Oh wow, all positive reviews so far. I'm so happy! Thanks guys! OK, on with the story!
The next week passed quickly. I would work on crafting my stone tools for hours, only stopping to get food and sleep. At night skeletons would come, but I managed to obtain a bow from one, and after crafting a dozen arrows from my now obsolete pile of wood, I added archery training to my schedule, using skeletons and chicken as targets. My sword was getting stronger with every kill, the fresh skeleton bones adding points of the edge and strengthening the entire weapon. The wood it was originally made from had disintegrated days ago. The sword was now completely bone, from tip to handle, and it served me well.
When I wasn't working on my tools, I was hacking off large stone fragments from side tunnels I had made solely for stone gathering, hauling them to the surface, and making new walls for my house. As the days went by my wooden house became a stone fortress, with deep trenches carved all around to deter monsters.
When the zombies came I admit I freaked a bit, but after confirming they weren't actually people, just the living dead, my bone sword made quick work of them. For the oddest reasons the corpses had feathers on them, but I collected them anyway, adding them to my arrows, possibly adding accuracy to them, I'm not sure. I just did it so they looked better.
The spiders were a horrifying experience. They would fall out of trees, landing on top of me as I walked around at night and in the early morning. I got several bites from them. Luckily they didn't seem to be poisonous. They proved difficult to kill with my sword, since they jumped just when I would swing, making me miss and get a painful bite. Eventually I burned down every tree within 500 yards of my house, eliminating any possibility of a suprise attack.
The last night before I finished my new set of tools, I met the...thing that had blown up my wall and injured me. It was tall, with green fur all over it. It had no arms, and scuttled around on four small legs. I named it a creeper, because as I watched it, it would creep around the trees, trying to get behind me before rushing in and exploding. That's right, exploding. BOOM! Seeing it happen was horrifying, fur and blood everywhere. It seemed to ignore all other creatures, running right past cows and pigs to get to me. It could take a few more hits than the average skeleton, but as I got better with my bow, they wern't too much of a problem.
On my 16th day, I took a step back and took a quick inventory of what I had.
89 wood pieces
66 stone pieces
54 torches
5 cow hides
2 stone axes/1 iron axe
2 stone pickaxes/1 iron pickaxe
2 stone shovels/1 iron shovel
1 bone sword/1 stone sword/1 iron sword
1 stone knife/1 iron knife
1 compass
1 watch
1 lighter
1 chest
1 crafting bench
1 furnace
It hit me at that moment, while marveling at how much better my situation was, that I had become much too compliant in my new life. I HAD a life! I needed to try to find a way home. Wasn't that the whole reason I was trying to stay alive? It was time to leave my house and strike out into the wild.
My course now set, I put my possessions into my chest, which I then strapped to my back using the cow hides I had. I took apart my house, adding more wood and stone to my chest. Even though normally I would be floored by such a load, it weighed that of a 20 pound backpack. Maybe the gravity in this place was less than home.
I put my back to the sea, faced the world, and started walking. As I walked I felt good, like a teenager leaving his parents and going out into the world on his own. The sun was bright, even the animals seemed happy. I could almost hear the music again, guiding me towards my destiny.
Well, after several days, our hero is finally leaving home! God knows it took me long enough lol. I tend to stay in one spot when I play Minecraft. Keep up the nice reviews, guys!