We followed the path back along to the set of stairs leading up and to the left, before entering the confines of the tunnel. I felt safer in here; if there were any HoN Co. guards nearby, they were unlikely to spot us in the tunnel. However, if the guards were moving through the tunnel, then we would have a problem. Luckily we made it out of the other end, through the twisting passage and off to the right, heading out from beneath the bottom of the hill. COLUS and the others were already there waiting for us, and they all seemed pretty shocked at what we had found.
"When I learnt that we were heading back into the Nether, I didn't expect to find HoN Co. setting up shop for what seems like the long haul! This could drastically interfere with our operation!"
"My guess is that HoN Co. have discovered the time lapse in this dimension and are now attempting to use it against us. If we remained in Minecraftia trying to find and destroy portals, they literally have triple the amount of time to achieve whatever they want of this place!"
"We'll head back to the base camp and rest up for the night. We can discuss what to do next from there. There's very little activity around for such a large building, but I don't want to go rushing in on the off chance that there's no-one there..."
Heading back to to the camp, I helped THEROS remove all of the torches that laid out our path back and forth to the platform. We had possibly just shown HoN Co. that the Lone 7 were back in the Nether, and the last thing we wanted to do was lead them back to us!
----
It seems that the group is split in terms of thinking what that large building we have spotted is used for. We're almost at an agreement that it's the work of HoN Co., with OROTHO being stubborn because he says we can't actually "prove" it just yet. Meanwhile, a few of us think it could be another obsidian plant, whist the rest think it's just another headquarters set up in the Nether. Both are totally plausible explanations for it; the Nether has an abundance of lava in large pools and lakes, as well as lava falls. So it was entirely possible that HoN Co. has gone to the extent of pumping water into the Nether to mine more obsidian. On the other hand, we're not entirely sure if that's even possible as the only way to get through to the Nether is through a portal. It would take a rather large vessel or pipeline to carry the required amount of water they would need for an obsidian plant. I'm with the others, thinking that it is a secondary set of headquarters they have established to enable them to further experiment on the environment.
"Chances are they're going to be running tests on practically everything here; rock density and composition, atmospheric tests, and searching for new forms of life or elements etc... If they're planning on activating the master portal and merging the two dimensions together, it'd only be sensible to test the effects that would have before doing it..."
"HoN Co. are only trying to merge the two dimensions together because they're trying to acquire a maintainable energy supply which they can regulate. Previous attempts at bringing these energy-rich materials in through a portal to Minecraftia resulted in the materials losing all of their potential energy."
"Well if that's the case, could the same happen to water if they brought it through a pipeline?" If energy is lost from materials going from the Nether to Minecraftia, could water gain energy on its way in?"
"I doubt it works like that... For all we know, it could mutate the water into something else entirely, but there's unlikely to be an opportunity we're going to find out..."
"What if we go back and speak to UOPETA? He might have spoken to SERVERE already. Maybe we can give him a message to SERVERE to ask him to search for any projects recently undertaken by HoN Co. involving the Nether...?"
"No it wouldn't work. We've been here less than a day, and that's reduced to a third of the time for UOPETA. To him, we've only been gone a few hours. Besides, we can't risk blowing SERVERE's cover asking him to dig deeper and deeper in their systems..."
"Well from the sounds of things, the only way we're going to find out what's going on around here is to investigate ourselves. We're still waiting for SERVERE to come through for us with the map, and until then we're just sitting pretty!"
"It's not something I'm happy with, but it may be our only option. It may also help us to understand where the creatures that inhabit this place have disappeared to."
"Is that a 'yes' then...?"
COLUS looked around at all of us; I got the impression that his need to find out what was going on here might be overwhelming his need to keep everyone safe. I couldn't blame him; I hated it when there was something put in front of me that I didn't know anything about. I suppose that it was just human nature. To be curious is to be human... We settled in for the night, agreeing that tomorrow, we would further investigate the construction in the lava lake... Together.
Syeonyx signing off
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