15 Chapter 15. The Nether

Purple particulars started to gather around the newly lit fire.

They began to consume the tall flame and then moved to the middle of the portal. A distorted image started to appear in the empty frame, but not for long before it cleared itself.

On the other side, I could see the red ground spreading everywhere, and lava falling from the sky.

"It's more creepy to see it in person than on a screen, that's for sure."

I passed my hand through the portal and felt the heat of the nether. I felt like I was in a room filled with furnaces and they were all smelting or cooking something. I don't know how the fire resistance potion or the enchantment works, but I sure hope that it can alleviate some of the heat since it would be a nightmare to wear armor in there.

I finally gathered enough courage to step through the portal, and a wave of heat washed all over me. I had to quickly take the helmet off my head since I couldn't handle the heat. The rest of the armor was still as hot but it was still bearable. But I wouldn't like to move too much with armor on, less much so fighting in one.

Well, have to move carefully here then. I then started to build a small cobblestone house to cover the portal. I didn't want to be stranded here after a ghast blows out the portal for having a bad day.

It didn't take long before I was finished with the stone house, then I quickly got into it only to be impressed how similar to the game it was. It wasn't complete darkness, even in this enclosed spaces without a light source.

I then went back to the Overworld and was immediately more comfortable with less heat bothering me.

"Now that the preparations are done, I should call Bobby as well. I hope I'll get a good reaction out of him this time as well."

I quickly climbed the stairs to the surface and went looking for the village head. Fortunately, he wasn't too hard to find, he was still in the middle of the village trying to show people how to use the golem. I decided to watch from the sideline until everything was done, and while I did wait for a bit, I was not getting bored looking at the villagers that managed to order the golem to accidentally destroy a house.

After everything was done and fixed, I brought Bobby to the portal room.

"Wow! You weren't kidding when you said that Nether was another dimension. And you actually managed to make obsidian, the unbreakable block."

He then looked closer into the portal only to see a wall of cobblestone.

"I don't see the red world you described to me though."

"Oh don't worry about that, just take this armor and shield, and cross to the other side."

Bobby looked at the items in my hand, then at me, then back to my hands. He looked surprisingly touched by this gesture, he almost cried as well but managed to hold it in.

"Are you ok Bobby? Did something happen, did I go too far? I'm sorry I didn't mean that."

He then looked me in the eyes and said:

"Don't say sorry Trader. I'm just overwhelmed by what you did to me. You saved my village, built a wall, made an iron golem as a guardian for the people, then opened the portal to another dimension just so you can help me look for ingredients for my alchemy, and now you're giving me a full iron set of armor without me saying thank you or paying you in any way. Sorry for the outburst, but I want to thank you for what you did for me, for what you did for the whole village."

After he said that, he left the room in a hurry.

"I feel like I shouldn't follow him right now. His emotions are in a mess."

I was taken by surprise, by the sudden change in Bobby. But if I tried to think about everything from his perspective I would be shocked as well. A person suddenly comes and saves your family from an accident, looks at your broken home, and decided to build you a new one, then he asks you about how your studies go, only to tell him that you've been thrown out of the school because you got in a fight with the rich kid there. Then like a hero he just brought you to a better school than before by paying everything up already. And all of that from a stranger that you know nothing about, and expects nothing in return.

Yeah, I think that's an appropriate reaction to have, especially because we meet just a week ago.

After a little while, Bobby came back looking much better, but still had a little red around his eyes.

"Thank you for waiting, and sorry for that shameful display. I wanted to tell you, something Trader, I know I don't have much to give to you, but I want you to know why I'm here, and how much this meant to me."

After that, he proceeds to tell me his story, how he got the job as a cleric, how that opened an opportunity to get to the academy, how he tried to learn everything he could to change the life of his village to a better one, how he made friends in the first year and had high grades, and then everything changed from the second year when he refused to join the noble group, how he still tried to persevere through all of the bullyings and even catch the attention of an official from the palace.

But it all came to an ending once the nobles heard about that, and framed him for stealing from the school, once at the trial, he was given a harsh punishment without the option to even defend himself. The punishment was equal to death since he had to take care of an infected village, they hoped for him to get infected as well, and die in a monster attack. But after he got here, he took pity on those people, he repaired their homes, thought them how to grow crops, and even wanted to make them a wall for protection until I came.

Of course, even if he was working in the village, he didn't forget to grind for the next level in his profession, he didn't give up, he wanted to get back and take revenge on those who wronged him.

After he finished saying his story, I learned a lot about this world, about what he went though, and how dangerous people can be here, more so than the monsters of the night.

