The more she spent time exploring the wilderness, the more she began to understand the way the world worked here.
First - every enemy dropped something when killed, whether it was a part of their body or simply coins that were in their possession for… whatever reason.
Next - although there was no longer any need for her to chop down trees for wood, doing so gave her some new items that fall from said plants, such as fruits, acorns, etc.
Then… well, actually, that was pretty much all she could think of.
Oh, except for the small fact that together with the duplication system that Terraria's world had for players, she found a broken method to become rich - by duplicating her coins collected from slaying some swarm of slime (huge thanks to her new pet finch, Fino) she managed to max her ammunition/currency slot with infinite platinum coins.
Truly, the world's creators had overlooked this super broken system… unless they actually let this slide by intentionally.
Nevertheless, Mikan felt rather clever in her corruption of the game world's finances. Perhaps this would be something to brag to Andrew about.
For now, though, she supposed she could focus more on exploration, since it wouldn't do to miss out on something interesting just because she was busy drooling over infinite money.
Most of the forest didn't change at all, however, to her dismay. Trees, slime mob, plants, cute critters, it stayed like this for what felt like hours.
She did come across some sort of cave that led deeper underground. At the entrance, there was a treasure chest that slightly put her off - was someone living here? Was there anyone using this treasure chest, who was exploring the caves and probably wouldn't do well with some stranger appearing from nowhere?
Upon rummaging through the chest, however - which she did while fully acknowledging the lack of manners and the criticism she wanted to give herself - Mikan eventually became convinced that it was one of those stray treasure chests that existed for player convenience.
There wasn't even any sort of edible food inside, so whoever wanted to live here would have to have a damn good tolerance for hunger, or for whatever reasons, be carrying all food everywhere they went.
And so, after pillaging the treasure chest, she exited the cave.
...well, actually... Mikan promptly grabbed the treasure chest, wondering if she could take the box too. Boxes are quite a useful storage item.
To her surprise... it worked.
The chest detached itself from the ground and shrunk into the size of a normal block.
Mikan blinked. The more she tested things out, the weirder she felt the Terraria world was.
A similar idea to her money-duplication corruption formed in her head. The girl opened her hologram menu and navigated her way to the research panel, then stuffed the wooden treasure chest into the slot. Seconds later, she had a short party consisting of her throwing treasure chests around, drunk with questionable power.
Eventually, her pet finch Fino detected the revival of a slime mob and began attacking them from afar, snapping the girl out of her strange party.
Thus, the girl used her infinite supply of rope to climb over the cave, getting rid of the issue of approaching slime mobs.
That's when she saw it.
Before her eyes, as trees began fading away, as the soil grew dark, and grass turned a eerie shade of red.
In the distant, a sickening feeling began to invade her body as she stared on and on.
Something about this territory screamed 'danger' to her, telling her to get away as fast as possible.
Mikan paled and took a step forward. "I shouldn't... I shouldn't chicken out now." The girl prepared to venture deeper into this new area, when her eyes finally took notice of movement far away. Silhouettes that she pushed off as strange, chopped trees, or even delusions, seemed to be moving around in the forest of red. A few seconds observation told her they were probably zombies again, moving mindlessly.
Although... zombies seem to disappear when it's morning. Keeping that in her mind, she slowly moved closer to get a clearer vision of whatever these new monsters were, being careful not to-
snap
- make any noise. The girl cursed in her head as the monsters, which were now clearer in her eyes, all turned their heads towards her with surprisingly good hearing. "Son of a bitch. Why must you do this to me, you piece of shit author!?" the girl hissed.
Taking in a short but good glimpse of the now-pursuing monsters' appearances, the girl felt her stomach twist and turn, wanting to reject all the fruits she had consumed from hitting trees hours prior.
Tall, grotesque, humanoid lumps of meat, with their beating brain fully exposed and a strange, pink strip of flesh in place of where their eyes should be. Essentially they looked like simple meat dolls, body wise, but their jaws were unhinged like an open door, a mouthful of teeth glistening with drool and something with a red tint that she hoped wasn't blood.
For a fun-looking sandbox world, things suddenly turned creepy.
The girl quickly turned around to run, before remembering she had only taken two steps from the cave's upside, leaving her no space to run unless she wanted to risk jumping into the mob of slime and try to dart out of the mess. Glancing back, the walking humanoid meat dolls were getting closer and closer to the greenery separating her and the not-green land.
As Fino continued swiping down towards some slime below, Mikan bit her lips.
She had a simple idea, one that she hopefully doesn't mess up.
Taking out her infinite blocks of wood, she created a barricade covering almost all sides, leaving her with the direction of where she came from, where the slime were waiting. At least, this guaranteed the meat monsters wouldn't be able to attack her, now. ...hopefully.
...upon further contemplation, couldn't the terrifying creatures just circle around her barricade? It wasn't like they'd die just from jumping off the cave's top side, they'd just shrug it off and travel through the forest and make it to where she wanted to jump.
Mikan paled more. This was a terrible situation to find herself in.
She'd be in deep shit if she didn't hurry and make a decision, so...
The girl bit her lips. "Fino," she called. Her pet finch paused its assault on slime and flew back to her, resting on her head. Mikan glanced downwards. "I'm going to take a risk... try to keep them away after I jump, alright?" The bird didn't respond, but she had a feeling it would've nodded. Or maybe it did, she wouldn't know, not when it was on top of her head, out of sigh.
Taking in a deep breath, the girl swiftly jumped off the cave's top side. She landed in the mob of slime, her legs immediately sizzling with pain upon contact. The girl hissed, but tried not to fall on her back completely, and instead did a 180 and rushed into the cave. Her wooden blocks prepared, she quickly formed a barrier of wood keeping the slime mob out.
The few that managed to hop through then-uncovered openings were promptly struck backwards by Fino.
Almost a minute later, her vision was completely dark, all light sources blocked by her wooden barricade.
Luckily, she had an infinite supply of torches.
And so, lighting up the insides of the cave, the girl sighed with relief and glanced deeper into the cavern. "Welp. That was a hectic morning," she mused. "The only thing I can do now is... look around in this cave, I guess."
As Fino recovered its place on her head, the girl scratched her hair before unsheathing her sword in one hand, torch in another, walking towards the unknown.
Hopefully there won't be more weird, fucked up looking creatures in here.