The Shop Guy fell to the ground as if all his bones had liquefied, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth, his eyes were closed. All around him were shards of metal and glass.
"That was impressive." TehLulz said and gave Fire thumbs up.
freeZe asked: "What exactly was that light arrow? You said that there was no magic on the bow."
Fire knelt down and showed them the runes on the bow.
He asked: "TehLulz, some of those might look familiar, right?"
TehLulz muttered: "Yeah, this one I recognize, that one too… and oh, this one was one of the big ones…"
"Yes, you know what I did? I put a protection rune on the arrow, in this case it is a very strong protective symbol, the strongest I know of."
freeZe interrupted: "Why would you put protection on an arrow?"
Fire explained: "The second rune is a reversing symbol, so the entire enchantment means 'damage' or 'shatter', I couldn't use the regular damage rune, that one only works on living things while protection applies to armor and so does its inverted form, so it's an anti-armor arrow."
"What the hell are you even talking about?" Ambigious asked, who had checked if the Shop Guy was dead or just immobilized.
TehLulz answered: "Enchanting."
Fire whispered: "Listen now, this is important. We will go down to the fire and talk a bit, don't question anything I say, there will be some lies because I know for sure that the Shop Guy will run straight to the hackers and tell them what I said. And do not mention my sister, the Wither cultists or Brad unless I do."
He went down to the fire, picking up the Shop Guy on the way, who was hanging down like a wet rope. Fire put him down near the fire, which was already getting weaker.
Fire started: "So, let's discuss our further plans, don't worry, he can't hear us."
freeZe played along, sat down and replied: "Good idea, where will we head next?"
"We will climb over the left side of this mountain, after leaving the snowy area there is a very dense jungle, which is where I hid another Nether portal. We needed to take the Overworld route because we need to avoid a sea of lava, which we couldn't go through without more Fire Resistance. We will go through the portal and follow the tunnel there until we hit a large cavern. In this cavern there are some supplies."
The others had sat down at the campfire.
Ambigious asked: "Where will we go after that?"
Fire answered: "I can't tell you that yet but I have left a map in the cavern, which is where the approximate location of my base is noted, encoded of course, the map won't make any sense to someone who doesn't know how to read it."
"That is good. I hope that we will be at your base soon after all that heat and cold…" TehLulz said, he was struggling to keep a straight face but managed to do so.
"What about this guy here?" freeZe asked and pointed at the Shop Guy "What kind of potion was that?"
"It relaxes all motor muscles and disables the senses, you are awake but you see, feel, taste, smell and hear nothing." Fire explained.
About an hour later the fire had burnt down completely and they decided to start walking again. Fire took the lead until they reached the first steep hill, then he told the others to go ahead. Ambigious went first, then TehLulz, then freeZe and then Unchosen.
"Wait!" Fire shouted up to Ambigious.
"What?" Came the answer back down.
"Take a pickaxe!"
"Why?"
"Use it to make holes for us to step in."
He climbed up to Ambigious who was a fair bit ahead.
Fire handed him a diamond pickaxe and also gave the others one when came back down.
"If someone loses their grip, just yell and I'll keep myself ready to catch you." He promised.
freeZe mumbled: "That sounds very convincing…"
Fire answered: "I didn't just hear that."
Meanwhile Ambigious had already started climbing, it wasn't steep enough to require a pickaxe to make holes in the ice but further ahead they could see part which was almost straight up.
They were already a few hundred meters higher when Ambigious complained: "Fire, my arms and feet hurt, it is not easy to make all these holes for you all!"
"We can't take a break right now, look at the sky!" Unchosen yelled.
Half of the sky was covered in thin white clouds, the sun was still shining on the mountain but at the horizon there were big black clouds coming towards them.
Fire commented: "That doesn't look very good."
Ambigious asked: "Hey, TehLulz, could you do this instead of me now, if I keep going I will fall off this mountain."
"Just wait for us to catch up, then I'll take over."
"Thanks man."
"No problem."
freeZe looked at the sky and said: "Actually, this is the first time that I saw weather change here, they really made that realistic."
"Most of the environment actually isn't manually coded, the server used the collective experiences of the first players as a baseline and improves the simulation with each new player." Fire explained.
TehLulz had arrived where Ambigious was. Ambigious climbed back down, he had already packed his pickaxe into his inventory.
