Over 100 favorites, over 15k views and half a year later - finally, it's come to this.


The Nether

I will begin by saying: I am not a religious person.

My hometown was pretty much the central point of one of the many religions – the Brother Gods' worship. Summing the whole thing up quickly, there are two Brother Gods watching over Remnant – God of Light, protector of Virtue (whose prophet Oum has shown Humanity how to use Dust, how to prosper and so on), "he who takes the souls of equally virtuous and sinless people to "Paradise", and God of Darkness, the eternal Tempest, He Who Punishes, taking the souls of the worst sinners to some sort of horrible, tormenting Underworld (or Hell, as most call it) - the origin point of Grimm - to suffer, and he is the one who's unleashed the Grimm menace upon the mankind a long time for sin of just one woman who happened to poison Oum and kill him. I don't buy into this stuff, even if I occasionally use references to the Brother Gods and Oum – they're just figures of speech that me and my family have picked up from being around actual old-time worshippers and believers all the time.

I'm not religious, I don't believe in Brother Gods – but I admit: the Nether was the closest thing to the real Hell that could possibly be. Even if I came with no expectations, the place managed to break all of them.

The first thing I felt upon coming through the portal was the heat. Unbearable, suffocating heat. The first few seconds I panicked, thought that I wouldn't be able to breathe; though it was possible. It's just that the air was just so hot – like a really, really warm summer day without a hint of breeze - it took a lot of time to get used to it (even then, my head was hurting and swimming a bit).

All I could see in front of me was red – thick red fog and the red rock, as far as my eyes could see. Oh, and fire. Lots of fire. Literal fire pockets all over the place, only adding even more heat. And the stench? The nose-killing stench of flames (not normal flames to make such odor, for sure) and smoke. Ugh.

The "best" part? I was fully decked out in armor too. Metal armor. And a warm hoodie beneath. I wasn't quite boiling inside of it, but I was as miserable as if I was.

After getting my bearings together, I examined the rock I was standing on. Called "Netherrack", it seemed to be the only thing around there, at first glance (the fog didn't let me see well beyond, like, 30 blocks, not to mention the waterfall of sweat after just a few minutes wasn't making it any easier). Honestly? It creeped me out. Less like typical stone, and more like this semi-hard clay (it broke very easily with a pickaxe), and with a fleshy texture. Not even kidding – it almost felt like I was touching a living thing, and the warmth of the rock only sold the feeling further – had to double-check if I wasn't accidentally "digging" a piece out of some massive creature.

Looking around a little (almost fell into some hole, because everything blended together so damn well with crappy lighting and the red), I easily spotted some yellow spots amidst all the netherrack. Turns out it was gold! Some sort of local gold ore, much like in Overworld, but with one key difference – in Overworld, gold's encased and mixed with stone, so it needs to be smelted to become more or less pure; from the looks of it, this Nether gold was pure already, and, thanks to how soft netherrack was, breaking and separating it from the gold was child's play, netting me a handful of shiny gold nuggets in process. There was a lot of this gold-filled netherrack in this one deposit, so I got greedy. Who wouldn't?

As things turned out, a smart man wouldn't. Because my only indication that something's happened was the sudden realization that the hole I dug myself into chasing gold suddenly got a lot brighter, and a LOT hotter – talking boiling water hot, it was actually painful. I started climbing out and damn near got my face melted off – there was lava, at the very edge of my hole!

Had the hole been one block wider…I don't want to imagine what it'd feel like. I ducked back in, took my water bucket to both get rid of the lava heat and douse myself. The heat was gone – as was the water, which turned to steam the instant it left the bucket and would have probably given me a permanent balding haircut, if not for my helmet. So, with the bucket, I climbed out, only to see that the entirety of my portal was flooded with lava! The lava coming from uphill, except there was fucking nothing when I first looked! It just started pouring out of nowhere, and it was moving fast – about as fast as water down a slope. Scary stuff. Thankfully, the portal didn't break, but of what use could it be, if I couldn't reach it without getting evaporated?

And so I was forced to try and block off the entirety of the lava flow, with gravel, scavenged netherrack and a lot good hopes. Second time I've gotten very lucky about not dying within a few minutes into the Nether – had I not had my bucket, I wouldn't have been able to get that close to the absolutely massive lava spillage to try and build a dam. Even then, it was a horrifying experience. One misstep away from agonizing death (even Aura wouldn't have helped), having to make a barricade over the entire distance (a solid 30 blocks or so), not to mention the ambient heat messing me up – my heartbeat was louder to me than lava crackling all around.

