don’t get caught off guard. Sometimes people can be worse than monsters in Minecraft,” said Jerry.
That last thing that he said had me feeling a bit worried. What did he mean by “People can be worse than monsters in Minecraft”? I mean, why would anyone act that way?
We cautiously made our way down the tunnel in which we suspected the mineshaft would be and we started hearing that noise again. The strange noise seemed to be coming from underneath our feet. I took out my pickaxe and starting digging, but not straight down, this time. Fool me once! After digging through about four layers of stone floor, I managed to find a block of wood. I turned around and saw that Jerry wasn’t there anymore. I figured that he had wandered off for a bit and that I should continue my excavation. I took out my iron axe and hacked the wooden block away. The brown block revealed a small tunnel, weakly lit by a torch from somewhere. I jumped down the small hole, as the distance didn’t seem all that big. I landed in a fraction of a second in what seemed like a narrow tunnel carved into the stone. The tunnel had beams of wood once every five blocks or so that had the role to support the ceiling and keep the tunnel from collapsing from its own weight. Not particularly useful, I guess, since again, Minecraft does not care that much for the laws of physics, but the wooden beams added a lot to the atmosphere of the whole thing. I felt like a true adventurer. I slowly walked around the tunnel and saw that there even were some wooden tracks laid out on the floor and a small mine cart with a wooden container in it. I opened the container and found three loafs of bread, an iron pickaxe, a couple of gold ingots and an emerald. The green crystal seemed to radiate this beautiful green color in the darkness of the mineshaft. I didn’t actually know its purpose or in fact how to use it, but I figured it looked pretty cool, not to mention valuable, so I kept it. After I stored the emerald in my inventory, I then destroyed and collected the mine cart, along with the chest that was inside it and the wooden rails that were beneath it. For a moment there, I thought about the idea of Jerry and me building our own rail track leading into the depths of the earth, just like in those fantasy stories about dwarves and goblins. We would have our own mine from which we would siphon all sorts of riches and live like kings.
My fantasy was then abruptly interrupted by a large number of red eyes that gazed at me from within a dark corner of the tunnel and by some worrisome hissing noises.
“What the…” but I never got to finish my question, because in a matter of seconds I was already swarmed by a large number of spiders. There were both black and green, eight-legged, red-eyed monstrosities chasing me down the tunnels. I ran for my life. The only thing that I could think of was “Where is Jerry? How did I manage to get lost from him? I ran through the winding tunnels until I found myself within a poorly lit, narrow corridor. I managed to see something in the distance. It looked white. Maybe it was some sort of light source or…
By the time I had reached the object in the distance I felt a knot in my stomach. The white object to which I was heading was in fact a spider web. Not only was the narrow corridor filled with it, but all the spiders had chased behind me and I was now caught right in the middle of the whole thing. Going forward through the spider web was severely slow and in a couple of seconds the spiders had caught up to me. I turned around, facing the spiders, and slashed at the nearest one – a big green spider with hideous red eyes. I managed to land a couple of blows right on the spider’s ugly head, but shortly after the last blow, the spider bit me. My skin flashed red and my health bar turned green and rapidly started decreasing. I was poisoned. My impending death, eaten by spiders in some abandoned mineshaft, down in the middle of the earth, became the only thing that I could think about. I mean, sure, I could respawn, but I would lose all of my XP points and all of my items along with my precious emerald. And where was Jerry? Those thoughts turned quickly into rage as I decided that instead of defending myself and waiting for the spiders or the poison to defeat me, I would turn the tables on them and launch into a desperate attack. I then started moving forward hacking and slashing away at everything that had more than two legs. Two black spiders fell rather quickly followed by another two green spiders and it seemed like my attackers’ numbers were quickly dwindling. I destroyed yet another pair of spiders and found myself thinking that that was it. That is, until I heard the hissing of four more spiders, this time, coming from behind me. I took a quick glance at my health bar and saw that I had enough health to endure one more blow. I then quickly turned around and ran for my life yet again, but this time I ran down the corridor on the same path that I had used to get there. Of course, the spiders followed me closely, but not close enough so that they could touch me.
