The pair spread out through the expansive cavern, the sound of pickaxes hitting the deepslate ores as they cleaned the cave of its resources.
"Say," Arcum started, trying to fill the void with some noise. "What was that attack of yours?"
Arcum stopped mining for a little, wiping some sweat of off his brow. "If I remember correctly, your moves have cooldowns. Shouldn't they be saved for more high-stake situations?"
"They should," Mydei responded. "But this one doesn't have a cooldown, only a requirement."
"That requirement is?" Arcum asked.
"Taking damage," Mydei responded simply. "Take damage, I can throw out that attack."
"Is there a bar of progress?"
Mydei nodded. "It's just a small bar, telling me whether or not I can use it. Although, it seems that the max charge is just one."
"Let me hit you then."
Mydei stopped mining for a little, turning to face Arcum. "Repeat yourself?"
"Let me hit you," Arcum repeated. "It's good to have a charge to throw out in the beginning of a fight, and then get it back during the fight, right?"
"Do it later," Mydei responded, going back to mining the ores.
"Very well."
A quiet silence was brought about the cave yet again, the sound of water dripping onto the deepslate floor from the dripstone above.
Hearing the water droplets, Arcum decided to take a small detour, walking to a small dripstone patch in the cave, taking a few from the floor for later usage.
Returning to the main part of the cave, Arcum decided to go to the diamonds he had spotted earlier, before he was rudely interrupted by the witch.
"One... two... three..." Arcum counted in his head as he mined the ores, watching them drop onto the floor. "And five. Five diamonds, enough for an enchanting table."
"How much ores do you have?" Arcum asked after a fair amount of time had passed. "We should get going soon."
"64 and 37 raw iron, 64 and 12 coal," Mydei started. "64, 64, and 28 redstone, and 64 lapis lazuli."
Arcum blanked at Mydei's way of speaking.
"Right," Arcum thought. "He hasn't played this game before, so he doesn't know stacks."
"You can call the items you have 64 of a stack," Arcum said. "It's cleaner and a stack is typically 64, special cases only have stacks of 16."
"So I have a stack and 37 raw iron, a stack and 12 coal, two stacks and 28 redstone, and a stack of lapis lazuli."
"Yeah," Arcum responded. "You can teach that to the others, I don't want to repeat myself..."
Looking into his own inventory, Arcum had about two stacks of coal, a stack of iron, a stack and a half of gold, and some lapis, not to mention those five diamonds.
Arcum made his way over to Mydei, avoiding small pools of water that were present in the cave. "Here."
He placed down a crafting table, gesturing Mydei to use it. "Craft all your loot into blocks."
Mydei cocked his head to the side.
Sighing, Arcum gestured to the grid on the crafting table. "Place your raw iron into the 3x3 grid, one in each, to make a raw iron block. Do that for more space in your inventory, and do that for the rest of your ores."
Arcum watched as Mydei did what he asked, as there wasn't much else for him to do.
"Done," Mydei said.
Arcum looked back, picking up the crafting table and placing it back into his inventory.
"Perfect," Arcum responded. "We can head up and meet up with Stelle—"
Thump. Pop! Thump. Pop!
The sound of blocks breaking caught Arcum's attention, looking around. "You didn't do anything, right?"
"No," Mydei responded, also looking around. "What's the matter?"
Arcum didn't respond to Mydei's question, using the sounds to hone into where the sound was coming from.
"... up," Arcum said finally, looking up to the ceiling.
Suddenly, a block in the ceiling of the cave broke, and something fell down.
Splash!
Arcum watched as someone else dropped from above, wearing a full suit of iron armor. He had a shield in one hand, a water bucket in the other.
"Another person?"
"Lucky me," the other person started to speak, his voice low and giddy. "I didn't expect to find players out here, much less people so understacked."
"Who are you?" Arcum asked. "What do you want?"
"Me?" The player responded, barking a sharp laugh. "I don't think you need to know. I'm in the same boat as everyone else."
"Everyone else?"
"And by everyone," Arcum said, looking from Mydei to the new appearance. "Do you mean other players?"
"Are you stupid? Of course that's what I mean."
"... I'm dumb."
Arcum was hit with a realization. Earlier, he and Stelle were both talking about the fact that they were in a different world, or Minecraft, something that Arcum knew about, but Stelle didn't.
The point was, that it wasn't just them, or Stelle's friends, or just him who was brought into this world.
"... it was everyone."
If Arcum included everyone in this world, that meant that building a civilization just to find Stelle's friends wouldn't be as helpful.
Other people, like Arcum, would also know how to play—building civilization and making teams, and getting stronger.
"So there are competent people in this world... and I got stuck with the incompetents?"
Arcum gave it a quick thought, before shaking his head.
"Well, they're useful, too. I can't be too harsh."
"You should answer his other question," Mydei responded with a threat in his voice. "What do you want?"
"You think you can tell ME what to do?" The player laughed out. "Oh, boy. It looks like I found some newbie players who don't know how this world operates..."
The player turned to look at Arcum. "But you, seem to know. You already have a shield, and some chainmail armor."
"What are you getting at?" Arcum asked.
"Why don't you join my team?" The player asked. "We know how to play Minecraft, like you. We can survive, just leave these newbies."