As I was finishing the lava wall, I spotted some sort of a humanoid figure standing on the cliff, just above the lava flow.

This figure promptly proceeded to walk off the cliff and fall straight into the midst of lava. Not a great first impression, I'll admit, but what happened next is more important. The figure didn't burn in lava, as I expected it to do. No, it just sank a bit deeper and went with the flow – straight towards the part I hadn't blocked off yet. Absolutely no care - it had to have been fire-proof. I didn't see much of it (the lava was too bright), but the thing looked too goddamn comfortable swimming inside lava.

Adapted to the heat, much like Grimm to their own Hell. Naturally, I moved back as far and as fast as I could, and waited for the thing to pass. Didn't seem like it'd paid me, or the sudden obstruction much attention – got out of the flow a few blocks beside my portal and went on its merry way, dripping bits of lava all the while. Walked straight into some flames too – no care at all. I was still shocked - how often do you see a living thing that treats lava as water?

After the lava flow was stopped, I had the option of going back through the portal. At that point, I really should have (at the very least to cool down, I was sweating hard), but I chose not to. Why? Because, just behind the portal I noticed some sort of a weird bright-red cloud of particles in the air, just up the cliff. Carefully making my way up, I came to the source of that particle cloud.

What I saw shocked me. Unlike absolutely anything that I've seen before (even Overworld, besides a few hangups, was mostly familiar territory), it helped to hammer how truly alien this dimension – this entire thing – was.

The only thing I can compare it to is a forest. A forest, strecthing out as far as the eye could see – which wasn't far, because these particles mixed with the fog very well to create a crimson shroud that completely blocked vision beyond a few dozen blocks or so.

Everything in this place was bright crimson. The ground had this weird sort of crimson-blood red mass of growth on it; I would like to compare it to grass, but it was more similar to something like moss. The occasional vegetation was all only mushrooms: either huge, red, singular ones (resembling fly amanitas, but with bright-orange spots instead of white), or clusters of very thin and crooked ones (those I didn't dare get close) to) The particles in the air were crimson too. Tasteless (I got a mouthful accidentally, because of course I would), a bit like dust – normal dust, not Dust – which made it a bit difficult to breathe normally, I had to drag the collar of my poor, abused hoodie out of the armor to use as a filter. Thinking about it now, I am very sure that those were massive amounts of spores.

But the biggest surprise was certainly the "trees". And I'm calling these things "trees" very liberally, because after a bit of inspection, they turned out to be somewhat like huge, warped mushrooms. Pretty similar to those giant mushrooms I found some time ago. That's about where their similarities end, though: for one, the "leaves", instead of being just a huge bunch of interconnected small mushrooms, were blocks of some incredibly densely compacted hair-like threads. These "Nether Wart Blocks" were dense enough that walking on them felt like walking across your average smooth & flat surface, and strong enough to not be cut easily – both my sword and axe didn't have enough sharpness (or got tangled very easily), to really be better than just punching them to breaking point. Again, if I recall correctly, somewhat similar to the stems of those huge mushrooms from awhile back, with the threads and all, but not nearly as fragile.

Then I got to the stem itself. Oh man. The "Crimson Stem" (not really crimson, more like somewhere inbetween red and dark purple), was, well, it's really hard to explain what it was like. On the outside, the block had this smooth texture - something like leather mixed with rubber – and again a lot of these characteristic threads all across the body; only this time, they were a lot thicker, somewhat transparent and seemed to have liquid running up and down inside.

Like blood vessels. A living giant tree-like crimson fungus. (In a nutshell.) It was also fireroof, I believe, because there was fire burning right next to one such "tree", and neither the Wart blocks, nor the Stem seemed to be affected

Decided to grab a sample, then leave, because, despite this place being actually somewhat cooler than the netherrack land, I was having difficulty breathing – must've been something with the spores. The axe was the tool for the job, and when I chopped a part of the stem off, things just turned completely bizarre.

