John carefully placed another fresh block of Ancient Debris ore near his friend while Collecting the now shivering purple ones. Well, not exactly purple… More like the other blocks near Steve were leeching this black fog out of his body and generating the purple effects as a by-product.
Thankfully the newly generated, non-pulsing Ancient Debris acted like a sponge for strange Conceptual Essences like this.
He checked on Steve's situation again… The spreading black marks on his skin were slowing or even regressing in some areas, no more odd twisting or stretching of his limbs, but his eyes were still flashing with purple light every now and then.
But you know, the screaming stopped an hour ago and the echo of whispers hadn't started up again, so things were getting better!
John absently popped another bit of dirt that was being corrupted into some sort of strange moon like stone and replaced it with more spare cobblestone while preventing Bessie from getting too close to this mess.
Thankfully she(?) seemed happy enough to chew on his body and not wander over into the danger zone, so the area around his friend stayed pretty clear of issues while this 'treatment' was underway.
A check… Yeah, the sun was going down. Looks like more time would be spent here before they could resume heading back to the former base.
Ah well, it wasn't that big a deal. Jessica was still being decontaminated and Steve needed to be cleansed and slightly de-mutated.
So might as well just wait here then.
Another block of Ancient Debris ore fully shifted color and got replaced, the new material eagerly drinking in the contaminated Conceptual Essence that continued to attempt to corrupt Steve's core existence.
This newly formed ore however was odd after being exposed though.
Unlike the original heavy and pulsing power of Ancient Debris ore that had been collected earlier, this NEW stuff still LOOKED normal if you stared straight at it. Mostly.
But from the corner of your eyes it seemed to phase out of reality slightly and had strange purple sparks and such fading in and out of sight.
Not like the original one. THAT thing still felt like the Nether itself, filled with the Conceptual Essence of Nether. AKA: Hell.
But this new energy from whatever had attempted to c̮on̦̘͠v̡̳̘̙e̯̖͎͎͚r̜̼̠͕̺̼̰ț̼͇͙͠ Steve?
It felt old. REALLY old.
Not alien, or foreign, or like some sort of outside influence… No, it almost felt like something from way beyond now had reached backwards through time itself and just… T̟̲͓̘o̢̫̭͈͉̝͉̤u̻̕c̥̮̥̤̘̖ͅḫ̣̺̠͢e̷̮͕̰̟d̺͕ a thought.
A wisp of influence, of something that might happen someday at the End of things… Or perhaps long, long ago, before the beginning.
The difference between the two felt nebulous and fragile, a wisp of an untouched idea.
Yet, if nothing else?
Something about this helped explain the strange but POWERFUL urge for John NOT to just hand over the resource materials he was constantly building up in his Pocket.
Why his carefully protected and growing block stacks of Ancient Debris ore, Bedrock, Emeralds and Redstone were set aside from locally gathered stuff, why HIS blocks could be gathered and spent to create new items and energies and such without a care, but never handed out themselves. Never. To anyone.
Because his reserved blocks were, like the Nether tainted ore and these newly corroded materials, already touched by someone. By John Doe himself, by the Pocket.
.
They were H̛̰̯̞̤̰͕̖̥͉̺̣͈͔̥̦ͬ͌ͨ̍̓̆͗ͬͭ͂ͯ̇͢͟͠ͅI͈̻̖̭̯̰̦ͪ͐̏ͣ̄̀̒̀͟S̷̡̧͔̬̱͕̃ͧ̊̎ͭ́!
.
'On a level equal to his Body, Mind, and Soul backups, they belonged to him. Were a part of him, adapted to his own Concepts and Essence and Energy and Soul and… And so much more.
And just like it was trivial to duplicate 'empty' or 'unaligned' Ancient Debris ore, John could casually and easily craft stacks of Redstone blocks or Emeralds if he so desired. Even Bedrock blocks could be mass produced, as horrifying to the natives as that would be considering they can't mess with them.
As long as they were new, as long as they were unused… He had no connection to them. No desire, no need, no pull.
But should someone gain access to his Core blocks, his Reserve blocks themselves?
Nothing in the area V̷͙͖̖͈i͎b̪͝r͕͟a̫̩̗͍̻͍te͕͇͡d̫͈͙ and returned to stillness as he carefully regained control and calmed the spooked cow trying to eat his body.
Well, it didn't matter. If that impossible thing happened, he'd simply get them b҉̘͕̖a̴̫͎̝̼̩̰͠c̜͈̹̬͇̩͘͝k̴͉̱̬͎͖̤͖ͅ.̴̤̟̜͎̩̬̺̻̜͜͞ ̶҉͕̻.
