[POV: Li Yan'er]
Hundreds of kilometers away, at the Immortal Alliance Plaza in Verdantree City, Yan'er was not having a good day.
Actually, she was having a terrible day. Possibly one of the worst days since her rebirth. Her senior sister was missing.
Mengyao should have been recruited at this year's ceremony. She was the girl destined to become one of the most powerful cultivators of her generation, someone whose presence was meant to be a fixed constant in this timeline. Instead, she was nowhere to be found.
Yan'er had checked multiple times. She'd listened to reports from every sect that had participated in the recruitment. She'd even made discreet inquiries with the Immortal Alliance officials.
No immortal-grade spiritual root had been discovered this year. And no one matching Mengyao's description had been recruited by any major sect.
It didn't make sense.
Unless...
Did I change something? Was it because I was reborn? Did I make too much noise searching for her?
But that didn't explain the complete absence of an immortal-grade spiritual root discovery. Something that rare should've caused a massive commotion. Yet Verdantree City was quiet.
"It's time to depart."
Feng's voice snapped her out of her spiraling thoughts.
"Yan'er?"
She forced a smile onto her face. "Apologies. I was lost in thought. What did you say?"
"We're leaving. We still need to visit the Ten Thousand Swords Sect before returning to the sect. We can't delay any longer."
Yan'er's stomach dropped. Leaving meant abandoning her search. And finding Mengyao again in the vast Eastern Domain would be impossible.
Why did I insist on coming to this recruitment ceremony? I should have stayed at the sect, focused on my own cultivation, and relied on the knowledge I already had.
But she had gotten impatient. She had believed she could accelerate her advantage by recruiting Mengyao earlier than in the previous timeline.
And now everything was in chaos.
Her timeline knowledge was becoming less reliable by the day.
She followed Feng toward their spirit boat.
I'll find her again eventually. The Eastern Domain is large, but not infinite. And someone with an immortal-grade spiritual root can't stay hidden forever.
She has to resurface sometime.
----------
Back on the Aureate Summit Spirit Boat.
It was now the second day since leaving Verdantree City, and Alexei had finally finished examining everything Changgui had brought with him.
The results were disappointing.
He'd hoped some of the materials might unlock new crafting recipes or items in his Minecraft system. But apparently, the universe had decided to give him the middle finger on that particular hope.
The spiritual ores Changgui's family had provided came in decent variety, about a dozen different types. Problem was, there were only a few pieces of each kind. Nowhere near enough to meet whatever arbitrary threshold his system required for "collection completion."
The spiritual plants were mostly low-grade. The best specimens were a few dozen mid-grade Mystic-tier herbs, which would've been valuable to normal cultivators but were completely useless to him since he couldn't assimilate them through his Minecraft abilities.
The most useful items in the entire shipment turned out to be the jade boxes used for storing the spirit medicines. Yan would be thrilled, she'd been complaining about jade box prices for weeks.
Silver linings and all that.
He sighed, leaning back against the spirit boat's railing. "Tyazhyolaya zhizn," he muttered in Russian, the equivalent of "life is hard," before switching to the local language. "Even for tough guys."
He pulled out a Brightglow Fruit and tossed it to Mengyao, who caught it reflexively.
Then another for Changgui.
Being a senior sect brother came with certain responsibilities. Like making sure the junior members didn't starve or develop inferior spiritual roots.
Mengyao accepted the fruit with a small nod of thanks. After several days of receiving these gifts from Alexei, her initial grief over leaving her previous life had faded considerably. A faint smile even touched her lips as she bit into the fruit.
Compared to Celestial Path Sect in her previous life, the Aureate Summit Sect felt warmer. More like actual people instead of cultivation machines grinding away at immortality.
And this sect brother was a bit strange but kind.
Changgui devoured his fruit with the enthusiasm of someone who still found everything about cultivation miraculous and wonderful.
Alexei watched them both for a moment, then reached into his inventory. "Want some fish?"
He pulled out a dried fish.