First, this blood-liquid started pouring out, since I ruptured the threads; really viscuous, like honey, and smelled something like fresh mushrooms, but with a hint of spiciness, if that makes any sense? The entire forest had this same kind of odor, but with this liquid it was really pronounced.

Second, the stem itself. The core was a real strange mix of wood-like material, and those same dense threads I've seen on the wart blocks. And I wasn't wrong about the "rubbery" part: the entire thing was both elastic and firm at the same time, inside and outside. It's not something I can explain, it just needs to be felt with your own hands to make any sort of sense.

Best part? I hit the nail on the head about the wood stuff, cause I got a recipe for cutting this stem into "Crimson Planks". Which I did, right beside my portal. For all intents and purposes, these seemed to be just like ordinary wood, except they gave off that strange mushroom odor non-stop, and their inexplainable mix of flexibility AND rigidity - Oum knows how that's happening - allowed for some very unique designs as I later found out.

At this point I noted down the coordinates for my portal (completely irrelevant, for reasons explained later), and went in the last direction I haven't been in yet. On my way there, I saw a few patches of strange yellow-ish glowing growing high on the netherrack walls, but I was very, very done with the heat, so I didn't bother inspecting it any closer.

At that point I was sweating buckets and very thirsty, so my only desire was to get on top of the little netherrack hill at the end of this clearing I found myself in, check out the surrounding area, then get out. I didn't quite expect to find a view beyond it that would tell me exactly what kind of place I dragged myself into.

I was high up, and all I could see was lava. Lava everywhere, a giant freaking ocean stretching out in all directions. Small and big lavafalls flowing down into the ocean from the sky that didn't exist. How? I looked up – the constant red fog was less dense here – and saw nothing but more netherrack, and the occasional spurts of that yellow rock. No Sun, no Moon, no stars, nothing. The netherrack roof was the sky; this entire place was essentially an enormous cavern. I could see the fires burning all around, above – on the floating netherrack islands, which in itself was beautifully bizarre – and below. No life should have been possible in this fiery pit, and yet I could see more small red figures strolling around in lava, without a care in the world. And the weird fungus trees, completely immune to the heat?

I compared this place to Hell for a reason, because it was Hell; only the eternal darkness and cold and stuff like that were traded for oceans of hot death and blazing fire all around. And of course the locals were absolutely fine living here, just like Grimm.

There was some sort of a structure made from black stone, or something similar to that, with a few exposed ores of gold twenty or so blocks away. I was ready to high-tail out of there, and decided to grab a little bit of extra gold. Quick and easy.

I wish. As I was climbing out of the freshly-dug hole in the ground, something whizzed past me – an arrow. I turn around, and come face to face (a snout, to be literal) with a fucking bipedal hog-looking humanoid thing – giant snout with tusks, flappy ears and whatnot - dressed in some kind of leather robes, armed with a crossbow and making a lot angry hog sounds. And I really thought moving archer skeletons and walking suicide bombers were pushing it! I made a mad dash for the thing while it was reloading and swiped it with my sword.

To my surprise – the hog thing didn't continue fruitlessly attacking me (I knocked the crossbow out of it's "hooves" – I'm putting them in quotes, because, while I didn't get a good look at it, they did not look like your typical hooves), unlike literally every hostile thing I'd met thus far. No, instead it dove to the side, made some sort of a really loud, throaty sound, and ran away towards the black struture.

In a span of literal seconds, there were dozens of same hog-things pouring out of it, like angry bees out of a damn hive – some armed with crossbows, others armed with golden swords - a lot of them decked out in various pieces of golden armor -, and one really tough-looking guy with a huge axe. One with a sword rushed me, while the others held back, waiting; I decided to meet him head-on. The brief scuffle we had led me to a terrifying realization - the hog guy was better at sword combat than me. Didn't take too long for me to make a fool of myself and end up wide open.

His golden sword tore through my iron armor and into me like hot knife through butter - only blind luck and last-moment reflexes had meant the hit wasn't instantly fatal, but it was still serious. It wasn't an enchanted sword either - a simple golden one, - and yet it just deleted any protection my chestplate had to offer. Full condition too, not like that fiasco with a creeper. However the hell their blades were made, their sharpness was incredible – possibly on the level of my diamond sword.