Attempting to stay calm, he found another contaminated ore was filled, and so John Collected and replaced it once more. Because he was calm and he was fine. Not even his sister would take something that important from his Pocket, so it shouldn't concern him.
…Increase the security of all Resource blocks, please.
[[Confirmed.]]
Anyway, whatever this was that had se̠͇͡e̹̜̮̰̟͜n Steve while they had visited hell, it was a persistent bugger.
Like, come on man! Aren't you bored of doing… Whatever the hell you were doing here?
How long would this take? SOME people wanted to go back and start trading all this newly generated 'new' Ancient Debris ore for lots of awesome junk already!
Entities could be so inconsiderate sometimes.
[[HOST can accelerate this decanting process by 38% by harvesting contaminated limbs and organs from the patient and injecting the destabilized body with excess 'XP orbs'.]]
Nah, John was just grumbling for complaining's sake honestly.
Besides, one of the many MANY rants that his sister had given him about 'laying low' and 'morality' and all that involved a ban on all experimentation on sentient and sapient life forms without express approval and consent from both her AND the research subject.
…He meant to say 'patient'. Yeah. Patient.
[[It could be considered more of a medical procedure than an experiment, due to the lack of proper facilities and control groups and so forth.]]
Nope, she covered that one when John offered to replace Ferb's arm. Why bother healing when someone sprains a wrist, just get a new one! His friend seemed up for it, but nooo... Still have to ask for permission first.
The boy sat on a spare block of ore and ignored a calmed Bessie entirely as she began to nibble his shoulder again.
It was a pretty quiet and peaceful night, now that his friend had stopped screaming and the black clouds of hissing whispers had mostly been absorbed by the ore.
Anyway, since he was stuck here for a few hours regardless… What about that stuff Steve mentioned earlier? About modded stuff and all that, would there also be modded food?
Could we add that to the list?
[[While a variety of modified foods and beverages are possible, they can only be used, transferred, and crafted in Instances that have been directly altered or 'modded'. Sending them to a natural Instance or Server would cause them to despawn or reform into junk material.]]
Aww man, he had been hoping to find some modded place with cherry cheese cake or hot wings or something.
[[HOST will need to visit such locations directly within this Realm to experience such. Reproduced food Essence would not retain qualities in other locations without needed mods and will degrade into toxic variants and raw energy. Solutions would require the following research materials and the estimated time for completion would…]]
Nah, he wanted to grab what he could and get out of this place.
Not just to let Jessica out when she finished recovering, but because something in hell had clearly s̯͕̗̖̣͔̠e̬͉̻̖̲͉͢en͙̪͓̱̩ him take that very powerful pulsing Ancient Debris ore and seemed annoyed.
Or eager to take it back.
Or both.
But it was HIS now, and 'Debby the Debris ore' couldn't be considered Ancient because you shouldn't talk about a girl's age. Right? That seemed right.
It was now a widely accepted fact in John's opinion: He wasn't going to return Debby, because otherwise is Pocket Pals would be unbalanced! Poor Party would be outnumbered by the guys, Poppy and Spike!
That would be so unfortunate!
…Besides, Debby was one of the only objects he had Collected in this whole messed up Realm that actually had something of a history to it. Something that didn't feel empty and hollow and fake.
John wouldn't let something like that go. It was too important.
So he would grab what he could and skedaddle!
His focus was pulled once more to the nearly entombed contaminated miner who groaned as something unseen was leached from his flesh and imbued into the Ancient Debris ores constructed around his tormented body.
Ah… Right. Almost forgot that.
FIRST he would finish treating Steve,
THEN he would grab what he could and flee!
This was what, his second or third plan so far recently?
Things were going GREAT!
~~~Pocket System~~~
What… What happened?
"Good news, Steve! You've almost fully stabilized and recovered!"
Huh? "Wha?"
"I mean, your eyes are now glowing blue and you seem to be slightly more powerful than you should be after your flesh rebuilt itself, but the strange skin colors cleared up and none of your limbs are freaky thin and long now. That right there? That's stabilization. Good stuff."
Why was he staring at some sort of rocky-stone tree trunk block? "John?"
Wait, was that Ancient Debris ore!? But… It didn't feel oppressive and heavy and pounding into his mind just by existing anymore…
Plus there was SO much of it. Literally more than he could handle, considering he felt pretty trapped right now.
"Oh good, your mind didn't fully collapse and you even retained some memories. That is going to save SO much time! Do you still feel like bleeding any strange materials or screaming or whatever? Feel any odd urges or hear any unsung languages?"
He tried to move, but he pretty much encased in ore at this point. "What in Notch's name is going on? What is all this?"
