Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 36: Finally, new tools!

"Come on, man, time is ticking!"

Pushing himself off the ground he had just taken a moment of rest at, Theo stood up.

Then, for the first time in what felt like ages, he properly put away his pickaxe into his inventory. This time, however, for good.

"Finally, it’s time to take a qualitative leap!"

By no means was Theo done with the job. In reality, he had more things to do than he realistically had time for!

That’s why, as counterintuitive as it might be, he sacrificed a few minutes’ worth of waiting at his mining base so that he could speed up all the mining he had in store for the future.

"Now then…"

With the timer in the corner of his vision finally reaching zero, Theo watched with satisfaction as a new position appeared inside his inventory.

[Name: Iron Pickaxe | Amount: 1/1 | Type: Tool | Grade: Common | Level: n/a | Subsystem: Blocky]

Yet, the name itself was of absolutely no consequence. What mattered was what benefit this improvement to Theo’s arsenal of tools would provide.

"And for that," Theo muttered under his breath as he summoned the pick from his inventory, only to then instantly wrap his fingers around the iron-reinforced handle while the weirdly familiar weight reappeared in his hand.

Contrary to his expectations, however, this pick felt quite a lot lighter than its stone counterpart, causing Theo a bit of worry as to whether or not he could get used to its balance.

"One, two…" he muttered as he swung the pick through the air, only for his body to quickly adapt to the new weight of the tool. And as Theo’s first test came to an end, he smiled before moving over to the corner of his base, still waiting for the other two tools to finish.

After all, according to his tests, the moment he stepped out of the range of his crafting bench, the crafting progress would halt. And if he dared to step far enough from it, some of the materials used for the crafting would vanish, while roughly half of them would just drop on top of the block of the crafting bench.

That’s why, while he had no other choice but to wait a few more minutes for his crafting to finish, Theo eagerly approached the edge of his underground base before reaffirming his grasp over the tool and then gently bringing it down to the stone floor.

[Mining: 42%]

"Not bad…" Theo muttered, only to then strike the stone again… and watch as the whole block of it vanished into thin air, just like the many thousands of times before.

"Two swings for the stone. And if I remember the ratios correctly, it should be…"

The happy look on Theo’s face quickly vanished when he realized the ugly truth.

"Four swings for the iron, huh?"

With the difference between the effectiveness of the stone and iron tools coming to a straight ten percentage points of progress, he could only expect thirty-two percent progress per swing at the iron ore block. And since the debuff to the stone’s durability didn’t apply to the ores, Theo would have to add a whole fourth swing to complete the process he could bring to ninety-six percent with just three swings.

"I really need to find a way to decrease that…" Theo muttered, only to shake his head and pull his attention away to the iron shovel that had finally appeared in his inventory.

"Not much of a difference when it comes to dirt, huh?" Theo muttered, not even wasting his time summoning the tool.

It already took him two swings to undo a whole block of earth, with each coming at fifty-four percent progress. With that, even if the iron shovel gave him a bonus of twenty, thirty, or even a whopping forty percentage points more of progress… he would still need to strike the ground with it twice for the process to be completed.

If anything, the only reason why Theo decided to craft an iron shovel was to see whether or not he could hunt down some sort of achievement for getting a full set of iron tools. This was also why he had both an axe and a simple iron sword waiting in the crafting queue, now only about three minutes away from completion.

"There better be some sort of bonus, or I will wind up wasting a whole ten minutes crafting those…" Theo muttered before turning his attention to the gaping hole of the mine shaft he had mined out before.

Its darkness was strangely inviting, awaiting the moment when he would be done with all of his side tasks, ready to plunge himself into the earth’s bellows and zone himself away, gathering as much stone as he could in the forty minutes left until the completion of the constructor’s office.

And so, Theo returned to his spot, forcing himself to sit down and even going ahead and snacking on some dried berrymush before washing it down his throat with a solid bite out of a fresh berry.

’I’m not going to get many chances like this to rest, so I need to make the most out of the opportunities I get!’

With this pragmatic mindset at the forefront of his mind, Theo swallowed the tasteful juice before throwing away the dry husk of the evaporated berry… before giving in to his cravings and biting into a second berry.

’As soon as the sword is done, I’m going to go all in on mining. So, it’s only right for me to get proper sustenance in advance!’ Theo thought, eagerly justifying this wasteful behavior while conveniently ignoring the fact that before he took the bite, both his hunger and thirst meters were perfectly full, turning his bite from an actual attempt to sate his thirst into nothing less than just an act of snacking away his precious supplies.

Thankfully, the iron tools, a direct progression from the stone set Theo had sported up until now, didn’t take all that long to get crafted. Yet, contrary to Theo’s hopes and beliefs, even once he held the iron sword in his hand… no achievement related to completing a set of iron tools came to him.

This chapt𝒆r is updated by frёewebηovel.cѳm.

[You’ve held a weapon for the first time!]

[Do you wish to register "Sword" as your main weapon of choice?]

Rather than giving Theo an achievement, the system surprised him with a different notification.

But a notification Theo dismissed with hardly a second thought.

"I’m just a man. And as fancy and cool as it would be for me to wield a blade…" Theo shook his head, amused by his own childish cravings. "This is not the kind of place where I can afford to do what’s fancy over what’s practical," he stated to himself before looking up, as if he could find the source of his system somewhere in the dirt-based ceiling of his mining base.

"No, I do not wish to register ’sword’ as my main weapon," Theo announced out loud in a clear, crisp voice, all to make sure the system wouldn’t ’accidentally’ mishear him, effectively pushing him into even bigger trouble than the situation he was in right now.

"Well, that does bode well for the future, though," the young man muttered to himself, taking one last longing look at the simple sword before rolling his eyes at his own childishness as he stashed the sword away, pulling out his iron pickaxe instead.

"The times are…"

Turning his eyes to the bottom of his vision, Theo checked the two most important countdowns in his current life.

[Time before the first wave of challengers: 17:02:11]

[Time until the "Constructor’s Office" construction finishes: 32:11]

"Half an hour, huh?" he muttered before shaking his head and turning his eyes towards the dark mouth of his mining shaft.

Theo sighed before bringing up his freshly minted iron pick to his shoulder and then locking his thoughts in on the simple algorithm he had followed for quite a while.

’Let’s mine away until the construction’s end!’