I had to get out. Kicking the bastard away (he made a really happy sound, despite that), I was going to run for the portal, only to realize that the rest of the hog-people, probably inspired by how easily my blood was drawn, sprung into action, cutting me off. Surrounded, and my only Goddamned option was to run across the tiny ledge just over the lava pit – away from the "hive". Away from my portal. So I ran. Straight along the tiny ledge, where a single misstep would mean either a lava plunge, or death at the hands of hog savages.

Along the way, I turned around just once to see if the chase was still on - nearly ate an arrow for that. The guys with crossbows had apparently given some kind of a signal to the swordsmen chasing me, who instantly ducked low so the crossbows could shoot over them safely. Not only were they faster and more dangerous than anything and anyone I've met so far, they were able and willing to work together against me. In that single moment I realized how truly fucked I was. I had to get away ASAP.

I tried using the few sets of the mushroom wood planks that I had to possibly stall the chase. I only ended up screwing myself over, because the hogs ran straight around my pitiful attempt at a barricade; I, on the other hand, ran ass-first into some netherrack, stumbled, and managed to block a swing of the sword guy behind me…with my armor. With the same results. Ow.

(I was bleeding so hard the entire time that my chest armor was as crimson as the fungus forest that was just above the netherrack I assed myself into. Ow indeed. Only the regeneration was keeping me up, despite all the blood loss.)

Even with all the adrenaline in my body, I managed to hit the hogguy too – didn't have much left in me to swing a sword – so I just bashed him in the snout with my shield. However, as I was climbing up and away, some other turd managed to nick my left leg – straight through perfectly fine iron leggings, once again – so hard, he cut something. Something that made me lose control of my leg.

I was panicking hard, because, well, one moment I could move it. Then snip - and no more. As easy as that. I would have been a goner, really, if not for the dandelion mushroom stew. I kicked the guy that screwed up my leg in his snout just as he was climbing to finish me off (heard more than just a couple of angry and pained squeals down below, so the pig must have knocked some of his comrades down with him. Bought me sorely needed time), then took the soup off my belt and slurped it down in one go, choking horribly.

But it worked. Oum, it worked. I could feel whatever was wrong with my leg fixing it self, and holy shit did it feel wrong, but, unbearably sore, it was in action only two seconds later. Just in time for me to crawl up and almost eat another hit from the enraged hogs (I got a hoof-powered kick to the ribs instead – only marginally better). I myself swiped at the legs of the bipedal bastard; don't know where I hit him, but judging by the squeals, nowhere good – and then I was off, straight back into the red fungus land.

I just ran, over hills, holes, crevices, occasional fire patches. Yet the bastards wouldn't stop. Eventually, though, I managed to put some distance. At that point I was so messed up I doubt I could've been running any longer, so I opted to try and hide instead: inside one of the fungus trees there were some vines growing almost to the ground (made of same threads as the leaf-wart blocks). Lacking any other options, I decided to climb up. Didn't take long for the hogs to catch up and start sniffing around. I hoped that their sniffing wasn't good enough to smell me up there, that I wouldn't make a sound (I was hurting and really dizzy) to give myself away, hoped that the vines would hold my weight. I had nearly fallen off several times - partly because I was so weak, tired, disoriented and just overall done, and partly because the strange glowing block next to me ("Shroomlight") had this constant humming that almost lulled to sleep, despite the situation (not to mention that, every once in a while it would emit a really loud chime that startled me real bad the first time and almost caused me to let go of the vine.)

Eventually, I heard some of them moving away, making annoyed noises. Wanted to climb down there and then, but had enough foresight to realize that if just one of them was still watching the area, or simply lagged behind, he'd just alert the rest and I'd be done for. So instead, I opted for a safer alternative: very slowly broke off a block of mushroom wart right next to where I was hanging, and climbed onto the top outside. When I saw a group of them finally marching away, my relief was incredible.

I was about freaking ready to go home, so I checked "Coordinates". Oh man. The numbers I got were a bit too crazy for the distance I ran. I checked again. One of the coordinates was in fucking hundreds of thousands. Every attempt, the numbers were completely random. I open my inventory, take my compass, and what do I see? It's going wild. The pointy rod inside is spinning in all directions, randomly.

My relief was gone, just like that, replaced with panic. I was lost. Not going to lie, I felt like crying, but I was so thirsty I'm not sure I'd be able to.

