Day 41

Despite how short the days and nights are (by my very bad estimates, they're only like 8 to 10 hours long) I still somehow manage to get a good, restful sleep most of the time, despite sleeping for like 4-6 hours. Either yet another unique "aspect" of this place, or I am slowly adopting the "student" lifestyle Saph used to tell me about: not the Huntsman student, but a civilian one, where you sleep for 5 hours a night at most and survive on fast noodles mixed with coffee. Yeah, I'd take Grimm over that any day of the week.

Anyway, I wanted to see the jukebox in action and I damn well intend to do it.


I am so glad I had the foresight to get some rest before making a jukebox. This was undoubtedly the most difficult-to-craft piece so far; funnily enough, it's not even too complicated in terms of the mechanics (and that's coming from me, a total "what is a gun" kind of guy)! The most complicated part was making a Redstone-powered pressure plate that would activate the diamond pinhead (stylus) and start the disk's playback, a powered button to eject the disk and making sure they were all connected, and an iron funnel-like thing that was for emitting sound.

Like, that's not too difficult – the wiring and all that stuff is clearly demonstrated in the recipe. No, what is difficult is trying to keep up with damned required proportions, because of course they can't be too big (won't fit in the obligatory 1x1x1 wooden body) or too small (or else Redstone malfunctions). The worst part was absolutely the diamond stylus – it had to be perfect, so as to not damage the disk and make sure it plays the exact melody it's supposed to. That alone took me like an hour to get right - I HOPE it's right.

Time to see if it works, cause if it doesn't, my mood is going to be ruined for the rest of the day.

(On a side note, the way in which it's all supposed to work is kind of unconventional: apparently, the disk's surface is covered in these uneven "grooves" that force the stylus to vibrate as it travels over them; then that vibration goes through a Redstone buffer and comes out of the "funnel" as sound. Like I said, seems pretty unconventional, but I am not a sound engineer, so I guess it's cool. Perhaps these jukebox equivalents back home work in a similar way, only with a different buffer?)


Jukebox works as intended. I went through the all disks; the music turned out to be unique, to say the least, and for some of them not in a good sense.

Started this little reviewing session with the yellow-rimmed disk – "13". Let's just say that it did not give me a good first impression. It was just some sort of a creepy ambient tone with a bunch of random (also creepy) sounds thrown in for good measure. I really don't need any extra reasons to feel creeped out or scared. So yeah, not a great start.

Next disk – "Blocks" – was marginally better, but mostly because it was actual music this time. Sort of like, pixel music? Something you'd hear in an 8bit platformer, like Grimario. Definitely a very upbeat and fun melody, but there were a few weird moments that didn't quite click with me; still, it was a good listen overall. Certainly worked better for the bright, sunny day mood than "13".

"Ward" came after that. Another pretty unconventional piece: starts off like a funeral march, but then turns to a catchy pixel-type track as well. Kind of all over the place, if I'm being honest. Not bad, not great. Seemed to have a lot more of that scratchy background recorder noise than the rest.

Last one was "Stal" – the black-rimmed disk. Honestly, at that point I didn't expect much from it, of them all, it was the best. A very classy-sounding jazz piece…for only about 30 seconds or so.

Then a flute kicks in: a very awkward, out-of-place flute, and the track proceeds to switch between the two. I'll be honest, I laughed. Hard. The contrast is jarring; doesn't help it that the flute sounds pretty amateurish compared to the smooth jazz tone, it feels like an April Fools joke. I will admit, after listening the 2nd time, it kind of grows on you, but damn it, I still smile. It's just goofy.

Whoever this Siforaityn dude is, I at least have to give him props for somehow getting a whole lot of instruments around here and for being creative: besides "13", these tracks held a lot more diversity to them than what I've gotten used to hearing (like Achieve-men songs all sound somewhat similar, but they have good guitar solos and I'm really more of a guitar guy).


Found a small unexplored cave on my way to Eastside, pretty rich in coal. Too bad I can't ever have a peaceful time mining – but at least this time my paranoia paid off: heard footsteps before anything bad could happen. Goddamn creepers.


