17. Ranma hates the rain
17. Ranma hates the rain
Ranma looked the most desperate I had seen him since arriving here.
Hmm. I know he turns into a girl, but there's no need to let him know I know. There's no reason to make Ranma wary of me, too.
I already felt like I was going to have stress-induced blood in my urine just from Asagi's wariness. If Ranma joined in, I wouldn't die from starvation or being torn apart by monsters; I'd probably die of stress-induced hair loss.
So, I decided to play dumb.
"Why the house all of a sudden?"
I asked suspiciously. I had planned to build a house when it rained anyway. It was bound to be a low-quality, hut-level structure, but since this place had reality-correction, I didn't want to work while getting rained on.
Besides, the Bed was already made. Phantoms weren't spawning yet, so I could take my time preparing from now on.
Time to take it easy.
While I was thinking that, Ranma started panicking at my question.
"It's going to rain. If it rains, we'll get wet. I hate getting wet. I don't want to live in the rain, and if it rains all night, we won't be able to sleep. Most importantly, we only have the clothes on our backs right now."
"True. We should build a house."
I didn't intend to bully Ranma anyway, so I just gave off the vibe that I didn't know his secret and nodded. I didn't want to get wet either. Everything Ranma said was valid.
As I said that, Asagi, who had been listening quietly, spoke up.
"I object."
Excuse me?
Asagi's objection was something I hadn't anticipated. As Ranma and I looked at Asagi, she answered with a cold face.
"We need to break through this place and return to our world as soon as possible. Since we don't know how long it will take, we shouldn't waste the materials we've collected here."
"....But shouldn't we have a house when it rains? If the Bed gets wet, we have nowhere to wash it."
I argued against Asagi's point. Ranma was nodding with a touched expression while looking at me. I had unintentionally ended up taking Ranma's side.
"We won't use many materials. And since we've already collected some Bone Meal, we don't need to worry about trees growing. I'm also planning to rebuild the Monster Farm in a safer way."
"Hmm...."
"Asagi-ssi? Why don't we listen to him? He's been reliable so far, right? I hate cold water!"
Ranma desperately tried to persuade Asagi. Was Ranma planning to live only on hot water? I decided to hit him with some hard facts. It was better to crush such false hope now to prevent a major incident later.
If I didn't say anything and he found out later, he might not be cooperative.
"You can't boil water here."
"What?"
At my words, Ranma froze like ice. We had to get water anyway.
At the very least, we needed two Buckets to create an infinite Water Source Block, and we needed that to somehow procure Gold Ingots. We could also farm and build a properly functioning Monster Farm. Since we could also collect cobblestone, our daily life needed water to make a comeback.
However, boiling water was impossible. If you put a Bucket of water on a fire, the whole Bucket would disappear, or if you placed a Water Source Block, the fire would go out or both would vanish. The concept of boiling water didn't exist.
There was only one thing: a food item called Suspicious Stew. It was made with mushrooms, but since we didn't have Mycelium, I wasn't sure if we'd even see a mushroom before we left this place and returned to our original world. Since it was a stew, it would be hot, but the chances of us seeing it were close to zero.
I approached the frozen Ranma and scolded him like a younger sibling.
"You're old enough to know better, why are you still whining about cold showers? We have to go into the water to get Gold Ingots anyway."
"Go into... the water? Cold water?"
"Yeah. We need at least 16 Gold Ingots. That's going to be harder than getting Iron Ingots."
I apologized to Ranma in my head as I said that. Ranma turns into a girl when he touches water. He probably hates that. Turning into a girl is a curse, and he's a guy by nature.
"Why do we need Gold Ingots?"
"We need them to catch the Ender Dragon."
My words were true. First, to get gear better than iron, we absolutely had to create a Villager. In a Sky Block with nothing, the only way to get a Villager is to cure a Zombie Villager, which spawns with a low probability when a Zombie spawns.
The item needed for that cure is a Golden Apple, which requires 1 Apple and 8 Gold Ingots.
Villagers can breed, so once we secure two, we can increase their numbers through breeding, so that part doesn't matter. But to secure those two, we need 16 Gold Ingots.
Gold comes from a monster called a Drowned. Drowned spawn in water, or Zombies turn into them when they fall into water. They drop Gold Ingots at a similar rate to Iron Ingots.