(Only later did I remembered one small, but important detail – that compasses only work in Overworld, and Coordinates work only after tagging the "origin point"; and since I wasn't in Overworld anymore, and there was no tagged origin point for an "anchor" anymore, the compass, and, by extension, coordinates, got scrambled hard. I assume that's how it works and that's why it got busted the way it did.)

I don't know how long I spent in that forest – hours, maybe -, slowly shambling around. I had completely lost my sense of direction, moving around the tops of the Shroomtrees where I could (the spores were less dense higher up, so it was easier to breathe), looking for any sort of landmark to set me on the right track. I couldn't recognize anything, not from above, not from below. The atmosphere around me, it was like some warped nightmare, a fever dream. At that point I had all but sure that I was going to die – and honestly? I was strangely calm about that. There was something really peaceful, hypnotizing about that place: the soft rustling of the wart leaves and the mesmerizing chanting of the Shroomlights on the Shroomtrees all around me; or maybe I was just a mess and wasn't thinking straight.

While there I also managed to "meet" another part of local wildlife – huge, fat Boarbatusk-looking hogs (literal this time), with equally fat faces and tusks. A pack of them nibbling on some of the small red mushrooms. I thought to sneak past them (because I just knew they would be hostile), but before I could make a move, one hog stumbled upon a blue mushroom, of all things, and with a bunch of horrible squeals the entire pack started to skedaddle. Taking a closer look at the "Warped Fungus", it turned out to be almost the same as the reds ones all around, albeit without the additional "hat" on top. Took it with me as the hog repellant, incase I ran into any more packs. (I didn't, thank Oum)

Finally, after stumbling around for who knows how long I found one actually recognizable landmark – a huge chasm I'd jumped over during the chase. It was easy to figure out the approximate direction to the portal then, because I sure wouldn't be going back to that black hive structure any time soon. When I did find the portal, I cried out of sheer relief. Just a little.

Once back in Overworld (it was still day), the first thing I did was rushed to the river and started drinking (water here was fresh, and I couldn't really care less about any contaminant), then jumped in and dunked myself head to toe. It was glorious, best feeling ever; after spending so long in that oversized furnace of a dimension, how could it not be?

("Days survived" showed me 43 days, and it was going to be sunset pretty soon, so I'd been there for over a day)

Back at the base, I went straight to bed. Woke up, and here I am now. Day 44. My armor's gone, my pants and hoodie are ruined beyond reasonable repair, I have a few new scars, and now I'm sitting butt-naked and feeling utterly defeated. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong; what's worse is just how many things had to go right for me to get out. Just like the Initiation – near-death experience after near-death experience, and I was utterly out of my element both times.

The worst thing was certainly getting my ass handed to me by a bunch of hog savages. I mean, I do only have about a month of experience getting beat up in Beacon, and then a month of survival in this world, while they have probably been sparring and training since infancy or something (it'd be a smart thing to do), but still, it really sucks.

But at the very least I am still alive. I don't plan on going back to the Nether any time soon, but when I do, I'll be ready. I'll know what to expect; I refuse to get caught like that again. Shame about my sword fighting skills – thought I was getting good, but nope! Hopefully, someone somewhere's written a guide that I can learn from; or, at the very least, once I go back to the Nether, I might be able to get some of those swordsmen hogs into a one-on-one and learn from them that way.

But first? I need new armor. Diamond armor, because good old iron doesn't cut it anymore. Maybe some more enchantments too.

If I'm lacking in skill, I guess I'll just have to make up for it with my equipment. Gonna take a day off, plan my next course of action.

I sure deserve it.


The Nether was, once again, one of those ideas I had already (sort of) planned a long time before actually starting to write this fic. This was absolutely the most difficult chapter to write - I wanted to make sure I set the right tone and atmosphere for the place; this resulted in one complete rewrite of an early version of the chapter, and a lot of edits even after that. I'm still not entirely satisfied with some things, but I hope you are.

I think I'll take a break for now. Might upload something before New Year's, might not, will almost certainly disappear in January. Sorry.

Oh, and for the purposes of this story, golden swords deal as much damage as diamond ones. The one thing golden tools have going for them is the best default mining speed in the entire game (at the cost of fuck-all durability), so why aren't swords the same?

EDIT 2020-12-23: Moved one sentence that was in an incorrect place, also a small wording fix near the end of the chapter.