It's slightly odd to be doing restoration with a partner and compatriot, but it feels good.
That's not the only odd thing. You did notice that we'd made the forge first for advanced tools before making the proper smeltery. Truth is we hadden't found a good underground source of lava yet, and in the meantime we could at least use manasteel to make lumber axe for such large trees as those.
Still, with one chapter down, you start feeling like you've started to hit your stride. None of the demands where extraordinary, it was all very basic suggestions that lead us gently into the first part of our work and helped us to secure the base.
Some of these things make sense, the dirt below the ground that the endermen could not take, of course it's low in nutrient, that explains perfectly why we'd need the crop sticks. Makes even more sense that we'd have to use compost to make things livable for the more delicate magical plants. Shame we can't just bonemeal it, but using the magical remnants in the bonemeal and the magical flowers, and just a touch of the mutandus for change, of course.
So many things I'll be taking back to the world with me, to try when I can.
Proud was the day we had enough growing that we could fill one wall with furnaces and do our smelting in vast batches. Proud too that we had resources enough that doing such actually made sense... even if half the time it was cobblestone into smooth stone so that we could continue to build well in this decaying world.
Proud too that our ability to tame mana has lead us away from these simple tools of flint into better ones of mana steel, both crafted on the forge and crafted with magic. It's a strange feeling, knowing you've got this figured out and knowing that there is yet so much to learn, powerful but humbling.
And yet, the signs of difficulty in this world are hard to miss.
To get these chests, to go beyond the simple wood ones that we'd made from the deadwood, we had to have wool. Many nights and many spiders, while dealing with the creepers and the others left behind by the endermen to guard the world. The undead outnumber the living, and the few living things are creepers and spiders. Never a single sheep to be seen. It's discomforting.
And, if yea spotted that unusual furnace, seems that iron here is one of the things to feel the tainted bite of the magics of the endermen. Nothing is as strong as it should be and iron seems to have suffered the worst. But still, the overlords teach us, there is a tool. Iron, reforged with charcoal and sand, the process gives us impure wrought iron to work with. A material I've not seen before, dark as the night, but rich with potential. Still only potential, through we've made some of it to tinker with. Though to use it to the fullest, there's a dangerous thing we must do.
The vat, it lets us make obsidian, though nothing we have can break it once it's in place. Such a portal has an unusual weight of permanence in such circumstances, a strange dangerous feeling even if we could just extinguish it, it will always loom. At least until we can improve ourselves, and we will, we must.
So into the portal into the fiery pits, and we find that the pigmen seem to have been a part of it too. This world is rich in ores, and everything that was under the ground. It is the farthest thing from safe as this portal opens onto a tiny island in a vast open cavern of lava.
Still, with some work, a reinforced tunnel into the roof of the world is made. There it's safe, truth be told, never SAFE, to plunder some of the resources that are so dangerously and jealously guarded. I take just a few of each and then through the portal again. Work them in the smeltery and upgrade my tools, and back into the fire, time and time again.
Meanwhile, Pinky is working hard as well. With each new resource I take back, she seems to be able to get a new seed growing. In time we will never need to risk this place. In time.
Starting off the plants are things we would otherwise be taking for granted. Copper, tin, iron, even enderpearls are farmed here because the enderfolk rarely leave to check this blasted and blighted land.
With the coal, the endoflames have a new fuel source, and mana becomes plentiful. The overlords being kind have even seen to give us a few blaze rods now that we've shown we can handle the nether. Or, honestly, it's perhaps we have shown that we cannot handle the nether and that it's too dangerous for us.
Still, that reward was enough to let us setup a catalyst for additional forms of alchemy with the mana. One of the first things made is proper cactus, and with them the occasional slimeball so that I might push a bit in technology.
Also, likewise, cocoa. I'd gotten lucky with the mutandus and had myself some junglewood saved from that tree, so it was a simple thing to set some of the cocoa beans growing again. You'd not think this means much, but for a diet that had been mostly of bread, to suddenly know we could have cookies, it was a joy for us.
Also, the mana cookies make such a lovely emergency food that I think I'll never want to be without them, anywhere.
I did say that it seemed like we'd not get further without taking that insane risk, and with the risk taken come rewards.
Now it is simple enough to make sandy brick, even if the resources needed are strange feeling, the result is the same as ever. A coke oven. An even better fuel for our furnaces and for the endoflames.
This is also the next piece in turning the iron into something more suitable then the fragile shards it tends to want to become. Though it seems the blast furnace is going to be slightly out of our reach for a little more.
Still, with the new flushness of mana there are things we've wanted that we can now make. Many creatures that where just waiting a touch of magic to be drawn into the world again. Sheep for wool so that we could keep making better and better chests where unresistible now.
Likewise, as needful a chance in diet as the cookies, the pigs came forth into the world for us too.
Now, these rituals require eggs to contain the animals until they can be brought into the world, and while we'd been granted a few by the overlords, it wasn't many, and next had to be chickens. Without them we where at risk of running out and we knew not when we could obtain more.
So, carefully contained with the eggs collected for us, come the chickens.
Feathers too, I'm sure will prove to be useful, all in good time.
I offer you one strange thing I noticed, you'd not think that milk would be of much use, but it keeps showing up as something we need. With these lovely milk maids we can now make cake and satisfy the last of the runes that had been out of reach. Though still the last of them, sins, will require diamonds, and those are but a twinkling dream, still we've now gotten the seasons.
And so, this corner of the wastelands was almost starting to feel like a place that might have life, a place that might have hope. We even have neighbors who we know are working just as hard across the pond, all in all a good feeling, somebody to pit ourselves against and work with, turn and turn about however it might go.
Seems there was just one bit of life left in the world though, something rather unexpected.
Never thought that the escenceberries would be the crop that survived the end of the world. Must be because they where thorny and hard to pick up, that's the only thing that saved them from the endermen I figure. Perhaps the pigmen where not able to move them because they where alive.
I'll never know, surely the two conspiring forces would never tell ME about how they did it.
Speaking of the nether again, there's one thing I can use from there to my advantage, perhaps two in the long run but I'm not entirely sure about THAT part yet. Still the netherrack does make a wonderfully potent furnace, able to use the perpetual heat of the nether to make itself far more efficent. It only takes two coal coke to process an entire stack of items now, and for the small batches even sticks manage to be enough.
There's pinky, she's rather fond of the pink tools and her new armor, posing for the camera, it looks good on her.
Right beside her is the upgraded smeltery, pushing it higher while doing a touch of relocating, putting the proper tools right by it. A place ofr everything, and everything in place.
Looks like I'm closing this little entry in the log with the lastest project that the pink one has started. She thinks it might be possible to channel the powers of nature through another magic. She's making a start on witchery, and not just because it's a task assigned by the overlords, but for the sake of making the land greener and better.
