William was standing outside within the walls when Robyn returned.

"Find anything?" he asked.

"A bit more copper, but no iron." She looked around the tall walls that surrounded them.

"The walls will keep the zombies out," William explained.

At that moment he spotted a Demon Eye flying down towards them – he had placed torches all along the top of the wall, so he spotted it long before it reached them – and at that same moment an arrow from Robyn shot into it, knocking it off-course.

"Have you seen Sid?" Robyn asked.

William hesitated. "Yes," he said. "But... he left."

She narrowed her eyes. "Why would he do that? He'll get killed out there."

William shrugged. He'd been mad at Sid gallivanting on his own quest and stealing things from chests, but truthfully he was already regretting sending him away like that – he hadn't considered what Robyn would think. And now he wasn't sure if he wanted to tell her he had been the one to tell him to leave.

He jumped up some wooden platforms built into the side of the wall and peered over the edge. There was no sign of Sid.

He and Robyn headed back underground, digging separate tunnels, though William wasn't working long before he heard Robyn call, "I found a cave!"

He headed straight for her and stepped into the cavern. The walls were built from a mix of dirt and stone, along with some veins of red clay in the ceiling. Some ancient-looking ceramic pots were scattered throughout the cavern, which dropped various items when smashed including torches, some rope, and one contained a Lesser Healing Potion.

They shuffled through the cave, Robyn placing torches. A Red Slime tried to jump upon them from a crevice in the ceiling, but William fell upon it with his sword, Robyn shooting it with arrows, and it quickly split into gel. They soon came across a small pond, and William spotted a large vein of white ore on the other side.

"Could that be iron?" he muttered.

He pulled out some wooden platforms and built a bridge to the other side. Robyn pulled out her pickaxe and dug away at the ore.

"It's not iron," she said. "It's silver."

"Silver?" William repeated.

"At least there's a lot of it."

They mined up the whole vein, and were about to return to the surface to show it to the Guide when William spotted something through the crevice that the Red Slime had fallen from.

"It's some planks of wood," he said.

"Down here?" Robyn muttered.

William was just as confused. Planks were a man-made material, which could only mean one thing...

He felt the rope that had come into his inventory from the pots they'd smashed, and tried throwing it up at the crevice, but that just caused it to come out as an item on the ground. That wasn't what he'd wanted to do.

Robyn involuntarily picked it up, and she must've thought he'd thrown it on purpose, for she said, "Good idea."

She placed one of the ropes on the ground, then another on top, and kept placing them, going upwards, eventually looking like a fireman's pole stuck up in the middle of the cave. When she grabbed onto the rope, a strange wooden tool with wheeled spokes appeared in her hand, latching onto the rope.

"Okay..." she murmured, then she began rising up into the air, the tool carrying her upwards along the rope. With her other hand, she kept placing more rope, going further upwards and into the crevice.

William grabbed the rope himself. The way this rope stood freely without needing something to latch onto was definitely something that wouldn't make sense in the real world, but it had already been well-established that this world had different laws of physics.

When he got to the top, he was faced with what appeared to be a wooden house. Definitely man-made, but abandoned, from the looks of the chunks torn out of the walls, floor and ceiling, and the cobwebs growing all throughout it. Robyn stepped forward, swiping the webs aside with her sword. The cobwebs turned into items that rushed into her inventory.

"I hope there aren't spiders here," William muttered.

"Me too," she said. "They give me the creeps."

"Same."

She smiled slightly. "At least I'm not alone in that."

He found himself smiling back. "Yeah."

The house had a set of steps made from wooden platforms that led up to a second level. On that second level were two things that ended up interesting both William and Robyn.

The first was the golden treasure chest sitting in the corner of the room.

The second was the painting, which resembled a vase of sunflowers. The painting triggered some sort of... memory, in William. No, not a memory, something in the general knowledge of the real world he had in his mind.

"That's Sunflowers," he said, pointing. "A painting by Vincent Van Gogh."

The look that flashed across Robyn's eyes told William she was coming to the same realisation. "Oh my god, you're right. What's it doing in this place?"

William wasn't sure.

She bent down at the chest. Her touching it caused it to automatically open.

"Huh. This chest has an inventory," she said.

"What's inside it?" William asked. He remembered Sid had mentioned finding a few chests in seemingly abandoned locations.

Was this a regular thing in this world? Finding treasure chests in random, abandoned locations, ripe for the taking?

The more time William spent in this world, the more it seemed that was the case.

"A Precise Band of Regeneration," Robyn said, pulling it out. It was a red bracelet with a heart design on its side. She tried sliding it onto her wrist, and it slid up and around her upper arm.

"There's also some arrows," she continued, "Some more healing potions, some... recall potions, and quite a lot of silver coins."

Looking around the house again, William said, "I wonder who built this house?"

"Whoever did, I don't think they've been here in... perhaps years," Robyn said. "Do you think this means... we can take everything in here?"

"I think you might be right," he mused, thinking once again about Sid.

