Walking down the stone, the path was lit up only by the torch in Arcum's hand.
The center cave twisted and turned, some paths leading higher up while others led further down.
Arcum was alone, just like when he first arrived in this Minecraft world—but that was always how he rolled.
"I'll be more attentive then," Arcum strategized as his eyes darted around the cave, looking for any useful ores. "I've only got one life here."
Spotting a vein of coal ore on the wall, Arcum moved towards it, placing the torch on the wall before taking out his pickaxe.
Putting both hands on the handle, he swung down into the ore.
Tink!
Swing after swing, Arcum slowly mined the entire coal vein, leaving a large hole in the side of the cave.
"Better take some time to get more blocks, too."
Although Arcum still had some cobblestone left, he was running out. From his past experience in the night, blocks were a must-have when surviving here.
After taking a few moments to mine another stack of cobblestone, Arcum opened his inventory.
Using the oak logs he had collected before coming down, he made some into planks, those planks into sticks, using the coal just mined for more torches.
grrrrhghh...
Arcum turned towards the sound of the low groan. A zombie had came out of one of the tunnels, it's head slowly turning and spotting Arcum.
As it spotted Arcum, it suddenly charged at him, its steps fast and light.
"Hm," Arcum hummed, putting away his pickaxe and pulling out his stone sword. "Finally, a solo mob."
The zombie was an arm-length away. It raised its arms, swinging downward at Arcum.
Arcum weaved left, moving away from the swing of the zombie, readying his sword in his right hand. His grip tightened, his arm outstretched to the side.
"One!"
Bringing his sword in front of him, Arcum charged forward and thrusted the tip of the blade straight through the zombie's torso as it turned to charge him again.
The blade tip could be seen from the back of the zombie. The zombie continued moving, it's blocky body slowly moving forward, pushing itself further into the blade.
"Ugh."
Arcum's left hand moved to hold the handle of the sword, before he sliced through the zombie's torso to the left, stumbling the zombie to the left.
Taking a page out of Stelle's book from the prior night, Arcum quickly swept the feet of the zombie, who seemed to be disoriented, despite being an undead mob.
The zombie fell to the floor, it's back landing on the stone with an uncomfortable thump.
Without wasting another second, Arcum rose the sword above his head, the tip of the blade pointed down to the zombie's head.
"And done," Arcum said with a finished tone, the sword driving itself into the zombie's head, stopping the movement of the mob.
Arcum pulled the sword out of the zombie's head, swinging it through the air to get rid of anything on it, although there was no blood from the zombie, probably because it was just blocks.
Arcum looked in chat and read the words that Mydei had sent.
"Peach-like colors and brownish spots..."
A lightbulb flickered on in Arcum's head as he slowly came to the realization of what Mydei found.
"At least some of us found something useful," Arcum thought with glee, a small jump in his steps as he moved in the cave, choosing to head more down instead of up.
As he went down, he placed torches on the left side of the wall, ensuring that he wouldn't get lost when going further down.
"I suppose I could check coordinates," Arcum muttered aloud as he brought up the GUI to open up the coordinates. "It's... 6782, 20, 9864..."
Arcum noted the y-coordinates, almost close enough to find diamonds. Going further down would lead him to deepslate.
"Pretty far from the base coordinates, 6229, 70, 8518..." Arcum noted. "I should have someone test my theory on chat messages only going so far. Public vs private DM's could be different."
Arcum was brought out of his thoughts as another ore caught his attention. Looking closer at it, his face curled into a small smile.
"Iron ore. Perfect."
Placing a torch down, Arcum took out his pickaxe and mined the entire vein or iron, leaving him with 9 pieces of iron ore.
Using the wood to make a crafting table, and the cobblestone he mined earlier for two furnaces, Arcum placed down the workbenches, putting coal in them and splitting the iron ore in the furnaces he made.
Arcum decided to send a chat message to ensure that Stelle was doing alright. Mydei had sent a chat message prior, and Arcum had also responded, but Stelle was the only one who hadn't.
Although Arcum hadn't seen a death message in chat, he couldn't be sure that death messages existed. He didn't get any advancements when he first got cobblestone, and killed mobs.
"She's fine."
As Arcum looked inside the furnace to check if the iron was smelting properly, an arrow whizzed past where his head was just a second earlier.
"Oh. No."
Arcum quickly turned around, spotting a skeleton, already notching another arrow in its bow.
The arrow fired, flying through the air, aimed at Arcum's head.
Thinking fast, Arcum quickly took out one of the many zombie corpses he had put in his inventory, holding it up in front of him as a makeshift shield.
The arrowhead pierced through the zombie's torso, but didn't fully go through, leaving Arcum safe on the other side.
With a small amount of effort, Arcum threw the zombie corpse towards the skeleton.
The surprise factor must have gotten to the skeleton, because the skeleton fumbled and dropped the arrow it was notching, deciding to dodge the zombie corpse that was thrown.
Taking the chance, Arcum burst forward with some speed, quickly drawing his sword.
The skeleton, another arrow already ready to be fired, pulled back its drawstring, letting the arrow fly loose.
