Day 40

Not really much to write about yesterday – I mostly just tended to the compound: got food from the farmland, took care of the animals, cut down a few spruces I had planted before (it's a bit comical how the saplings seem to fall straight from the leaves), cut down all of the plentiful sugarcane around my farmpond – around 2 stacks in total, so pretty nice. Not very nice to turn all of that stuff into useable paper, but I do need some books to boost my enchanting table. I will have to move it out of the toolshed eventually, because there isn't nearly enough space to fit even just a single tiny bookshelf now. I'm thinking about digging some sort of a basement, perhaps? Or something like a wine cellar we used to have back at Chateau d'Arc – only without the wine, obviously.

Later, I tried finding a guide to creating a lantern, because honestly, the smell inside the house from all the torches is really getting to me; not to mention it was quite chilly the night before, so I'd have preferred to sleep with closed doors.

The lanterns needed glass. I had no idea how to make glass. What was really appalling was that I tried checking out the creation process for it – something that can be done for crafting materials of literally every single crafting recipe – I got nothing! The System was very quiet too. Even if I figured it out later, this still feels like a huge "Screw You Jaune" moment.

Anyways, after that I had started creating those "boosting" books instead – basically just sewing the paper and leather together, then writing whatever on the inside until I was all out of space. Never thought I'd get my vocabulary tested, of all things. I was literally just scribbling down every single word I could come up with in alphabetic order. While I do have a couple of filled books now, I think I'll relegate the rest of the work to the librarian, because…honestly.

(I also just realized I filled them with English symbols, not local ones, so there's a big chance they won't work. screw me indeed, that's like a solid 2 hours of work probably undone)

Everything exciting had only happened at night – starting with an absolutely massive zombie swarm at my doorstep; about 20-25 of them? Either way, not wanting to waste my diamond sword, I, as quickly as possible, put an iron sword together to go and physically tell them to shoo off. Certainly didn't feel nearly as great to use – I am sure I've scuffed the sharpness and overall balance of the blade, but it got the job done. Having "cleaned" the swarm up, accidentally pissed off an Enderman – I'm proud to say I utterly laid him out. Comparing that to the last time I fought one of them - progress sure does feel good. Here's the interesting thing – the particles turned into an Ender Pearl again. No big deal, except when picking it up, I may have tripped over my own legs and jerked my hand a bit too hard to keep balance.

The thing went flying. Not literally, but, like, an Aura enhanced baseball throw and absolutely not with the force I might have thrown it. Recovered fast enough to just about see it land on the other side of my compound.

What happened next is hard to explain. I barely processed it at the time, but it was like I got crushed into myself in a single moment; the next thing I know, I suddenly appeared at the spot the pearl had landed in, hurting all over (and promptly stumbled and faceplanted into the my own wall).

It seems like these pearls force me to teleport to wherever they land – which is really freaking awesome, no doubt; the problem is, since I am not an Enderman, I don't think I'm built to teleport in the same way they do. I ended up with a huge pain in my chest (broken ribs if I had to guess) and some serious pain in both my ankles (not sure why), along with moderate ache everywhere else. Natural regeneration was quick to patch me up, but until I figure out how and why I get compressed and end up getting hurt so much, I'm not using them anymore, intentionally or not. Don't think a broken neck or a fractured skull will get mended as easily.

But teleporting is still cool.

That was yesterday. Today started off fairly normal too – collected what plants and veggies had managed to grow overnight, took some coal with me, then went on my routine walk through villages, starting with Eastside. While there, I asked the librarian if he had any idea how to make glass; guess I lucked out - he didn't know the actual process, but did say it started with sand. Northside was the same as when I left it, so I just traded some coal with the grumpy armorer guy and moved towards Westside. On the way there, I walked by that strange obsidian structure; there was actually a cave opening nearby I had missed, so I figured I could go down and look for some coal to mine, since I had sold all of it already.

I didn't expect to run into another one of those monster-spawning cage rooms – a spider one, this time (normal oversized, not the tiny poisonous type). Obviously got greeted by a swarm of them appearing out of thin air too on approach, so I guess they are sort of similar to skeletons in that regard? In any case, having killed them all, I took a look around and found some interesting stuff: for one, there was a strange red torch burning on top of the cage thing, giving off a very faint light – it was a Redstone Torch, apparently, though for a torch, it was really bad at lighting stuff up. And two, there was some sort of an unfinished barricade/wall of cobble and dirt in one of the corners, evidently unfinished. There were two chests inside that little corner and, well, patches of (I think) dried blood on the floor and the walls. Thankfully, there was no body (zombies are one thing but I don't want to stomach seeing an actual person dead).

