The Woodland Mansion

"It's fucking pitch black in here! I can hardly see a thing." (Uni)

"How in the hell have we not come across Coal?! We're like twenty blocks deep from the surface." (Hex)

Deep in the stairway mine that Hex and Uni made was a small room that was dug out by them, in hopes searching for Coal. With the shader pack that they were using, it made it impossible to see and the only light source they had the was the surface light whenever the sun was at a certain position where it shone directly into the stairway hole and barely lighting up the stone room.

"Is there another way for us to craft Torches? Or something similar to one that's easier to get?" (Uni)

"Lemme bring up JEI then." (Hex)

Opening up his inventory and JEI interface, he typed down Torch and clicked on the recipe for it.

"It says here we can either use Coal or Charcoal." (Hex)

"Normally, you get charcoal from burning wood right?" (Uni)

"Lemme see..." clicking on the Charcoal to check it's recipe, Hex then saw the Furnace interface and a Wood Log being burnt and turning into Charcoal. "Wow, you're actually right for once."

"Heh, of course. I'm a genius, after all." Uni said with smug.

"Yeah, keep sucking your own dick." Upon hearing Uni's self-delusion, Hex didn't want to hear any more of his useless ramblings and quickly left him behind. He made his way back to the surface and went towards the Crafting Table.

"Oi, why'd you leave me down there?!" Uni followed Hex shortly after and was quite annoyed that he was ignored, even insulted.

"Why don't you be useful for once and craft some Sticks." (Hex)

"What, you want me to shove 'em up your ass?" (Uni)

Getting tired of trying to come up a quip back to Uni, Hex just groaned and focused on his task which Uni took it as a sign of loss on their brief bout of bickering.

Without even pulling up the recipe for a Furnace, Hex grabbed the stack of Cobblestone he and Uni mined and placed them in the crafting grid in the shape of a donut. This was the recipe for a Furnace.

Taking out the Furnace from the Crafting Table, he placed the Furnace adjacent to the table and accessed it's interface.

The Furnace was multi-functional cooking block where it acted as a stove to cook food, a smelter to melt ores, a kiln to fire Clay, or a fire pit to burn wood into Charcoal

There were two input slots, one for the main input and one for fuel, and then a progress bar which looked like an arrow that was pointing towards output slot.

Hex still had two logs left over from the previous tree he mined so he placed them in the main input slot.

Now all that was left was to fuel the Furnace and 'cook' the logs.

"I think I saw in the furnace recipe that we can use planks for fuel. Uni, you got any planks left?" (Hex)

"No, I turned them all into sticks." (Uni)

When Hex heard that, he slowly turned to look at Uni and stared at him.

"You're actually retarded." (Hex)

"What!? You told me to make Sticks!" (Uni)

"How many fucking Sticks did you make?!" (Hex)

"Four stacks!" (Uni)

"Ask yourself: why do we need four fucking stacks of Sticks!?" (Hex)

"I don't fucking know! You just told me to make sticks and I made sticks!" (Uni)

"Fucking... Gahhhh!" (Hex)

Hex felt like he was going insane by being together with Uni. He wondered to himself how he had put up with him back then. While Hex was busy getting angry, Uni was busting his gut seeing Hex infuriated.

Hex started calming down. It wasn't worth it to get angry at someone over a video game, even though that someone was a literal gremlin that thrives in annoying people.

"Give me the fucking Sticks. We can still use them as fuel." (Hex)

Having his fill of laughs, Uni felt satisfied and accomplished that he was able to annoy Hex so much that he looked like he had a seizure so he gave the Sticks to Hex with no questions asked. He still hadn't gotten over the image of Hex's character flailing around while punching the air so he began laughing whenever he recalled that image.

"Stop fucking laughing." Laughter was contagious and it seemed that Hex was infected by it as he began laughing with Uni, though it was restrained.

Hex had already put in a stack of Sticks in the fuel slot and he saw quick a Stick can burn. But it looked like five was enough to turn two logs into Charcoal!

He took the Charcoal out of the Furnace and crafted the Charcoal along with a Stick and it made four Torches.

"Go get more wood. We're going to need a lot of Torches." (Hex)

"Okay." (Uni)

It seemed like Uni's laughing fit had died down. He went to the Crafting Table and looked up the recipe for a Stone Axe. He kept some Sticks on him and had a bunch of Cobblestone in his inventory so he was able to easily craft one.

Equipping the Stone Axe, Uni went towards a nearby Oak Tree and began collecting more wood.

In the meantime, Hex went down the stairway mine and place the rest of the eight Torches he craft. Now the place was well lit and they were able to see well now. But if they want go down further or managed to stumble upon a cave system and want to explore it, they're going to need more.

...

Far away from the settlement, Joro was surrounded by Dark Oak trees that stretched as far as the eyes could see. Out of boredom, he had named this Dark Oak forest as the Shadow Forest since this place was a safe haven for undead mobs during day time.