"Hmph!"
Arcum quickly rose his sword in front of his face, the flat side of the blade facing the skeleton, as the arrow bounced off it.
"Oh, that worked," Arcum said with a bit of surprise as he leapt towards the skeleton, jumping in the air and swinging the sword downward.
The skeleton rolled out of the way, its roll moving it closer to the furnaces as the two change positions.
As Arcum recovered from his attack, he turned, an arrow hitting him on the shoulder.
The damage was negated slightly, however, by the chainmail chestplate he was currently wearing.
"Alright, skeletons suck."
Arcum beelined towards the skeleton, his sword held outstretched to the side as he prepared to deflect the next attack from the skeleton.
The arrow fired, the world felt like it had slowed down, the arrow slowing down alongside it.
Arcum raised his sword, before cutting through the arrow that was fired at him. The arrow split, the two ends flying around him.
A bit flustered at his feat, Arcum quickly capitalized off of his defense, getting closer to the skeleton and swinging horizontally.
The skeleton, attempting to roll again, was slightly later, getting hit by the blade, as the skeleton fell to the floor, unmoving.
Breathing out a sigh of relief, Arcum turned to look around, ensuring that no other hostile mobs were near.
After a small moment of respite, Arcum went to the furnaces, which had been long done with smelting.
Reaching inside, Arcum took out 9 ingots of iron, placing them all onto the crafting table.
They scattered on the top of the table, before the all accidentally fell into slot, creating an iron block.
"... that's really sensitive."
Arcum's eyebrow twitched slightly at his mistake, putting the iron block back into the grid to convert it back into iron ingots.
"Not iron blocks... maybe a bucket, 3 iron... shield, 4 iron... pickaxe, 7 iron... and then I have 2 iron ingots left that I'll save."
With a plan outlined for what Arcum would do with his iron ingots, Arcum went ahead and crafted an empty bucket, a shield, turning some logs into planks for it, and a pickaxe, using leftover sticks.
Picking up the workbenches, Arcum decided to head deeper into the mines.
As he ventured deeper in, a thought briefly crossed his mind.
"Oh, shoot. I guess I could have looted that skeleton for its bow, and the arrows it show for some ammo. Oh well."
Arcum could always go back up later and retrieve it. The mob corpses didn't despawn unless they were in the sun, and it was left in a cave.
The Y level dropped more and more, going from 20 to -20 as Arcum continued his exploration.
Soon, he came across a small cavern next to a large cave. His torch wouldn't light up the rest of the cave, but he could make out the size, thanks to how far apart the walls were.
"I'll explore the small area first," Arcum planned, before heading into the smaller cave.
Inside the smaller cave, the walls were close together, signaling to Arcum that there wasn't much inside.
Throwing a torch deeper into the cave, embedded in the floor, was the gleam of something blue.
"Oh?"
Before Arcum could move closer, however, something darted out from the corner of the cave.
It wasn't blocky, like hostile mobs from Minecraft. It looked like a soldier. It was wearing armor, grayish and green, as if it was getting dirty from age.
The weird part was, however, the yellow plants that was sprouting from the armor as it moved towards Arcum.
"Hello?" Arcum hesitantly spoke, looking at the person. "What are you doing down here?"
Looking closer at the soldier's arms, were arm blades, also yellow and plant-like.
Before Arcum could ask anymore questions, the soldier screamed with a low growl, before lunging at Arcum, thrusting its arms forward, the tips of the blade embedded on its arms moving towards his torso.
"Hey!"
Arcum reacted quickly, using his newly crafted shield, raising it up in front of himself to block the attack, pulling out his sword.
The blade was stuck in the shield, the soldier pulling backwards, desperately trying to free the blades to attack again.
"My turn."
With a cold gleam in Arcum's eyes, he thrusted his sword downward to the head of the soldier, narrowly missing its head as it moved its head to the side, sweeping Arcum's feet with its own.
As Arcum fell, the soldier managed to get its blade out of his shield, leaping backwards and staring down Arcum as he slowly stood back up.
"Switching tactics then," Arcum said vocally, as if the crazed solider could understand him.
He pulled out his stone axe, raising his shield in front of him. Arcum swapped from freestyling, to axe PVP.
The soldier charged at Arcum again, spinning its blades as it leap at him.
Holding his shield stead, Arcum waited out the attack, before lowering his shield and jumping, his axe up above his head as he brought it down onto the head of the attacker.
Bink!
The sound of a critical hit was heard, but at the same time...
"What?!"
Arcum watched as the thing in front of him exploded into particles, the sound of a totem of undying playing.
"A totem, this early?!"
The soldier leapt at Arcum, catching him off guard, as it ripped the shield and axe out of his grip.
"Hmph!"
With a grunt of effort, Arcum tossed the plant-like soldier off of him, the blades scrapping on his chainmail chestplate.
Taking out his sword, Arcum thrusted it into the chest of the soldier, who was crashed and sat up against the stone wall of the cave.
Mara_StruckL0E2JK was slain by sourdough123