Malphegor
patreon
MCIM Ch. 23
🕑 Added 2025-09-19 02:07:32 +0000 UTCBy the time they walked out of the mall, the sun had completely set and streetlights were flickering on all across the city. Mario and Coulson hauled bags of supplies back to the truck, though most of the stuff that could be converted into crafting materials was already safely stored in Mario's inventory. The rest was just for show.
Blade hadn't come shopping with them. Instead, he'd stayed with the truck, keeping an eye on Pearl and making sure their captive vampire didn't cook himself to death in the back.
"Alright, let's head back," Mario said, shoving the remaining decoy purchases into his inventory.
Vroom.
The truck roared to life and sped toward Central Park. But when they arrived at the entrance, they hit another snag, the park was even more crowded than it had been during the day. Families were having evening picnics, couples were walking hand-in-hand, and street performers were working the late crowd.
"Fuck it, we'll wait until after midnight," Mario said, parking in a nearby lot.
He jumped down from the cab and, after checking to make sure no pedestrians were around, went to the back of the truck. When he opened the cargo doors, Pearl was crammed inside like luggage. He could swear the fat vampire looked a little thinner, though that might have just been wishful thinking.
The moment Pearl saw Mario, he immediately perked up.
"Oh! Mario, you finally came back!"
His excitement was so intense that the entire truck started rocking. The guy was built like a human earthquake.
"I thought you'd forgotten about me! I nearly starved to death in that archive room!"
Mario looked at Pearl's wobbling layers of fat and chuckled. "How could I forget? I'm still counting on you to help me with things."
"But right now there are too many people outside. You'll have to wait here a bit longer. Once it's after midnight and the crowds thin out, I'll take you back to my place."
"Though seriously, you need to lose some weight."
As he spoke, Mario pulled two dark-red human hearts from his inventory and tossed them to Pearl. The vampire sniffed them once, then immediately shoved both into his mouth.
"This stuff is incredible! My God!"
Mario just smiled. As a vampire hunter, those things were completely useless to him, he didn't eat that shit anyway. But Pearl seemed to love them, and keeping the fat bastard happy was important for his plans.
Off to the side, Coulson was staring wide-eyed. This was his first time seeing Pearl, and the impression was definitely unforgettable.
He whispered to Blade, "Are vampire meals this fancy these days?"
Blade shook his head slightly. "This is the first time I've seen anything like this too."
Mario glanced at the vampire fang in his inventory, and a bold idea started forming in his head.
If I could turn Pearl into a Minecraft vampire, that would be incredibly convenient.
His eyes lit up at the thought, and Pearl shivered under his gaze.
"W-what are you planning?" he asked nervously. "Just to be clear, I can help you with anything, but I won't sell my body!"
Mario stared at the vampire for a moment.
"Mamma Mia, with all that fat, I could go swimming in you!"
"I just wanted to ask, do you want to become stronger?"
A spark of hope flashed in Pearl's eyes. Who wouldn't want to become stronger? He certainly didn't want to stay immobile forever, relying on others to feed him. If people forgot about him, he'd just starve to death helplessly.
"Of course I do!"
Blade and Coulson exchanged glances but said nothing, just watching to see what Mario would do next.
Mario jumped into the truck bed, holding a vampire fang. In the game, using this item would poison the user for three seconds and grant them the "Sanguinare Vampiris" status. After one in-game day, about twenty minutes in reality, the affliction would transform the player into a vampire.
Normally, vampires couldn't use this item. The system would display: "You are already a vampire!"
Mario aimed the vampire fang at Pearl and mentally activated it. The fang instantly disappeared from his hand, and Pearl's massive body turned a sickly green color. Wisps of green particles began rising from his skin like toxic smoke.
"I feel terrible..."
Pearl felt his body weakening, pain radiating from deep within his organs. The three seconds of poisoning passed quickly, and before he could think too much about it, his body started recovering.
"I felt so awful... huh? That feeling's gone now!"
