Welcome to "The Diary of a Miner"; a blog detailing the adventures and mysteries that I, Syeonyx, embark upon in my quest to further my mining and survival skills! It'll be tough, there will be good times and bad times, but I'll always be alive to post my adventures... probably...

Back in time for tea!

     It had finally begun to grow dark, and the sun had completely sank behind the horizon. We were very close to the base by now so I wasn't so worried about the guards or Creepers. As long as I maintained the same level of efficiency without becoming too complacent, we would make it back in one piece! Before we left the small beach behind, I asked to take a look at the map and what we had achieved so far. We had set off from the conducting tower, and initially headed North East before going back on ourselves and going South West. We had then gone North West to the desert area where we had found the four standard portals in a pit. That was odd in itself, but a few sites later, we had found a huge tree that had grown from beneath a portal and split it in half! I had made sure I had images of these to show OROTHO and Amie. They weren't of any series concern as we had taken them out, but they were definitely interesting. From the last site, we were heading South East to the last portal site of the day, before heading home. All in all, a very goo start, especially considering we were unable to find any reports to help us locate them more accurately.


     This site was slightly easier to pinpoint in contrast to the others as the actual location was situated close to a pool of water. We passed the pool on the way to the site, and kept our eyes and ears open for any signs that one may be nearby. We also made sure we didn't neglect the general scouting, so we didn't end up walking into an ambush. A few minutes after passing the pool, we arrived at what would be considered the centre of the point on the map. We couldn't see anything around at all. There was no sign of the portal located on the surface, and after a thorough search of the surrounding area, we failed to locate any caves, tunnels or underground passages. We seemed to put a little more effort into searching this one... Maybe because it was the last one of the day, and we wanted to end on a high note, I don't know... In the end, THEROS was walking around the area holding the Solus stone out, searching for any area which would cause it to glow.

"I don't think there's one here... Admittedly it could be inactive, but if it were underground, it's either hidden well, or the tunnel to access it is further away from this point. I'll mark it as such, and we can come back if we need to."

No point ruling this one out if we couldn't say we had checked as thoroughly as possible. If we had UOPETA with us we may have been able to search a wider area more efficiently, but alas he's currently "out of action", as OROTHO puts it...

Putting the newly updated map away, along with the stone, we headed in the same direction, towards the base, and for a long awaited rest. We had covered a lot of ground in a small space of time, and considering we were one man down, we had done surprisingly well! Let's just hope that UOPETA is better when we get back. Maybe he can accompany us when we next go out... I suppose we'll have to see what COLUS says about that...

     It was almost totally pitch black; the moon only casting a dull yellowy hue across the landscape. Luckily, the way we were approaching the base was elevated, allowing us to see much further ahead of ourselves. From the final vantage point before descending, I was able to make a full analysis of the area to ensure there was no-one waiting to spring out on us. Obviously it would have been easier if I had a way to see longer distances across to the other side of the pool, but it didn't matter too much for the moment. Maybe that was something to ask OROTHO about. Surely he could put together some binoculars or something... It wasn't much to ask, although I knew about how accurate the lenses had to be for them to work properly... It may take him some time to make one if he was able to... I wondering if his scientific expertise branched into this region of optical acuity... Below us I could see the pool where our base was hidden. In the centre, I could see a faint light emanating from the depths. We'd need to remove that when we got inside. A very big give-away if someone was to walk by and look down.

Once we were inside, we went straight to COLUS who was with OROTHO and Amie in the lab. We informed him of our progress, and handed him the map.

"Excellent! I'll go and take this to AMPHIS for the time being. You may want to see UOPETA. He's keen to hear how you progressed alone."

"Sure, but we have some interesting images to show OROTHO and Amie..."

I took the two images of the pit of portals, and the split portal from my armour pocket, and handed them to Amie. We asked if this was recent, and how likely the latter image was.

"Well... The tree growing through a portal is new to us, but there's nothing for me to really tell you there... As for the pit... It seems to be recent. Are you sure you didn't pass anything like this on your previous outing?"

I shook my head. We had approached from the South heading towards the North to take out a confirmed secondary portal, so we would easily have seen it.

"Well then, it seems this is recent. It's a little worrying that they're setting up these portals so quickly. It just compounds the fact that we need to aim more accurately at taking down the secondary portals. These are easily replaced, but the secondary ones... Well, you know that these are precious to them. God help us if they make any progress with replicating them..."

We left the images with them, and before we left I put the idea to OROTHO about the binoculars, or some other far-seeing device. He seemed intrigued by the idea, and almost considered it a challenge. He said he couldn't promise anything, but he'd look into it. Well that was enough for me. We left them and went to check on UOPETA. He was still in bed, his arm no longer in the sling, but the bandage was still there. When we came in, he quickly tried to stuff his arm back into the sling, but stopped when he realised who it was...

"Oh thank goodness... Those two are so suffocating... 'Don't take the sling off UOPETA'... 'It's for your own good!'... Surely I know what's best for me... Besides, it's itchy and I have more freedom without it..."

It was nice to see he was practically back to his old self, albeit it with a fractured arm...

"How goes the portal patrol then?"

We told him about our progress; we couldn't find any reports to help us, so we were going on the basis of the speculative map. We then told him about the pit containing four portals.

"Looks like HoN Co. are feeling the pressure. Good! We need to hit them where it hurts! Would be easier if we had something to go on though. I hear Amie is being very helpful to OROTHO though. I was a little weary of her to begin with, but I guess she's alright."

We talked for awhile longer, and then left him to get some rest. I was starved and needed some proper rest if we were to be heading out tomorrow. We hadn't run it by COLUS yet, but I'm sure we can sway him like we did last time.

Syeonyx signing off

No comments:

Post a Comment