《The Magical Craftsman》Chapter 6: A New World
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Jack kept falling and falling until he collided with what seemed to be a barrier between dimensions, going from a dark void to a clear blue sky in the middle of a sunny day. Soon, his body slammed into the ground, creating a miniature impact crater around him. That fall hurt like hell.
"Oww! Ow ow ow...Damn that truck-headed bastard." Jack complained as he got up from the ground.
He looked around to see where he had fallen. He seemed to be in the middle of a meadow. There's grass, trees, and flowers as far as the eyes can see, but no people around. It's as though he was alone in the center of a vast wilderness, albeit one that was rather peaceful and serene.
He then took a closer look at himself. He was still in his own regular human body, hospital gown and all. Thank God he wasn't reincarnated into some sort of weird creature, though he wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, as some of those creature forms might give him a starting advantage of some sort.
He felt healthier at least, so he assumed the cancer was gone from his body or else this was going to be a short second life for him. Other than that, there doesn't seemed to be anything out of the ordinary. He's still the same old Jack Slater, only this time he was transported into another world with nothing else to assist him.
"I swear, if he wasn't the Master of Reality or whatever, I'm gonna give that mothertrucker a piece of my mind." Suddenly, Jack felt something was off with his speech. He couldn't say a specific word properly. It's as though his own words are being censored somehow. "Truck...truck...Truck! Why couldn't I say the F-word? Truck!!!" Jack thought for a moment. It must have been Truck-kun's doing. This must have been his idea of a cruel joke. Only he would have the childish sense of humor to do something like this. "Grr, this is bullship!"
As Jack found himself lost in the middle of the wilderness and not having any immediate goal in mind, he decided to start walking towards a random direction just to explore the layout of the land. From what he'd seen so far, it doesn't look that different from regular wilderness on Earth. After a bit of walking, he'd arrived to a woodland area that was more densely packed with trees.
He kept waking and walking. He walked so far and for so long that he's starting to feel exhausted and bored. Even after all that walking, not a single person was found.
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Thoughts kept surfacing on Jack's mind as he walked. How much longer does he have to walk before he finds somebody? What if he dies in the middle of the wilderness with no one to help him? He just got a second chance at life in this new world and he'll be damned if it's going to end so shortly. What a waste that would be! Surely, that mothertrucker wouldn't leave him to die that easily, would he?
"Hello?! Anyone?!" Jack cried out into the desolate emptiness of the woods. "Is anyone here?!"
He could hear nothing other than the faint sound of a gust of wind. He was warned that this wasn't going to be easy, but he never thought it would be this hard either. Deep in his mind, he suspected that Truck-kun had simply placed him here just to toy with him, making him miserable for his own entertainment. Jack was starting to lose his damn mind. Gradually, anger started to boil up inside him. He wanted to hit something.
"Goddam it!" Jack shouted as he punched a nearby tree.
However, as soon as he punched that tree, he felt a strange sensation. He saw that the fist that had hit the tree was emitting a faint bluish-white aura. In addition, the tree that his fist had made contact with seemed to display some kind of gray bar with some words and numbers floating next to it. Jack looked closer to see what the words and numbers say.
[Tree: 140/150]
Was that...an HP bar...for the tree?!
Jack looked at his fist and then looked back at the tree again. Clearly, the act of him punching that tree was having some kind of effect to it. To test his theory, Jack wound up his fist and punch the tree again. By punching that tree, the grey bar appeared to have shortened and the numbers seemed to have decreased even more.
[Tree: 130/150]
At that point, Jack put two and two together. When he punched that tree, he seemed to have decreased that tree's HP by a certain amount. What would happen if he decrease it down to zero?
He continued punching that tree to find out. With each hit, the bar and the numbers started getting lower and lower. Once it have reached zero, the entire chunk of the tree around where Jack had hit it had been blasted apart into bits and pieces, causing the top part of the tree to collapse to the ground. Those bits and pieces then hover in mid-air for just a brief moment before turning into bluish-white particles of light which then gets seemingly absorbed right into Jack's chest. Afterwards, there was an indicator near the bottom-right corner of Jack's field of view that showed what he had obtained.
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[+5 Wood]
Jack then had a eureka moment as he started to piece things together and figure out what this was.
"Holy ship! This world has Minecraft mechanics!" Jack said with amazement. "That is so trucking cool!"
Upon learning this, Jack was now all fired up with immense anticipation. Finally, all his thousands of hours playing Minecraft had finally paid off. Eager to test out this new mechanic, he started punching trees left and right, breaking them down in order to absorb their materials.
He had noticed a couple of things as he did so. First, different trees have different amounts of hit points, or durability points as it should be more accurately called. It seemed that larger trees tend to have larger durability points and vice versa, which was fairly accurate in real life as thicker trees are usually more durable. Secondly, the harder he threw his punches, the more damage it seemed to do to the trees. Light jabs seemed to do about ten points of damage while a heavy powerful haymaker does a whopping fifty points of damage. Third, each chunk of the tree that he'd harvested seemed to grant him differing amounts of wood, with larger chunks usually granting him more wood.
"Hell yeah! I'm getting wood!" Jack said happily as he continued punching the trees. "Look at how much wood I've gotten! I'm getting me some wood! Haha...wait, that came out wrong."
After a decent amount of tree-punching, Jack decided to stop and rest for a while. He was out of breath and his knuckles are getting kind of sore. Though, to be honest, he didn't expect his bare knuckles to even be able to impact the hard surface of the wood without some kind of immense pain and broken bones. He suspected that the blue aura that was swirling around his hands was perhaps cushioning his knuckles so as to make the process a lot less painful. Still, it kind of hurt when he punched those trees, just not as much as he thought it would.
The way he'd punched those trees felt kind of weird as well. It didn't feel as though he had superhuman strength or that the trees were particularly weak either. He just punched with the force that a regular human punch would, against a tree that, for all intents and proposes, seemed like a normal tree. It's just that this new power that was given to him when arriving in this world seemed to register his punches as a corresponding amount of damage to a particular object. It's as though this world doesn't quite follow the laws of physics that govern the real world and had its own set of unique rules. It's almost as though he was truly living inside a video game.
After resting for a couple of minutes, Jack decided to try something new with this mechanic. He wondered what else could he harvest from besides trees? He looked around his surroundings and soon found himself a large boulder. He walked up to the boulder, steadied himself in a fight stance, and punched it. Once the punch made contact with the boulder, the gray bar that appeared on the boulder had shortened a little and the numbers were shown in how much it had decreased.
[Boulder: 490/500]
Just as expected, the boulder was a lot more durable than the trees. This means that it would probably take more punches in order for it to be broken down and harvested.
Guess its time to start putting in some elbow grease, Jack thought.
He started punching that boulder repeatedly. Punch after punch, he started chipping away at the boulder's durability more and more. He kept at it until, right at the last punch, he blasted the boulder apart into little chucks of rock, which then turned into bluish-white particles of light that gets absorbed right into his chest. After absorbing it, Jack looked at the indicator at the corner of his view to see the materials he'd harvested.
[+5 Stone]
Jack felt an incredible sense of exhilaration. For some reason, he felt powerful. He felt unstoppable. He felt like, after this point on, everything in his life would go right for him. Even though he was stranded alone in this strange new world, right now, at this moment, he felt as though he was the most powerful person in all of history.
"Yeah! Truck yeah! I just punched a boulder into pieces! Hell yeah! I'm the king of the world!" Jack yelled as he laughed victoriously. It could be said that no one in this universe have ever been more excited than he was at punching a rock into pieces.
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