If not for the residual damage that hadn't fully healed yet, he would have thought the whole experience was just his imagination.
Mario walked over to check Pearl's condition, and to his surprise, he discovered that he could actually see Pearl's status information floating above his head. This was a new development.
Sanguinare Vampiris: ∞
The interface showed infinite duration, though in reality it would only last twenty minutes.
Pearl examined his body and asked doubtfully, "So... have I gotten stronger? Why don't I feel any different?"
Mario rolled his eyes. "You're overthinking it. It's not that simple. Just stay here and wait for me."
With that, he jumped out of the truck and pulled some materials from his inventory to start crafting an Altar of Inspiration. Unfortunately, without glass, he couldn't proceed. He looked around but didn't see any construction sites nearby where he might scavenge materials.
Blade and Coulson watched as he took out some kind of special crafting block and placed it on the ground. Seeing him get stuck and stand there looking frustrated, they immediately realized he'd hit a roadblock.
"What you said earlier, was it true? Can you really make Pearl stronger?"
Snapped out of his thoughts, Mario turned to see Blade and Coulson beside him. He sat down on his crafting table.
"It should be possible to make him stronger, but right now I'm still experimenting. Problem is, I'm short on sand. Without sand, I can't continue the next step."
At that, Coulson immediately said, "I can help with that! How much do you need?" He was already pulling out his phone.
"A lot. A whole lot. But for now, just enough for an emergency will work."
For Mario, glass was a complete consumable. He'd need enormous quantities eventually, hundreds of cubic meters wouldn't be too much. But for the moment, he just needed enough to craft three pieces of glass to complete the altar.
Coulson nodded and quickly dialed S.H.I.E.L.D.'s logistics department.
"I need a large quantity of sand delivered to the parking lot west of Central Park."
"Understood!"
The person on the other end didn't even ask why. With Coulson's clearance level, requisitioning supplies like this was trivial.
After hanging up, he smiled at Mario. "Looks like we'll have to wait a bit."
Mario nodded. He wished he could just make a phone call and get whatever he wanted delivered too.
With nothing else to do for now, he pulled the watermelon he'd bought from his inventory. Instead of converting it directly into a Minecraft watermelon, he cut it into slices first. That way, when he transformed them, he'd get many more watermelon slices in return.
Coulson and Blade watched like tourists seeing their first magic show, staring wide-eyed as Mario worked. The way he combined gold and watermelon on his crafting table to create a glowing golden watermelon slice was completely beyond their understanding.
"What's this thing for?" Coulson asked, pointing at the shimmering golden slice in Mario's hand. It looked anything but scientific, though come to think of it, Mario's abilities were already way beyond modern science anyway.
"You mean this glistering melon slice? It's just an alchemy ingredient. You can use it to brew potions."
"Like this."
As he spoke, he pulled out more materials and crafted a brewing stand, placing it on the crafting table. Coulson and Blade leaned in eagerly, watching his every move.
He dug a small hole in the ground and poured water into it with a bucket, creating a water source block. Then he pulled out glass bottles he'd bought, which had all been converted into Minecraft glass bottles, and filled three bottles from the water source.
Next, he tossed some blaze powder into the brewing stand as fuel, then placed the three water bottles inside. After that, he added nether wart and glowstone that he'd collected during his trips to the Nether.
After about thirty seconds, three bottles of healing potion were ready.
Even though Coulson and Blade had watched the entire process with their own eyes, they still doubted what they'd seen. Something that had taken barely ten minutes would probably take them a lifetime to fully process.
Seeing their dumbfounded expressions, Mario chuckled and shook one of the healing potions.
"Want to give it a try?"
Coulson immediately nodded. Getting injured was no big deal for him, the important thing was testing the effects of whatever Mario was holding.
"Sure. What do you need me to do?"
Looking at Coulson's earnest expression, Mario just smiled and shook his head.
"No rush. You'll have a chance to test it soon enough."