But not long after he finished his story, he just put the iron helmet on his head and went through the portal.

"Bobby no-"

It was too late, he already passed through the portal, but he didn't get too far before he stopped, and threw his helmet on the ground, gasping for air.

"It's too hot..."

I then followed him through the portal and asked if he was ok to continue.

"I'll manage it!"

He responded through gasps. He then started to walk towards the door and open it, and then froze in place.

On the other side of the door lay the vast world of the Nether. Rivers of lava fell from the ceiling into the melted sea, red rocks surrounded us from everywhere, and the occasional strider walked calmly on the sea of lava.

"Is-Is this the Nether? How can life survive through such harsh conditions?"

Now that's a question that I didn't have the answer to, but I decided not think too much about it since nobody is going to answer us.

"Let's go Bobby, but be careful of your surroundings, this place is filled with danger."

He nodded to me in understanding, and then we started to walk in one direction and occasionally placed some cobblestones to mark our way back to the portal.

We walked for a few hours before the scene started to finally change, it was a soulsands valley with the occasional bone blocks poking out the ground.

"Why is there so much soulsand here? Are you telling me that even the nether wart is brought from here?"

"Yep! But you can only find them in the fortress, unfortunately. Be careful, usually, there are a lot of skeletons here."

Not too long after I said that, a skeleton appeared out of nowhere and started to shoot arrows at us.

We quickly got in a fighting stance and started to run towards the enemy, with two of us it was easy to overwhelm him, but until we arrived at the skeleton, another two appeared and started to attack us. We did the same thing with them, but others appeared to take up their place.

After a few minutes of fighting and overheating, we realized that this can't continue, so we decided to just defend and pass the valley.

After a few more stressful minutes under the shower of arrows, we managed to get out of that nightmare. Then I quickly made a small box so we can actually rest in peace, and replenish our energy.

"That was more intense than the knight training. Why would anyone want to live in here?"

"Well from what I understand, they don't really have a choice. And even if we brought them to our world, they'll turn into monsters for some reason."

Bobby nodded his head in understanding, the asked me a question:

"I always wanted to ask you this, but how do you know so much? how to make an iron golem, hot to make obsidian, even the knowledge of this dimension?"

I knew that It would be a time where I'll be asked this question, so I thought of an acceptable answer.

"Once you travel as much as I did through the world and its ruins, you can find some pretty interesting stuff, the only downside is the loneliness in all those journeys."

"I'll love to hear your stories, and how you even started to make such a big decision to travel."

I smiled awkwardly at that.

"I'll probably do that another time, I'm too tired now for storytelling."

He nodded and took out some bread to eat, I also took mine and drank some water from my bucket to cool myself off.

After an hour of rest, we decided to continue our journey. This time we meet the zombie pigmen, and I had to stop Bobby from making a mistake that would've killed both of us.

After I explained to him the consequences of hitting one of them, he thanked me profusely for stopping him. Luckily like in the game, the zombie pigmen didn't seem too interested in us, so we passed them with ease.

We walked more until the scene changed again, this time to a red forest. The red trees were everywhere with light coming out of them.

We watched in fascination at the beauty of this strange nature until a low growl got our attention.

A huge hoglin was running full speed at us.

"Sh- *Boom*"

I was suddenly hit with force and fell on my back from the knockback. I quickly checked my health, only to see it went down by 10 points to my horror.

"Trader no!"

Bobby started to swing with rage at the new enemy. With a few grunts, I also got up and joined in the fight.

The hoglin had a lot of HP so we had to stab and slash him a few times, but we Finally managed to defeat him after letting out one last cry of pain.

Both of us were panting from the intensity of this fight.

"Are you ok Trader? How much HP did you lose?"

"I'm ok for now, but I don't want to join a fight too soon-"

But before I could finish my sentence, the sound of another low growl coming closer caught our attention, and this time it wasn't just one. we both looked at each other and booked it from there, with the hoglins on our tails.

We run as fast as we could, but even with the trees as obstacles they didn't lose us, and everything got worse when we arrived at a dead end. We were too tired to fight, and Bobby couldn't place blocks fast enough to tawer up like me. So we raised our shields and prepared for the worst.

But when all hope seemed lost, a lone figure dropped from above right in front of us in the way of the upcoming death, it placed a mushroom on the floor and turned towards us with no fear about what was about to happen.

We both waited in suspense for the upcoming collision, but instead of us being trampled by the pigs on steroids, they started to screech in fear and run back to where they came from.

Bobby and I were too shocked to process what happened, but we didn't have the luxury to stay shooked for too long, because a feminine voice got our attention.

"What are you doing here outsiders!"