Vault Hunters, The Aether, and others such mods introduced new dimensions, but the Nether is the easiest and the most popular one.
Steve already considered entering the Nether, he had obsidian and flint and steel. He created the portal lit the bottom obsidian and no swirling door to another dimension appeared. He scoured through countless manuals, tomes, books, anything that he can craft and show lore around Nether— he tried but nothing came out.
Well a sudden inspiration struck him while carrying his brand new arm. The recent Voidborn wanted to come in, and he wanted to connect to another dimension. What if the barrier also disconnected itself to other dimensions other than the void itself? A venture worth doing.
Of course it's not like this is his first time thinking of such ideas. It just he didn't care in the first place
Nether is hell, it's hot and full of hostile mobs, its sulfuric dust hurts the lungs and eyes, neither I'm concerned as I don't have lungs, and I installed a mod that protects any ocular effects and damages— due to the annoying warden fights.
But first, he must stock the necessary items.
Ice. Ice is important, as it provides a continuous source of cooling, but the Portable Refrigerator—a modded solution developed alongside the Tough As Nails system, which introduces temperature and thirst mechanics—circumvents most of the heating problem.
The first priority is the Portable Refrigerator itself. It is designed to be equipped through the Curio system, attaching neatly to the back, but such features are unavailable to him here. A simple strap, however, should suffice.
The internal components are surprisingly simple: a fan, a motor, and a battery. The fan was the most tedious part, each of its three blades carefully crafted by hand. The motor converts stored energy into rotational movement, and the lithium-iodine battery serves as the primary power source.
Basic electronics, in theory.
In practice, he shuddered at the memory of creating the materials required for it.
He had knelt more times than he cared to admit, silently praising the Transmutation Tablet and the compatibility between ProjectE and most technological mods. Without it, even something as simple as assembling these components would have taken an unreasonable amount of time—enough to make him consider jumping into the Void out of sheer frustration.
Before any of that, however, he had to establish a stable power source.
Which brought him to the water wheel.
The water wheel is currently the second most reliable energy provider available to him. Other options, such as solar panels or windmills, are effectively useless in this environment—there is no sun, and there is no wind.
Thermal systems remain the most efficient alternative. Boilers, fueled by lava and sustained through his existing resource loops, provide a steady and dependable output.
In the end, it all comes down to a simple principle.
How efficiently one can boil water.
He then spent the rest of the week creating a functioning energy generator—one that wouldn't blow up in his face.
The furnace could serve that purpose, thanks to the Iron Furnace mod. It added a limited number of modular slots at the back, where module cards could be installed. One of those modules allowed the furnace to convert heat directly into Energy Points, or EP. The tradeoff, however, was that once installed, the furnace could no longer smelt anything.
A fair exchange.
At one point, he even considered using it to mine bitcoin. Yes, bitcoin.
The hardware and software required to process mathematical computations weren't particularly difficult to replicate in this environment. He wasn't entirely sure when he would ever need it, but bitcoin was bitcoin.
That thought didn't last long.
Setting the idea aside, he focused on something more practical. By the end of it, he had already prepared two stacks of batteries, each capable of storing 1000 EP.
The Portable Refrigerator consumed roughly 100 EP per hour, which meant he had a comfortable margin for extended use.
Still, energy alone wasn't enough—An electric drill would likely be necessary.
Something durable. Something efficient. Something capable of withstanding the heat and density of whatever the Nether might throw at him. A manual pickaxe would work, but it would also drain stamina and time—both resources better spent navigating and adapting to the environment rather than struggling against it.
Energy, in comparison, was far easier to manage.
A rare smile appeared on Steve's face. This is what living is—to pursue something brighter, something livelier, rather than wallow in grief and loneliness. He is no longer the Albert of the past. He is Steve, and this is his Minecraft.
"First we mine, then we craft. Let's Minecraft," he shouted like a commander about to charge into battle. With that, he headed toward the cave, intent on studying the materials and finally creating a working drill.
Ten days later.
Deep within the cave, darkness swallowed everything, broken only by the occasional spark. The sound of metal grinding against stone echoed through the tunnels, accompanied by the steady whir of a motor—and, every now and then, a hearty laugh that carried further than it should.
"Finally, LLIRD 0.89—the first one that didn't explode in my face!" Steve exclaimed, wiping his hands as he looked at his work.
His face bore a few scars now, small but noticeable.
One might think he had fought a ferocious battle with a Voidborn to earn them.
But no.
The drills and his craftsmanship had blended together so well that most of his earlier attempts could only be described as carefully engineered explosions that triggered the moment they were powered.
He even reworked a few of them to create bigger explosions, they dangled in his belt that carries the Portable Refrigerator slash Air Purifier, it now carried a filter system that lessen the smell of the caves and his sweat, it's also less bulky as it hinders his movements.
The LLIRD 0.89 is already perfect, He already fixed the overheating issue previous iterations before, just not implementing it, now that other components and functions are working good, that simple problem can be solved easily
Walking out of the gloomy caves, he basked at the lightless abyss above. The Heating and Gathering is now complete, what other things does he still need to do to feel safe going to the Nether? Protection right it's protection
He looked at the pool of hovering blood, and shuddered recalling such horrifying event
40 days ago after the Nether Portal Experiment
Steve is devastated for a few hours as his work bores no fruit, he keeps thinking but a voice unfamiliar in his mind suddenly appeared
What do we have here? Oww little voidling can you please invite me to your home?
A motherly voice rang in his mind as he snapped awake, looking around he then soon noticed at the sky above him. The sky above ablaze by a Being of pure radiance, he unknowingly kneel, tears and blood flow down in his body
Oh How pitiful.. Would you like to be helped, I'll grant you salvation if you open yourself to me
Steve looked at it directly, its body consisted of a blazing flame that made it looked like a great sun. Keyword "looked like", its face carried an otherworldly beauty, while its robes concealed an insectoid body beneath. It's a facade that the Great Voidborn is using.
The barrier burned under its touch, but so did the creature itself, its voice growing urgent as if it were trying to escape something. And then he saw it
Tha'Pang
A colossal amount of information flooded his brain trying to decipher the Ancient Voidborn in his eyes. An infinitely large being of pure cosmos, where it's structured, seems like a whale, and like a whale it consumes enormous amounts of resources and gives even more so. From its destruction comes countless pocket cosmos.
The Bringer of End and Beginnings
The Lord that governs Time-Space Continuum
Tha'Phang the Majestic
From infinitely far, to infinitely close, The entire 10km cube lands barely a tenth cell to its colossal proportion. Yet it can perceive and communicate to us. The land shuddered, even more so of the insect that is trying to its majesty
Its majestic voice resonated within my deepest beings, communicating in a language I understand and not.
"Mtha'Li you ungrateful thief, I forgave you countless times and yet you still dare steal something from me. Reflect in the Ishtra'Helios for a few thousand millenia"
As suddenly the insect appeared it also left with a screaming soul to the mouth of the Ancient
It then looked at the small pocket of cosmo beneath it. Steve could do nothing but freeze at it and talk directly to his soul again.
"I apologize for scaring you a little voidling. Mtha'Li is a naughty girl and needs to be punished. Here is my sincerest apologies for giving you trauma, a gift perhaps, or an investment"
A swirling pool of blood, effortlessly passed through the barrier as it tried to intercept it. The whale snorted, then slowly left. Or so he thought but the Voidborn is already millions of lightyears away, it's just his size that fools the mind
If not for the pool of mysterious blood still hovering there, it would have been easy to believe none of it ever happened. A drive to be something greater ignited in his heart, to protect himself if such a scenario ever happened again.