So, what we need to do is somehow collect Iron Ingots while getting water, use that to get Gold Ingots, use that to create Villagers, and then breed them to build a village. Once we breed enough Villagers, we can build a factory to get Iron Ingots at a crazy speed. We also need to promote the Villagers to collect Emeralds. That's because if a Wandering Trader spawns, we can get materials that are hard to find here.
What we need to do right now is build a more advanced Monster Farm—not the prototype we broke this morning—to get Iron Ingots.
Building it is easy, but wait, I have to build it while crawling in mid-air, so it's difficult for me. The most important thing is whether the resource supply is smooth. We still have no way to get construction materials other than Oak Trees.
To get Oak Trees, the trees have to grow well. There was just too much to do. Now, there was a justification for mining Dirt Blocks and changing their positions.
I wondered how many Dirt Blocks I would drop, but I had to place the dirt with space between each block to plant the trees. That way, the trees would grow well without obstruction.
"First, Ranma. You chop down the Oak Trees. I'll give you a Wooden Axe, use this."
"Are we building a house?"
"Can't really call it a house, it's a hut. We don't have many materials yet. I'll make a place to avoid the rain, so you get the materials ready."
"Got it!"
Ranma chopped down the Oak Trees more passionately than ever. Since the Oak Trees didn't grow large enough to be that hard to chop down at once, Ranma quickly felled all of them. Debris and materials were floating everywhere where we stood.
Ranma shouted at me triumphantly.
"Fast, right?"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Haa.... I wonder if we need to waste materials like this."
Asagi sighed at my conversation with Ranma. Since she didn't know anything, I could understand why she was so impatient, but regardless of that, Asagi was being too impatient.
"I have no idea how long it will take for us to return."
"Can we return within a month?"
Asagi asked with a desperate expression. My heart ached, but that was impossible even if you killed me.
"Absolutely impossible."
"Then how long will it take? Is it possible to return within three months?"
That was also unclear. I shrugged my shoulders.
"If you're willing to die if you don't succeed on the first try, maybe it's worth a shot?"
If we did that, it might be possible.
If we moved without resting from now on. But the problem was that I had no intention of doing that. Besides, the idea that we might return if we catch the Ender Dragon is just a guess, not a fact. We aren't catching it to return; we're catching it because it might be the way to return.
There was no point in telling Asagi that directly, as it would only increase her dissatisfaction, so I thought it was better not to say it for now. It was better to help her grasp the situation so she could realize the reality. First, it was a priority to make sure Ranma could avoid the rain, and neither Asagi nor I wanted to be in the rain, so we quickly built a place to avoid it.
It was easy anyway. If you just build an L-shape with planks 4 blocks wide, you can block the rain. It would be better if we blocked all the walls, but since we didn't have Torches to use as a light source, natural light was important.
However, we had to stop the rainwater from coming inside, so we left a hole only in the middle of the 3-block-high wall.
It was a hut that anyone could tell was built poorly. Since it was hard to do anything else because of the rain today, I thought it would be fine to do the rest tomorrow.
The one thing that was a relief was that since Ranma had chopped down all the Oak Trees, the number of Oak Logs had reached one set.
Most items in the Inventory can be stacked up to 64. That counts as 1 set.
The number of Oak Logs exceeded 64.
If I turn this into planks, that's 4 sets. If I turn them into Half Blocks again, that's 8 sets. We definitely had a foundation to expand the area a bit more. We couldn't expand the area too much because of monster spawning, though.
"Phew...."
"It's hard to call this a house."
Ranma let out a sigh of relief as he entered the hut, and Asagi muttered with a bitter expression. But it was a relief just to be able to avoid the rain. Asagi knew that too, so she sat down in one corner without complaint.
It was the opposite side from where I was.
I feel hurt again.
"Asagi-ssi, do you like being far away from me?"
I asked abruptly. I oppose this unreasonable discrimination! I have the right to be close to Asagi!
Though, from Asagi's perspective, she also has the right not to want to be close to me.
Asagi was flustered by my direct question. She waved her hand at me and asked in a small, muffled voice.
"You... smell."
"......."
I smell?
Am I dirty?