Chapter 16. Hidden tribe

A furious voice brought our attention to the hero. It was a tall woman that had a hoglin head, actually no! It was a hoglin head on top of the woman's head like a tribesman that I've seen in movies from my world.

She had red eyes that looked mad at us, black hair bearly seen under the hat, and wore clothes made of lather with some symbols painted on them. In her hand was a golden axe ready to strike us at any sudden movement.

"Are you trying to take over this forest as well? it wasn't enough that you stole all our striders, you want now to take our hunting grounds as well!

What is she talking about? stealing striders, stealing a forest? Is she confusing us with someone else?

" I don't know what your talking about miss, we just got here and suddenly got attacked by that hoglins! "

She looks suspiciously at us but lowered her axe.

"Your ugly armor got me confused with the others from the fortress. But your not as arrogant as them, nor as good at fighting. So what are you two doing here?"

I didn't know if I should feel relieved or insulted by that comment, but we also lowered our weapons and relaxed our tense bodies.

"We came here in search of blaze roads, can you perhaps help us with some information?"

"Though luck for you guys, there's only one fortress around here, and it's occupied by outsiders like you. Except that they were actually smart, and came with enchanted armor for this unbearable heat."

Ok, she was clearly trying to insult us at this point.

"Well excuse us for being too poor to afford the advanced iron armor."

"Yeah, whatever you say, outsider. So what's your plan now?"

While I was angry at her attitude, I had to calm myself down and talk with Bobby about what we should do now. But before we started to talk I asked one more question.

"Uhh... do you by any chance have blaze powder to trade?"

She looked suspiciously at me.

"What do you have to trade outsider?"

Happy that she was even willing to consider it, I quickly took on this opportunity and used my knowledge from the game.

"In my travels, I stumbled upon a forgotten ruin, in there I found some records about your people. It was written that you called yourself the piglins, and you like to trade with gold."

I then took out a gold ingot from my inventory in case I needed it for this occasion.

For the first time, I saw her having another expression besides disgust and suspicion, it was a face of pure surprise. She then quickly grabbed our hands.

"Follow me."

She led us through the forest at a fast speed. and then we arrived at a wall of netherrack, she then started to knock twice on the wall. After a few seconds of silence, a voice was heard beyond the wall.

"Who is it?"

"It's me, Undying flame, open this place up!"

Not too late after that, an entrance was created by breaking the blocks. On the other side was a long tunnel with two piglins as the guards that had wooden pickaxes. The woman took our hands again and guided us deeper into the tunnel.

We walked for around 10 minutes making turns from time to time before we finally arrived at the end.

On the other side of the tunnel was a huge opening with tall red trees, their trunk was big enough that they even had houses on them, actually every house was in the trees, there were stair laters that helped with climbing in them, and every tree had a suspended bridge to connect them.

On the ground people walked calmly through their day, some were just talking and farther from everyone else, were some people that trained with their crossbows.

It was a unique and beautiful sight to see. This was vastly different from the game, this was a community, and even in this harsh environment, some people managed to live through all of it's challenges.

We arrived at the biggest tree that had a door in it.

"You two stay here while I talk with the shaman."

She then entered the house while closing the door with force.

Now that we were alone, Bobby finally spoke.

"This is a fascinating place to be in, and it would be even better if we could trade for some alchemy materials. But Trader, is it really such a good idea to be in the middle of a village with unknown intentions?"

"Bobby my friend, that's a great point you bring up, but unfortunately I'm as clueless as you on this front. We will be going with the flow for now."

He looked shocked at my casual reaction, and then just accepted the situation. Not too long after, the door opened, and the woman signaled us to come in.

We entered the house tree, and were met with a huge room that had red vines coming from the ceiling. On the walls, there were frames with different items, from alchemy ingredients to gold and even one nephrite scrap. On the floor were empty potion bottles and behind the blue wood table, stood a shaman-looking pigling with a baby hoglin in his arms.

He looked at us and gently petted the baby hog and spoke in a deep mysterious voice.

"Ah, travelers from another world, I se- *Oink oink*

Suddenly the baby hog started to move heretical in his arms while crying in furry.

