As I stepped through the portal, I grew a little nauseous as the world around me began to warp around in circles. After a few seconds, the warp stopped, revealing the fiery landscape, a giant lava lake in the distance, and a few piglins that were thankfully ignoring me, as I had the golden armor on. Soon after, Jamie stepped through the other side of the portal, a little dizzy.

"I feel like I just drank a month's worth of alcohol in 5 seconds." She said, approaching me.

Soon after, Erik and Josh also emerged from the portal.

"That was an acid trip…" Erik said, approaching us with Josh.

"So, what now?" Josh asked, as I looked around. In the distance, I spotted a nether fortress.

"Let's head there." I said, pointing towards it and starting to walk.

"Hopefully we can find some nether wart…" Jamie said. "We'll also need to collect soul sand to plant it on when we get back."

"If we find some nether wart in this fortress, let's re-plant some just in case." I suggested.

"What are we going to do about the blazes?" Erik asked.

"You all have bows. Just fuckin shoot em." I answered.

"Welp, alrighty then." Erik answered, looking at Josh. "You're the only one without a bow, so I think you should be the one that disables the mob spawners."

"Sounds like a plan." Josh answered.

"Who's got torches?" I asked.

"Shit…" Erik said, checking his inventory. "I forgot them at the house."

"I don't got any either." Josh added.

Jamie checked her inventory. "I have 5 on me."

"Well, there goes using torches to find our way out of this place…" I said, approaching the side of the fortress and pulling out a pickaxe. "We have to make those 5 torches count."

Checking my inventory, I saw that I only had one.

"Man…" I said, slamming my palm into my face. "Out of all the stuff we could forget, and we forget to bring fuckin torches?"

"Pretty ironic, huh?" Jamie asked, as I began to mine out the wall. As I was mining, I took a look around the place and noticed that the majority of the fortress sat on top of the giant lava lake, with one of the lava waterfalls spilling onto one of the bridges. As the first block broke, I was greeted with a chest in the corner. As I dug out the bottom block, I went in and immediately searched through the chest. Sifting through its contents, I found a bunch of gold ingots, a worn out golden sword, and 5 nether wart. I pulled it out and showed it to the others.

"Well, I guess that's one thing down." I said, stuffing it into my inventory.

"What else was in there?" Jamie asked, stepping in to take a look for herself.

"Nothing good." I answered. Looking in the distance, I saw a few zombie pigmen.

"Careful guys, don't wanna accidentally shoot the pigmen and get cornered by them." I said, moving out of the way so Erik and Josh could get through the hole. We were now presented with a bridge that led straight ahead, or one to the left. Looking at the one to the left, there was lava in the distance that almost completely covered and blocked off the bridge. Straight ahead was a large tower, and I could see some smoke, supposedly coming from blazes.

"Well, I guess we go straight." I said, continuing forward. Walking across the bridge, Jamie looked over the edge at the bubbling lava below.

"Man, I can feel the heat all the way up here…" She said, wiping the sweat from her forehead. I just now also realized how hot it was.

"Well, at least we're not any closer to it. It would be piping hot if we got up close and personal." I replied.

As we reached an intersection in the path, we noticed that to the left, there was a blaze spawner and 2 wither skeletons. As their bones rattled, they began to approach us and I prepared my crossbow to fire. Thankfully, we were not close enough to the spawner for it to activate yet.

As I aimed for the wither skeleton, I pulled the trigger on the crossbow and fired an arrow. As it hit the wither skeleton in the head, it lost its balance and fell over the edge of the bridge and into the sea of lava below, dropping his sword on the middle of the bridge.

"That won't kill it." I said, as the other wither skeleton started approaching, it's stone sword ready to swing. As Jamie pulled out her own crossbow, she loaded it and prepared it to fire. As the wither skeleton was getting closer to arms reach, Jamie fired her crossbow, the arrow hitting it in the chest and knocking it back. As I approached the wither skeleton with my diamond sword to deliver the finishing blow, the spawner in the distance activated and spawned a cluster of 3 blazes.

