IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! So to celebrate, here's a new chapter! Enjoy and don't forget to comment!
I ran back to my cave home, grabbing every torch I could from nearby buildings. I stopped at my cave home long enough to grab my pickaxes and the rest of my torches. From there I started climbing down the tunnels, getting as deep as I could without actually mining.
I got pretty far, I think, before the decent ended. I dropped a torch and got to work, carving a downward staircase into the earth. I mined for hours, smashing enough rock to make a new mountain, and finding chunks of iron and gold ore by the dozen. I even found coal, which made my torches brighter and last alot longer. When I took a break, I looked back up my staircase.
It went up and up so far I couldn't tell where it had started. I had no idea how deep I was, but my watch told me that I had been mining all day and almost all night. As I turned to go back up my staircase, a dim red glow caught my eye. I lookked closer, and saw part of the stone was covered with red specks that glowed when struck. The air around the stone had a metallic taste to it, and when I mined it, it crumbled into a fine powder. Wondering greatly at what I had discovered, I filled my pockets and trudged back up my seemingly endless staircase, eventually reaching the top as my watch buzzed, which signaled it had been officially 24 hours since I had started mining, and what did I have to show for it?
47 Iron Ore
32 Gold Ore
over 100 Coal
Seemingly infinite stone
The Odd Red-Stone Powder
No Diamond
I shoved the Iron and Gold into my furnace, lit some coal for fuel, and sat on the edge of my bed, sifting the red powder around on top of my crafting bench. I small bit fell on my watch, and the digital screen briefly glowed much brighter. It seemed the powder had some connection to technology. This, I mused as I layed down to sleep, may serve me well someday.
The smell of burning wood woke me up. I opened my eyes, shocked to see smoke everywhere. I got out of bed coughing, falling to my knees to escape the smoke. I looked for the cause of the fire, going into panic mode when I saw the source.
My furnace was billowing fire in all directions. My crafting bench was a charred cinder, and my chest was halfway there. I snuffed out the flames on the chest with my jacket, grabbed what I could, and got the hell out of there.
I climbed out of my cave home, coughing and gagging. It was the middle of the night, so I crawled as fast as I could to the nearest building, which happened to be a 3 level tower near the lake edge. I reached the top, narrowly missing an arrow that embedded itself in the wood underneath the top floor of the tower. I collapsed as soon as I cleared the ladder, wheezing like an asmatic. My sleep that night was fitful, to say the least.
The next morning, on what I think was the 9th day since I hit the ice lake, I got up irritable and hoarse. With a face that could curdle milk, I dumped out my chest to see what I had saved from the fire.
My stone and iron tools had survived the blaze, luckily, as had my bone sword, and I only had to fix the handle of one shovel. I lost alot of wood though, with only a few dozen pieces left. My stone supply was slightly diminished, but that was more from my hasty exit than the fire. The big loss was the iron, gold, and coal I had left in the furnace. I hadn't thought to grab much when I left, so now I only had 5 Iron bars, 1 Gold bar, and no Coal.
Humbled and depressed, I looked out over the world from my new vantage point. It was a cold, clear morning, and the builders were still hard at work, but more spread out now. Building dotted the landscape in all directions. Towers, huts, lightposts, they went on forever. The opening to my cave home was still billowing smoke into the sky. Shaking my head, I went to lay down again, when something caught my eye. I stood up and looked at the lake again. From my new home, I could see the other end of the lake!
It looked a full days journey, but I could see there was no snow on the other shore. Excited for the adventure that lay before me, I grabbed my pack and climbed down the tower.
Before leaving, I ransacked every home within a mile of the Smoky Cave, which is what I named my former home. I took every torch and ladder, even chopped down a few lightposts to increase my wood supply. In some of the new houses, chests and furnaces were inside. I found sulfur, some of which I already had from previous creeper encounters, sugarcane, which really boosted my energy, and in a particularly large house, some armor made from cow hides.
I put the armor on, feeling more protected immediately. As I left, I checked the furnace in the house, and what do I find?
Glass. Big chuncks of glass. This was a major discovery. With glass, I could have windows in my future homes. Deducing that other furnaces could have more glass, I quickly ran though all the houses I had already robbed. In every furnace, glass was found. I was giddy with excitement, whooping and jumping around like an idiot.
In the end, I calmed down, made a last inspection of my possessions, and began my slipping and sliding journey across the frozen landscape.
SO, redstone and a fiery exit! Quite a chapter, wouldn't you agree? To address concerns about my chapter length, I think I should tell the readers that I actually have this entire story written and chopped up into chapters. I plan on adding to it a bit here and there, but most of the chapters will be about this long. But don't fear, we still have a few left to go, and maybe even more...wow, what a crappy cliffhanger .