moonworm Queens, Peacock Feather Fans, Transformation Powder, Ore Magnets, and most importantly: the Uncrafting Table, Ironwood Ingots, Steeleaf, and more naga scales.
There were plenty of Hollow Hills marked on the map. He locked onto the nearest medium-sized one. Large, medium, and small hills had different loot tables, medium ones contained the uncrafting table and peacock feather fan he needed most.
A light jog brought him to a hill shaped like a massive dome, or more accurately, like an old burial mound. The shape triggered childhood memories of family trips to historical sites in southern Italy, tombs and ruins that dotted the countryside.
"Can't say it's similar, it's identical to those old burial chambers."
But he had never been superstitious about such things. He walked straight to the southeastern corner of the hill and placed a torch there, then pulled out his shovel and pickaxe.
If I was in some tomb-raiding story, I'd definitely be the 'take everything that isn't nailed down' type. Hell, I'd take the nails too if they looked valuable.
He started digging into the hillside, creating a tunnel that would bypass the main entrance. His mini-map showed the interior layout, and what he saw made him pause.
Red dots. Hundreds of them, packed so densely. Luckily he didn't have trypophobia, otherwise he'd lose it right there.
"Mamma Mia... No spawn limits in this dimension?"
Soon enough, his tunnel connected to the interior. What greeted him was an absolute storm of arrows and slime balls flying through the opening.
"Shit!"
His reflexes saved him, he jammed a torch into the opening for light, then immediately sealed it with cobblestone. Even with that split-second of exposure, several arrows had struck him. Thanks to his armor and the brief invincibility frames after getting hit, he'd only lost two hearts of health.
If I didn't have game rules working in my favor, that would've been a lot worse.
There was no way to charge in directly. The monster density was insane. So he did what any experienced Minecraft player would do when faced with overwhelming odds, he started digging down and to the side.
Slowly, he carved out safe passages and killed monsters through narrow openings where they couldn't swarm him. The Hollow Hill spawned both vanilla Minecraft mobs and Twilight Forest exclusives: Redcap Goblins, Redcap Sappers, Kobolds, Swarm Spiders, Twilight Wraiths, Fire Beetles, Slime Beetles, and Pinch Beetles.
None of them posed a serious threat individually. But in these numbers, they could overwhelm even a well-equipped player through sheer attrition.
He cleared the interior section by section. The monster count decreased significantly, but they kept coming.
That's when he noticed something moving through the mob crowd. A green-glowing figure shambling among the others.
"A zombie villager?!"
He'd completely forgotten about villagers during his time in the Marvel world and the Nether. But seeing a zombie villager reminded him of all those crafty merchant NPCs from the game.
With villagers, I can set up iron farms, automatic crop farms, librarians for enchanted books... and if I can find a Pillager Outpost captain for the Bad Omen effect, I could mass-produce Totems of Undying.
But right now, there was no way to rescue the zombie villager from the mob swarm. Since he now knew they spawned in the Twilight Forest, there would be plenty of opportunities later.
After what felt like hours, the monster density had thinned considerably. But they were still coming, and Mario could see why, multiple spawners positioned throughout the deeper sections of the hill, pumping out fresh mobs.
His eyes landed on a cluster of green shapes moving in the darkness. Creepers. Several of them, mixed in with the other monsters.
An idea formed in his mind.
"Go big or go home."
He crouched and crawled through a one-block gap, taking several hits along the way. He yanked out a Potion of Healing II and chugged it, feeling the wounds close instantly. Then he sprinted deeper into the hill, placing torches in dark corners as he ran.
The pitch-black cavern suddenly blazed with light. He looked back at the massive crowd of monsters packed together, grinned like a maniac, and raised his shield.
He charged straight at the creepers, ignoring the rapid durability loss on his shield as arrows and attacks pelted him from all sides.
Hissssss...
That beautiful, terrible sound.
BOOM!
A massive crater appeared in the ground, and huge numbers of monsters were obliterated in a chain reaction as multiple creepers detonated simultaneously. The shockwave knocked Mario back, but his armor absorbed most of the damage.
"At critical moments, you can always count on creepers to save the day!"
The few stragglers that remained posed no threat. With torches placed throughout the cave system, the spawn rate had also slowed dramatically. He spent the next hour systematically clearing spawners and looting treasure chests.
Among the treasures, he found a peacock feather fan.
He held it up, aimed at a charging redcap goblin, and gave it a wave.
A powerful gust of wind erupted from the fan, launching the goblin six or seven meters through the air. It hit the wall with a crunch.
He stared at the fan. "Did this thing get buffed?"
In the game, the fan could deflect projectiles and launch you into the air if you used it while jumping. With this enhanced version, fighting the next boss, the Twilight Lich, would be trivial. Any spell the Lich cast could be blown right back at it.
Too bad it doesn't work mid-air, or I'd already have functional flight.
---
Mario unloaded the miscellaneous items from his inventory into storage chests. He kept the steeleaf, ironwood ingots, naga scales, and redstone, then headed to the Nether portal. The infernal fast-travel system brought him to the suburban factory in minutes.
Climbing up from the underground passage, he emerged in what had been converted into a proper office. The once-empty factory floor had been partitioned into multiple rooms, with numerous staff members moving between workstations.
These were all talented engineers and technicians he'd poached from various companies. Without them, Anton and Ivan would never be able to build the battle suit he had envisioned, let alone anything more ambitious.
Settling into his chair, he pressed the intercom button. A female voice responded immediately.
"Yes?"
"Have Garcia, Gore, and Kerry returned yet?"
"No, sir. They're still on the hunt. No contact so far."
Mario exhaled through his nose, tapping a finger on the desk. "Alright. Tell Anton and Ivan I need to see them. Conference room, ten minutes."
-----
Interested in a Naruto story with a Yamanaka being the MC?