Alexander woke me up early this morning for breakfast and to talk over how we intend to set all of this up. Breakfast was some bread and porkchops. It works, I guess. At least we’ve got food, and there’s a well in town for water. Alexander also has a couple cows penned up to get milk from. So we’re set up for food. I guess carrots, potatoes, and wheat are already growing in the various farms in the village, and they grow fast. That works for us. It means we should never run out of food. We’ll always at least have bread.

Our talk this morning consisted of Alexander going over what kind of practice I’d have to do before he’d even come close to considering me ready to face the dragon. After that… Wonderful discussion, we started discussing getting to the dragon to begin with.

“So how do we get to this dimension in the first place? I mean, if we can’t get there, we can’t fight the dragon.”

“Well, that’ll be the hard part. According to the book, we’ll need a number of what are called enderpearls. You can get them from endermen- Which I’ve only seen one of. But we’ll need at least nine, probably more. We’ll also need to go to another dimension called the nether to find some creatures called blazes. We’ll need to kill them for another component we’ll need.”

“Let me guess- Blazes are also super dangerous.” I am really starting to think I’ll be stuck here forever.

“Yes, as are most of the other inhabitants of the nether. Luckily, we can make defenses for ourselves. Armor, weapons, potions- We just need to get a strategy and we’ll be golden.” Alexander seems a little more optimistic about this than he was yesterday. “Now- Getting to the nether is going to be another task that will take some time and preperation. For that, we are going to need, as near as my math can tell, we need 14 blocks of obsidian to construct the portal to get there. To get obsidian, we’ll need a pickaxe made of diamonds. Diamonds… Are a pain to find. I’ve personally never found any.”

“None? In three years?” That sounds kinda… Super hard to find.

“To be fair, I haven’t been actively looking for them, and I try not to go out on mining expeditions for too long at a time. On top of that, I only go down there if I need something. I usually don’t.” Well, I guess that makes sense, then. Why would he want to go down there in the dark and risk getting himself hurt, or worse, if he doesn’t need anything down there. “But I have a general idea of how to find them, at least. We’ll probably be down for long periods at a time, so… Let’s start planning things out. Figure out what we’ll need for a trip, what to bring extra of, things like that.” Alexander said, getting up. I agreed and we started planning.

It’s been a few hours now, and I think we’ve about got this figured out. We’ve decided that we should pack extra food, extra iron to make more pickaxes should ours break on us- Apparently, they can break. I wouldn’t have thought that was a thing, but apparently it’s a thing. We also want to bring an extra furnace in case we run out of iron- This way we can refine some more to use should we need it. Other things on the list:

Several bunches of torches, to help light our way, as they apparently only give off light when on a wall; plenty of wood so we’ll be able to use it for pickaxes, which have handles made of wood; buckets of water, to take care of any lava we see and keep us from accidentally falling in; two beds so if we get exhausted we can set up a small base camp and rest up; a crafting table each, so we can actually make the pickaxes.

Alexander helped me practice the sword after we had finished that. It isn’t nearly as hard as I had thought- You don’t need any fancy fencing to use these things, thankfully. The main thing he wanted me to practice was blocking, as that’s the best way to keep from being hit by arrows from skeletons. Thankfully, the swords are kinda wide, so that should help. They really aren’t heavy like you would expect, either- These are pretty light, and thin, but super solid and super sharp. I’m not complaining, of course. That just means that I can learn how to use this thing quickly and easily.

Currently, we think we’ll be heading out tomorrow to start searching for diamonds. We don’t really have a way to tell the time underground, so we’re just going to assume we’ll be down there for a couple days. That’s why we’ve planned to take extra food and beds. Alexander mentioned finding a good, deep spot to set up an actual, defensible base camp and set up a furnace, a crafting table, and the beds there, along with plenty of light. Apparently, most of these mosters only appear in the dark, though they can travel in the light. There is an exception to that- Zombies and Skeletons die in direct sunlight, but not man-made light.

Alexander did warn me we’ll have a chance of encountering several dangers underground that we haven’t here. He mentioned lava, creatures he called slimes, and what are called cave spiders. Cave spiders are still giant spiders… They are just poisonous whereas the spiders we’ve been seeing aboveground here aren’t. So poisonous giant spiders that we may or may not see coming… Yeah, I’m not excited for this.

It could mostly just be nerves, but I really don’t want to go underground for potentially days on end. It could be the fact that I am a huge arachnophobe, or that I really don’t like the thought that we could get trapped down there forever. But I think a large part of it is a dream I had last night. It was a short dream, but enough to creep me out. I haven’t mentioned it to Alex yet.

I dreamt that I had woken in the middle of the night and decided to look outside. Everything looked pretty calm, like any normal night, except for a strange figure not too far from the window. He looked like a blocky human- Everything about him was a square or a rectangle. He had on a green shirt and blue pants, and he had brown hair. Nothing too freaky- Until he turned around. His eyes were pure white, no pupils or anything. He looked right at me, watched me for a few minutes, then turned and walked away.

I really hope it was just a dream, and I didn’t really wake up and see that guy. It would make me a nervous wreck to know that something like that is running around here, and knows where we are. It might be the case that he’s not our enemy- He could just be a native of this world and have found us and come to see if we meant any harm. It could be that he’s just travelling, saw me, and decided my presence was none of his business. But the scary idea is that he could be a demon of some kind, and could be watching us waiting for a chance to strike. He could kill us here, and no one at home would ever know what happened to us.

I should stop writing about it- Alexander keeps looking over at me while I’m writing, and he looks a bit concerned. I might look scared- I’ll just tell him it’s the spider thing. I don’t want to tell him about the dream. I’m sure it was just a dream- After all, he’s been here three years. If there were any natives here, I’m sure he’d have run into at least one of them, right?

For now, I’ll end my day’s writing here, unless something else comes up before bed. If we’re going to set out tomorrow, we need to make sure everything is packed up today. This is going to be a long, tiring adventure. I just hope we’re both ready for it.

Alexander did ask what was bugging me while I was writing. He thankfully didn’t ask for any explanation beyond my fear of spiders- Rather, he accepted that and promised me he would do his best to handle any spiders we come across so I wouldn’t have to. That does make me feel considerably better. Maybe this trip won’t be so bad after all.