The chests were a bit of a jackpot, not going to lie. The first one I opened – empty, save for two pieces of obsidian and some sort of a note that I couldn't read, since it was the usual, rapidly-changing gibberish of a language. The second though? A few lumps of coal and yet another music disk – "Siforaityn – ward"; and after picking up this one, the System actually notified me of an unlocked recipe – for a jukebox, of all things! Not bad.

Going back from the village after that, picked up a block of sand near the bridge over the river - the bridge's very simple and crappy at the moment, being just a single row of planks over the water, but does its' job. maybe I will decorate it in the future or something -, and what do you know? Got a new popup from the System – some new recipes, along with a more important tutorial - "Smelting glass", a.k.a everything I've been looking for.

(I can't remember if I paid any special attention to this but these interfaces – speaking about my inventory one and the crafting table – I still get occasionally thrown off by their appearance; they are honestly amazing and weird at the same time. Like a mix of some videogame User Interface and display on one of those Apfel ScrollTech smart glasses with voice recognition - took me a while to remember those, and only because I recall playing with and almost breaking the ones Noir owned. But hey, they don't come close to operating with the power of your thoughts and intent, which is the way to go here.

Thankfully for me, practically everything in those interfaces is tagged and accessing anything takes like a second or two of thinking at most.)

I made sure to grab a few more blocks after than, then got home and started shifting through the stuff I'd just uncovered.

The production of glass was a bit unique, because, like paper, I had to add some new "modifications" to the the smelting process (crafting a Stone Mold – basically hollowed out, fragile piece of stone), and only then start the smelting process. In theory, the sand would melt into the glassy substance, pouring itself into this temporary form; once finished, it would start "stacking"; at the end, once the glass had cooled and hardened, I would take this stone form and gently break it off, getting a nice, perfectly cubical and blocky stack of glass in process - all of this in comparison to the usual process in normal and blast furnaces with, say, iron, where it would melt and pour into an in-built casting hole, fill it, start stacking and could be taken out very easily afterwards . In practice…I may have removed the cast too early. Not there's a perfectly cubical and blocky piece of glass stuck inside the furnace, and I don't know how to get it out, besides just breaking it.

At least I got some glass blocks out (though breaking that stone cast without damaging anything was pretty annoying) – those unlocked the recipes for glass bottles (which means I can finally have some purified water with me whenever I go, which is just perfect), a compass and a whole bunch of other stuff, like tinted glass and panes. The recipe for lanterns was also updated, this time needing "Lantern Glass" – you basically have to create yet another temporary stone cast, shaped specifically for them, then stick a block of glass into the furnace and watch the magic happen; same thing with "Compass Glass" and Glass Bottles. Thank the Gods they freaking stack too, otherwise I would have certainly gone mad.

Even so, having to chisel and chip these forms out of stone – not easy, not by a long shot. I'd come home somewhere after noon and was done practicing and messing up about halfway between afternoon and sunset. Yeah. Eventually I was done smelting and re-smelting and so on, and finally had some Lantern Glass (one block gave me exactly 16 units); then all I had to do was just hollow out a solid iron ingot, make some holes for the little glass panes, use the leftover iron to make a hook to hang this stuff, stick a lit torch in, fit the glass in and ta-da. Magic.

(It sounds easy when phrased like that, but without the crafting table's helping hand I would be absolutely useless. I might as well start calling it Pyrrha.)

The lanterns don't smell, somehow shine even brighter than torches, also seem to burn forever (I hope, but will be 100% sure in the next few days) and hanging them is as easy as simply sticking to the underside of whatever it is I want them to hang on. That is true quality of life improvements – improvements all around my house and the toolshed. Sadly, there wasn't enough lantern glass to make some for the animal pens, but they'll get theirs soon enough.

Next, I had a choice between a compass and a glass bottle. The compass had a more "traditional" assembly scheme, with the compass glass pieces requiring a rather small square stone mold (the lantern glass, in comparison, used a more rectangular shape); meanwhile, glass bottles required me to carve out a really freaking thick part out of the stone in the shape of a cubical vessel. It was nearing sunset, I was tired and had gotten my fair share of warmup doing the lantern glass stuff, so I went for the compass.

