A Village Appeared on My Desktop

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Chapter

8 – Sudden Visit (8)

“Busy these days? When are you off work?”

“I’m already off work. We’re a bit early.”

“Then since we have some time, shall we play a game?”

“Um… I have prior commitments, so I can’t play today.”

Amidst our busy lives, a friend reached out first. However, I had no choice but to decline his invitation to play a game together.

Even though I continued playing, I couldn’t team up with anyone else. So, after rejecting my friend’s contact, I returned to a computer screen still displaying the residents going about their lives.

It seemed like nothing special had happened during my absence. With such thoughts nagging at me, I figured it would be best to quickly arm them properly.

[Game Activated]

As soon as the right time came, I launched the game and brought in the same four people I had called last time.

As the saying goes, “Even a dog learns a trick after three years,” they appeared to be quite accustomed to the situation and weren’t particularly surprised.

‘Are they expecting something?’

Rather, their expressions seemed oddly different from the day before. Unlike the slight wariness or distance I felt yesterday, ever since I gave Riena the iron sword, they looked eager, almost as if they thought I might give them more.

“I can give you something.”

I let out a small laugh. After all, I intended to meet their expectations. Today, I planned to head into the mine right from the daytime to search for iron ore.

But I had no intention of leaving them behind. Conveniently, there was a rocky mountain nearby. I took them there.

‘After all, it’s for everyone’s benefit.’

Afterward, I distributed four pickaxes made according to the guild’s specifications. When I pointed at the rocky mountain with my hand, they understood my intention and began to mine.

Their work was not to create stone blocks of a uniform size like I would but rather to chip away at the rocks just like real stones; however, that was sufficient.

When they touched the blocks, as if to become reality, my character would move to consume the stones they left behind.

‘Just as I thought.’

A stone fragment entered my inventory as a single stone block. This phenomenon was something I discovered yesterday when I accidentally touched the meat they had left on the ground and consumed it again. I thought of using these to create sturdy walls around the bomb shelter.

Of course, my speed for mining was several times faster than theirs, but since achievements were tied to gathering a certain amount of resources, it was essential for all of us.

“—.”

“–, —!”

As I attempted to leave, they shouted something at me. It seemed like they were offering their greetings. Especially Chieftain Balun appeared extra enthusiastic.

*

“Will he bring us iron items again?”

“I’m not sure. But didn’t we confirm yesterday that it’s quite possible? There’s no reason for him not to.”

With his array of lively hopping movements, he soon disappeared into the distance. Watching his back, Balun smiled at Riena’s words and picked up his pickaxe again.

“Even if we mine these mere stone fragments, we’ll be rewarded with iron items or meat. Everyone knows how hard we worked to obtain iron weapons before we came here.”

“That’s right. Didn’t it cost us a whole horse when prices were high?”

As Balun spoke, Koon echoed his sentiments; for them, who had no smelting or forging techniques, iron weapons were extremely valuable items. So, if they could obtain them after just a few rounds of mining, it would be a blessing.

“B-but it’s still hard work. Let’s take a short break.”

“There’s no helping it.”

Of course, they weren’t game characters, so mining hard stones wasn’t an easy task.

They had to rest as much as they worked to sustain their bodies, resulting in terrible efficiency.

Unlike others who relied solely on physical abilities, Riena, who had a strong body enhanced by mana, found it challenging enough that ordinary people were already too exhausted to lift their arms.

[Trait Unlocked]

[Trait: Miner]

“Hmm?”

That’s when Koon, one of them, felt something unusual in his body.

His body became incredibly light while he started chipping away at stones like cutting through tofu—a significant improvement in his mining efficiency.

“W-what is this?”

“What’s going on?!”

Surprised, they all rushed to Koon, who had just shattered a stone about his size. Koon himself was staring, dazed, at the pickaxe he held.

The wooden handle felt perfectly snug in his grip like never before.

“Oh my, it seems Koon has acquired mana in his body.”

“Is that true? Did Koon become a warrior?”

“But it feels a bit… No, it feels very different…”

Riena, examining Koon’s body, couldn’t reach a proper conclusion. They couldn’t see their status screens, so they could only ascertain that Koon had gained some special power.

“Well, isn’t this great? If he can work better with this power, he’ll surely receive something better from him.”

Oddly enough, Koon was calmer than the others around him. He positively embraced the fact that his strength was now specialized in wielding the pickaxe for resource gathering and resumed his work.

