The Potion Of Mutation
Book One: Journey Through The Overworld
Chapter One
A Day At The Mine
Jack woke up to find the sun shining into his eyes. He jumped up out of bed, grabbed his pickaxe, spade, and armour from the chest, ate a piece of roasted mutton, and set off southwards toward the mine.
Turning a corner, he carefully crossed the set of minecart tracks that ran through the forest, the only path through the trees with the exception of his narrow path that crossed it. Climbing up onto the station, he pulled a minecart out of the nearby chest and placed it on the tracks. Climbing into it, he pressed the power button and braced himself as the minecart went shooting down the track.
When he reached the end of the track, he jumped out of the minecart, destroyed it with three quick hits from his pickaxe, and put it in the chest with the others.
Walking down the steps out of the minecart station, he walked up to the cliff wall and pressed a button camouflaged on nearby rock, revealing a hidden set of stairs leading down into the ground. Quickly stepping forward, he hurriedly began to descend down the set of stairs as the entrance began to close behind him.
As he descended down the steps the noises of people crafting, smelting, and talking began to fill the air until it was almost deafening. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he emerged into a large room filled with people all talking to whoever was next to them. Walking over to a long counter that stretched alongside the left side of room, he pulled out his pickaxe and spoke to a man on the opposite side.
“Hey Johnson, I’ll just be going down to the Bedrock Regions today, can you tell the manager?”
Johnson’s eyebrows shot up. “Just going down to the Bedrock Regions? Since when have you been going down to the there? I thought you liked to stay safe in the Cobblestone Regions, and now you’re going into the most dangerous ones?”
Jack grinned, shrugging his shoulders in response to Johnson’s question. “I don’t know, I just want a change for once.”
“But that’s at lava level! Monsters are everywhere down there!”
Jack nodded, putting his pickaxe over his shoulder as he began to walk away. “Make sure you tell him! It’s easy to get lost in these extreme cave systems, and I want someone to know I’m down there!”
Walking to the other side of the room, he quietly opened a door at the end and went through. As he emerged into the next room, he quickly walked down the narrow torch-lit passage and opened a door that said CRAFTING on a big wooden sign above it.
The crafting chamber was a long and narrow room filled with chests and crafting tables, each bench occupied by a worker who was crafting a pickaxe or a minecart or a set of rails or whatever they wanted to make. Not bothering to look in any of the chests, he quickly crossed the room and opened another door that said SMELTING above it.
This room was a huge room, the walls made out of furnaces that hissed and smoked as the coal and wood inside burned, fueling the fire that melted whatever was inside. Unlike all the other rooms in the mine, there were no torches on the walls, or floor, or anywhere, the only light coming from the lit furnaces. Sometimes all the furnaces would go out, but that was normally only when the mine was shut for the night, occasionally it happened in the day, but not very often.
Pulling out a couple of pieces of iron ore, Jack walked over to a furnace in the left corner and placed them in a furnace there. Adding a couple of pieces of coal to the few tiny chunks that were already sitting in the fire, he stirred up some of the ashes at the bottom with a stick, releasing a few glowing embers into the air. Quickly the coal began to burn, and the iron began to melt in the furnace, soon to be forged into a couple of iron ingots. Just before he left, he pulled out a wooden sign and scratched his name onto it. He placed it on his furnace and began to walk towards the end of the room. Now everybody would know it was his, and he wouldn’t forget where it was.
Opening a final door at the end with the word MINE above it, Jack was welcomed by a warm fire that burned at the end of the final room. This room was completely different to all the other rooms in the mine. There were no torches, and no doors at the end, but instead, on each side of the room, there was a row of tunnels that led off in certain directions. Above each tunnel there was a sign, a certain name engraved into it and the number of miners who were down in that region. Jack had never managed to figure out how they kept track of how many miners were down there, but it sure helped. Glancing up at them, he read them as he went past.
DIRT REGIONS: 0 MINERS
These were the very first few tunnels in the mine, all torchlit, and the only thing you could find down here was coal, and anyway, it had all been searched by countless miners over and over and over again until everybody knew there was not a scrap of coal to be found anywhere.
COBBLESTONE REGIONS: 8 MINERS
The next few tunnels on from the Dirt Regions were the Cobblestone Regions, most of them had been explored, at least to put torches on, but there was still lots of coal and iron to be found around there. This was normally the tunnel Jack would go down, but today he wanted to find a little more than just coal and iron.
TORCHLIT REGIONS: 128 MINERS
These region was the last region that had been scouted and lit with torches. Lots of the miners worked here because this region was the biggest. There were a few monsters down here, but mostly in the few unexplored tunnels that weren’t lit. There was heaps of coal and iron down here, and the occasional piece of gold that people had overlooked.
MIDWAY REGIONS: 73 MINERS
These were the regions that had mostly not been explored, and monsters roamed everywhere down here, so you always had to be on your guard. They also went deep enough so that lapis lazuli and redstone were always plentiful down here. They were mostly dark, but there were trails of torches from previous miners who had left them so they could find their way back.
MONSTER REGIONS: 18 MINERS
The Monster Regions were very dangerous, and very few miners searched down here. Monsters were everywhere, and the were even rumors that there was a stronghold somewhere down there, swarming with silverfish. Gold could be found down there if you looked hard enough, and even a couple of diamonds had been found down there recently.
LAVA REGIONS: 10 MINERS
The Lava Regions were at the level of lava, and huge caverns filled with monsters were very common. Obsidian could be found here, for there were many places where water and lava met. There was next to no torches down here, and there were no maps of the mazes anywhere. It was very easy to get lost, so barely anyone went down there.
DARK REGIONS: 2 MINERS
The Dark Regions were the most dangerous of all, for they contained so many monsters that nearly everybody who went down there was either killed, or wandered around lost until they starved to death. There was a mysterious fact that Jack had heard from the a miner who had barely made it out of there alive. Something about torches always burning out when they were placed, so even if you tried you could never have any light. Jack would have liked to go down there sometime, but he wanted a bit more experience first. There were always so many resources down there, but barely anyone liked to go down there because they probably wouldn’t survive the trip.
BEDROCK REGIONS: 8 MINERS
The Bedrock Regions went all the way down to bedrock (obviously), and there was always lots of resources everywhere. There was not as many monsters here as in the Dark Regions, but there was lava everywhere. These regions were huge, stretching for several kilometers in all directions. Many people had been killed, or starved to death when they got lost.
It was here that Jack stopped, turning down the tunnel that twisted and turned, sometimes going up, and sometimes going down. Eventually he came to the end of the tunnel and was met by a youth about his age climbing back up the stairs.
His face was smeared with dirt, and he looked very weak and hungry. He was holding a dirty and chipped pickaxe, that looked more black than grey. He staggered over to Jack and collapsed on the floor in front of him.
“Don’t…don’t go down…there,” he coughed, “Monsters…completely black…can’t see…”
Two other men ran up behind him and lifted the youth off the floor. Between them they carried him back up the passage and towards the Miner’s Hospital. Jack stared after them for a while, then turned around and walked down the stairs into the ever-growing darkness.