Mengyao shook her head politely. The image of sitting in public gnawing on a large fish like some kind of barbarian didn't appeal to her sense of propriety. Changgui, on the other hand, had no such reservations. He reached out eagerly.
"Here you go," Alexei said, releasing the fish.
"WHOA!"
The moment he let go, the full weight of the fish asserted itself. Changgui lurched forward, nearly face-planting as several kilograms of fish tried to drag him down.
He managed to catch himself, gripping the fish with both hands and bracing his legs to stay upright. The fish didn't hit the ground, but it was a close thing.
Alexei winced. "Ah. Forgot about that. Sorry."
These food items were so mundane-looking that he kept forgetting they weighed as much as they realistically should. A dried fish this size probably weighed about eight to ten kilograms, not exactly light for a kid Changgui's age to handle one-handed.
At least it wasn't the bread, he thought. A single loaf weighs over two hundred kilos. That would've killed him.
Changgui stood there, holding the fish with both hands. His arms trembled slightly from the effort.
"This is immortal food?"
In his mind, the pieces were clicking together. This fish, barely larger than two of his palms, weighed as much as a bag of rice. And Alexei had handed it over with one hand, like it weighed nothing at all.
He really is the protagonist Father told me about...
His eyes shone with admiration as he lifted the fish to his mouth and took an enormous bite.
The taste was incredible. The skin was crisp, with no trace of fishiness, only a pleasant hint of salt and smoke.
BURP.
He froze.
He looked down at the fish, which still had at least ninety percent of its mass remaining. Then he looked at his stomach, which already felt uncomfortably full. Slowly, he looked back at the fish.
"What? It was just one bite...?" he whispered.
"That's... cultivator food for you," Alexei said, providing an explanation the kid could accept. "It's densely nutritious. One bite fills you up."
Changgui wrapped the remaining fish in cloth and clutched it to his chest.
Alexei watched this display with mild exasperation. It's just a fish, kid. I have like fifty more in my inventory.
Mengyao's expression remained neutral, though internally she was processing what she'd just witnessed. A fish that fills you up in one bite? I've never heard of such a thing.
She'd assumed it worked on the same principle as Fasting Pills, compressed nutrition that sustained cultivators without need for regular meals.
In her previous life, after the first month at Celestial Path Sect, she'd survived entirely on Fasting Pills. Real food was considered a wasteful indulgence for anyone above Qi Refining stage.
Which meant she had very little experience with cultivator cuisine.
Thinking about it now, she found herself growing curious about the fish's taste. But she'd already refused when it was offered, and asking now would be awkward.
She glanced at the fish in Changgui's arms, then quickly looked away before anyone noticed.
---
By the time the spirit boat touched down at Aureate Summit Sect, the sun was already painting the western sky in shades of orange and purple.
Less than two days had passed since they'd left Verdantree City. With the spirit stone torch providing unlimited cultivation boost, Quan had been able to maintain near-maximum speed the entire journey without exhausting himself.
The spirit boat settled onto the mountaintop plaza. Waiting for them was Zhengxing, looking considerably more tense than usual. His expression only relaxed when Mengyao and Changgui stepped off the boat, clearly identifiable as new disciples by their lack of sect robes.
The recruitment hadn't gone as planned. But they'd still managed to bring back three new disciples this year, counting Alexei. For a sect that had been slowly dying for decades, three disciples in one year was a miracle.
The sect now had a grand total of six disciples.
At this point, they were less a sect and more a book club with cultivation powers. A very exclusive book club where most of the members could fly.
Yan, standing off to the side, looked vaguely uncomfortable. She'd been the one insisting to Zhengxing that this trip would be their chance to finally advance to ninth-rank sect status through the secret realm.
But the secret realm hadn't factored into it at all.
The group followed Zhengxing to the main hall for the formal ceremony.
---
The initiation ritual was mercifully brief. There was some formal bowing, the acceptance of sect tokens, and a recitation of sect rules that essentially boiled down to not being an asshole and not murdering one another.
