Alexander woke me up around dawn this morning, according to his clock. We’re eating breakfast now, and we’ve already discussed our plan for today. He thinks that instead of just blindly wandering the caves, we should try strip mining. He thinks there’s a good way we can do this and cover more ground.
His plan is to pick a spot and start mining straight ahead. I’ll go three blocks to his left in the same wall and start mining the same direction. He thinks that this will expose the most rock to us and give us the best chance of hitting diamonds. We’ll open windows every five blocks so we can see and hear each other, and we can make a tunnel between the two when we need to take a break.
By my thinking, this should also help with monsters. If we do this and light up behind us, we shouldn’t run into as many monsters. The only ones we should run into are ones in dark passage ways we mine into. If we’re careful, that still shouldn’t be a problem. That, and we should be able to hear most of them before we get to that point in our mining.
Alexander says he’ll let me know around 9, at least as best he can tell since this clock doesn’t have numbers on it, that we should take a break if we haven’t already. Then we’ll stop again at noon for lunch, at 3 for another break, then at 6 for the evening. I think that sounds like a solid plan.
We started the strip mining- Alexander stopped me a couple minutes ago for a break. He wants to be sure we don’t overwork ourselves, so he figures we just work slow and carefully. So far, the mining has been uneventful.
I did get the strange feeling someone was watching me while we worked though. I don’t know how they could be- Minus the windows Alexander and I made to talk to each other through, there’s not much chance of anyone watching us. Maybe I’m just getting paranoid in this close space we’re working in, but I’ve never been claustrophobic before. It’s hard to say.
After we eat and rest a bit, we’ll be getting back to work. Alexander thinks we can find diamonds before long if we keep this up. I hope so. It’s a little weird being underground for so long. At least, baring sand and gravel, we don’t have to worry about a cave in. Those seem to be the only things that actually fall around here.
On the plus side, I don’t think we’ll find much sand this far down, and gravel has an obvious texture difference to it, so we should know ahead of time if we’re going to hit it. The only thing I’m really worried about is hitting a pool of lava. If one of us mines into a pool of lava, we could be in trouble. Thankfully, if we mine over one instead of into the side of one, we should be able to make a path out of some of the stone that’s dropped. (Sorry, cobble. Alexander glanced over and saw that and is insistent that stone breaks into cobble, not more stone. I don’t see the difference, it’s a block of rock either way!) He also says that if we mine into the side of lava, we’ll have plenty of time to block it up and keep it from flowing into our area.
Alexander wants to get moving again if I’m ready. I’ll write more when we stop again.
Oh my God, this is nuts! I can’t believe this is happening! I saw him- The man with the white eyes from my dream! He was watching me from a ways back in my tunnel!
I kept getting that feeling I was being watched, so I finally just turned and looked, and there he was! As soon as I saw him, I freaked the hell out. I screamed, and he turned and walked away. Just walked away! Calm as could be! Thankfully, I know I’m not crazy. Alexander tunneled through the wall to me and saw him walking back down the tunnel. We’re in a little room we made now, with the wall built back up so nothing, and no one, can get in to get us. Alexander is thinking about what we should do and who that could’ve been, and wants me to try to rest. He thinks I’m too freaked out to head back to the surface. He’s right, really- I don’t think I can handle any of those stupid monsters right now. I’m shaking and I keep hearing things that I haven’t heard here before, and it’s making me jumpy.
I think I’ll try to eat something and calm down. It’s not even noon yet- Once I’m calmed down, we plan to head back up to the surface. Alexander thinks that’ll be a faster trip than our first trip down here, especially since we placed torches in such a way that they should lead us back up. I just want to get out of this stupid cave system- I want to get back to our houses and away from this creepy block man!
We’re about halfway out of the caves now, and I am exhausted. Alexander said I don’t look like I’m doing too well either. According to him, I’m pale and look like I might just pass out. I feel like I might just pass out. Three times while we’ve been walking I’ve spotted him again- Alexander saw him as well two of those three times. It’s clear he’s following us- But I don’t know why. Is he a native that thinks we’re trespassing? He hasn’t actually approached us, just watched from afar. Is he trying to decide if we’re a threat? What if he’s looking for the best time to-
It’s been about an hour. Alexander took my journal because I was getting more worked up. I’m a lot calmer now. It’s almost noon, and we are still in the same spot. Alexander said we might as well give it a few more minutes, then we should move on. He figures we should go ahead and eat, make sure we’re all good, and then go. Given the speed we’ve been moving, we should easily be out of the caves by dark. Thankfully, the town isn’t far. We can hurry back to the town from the caves and lock ourselves in. I don’t intend to come out even once overnight. I might even block up my door so only Alexander can come in. (I don’t think I’ve mentioned that we took up separate abandoned houses. We may be in some strange alternate world, but there are still some places a woman just has to draw a line.)
It’s surprising I haven’t gotten sick of this bread yet. Or apples. That’s most of what we eat, since we don’t want to risk getting lost trying to find pigs or cows to kill. God that sounds gross and I would hate to do it back home, but at least these things don’t bleed or anything. They just fall over and turn into raw meat. It’s so weird, but it works! And apparently, this raw meat actually never goes bad. Weird, but super handy. If we get lucky and large herd of cows comes walking right through the village, we can kill as many as possible and have meat for days! I miss meat…
Speaking of, I should eat something to build my strength back in. If we stop again, I’ll update this. Otherwise, I won’t until we get home.
We made it back out to the village safely. God it’s good to be holed up in my own little house. I’m actually hidden back in a corner I set up as a make-shift shower… I broke out the windows back here, walled the section off, and pretty much made sure a certain guy in the village can’t be a creeper. I managed to set up a spot for water to fall from, and all I have to do is break a dirt block to start it and put it back when I’m done. The only sucky thing is I have to air dry, but it’s not cold here. It’s not hot either. So what I’ve been doing is washing my clothes first, at least as good as I can without soap of any kind, before taking a shower myself.
The main point of all that was just that I am trying to stay as far out of sight as possible. I don’t want to so much as see the block man. Alexander immediately ran to see if he can find anything on this guy in his book. I might just take a nap back here and see if he comes up with anything.
Alexander just came to tell me he did find something on the block man. Bafflingly, he only found his name: The Gatekeeper. There’s no description of this guy in Alexander’s book, just a picture and that name. I hope we can find something more out about this guy… I at least want to know if he’s dangerous, or if he could even help us. Then again, he might not even understand English… There might be some strange language spoken here, and that alone could cause problems for us…
I guess time will tell. The look on the gatekeeper’s face though… It’s intimidating, and he doesn’t look too happy when he looks at us… I just hope he’s not dangerous.
Before bed, Alexander wanted to discuss our next steps. For a couple days, or really nights, he wants to try to hunt endermen and try to get the pearls we’ll need. He said we’ll need some just to find the place we need, and then we’ll need even more to activate the portal to the end. This is going to be a nightmare and a half… He said he’ll do some more research and see if his book says anything about the best time or place to find endermen, then tomorrow morning we can plan a bit more, then go hunting.
I’m not looking forward to this.