Despite sleeping on the floor, and vaguely remembering waking up once or twice during the night, I woke up surprisingly refreshed! It was odd feeling this for a number of reasons. Firstly we were underground, so there was no form of natural light to determine the time from. Secondly we had worked tirelessly yesterday, mining large amounts of iron, gold and redstone. And lastly we were sleeping in an unfamiliar, and possibly dangerous location. After waking the others, and having a light breakfast, we set off towards the next fork of tunnels we had found that we had extracted much iron from already! AMPHIS was fine to be left alone once more to work on the books with a fresh head. Setting out towards the tunnel system, I felt surprisingly awake despite everything working against that mood. UOPETA and THEROS seemed to be in the same spirits, and we even managed to whistle a tune on the way! It wasn't 'Hi ho' though, which would have been rather apt... It didn't take us long to reach where we had left off, and we began to extract more and more of the iron ore that line practically the entire tunnel structure from start to finish! I think OROTHO was definitely not going to run short of iron any time soon!
The tedious job of mining for iron ore was made less so with casual discussion and debate. We had spent a lot of time talking amongst ourselves about current events, and I had expressed my concern with the progress that HoN Co. could be making in our absence. UOPETA was quick to reassure me though.
"I somehow doubt HoN Co. is going to be making much progress in the near future, to be honest! With every portal chamber destroyed, and then their obsidian farm, they have little to protect left, aside from the two towers... With our recent exploits, we've more or less forced ourselves underground because they will definitely heighten security in and around their assets. Moving underground, though time consuming, is a lot safer. I can almost guarantee there will be additional guards inside the tower base, and the chamber, not to mention guards patrolling further away from the tower, within the trees. It's what I would do..."
"It's a good job you don't work for HoN Co. then... Are we going to head back and dump this stuff off at the storage any time soon?"
"Might as well do it now actually. How long have we been going, four, five hours...?"
"Something like that. After storing this, we can have a break, and check in on AMPHIS..."
Cleverly using the pickaxes as combined supports, we managed to support a large amount of iron ore atop them, and carried them between the three of us towards the entrance.
"We really need a minecart system down here quite badly... We could manage a lot more iron ore that way..."
"We'll see if we have the time, space and resources to achieve that. Until then, quit your complaining and put your back into it!"
We cautiously made our way up to the surface of the mineshafts; it took quite some time to move together past the lava flow and up the stairs to the main mineshaft area. Eventually with some time, and a lot of effort, we hauled the lot up to the storage, where it was quickly packed away, ready for smelting at a later date.
"At this rate, we're going to run out of storage space! We'll need to deliver this lot to OROTHO at some point otherwise things will grind to a halt."
UOPETA was still going on about the possibility of a minecart system running throughout the entire cliff mine, which was a nice idea, but required vast quantities of time, energy and resources. Resources that could be better spent on constructing the support for the tunnels. We made our way back down the mineshaft to meet with AMPHIS to check on his progress, and to have a rest. We had definitely earned it!
We reached the lava flow, making our way cautiously down. We had agreed that we would need to make the passage between the wooden shelter and the cliff mine entrance safer, but first we were going to rest! After waiting for THEROS to join us, we then headed in the usual direction towards the chamber. Oddly though, we saw AMPHIS standing in the centre of the chamber that was around the corner from the shelter. He was just standing there, staring at something to our left. Confused, we went over to him, looking in the direction he was, unable to see what he could see.
"AMPHIS...? Are you alright?"
"Se... Se... Se..."
"Se...? Se what? What did you see...?"
AMPHIS started to jibber nonsensically again, and UOPETA shook him by the shoulders, forcing him to look into his eyes.
"What. Did. You. See?"
AMPHIS didn't say anything for a few moments, standing there physically shaking, gawping like a fish. Then he spoke... Four words. Four of the most chilling words I have ever heard anyone say!
"SERVERE... I saw SERVERE..."
Syeonyx signing off
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