"Pretty solid efficiency, huh? Wait... why did it stop spawning?" Marcus stared at the suddenly empty netherrack platform, confused as hell.
He'd only been doing this for what, four or five hours? That wasn't even a long farming session by Minecraft standards.
So... what the hell was going on?
He scratched his head. Had the system somehow detected he was idle farming? That would be seriously annoying if true.
He decided to investigate, making a quick trip down from his elevated platform and then returning. But when he got back, the netherrack was still completely empty, not a single zombified piglin in sight.
Even after leaving the Nether entirely and coming back through the portal, there were still no signs of mob respawning on his platform.
This made no sense. The spawning mechanics had been working perfectly before.
Carrying his confusion with him, he ventured deeper into the main Nether landscape. What he found there made his jaw drop.
The Nether floor, which had originally only hosted a few hundred zombified piglins scattered across the terrain, was now absolutely packed with them. They covered the landscape, stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction.
"Damn," Marcus breathed, finally understanding what had happened. "The mob cap. I hit the goddamn mob cap."
While he'd been farming mobs up on his platform, they'd never stopped spawning down below on the main Nether surface. In fact, for every zombified piglin he'd killed above, another one had spawned somewhere below to replace it.
The good news was that none of these piglins showed any hostility toward him. If they'd all decided to swarm him at once, he would've been hacked to death in seconds, regardless of his abilities.
He swallowed hard, staring out at the sea of golden swords and pig faces. The whole point of building his farm above the bedrock layer had been to avoid this exact problem, to create an isolated spawning area where he could farm efficiently.
Turns out having mobs that don't despawn wasn't the advantage he'd thought it would be.
"Well, fuck," he muttered. "So much for that brilliant plan."
The zombified piglin farm was effective, sure, but it came with a serious cost. At this rate, the entire Nether would become uninhabitable, packed wall-to-wall with mobs.
He decided to cut his losses and check out what loot he'd managed to collect before the spawning stopped.
He examined the chest full of drops from his farming session. It was packed to the brim with items.
Rotten flesh was everywhere, each piece worth 3 EMC. Not much individually, but the sheer quantity added up to a decent sum.
Gold nuggets were scattered throughout, worth 48 EMC apiece and nearly as numerous as the rotten flesh.
But the real treasure was the golden swords. These weapons had wildly fluctuating values depending on their durability and enchantments, and they filled most of the storage space.
He pulled out one of the enchanted golden swords that had caught his attention. This one was special because it carried a Looting I enchantment, pretty valuable for a random drop.
He sorted through the other enchanted weapons he'd collected:
Sharpness I × 21
Knockback I × 22
Fire Aspect I × 6
Unbreaking I × 3
The prices on these were surprisingly high. Even the cheapest Sharpness I enchanted golden sword was worth over 2,100 EMC, and the value only increased with better durability.
While it was theoretically possible to repair them using an anvil, golden swords had pathetically low durability, only 33 points, making them weaker than even wooden swords, which lasted for 60.
He stored all the enchanted weapons for future use or trading, then converted the rest into pure EMC.
His EMC balance skyrocketed past 90 million.
And that was just from some hours of semi-idle farming. If he could find a way to make this sustainable, the profits would be insane.
"Maybe I should build a proper mob farm inside the main Nether?" he mused, but immediately felt his head start pounding at the thought of the workload involved.
He wasn't a hardcore technical Minecraft player, but he knew enough about spawn-proofing to understand what would be required. He'd need to light up or block off massive areas of the Nether to force spawns into his controlled area.
The main problem was his lack of redstone. Without it, he could only consider manually excavating huge areas, which would be exhausting.
Breaking bedrock without redstone was nearly impossible using conventional methods.
But then he remembered his exploding eggs.
If he made an S-grade one, who knew what kind of destruction it might cause? Could it blast open an entire region? That would certainly save him a lot of manual labor.
Of course, there was also a simpler approach: just remodel the existing Nether environment instead of trying to build above it.
After all, the only reason to build above the bedrock layer was efficiency. But based on what he'd just seen, the spawning rate in the regular Nether was plenty fast enough for his needs.
The main issue with remodeling would be the sheer amount of work involved.
"Should I even bother?" Marcus looked at his EMC balance.
Honestly, it was more than enough for his current needs. He had plenty of resources to work with.
It definitely wasn't that he was too lazy to tackle such a massive construction project. Definitely not.