As I took a right turn down the next tunnel I noticed that the light was much brighter. I then heard a familiar voice.
“In here!”
I looked around and saw Jerry standing inside a small hole in the wall. I ran up to him and entered the small shelter. We traded places inside and Jerry positioned himself between me and my eight-legged attackers. He then started wailing on them with his iron sword. He destroyed the four spiders within seconds. He had a neat strategy though: instead of focusing on one spider, he used his sword to knock back one spider at a time so that none of them could surprise him and poison him while he was busy with just one spider. He managed to destroy all of them in quite a short time.
After the spiders were all destroyed, we healed up and started wondering the abandoned mineshaft together.
“Where did you go?” I asked Jerry. “I almost got killed out there.”
“Sorry, I guess I just wandered off. I thought I saw something lurking in the shadows and I went off to investigate. I should have told you.”
“It’s okay. I’m alright now. Thanks for saving my behind, yet again. I guess I should have stopped digging and wait for you to come back.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Oh yes,” I told him, barely containing my enthusiasm. “I found this mine cart with a container in it, a wooden chest in which I found some bread, some gold and…an emerald. Isn’t that cool?”
“It is,” said Jerry.
“What can I do with it? The emerald I mean,” I asked him.
“Well, you can use it to trade with villagers. That is, if we find any villagers,” he responded.
I was pretty disappointed by that. At least the emerald looked kind of cool.
After we were completely healed we started making our way together through the tunnels. We collected all sorts of useful stuff: iron, gold, more provisions and even some healing potions found in one of the mine carts.
As we walked down one of the tunnels we found a stairway that wound its way down a deep tunnel.
I went down the stairs and saw a red glow coming from the end of the tunnel. When we reached the end of the tunnel we saw a small pool of lava that spread a reddish glow to the entire portion of the cave.
“Well this looks strange,” pointed Jerry.
One portion of the room had a very large hole that gaped itself into the wall. The hole was dark and had rail tracks coming out of it, but no mine cart on them. The hole was very irregular, with blocks missing sporadically.
A small stream of lava came out of the wall near the hole and flowed down the floor into the pool. As I walked around I could see that there were small holes, the size of two or three blocks carved into the stone wall around the pool, with stone blocks in the lava, leading up to them like some sort of walkway.
Jerry found a wooden chest and quickly investigated.
“There’s nothing in here except for this iron pickaxe,” he said.
I nodded and walked up to the giant hole in the wall.
“This looks like a tunnel to me. Do you think somebody made this?”
“Quite possibly,” said Jerry.
“Do you think that we should investigate?”
“I don’t know,” confessed Jerry.
But without thinking too much, I took ou
t a mine cart and placed onto the tracks.
“What are you doing?”
“Investigating,” I told him. “Come on! It will be fun.”
“I don’t know,” said Jerry. “We’re pretty far from home base as it is. Who knows how deep that tunnel actually goes? And what if it leads us into some sort of danger?’
“We’ve got a whole lot of provisions of food and we’ve got armor on. What could possibly go wrong?”
“I guess you’re right, Mike. But we should proceed on foot first,” said Jerry. “What if the tracks lead down a giant hole or a pit of lava?”
But I was already inside the mine cart. All it took was one wrong move and the cart already started making its way down the tracks. At first the mine cart didn’t go that fast but soon enough the tunnel started going down pretty abruptly, and so did the tracks. The mine cart started building up speed, racing through the darkness that filled the whole tunnel. I could hear Jerry behind me.
“I told you that we would proceed on foot! On foot! You’ve done it again, Mike!”
Apparently he got into a mine cart and started following me down the tunnel.
Within seconds, I had built up a rather great amount of speed. The tunnel began to have torches set from time to time, making it easier for me to see what was around me. I quickly saw that at certain points throughout the