After I finished trading with the villagers, I decided to start working on the mine.
I started with doing a small hut in the corner of the village, then I dug straight down for about 20 blocks where I made a room 6 blocks wide and 2 blocks tall.
"Ok, I don't want to do a staircase as I did at my house, and I think one of the villagers will get lost in here. So it's better to just use the latter, and make my storage room here."
I put down some more chests and furnaces to smelt while I was mining.
With all of that done, I started to strip mine for iron. I dug a tunnel two blocks tall for about 50 blocks then moved three blocks to the left or right and mine back towards the hub, and repeat the process.
Once I was out of room to mine from my hub, I would just go down a level and repeat the process.
I don't know how long I've been in the mines, but a voice brought me back from my grinding.
"What's happening here!?"
I quickly climbed up the stairs to see what was the problem. Once arrived, I saw Bobby looking very confused at my mine lobby.
"Hey, Bobby! What brings you to my humble mine?"
"Humble? Mine? What did you do here Traveler?"
"Well, I told you that I'll mine for some resources. I want to get you an iron armor before we go."
"When you said you'll go mining, I expected that you'll go searching for a cave to mine from. Not disappear for three days and mine under the village."
"Has it been that long? It's hard to tell the time when you are underground. I even put a bed here to not waste time by going to the surface."
"That would explain why you didn't come up. But what did you do here exactly? I only see some tunnels. And while I'm impressed with your mining speed, I don't see the point of mining like this."
"Indeed, that is not the most efficient way to mine, it's still at the top. It's called strip mining, where you choose a path to dig and then start another tunnel two blocks to the side. That way you can see the resources from all the sides without mining every block."
"That's actually.... pretty ingenious. I expected at most you'll do a tunnel 5 blocks wide and put a railway to move faster."
"That's also a way, but it's pretty inefficient. Did you manage to get the pumpkins?"
"Yes, I don't know why you'll need it though. If you wanted a pumpkin pie you could've told me to get that."
He told me that while handing me the 5 pumpkins. Fortunately, Bobby didn't have to drop them on the ground for me to pick them up, he just gave them to me normally through a handshake.
"While I would like to eat a pie, this is not why I requested them. I want to use them to make an iron golem."
"Iron Golem? What is an iron golem?"
I looked at him in case he was joking with me, but from the look on his face, he didn't seem so. Surprisingly, he doesn't know about them, since in the game, players usually use villagers to make iron farms. Which is an inhumane thing to do if you think about the implications of what you're doing to those poor people.
"An Iron golem is a creature made completely out of iron that would protect people from monsters or other people if they attack someone in the village. They are tall, white with long arms to attack, it has around 100 HP, and do 15 damage or more to almost every monster."
" 100 HP! Does 15 damage or more! What kind of monster is that? The legendary diamond sword was rumored to do around 7 damage, and you're telling me you want to make a monster that punches me dabble that?!"
I've seen Bobby shocked a few times since I met him, and that wasn't a long time ago, but I think I just reached a new level of shock for him, and it was amusing to see it.
"Precisely so! Think about it. We're going on a dangerous journey for more than one day, and while I do think the walls are good enough to keep the villagers safe, I would feel much better if I knew that an iron golem would protect the people in case of an accident."
Bobby started to think about the suggestion that I had made. But not too long after he nodded his head to show his approval of my idea.
"So how do you make an iron golem? I never even heard about him, and I don't know how you know about them."
"Well, with something of that strength, it needs a lot of materials, 4 blocks of iron, and one pumpkin more exactly."
"That's a lot of iron, it would take a few weeks of mining to get that much iron. And it would be pretty expensive to buy it as well if we even get the chance to buy it."
He wasn't so shocked anymore to my disappointment, I think he's either starting to get used to it or gave up understanding me.
"There's no need to worry about that since I already got all the iron that we needed and more!"
I then showed him a separate room that was full of furnaces running. It was too hot when they were all smelting the iron and other ores that I found so I made a separate room to not my the whole mine a sauna. I quickly got in and took what ores that were already turned into Ingots and got out while closing the door behind me.
Besides the door sat Bobby with a shocked face again.
Yes! There was still hope for some more surprises in the future.
"How much did you mine Trader?"
