Arcum's eyes widened as a death message appeared in chat, the body in front of him slumping down.
As it stopped moving, it started to fade away, the yellow plants on its body left the body, floating away in the cave before dissipating in the air.
Arcum sent a message in chat, before looking to where the body was originally. There were no items on the floor, nothing to show that anybody had existed in the first place.
"... do mob corpses stay, but player corpses vanish?"
Arcum theorized that it could be a respawn mechanic, too. Dying and respawning would bring you back to world spawn.
But there was no way to tell just yet, Arcum had no idea whether this world was in survival or hardcore mode.
Arcum's eyebrow shot up.
Arcum was questioning Stelle's thoughts. Sure, she had been in the war with Irontomb, so perhaps 'death' wasn't the biggest thing for Stelle anymore, but Arcum still killed someone.
Arcum slicked his messy hair back into place, taking a deep breath in and back out.
This was his life now, and he would need to get used to these things if he wanted to survive but...
"I can be a little disoriented in the beginning."
Looking around for the shield and axe that the Mara-Struck Soldier threw, his eyes land upon the blue block that caught his attention.
Stepping closer, Arcum expected diamonds, his expectations plummeting as he got close enough to see.
"... Lapis. Whatever."
Arcum grumbled, but took out his iron pickaxe to mine the lapis lazuli nonetheless. It was still an important ore that he needed later in Minecraft's progression.
After spending a few moments grabbing the lapis in the floor, Arcum stepped out of the small hole he made, his eyes landing on the two weapons that were thrown off to the side.
They were still in decent condition, although they were a bit more beat-up than Arcum would have liked.
Picking his shield and axe back up, Arcum glanced back to the cave, finding the rest of it to be a dead end.
Taking a small look around, making sure nothing else was inside, Arcum heading back the way he came, planning to explore the larger cave he saved for later.
Boom!
As Arcum reached the entrance to the larger cave, a large explosion was heard from inside.
Looking deeper in the cave, Arcum could only see a small light in the distance, no mistake in his mind that it was from a torch.
"Is someone in there?"
Arcum held a torch above his head as he ventured deeper into the cave, the sound of fighting getting louder and louder.
Deeper in the cave, the ceiling grew taller and taller, water poured down from the ceilings. The floor was made out of both deepslate and dripstone, while ores were embedded in the floor.
A mineshaft was on the left side, hanging from the ceiling, chains attached to the wooden planks to keep it from falling down, although it wouldn't really fall thanks to Minecraft physics.
"Hm!"
A grunt was heard from the sound of fighting, a zombie flying through the air and landing at Arcum's feet.
"Someone there?" Arcum called out. "Good throw?"
"It's me," a familiar voice sounded. "There's a large amount of zombies here. And that explosion was those green things."
Throwing a torch further into the darkness, the light soon showed Mydei, with an army of zombies in front of him as he fought in the dark, punching them back with extreme force.
"A creeper... and our caves linked up," Arcum said, looking back at the way he came. "So why are there so many zombies?"
"Beats me," Mydei responded. "It seems there are more here than last night."
Arcum looked at the trail of zombies that was currently fighting Mydei, getting tossed around like rag dolls, hitting the floor and not moving.
"It might be a dungeon," Arcum theorized. "A zombie spawner might be in this cave."
The cave was large, it wouldn't be strange if there was a dungeon with a zombie spawner inside the cave.
Taking out his stone sword, Arcum charged forward, sweeping his sword into the crowd of zombies, aiming to chip down their durability while they were distracted on Mydei.
His stone sword cut through the zombies, falling some immediately while others merely staggered and continued their assault on Mydei.
"I saw the message in chat," Mydei said casually as he flung a zombie into the high ceiling above. "Are you doing alright?"
"Yeah," Arcum said with a slight grimace. "I've been better, but I'm fine. You don't care about that?"
Mydei let out a small laugh. "Of course I don't. Even if I did care, Stelle already explained it, so I have no reason to hold any grudge."
"Good man," Arcum commented, his sword downing a zombie that strayed from the crowd. "I think they're all on you. I'll go stop the spawner."
"Be my guest."
Arcum followed the trail of zombies. Despite their more aggravated state than when they were code in Minecraft, they seemed to have a one-track mind on Mydei.
The zombies poured out of an opening in the wall as Arcum's torchlight soon lit it up.
When the zombies stopped pouring out, Arcum quickly slipped inside the room, tucking his scarf more in so that it wouldn't get caught.
"There it is," Arcum said breathlessly, his eyes on a monster spawner in the center of the mossy room. "Found you."
Using his torches, Arcum lit up the blocks around the spawner, stopping the spawner from creating more zombies for Mydei to fight.
His instincts kicked in, looking to the side for the chest that usually came with the dungeon, spotting it almost instantly.
"Well, don't mind if I do," Arcum said, walking over and opening the chest.
Inside the chest were some pieces of wheat, beetroot seeds, iron horse armor, a nametag, and a golden apple.
"Darn," Arcum complained. "No god apple."
"God apple?"
Arcum turned around as Mydei appeared behind him, his eyebrow raised.
"Just an apple that makes you practically invincible for... maybe around 30 seconds, and significantly harder to kill for 5 minutes.
Mydei nodded, watching as Arcum took out all the items from the chest, disappearing from his hand as they entered his inventory.