"Bows up everyone, shit just got real." I said, pointing out to the fiery floating mobs, as they prepared to attack. Slashing the wither skeleton with my sword, it came apart, leaving its head on the path. I took it and stuck it in my inventory, as one of the blazes shot a stack of fireballs our way.

"DUCK!"

As we all crouched, several fireballs flew past us. Jamie was the first one to rise back up, swapping her crossbow for a regular one and preparing to rapidly fire arrows towards the blazes, the arrows connecting with them and damaging them.

"I'mma go torch the spawner…" I said, running into the room where the spawner was situated. Jamie followed behind, preparing to fire more shots.

"Save your arrows if you don't need em." I said, as the blazes fired another round of fireballs. Looking behind us, one of the fireballs managed to hit Josh right square in the chest, and he fell to the ground. Erik immediately tended to him.

As I rushed into the room, I placed my only torch on top of the spawner, as Jamie placed some of hers around it, effectively stopping more blazes from spawning, but we would still have to contend with the ones that were already there. As Jamie switched to her sword and swung at the closest blaze to her, it tipped over and disappeared, leaving behind 2 blaze rods. Unfortunately for me, the blaze closest to me started firing more fireballs, one was able to hit me and ignited me on fire, but I was able to finish it off with my sword as I was knocked back by the fireball and stumbled to the ground. Jamie immediately rushed to me, handing me some steak.

"You good?" She asked, as the fire went out. I took a look at my HP.

"For now." I replied. "Let's move forward."

As we moved on through the paths, I looked into the distance of the fiery ruins that were the nether. Far back, I could see one ghast in the distance. Thankfully, it didn't see us. Looking down below the bridge, I could see two striders on the shore of one of the lava oceans, along with some hoglins and more piglins fighting each other. Continuing our walk, I noticed that in the distance, there was what appeared to be a soul sand valley.

"That's where we can get the sand to grow the nether wart on." I said, pointing to the biome.

"Great catch." Erik said, catching up to us with Josh.

"Is he okay?" I asked, pointing to him.

"He's fine. I gave him some apples to heal him." Erik answered.

"Good. let's head here and grab some soul sand, then we'll come back to that blaze spawner for more blaze rods."

"Two of us were already set on fire, you really wanna go back?" Jamie asked.

"Yes, because we can turn it into a mob trap before removing the torches." I replied. "Easy blaze rod generator for us, then one of us can stay there and collect them while we go get other shit."

"Like what?" Erik asked.

"Well, if we find a basalt delta, magma cream for fire resistance." I answered. "That will make dealing with the blazes even easier."

"I have to agree with him on that." Jamie added as we continued closing in on the soul sand valley.

"What about what you were saying about the netherite?" Josh asked.

"Well, none of us have TNT, or beds, and even with an efficiency 5 pickaxe, manually mining out chunk by chunk searching for ancient debris would take longer than it would to go through the McDonalds drive-through." I replied. Jamie laughed.

Taking a closer look at the valley, I noticed that behind it was a lava river with a plethora of striders scattered across it. In the sky, there were a few more ghasts, and as one of them caught my eye, it opened its mouth and let out a loud screech as it regurgitated a fireball at us.

Pulling my diamond sword out, I prepared to swing at it.

"Oh, I've alway wanted to do this…" I said as the fireball got closer and closer. When the time was just right, I swung my diamond sword at it like I was playing against Matt in Wii sports, and the fireball flung right back towards the ghast, but unfortunately it moved at the last second and the fireball hit the ceiling behind it.

"Foul ball." Erik joked.

"Shut up." I snarked, as the ghast fired another fireball at us. This time, I watched the trajectory of the fireball corresponding to the ghast, and predicted the ghast would move right. Swinging at the fireball, I managed to whack it to the right a little, and as the ghast instinctively moved to the right, the fireball hit it right smack in the middle of the face, the ghast disappearing into a cloud soon after.

