Well rested

     The excitement of nearing the end of tunnelling had worn off already, and our working speed had dropped quite severely. I think it was due to the tedious nature of the job, and the fact that we were all incredibly tired. My muscles were practically screaming for a long rest, and we still had the rest of the afternoon to get through! As we became more and more tired, the energy we put into the job decreased, and our progress followed suit. We knew what was at stake, and we understood the importance of us succeeding, but we literally had no energy left! We had been going for so long, with so much resting on our shoulders, that the stress of it all had begun to show. So much had happened in the past few days that it was hard to take it all in. Destroying an obsidian farm in a huge explosion, starting a cliff mine, finding a strange book that mirrored the style of the Codex Solis, finding the underground library full of similar books, AMPHIS seeing SERVERE, the lockdown of the entire base and now this mass tunnelling project... It was exhausting just thinking about it, let alone physically going through ourselves! Eventually we came to a complete stop; resting against the stone wall, breathing heavily, covered in perspiration, I set my pickaxe down. This was soon mimicked by UOPETA and THEROS, and then THEXIS joined in.

"This is just too far... I know what we have to do, but to do that in a short period of a few days... It's like asking for the world..."

Everyone was breathless... Even THEXIS was stooped over struggling to fill his lungs, and he was the one technically doing the least manually exertive job out of all of us!

"We haven't got that far left to go. Just a few hundred more metres and then we can rest..."

"Well you see we can't though. After this tunnel is complete, we need to find a way to conceal the entrance, and then go to the tower and check on progress... We've got to somehow gain entry into that place when we all know that it's going to be teeming with guards! Even if we manage to take out a few, we can't guarantee we'll take them all out, and COLUS's idea of trying to get them to join us seems a lot more of a dangerous option!"

"How...? We managed it with the guards and the workers at the obsidian farm..."

"That's because the guards and workers were told different thing to prevent anything starting off. There are no workers at the tower; just guards and the occasional scientist... The scientists are already aware of what HoN Co. is doing, and will have already made their mind up about the ethics of it. The guards will be motivated by peer pressure and numbers. Ten plus guards against the three of us equals a bad ending for us! Even if that doesn't happen, you really think HoN Co. are going to just send another dozen or so guards down to the base? They'll lock it down entirely!"

"Or worse... They could craft portals around the perimeter, put Affinitas cages in the centre, and let the spawn of the Nether guard that place..."

"Oh, god... Don't even think about that... If that happened then the only way into the tower would be via more tunnels! You do realise where that would put us...?"

"Digging the tunnel, yes I know... We need to ensure that we're very careful with the way we tackle that tower after this tunnel is finished... It might be an idea to scout out the area first..."

"If we did that, I'd go alone. As good as you two are, I work more silently on my own... No offence..."

"Trust me, I can't see me or Syeonyx complaining about that!"

"To be honest, I think we've earned a long rest, don't you? I can't see COLUS complaining about that when he sees how far we've progressed... We can check on AMPHIS too."

All groaning, we got to our feet and headed off towards the lab. Despite being reasonably cool in the tunnel, I was boiling, and I did not relish the idea of going back into the lab where AMPHIS was working to smelt all of the iron... Passing OROTHO and Joe on the way back, it seemed that they had finished with the second door and were testing the switches. From the looks of the wire trail however, they had yet to fix the doors to the lights near the entrance. That would be a pivotal part of the security system, if what OROTHO had been saying was right...

----

     We've taken a very long rest! So long that afternoon has become evening, and COLUS is unhappy with us going back. I can't say that that was our achievement; to rest until the evening, but we're not complaining. Contrary to what I thought, the lab was nowhere near as hot as I had expected. AMPHIS had indeed been busy smelting iron ore, and had so much surplus now that he had combined the ingots into stacked blocks and stored them in the corner of the lab until they were needed. When we needed more iron, all we needed to do was to remove the ties, smelt a few ingots and craft whatever we needed. But as AMPHIS had realised this, he had stopped about an hour before we came back. His work was done for the moment, and he seemed anxious to get back into the wooden shelter in the cliff mine. He said he was over the whole seeing SERVERE thing, but COLUS had refused him from leaving the base.

"Any time we leave the base, we potentially expose ourselves to anyone who may be watching us. As long as we remain inside the base, we won't be spotted."

AMPHIS had begun to wish he had brought one or a few of the books back with him, but all he had was Finis, which he had been through a hundred times or more. The full meaning and purpose of the book was still lost to him, and the rest of us, but the fact that AMPHIS had found an opening that overlooked our base from that wooden shelter was a clear sign that the two were connected. Whoever was watching over us had been for some time, and had amassed a large collection of hand-written books. But that got me thinking... Whoever had lived their obviously watched us for some time, but they couldn't be HoN Co.! There was no reason for a HoN Co. guard or worker to live deep in the earth writing books in strange codes and old test. It didn't make any sense!

"That may be the case, but we can't assume anything other than the worst case scenario. The best we can be is fully prepared for anything, that way we can't be taken by surprise. As far as we know, whoever had the cliff overlook was an employee of HoN Co., and therefore poses a potential risk to our safety."

I suppose coming to the conclusion that this person wasn't connected to HoN Co. wasn't much of a revelation. Knowing who it was even if we knew with perfect clarity wouldn't change anything because COLUS would still have initiated the lockdown. Unless of course... It was SERVERE who was down there... Which, if that was the case... It opens up an entirely new set of more disturbing questions...

Syeonyx signing off