Malphegor
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OP: AMP Ch. 49
🕑 Added 2025-08-27 02:23:37 +0000 UTC"Yeah, figured it wouldn't work," Marcus said, scratching his head in disappointment.
The composter was apparently his exclusive piece of equipment. To everyone else, it was just a square wooden barrel that did absolutely nothing special.
Marcus could turn kitchen scraps into bone meal without any problems. But when Nojiko tried it, nothing happened. The composter just sat there like an expensive decoration.
Finally, he decided to test whether other people could use bone meal itself. He handed some to Nojiko and gave her instructions.
"Try focusing your mind and using it on the sapling."
She concentrated, held the bone meal over the small orange tree, and... nothing. Not even a flicker of growth.
Marcus rubbed his temples. If other people could use bone meal, he could build automated bone meal dispensing systems. But if they couldn't even use the stuff manually, there was no point in building it.
"Maybe this stuff works like regular fertilizer?" Nojiko suggested, examining the white powder.
"Yeah, probably."
"What if we just bury it directly in the soil?"
"Hmm... that might actually work."
So Nojiko simply mixed the bone meal into the tilled earth around the sapling's roots and waited.
Several minutes passed with no visible change.
"Doesn't seem to be working," Marcus started to say.
But Nojiko held up her hand, studying the plant. "Look at this branch here, it's growing. You can still see progress if you watch carefully."
Marcus leaned in for a closer look and spotted a tiny flower bud that was indeed developing. The growth rate was painfully slow compared to his instant results, but it was definitely faster than natural plant growth.
Nojiko dug up some of the soil to check on the bone meal. The white powder had become speckled and was clearly being absorbed by the earth.
Marcus nodded, understanding the mechanics now. When he used bone meal directly, it had an instant effect, boom, fully grown plant in seconds.
For non-Minecraft plants, his bone meal still worked but much slower. The whole process might take ten minutes instead of seconds, though the final result would be just as good.
When buried in soil, it worked even slower, maybe thirty minutes or an hour for full effect.
He decided to test it outside the tilled farmland, just to see what would happen.
The results were even more sluggish, so slow he could barely detect any change at all. It was like watching paint dry in slow motion.
It was like different speed settings. Direct application was 1x speed, tilled soil was maybe 0.5x speed, and regular dirt was like 0.1x speed or slower.
Plus, plants grown in untilled soil showed weaker effects overall. Poor soil quality meant poor results, simple as that.
There was another issue too, non-Minecraft plants still dealt with normal problems like aging, disease, and pests. A regular orange tree might live 20-50 years under good conditions, but these fast-grown ones might burn out quicker. Then again, if you could grow a fruit-bearing tree in ten minutes, did it really matter if it only lasted a few years instead of decades?
"I'll leave you a couple chests full of backup hoes," Marcus said, crafting the storage containers and filling them with iron tools. "And I'll set up an automated composter system too. This thing only accepts plants, fruits, and small pieces of meat, nothing bigger than your fingernail or it'll jam up. For cleaning, just check this hopper. If you see weird spots or buildup, reach in and pull them out."
He quickly assembled an automated composting system and walked Nojiko through the maintenance procedures. For Minecraft blocks and items, it would run perfectly without issues, at worst, the hopper might get clogged and you'd just need to open the interface to clear it.
But when processing non-Minecraft garbage, clogs would be visible from the outside so normal people could clean them by hand.
Just then, Sanji came spinning over with his usual flair, carrying a tray of drinks.
"Ah, Nojiko! Would you care to sample the fresh orange juice I just prepared?"
"Thank you, that's very kind," Nojiko accepted the glass with a smile.
After presenting her with the drink, Sanji's curiosity got the better of him and he wandered over to examine the composter setup.
"You're saying this thing can process kitchen waste?"
"Yep, want to give it a test run?"
Sanji didn't need to be asked twice. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two massive garbage bags full of food scraps, peels, and leftovers. Without hesitation, he dumped both bags, plastic and all, directly into the composter's input hopper.
Right before their eyes, the garbage bags shrank down and disappeared into the wooden chest component. Then they heard crunching and grinding noises as the machine got to work.