He hadn't brewed the healing potion randomly, it was to test whether Pearl, after his transformation, could gain the special vampiric abilities from the Minecraft mod. After all, in the game, vampires could drain blood from a distance without even touching their victims.
"We'll wait until Pearl transforms before we test anything."
Just then, a construction truck came barreling toward the parking lot, and Coulson's phone rang at the same time.
Glancing at the caller ID, Coulson said, "Looks like our sand delivery is here."
He answered the call as the truck drove straight into the parking lot and came to a stop right in front of the three of them.
He quickly walked over to the driver. "Leave the truck here and wait for my call."
"Got it."
The driver, clearly a trained professional, didn't hesitate. He jumped down from the cab and left the parking lot without a second glance.
The truck bed was piled high with sand. Once the driver was gone, Mario climbed up the side ladder, pulled out a shovel from his inventory, and started transferring the entire load into his storage space.
"Finally, sand!"
Jumping down from the truck, he immediately set up a furnace and started smelting glass. Blade had seen Mario smelt things before, so he wasn't too surprised by the process. But when he watched an entire truckload of sand disappear into Mario's storage space, and remembered the barren wasteland Mario had cleared outside his vampire base, a question suddenly popped into his head.
"Just how much can your storage space hold?"
At that, Coulson immediately perked up as well, clearly interested in the answer.
Mario was stumped by the sudden question. In his head, he tried to calculate the storage capacity of a modded Minecraft inventory. Images flashed through his mind of all the storage mods he used to play with: Sophisticated Backpacks, Bigger Stacks, Better Storage, Applied Energistics 2...
He looked down, falling silent for a moment.
Seeing Mario stay quiet, Blade thought he might have touched on something sensitive. "I was just curious! You don't have to answer if it's inconvenient."
Mario snapped out of his thoughts and said with a wry smile, "It's fine, it's no secret."
He shrugged and grinned at both of them. "Honestly, I don't even know how much I can carry. There's no way to calculate it."
An awkward silence fell over them, broken only by a cool breeze.
Then Pearl's voice came from inside the truck.
"Mario, are you still there? I feel like something's happening to my body!"
Mario immediately walked over and jumped onto the truck bed. Looking at Pearl, who no longer had the Sanguinare Vampiris status, he asked, "Can you see hearts floating above my head?"
"Hearts?"
Pearl's face scrunched up in confusion. He stared at Mario's head and shook it slowly. "No. How could there be hearts?"
Mario could clearly see the 110 health points displayed above Pearl's head. Looks like he hasn't been fully converted to game mechanics...
"Then try saying 'inventory.'"
Though confused, Pearl followed Mario's instruction. "Inventory."
Mario watched his expression carefully but saw no changes, which gave him a headache. Does this count as a successful transformation or not?
Seeing Mario's troubled expression, Pearl started to panic as well. Don't tell me I've lost all my value...
With Frost dead and no other vampire willing to care for him, if Mario abandoned him, his massive body would just end up starving to death in some forgotten corner.
His body trembled as his small eyes locked onto Mario, waiting for judgment.
"Do you feel like you've gained any special abilities?" Mario asked. "Try using them on me."
Pearl immediately recalled the strange power that had surfaced in his mind earlier. Almost instinctively, he nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes! I think so!"
He hesitated for a moment, then stretched out his hand nervously. "It seems like a blood-draining ability... Maybe we should find another vampire to test it on? Right now, I feel like I can drain blood from other vampires!"
Mario was a vampire hunter, he wasn't stupid enough to let Pearl loose on innocent humans in the streets.
He raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Not a bad idea. When we get the chance, I'll let you hunt vampires yourself. For now, just try it on me."
Pearl didn't argue further. He extended his hand toward Mario, and blood began flowing from his palm. At the same time, Mario's body was surrounded by swirling red particle effects as his health quickly dropped.
"Catch this!"
Mario tossed Pearl an empty glass bottle. As soon as Pearl caught it, scarlet liquid appeared inside the bottle out of thin air.