Once that was finished, the next matter arose. The elders had to decide who would take each disciple as a personal student.
Currently, four elders had no disciples: Zhengxing, Quan, Yan, and Zhi.
Mengyao had a single fire spiritual root, which made her incompatible with Zhengxing, Quan, and Zhi's elemental affinities. She naturally went to Yan, who had purified fire, earth, and wood roots.
Changgui, with his purified metal, water, and earth roots, was a perfect match for Quan's metal and earth affinity.
The assignments made, everyone was dismissed to handle the practical matters of getting two new sect members settled in.
Which, in Changgui's case, involved an absurd amount of luggage.
---
"I can't accept this," Alexei said for the third time, looking at the pile of spirit stones and storage chests Changgui was trying to refuse.
"Please," Changgui said. "My father's instructions were very clear: support you in every way possible. These resources belong to the sect now, not to me personally."
Alexei stared at him. "Your father told you to give away your entire inheritance?"
"My father told me to invest in my future," Changgui corrected. "And he believes my future is brighter if I align myself with yours."
That's... actually pretty savvy, Alexei thought.
Still, the sheer volume of resources being donated made him uncomfortable. It felt like accepting charity, which rankled his pride even as the practical part of his brain screamed at him to shut up and take the free loot.
"Fine," he said eventually. "But I'm not just taking your stuff for free. When I craft useful items, you get a share. Deal?"
Changgui's face lit up. "Deal!"
"Starting with these." Alexei pulled out seven spirit stone torches from his inventory, distributing them among the sect members present.
He'd had to dismantle his treasured shield to make enough for everyone, which had hurt his soul a little. But the torches were more useful than keeping the shield.
The sect members gladly accepted the torches. They'd all experienced the effects during the journey back, but having their own personal cultivation accelerator was still surreal.
---
After helping Changgui get settled and saying goodbye to the others, Alexei followed Qingxue on her sword, flying over to his courtyard.
The golden wheat fields below glowed like they'd been painted with liquid gold.
They landed in the courtyard, and Alexei immediately got to work on his usual routine.
First priority: dump the bucket of fish he'd brought back from Verdantree City into his fishing pond.
Having fish in nearby water increased fishing speed by 20% and reduced the minimum time before a bite by half a minute. Marginal improvements, sure, but Minecraft was all about marginal improvements that added up.
He grabbed a fishing rod from a nearby chest and tested it out a few times. The difference was subtle, but definitely there.
Next: harvest the wheat that had grown during his absence.
Most of it got crafted into bread. A small portion went to feeding Bessie, who mooed happily at him as he tossed her some wheat.
"Missed you too, Bessie," he muttered, giving it a pat on the head.
Then came the real objective for the evening: checking his mob farm.
He grabbed the pink-gold sword and headed toward the painting that served as his hidden entrance.
He only needed six more iron ingots to craft an anvil. With any luck, the mob farm would provide them.
---
Stepping through the painting and onto the mob-farming platform, Alexei immediately noticed something different.
The water collection area below was packed.
Since this world didn't have Minecraft's entity collision glitches, where multiple mobs could occupy the same space, the zombies, drowned, and skeletons had crammed themselves into every available bit of water like sardines in a can.
"How the hell are the skeletons even drawing their bows?" he wondered aloud, peering down at the mass of undead. They were pressed so tightly together that movement seemed impossible.
Then a glint of gold among the rotting flesh and bone caught his eye.
"Is that a skeleton in full gold armor?"
He squinted, trying to get a better angle. The skeleton was stuck in the middle of the pack, but he could clearly see a gold chestplate, leggings, and boots. The helmet was blocked from view by the angle, but three out of four pieces wasn't bad.
Each piece of gold armor only had an 8.5% chance to drop. Getting multiple pieces from one mob was absurdly lucky.
"Thank you, random skeleton. Your sacrifice will be remembered."