Not much time had passed until it started snowing and storming, everybody was freezing and even Fire had put on his warm clothes.
Unchosen said: "It is so cold…"
Fire looked up and mumbled: "The sky is as black as the night, the wind is too strong to keep on climbing."
He yelled upwards: "TehLulz! You can stop now, everybody else wait together!" After these words Fire climbed up to TehLulz using his claws.
Fire swept away some snow and started punching the ice until he hit stone. Then he took his diamond pickaxe and dug a short tunnel followed by a circular room large enough for them to fit in, he sat down leaning against the wall and waited for the others to come in.
Fire put down a block of wood in the middle of the room and looked for his flint and steel. He smashed the piece of iron and the flint together but no sparks appeared.
"The flint must have gotten wet." Fire said.
"What now?" freeZe asked.
Fire sighed and without answering opened his inventory, taking out the blaze core. He held it in both hands and pointed it towards the log. Fire concentrated and felt how his life force was flowing from his body to the blaze core. It was not a high life force requirement but he still felt it. Inside the core sparks started collecting, fueled by Fire's energy, condensing towards the center and forming a small sphere. When Fire felt how the core started vibrating and heating up in his hands, he stopped the energy flow. The sphere in the core was not held in place anymore. The sphere exploded, creating a bright flash of light. A small ray of energy came out of the core pointing at the wood. At first it was small but it got as thick as a finger within a second, then disappeared as fast as it had come. At first nothing happened but then the wood was set ablaze.
"So, why didn't you use this thing in the first place?" Ambigious asked.
Fire packed the core into his inventory and answered, a little exhausted: "The blaze core drains life force and not very little if I may add that. This core is capable of setting a huge forest on fire and ripping a crater into its center but I'm not capable of using this thing's full potential, I will be just using it for brewing after making it grow."
"Who is capable?" freeZe wanted to know.
"Mages." Fire answered. "Only a fraction of the population is capable of being mages though."
"Where do they live?" freeZe wanted to know.
"Some of them are hermits, you usually won't meet those. A lot of them live some in bigger towns and take care of building huge buildings with creatures they create from solid matter and magic, call them golems if you want."
"Like in the Thaumcraft mod, huh?" TehLulz asked.
"Some of the creatures do look like Thaumcraft golems but that is up to their creators. I have seen entire mountains growing arms and legs and standing up to help flatten out a huge area. There were multiple mages involved, I no normal mage is capable of commanding an entire mountain on their own."
"That is amazing." freeZe said.
The fire had burned down halfway, they hadn't talked much since then.
Ambigious broke the silence: "Fire, how did you steal those arrows from the guy?"
Fire smirked. "I dug into the ground a few meters behind you, it is pretty easy to dig through snow."
"Oooh!" Said Ambigious "That's where you went!"
"Exactly. After digging under where he was standing, I made a small hole into the snow and cut his quiver. I was pretty lucky that he didn't notice me, I would just have killed him but giving him false information was way better."
"Was meeting the guy planned?" Unchosen asked after a small pause.
Fire answered: "Not exactly planned but anticipated. Not him specifically either but in general someone who would try to kill us. That is why I told Brad to make me those potions."
freeZe looked at Fire and asked him: "You could have easily escaped without us, why didn't you?"
Fire returned her look and said: "Because I need you four, the Ban Hammer can't be created by a single person."
She asked another question: "When did you plan all this?"
"I started as soon as I knew that the hackers had taken over. Also, did you think that you and Ambigious were the first to spawn in my area? You were only the first ones who weren't exactly scared of me, one of the qualities needed to beat the challenges up ahead is being pretty fearless."
Ambigious smiled. "Hah, and I thought we were just some random people who are accidentally part of your master plan."
Fire looked at the flames and replied: "Up to some degree you are, but up to some degree we all are also legendary heroes on a mission to save the world. Don't let that go to your head though."
After saying that Fire put another block of wood down, this time a bit further from the burning piece. He extended the claws on all fingers of his right hand except for the thumb and cut the wood into sticks, throwing them into the flames, where they started burning and crackling, heating the room up again.
"We should get some sleep now, tomorrow will be a hard day. Night." He said and laid down.
"Night Fire." Unchosen said and did the same, so did the others.