Minecraft Monarchies – #12

With the outpost captured and the sun sinking into the horizon, Dean and Dad decided it was high time to take a rest and spend the night. A fine time to search through the outpost for treasure as well.

But first they went to the second floor to have dinner. Roast chicken and pork, straight from the timelessness of their inventory and into the bellies. It was delicious food — somehow far better than the stuff they had in the real world, and they ate until both their heart and hunder meters were full.

Afterwards they stood gazing out into the dark night. There were zombies ambling about, skeleton archers as well. Some spiders. You could really feel how ridiculously dangerous night time was when you were in the game.

It was a wonder that villagers were ever able to create their villages at all.

The occasional pillager spawned, only to be struck by lightning bolts and immediately oophed. Dean and Dad laughed. It was quite fun to watch.

“So, what quest do you think they’ll have lined up for us next?” Dad asked. He’d stopped looking around at the land, and was now looking at the stars, trying to see if there were maybe other worlds up there in this mod. Some of the mods for the PC let you build rockets and go to other places, after all.

“I think that we are going to have to go to a water mission. There are so many things for us to find and do still. And that’s just thinking about the regular game. A sunken pirate ship maybe. An underwater temple . . .” Dean paused, thinking. “I bet there is more to that glass water dungeon we found at the beginning. It would be strange for such a weird thing to not be a quest.”

Dad nodded. “Yeah. I bet that one will involve fixing the portal and going on into the Nether.”

Dean shivered. “I don’t really like the Nether. It’s scary. But you can get some good loot.”

They were silent a moment. Another pillager appeared, screamed some bad words, and was lightninged in the face. He poofed away moments later.

Dean walked to a different part of the outpost. Out here the torches lining the trail were much less frequent, but since they’d captured the outpost a bunch of torches had appeared in a circle about them. Somehow they added clarity to the place — it felt a lot easier to see things at night when there was a torch nearby.

It wasn’t nearly as distracting as the day.

And it was there, looking out, that Dean followed the line of the trail as it rolled past the outpost and continued on through The Kingdom of Kanterberry Blockdom. The outpost was high up, and the hill it was on was high as well, so he was just barely able to make out an interesting site to their Northwest and straight from the trail.

The trail branched and one part of it disappeared down into a hole in the ground, much like it did with the Deep Dark. He hopped up and down, turning to Dad.

“I see something I want to explore. There are stairs heading down to the caverns, and the road leads there, and there’s gotta be treasure!” he said quickly, his words tumbling into each other.

Dad laughed and pointed at the sky.

“Things are beginning to lighten up, so I don’t see why not. But don’t you want to go get our emeralds first? 50 is a pretty big number and we could use it to buy some more shields and gear.”

Dean shook his head. “I say we hit it now and if there is a quest for it back at Port City, we’ll already have it done and they’ll just pay us off right away for that one too. It’ll be faster and also I really really want to go check it out. Please!”

Dad went over to the same side of the outpost from which Dean had been looking, and then he nodded. “Seems likely it’ll head to another underground city. And if it is anything like the Colony of the Deep Dark, we’ll be in for a treat. Yeah, let’s do it.”

They waited until the sun was up and watched the monsters turn to fire and die before they left the outpost. Then is was a straight walk to the cavern, fighting just a single creeper on the way. The path at the caverns was a lot of stone stairs heading down and the two of them walked their way forward, weapons ready in case of another attack.

Soon it became quite dark, the trickling water of a waterfall giving them their only sense of direction, and Dad began to place torches.

“I feel like, if there were people down here, this whole way would be lit up,” Dad said.

Dean shrugged, his blocky shoulders hopping up and down. “It feels spooky. But, I don’t know. There is a lot of water here. Maybe something broke and the water came through and destroyed the torches?”

“Or maybe the water is a monster that destroyed them,” Dad muttered, thinking back to the surprise he’d felt at having to fight a boss mob in the coal mine of Asbury.

Anything could be a monster in this mod.

They continued forward slowly, and splashed past the waterfall, coming to a place that was again lit by torches. Both of them sighed in relief.

“I don’t know what the danger was in that last spot, but I think whatever it was, it was sleeping,” Dean said. Dad nodded in agreement. They pushed forward further. This trail was longer, definitely longer than the one that led to the Deep Dark had been.

Taking the stairs was quite scary too. The sides of the stairs felt way too easy to fall off of. And the drops were so deep that the bottoms were hardly seeable. Dean and Dad moved forward slowly and very carefully, watching their every block step.

Climbing down another long flight of stairs, the two found themselves in a cavern composed of deepslate, a single torch lighting a dim spot of light before yet another staircase that went even deeper into the earth. The air felt warm, like they had begun to get closer to the core of the planet, if such a thing existed here.

The next staircase was very narrow, and there was a sense of finality to the whole thing. Whatever was at the bottom of these steps would be the target of their whole adventure.

“Are you scared?” Dad asked, looking down the steps. He wondered if there was a city down there. Or even if there was room for a city there. It was very deep here, and he couldn’t imagine that villagers would be brave enough to live in a place like this.

Dean smiled, giving him a Minecraft thumbs up. “Not really. Well, I guess a little. But, whatever it is, we’ve been kicking butt so far. We can beat it.

They went down the stairs, quickly this time since there was no room for monsters to hide and then come out to attack them. And finally they arrived at a wooden door.

And past that door, the sad sight of a well-made but completely empty camp. It was cut into a variety of deep blocks and much of it was made by bedrock. This was deep-deep and the fact that people from The Kingdom of Kanterberry Blockdom ahd made so much effort to create this place, only to vanish, was incredibly scary.

Words popped into their vision and both Dean and Dad screamed, jumping close to each other.

QUEST UNLOCKED – THE MYSTERY OF THE CROATOAN MINES

They both sighed.

“I’m thinking we leave this quest for later,” Dean said after they relaxed a bit.

Dad smiled. “Agreed. I bet it is night about now. How about we jump in those beds and call it a day.”

Dean ran over and jumped into the one closest to him.

“Tonight we sleep. Tomorrow, we head back to Port City!”

Minecraft Monarchies – Table of Contents