He returned to the Soul Sand Valley where his portal was located. Strangely, this area remained completely free of monster spawns. Even the zombified piglins seemed to avoid coming near it.
If he decided to build a proper nether mob farm in the future, this could serve as the perfect safe spot from hostile mobs.
The only issue he'd need to solve would be ghast spawning, since those floating menaces could appear anywhere and rain fireballs down on him.
Just thinking about manually digging out spawn-proofing areas made his head hurt worse.
"Screw it. This is enough for now."
He pulled the Munch-Munch Fruit from his inventory and converted it to EMC. The fruit he'd been carrying around was finally worth something concrete.
As for the Shroom-Shroom Fruit, that fruit wasn't worth spending 80 million EMC to convert. He'd save his resources for something more useful.
"Though with all this, the importance of the bedrock layer just dropped to nearly zero. But if I could trap some powerful enemies up there and then destroy the entrance afterward... I wonder what would happen to them."
The mental image made him chuckle a bit.
Anyone locked up on the bedrock layer would probably go insane within three days. After all, there was absolutely nothing up there, at most, they'd find some mushrooms to fill their stomachs with.
Regular prisons crammed five people into a tiny cell, creating misery through confinement.
A real prison would be a vast, endless world where it looked like you could go anywhere, but everywhere was exactly the same. The psychological torture of infinite emptiness might be worse than any physical restraint.
---
Back on the Going Merry, dawn was still hours away.
Marcus made his way alone up the mountain peak toward Drum Castle. Because of the peculiar properties of the Soul Sand Valley, he hadn't ventured out to find a nether fortress or obtain nether wart. But he still had a promise to keep.
When he arrived at the castle, he found Kureha sitting on the stone steps leading to the entrance. Despite wearing only light clothing, she seemed completely unaffected by the bitter cold wind that would have frozen a normal person.
"You didn't leave?" Kureha looked at Marcus with surprise.
The entire armory had been consumed by Wapol's powers, so unlike in the original story, she hadn't been able to give Chopper "Hiriluk's Sakura fireworks" farewell gift.
"Nah, we still need to record the magnetic field for our Log Pose. Besides..." Marcus smiled warmly at her. "Is this really the right way to say goodbye?"
"Farewells don't need elaborate words. And he..." Kureha trailed off with a heavy sigh.
She wasn't the only one reluctant to see this separation happen. Chopper was struggling with it too, though he was trying to hide his emotions.
Marcus grinned and began crafting, his hands moving quickly as he assembled iron blocks into a familiar shape.
"Even though we're taking Chopper with us, I made a promise before, and I plan to keep it. This is an iron golem. He's pretty heavy, so he probably can't climb down on a rope, but I've already made another one at the base of the mountain as well."
The massive iron construct took shape before their eyes.
"From now on, you can rely on him for transportation and protection. Oh, and you don't mind if I modify the area around here a bit, do you?"
Kureha stared at the towering figure. She'd seen plenty of Devil Fruit abilities in her long life, but Marcus' power to create this golem was still impressive.
"Do whatever you want," she said with a dismissive wave.
Marcus turned his attention to the trees surrounding the castle grounds.
"These are cherry blossom trees, right?"
"Yes... and no."
"What do you mean?"
Kureha let out another sigh. "The original species was cherry blossom, but I've spent decades modifying them. Generation after generation of selective breeding, trying to create a variety that could survive this harsh climate. I finally managed to develop a strain that can resist the extreme cold, but as you can see..." She gestured at the bare branches. "They don't actually bloom cherry blossoms anymore. So I can't really call them cherry blossom trees."
Marcus walked over to one of the modified trees and pulled out bone meal from his inventory.
He applied the bone meal directly to the tree's base.
The effect was absolutely breathtaking.
Even in the middle of the howling snowstorm, even with the temperature far below freezing, the cherry blossom tree burst into full bloom. Pink petals unfurled from every branch, creating a stunning splash of color.
He was surprised by the intensity of the pink blooms. "This variety is really vibrant."
The flowering tree looked like a beacon of spring life in the heart of winter.
If only I could permanently MC-ify it... What a pity.
"How did you do that?" Kureha asked, staring at the sight of cherry blossoms blooming in a blizzard.
Marcus explained the properties and uses of bone meal, describing how it could accelerate plant growth and flowering regardless of environmental conditions.
Kureha sighed. "Devil Fruits never cease to surprise me, even after all these years."