Day three of being stuck in a fantasy death forest, and Alexei woke up on a hard wooden floor.
His hunger bar was still full, since he'd respawned and immediately passed out last night without bothering to do anything productive.
He dug open the entrance to his treehouse and was greeted by an unusually early morning. The sky was just starting to lighten along the horizon, that pale pre-dawn glow that he'd only seen a handful of times in his life.
Once back in Russia, when his mother had dragged him to some godawful early morning market.
And once on his first day here, right after face-planting into this world.
The air was damp, sticky in that way that meant it had rained overnight. He could see droplets still clinging to leaves.
"Right... Today's agenda: find cobblestone. That's it. Just... find some rocks. It can't be that hard."
He grabbed his wooden sword from the chest, and set out.
Yesterday he'd explored the immediate area around his base. Today, he was going farther.
The forest had other ideas about his bravery.
---
Death #1: 9:47 AM
He'd been walking for maybe an hour, searching for any sign of exposed stone, when he heard a strange sound.
He turned slowly.
The snake was easily eight meters long and as thick around as a tree trunk. Its scales were a mottled brown-green, and its eyes, fuck, those eyes were way too intelligent for comfort.
"Nice snake," he said, backing away slowly. "Good—"
It struck faster than his brain could process.
[You Died!]
[Cause of Death: Constricted and Envenomed - Forest Titan Python.]
[Score: 0]
[Respawn]
---
Death #2: 11:23 AM
The second death was somehow worse.
He'd respawned, grabbed his gear again, and decided to try a different direction. Maybe east was snake territory. He'd go west instead.
West had scorpions.
The thing was about the size of a bear, with a crystalline exoskeleton. It looked like someone had built a scorpion out of jagged glass and given it way too many legs.
"Oh, come on," he groaned. "What is this, a Dark Souls forest?"
The scorpion's tail whipped forward, and its stinger buried itself in his chest.
It felt like molten glass was spreading through his veins, crystallizing everything it touched.
He tried to scream, but couldn't. His lungs weren't working right. Everything was hardening from the inside out.
[You Died!]
[Cause of Death: Petrification Toxin - Crystalback Scorpion.]
[Score: 0]
[Respawn]
---
Death #3: 1:15 PM
"Third time's the charm," he muttered, respawning yet again. "Maybe north? North could be safe."
North was not safe.
North had bees.
Giant, probably demonic, bees.
Each one was the size of his head, with three glowing eyes arranged in a triangle on their faces.
There were dozens of them, swarming around what must've been a hive the size of a car.
He saw them, immediately turned around, and started walking away quickly.
They noticed him anyway.
The first sting hit his shoulder. The second got his leg. By the third, he was on the ground, convulsing, as venom spread through his system.
[You Died!]
[Cause of Death: Neurotoxic Venom - Three-Eyed Drone Bee.]
[Score: 0]
[Respawn]
---
Five hours. Three deaths. Zero cobblestone.
Alexei sat at his spawn point, staring at nothing.
"Okay," he said to the uncaring forest. "New plan. Clearly, exploring is suicide. Every direction has something that wants to kill me. So I'm officially giving up on finding surface stone."
He pulled out a piece of bark and started carving notes into it with a sharp stick, his version of a "notebook" for tracking threats.
Treehouse North: Three-Eyed Demon Bees. Do not approach. Ever.
Treehouse West: Giant crystal scorpion. Petrification toxin. Avoid.
Treehouse East: Eight-meter snake. Fast. Extremely bad news.
Treehouse South (Spider Territory): Demon Spider. Main threat. Killed me three times. Revenge pending.
He stared at his notes. His base was literally surrounded by things that could kill him in seconds.
"This is fine. This is fine."
The forest did not confirm whether things were, in fact, fine.
He trudged back to his treehouse, crafted his eighth wooden shovel and pickaxe, he'd lost track of how many tools he'd made at this point, and made a decision.
No more shortcuts. He was going to do this the hard way.
He was going to dig.
"If I dig deep enough, there has to be stone eventually. It's literally impossible for there not to be. That's just that's how planets work, right? Then again… I am a dropout… fuck."
He gathered materials and crafted a massive number of ladders. This time, he was doing it properly, a one-block-wide vertical shaft right next to his treehouse, with ladders all the way down for safe access.
He picked a spot that looked reasonable, which is to say, a spot that looked exactly like every other spot, and started digging.
---
Two hours later, Alexei climbed back to the surface and collapsed on the ground, staring up at the canopy with dead eyes.
Six shovels worn down to nothing.
His inventory had several stacks of dirt. Some tree roots that had been buried deep underground. And zero stone.
Each silkspore wood shovel could dig about eighty blocks before breaking. He'd dug down at least four hundred and eighty meters. And to make matters worse, the bottom of his shaft had started filling with water. Which was actually what forced him to come back up, the water had risen past his knees, making further digging impossible.
He lay there on the ground, thinking about his life choices, until the sun started setting.