The compass needed a ingot of iron, a single piece of glass (and I had, once again, 16 of them from a single glass block, so now there are 15 left and taking up valuable chest space; same with lantern glass) a pile of Redstone Dust and, surprisingly, a drop of my blood (this wasn't in ingredients, but was listed as "Additional Requirements" – a first). The actual assembly wasn't really anything out of the ordinary, except for the final few steps – after cutting the ingot into the shape of the compass' body, and making a tiny pointer rod out of the remains of that ingot, I had to dip the rod into Redstone – about 3/4ths of it – and hold it there for a solid minute. It seemed like the Redstone had fused with the iron in about the same fashion lapis had with the enchanting table, because the rod was a solid red color and Redstone didn't seem to come off. Afterwards, I was to fix the inert rod inside the compass's body, drop a little bit of my blood onto the red part and close the top with a glass part for good. Did all of that – the Redstone part started to glow as soon as I squeezed some blood out of a cut I made; then the whole rod started to spin wildly, then, after a few seconds, calmed down and steadfastly started pointing in a single direction.

The thing is: compasses on Remnant, from what I remember, relied on magnetic fields, created by two supposedly gargantuan Gravity Dust formations on the opposite sides of the planet (or something along those lines). My point is, the compasses back home were always supposed to point to the North Dust Pole (near Atlas), or simply North.

My compass didn't. It pointed away from north, to somewhere Southeast. It was already sunset, very close to nighttime, but I decided to move along that direction for a little bit, to try and see where exactly it would lead.

Imagine my surprise when the thing suddenly did a 180 once I got past a certain point and started pointing back towards the house! I moved along, because this was getting nonsensical – eventually came to a stop at the base of a hill, not far from my base. Took me a second to recognize, but this was the very place of my arrival on the very first day; in fact, the compass was centered on the same spot where I had woken up!

I went from "nonsensical" to "amazed" in a split second; in that very split second, as I stepped back onto the very point where this crazy adventure started, the compass went off in a bright red light for a second; The System one-upped me and introduced yet another tutorial – "Coordinates". Getting back to my homestead ASAP (cause I could already hear some rattling bones and quiet footsteps somewhere up the hill), I took a look at this tutorial.

It was certainly something – I will say that much. To sum it up, as long as I have a compass inside my inventory, I also have access to a "Coordinates" command. By activating this command, I will be able to view my numerical 3D coordinates (on X, Y, and Z axis), allowing me to easily pinpoint my location in the Overworld (tutorial term, not mine), obviously also allowing me to check the coordinates of whatever interesting location I find and later come back to it easily by following them; moreover (this part I already figured it out myself), the compass will always point to my personal "spawn point", but only while I am present in Overworld.

(SO, basically, as long as I have a compass in my inventory, I can't get lost! Perfect!)

Riding the hype, I immediately began testing out this command. Surely enough, I dropped compass on the ground first, then tried "Coordinates" – nothing happened. Picked it up, did the same – and yes, I did get my coordinates, but in a very weird way – it was like a flashing thought in my mind that somebody else put there and forced me to think it. The closest thing I can possibly compare it to was a few times I remembered practically falling asleep, but then waking up – at first I was thinking just fine, but then those thoughts got muddied and really strange and random, like the very beginning of a dream; but I never got to the actual dream part, suddenly waking up, alarmed, and remembered the last few thoughts I had and in turn thought how could I ever have them. It's a really jarring experience and it killed my hype quite a bit.

Anyways, activating the command, I had three sets of numbers and letters "imprinted" into my memory. The format is as follows: X ** Y ** Z **. By getting coordinates of a few spots within my house, I figured out that the X is the West/East direction (number decreases going West, increases going East), Z is the North/South axis (North decreases, South increases) and Y seems to be my height or attitude. The numbers seem to increase/decrease per each block travelled. Also, I am only 60 or so meters above whatever 0 on Y axis is supposed to be.

My home coordinates (taken by the signal campfire) are X -93 Y 64 Z 255. I'm going to dedicate a few empty pages solely to writing down coordinates of all points of interest I come across, that's for sure.

Lastly, and on a different note, there's still this newest music disk I found (white-ish green rim), and the fact that I can apparently craft a jukebox;, but I took one look at the creation process, and it involves cutting diamonds, and I'd rather do it tomorrow and well-rested.


I would love to give a cool excuse on why, having spent whole November in lockdown (and now an added extra half of December), I have only now managed to squeeze something out, but I'm just lazy. I managed to procrastinate *doing stuff I do to procrastinate in the first place* by doing other stuff. Several layers of not doing anything productive. It's fun, until it's not.

This isn't everything you're getting for a month of waiting - more chapters on the way.

EDIT 2020-12-03 "Siforaitupyn" instead of "Siforaityn". Gg butter fingers