The drowned weren't as densely packed, he counted maybe thirty of them, with only a few wearing equipment. Some might have iron helmets, but he couldn't see clearly enough through the gaps to tell.
Total mob count: roughly fifty to sixty underwater, plus another dozen creepers on the upper platform. Maybe seventy monsters total.
So there is a regional mob cap, he thought. Just don't know exactly how it calculates.
He was about to start clearing them out when he spotted something that made him freeze.
One of the zombies looked wrong. It wore brown pants and a tattered white apron that hung to its knees, cinched with a loose belt around its waist.
"A zombie villager... it's a zombie villager with a profession!"
He had spent enough time exploiting villagers in Minecraft to recognize every profession's outfit instantly. Based on the apron, this one was probably a butcher. Not the most useful profession, butchers mostly traded raw meat for emeralds and sold cooked food, but that didn't matter. Because he could change its profession.
By placing different job blocks, he could reroll a villager's profession completely. A blast furnace would make it an armorer. A cartography table would make it a cartographer.
But what he really wanted was a cleric.
Clerics sold redstone dust, lapis lazuli, glowstone, ender pearls, and bottles o' enchanting. Absolutely the most valuable villager type for his current needs.
The only problem: binding the cleric profession required a brewing stand. And making a brewing stand required opening a Nether portal.
Which... wasn't impossible, technically. He could just ask Yan to help smelt stone into lava. Use the lava-casting method to build a portal frame without needing a diamond pickaxe.
But opening the Nether portal felt dangerous.
If his theory was correct, the Nether right now was probably spawned to its maximum capacity with hostile mobs. This world didn't have render distance limitations or chunk loading mechanics. Every Minecraft block, no matter how far away, could spawn monsters.
Even with a regional mob cap, the sheer volume of Nether mobs would be overwhelming.
And taking Qingxue or anyone else into the Nether?
He had no idea how this world's mechanics would interact with native beings entering a portal. Would it hurt them? Transform them? Kill them instantly?
Until he had solid answers, the Nether portal stayed closed to everyone except him. He could respawn. They couldn't.
First rule of not being a complete asshole: don't get your friends killed experimenting with dimensional portals.
He refocused on the zombie villager, noting its position before clearing out every other mob in the water.
The kills were deeply satisfying. He cut them down with clean sword strikes and well-timed critical hits, and used his bow on the ones that drifted too far to reach. One by one, they fell.
After finishing the lower level, he climbed to the upper platform to deal with the creepers. A few careful shots from a safe distance brought them down without triggering an explosion.
When the last of them collapsed, he gathered the loot.
1 gold helmet, 1 gold chestplate, 1 gold leggings, 1 gold boots, 1 leather chestplate, 1 leather boots, 2 iron shovel, 27 rotten flesh, 18 bones, 15 gunpowder, 27 arrows
The gold armor had been the real prize. The lucky skeleton had dropped a chestplate, leggings, and boots, and one of the drowned had added a helmet to the haul. After dismantling everything, he ended up with 24 gold ingots.
That brought his total gold reserves to 72.
The two iron shovels broke down into 2 iron ingots.
Only four more ingots until he could craft an anvil. He'd probably have enough by tomorrow.
His experience levels, naturally, all went toward assimilating more spirit stones. Every time he used a spirit stone torch, he got a weird guilty pleasure from it.
Finally, he dealt with transporting the zombie villager.
In theory, it was simple: just put it in a wooden boat.
In practice, wrestling a hostile undead creature into a boat while it tried to bite your face off took significantly more effort.
Half an hour of struggle later, he'd successfully moved it to a small room he carved out of the mob-farming platform specifically for this purpose. He sealed it with stone walls.
The precautions were partly for security, but mostly because the smell was ungodly.
Now he just needed two more things: another zombie villager and a golden apple.
Witches could spawn anywhere in the Overworld with light level below zero. His mob farm qualified, but witch spawn rates were extremely low and random. He'd just have to get lucky.
Golden apples were easier. He just needed to break leaves.
