I quickly came awake the same as yesterday morning. A quick peek out the window revealed that the storm has thankfully gone, and the sun is just over the horizon. Between yesterday and this morning, I think it might be safe to say that my body is waking me up immediately on sunrise.

Julian is still asleep, which doesn't surprise me. Straining my ears, I don't hear anything on the roof, but I can't be sure until I look. At least there are no skeletons under trees near the safehouse this time, and the wall has held since it's made of stone now.

Reaching into the reservoir and cupping some water, I quickly splashed some on my face to clean up and get refreshed, then made my way downstairs, drawing my sword as I did so, took a deep breath, then took off out the back door.

Running across the beam to the wall and leaping down, I began to juke back and forth until I'd gotten far enough away to hopefully be out of range of any skeletons potentially on the roof.

Turns out the roof is clear though. Chuckling in relief, I went back and got back on top of the wall. Nothing underneath the safehouse either. I did a quick perimeter check while walking along the top of the wall, and smiled as I found nothing. Despite the torches being knocked out last night, no mobs got in. In which case I think it might be safe to say that there is indeed a minimum distance from myself that mobs are prevented from spawning in. Thank goodness for that!

Now to deal with the torches. All the ones outside with direct line of sight to the sky are unlit. Luckily all it takes is holding the lit end of a torch to them to make them reignite. For lack of any better ideas I then placed a block directly above the torch to hopefully prevent them from being put out by the rain again.

I went back inside and headed upstairs to do the same with the two torches on the wall on either side of the alcove. On the way I found Julian, just sitting up in bed and stretching, looking rather tired.

"Mornin," I greeted.

Julian mumbled something back that may or may not have been 'good morning'. Definitely not a morning person.

Walking past him, I broke the blocks leading to the patio with the furnaces, placed the door back, and relit the torches. I then placed a temporary ladder to get on top of the building, relit those torches as well, and placed blocks over them to shelter them from the rain.

All told, I have half a stack of asphalt left. Unfortunately that's not nearly enough for the half made plans to expand the building a little, so I resolve to just head back to Walmart and finish clearing out the place.

While I lit the exterior torches, Julian shambled outside and looked about, then yawned and stretched while I placed some blocks above the torches and he turned to look at me.

"We're going to have to move aren't we." Julian more stated than asked.

"What?" I said, completely flummoxed at the sudden statement, "What do you mean?"

Julian gestured out at everything. "All this. The rain. Hurricanes are going to come eventually, and you know how it is. A week or more of nothing but rain and clouds. We don't have the resources to hunker down for a week, and I don't know about you, but I'd go crazy trying."

I didn't answer for a moment then shook my head. "I'm not worried about the rain. Yeah, if we got hit by a hurricane right now, we'd be screwed, but it still wouldn't stop me. If it came to that, I'd just make a well lit tunnel underneath the road and mine out Walmart that way. And I'm already planning to set up several plots of land for crops, which we've already confirmed you can at least harvest since you can interact with everything Minecraft even if you can't place them… which kinda makes you like an ingame villager now that I think of it…"

"What?" Julian asked, confused.

I shook my head. "Not important. Point is, we'll be fine. We don't have much yet, but there'll be plenty to do eventually. Like, in the next few days, eventually. Even without a source of cobblestone…"

"About that," Julian said thoughtfully, "You just need lava, right? It doesn't need to be any specific kind of lava? Just… as far as you know, lava?"

I slowly nodded. "Yeah, I mean… What do you mean, 'different kinds of lava'?"

"Well, I was thinking before I fell asleep and it just occurred to me… We can make lava. Any sufficiently hot rock that has reached a liquid or near liquid state is technically lava. Same with molten metal, though I bet that doesn't count, right?"

"Right," I confirmed.

"So all we have to do is melt some asphalt or concrete, and you get your lava." Julian said, nodding.

"That… might work…" I said, considering the possibility. "Only one problem."

"What?" Julian asked.

"How the hell would we get rock hot enough to melt lava?" I asked, incredulous at the idea.

"That's actually not that hard," Julian said, "Just need a kiln or foundry and you can make one that can melt iron in your own backyard, and most rock has a far lower melting point than metal does."

"Wait, seriously?" I asked, shocked.

"Yes? You did remember how I mentioned that your stone furnaces should be slag all over the ground, right?" he asked, nonplussed.

"Oh yeah…" I said, the proverbial lightbulb finally lighting. "…But can we actually make a kiln big enough?"

Julian frowned slightly, "Well, how much lava do you need? Wait, don't tell me…"

"A cubic meter of it," I confirmed.

Julian sighed and slapped a hand against his face before drawing it down with an expression that just screamed, 'Why me?' He then shook his head and sighed. "I've made a kiln before, but nothing of that size. Do you absolutely need a cubic meter of molten lava all at once, or can it be in small amounts?"