The gray-brown compost material inside the barrel began slowly increasing in volume. At the same time, oil stains and white residue started appearing in the collection hopper at the bottom.
The buildup kept accumulating until the entire hopper was overflowing and the machine stopped working.
"What's all this stuff?" Sanji asked, poking at the oily residue.
"Things the composter can't process," Marcus explained. "Just clean it out and it'll start running again."
Sanji quickly cleared the hopper, and sure enough, the machine resumed its operation.
"Pretty handy system. Just can't handle oils and bones, huh?"
"Or plastic bags," Marcus added, pulling a large trash bag out of a black pixel that had formed in the hopper.
"This is so convenient! Marcus, we need to install one of these on the ship too."
"Sure thing. I'll build one into the kitchen area."
Sanji's eyes lit up as he remembered something. "Oh yeah, about that thing you mentioned yesterday, using ingredients produced by your abilities for cooking, I actually made something. Want to see?"
"Really? Hell yes, let's check it out!"
Marcus was excited. He'd been curious about how Minecraft food would work when properly prepared by a skilled cook.
Back in the kitchen, he stared at a plate of spaghetti, examining it from every angle.
"There's really food in here created with my abilities?"
"Trust me, there is. I made Spaghetti all'Assassina using your wheat, beef, and fruits as the base ingredients."
Marcus didn't overthink it and started eating. The first bite made his eyes widen.
"Holy shit... This is incredible!"
He devoured the entire plate in record time, then checked his hunger bar. The increase was massive.
A normal cooked steak restored four hunger points and some saturation. But this dish had given him eight hunger points plus twelve saturation bars, way more than he'd ever seen from a single meal.
But then something even more surprising happened. He noticed strange text appearing in his status bar:
Strength I - Duration 59:59
Regeneration I - Duration 59:59
"How the hell did you do that?!" He stared in disbelief. The food had actually given him potion effects!
Sanji took a drag from his cigarette, not fully understanding why Marcus was going nuts but clearly pleased with the reaction. "I had to use everything you gave me completely from scratch. I turned your wheat into fresh spaghetti, then fried it in a hot, flavorful broth so it soaked up all the taste. I crumbled the beef into small pieces and cooked it in the pan with a hint of spice, and I added your tropical fruit to replace the usual tomatoes, giving it a bright, tangy kick."
He paused to ash his cigarette. "If I only used one or two of your ingredients mixed with regular stuff, it still had some effect, but the taste was weird. Like distinct flavor layers that didn't quite blend right. Still an interesting experience though."
Marcus nodded enthusiastically while continuing to eat.
But their conversation was cut short as the aroma apparently traveled beyond the kitchen. Luffy and Alvida suddenly burst through the door, followed by the rest of the crew, all of them drawn by the incredible smell.
"Dammit, Luffy! That's my bowl! Go get your own!" Alvida abandoned all pretense of elegance and started wrestling with Luffy for food, grabbing at his stretched arms as he tried to snatch dishes.
For people who lived to eat, Sanji's cooking was absolutely irresistible.
Luffy grabbed an entire pot and started drinking the broth straight from it like it was soup. But after consuming less than half, he suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong, Luffy?" Sanji asked, concerned that something might be wrong with his cooking.
"I'm full."
Luffy scratched his head, looking confused.
It wasn't just him either, Alvida had the same expression, staring at the food she still wanted to eat but somehow couldn't.
It was a bizarre experience for both of them. They could feel that their stomachs still had room, and they definitely wanted to keep eating, but the sensation of fullness was so overwhelming that Luffy literally couldn't swallow another bite. The food felt stuck in his throat, and he knew that if he forced it, he'd just throw up everything.
For someone like him, who treated food as sacred and never wasted a single crumb, this was distressing.
Marcus burst out laughing at the sight. He'd never thought he'd live to see the day when Luffy would actually say he was full.
Then, as if remembering something, Luffy reached into his pocket and pulled out some of those rotten flesh jerky he'd somehow gotten attached to, and took a couple bites.
Within moments, the hunger sensation returned.
Marcus stopped laughing and started saying. "You cheat!"
But after just two more bites of the proper food, Luffy hit the saturation wall again. The fullness effect from the Minecraft-enhanced meal was clearly stronger than the hunger from the rotten flesh.