Every cubic meter of leaf blocks had a 0.5% chance to drop an apple. One apple plus eight gold ingots crafted into a golden apple. He'd considered buying apple seeds back in Verdantree City, but apparently this world didn't have apples as a fruit. One more random difference between this place and Earth.
Leaving the mob farm behind, he hung his unused equipment on armor stands in the main room, then planted two more spirit stone torches beside the Brightglow Fruit tree in the living area.
The tree was thriving, spiritual energy radiating from it in gentle waves. With the torches boosting ambient qi even further, it would probably start producing fruit even faster.
Finally, thoroughly exhausted from a very long day, he headed back to his bed.
---
The next morning, Alexei woke to someone knocking insistently on his door.
"Alexei. Time for qi-sensing practice."
He groaned and rolled onto his back, squinting at the early morning light filtering through the window.
"Get dressed and meet me at the Brightglow Fruit tree in ten minutes."
Her footsteps were already retreating before he could muster a protest.
Ten minutes, he thought, dragging himself upright. That's barely enough time to look human.
Even so, he managed. He splashed water from the basin over his face, changed into clean sect robes, and ran his fingers through his hair in a halfhearted attempt to tame it. It would have to be good enough.
When he stepped out of his house and made his way toward Qingxue's building, where the fruit tree grew in the courtyard, he realized he was not the only one summoned for morning cultivation.
Mengyao and Changgui were already there, both seated cross-legged beneath the tree.
"Morning," he said, because it seemed like the polite thing to do.
Mengyao nodded in response. Changgui started to wave enthusiastically, then caught Quan's warning look and quickly settled back into meditation pose.
Quan was sitting off to the side with a cup of tea, clearly there to supervise his new disciple. He gave Alexei a brief nod of acknowledgment before returning his attention to Changgui.
Qingxue appeared from inside, looking far too awake for someone who'd probably been up since before dawn.
"The three of you will practice qi-sensing here together. The Brightglow Fruit tree purifies ambient spiritual energy, making it ideal for beginners. Mengyao, Changgui, this will be your primary cultivation location until you succeed. Alexei... we're still hoping for a miracle."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he muttered.
She either didn't hear him or chose to ignore it. "Begin."
---
Over the past few months, Alexei had learned that qi-sensing was essentially meditation with extra steps.
You sat down. You breathed slowly. And you tried to feel the mystical energy that supposedly permeated everything in this world.But you failed. Then you kept trying anyway.
For someone with one point of spiritual root aptitude, success was unlikely.
Qingxue, however, had a theory. Sensing qi involved a great deal of randomness and luck, and environmental factors could make a difference. The purified energy of the Brightglow tree might be enough to tip the scales and allow even his abysmal talent to catch a spark.
If he somehow succeeded, she could begin feeding him spirit fruits that improved spiritual root quality. If she could raise him to two points of aptitude, he would qualify as yellow-grade talent. That was still bottom-tier by cultivation standards, but it would at least be acceptable. With enough time, he might reach Foundation Establishment.
It was a long shot. Still, Foundation Establishment cultivators lived for 350 years. Measured against that kind of lifespan, even a long shot seemed worth taking.
He settled into his usual meditation spot, closed his eyes, and started the breathing exercises.
He breathed in. Held it. Breathed out. He tried to sense the ambient qi.
He felt nothing, and repeated the cycle.
This was going to be a long morning.
----------
[POV: Yi Mengyao]
The moment Mengyao had stepped into the small building that morning, she'd felt it.
Success.
After a week of practice in Verdantree City and careful effort to sense the spiritual energy around her, the breakthrough had come instantly. The purified qi flowing from the Brightglow tree had practically rushed into her body the second she'd crossed the threshold.
She hadn't even had time to sit down properly before her qi-sensing activated.
This is insane, she thought, maintaining the meditation pose while internally reeling.
In her previous life, it took her three full days in a proper Spirit Gathering Array to succeed. But that wasn't even the most shocking part. The tree behind her was radiating spiritual energy at a level she recognized immediately.