Stopped at Eastside mainly for two things (three if counting plentiful coal I had mined out): noting down its down coordinates and speaking with the librarian to help decrypt the note I found the other day. The contents of it were very interesting

"failed to fix the stupid fucking portal thing 3 times in a row! Its suposed to be rectangle NOT a square. It doesnt get lit up if its square. Now im out of fire charges and theres no iron to use with flint. Going to the nether is easy Eski said. FML I spent so much time deleting obsidian now its too late and ill never finish it with skeletons shooting me every 5 sec and ill have to camp inside this stup"

And the note just ends here. So if I understand correctly, that strange obsidian structure is, in fact, some sort of a deactivated portal to the "Nether", whatever that may be. I'm guessing whoever tried to fix it took refuge in that cage room, lit it up with that Redstone Torch, which wasn't enough light to prevent spiders from appearing, and got caught with their pants down writing their entry, hence the shoddy dirt barricade and the sudden cut-off on the note. Reminds me of that time I got caught by a creeper in a mineshaft. I was lucky to walk away. I hope whoever the author was, they did too, but with how much blood there was…damn. At least I have a clue or two on what to do with this obsidian Nether portal. I'll visit the villages, note their coordinates, then come around and see what can be done.

Also, the whole decrypting process (I observed) doesn't need anything special, so I'm going to make my lectern to not bother the librarian needlessly, should anything else come up.


I'm at this broken portal structure once again, after having gone to Northside and Westside. I still have the two obsidian pieces from that chest, so it should be a perfect fit for this frame, cause it's missing exactly 2 pieces to be a vertical rectangle. I'll fit them in and see if anything happens.


Nothing's happened. The note did, however, mention it getting lit up. Don't know what those fire charges are, but the flint? I do recall flint being used as a fire-starter, and I did light up my campfire with a simple flint&steel lighter. Too bad I didn't bring it with me – the one time I didn't expect to use it. Maybe I can wing it with just flint.


The flint rocks inside the chest by the portal were a bit too under-sized, so I had to look elsewhere. Digging through some gravel piles, managed to fish out two sizeable pieces. Unfortunately, they don't produce any sparks, or any kind of heat at all. I'd go looking for some iron, but on the off-chance I find none in time, I'm going back home to grab my lighter instead – won't be long now until it's too dark.


Okay, so I went back to grab my flint lighter, came back to the portal and, well, got a bit stuck because I didn't know what part of portal I was supposed to light up. I decided to start with the magma blocks. It wasn't doing anything, except for a load of blistering heat, but then I noticed that some of the fire sparks flying from the lit-up magma that were landing inside the empty space inside the portal were actually turning purple. So I decided to try and light up the portal itself instead, with much better results: the flames had turned purple and, from the bottom, slowly started growing towards the top (without my input).

However, they started flickering and dimming once they reached the same level as one of the leaking obsidian blocks (which also lit up a bright purple/magenta color, by the way), and went out completely after reaching the top with the second leaking block (where the same thing happened). This exact moment was when some skeleton chose to fire at me from the bushes, and, since it was already darker than dusk, I rushed home to not run into too much trouble.

As per tradition, I did just that. My axe, which I hoped to use up completely chopping down some trees, met its end on the skull of some random spider. Oh well.

(I'm surprised I never thought of using my shield as a weapon, because that is exactly what I was forced to do. The thing is, after all, heavy with some mighty sharp iron-cast corners. I mean, I've seen Pyrrha use hers as a sort of weapon, but she was mostly just throwing it and catching it back, somehow. In retrospect, I feel pretty stupid for not realizing how great a huge hunk of wood with iron lining can be for smashing heads and faces.)

So now, thinking about the portal, there are 2 distinct possibilities: either it failed to activate and that leaking obsidian was the culprit; or it did, indeed, activate for a short time, with that flame barrier being the gateway/active part, and I need to suffer 3rd degree burns to go through it. Come tomorrow, I'll replace the leaking obsidian with normal one (since I have that in abundance) and try again; if that won't work, that will probably mean that the leaking obsidian is actually required, and I'll have to go looking for it. Fair to assume I'll need my diamond pickaxe for this.


GUESS who got lazy again.

(While being lazy, I slightly edited chapters 7 and 8; more details found there. Just a heads-up)