As usual, Fire was the first one to wake up, the cultists had left the room and the plate where the steaks used to be on was gone. His wounds were completely healed by regeneration potion that was still coursing inside him, his scales were still deformed but there was no way around that without a stronger potion. Fire decided to let the others sleep and took a closer look at the room he was in, he hadn't been here in a while. There were brewing stands on one wall, an enchanting table and some bookshelves on the other one, hidden behind a tunnel. The third wall had the entrance in it and the last wall had what he was looking for, a cauldron filled with water. He walked over to it and formed a bowl with his hands and drank a bit of water to get rid of his thirst.
"Not the best water in the world, but better than the stuff in the quarry." He commented.
Fire walked back to the spot he slept on, just to sit there and look at the fireplace for a few minutes. He was thinking about what to do next, he had a rough outline for his plan but he had to add in the details when the time came… And the time had come, the time to plan in detail, how to get to his base the fastest and the safest, with the first one having priority.
First they would have to leave the Nether, then there was the glacier. They had to climb the icy mountains and get down on the other side. Fire took a deep breath, the air smelled a bit like sulfur, what else would you expect from a hellish world? Then there was a smell, humans couldn't detect, it was the smell of blaze powder burning in the fireplace, it was a little spicy but also sweet in a strange way. The smell reminded him of something, he still had to activate and infuse the blaze core. He closed his eyes and moved it to his hotbar with his thoughts, then when he opened his eyes again, he was holding it in his right hand.
Fire went over to the enchanting table and ducked to get through the hallway, which was a little too low for him. As he approached the table, the book laying on it magically opened and fragments of knowledge started flowing towards the table from the bookshelves. The books were mostly red, some black ones were there too, rarely blue and yellow and only a single green one. This enchanting table was specialized for black magic and harmful or sinister enchantments, exactly what Fire needed for the infusion of the blaze core.
He put the glowing crystalline core on top of the book, from where it floated up. Fire cleared his throat and collected his thoughts, he focused on the core and began speaking the words which guided the magic. They were no regular words, no ordinary combinations of letters, may they be random or not. It was no language, not in the traditional sense, the words were just an instrument to guide the energy, they were not even words, just sounds. You could only feel the air vibrating and hear a sound with varying pitches, sometimes low, sometimes high, sometimes everything at once.
A shockwave went through the semi-transparent runes coming from the books, they stopped going into the table and then slowly focused on the blaze core, which had started spinning. At first, Fire's voice was not audible because it had a frequency lower than the human ear could detect. But even if you couldn't hear it, it had an effect on the knowledge bits, they arranged in a complicated grid, some flew back to their books and some more came out of books that hadn't given out any before. Suddenly the vibration in the air stopped, Fire had rapidly changed his voice to ultrasonic, making the fragments shiver and arrange to different figures. That was the method of determining, what "words" had to be used to infuse the now rapidly spinning core with magic. The fragments now formed a three dimensional star-like shape around the core, exactly what Fire wanted, the base position was reached, he could start with the difficult part.
Fire started speaking in the "language" of enchanting, a strange mix of sounds with all kinds of different frequencies and volumes. The fragments started rotating and coming closer to the core but seemed to be held back by an invisible barrier, Fire increased the amount of low frequencies with high volume and completely stopped the high frequencies. The fragments arranged in packets, similar symbols together. Fire changed his voice again, making the symbols transform, merge and split, modifying the enchantment. The changes in his voice became more rapid as he needed to react to every tiny symbol trying to leave its place.
One or two minutes later he had arranged the symbols in seven stable spheres, rotating around the core, connected by small strings of symbols. Now he only had to add some of his energy to activate the enchantment. He raised his hands and changed his voice to a very loud and deep sound that rumbled through the enchanting room. He felt how the energy inside of him searched for an exit.
He made his voice a little quieter but maintained the pitch, decreasing the force with which he was pulling the energy towards the spheres, then he suddenly stopped. Fire started glowing in a rainbow-colored light from the energy that had made it through his skin. It slowly got pulled towards his hands, forming two spheres, which met between his raised hands, combining into a big one. With a sudden blast of his voice he threw the ball of energy towards the runes floating in the air, it distributed evenly in the spheres. Fire concentrated and started the enchanting process with his thoughts.
One after the other, the runes flew towards the core but stopped just short of its surface, creating a glow, which evolved into a bright light as more and more runes orbited the core. When all the symbols were at the core, the light stopped. Fire hoped that he didn't do anything wrong, this was his second try on activating a blaze core and this time the enchantment was fundamentally different. Experimental enchanting was not an exact science. Just as he wanted to reach for the core and take it away, a bright flash of light, an explosion almost, came from the core, blinding Fire and creating a loud high-pitched sound in his ears, he got knocked off his feet.
"Fire?" A voice asked "Are you okay?"
Fire couldn't identify who exactly was speaking but it definitely was none of the cultists, neither was it freeZe. The white fog in front of his eyes slowly cleared and he stood up, hitting his head on the ceiling of the tunnel. TehLulz was standing in front of him, smiling.
"How long have I been out?" Fire asked.
"I don't think it was that long, I woke up from a strange sound and this explosion, then I saw you on the floor there." TehLulz replied.
"Ah, I see." Fire said and turned around.
The core was still floating above the enchanting table but it was glowing more intensely and little sparks radiated from it.
"It worked." He said and picked the core up.
"What worked?" TehLulz asked in a confused manner.
"I reactivated the blaze core using some energy."
"Wow, I want to learn enchanting…"
"I can teach you. When we are in my base, we will be there for quite some time until your armor sets are done and all the other preparations are complete." Fire promised.
"What is the difference between an active and an inactive blaze core?" TehLulz wanted to know.
Fire walked out of the room, sitting down at the fireplace again, Ambigious, freeZe and Unchosen were still sleeping.
"Hmm…" Fire said "I think that you should really learn enchanting, you have a sense for the energy waves, that is why only you woke up…" He speculated and answered the question he was asked: "An active blaze core can serve as a catalyst for powerful fire based magic."
"That sounds amazing." TehLulz said and asked another question: "But if I learn enchanting, how will I reach those frequencies, I heard some strange sounds, were those your voice?"
Fire explained: "You will learn that at my base, it involves some kind of meditation. Most enchantments aren't this complex either, this one had hundreds of runes assembled in a very complicated manner, for general-purpose enchantments you normally don't need more than twenty unassembled runes."
"That's good, it must have taken you quite some time to figure all that stuff out…"
"True. But now, let's wake the others up." Fire said.
A few hours later, they were ready to go. Matt showed them the way to their portal, it was a very pretty portal situated on a little pyramid of sandstone and nether brick, the obsidian was chiseled and had runes on it, primarily for decoration but some of them actually had an effect, for example ones that prevented blacking out, making it far quicker transition.
"Here is the bag with the clothes, Fire." Matt said and handed Fire a bag made from nether wool.
"What is so special about those bags, Fire? Brad also gave you one." freeZe asked.
"They hide what is inside, the hackers can view our player data, which means what we have in our inventory. The thing about that is that things inside the bag won't be displayed, so it just shows a bag." Fire explained, already walking towards the portal.
Fire then said: "Okay, I will explain everything else while we walk, thanks for everything Matt."
With these words he walked up the stairs to the portal and took a deep breath. He touched the purple magical semi-liquid with his right hand, then walked into the portal. He felt how he got transported over to the Overworld again, at the edge of his perception he noticed the others going into the portal.