As well as everything in the chest, they also took the Sunflowers painting. The item was indeed labelled 'Sunflowers', though its painter was listed as 'W. Garner.' William had no idea who that was.

Upon returning to the surface it was dawn, and William decided to start expanding on the house itself. The first new room he built adjacent to the existing shelter, out of grey brick, and he placed the furnace inside as well as the gold chest from the underground house.

He then built two more rooms, creating a second storey and adding a staircase in the first room. He put the sunflowers painting in one of the new rooms and a table and chair facing it. He wasn't yet sure what to do with the other room, but his thoughts were interrupted when he heard someone knocking at the front door.

Andrew seemed unwilling to answer, just sitting in the first room like always, so William opened the door, thinking it was probably Sid.

It wasn't. It was a man with a long grey beard, a brown coat, and beret.

"Sword beats paper! Get one today!" he said.

William stared at him.

"Who are you?" he asked. All he could discern was that the man's label read 'Gilbert: 250/250'. The same amount of life as Andrew the Guide. Still, that told him nothing about who this man was.

"You want apples? You want carrots? You want pineapples? We got torches!"

William shook his head. "That's not answering my question."

"Check out my dirt blocks; they are extra dirty."

He groaned. He turned to the only other person in the room and yelled, "Andrew!! What is this man doing here?"

"That, my friend, is the Merchant," Andrew said.

The merchant? William felt like Andrew had mentioned a merchant at some point.

"There are a number of different citizens that can move into our town," Andrew said. "They can be attracted here through a variety of different means. For example, I believe Gilbert here arrived because you have gathered plenty of money."

William himself didn't have a lot of money, only a few silver coins. Though he remembered Robyn had said there'd been quite a lot of silver coins in the chest they'd found underground. Had that been enough for Gilbert to arrive here?

"In addition," the Guide continued, "Each citizen needs a room to live in, which needs to contain a chair, table and light source. If there are spare rooms and the requirements for a citizen to arrive are satisfied, they will move straight in."

William looked back to Gilbert, who had already moved through the doorframe and seemed to be staring at the wall. He realised that when he'd made the room with the Sunflowers painting in it, he had put a chair and table in, and some torches as well. That counted as a room, so that combined with Robyn's money meant Gilbert arrived.

This world is strange, he thought. Real life certainly didn't work like this – random people didn't show up invading your house if you built an extra room.

"Well," William said, "If he's a Merchant, what does he... do?"

"The sun is high, but my prices are not!" Gilbert said cheerfully.

William held out his hand, and suddenly his inventory popped up. This time in addition there was a list of items that the Merchant was selling.

He quickly skimmed them. Some he had seen before, like a copper pickaxe and axe, torches, arrows and rope, but a few he hadn't, like the mining helmet, piggy bank, and –

"An anvil!" William exclaimed. He ran over to Robyn's mining tunnel and yelled down it, "Robyn! This guy's selling an anvil!"

She quickly ran back upstairs and checked the Merchant herself.

"It costs fifty silver," she said. "I've got sixty-five silver right now. Should we get it?"

"I don't see why not," William said.

Robyn bought it, and set it down in the forge room next to the furnace.

"We've got nine silver bars. That's enough to make either a broadsword or a bow." She clicked her tongue, thinking for a moment. "I'll make you a sword."

"Okay," William said. "Then let's go back underground and get some more silver for a bow for you."

Before they did leave, he headed to the room he had left empty and set up a table and chair for the next citizen.

Robyn and William dug deeper, eventually uncovering another cave. This one was bigger, comprising of a network of tunnels that wound in numerous directions. Some more slimes – these ones colored red and yellow – attacked them, as well as some small, flying cave bats, but they fought past all of them with little trouble. William felt like he was getting good with the sword, especially since his new silver broadsword dealt so much more damage than the wooden one.

The ores they mined consisted of a fair amount of copper and even some iron, as well as some green-speckled rocks that yielded emeralds.

The highlight, however, was undoubtedly the life crystal.

It was a red, heart-shaped crystal that hovered in mid-air just above the rocky ground. William smashed it with his pickaxe, and the life crystal rushed into his inventory.

"What does it do?" Robyn asked.

"It reads, 'Permanently increases maximum life by 20'," William replied.

"Ooh! That sounds useful."

William smiled. He held it out. "You can have it."

She looked surprised. "Really?"

"Yeah. I got the new sword." He threw it on the ground. "You can have this."

"Thank you," she said as she picked it up.

There was a 'ding' noise as she held it in her hand and swung it in the air. A green number 20 rose up from Robyn, and her label changed to 'Robyn: 120/120'.

"Awesome."

Deeper into the cave, they came to a deep hole. Nothing but darkness could be seen beneath, but on the other side the tunnel continued onwards.

And William could spot some shining yellow ore on the other side.

There was no question what that was.

"Gold!" he exclaimed, placing down platforms to build a path across.

He was not expecting to get hit while halfway across and fall off, into the dark chasm.