"Since we're already together," Arcum said as he started to stand back up, dusting anything off his pants. "Let's just stick together. It's a large cave, anyway."
"Sounds like a plan."
Arcum held out some more torches for Mydei to take. "Here, we're going to light up this entire area first. Clear out all the hostile mobs, and then we can mine the ores."
It took a decent amount of time for Arcum and Mydei to light up the area. The cave was quite large, about 200 blocks wide, if Arcum was estimating correctly.
As the last torch was placed, Arcum looked around the cave, spotting coal, iron, lapis, redstone... even diamonds in the walls.
"Good cave," Arcum said aloud, unable to help himself. "This is definitely a good cave."
A evil giggle shook Arcum out of his thoughts, his head snapping behind him.
Another mob, with purple robs, and a witch hat.
"Oh, great. A witch."
The witch, to Arcum's interest and disgust, didn't have their hands together, like they were always portrayed in Minecraft.
It held a potion, one in each of its hands, respectively.
In a sudden moment, Arcum rushed forward, attempting to not give the witch anytime to use any potions.
He swung his sword at the witch's torso, missing by an inch as the witch moved out of the way, throwing a green potion at Arcum.
"Crap."
The potion missed Arcum slightly, but broke on the ground, a small amount of the particle hitting him.
Immediately, Arcum's body started to hurt. Every movement started to take more effort to do, and his vision grew slightly blurry.
"Poison," Arcum thought. "It wasn't a direct hit, so it'll fade soon."
Although Arcum could wait it out, the witch wouldn't.
The witch raised it's hand, another potion ready to be thrown.
"Catch."
Mydei's voice boomed, and as Arcum turned to look in the direction of his voice, a stone pickaxe flew through the air, whizzing past Arcum's field of vision towards the witch.
The witch, unprepared for the sudden pickaxe projectile, was hit squarely on the shoulder, the pickaxe embedding itself into its blocky arm, before it was shaken off.
It took out a pink potion, quickly drinking it, the wound on its shoulder healing instantly.
Arcum, recovered from the poison, immediately put some distance between himself and the witch, pulling out his stone axe and holding his shield in front of himself defensively.
"It's a witch," Arcum explained as he heard Mydei stop behind him. "It has poison, weakness, harming, and slowness potions to attack us. It can heal itself too, so you can't let up the pressure."
"Got it," Mydei said, stepping ahead of Arcum's shield to face the witch. "I'll handle this."
"Then you do that," Arcum said, turning around. "I'll try to help, just give me some time."
[Mydei's POV]
"Take your time," Mydei said as he watched Arcum run off into the cave. "I'll be done before you come back."
The witch reached into its pockets, pulling out more potions and tossing it up, catching it, and giving what looked to be a smug look to Mydei.
Mydei palmed his fist, before getting ready in a fighting stance. "Come on."
The witch charged at Mydei, throwing a green potion at his foot.
Jumping backwards to avoid the potion, Mydei retaliated, picking up a deepslate block from the floor and hurling it towards the witch.
The witch let out a weird noise, avoiding the attack with a quick roll, pulling out a blue potion and drinking it.
"Foolish tricks, if you think you can beat a Kremnoan," Mydei said tauntingly, throwing another block to the witch.
As the block approached the witch, it exploded on the floor.
When the dust settled, the witch was no longer there.
"Now, where did you go?"
As Mydei looked around, the sound of quick footsteps were heard behind him. His head snapped behind him to look, finding the witch standing there, blue particles coming out from its body.
"Fast now, are you?"
The witch only responded with a small cackle, running around Mydei with great speed, throwing potions of harming at him without break.
Mydei's body took the potions of harming, hit after hit, unyielding and unmoving.
Three minutes passed, before the witch stopped hurling potions of harming to Mydei.
"My turn," Mydei said with a small growl, leaping up into the air, unhurt. His hand curled into a fist, his hand pulled back behind his head.
Around his closed fist, the head of a lion, looking similar in color and texture to his crystal lance formed, its mouth open as if it was letting out a monstrous roar.
"Conquer all!"
The witch leapt back with barely anytime left to spare, as Mydei's fist collided with the blocks that the witch was standing on previously.
The deepslate floor cracked. Everything paused for a second, before exploding upward, cracks in the floor from the impact that Mydei had just thrown out.
The shockwave of the attack sent the witch, who had avoided the initial attack, tumbling backwards, its back hitting the wall. Still moving, the witch weakly reached into its pocket, pulling out another potion.
"There we go," Arcum's voice said as Mydei looked up.
Something fast shot through the air, before it hit the witch's body. The witch, in the middle of drinking a pink potion, dropped the potion, unmoving.
[Arcum's POV]
"Where did you go?" Mydei asked, as Arcum stepped closer to the dead witch.
"I saw cobwebs earlier by the mineshaft," Arcum said. "So I made a bow. It's hard to deal with witches just with melee attacks unless you're strong enough to kill it before it can do anything."
Arcum grabbed the projectile out of the witch, revealing it to be a broken stone spear.
"I didn't have any feathers to make arrows, so I just made a spear with two sticks and a piece of cobblestone, and used my sword to cut off the extra stick for a makeshift arrow."
"I see," Mydei said. "Good teamwork."
"Mhm," Arcum hummed as a response. "But now the fun begins, after all that. We get to mine."
Arcum pointed to the stone pickaxe that Mydei threw earlier.
"There's the pickaxe. Let's get to work."