He was following a trail of animals and had collected enough food and other items that would last the group for a long time. But then he discovered that he wasn't familiar with his surroundings and soon realised that he managed to get himself lost.

"Am I seriously lost?"

Joro does not realise this but his friends knew it ever since they met each other. His navigation skills and sense of direction was utter dog shit!

One time, Joro mentioned to the group that he had found a cool desert temple. When the gang followed Joro, they eventually found the desert temple... in another desert because the first desert they went to was the wrong one. That moment established Joro's inability to read coordinates, or rather, stubbornness to read coords because he felt that it was cheating!

Technically, it is. But the developer mode which can be accessed by pressing F3 was a function that the game developers themselves did not remove and was around for the longest time, so most players felt that it was fine to use F3. Joro established that he was not one of them.

"Maybe if I climb up a tree, I can find my way back home."

Taking out his Stone Axe, Joro went to a Dark Oak tree and carved out a path for him to get up over the canopy. It still proved pointless though since he could only see a sea of leaves from all directions. However, he did find something that caught his interest.

"Is that a building?"

It was weirdly situated deep in the Shadow Forest, this large mansion-like structure looked really ominous. It looked like it mostly made out of Dark Oak, mainly the roof and the walls, cobblestone and had large glass windows.

"Ooh, spooky mansion. I definitely wanna check that out."

His friends would often comment that he had the attention span similar to that of a dog i.e. he gets easily distracted by a lot of things. Like now, for instance. Instead of being worried that he can't find his way back home, he managed to find himself a woodland mansion. Back in the past, these type of structures did not exist in the game so he was curious to what exactly is inside it.

Getting down from the tree, Joro trudged his way towards the direction of the mansion.

Just as Joro was finding his way towards the mansion, a shadowy figure could be seen standing by the window, looking at the unsuspecting player that was about to enter its domain.

...

"This looks like something Kil could make."

Standing in front of the woodland mansion, Joro got a good up-close look of the structure. When compared with the god-awful houses generated inside villages, this mansion was way better. It looked intricate and had actual design to it, as if a real player was the one who built it and not some randomly generated structure. At least, Joro knew he couldn't build a mansion like this–even less, recreate it.

Circling around the mansion, he eventually found the entrance to the mansion which was just an open doorway and had torches at the front.

"Hello? Housekeeping." Joro said in his best impression of the meme from Family Guy.

Upon entering, what he saw inside were multiple rooms and a stairway to the second floor. From the outside, it looked like the mansion had two whole floors and a small third floor.

The mansion was decorated with red carpet and many large paintings, some looked normal while others looked weird. There was one in particular that Joro noticed which was a painting that looked very similar to a real painting called "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel in Rome, only being very small and pixelated when compared to the actual illustration.

Joro was not a man of art, but he did like this painting. That's why he took the painting off of the wall and he placed it in his inventory.

"Can't wait to show this to the guys. I'm definitely placing you in my house."

What Joro didn't know was how paintings worked in this game. He was not aware of the likelihood of getting that same painting again since when you place a painting, it's randomised to a different image every time.

Joro peered outside from a window and he saw that the sun was about to set.

[Kilnareth: hey, do ya'll have a bed with you?]

[Hex: We're underground.]

[Kilnareth: I guess sleeping and skipping the night is out of the window then.]

Joro looked at his inventory. Even though he didn't have a bed with him, he had the materials the create after hunting animals all day.

[Joro: I can make a bed.]

[Kilnareth: nah, we gucci. Oh btw, a good trick to reduce lag or increase FPS is to decrease or remove particles from the options menu. Especially during rain or snow, you will definitely see a noticeable drop in FPS.]

Seeing this, Joro appreciated Kil's tip. Even though his PC could handle playing the game in max settings, Kil advised the three of them that modding Minecraft will definitely take a toll on their system. Though it's still perfectly fine right now, that won't be the same in the future.

So Joro went to the options menu and navigated through various sub-options and managed to find where the Particle option was and turned it off.

[Joro: thnx]

Just as he was exiting the options menu though, he heard a something.

"What the what?"

It sounded like it was above him, the sound someone walking around the wooden floor.

Joro was pretty sure no other players were around him since a name tag should pop whenever they are near, and he didn't see any when he circled around the mansion. He also didn't see anyone in the mansion when he looked through the windows as well.

Joro looked around him if he could see anything: a mob or signs of someone already here, but he couldn't find any.

The sun had already set and the darkness was fast approaching. Monsters will start to spawn soon, and he thought it would be a suicide mission for him if he went out in the night.

Not that the mansion was any better since the only light sources in this building were the two torches at the entrance, but Joro felt that it was safer here than outside.

Deciding to stay the night in the mansion, Joro took one of the torches from the entrance and place it in his off-hand slot so that he could see in the dark while he had the Stone Axe in the main hand slot.

With the creepy atmosphere coming off the mansion, as well as the realistic lighting that came from the shaders and the ambient noise from Dynamic Surroundings, he felt like he was playing a horror game instead of a survival sandbox whose intended audience were kids.