Several new villagers arrived over the next few days.

Outside the tower, by the grass cave, I found a painter with a red cap and apron. "The name's Marco," said the painter. "This is Corundia, right? I'm gonna move in here, all right?"

Predictably, he wanted to live in the tower. Sighing, I removed the furniture from the third floor and brought it down to the first floor, where Marco moved in.

A few days later, I came upon a young man with a black turban and fine silk robes. "Greetings, Scheil," he said softly. "I am Ahirom, a dye trader. I have come from afar to settle in Corundia."

I started building a house for Ahirom above the grass-tunnels, between the tower and the east hill. I was starting to realize that quite a few people would be settling in Corundia in the future, so I started building more houses, including a long brick-walled room under Kyle's hilltop cabin.

"This tower looks terrible," Marco told me when I got back home. "It needs more bright colors."

By nightfall, I had kicked Marco out of the tower. He moved into a brick condominium between Ahirom's house and my tower. The condo had two floors for two homes, and I installed a bathroom on the third floor.

There were now four buildings in a row. I had platforms connecting the top of each one: from Alfred's roof to my tower's third floor, from the third floor to the roof of Marco's condo, and from that roof down to Ahirom's rooftop.

There were more planks covering the grass-tunnels under Ahirom's house. I also built a staircase leading up to the east hill so that Jack could move easily between the village and his house. Later, I built some stairs on my tower's east wall for easier access.

My tower's fourth floor never got finished. It had no side walls, only a roof. It was my balcony, and I liked it. I improved the structure of my tower several times as well, particularly to fix the north walls, which were an untidy mess of stone, wood, and dirt; the dirt was mostly left from the grass-cave that became the first floor.

Now, I wasn't just building houses during this time. I was still exploring the tunnels, still connecting them, still mining for ores. I rarely used the tunnels in the west hill now; the tunnels past the lead door in the basement worked well enough for me. I admit that I never explored very far down during this time; not because I was afraid to, but because I never realized how much further down I could go.

One day, I decided to explore to the east. Past the east hill, past the new wellsprings, I crossed through a lush valley of flowers and grass. I was delighted at first to find the two living trees I had once seen from afar, but to my disappointment, neither had dryad homes, as Kyle told me.

Between the trees was a large river-gorge, water tumbling down into water, more tunnels with vine curtains. I suspected that if I went down to explore, I would have trouble getting back up, so I simply left behind a long rope when climbing out for future exploration.

Past the living trees, I came upon a vast desert. This was actually not my first experience with the desert, mind you. I had once come across a stretch of badlands in Alabaster. But that one had been extremely small, sand mingled with mud- mud, of all things!- and quickly gave way to rainforest.

Not so with this one. This desert stretched as far as the eye could see, hills and valleys of gleaming yellow sand that battered at my armor and swept into my helmet, stinging my eyes. I dug into the sand, but unlike the dirt and grass, it could not defy gravity; it tumbled down on my head, into my eyes, as if to bury me alive.

It was frustrating to move around the desert in my armor. I spent the night in a tiny shack made from cactus, alone with the growls of zombies and their sand-crunching footsteps.

The next morning, I returned to my tower with a bag full of sand and cactus. "Sand? You can make glass with that," said Kyle cheerfully. "Just take it to the furnace."

One trip to the furnace later, I had eight kilograms of glass that I had no idea what to do with. Into the chest it went.

I also spent a little time expanding my floating island. It was jagged like a dragon, not meant to be a home of any sort, but merely a side project for my own amusement.

I believe this was around when I moved the furnace, the anvil, and the workbench to the fourth floor. Up until then, all my chests were on the fourth floor, while my workshop was still down in the basement.

The more things I crafted, the more I had to move between the workshop and the chests, and the more I had to move up and down the rope ladders. At first, I tried to solve this by installing a second rope ladder, parallel to the first, lining up with the second opening in my fourth floor.

Even with the new ladder, I had trouble moving between floors. Eventually, I simply moved the workshop to the fourth floor. I suppose I should call the fourth floor a patio, really, since it never got walls.

I developed a system with the chests. On the third floor, I stored trinkets, weapons, potions, and furniture. On the first floor, I stored plants, seeds, and animal parts that might come in handy. On the patio, which was now my workshop, I stored crafting and building materials.

On top of the patio, I kept a bonfire roaring, day and night, surrounded by tiki torches. "It'd be nice to toast some marsmellows up here," I said one night as the villagers gathered around the fire.

Alfred squinted at me. "The merchants' guild only distributes those to merchants in the tundra," he informed me curtly. "I have no interest in freezing my bones off, thank you very much."

One morning, I emerged from the grass-cave into another world—neither Corundia nor Alabaster. I saw two living trees towering high above me: one to the east, and one to the west.

The living tree to the west had a small pool of water on its branches. Past the great tree, I saw several large, shallow lakes. I was reminded of the lakes on Corundia, not quite so wide, but much deeper...

In fact, I had been here before. The Living Tree to the east was the one I had found after Jack's death, where I found the living wood wand. I knocked on the front door, but the dryad was not home.