"Hmm... Excluding everything else besides the iron. I have a total of 112 iron Ingots."
I quickly looked at him again for any good reaction, but he just turned around and climbed up the stairs to the surface and then yelled from the top with a monotone voice.
"I'll be waiting for you up here until you're done with the preparations!"
"Well, that was a reaction I did not expect."
I said that to myself.
But I then quickly got back to work. I took all the iron I had and crafted it into iron blocks, iron armor, iron tools, and the last piece of the puzzle a scissor. All of this took me about two hours to finish, and then I finally stepped outside the mine after three days.
The light of the sun almost blinded me once I opened the door. I was too used to the weak lite of the torches so I had to take a moment to get used to the new environment.
Once I was able to adjust to the new light I went a bit further from the mine and built a 3 blocks tall cage and started to build the T shape of the golem, I then finished everything by putting the pumpkin on top.
Of course, nothing happened, since the pumpkin hadn't been sheered. But a voice interrupted me right as I was about to do that.
"Trader! Do you manage to prepare everything you need? What's up with the big box?"
"Oh, Bobby! Yes, I did, I'm trying now to make the golem. As for the box.....Well the funny thing about me is that I know how to make an iron golem, but I never tried it before, so I don't know how the golem would react once he comes to life. But you know the saying. It's never too late to try!"
A look of horror appeared on his face.
"Trader n-"
*Poff*
He was Interrupted by a sudden smokescreen appearing in the box.
We both started to cough from the sudden smoke, and after a little while I was finally able to see the golem.
He was tall enough to almost reach me, he had long arms that reached the ground, a big iron chest, and the head looked pretty similar to a villager. His red eyes started to look up at me.
"Uh... Hello?"
"What happened? Did it work?"
"Yes, and he seems peaceful for now."
I then tried to give him a few simple commands, that he followed without a problem. I quickly broke the box for him to be able to move around, which he did not long after.
"It-it looks so majestic. I can feel the power emanating from him. Does he follow only your command?"
"I don't know, try to ask him something."
He looked unsure at me but he still tried.
"Move to the right... please?"
The golem looked at Bobby with curiosity but didn't follow his request. I said the same order and he did it without skipping a beat.
We tried a few more things with him and found out that, while he does follow every command of the creator, he can only follow simple commands like, go there, attack, and sit down. You can also transfer or share the authority with others which was a good thing since that meant we can leave it to one of the villagers from here in case an emergency happens.
But first, we had to introduce the golem to the village and hope that they'll accept him and not be scared.
We didn't walk too much before we arrived at the center of the village. The people started to gather already after the commotion we caused with the big guy. They didn't dare to get too close to him, unfortunately.
"Brothers of this village! I brought here a new family member, someone who is not afraid of the night, someone who will fight the monsters to protect us! So please, make our new guardian feel welcome."
After the impressive speech was done. The villagers started to slowly get closer to us. Some of them even touched the gentle giant, with no reaction other than a curious gaze.
After they saw that he wasn't dangerous, they got more comfortable around him, and one of them even said something interesting:
"Guardian, Big Bob! "
Once everyone heard that they started to hum at each other for a bit before they all agreed and said it again.
"""Welcome, Big Bob!"""
I watched in fascination how each village welcomed the new guardian.
"Well, big guy looks like you have a name now. Welcome to the family Big Bob!"
Once I said that I saw a quick flash of light going through his ruby eyes. But I don't know if that was something that I imagined or saw.
O decided not to stay too much on that and told Bobby that I'd go to get the portal ready. He told me he understood, and that he'll stay up here
to sort things out.
So after I've been outside for a few hours, I now go back into the mines. This time with the objective of caring filled buckets with lava to open a portal to hell. What could go wrong with that?
After I got back to the mining hub, I crafted a few empty buckets and went into one cave system that I found while strip mining. I kept going down until I saw the soft glowing light of the lava.
I quickly collected what I needed and went back to a room that I specially prepared for the portal.
There was a room in the deep slate layer for extra safety, I had to carefully make the shape of the portal since I was playing with fire and I only had one source of water.
But once I transformed the last block of obsidian, I took a breath of relief while looking at the masterpiece.
I felt proud of what I did, scared of what I was about to do, and finally determined to see it done until the end.
I then took out the flint and steel and lit up the portal.