Fire noticed the cold around him, they were standing in the middle of a giant glacier, the portal was standing on an elevated carved stone platform, which was strangely free of snow.
Fire knew that the hackers would know where he was, or at least that they would know the area he was in. Without doubt, the best place to hide was the Nether since a map was not readily available. He had just exited this safe house to walk the rest of the distance in the Overworld. The portal he just walked out of was the one with the most direct path to his base. If he had a portal directly in his base or close by, anyone could just walk in from the Nether or at least dramatically limit the area where his base could be. Fire aborted his train of thought when he saw that his friends had all exited the portal.
"So, where are we?" TehLulz asked.
"Good question…" Unchosen agreed.
He wrapped his hands around himself, his leaves didn't offer any protection from the cold.
"Here take those, they are made from nether wool, they will keep you warm." Fire said.
He handed them four sets of snow clothes, which were kept in white and blue tones.
Fire said: "See, everything is planned. Almost everything, the attack on you was not planned Ambigious."
"It better not have been planned." Ambigious said while pulling the jacket over his head.
A few minutes later everyone except Fire had put on their clothes, Fire didn't need extra clothing, his scales were not only good at keeping heat out but also at keeping it in, the degree of protection to cold was less than to heat but it was enough that Fire didn't need to put his set of clothes on yet.
"Everybody ready?" Fire asked. He got four positive answers, he then said: "You go first, go towards that mountain, I'll keep an eye out for anything."
Ambigious walked off the platform and down the stairs, the others followed.
"Be careful not to fall, the snow is deep here." Fire warned.
It was just in time to keep Ambigious from jumping down the last few steps, instead he carefully walked down the stairs and instantly sunk into the snow up to his knees. He started walking towards the giant mountain range covered in ice and snow that was ahead of them.
Unchosen was the last one before Fire, he said to himself: "From one extreme to another, first slavery, then Nether, now ice. When will we finally do something a bit more relaxing?"
"At my base, Unchosen, at my base. When we arrive you will get all the relaxation you want, at least when we are not training." Fire ensured.
"Training what?" Unchosen wanted to know.
"Right, haven't told you about that."
"No, you haven't."
"To be able to fight what we will certainly have to fight you four will have to practice the art of battle and also some other things. You all will have to specialize in either smithing, enchanting or brewing. There will also be a general combat training for all of you. TehLulz will do enchanting, I have no idea what freeZe or Ambigious want."
"Hmm, brewing sounds interesting…" Unchosen replied and scratched his chin through his leaves.
"And for combat? What would you think suits you?"
"Archery I think, I own a bow in real life but I haven't got any good practice lately. Tell me more about brewing though, I suppose that it is harder than in normal Minecraft."
"I wouldn't say harder, more complex would fit better. You can still make the basic potions easily. But if you really want good or interesting potions, then it gets difficult."
"Difficult potions like what?"
"You can brew potions that make you basically invincible, potions that change your voice like you saw Brad use in the arena, that and much more. Poisons with various effects and more importantly antidotes with which you can counteract those poisons. Your possibilities are limitless, each time when I think I discovered all the potion effects, I stumble upon something else like a new ingredient, the blaze core is the best example for that."
"How does brewing work here exactly?"
"First you need a good base potion, you can use nether wart as base but also the moss from mossy cobble. Different bases are good for different types of potions. For example, if you take the mob puppet out of a mob spawner and dissolve it in acid, you have a perfect base for harmful potions but you won't have any success when you try to make a healing potion from that base. In general, the better a base is the more potent the resulting potion is. For example, if you just use just use water with bone meal as a base, you will get a weak damage potion. When you use spawner essence you get a potion that can pretty much instantly kill most creatures."
"That sounds like proper alchemy. What was the hardest potion that you have ever brewed?"
There was no trace of exhaustion in Unchosen's voice anymore and a shine had entered his eyes. Fire noticed that and smiled, he was sure that Unchosen would make an excellent alchemist once he actually got his hands on the correct equipment and ingredients.
"The hardest potion? Let me think… There are actually two, one that was the hardest to figure out and the other one was the hardest to brew. The hardest one to figure out was definitely the Hypermobility Potion, gives you the ability to walk over water or straight up walls. It generally lets you say 'screw you' to some laws of physics, the more potent variants let you swim in air. The hardest one to brew was that potion I told you about, the Ultimate Base Potion, the timings for certain ingredients were very delicate and I constantly needed to keep the temperature in check."