"I knew those 13,000 hours of Wii sports would pay off." I said, as we ventured further into the biome.

"Do we still have the pumpkin heads?" Josh asked.

"Uh, no." I answered. "Why?"

"Because endermen are capable of spawning in this biome." Josh asked. "Skeleton and ghasts as well make up the 3 most common to spa–"

"Okay, Mr Encyclopedia Brown." Erik interrupted him. "We get it. Fighting mobs in this biome won't be as easy as pointing and clicking. Big deal."

Entering the valley, there were surprisingly little mobs there. There were some skeletons in the distance that still had yet to notice our presence, as well as a single enderman to the left. So far, we were in the clear to get the soul sand, and get out. Walking across the soul soil, I had trouble finding a pit of soul sand to mine out.

"Don't get too far ahead." Jamie called out.

"Aight." I answered. Since there were no mobs nearby, I took the free time to try and reload my crossbow. As I placed the arrow in, I saw a pit of soul sand in the distance.

"Hey guys! I found one!" I said, walking over to the pit.

"Great, now grab some and let's get the hell out of here before we get 360'd by a ghast." Josh answered.

"Pfft. We don't have to worry about that, Mike here can fuckin noscope that bitch." Erik added, getting Josh to bust out laughing.

As I approached the pit of soul sand, I looked through my inventory for my crafting table and placed it down next to me to craft a shovel with. As I approached the pit, I began to dig out the blocks of soul sand.

"How much should I grab?" I asked.

"Uh… let's grab a handful." Jamie answered. "Remember, we'll need to be able to make potions for everyone in the village, so we want to be able to grow a shit ton of nether wart at once."

"Got it." I replied. Moving down the pit, I was slowed by the effects of the sand. I could feel something pulling my legs down into it, but I didn't let it bother me. As I stocked up on more and more blocks however, the grabbing got worse, and turned into suction. Looking down, my feet were completely submerged in the soul sand.

"Do you really sink this deep into this shit?" I thought to myself as I continued digging. As I cleared out line by line, the suction only got worse, until some point where I couldn't lift my feet out anymore.

"What the fuck?!"

All I could focus on now was the feeling of a bunch of hands pulling my feet further down into the dry, grainy soul sand.

"Uh… guys?"

"What?" Jamie asked.

"I think I'm kinda… stuck."

"Wait, the hell you mean stuck?"

I tried once more to lift my feet out of the soul sand. "I can't get my damn feet out anymore."

Just then, the suction got even more intense, and I began to sink even deeper, as the dryness of the sand faded away to an unwelcoming sticky gooey mess.

"SHIT!" I yelled, looking around for something to grab onto, but quickly realizing that I had ventured far into the center of the pit and that there was nothing for me to grab onto at all.

Looking back at Jamie and the others, they all had panic in their eyes as I sank further into the pit of soul sand.

"Quick Erik, Give me some stone!" Jamie yelled, her hand outstretched. As Erik passed over the stone, she started to build a pathway over the pit of soul sand. I began to sink quicker. By this time, I was already shoulder deep in the soul sand, it's wretched suction tiring me and rendering my efforts to stop sinking deeper worthless. I tried to push myself up out of the now tacky surface, and it was starting to work, as I was able to lift my chest back out, it was now covered in the brown tar-like substance.

"What the hell is this shit? I don't remember this being a thing?"

As Jamie continued building her pathway, the tacky surface gave way, and I quickly plunged deeper, now with my head barely managing to stay above the surface. With my last ounce of strength, I managed to pull my goop coated arms out from the pit and rested them on the surface as I took a last glance at Jamie, a look of vietnam flashbacks in her eyes.

"Hang on! Please!" She yelled, speeding up the pathway, but it was already too late.

The last of my strength gave out, and the suction of the soul sand pit pulled me under, completely submerging my face.