Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!

Chapter 10 Coffin of dirt and stone

[Grave injury detected]

[Injury:

- Damage: Moderate

- Effects: Hemorrhage

- Effects: Moderate Blood Loss]

[Cost to heal: 3 ability points]

"Ugh..."

A pained groan escaped from Theo's lips.

His arm... no, his entire shoulder felt as if it was on fire.

Opening his eyes... Theo quickly realized the futility of doing so, given the complete lack of light in his hole.

Even breathing appeared to be a heck of a lot harder than it should, as if Theo had to suddenly put a lot more effort into doing something as simple as taking a single breath, with such breath lasting only a fraction of the norm.

'Oh right, if I'm buried like that, it's a miracle I didn't run out of air yet.'

Theo shook his head, slowly pushing himself to come awake and chase away the drowsiness of the unintended sleep he fell prey to.

The pain, while unpleasant, quickly turned into a crutch for Theo's will to rest on, using it as the only sensation he could actually rely on.

It became his anchor to reality.

And so, before Theo would start to seriously suffocate in his earthen coffin... he started to dig again.

Block after block, he dug.

Swing of his shovel after swing, he dug.

And soon enough...

The stack of earth blocks in his inventory reached its capacity of sixty-four, only for another stack to appear right beside it.

[Approaching the limit of the inventory: 9/10]

Yet, it was also right as this prompt appeared when Theo's mindlessly pressed shovel struck something its blade could not unearth.

'Huh?'

Barely awake, Theo looked down at a small angle, already forgetting his brain had yet to recover from the period of oxygen deprivation from before. Thankfully, whenever Theo dug out a block of earth... he could feel the air in his hole growing fresher and fresher, as if the space occupied by the mined-out block wouldn't turn into a void but be replaced with perfectly fresh air instead.

And a realm where he could finally think about building a somewhat safe shelter for himself, given the small risk of a cave-in, as compared to trying to hole up directly in the ground.

'Even if I will later try to move a base closer to the surface, for now... For now, this place has to suffice.'

With the basic plan for his future set, Theo took but a moment to unearth several blocks of dirt around himself. With just enough room for his purpose, he stashed the shovel away and exchanged it for his pickaxe, only to grab it with both of his hands... and just gently tilt it down towards the stone just ahead of him.

[Mining: 15%]

...

[Mining: Completed!]

[Obtained: 1 stone block]

'Now, for the hard part,' Theo thought, stashing his pick in his inventory before dropping down to his knees again and then slowly crawling around, marking the ground's layout with his bare hands.

'I guess healing that wound of mine was a good idea, regardless of the cost,' Theo thought as he worked away, hoping to gain some amount of room before even attempting to come up with a way to illuminate the place. 'I can't imagine trying to touch my way around like that with my right arm only half-usable. Not to bring up the risks of infection, poor natural healing, complications...'

Before long, Theo found the spot he dug out before sliding his feet into it and finally, for the first time since he left the ancient gateway's approach, stood down on smooth, solid ground.

'Now, to turn it into a basic room,' Theo thought, before gritting his teeth and then getting to work.

Digging out enough stone to create the room he envisioned in his mind, however, was the first slightly tougher task that actually took Theo a considerable chunk of time.

With each block only measuring fifty by fifty centimeters, he had to dig four layers of it to create enough room to stand comfortably in. Then, by digging two blocks out in all four cardinal directions from where he stood, he laid the groundwork of a five-by-five grid room.

A task that Theo imagined to take him at most a few minutes, ended up taking nearly an hour... or however long had actually passed, given the lack of any time-measuring devices for Theo to track its flow. Such was the cost of trying to keep his work area to follow his mind-design while working without even a single spark of light.

"Finally... done..."

Despite doing nothing but gently swinging his pick for about an hour, Theo couldn't help but collapse down to the ground pretty much the moment he confirmed the task was completed.

After all, what was the point of standing if the very next step involved him doing nothing but testing the limits of his system with a simple goal in mind?

'Right, even if there's a recipe for it, I don't recall what it could be in that game,' Theo thought back to the system that started everything, only to then take a glance at his inventory.

"Even then, it's not like I can go a long way with but a single unit of wood, can I?" he chuckled a little, only to turn his eyes to the other type of wood, one that refused to conform to the idea of existing as mere blocks.

'If it's with that kind of wood...' Theo thought, before quickly messing with all sorts of arrangements for the quadro-circular pieces of the wood within his three-by-three crafting window.

And soon enough, Theo ended up discarding the second stack of dirt out of his inventory, all to make space for his very first fireplace, one that he wasted no time placing down.

'Now, just to fire it up...' Theo thought, grinning from ear to ear as he found a certain sense of fulfillment from going from one step of his development plan to the next...

Only to then freeze as he stared into the darkness, facing the brutal obvious.

"But how the hell do I start a fire when I have nothing to start it with?"