"So, you made one of the artefacts we need for the Ban Hammer? Where is it?" Unchosen said, a little confused.
"In my base, so that cuts down the number of artefacts we need to find to... less, I don't know myself how many we need. The potion is not complete, it is just in a form where it won't degenerate. There is one ingredient missing, the Ender Dragon Egg, which we cannot open, except with the Axe of Eric the Viking, which is another one of the artefacts. The Axe currently located in the city of Rockhaven. Those two artefacts are relatively easy to get because I know where they are but I am more concerned about those I don't know about, the admins had a good reason not to tell me what awaits us."
Before Unchosen could answer anything Ambigious called Fire: "Hey, Fire! We might have a slight problem here, come over here!"
Fire ran forward to Ambigious, who had crouched down in the snow on top of a small hill, which was in front of a valley. In the valley was the last person they would expect and like to see there: The Shop Guy in full iron armor armed with a bow and an iron sword.
"He hasn't noticed us yet." Ambigious whispered.
"He seems to be looking for something…" freeZe assumed.
"Or someone." TehLulz added.
Fire said: "He is looking for me. He somehow found out that I am here somewhere, probably still has some information from the other hackers."
"And what are you going to do now?" Unchosen asked.
"I'll kill him again if I must but I prefer bloodless methods, much harder to track."
"Which won't work on him I think…" freeZe muttered.
"Fire…" Ambigious begun and stopped as he saw that Fire wasn't next to him anymore, he neither was in the valley.
"Damn it, how can he disappear like that?" He complained and then explained to Unchosen: "He did that all the time before you and TehLulz were there. Disappears, just to turn up a few minutes later, no idea how he does that."
Meanwhile the Shop Guy had put down a few logs and lit them with a flint and steel, forming a campfire and sat down next to it, facing them but not noticing that they were there.
"Maybe he isn't looking for Fire, maybe he is just travelling through here?" freeZe suspected.
Ambigious replied angrily: "Nope, he's definitely out for Fire's blood, probably for ours too. If I had a decent weapon and some armor, I would go and fight him myself."
They sat there for about five more minutes as Fire showed up as unexpectedly as he disappeared.
Fire said: "Okay, just needed to take care of some things, let's ask our Shop Guy, what he is doing here."
"Won't he just attack us, with his bow, you know?" TehLulz worried but then added: "But I should really get moving, my feet are getting cold."
Fire nodded and took his ghast bone bow from his back.
He stood up and shouted down into the valley: "Who have we here? What are you doing in this place?"
He immediately got a slightly agitated answer. "I should rather ask you what you are doing here."
As he saw freeZe, Ambigious, TehLulz and Unchosen he laughed and said: "And I see, you got your companions with you, time for you all to die!"
With these words he reached back to his quiver, took an arrow out and pulled back the string and released the arrow right into Unchosen's chest. With the only difference being that there was no arrow.
"What?"
He reached back once again and felt for more arrows but didn't find any.
"Where the hell are my arrows?" He asked himself.
Fire held up a good twenty arrows and shouted: "Here!"
The rest of the group looked at Fire.
It took a few moments for the Shop Guy to process what had happened, then he got his sword out and ran up the hill where they were standing. It would have looked a lot more threatening if he hadn't been wading through knee-deep snow.
Fire dropped all arrows except one and put it on the blood red string of his black ghast bone bow, while pulling it back, he said: "Okay, TehLulz, watch and learn."
TehLulz looked at Fire strangely but said nothing. As Fire had pulled the string all the way back, he suddenly made a strange sound and a red flash of light came from the tip of the arrow.
The arrow cut through the air and left a trail of red light behind it like a shooting star, as it hit the Shop Guy… nothing happened.
He stopped and laughed, triumph on his face. "Light arrows are useless against me!"
He quickly stopped laughing as he noticed that all of his armor had shattered into small metal shards and was falling off of him while he was talking. The expression on his face changed from triumph to anger, from anger to realization and from there to terror. He tried running away but as he turned around something hit his head and shattered, he felt his body going numb and lost control over his limbs.