"Are you lost?" called a voice.

I emerged from the tree to find a guide trotting up to me. "Yo! The name's Zach," he said, hands in his pockets. "Sup?"

I would never get used to how similar the guides looked. Was that their uniform, or something? Their clothes were pretty casual.

"I'm Scheil," I said, shaking his hand. "I'm from Corundia." I explained a little about my first visit to this world. "Anyway, I just wanted to go thank the dryad, because the wand's really come in handy." I frowned. "What world is this, anyway?"

"We call it Minaria, dude," said Zach, shrugging. "You asking about the dryad? She ain't here. She left when the Corruption set in."

That got my attention. "The Corruption is here?!"

I ended up following Zach on a little hike that day. Past the living tree, we crossed over several lakes, passed through several grass caves, and climbed several hills.

Like Corundia, Minaria had a stretch of desert to the east, past the living trees. Unlike Corundia, however, Minaria's desert was very small. As we wandered through the sandstorm, I heard an eerie growl, deeper and more chilling than any zombie.

We emerged from the hot, scathing wind... and found ourselves in a desolate valley of rotting, purple grass.

I was shaken to my core, that day, when I saw the Corruption in person for the very first time. It's one thing to know, in a dream, that a place has a terrible, rotten stench; it's another thing to actually smell the stench, to be surrounded by it, breathing it. My head swam.

The chasms! Ugly, exposed rock formations, stained a dull purple, stalactitites and stalagmites pale as the withered flowers at my feet. The ground was pitted and gouged, like worm-eaten leaves. I felt despair opening inside me like a deep pit, filled with melancholy.

"Hey, you all right, bud?" called Zach from the sand dunes.

Another growl. Alarmed, I stared up at the eater-of-souls descending upon me, their revolting skin half-molting, their pincers clicking. No, not just one eater; two, three, four.

I couldn't escape. Six of them, diving at me. Drawing my sword, I swung at them feebly. No good. I could barely scratch their knotted hides.

I felt the pain of their pincers, even though they appeared unable to penetrate my armor. I felt their teeth on my arms, beneath the intact led bracers.

I sank to my knees and collapsed.

I was o the floor of a dimly lit room. Overhead, I saw a seamless wood ceiling, just faintly registering it as the wood of a living tree.

I saw a woman with long, green hair, clothed in the branches and leaves of the forest. I saw moss-padded chairs and a wooden slab of a table.

She knelt down next to me with a small cup filled with ground herbs. "You should not have come back to Minaria," she hissed. Her voice was soft but dangerous, not fully human, but with a hint of something more wild.

I tried to sit up, but couldn't move, could barely move my eyes. The woman tipped the herbs into my mouth. "You are nothing yet."

I felt drowsy. The room grew both clearer and hazier at the same time, as if presenting itself to my senses more openly, but my senses didn't want to think about the room. "Prove yourself. Prove your power to all of Corundia."

I was drifting into sleep; the woman's voice was both alluring and threatening, comforting and yet unfamiliar. "Then, perhaps I will guide you."

The next morning, I woke up in the grass cave on Corundia, and life resumed as before. At first, I only remembered bits and pieces of my visit to Minaria. It took a few days for it all to come back.

I had seen the Corruption for the first time. Not in a dream, but in person. Up until that point, it could have just been my imagination. It could have just been a story.

But it was real.

The Corruption spread from world to world, caring little for the lush forests that it engulfed, twisting Terraria's life-giving power into a half-living, ravenous wave of death.

The possiblities were frightening. What if the Corruption should find its way here? What if it swallowed the village whole, turned the grass-cave purple and made its flowers wilt? What would I do then?

The answer came in the form of a new arrival, a week later.

At the time, I was building a house on top of Ahirom's house, one made of gray bricks. It had no walls yet; there weren't enough villagers that I would need it.

"Ah, such rustic hues, this little hamlet of yours," said a voice from the top of the tower. The voice was familiar, and yet it didn't match any of the villagers.

Down below, Ahirom poked his head outside, frowning up at me. "My dear! Someone is clearly waiting for you," he said grandly. "One ought to recieve guests graciously."

I hurried along the platform bridges, up to my workshop. There, I discovered a girl with sly eyes leaning on my workbench, a girl wearing a rain hat and white pharaoh robes. She held an umbrella in one hand.

It took a moment, but I recognized the girl from my dream- my first dream of the Corruption, on t night after Jack's death, in the ice cave.

She hopped down from the workbench. "So! We meet at last," she exclaimed, almost chanting. Her eyes were furtive, scanning; I felt as if she could see right through me. "Scheil, right?"

Just outside the patio, Alfred and Kyle were staring at her suspiciously, muttering to each other in undertones. "Yes," I said finally, frowning. "And you are..."

She grinned. "Ah, yes! Most know me as the witch, Fuwaa," said the girl, closing her umbrella. "But the name's Rose, Rose Guriri. Nice to meet ya!"

I had no idea how much trouble wouild arise.