Fire didn't mine very long into the night after finding the redstone, he depleted one more stone pickaxe before he decided to quit. He wasn't tired, he just wanted to quit mining earlier today, the hackers couldn't blame him, he mined more resources alone than an average group, that and he was almost the only one bringing redstone gems.
Fire backed up a few steps, then put his almost broken stone pick into his inventory, extended his claws and sprinted at the wall with inhuman speed. He climbed, but it looked more like running or even flying up the wall than anything else. When he arrived on the top, he turned around and took a look at the quarry, it looked like a giant had mined a staircase into the volcano. He sat down with his feet hanging down over the edge and watched the slaves put down torches and the hackers turning on redstone lamps inside the processing buildings.
Fire really liked being so high above the quarry, at this altitude he felt some degree of freedom, even though he knew it was just an illusion. He also enjoyed the wind on his scales, sometimes it was warm wind and sometimes it was the bitter cold wind of the desert nights, his only chance to cool off every once in a while. It was always warm or hot in the quarry, during the day because of one obvious reason: the sun. At night it was warm because the sandbasalt stored the heat very well and slowly passed it on to the air, it never cooled off completely.
Fire closed his eyes and looked into his inventory and took a few blocks of sandbasalt, put them on his hotbar and placed them behind him.
"It is no throne of gold with nether wool cushions but it will do." He said.
He leaned back and just stared at the sun sinking below the horizon. It almost looked like it was drowning in the quicksand fields far away. After about twenty minutes of just sitting there and watching the sunset he got up, mined away his improvised chair and started slowly mining the sandbasalt.
He didn't rush it like usually, he didn't expect to find anything, he just finished it to finish it, a weird mindset for a slave. It wasn't that bad being in the quarry, just boring at times, he was provided with food and tools and had something to do. Trying to break out had no point at all, some people tried it and exactly the same amount failed. Fire himself had been tempted to try several times but he knew better than to try and break out. Not yet at least.
He was so absent minded while mining that he noticed the strong waves of energy only as he saw their source. The waves were radiating form the ore which held the well-known and most-wanted blue shiny rocks: diamonds. The strength energy waves radiating from the diamond ore in the quarry always surprised him. He mined around the diamond ore until the vein of eight blocks was floating in front of him, sending even stronger waves now that it was completely uncovered.
Fire pulled out his iron pick and creaked the joints of his fingers. He mined away the sandbasalt around the diamonds even more carefully than he did with the redstone. With tiny pokes of his iron pickaxe he slowly freed the diamonds from their black and yellow prison. It was like with the redstone, the more carefully you mined the ore, the more materials you would get, in this case Fire wound up with twenty diamonds. He didn't put them in his inventory, where they were visible to the hackers, instead he put them into an inside pocket of his coat. The diamonds slowly stopped emitting energy, Fire only felt a slight tingle in his skin near the pocket.
"Those will sell for a high price, they are quite big." He muttered.
Now he didn't care for slow, he put his iron pickaxe back into his inventory, pulled out a fresh stone pickaxe and started hammering at the stone even more powerfully than at any time of the day. He felt the durability bar of the stone pick go down as fast as if he would be using it to kill mobs in an XP farm. The sandbasalt was shattering and bits were flying in every direction. The shaft of the pickaxe vibrated with every hit, Fire heard wood and stone crack. The blocks were breaking as quickly as netherrack when exposed to an Efficiency enchantment. One hit before the pickaxe broke, the area was done. Fire stepped back to the edge and looked at today's work.
"Impresses me every time…" He said to himself and looked into his inventory to take count.
He had two rows full of sandbasalt, a full stack and twelve iron ores, thirty gold ores, thirty-nine redstone gems, twenty diamonds and even forty-seven lapis lazuli, which was very rare in the quarry and very valuable outside of it because of its very pure and powerful blue.
After Fire had done his inventory check he slowly walked towards the wall he made. He was about to return to the sleeping area at the bottom of the quarry, this was his favorite part of work, not because work was over, it was because Fire loved the way how to get down there, or at least the way he himself got down there. It was one of the few things in the world he could still enjoy.
One of the abilities given to him by the admins was that in danger Fire would experience everything in slow motion, giving him more time to think about his actions. This ability was mostly useful in combat but it also had other uses. Over time Fire had gained a large manner of control over this ability, enabling him to use it whenever he wanted instead of just in danger. Fire sprinted towards the edge and as he drew close, the world around him slowed down. Fire's steps were long and had a long air time, his breath went slowly, his pulse was slow but powerful.
A few meters before the ledge, he leaped and landed on both feet with the front part of his feet over the edge. Fire concentrated and jumped with as much force as he could. The state he entered now was one of relaxation, it felt like being in a room without gravity. In this state of antigravity he could almost forget where he was and why, almost. Falling down the cliff felt just like flying he was almost too relaxed to cushion the hit on the floor, again almost. The world returned to normal but slowed down a few seconds after the landing as he approached the next ledge. He jumped again. Five falls later he had arrived at the base of the quarry where the tents of the slaves were, he was usually the last to come down but today he wasn't. Other slaves had already lit some campfires and the usual groups were forming. Fire always sat down with the same group of four other players.
They were a pretty strange group, first there was Fire, the longtime player and friend of the admins who had been brought to the quarry by the hackers.
The second player was TehLulz9001, for short TehLulz. He was tall and averagely built. He was wearing a black suit, which was ragged because of the work. His hair was shoulder long, messy and brown, his eyes were brown as well.
The third player was freeZe60, for short freeZe. She was slim and had completely pitch black skin with entirely green eyes shining out at her head. She was wearing a black shirt and black pants.
The fourth player was Ambigious_Name, for short Ambigious. He was short and quite muscular. He was wearing a blue T-shirt and black jeans. His hair was black and very short and his blue eyes were covered by sunglasses, which reflected the light form the campfire in all rainbow colors. The thing that only few knew about him was that he was freeZe's brother.
The last and newest member was TheUnchosenOne, for short Unchosen. He had black hair, brown eyes and dark skin and he was almost completely covered in vines and leaves which never seemed to tear. He was still unsettled by the new circumstances and therefore didn't talk very much.
This was the firegroup Fire was in, a firegroup were the people sitting together regularly at a campfire, they were not necessarily in the same section of the quarry or in the same mining group, just some people that fate brought together.
Fire walked over to the small campfire that they had, it was always at the same spot, a little bit away from the others, four blocks of sandbasalt were already placed down around the fire, with the members of the firegroup sitting on them. Fire moved a single block of sandbasalt to his hotbar, placed it and sat down on the block which he had seen the most in the last year.