Ethan leaned back, a plan forming in his mind.
If there are no mods—if I'm stuck with the limitations of Vanilla—then I won't just play the game. I'll turn this entire nation into a living, breathing Super-Mod. He would let the Republic's brightest minds engineer "updates" for his creatures that the original code never dreamed of.
General Zhang's posture, usually as stiff as a dress uniform, began to tremble. A deathly silence blanketed the room, thick enough to choke. It took thirty agonizing seconds for the veteran soldier to pull himself back from the brink of total shock.
He looked up, his eyes no longer sharp with suspicion, but wide with a desperate, hungry hope.
"Ethan," Zhang's voice was dry, his throat clicking as he swallowed. "I need you to define 'infinite' for me one more time."
He leaned over the table, his shadow looming large against the alloy wall. "When you say infinite... do you mean a stockpile large enough to last us a century of waste? Or do you mean... literally inexhaustible? Boundless?"
Ethan looked at the General, who had completely lost his stoic military composure. Ethan, by contrast, remained as cool as the stone he had summoned. He casually picked up the Coal Block he'd manifested and tossed it into the air, catching it with one hand.
"General, in my world, there is a fundamental law called The Respawn. And there are structures we call Mob Spawners."
Ethan allowed a faint, knowing smile to touch his lips. "If I set up the right infrastructure—what we call an Automated Tree Farm—I can literally stand still while the world grows, harvests, and collects timber into my storage. The same logic applies to coal. It doesn't run out because the world doesn't know how to stop creating it."
He paused, his smile widening. "And Gold? In the 'Vanilla' rules of that world, Gold is practically decorative. We use it for a few specialized Redstone circuits or some enchanted food, but otherwise? It's surplus."
"Surplus?" Zhang whispered.
"If I build a Zombified-Pigman Farm above the Nether Bedrock, I can exploit their aggression. They spawn, they fall, they die. I don't even have to draw a sword. I just stand at the collection point and watch."
Ethan leaned in, his voice dropping an octave. "In less than twenty-four hours, I can produce mountains of raw Gold Ingots. If I wanted to, General, I could make Gold flow through this base like water."
"Water..." Zhang muttered. His brain felt as if it had been hit by a kinetic penetrator.
As a strategist, Zhang saw the board immediately. These weren't just "resources." This was a pen that could rewrite the laws of human civilization. He stood up abruptly, his boots clicking a frantic rhythm on the metal floor as he paced.
He began to talk to himself, his mind weaving a blueprint for a new era.
"Ethan, do you understand what infinite Coal means?" Zhang stopped, staring at the boy with bloodshot, manic eyes. "Our power grid is still chained to thermal energy. We've had to shutter plants, ration electricity, and choke our growth to meet carbon targets. We're reliant on imports that could be cut off at any moment by a single trade embargo."
He took a jagged breath, seeing the vision clearly. "With your coal, every turbine in the country could run at three hundred percent capacity. Cost becomes zero. Logistics become zero. The price of industrial power would plummet to nothing. That wouldn't just be an upgrade; it would ignite the Fourth Industrial Revolution overnight."
Before Ethan could even nod, Zhang turned his gaze to the gold.
"And the Gold... people think it's just for jewelry and currency. But for the State? It's the ultimate conductor. It's the perfect corrosion-resistant material."
Zhang slashed his hand through the air, as if cutting the chains of the old world. "We only use copper and silver because gold is too expensive. If we have a literal mountain of it, I'll order the Defense Research Agency to replace every circuit in our precision hardware with 24-karat gold. Our satellites, our missile guidance chips, our supercomputers—their efficiency would jump by an order of magnitude. We could lay pure gold fiber-optic cables across the ocean floor. It would be the most extravagant, most powerful information superhighway in history."
Finally, Zhang's voice grew low, vibrating with an iron-willed intensity.
"Then there's the Iron."
"Steel is the skeleton of a nation. Right now, the cost of specialized alloys is the only thing slowing down our naval production. But with infinite high-purity Iron? We wouldn't have to be frugal anymore."
Zhang slammed his palms onto the desk, looming over Ethan. "We wouldn't just build aircraft carriers; we'd drop them into the ocean like dumplings into a pot. We could forge a literal Steel Flood. Every tank would have triple-layered heavy armor. We could pave a rail network from here to the Atlantic with solid steel. This isn't just wealth, Ethan. This is an infinite safety net for the Republic."
Zhang stopped, his chest heaving. He reached for his water glass, only to realize he'd spilled half of it. His hand was shaking—not with fear, but with the pure, unadulterated ecstasy of seeing his nation finally leave its rivals in the dust of history.
Ethan watched the General quietly. A spark of genuine respect flickered in his heart.
This is the vision of a State, Ethan thought. I was thinking about how to get rich and clear a few dungeons. He's thinking about global hegemony and the destiny of our people.
But Ethan didn't look excited. He didn't cheer. Instead, he simply shook his head, a meaningful, almost pitying smile appearing on his face.
"General Zhang," Ethan said softly. "Your scope is way too small."
The statement hit Zhang like a physical blow. He froze. "Too small?"
He was stunned. Recasting the entire national industry and securing the future of the Republic for a thousand years—how could that possibly be "small"?
Ethan leaned back, his gaze seemingly piercing through the miles of rock above them, looking toward the shivering veil of the Multiverse.
General Zhang didn't know the full truth. Ethan didn't just have one secret.
He had two.