Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!

Chapter 17 Stairs of Freedom?

'That was one hell of a run!'

Theo didn't rush back into the underground the moment he managed to get most of the wood out of the trees the boss felled. As it turned out, when he removed those logs, the area around his hole turned out to be quite rich in bushes—as one could expect from the deeper part of the forest.

'Seventeen berries, twenty-eight sticks, and half of a stack of foliage,' Theo thought as he took a quick look at his inventory. 'Adding seventy-seven blocks of wood to that...'

Theo shook his head before breathing out a satisfied sigh.

"It really feels good!"

The young man exclaimed while making sure not to make his voice too loud.

Out at the edge of the forest, he could never know when danger was lurking around... Or rather, whether or not nearby monsters had their hearing range greater than Theo's threat detection subroutine.

'That was a job well done for sure,' Theo thought, taking one more breath of rest before standing up and moving back right the way he came.

First, he crossed over the small, shallow tunnel to the spot he picked for his future trap. Yet, rather than lingering there, he opted to go down his secondary stairway, reached the primary one, and then... started to dig in the opposite direction of the forest.

'No matter what, this solution is too obvious not to try it out!'

With the bare minimum of food now secured, Theo could get a little bit more liberal with his time.

And so, just like he did for what felt like hours by now, he went back to digging, patiently swinging his shovel and then his pickaxe.

'That makes a third... no, fourth staircase,' Theo thought, doing his best to keep himself from getting into the zone. It was a great mindset to be in when he had to do some mindless digging... But not knowing what to expect from his current goal, Theo dared not to just... turn his mind off.

'I guess I should start naming them to at least know myself what the heck am I talking about...?'

Increasingly bored, Theo used his creativity to find seemingly random topics to just think about.

'The first staircase I made, the one leading further down from my base, shall become the mining steps. The staircase leading up to the surface will be the main one. Then, that trap access... Trap steps?'

"Woah!"

Theo let out a small cry as yet another notification appeared before his eyes, slightly different from what he saw just before.

[Hardstone - You need advanced-grade tool to break it!]

Without a word, Theo turned around and even summoned his torch again only to wave it in the narrow tunnel—only to fail to see the end of it.

'Judging by the amount of stone in my inventory, I didn't really dig all that far, but...'

Still, it was a bummer.

But even now, Theo had yet to exhaust all of his options!

'Surface it is, then.'

Knowing better than to waste his time lingering on what didn't go according to his desires, Theo hurried back across the tunnel he just finished up, taking roughly a minute to return to where he entered the zone and started to dig with the wall of magistone directly to his left.

This time, however, Theo decided to dig up, creating a second leg of his freedom steps, leading all the way up to the dark-covered surface. Yet, pretty much as soon as Theo's shovel broke the very top layer of the dirt leading him up to the ground, his head suddenly spun around, his vision blurred, and his entire sense of self crashed out like a computer about to flash its owner with the blue screen of death.

This attack, bug, or whatever else it was struck Theo so heavily, he ended up falling right back down several steps of his staircase... Only for whatever it was attacking him to cease its offensive as soon as he involuntarily retreated two or three meters underground.

And so, lying there, struggling to process what had just happened, Theo could only come to one singular conclusion.

'Surface is a bust.'

He thought, feeling the heartache of yet another avenue of escape from this hellish place closing down right before his eyes.

But again, rather than making him give up, this setback only reinforced Theo's determination.

'That leaves me with no other choice but to try to dig deep enough to reach the damned bedrock!'