"Well it CERTAINLY isn't any sort of human experimentation! You can trust me, I'm not a doctor. Anyway, this is more of a field hospital. Which is even MORE accurate than usual, because we are in a field! Well, mostly. I had to replace a good chunk of the stuff your body was corroding into some sort of strange moon rock."
What?
Ignoring the rambling of the kid, he shifted… "How do I get out of here?"
"Oh right, you sort of used up all your inventory building a mountain and then hurled your equipment at invisible demons yesterday, so that will be a bit tricky. I'll let you out and give them back to you later assuming you continue to not mutate or begin spewing Eldritch energies for at least another couple of hours."
He did… What? "I'm sorry?"
"Oh it's no problem at all! I've been spending time while your body and core recovers examining my own existence and the subtle alterations my Pocket has been enduring over time due to past decisions and my ongoing paranoia that all of reality is a dream for my tortured Soul locked outside of time and space."
An awkward pause filled the air.
"Mrrr?"
"Oh, that's right! This is Bessie, the cow! You can't see her, but just try and imagine Norwegian Red cattle. She has a normal cow shape with white cow spots. I know you can't see her when you are mostly trapped by Ancient Debris ore like that, but she's a sweetheart that mostly doesn't eat my head anymore."
…Was he high? Had that mushroom stew been off? "John?"
"Yep?"
He still couldn't move. "Can I come out from this casket of material?
"Sure! In a couple of hours. I tried to let you out this morning and you started screaming in strange languages and attempted to teleport away, so uh… Well, this is just a precaution."
Steve felt so lost. What do you even SAY to something like that?
"You know what though? I'm pretty sure I got the last of it drained out of you this time anyway! So you are basically free already, after resting for a couple of hours or three… Or maybe four, I guess. Just to be sure. Besides, it would be a hassle to hunt down a partially converted enhanced Enderman who's teleporting all over the place again. You can be a slippery littler bugger."
Steve stared up at the dim box made out of priceless material, and just sort of… Absorbed the implications of that mess of an explanation.
You know, on second thought? Maybe it would be NICE to just lay here for a bit and take a nap. He wasn't hungry or anything, although somehow he felt like he should be, and something about this space had a calming and soothing effect on his weary mind.
Fine. "So I just need to stay here a bit? Mind if I take a nap?"
"Yep! You go ahead and rest easy. I got Bessie to talk to and random monsters around to pop to keep me occupied. Plus I have a strong suspicion that if the ore around you doesn't change color THIS time, then you are likely to have been fully recovered! Wouldn't that just be lovely? Then we can head back, trade for a bunch of expensive stuff, and call it a day!"
…Not going to deal with that. "Good night, John."
"Good night Steve! Say 'good night', Bessie."
"Mrrr."
Yeah, all of this was probably the mushroom stew. Heh, dreaming about a plant man leading an army of pigs who gave out infinite materials and wealth… And then being stupid enough to galavant to the Nether to hunt for treasure?
Yep, Tripping on bad (Or very VERY good) shrooms seems way more likely.
Still, dream or not… This felt very… Very comfortable… So… Sleepy…
~~~Pocket System~~~
John blinked at the sound of snoring. "Hey, would you look at that! He didn't slip into rants or poetry or whatever this time! That right there? That's progress."
Bessie gave her approval. "Mrrr."
He nodded! Good point, Doctor Bessie! "Yep, I am pretty sure THIS time it isn't another attempt to escape treatment." Because chasing down his targeted research subject had been annoying.
She took another nibble out of his shoulder. "Mrr."
John examined and Scanned the area again… And swapped out all the Ancient Debris ore one more time. Just in case. "No reason NOT to be extra sure, right?"
He still wasn't entirely sure what had been going on there. Some sort of possession attempt? A simple conversion process, like how local Zombies could convert Villagers into Zombie Villagers? A corrosion of the foundations this Realm ran on? Temporal corruption? Druish space lasers?
No idea.
But if Steve seemed mostly recovered, then the problem was solved! If you squinted. And ignored a few issues like the guy's new glowing eyes and fresh ability to bench press a house.
…Wonder if Steve could still teleport after he clears the medical check?
Because, annoying to chase down or not, that seemed like an AWESOME trick to learn! Make a note of that: Learn how to teleport using raw Essence and what seems to be temporal traversal locks. Should be awesome!
[[Confirmed. Will continue to analyze Scanned information from previous pursuits of targeted research subject.]]
Sweet!
Wait, hang on…
Oops.
Change designation for target! He's a 'PATIENT', remember? Patient!
[[...Confirmed.]]
Sheesh, that was a close one. Jessica would have had a field day if he had forgotten to fix that bit. Right, back to examining the captured data! Let's do this!