The stones broke much more easily compared to before. He began digging through the rocky mountain like some sort of excavator.

And this task continued unabated until night fell quickly upon us.

‘Is he in shock?’

As I was getting ready to head to the bomb shelter, I froze in place at the sight Koon created with his newfound miner trait.

The residents, seeing his expression, took it as him being in shock. After all, he had stopped controlling his character and was hovering over Koon’s status screen in surprise.

“Are you satisfied?”

Balun stepped forward to speak to him. Words may not bridge the gap, but their hearts connected. He nodded repeatedly after retrieving all the spilled stones into his inventory.

“Be careful with your strength. Don’t rush in blindly!”

“Raise your spears!”

In the nighttime, though only the environment had changed, there was no reason for them not to come out; they confronted the werewolves, a type of monster that had appeared nearby the bomb shelter.

This time, not just Riena, but others were included as well. The steel spears and swords they held in their hands served as proof.

Under Riena’s command to swiftly strike down foes with their iron blades, the three formed a formation and calmly took down enemies one by one.

[Achievement Unlocked: Defeated 50 Werewolves]

They were utterly unaware that by doing this, they were clearing their achievements. They only understood that their actions were helpful to the “master of this world” and aimed to gain his goodwill for more resources.

‘They’re building walls.’

Riena took down a werewolf that leaped at her and glanced over at the ongoing scene.

This time, he hadn’t gone to the mine, and he was constructing a massive wall that greatly exceeded their height, built from the stones he had and those they had mined around the bomb shelter.

From the residents’ perspective, it felt like a giant playground entirely isolated from the outside world.

Having completed the wall, he too grabbed a sword and jumped in to fight alongside them, and just before the residents reached their limits, they managed to clean up all the werewolves trapped within the wall.

“This is the first time I’ve fought so many monsters.”

“We were lucky.”

However, just as everyone collapsed to the ground, catching their breaths, he wouldn’t halt his actions. He was working so tirelessly that even Riena, impressed, looked at him with admiration.

‘Is he making a field or something? With no water?’

After building the wall, he started tilling the fields next. Holding a hoe-like tool in his hand, he moved the dirt in rows, turning the earth up and sprinkling seeds in.

“Look at that. It’s water.”

Farming with the game system was absurdly easy. As he poured water next to the tilled soil, water blocks formed a small creek in an instant.

“Unbelievable.”

Balun, gathering his courage first, stepped forward and dipped his hand into the shimmering water. Once his hand touched, it was no longer a mere graphic; actual water swelled to waist height, rippling.

*

‘Is this really fascinating, though?’

The game lightly disregarded certain laws of physics. Because it was a game. But for the villagers, to whom this had now become reality, such facts were not easily accepted.

‘It feels off to only eat meat.’

They almost arrived barehanded, and it was unclear whether they had farming techniques.

However, given that they could fulfill their food needs with quickly growing crops in this game, rather than laboriously planting seeds year-round in the world on their desktop, setting up fields seemed far more efficient.

Tilling the ground, harvesting, and replanting took mere moments in this world. Even using fertilizer made from the monster drops they collected, everything would grow in an instant.

With the items obtained from the bodies of monsters they had defeated, I created fertilizer, and when I gave them the first harvested rice, they looked utterly dumbfounded.

This size of field seemed enough to feed just over thirty of them.

More than that, I was concerned about the fact that Koon had unlocked the miner trait. That confirmed that what they could gain through the game wasn’t merely limited to resources.

‘Should I check out the mine today?’

Since I also needed to achieve certain tasks to continue using this game, I thought about taking the residents with me to a further location once I had prepared sufficiently. With one of them having developed the miner trait, the conditions had improved.

[External Intruders Detected]

“What?”

But at that moment, something caught my eye outside the game screen I had left in spear-mode.

Similar to the day when the wolf pack invaded, I saw a sizable group of something coming from the western terrain, the left section of the desktop.

‘People?’

The identities of the figures were neither beasts nor monsters. A group of people, dressed similarly to the residents, appeared to be rushing toward here in a panic.

And trailing them was another group of people.

As I zoomed in, my eyes widened. A warrior chasing after those fleeing on horseback swung his sword, and one of them fell dead. This was undoubtedly no situation to overlook.

Moreover, the direction they were heading in was toward the village.