"Fine," he eventually said, pushing himself upright. "If the universe wants to give me water instead of stone, I'll use the damn water."
He went back to his treehouse, dumped all seven-plus stacks of dirt into his storage chest, and crafted three wooden buckets at the crafting table.
His plan: bring the water up, create an infinite water source. At least then he'd have one useful thing, even if it wasn't the thing he needed.
He walked back to the edge of his mineshaft and stared down into it.
The ladders stretched down into shadow, rungs disappearing into the gloom about fifty meters down.
He took one step onto the ladder, then paused.
What if he just... jumped? With a water bucket? Wasn't that a thing in Minecraft? MLG water bucket clutches?
"I mean, there's water at the bottom. Should work, right?"
He jumped.
For about three seconds, the fall was almost peaceful. Just him and the wind rushing past and the strange feeling that he'd forgotten to consider something.
He hit the water at terminal velocity.
The impact didn't hurt, he died too fast for pain to register. The shallow water did nothing to break his fall. His body just splattered.
[You Died!]
[You fell from a high place.]
[Score: 0]
[Respawn]
---
"...blyat."
Alexei respawned, stared at his empty inventory, and felt a muscle in his jaw twitch.
"Regular water doesn't work for MLG plays."
With significantly more caution and significantly less optimism, he climbed down the ladder properly. It took almost ten minutes to reach the bottom, and by the time he got there, the water had risen to mid-thigh depth.
He collected his dropped items first, then started the process of expanding the shaft sideways to increase water seepage, then bucketing the water out and carrying it up ladder by ladder.
An hour later, sweaty, and tired, he finally had three buckets of water back in his treehouse.
It was already getting dark outside. Too late for more exploration.
He sealed the entrance with his usual wooden blocks and lay down to sleep.
---
Day Four.
Alexei woke up with a new plan: take it easy today.
Set up his infinite water source, do some fishing, and try to feel like a normal person for once.
First step: get experience for assimilating items. Which meant killing bugs.
He grabbed his sword and went on what he was starting to think of as his "morning bug murder routine."
The insects of this forest had learned to fear him, not that it helped them any. He cut through beetles and oversized ants, collecting experience orbs as they died.
Two hours of slaughter later, he was at level five.
In Minecraft, levels barely mattered outside of enchanting. They didn't make you stronger or faster or better at anything. Just a number that went up.
But here, in this weird hybrid world, levels had one critical function: assimilating items from the environment into proper MC blocks.
Which meant he could finally set up his infinite water source properly.
He decided to place it inside the treehouse. Putting it outside seemed like a terrible idea, what if some monster decided it was a convenient water source and set up camp there?
The last thing he needed was his spawn point turning into a monster gathering spot where he was the one getting farmed.
Creating the infinite water source was straightforward, though it differed slightly from the game.
He dug two one-block indentations in the corner of his treehouse, leaving one block between them as a separator. He poured a bucket of water into each indentation, then, to be safe, used his spare third bucket to top both sides off completely.
After that came the important part. He placed his hands into the murky, dirt-filled water on both sides and focused, pushing experience into it.
The yellow-brown, sediment-filled water clarified, transforming into clear liquid in under ten seconds.
"One more step," he muttered, heart rate picking up slightly.
Instead of using his axe to break the middle block like some kind of barbarian, he mined it by hand.
The block broke after about fifty seconds, compressing into his inventory.
The water from both sides surged toward the newly opened middle space, flowing together.
The levels on both sides didn't drop at all.
The water kept flowing until the middle block was completely filled, level with the sides, and then the surface went still.
He grabbed an empty bucket and scooped some water from the middle. The level dropped for half a second, then immediately refilled itself.
The water in the bucket was clean but seemed to lack the special properties of MC water, probably needed an iron bucket for that.
He also discovered something interesting: no matter how hard he slapped the water's surface, it only produced ripples. No splashes. Very Minecraft-like behavior.
He took a sip. It tasted like water... Which was honestly more than he'd expected.
"One down. Now for the fishing rod."
His remaining level of experience was exactly enough to assimilate one silkspore log. He broke it into sticks at the crafting table, then combined them with string from his storage.
A moment later, he was holding a fishing rod that was barely a meter long.
For maximum comfort, he crafted a stool out of a silkspore stair and two signs, placing it one block away from his infinite water source.
He sat down, exhaled in satisfaction, and nodded to himself.
"This is nice."
He cast the line.
BONK.
The bobber hit the wall, bounced off, and clattered to the floor.
"..."
He reeled in and tried again.
BONK.
Same result.
"Are you fucking serious right now?"
He gave up on being cool about it, lowered about half a meter of line, and gently placed the bobber on the water's surface.
It floated there, perfectly still.
He waited.
Fishing in Minecraft was mostly a waiting game anyway. He was good at waiting. He'd been waiting three days to find cobblestone, and look how that was going.
His eye twitched slightly at that thought.