Arcum paused, feigning the action of giving it some thought, quickly attempting to connect with Stelle.
'/w Trash_Racoon31 get out of the mines and meet at the surface, there's hostile people. don't respond in chat.'
After sending Stelle a message, Arcum returned his gaze to the player, who was still waiting for his reply.
"No way," Arcum responded with a cold tone. "I know what type of player you are, and I wouldn't get along with someone like you."
"Well, I tried," the player said casually, shrugging. "Let's jump them for their loot, then!"
The blocks in the ceiling started to break, before multiple players in full iron armor dropped down from the ceiling, all with shields and iron swords.
Arcum and Mydei looked at each other.
"We're running, by the way, Mr. Bruiser," Arcum said, before dashing off towards the way he entered the cave, hoping Mydei was following close behind him.
Running through the caves, Arcum eventually spotted the way that he had entered, the same area where he split off to kill the Mara-Struck Soldier.
"Over here," he called out, entering the entrance, waiting for Mydei to run through, too.
As Mydei crossed the threshold, Arcum could see the other people giving chase, their iron armor and swords shining from the torches that Arcum and Mydei had placed.
"And blocked!" Arcum shouted, placing cobblestone in the entrance, following Mydei as he ran up the cave, placing blocks behind himself to spare more time.
"Argh, this ruins my plans!" Arcum complained as the two ran up the cave tunnel. "I forgot to assume there were others like me also here!"
"How does this ruin your plans?" Mydei asked casually, as if the threat of players in full iron didn't scare him. "There's most likely other ways to solve it."
"We were building a civilization to lure Stelle's connections over," Arcum explained. "But others will also be doing the same, so they'll be scattered everywhere."
"Then I'll suggest to Stelle that we should search for Lady Tribbie," Mydei said. "Or any of the triplets."
"Sure," Arcum responded. "You can tell me that later, because I don't want to talk when stressed!"
"You seem to be talking just fine," Mydei responded with a bit of a lighter tone. "Perhaps you're too out of breath to talk?"
The two manage to make their way up to a smaller cave, but much higher than before.
Checking the y-coordinate, they were only at 20, a bit away from the surface.
"Where are you going?" A voice called out from behind. "Come back and fight!"
Turning around, Arcum rose up his shield as a sword swung at his body, blocking the strike.
One of the hostile people had made their way up, twirling his iron sword in his hand. "Just drop the loot, and you can walk away. Simple."
"Fat chance," Arcum responded, pulling out his stone axe. "Keep going up, Mydei! I'll be there in just a second."
To Arcum's surprise, footsteps are heard retreating as Mydei ran up. "For someone who's a fighter, at least he trusts I can do this."
"Give me your name before we duel," Arcum said. "I don't want my first win to be against a nameless nobody."
"Well, you won't be winning anyways, so why bother!" He responded, swinging his sword downward to Arcum.
Arcum held up his shield, blocking the attack and bashing the sword away, stumbling the player.
Raising his axe and jumping, Arcum leapt forward, swinging his axe downward onto the player, cutting into his shoulder.
"Argh!"
The player crumpled to his knees, looking up to Arcum, only to get kicked in the face.
"And stay down," Arcum said, opening his inventory to pull out the many, many zombie corpses he had stored inside.
With a shrug, Arcum tossed them all onto the player, piling them all onto him, ensuring that he couldn't move or escape.
"Sit there and think about what you've done."
With the player dealt with for now, Arcum started to run up the tunnels again to escape. "If these are actual people, I'm not going to kill them. At least, not yet."
The sound of fighting was heard as Arcum went up higher. "Did they already get up there?"
Soon, the tunnel had led back up to the cave where the trio had split off for the first time, and a bit further up was the first rays of sunshine.
Running up to the surface, Arcum found Mydei, fighting one of the players.
"Take this!"
The man swung his sword, the blade easily being caught by Mydei's bare hand.
"Enough games," Mydei growled out, punching the man's gut, denting the iron armor and sending the man flying across the fields.
"Start running to camp?" Arcum suggested. "Or do we wait here for Stelle, I told her to come up."
"I'm here!!"
Arcum and Mydei turned to see Stelle, coming up from the caves, with the other three players chasing her, although they were still a bit behind.
"Actually," Arcum said, thinking it over. "We could just take this fight."
"It's free loot," Arcum thought. "Even with knowledge of the game, you still need to be good at fighting... and this isn't a game anymore, and these people... don't know how to fight."
Arcum had a small one-on-one with one of them in the cave, and he didn't seem the most... physically active, to say the least.
"Very well," Mydei said, getting ready into a fighting stance. "We each take one."
"Hey Stelle!" Arcum called out. "Fight back!"
"One second!" Stelle called out, jumping out of the cavern onto the grass. "Phew... sunlight."
"Get up," Arcum said, pulling Stelle to her feet. "We're fighting, and then I'm interrogating you on what you got in that cave."
"I still think this is child labor," Stelle said with a huff, her bat materializing. "I'm technically only 2 years old."
"I'm not going to fact check that," Arcum said with a bland expression, his eyes trained on the raiders who just got out of the cave.
"Get them!" The leader of the raiders called out, charging the trio. "Don't let them escape alive!"
Arcum smirked, before running at the raiders alongside Mydei and Stelle.
"Let's take them hostage!"