Earth-tier. High-grade Earth-tier, specifically.
She'd spent her entire previous life in one of the continent's top sects, and she'd never personally consumed anything above mid-tier Mystic-tier. The highest-grade spirit plant she'd ever eaten had been a low-grade Earth-tier Seven-Leaf Flame Flower, which she'd fought twenty-some people to obtain in a secret realm and nearly died acquiring.
This tree was at least two full grades above that.
And there were multiple fruits growing on it. Fruits that looked exactly like the ones she had been eating on the spirit boat for the past two days.
I've eaten seven or eight high-grade Earth-tier spirit fruits.... She realized, a bit numbly. What kind of sect just hands those out to new disciples?
"Mengyao, have you succeeded in sensing qi?"
Qingxue's voice interrupted her thoughts. The fox spirit was looking at her with mild surprise, clearly able to sense the purified energy flowing steadily into Mengyao's body.
Every pair of eyes in the room turned toward her.
"Yes," Mengyao said, scrambling for an explanation that wouldn't sound insane. "In Verdantree City, Chunhua taught me the basics. I've been practicing for over a week now. The environment here must have provided the final push I needed."
It wasn't entirely a lie. Chunhua had given her some instruction. And she had been practicing.
She just left out the part where she'd succeeded instantly because she was a reincarnated cultivator with muscle memory from a previous lifetime and this building contained spiritual energy so dense and pure that even a talentless beast could probably reach spirit beast status within two months of living here.
Qingxue nodded, accepting the explanation. "Good. You'll continue practicing here to stabilize your qi-sensing. Being able to maintain the state while moving or fighting is the next step."
"Yes."
Mengyao settled back into meditation, trying to process everything she'd learned in the past five minutes while simultaneously wondering what other absurd resources this tiny sect was hiding.
----------
[POV: Alexei]
"Well, that's just great," Alexei muttered, watching Mengyao effortlessly absorb spiritual energy like she'd been doing it her whole life.
Meanwhile, he sat there feeling exactly zero mystical energy, as usual.
Changgui, to his credit, seemed to be putting in effort. The kid's face was scrunched up in concentration.
An hour passed.
Then another.
By the time Qingxue finally called an end to the session, Alexei's legs were numb, his back hurt, and he'd felt nothing resembling spiritual energy.
"Same time tomorrow," Qingxue said. "You too, Changgui. Keep practicing."
Changgui nodded eagerly.
Alexei just stretched, working the kinks out of his spine. "Yeah, sure. Same time tomorrow. I can't wait."
Mengyao was led away by Yan for more advanced instruction, apparently succeeding at qi-sensing meant graduating to cultivation techniques. Changgui followed Quan for what sounded like a very dry lecture on cultivation theory.
Alexei, meanwhile, headed straight for his mob farm. Because if he couldn't make progress in cultivation, he could at least make progress in Minecraft.
The mob farm had spawned another batch overnight, maybe forty or fifty monsters in total. They were not as densely packed as before, but it was still a decent haul.
He began the clearing process, sword in one hand and bow ready when needed. The kills came quickly.
When the last creeper fell, he gathered the drops.
1 gold helmet, 1 iron boots, 1 leather tunic, 1 leather boots, 35 rotten flesh, 20 bones, 12 gunpowder, 23 arrows
He dismantled the equipment immediately, breaking it down into base components.
5 gold ingots, 4 iron ingots, 12 leather
"Finally."
---
Back in his house, Alexei pulled out every piece of iron he owned and laid it on the crafting table.
He opened the crafting grid, hands moving through the familiar motions.
Twenty-seven ingots crafted into three iron blocks, arranged in a row across the top of the grid.
Four more ingots filled in below, forming a T-shape.
"Craft."
The materials vanished. A grey anvil roughly the size of two palms appeared in his hands.
CLANG.
The moment he stopped focusing on it, the anvil dropped to the floor beside the crafting table, settling at exactly the same height as the table's surface.