I was already shaking my head before he finished the question. "I can't even use my bucket on any amount of water less than a cubic meter. I'm positive it'll just do the same thing for the lava."

Julian went to say something, then paused and frowned. "…When did you test if a bucket could do that?"

I thought back to answer him, before frowning. "I… I could've sworn… When did I?..." I trailed off, confused.

Julian waited, then offered, "Maybe you were going off pre-established rules from the game and just assumed it would be the same?"

I frowned, annoyed at myself as I realized he was probably right. "Well, we've got water. Let's go find out."

I then went downstairs and broke the blocks over the water reservoir on the first floor. Using my bucket to scoop out a cubic meter of it, I then made another reservoir and dropped the water into it. I frowned when it immediately filled up to the brim like the other reservoir, despite not having two water source blocks to do so.

"You'll have to add the water for only a moment then remove it," Julian suggested.

I nodded and replaced the water with blocks, before mining them back up, and scooping another cubic meter of water from the reservoir, and this time dropping it in for only a moment then immediately pulling it back out. It only left a bit of water this time. Humming, I dropped the cubic meter of water back into the reservoir to get rid of it, causing Julian to shake his head, then tried to scoop up some water with the bucket.

To my surprise, the bucket did pick up the lesser amount of water, and I could read from the bucket now how close to full it is. I goggled at it for a moment, then attempted to scoop up the rest of the water. It worked, and I now had a cubic meter of water in my bucket once more, and a bone dry test area.

"Well that worked." Julian commented while I broke the blocks for the temporary reservoir and put them into my inventory, "I suppose that means we can go ahead with making a kiln and melting down bits of rock for your lava?"

"Yeah…" I said half heartedly.

Julian blinked for a moment, then frowned, "Alright, I rather figured you would be happy about this. Why do you look like someone ran over your dog?"

I shot a quizzical look at Julian for a moment, then shrugged, and asked rhetorically, "If this doesn't work as expected, what else doesn't? Its one thing to learn new ways reality interacts with Minecraft, but if it's altering basic working principles of Minecraft in return, then everything I know might be wrong. I'm going to have to relearn Minecraft, and I'm really worried a lot of things I'm banking on for future plans won't actually work."

"Alright, I can see how that might be a problem," Julian said with a frown. "But I don't think worrying about it will help any. Better if we find out for certain, then cross that bridge when we come to it."

I took a deep breath, then let it out in a gusty sigh and nodded. "You're right. You said you could make a kiln? What do you need for that?"

"Most everything I need for that I can get from Walmart I think. Fire bricks, heat resistant mortar, ceramic fiber blankets, clay…" Julian listed off, "All of it should be there as I doubt it would have been high on anyone's list for looting before… that day."

"Good to know," I said nodding, before my lips quirked up slightly. "We should probably name what happened. It'll probably be the new 'BC to AD' event, you know?"

"After Apocalypse?" Julian suggested.

I snorted a laugh. "A.A.? An acronym like that just makes me think of Alcoholics Anonymous."

Julian shrugged. "How about… Meteor Fall then? I mean, this all started with that meteor showing up after all…"

"That… yeah… That would work," I said, frowning thoughtfully, "It even matches what they called another cataclysmic event in another game, so there's that. Plus M.F. doesn't jump out at me as any other acronym really. And all else fails, we could just borrow from another game and call it the third era of humanity, or 3E for short."

Julian nodded. "I think I'd like calling it the third era more myself, and just call the event that triggered it Meteor Fall."

"Sounds good to me," I agreed. "We should get a move on. The sooner we get access to stone, the sooner I can start really building, and I'm thinking the first thing we need after shoring up the walls is individual rooms, bathrooms, and plumbing. We could both use a shower."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Julian muttered, "But yes, let's."

-End Chapter-

AN: I usually avoid these end of chapter author notes things where possible, but in this case I feel I owe an explanation for why I abruptly stopped writing this story. It's mostly because it's taken me this long to figure out how to deal with the lava problem. I can't tell you how many youtube videos I watched to try and figure out how one might go about making a kiln, not so I can know how to do it, but so that I can know if it would be feasible for Julian to even pull it off, since I want him to know how to do it. Granted, he's a student geologist, not a smithy, but I figure maybe he got some hands on experience with rocks too, as it's part of his interest. But then came the issue of hand making a kiln that could make a whole cubic meter of lava at once, and things got more than a bit hairy. Granted I could've just had them seek out a factory with a large enough foundry, but that comes with its own host of problems, not the least of which being the lack of power, and the fact that I have no idea where one of those factories might be, and when I googled it, the closest one is at least twenty minutes away by car anyway. So no, that's not a very good option at all unfortunately.

So long story short, I hit a wall with the lava issue, and I had to break through it before I could continue writing.