Ambigious' stone sword cut through the vines and fern in front of him with powerful swings, clearing a narrow path. TehLulz, who was walking to his right slightly behind him, widened this path with similarly powerful movements.

Ambigious thought about the situation they were in and came to the conclusion that it was not too bad and it was clearly not the worst thing that could have happened. Of course he was worried about his sister but from his own experience he knew that the kind of burns she had wouldn't do more than hurt like hell and leave some scars.

He chuckled to himself while he thought about if the magic on the server could also remove scars, probably yes. If magic could hide things in plain sight or teleport people, removing scars seemed trivial. But you never knew.

FreeZe herself had fallen asleep in Fire's arms while they were walking. Ambigious couldn't help but grin at the fact.

He thought about what he would do in Fire's base. The whole magic thing didn't interest him very much and brewing just seemed like a very dry subject to him, he wanted to know about fighting with swords or axes, up close and personal. He had tried to fire a few arrows with Fire's bow when it was his shift and came to the conclusion that archery wasn't his thing either.

TehLulz asked Fire: "Are we still on the right path?"

Fire replied: "Yes. There shouldn't be any major obstacles in our way aside from maybe large rocks or fallen trees. From here it's basically a straight path to my base."

"Good to hear that." TehLulz said.

Ambigious remarked: "Good, crossing another river is the last thing I want to do right now. Especially with all the leeches and other jungle things…"

Fire said: "Talking about that, carnivorous plant dead ahead."

He pointed at an inconspicuous looking formation of fern.

He explained: "Don't touch that. The fern is very sticky and hidden in the middle is a funnel leading to the main part of the plant, which is underground. If something organic touches the fern it is pulled in and digested. You can distinguish it from regular fern by the shape of the leaves."

TehLulz shivered and said: "Nasty."

They kept their distance from the plant and continued walking in the same direction as before.

Nothing remarkable happened in the next part of their trek, in the late afternoon they decided to take a break in a small clearing. They sat down on the soft long grass.

Ambigious asked: "Are you sure there aren't any ants around here? I hate ants…"

Fire laughed and replied: "I can't guarantee anything but I don't see any."

Ambigious was satisfied with that answer and said: "You are the one with the eagle eyes around here."

Unchosen asked: "How long will it take until we reach your base, Fire?"

Fire answered: "I wanted to bring that up actually. I don't think we can reach it by sunset and as I said, being in the jungle at night is dangerous. This clearing is fairly safe, there are no trees for snakes to drop on top of us from. I will also be standing guard this night again."

"Alright." Unchosen said.

Fire continued: "Another thing. Now that we have time I might as well talk about what you will be doing in my base. You all will learn some things that will be useful when we go on the hunt for the other artefacts. Every one of you will be trained in combat and in a craftsmanship discipline. At first all of you will of course get training in how to use the most common weapons, in case we don't have our own at any point for some reason."

Fire paused and then carried on: "I assume that Unchosen will choose brewing for the other skill, is that right Unchosen?"

Unchosen nodded.

Fire turned to Ambigious: "How does smithing sound to you?"

Ambigious replied: "Smithing? Hell yeah! I've always wanted to do that."

"Good." Fire said and asked TehLulz: "I am fairly certain that you'll want to do enchanting, right?"

TehLulz said: "Right."

"We'll get to the details when we are at my base, no need to hurry." Fire said.

Unchosen shifted around on the grass to get into a more comfortable position and said: "I guess freeZe will do magic. From all that you have told us, magic is very versatile, so that counts for more than one discipline?"

Fire replied: "Yes, not only versatile but also very time consuming to learn, she wouldn't be able to do a second thing on the side."

Ambigious chuckled to himself and said: "I'll have to enjoy the time I still have before she can zap me at will when I say something that she doesn't like."

Fire suddenly turned his head towards a bush on the edge of the clearing.

He whispered: "There is something in that bush… doesn't seem to be very big."

A few seconds later an ocelot burst out of the bush, Fire's tension was immediately blown away.

"Oh, it's you." He said.

The ocelot stopped and then slowly walked towards Fire, he reached out with his hand and proceeded to pet the jungle cat. The ocelot started purring and pressed itself against Fire's hand.

"Awww." TehLulz said.

Fire explained: "I've known him since he was little, me and my sister take care of the animals around the base as best as we can."

Unchosen had joined Fire in petting the ocelot, he asked: "Are you here alone, little guy?"

Surprisingly, the ocelot looked at Unchosen and made a sound that sounded like something between a meow and a soft grunt, then it disappeared into the bushes but only to return with several more ocelots, one adult one and three smaller ones.

"Well, that is new." Fire remarked.

The other ocelots were equally fine with petting, which was unusual for wild animals. Even freeZe had gathered enough strength to sit up and talk a bit with the others, she was still weak and her burns still hurt but she claimed that it was getting better.

As they sat there with the ocelots and talked it quickly became night, darkness enveloped them until Fire used his flint and steel to ignite a small campfire, contained by rocks he had picked up.

Fire then proceeded to stand guard while the others slowly fell asleep, leaving him only with the ocelots. Around midnight the ocelots ran off too, Fire assumed that they were going off to hunt.

Everything was quiet until in the very early morning Fire heard something in the bushes again, it seemed to be bigger this time. He was sure that it wasn't the ocelot family returning. Fire was instantly alert and ready to fight off whatever was trying to attack them, an arrow already on the string of his bow.

Out of the bush leaped a spider which was very well adapted to the jungle. It was smaller than regular Minecraft spiders and its chitin shell had a greenish tone, making it harder to spot in the leaves. This type of spider lacked raw attack power but made it up by being substantially faster and more venomous than normal spiders.

Fire's perception slowed down but he still only barely had time to aim his bow at the eight-legged creature's head and release the arrow. The arrow left the bow and only after a few centimeters of flight it hit the spider dead on, it pierced the arachnid's shell with a crack, killing it instantly. The spider's dead body hit Fire's chest and still had enough momentum to throw Fire onto his back.

Fire pushed the spider off his chest, stood back up and put down his bow. He sat down next to the spider and used his claws to cut open its head to remove its poison glands.

"I'll use those for brewing." He said to himself, after throwing the dead spider into the bushes he added: "No reason to tell the others about this, they are stressed enough."

Fire then went back to his guard position with his bow in hand, ready to fend off any more creatures that the jungle would throw at him.

While guarding he thought about his plans for what he would need to do to prepare his friends for the long and hard journey ahead. Make some weapons and armor for them, brew some potions… then he decided that he would have more than enough time to think about those things when they were safely in the base. The one thing Fire really did look forward to was meeting his sister after one long year of slavery.

The rest of the night was unusually quiet, Fire didn't mind.