"Perfect."
Then he paused.
His pickaxe was gone.
He had dismantled it for iron.
"...blyat."
He stared at the book, then at the anvil, then back at the book.
All dressed up with nowhere to go.
A gold pickaxe would mine faster, technically, but gold tools only had 33 durability. Even with Unbreaking III, they'd barely last through a single mining session. Completely useless for work.
His eyes swept through his inventory.
I can't let this moment go to waste. I have to enchant something or I won't be able to sleep tonight.
Finally, his gaze settled on the sword Duan had given him.
It was not ideal, but it had potential. More importantly, it was available.
He placed the sword onto the anvil interface. The weapon appeared in the upper slot and then materialized on the anvil's surface below.
Now came the enchantments.
He had options. Quite a few, in fact.
There were the vanilla enchantments: Fire Aspect, Knockback, Mending, Looting, Unbreaking.
Then there were the modded ones: Poisoning, Auto-Repair, Life Drain, Blindness.
He could even upgrade the sword's existing Sharpness IV to Sharpness V, which would raise its damage to 7.5. That was half a point higher than a diamond sword.
But the base damage was only 1 point, and it weighed almost nothing. Building it for direct combat felt wrong.
He preferred striking people with a sword that weighed several tons. It was more satisfying, and the physics made more sense.
That settled it. He would build this one for support.
After reviewing his enchantment book collection, he narrowed the choices down to two.
Auto-Repair I - A modded enchantment with a maximum level of III. Each level restored one point of durability per minute.
Disarm III - A modded enchantment with a maximum level of V. Each level added a 20% chance to knock a weapon out of an opponent's hand. At level III, that meant a 60% disarm chance.
He checked the experience costs for each.
Auto-Repair: 5 levels (1×2 base + 3 penalty)
Disarm: 6 levels (3 base + 3 penalty)
The sword's existing Sharpness IV and Spiritual Energy Circuit I enchantments were clearly being factored into the penalty. That made sense. The more enchantments an item carried, the harder it became to add another.
Auto-Repair appeared to fall into the same category as Mending, Flame, or Infinity, which were double-base-cost enchantments.
As for order of application? It didn't matter much.
If he added Disarm first, the penalty for the next enchantment would increase to 7 levels. Auto-Repair after that would cost 9 levels. Total: 6 + 9 = 15 levels.
If he added Auto-Repair first, Disarm afterward would cost 10 levels. Total: 5 + 10 = 15 levels.
Either way, the final cost was the same. He might as well start with Disarm.
He placed the enchantment book in the slot.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Three hammer strikes echoed through the room as the anvil worked its magic. His experience level dropped from 16 to 10.
The sword's surface didn't gain the purple shimmer that Minecraft items usually got when enchanted, probably because it wasn't originally an MC item, but he could feel the change nonetheless.
He pulled up the sword's new stats:
[Mystic-Etched Rose-Gold Sword:
Spiritual Energy Circuit I
Sharpness IV
Disarm III
+6 (1+5) Attack Damage]
He placed it back on the anvil for round two.
Auto-Repair next.
The cost had jumped from 5 levels to 9, exactly as predicted.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
[Level 10 → Level 1]
He checked the final result.
[Mystic-Etched Rose-Gold Sword:
Spiritual Energy Circuit I
Sharpness IV
Disarm III
Auto-Repair I
+6 (1+5) Attack Damage]
"Not bad," he muttered, giving the sword a swing.
A weapon that could disarm opponents 60% of the time and slowly repair itself had undeniable utility.
Could he push it further? Stack on more enchantments until the blade practically glowed with divine light?
In theory, yes. In reality, that would require an unlimited supply of enchantment books.
He very much did not have that.
His current stock could not support that kind of reckless min-maxing. He would need to farm more books first, which meant more fishing, more mob grinding, and more time invested.
It was something to work toward.
At least he had the grindstone as a fallback. If he ever needed to strip the enchantments and start over, the option was there.
For now, this would do.