The man startled by the sudden movement dropped the animal.

Once the hog got on his feet, he headbutted the shaman in the leg and ran into the next room while shorting.

" Auci! Y-you... I'm so going to pork chop you so hard when you grow big and fat!"

The mysterious atmosphere was abruptly stopped by the sudden comical event. The shaman looked much younger than I expected, he had blue hair and red eyes like the Flame girl, and he was about as tall as me and covered in robes of leather with more strange symbols.

He then looked at us and coughed in awkwardness.

"Hello there travels, I heard you wanted to trade with us using gold. We're more than happy to do that of course. Just one small request from us."

He then leaned on the table and suddenly changed his eyes color from red to blue, and in a threatening voice spoke.

"Don't. Endanger. The tribe."

The air was so heavy that I thought I'll suffocate, I then looked at Bobby and he didn't look any better.

"Y-yes, we promise."

Once he heard that, his eyes got back to normal, and sat down on the blue chair.

"I'm glad we came to an understanding. My name is Blue flame, I'm the shaman of this tribe. So what do you want to buy from us?"

Bobby was the first to speak.

"We want some brewing ingredients, more specifically, some blaze powder and I think magma cream for fire resistance potions."

"Oh, I didn't know your world also had shamans!"

"Uh... We don't really have them, or I haven't heard about them, I'm a cleric, that's my job chosen by the world."

Bobby said that with pride.

"Oh yes, I think I read about your world job system, but my ancestors didn't manage to gather too much information unfortunately, since for some reason the system didn't work in our world.

" What?!"

Both of us said in surprise. I then quickly tried to see if it was true. But the only tab that appeared was the Status one.

_______________________________________________

                                    STATUS

Name:???????

Health: 20/20

Attack: 1

Defense: 15

Speed: 5.6 blocks/sec

_______________________________________________

"It's true! But why? how is this even possible?"

"Yeah, and why would the skills tab just disappear?"

"Are you saying you can open your Status tab?"

"You can't Bobby?"

"No... "

Now everyone looked at me with curiosity, which made me feel uncomfortable.

"Hmm, that's an interesting case that I haven't heard or read about. I wonder why are you an exception."

The shaman spoke while changing his eyes again.

"I don't know why myself, but this isn't why we came here, we came to trade."

"Hmm.... true, we don't have too much blaze powder, but we can give you enough for about 20 gold ingots. Is that ok with you two?"

I didn't know if this was too much or too little for all the items. But I have over a stack of gold from my mining session, so I could afford it anyway. I then looked at Bobby and we both nodded our heads.

"We're going to take them."

After I said that I dropped the bars on the table, which made the shaman smile.

"I think I understand why those brutes in the bastions like to trade so much with your kin. I heard your name is Bobby, would you like to trade some recipes with me while I bring the ingredients?"

Bobby's eyes started to light with excitement and quickly followed Blue Flame to the other room, leaving me with the silent girl alone.

"It's been a while since I've seen him so excited about something. But if you managed to pass his test, that means you are trusted enough to not endanger the tribe."

She then turned at me.

"Don't you feel hot in that armor?"

"I do feel pretty heated in here, but you know what they say. Safety first!"

The Undying Flame chuckled at that.

"It does sound pretty smart, but I don't know how wise it is to keep that armor around here. Follow me, those guys won't come out for a good while if your friend is anything similar to my friend."

She then left the house, and after a few seconds, I also followed her. We started to walk through the tribe, everyone looked at us and some even greeted us, or more likely they greeted Undying Flame. I even found something shocking through one of those interactions.

"Good news Tribe Head, we got another healthy baby strider."

So apparently the Undying Flame was the head tribe of this place, no wonder she was getting along so well with the shaman.

"That's good news Leaf, I'll go there to check myself soon."

She responded with enthusiasm, then walked with more speed towards the outer area of the tribe. We walked for 10 more minutes until we arrived at a pool of lava that had 5 Striders and 2 babies. They were bathing in the melting lava like it was nothing.

Undying Flame got close to the nearest strider and started to do something I did not expect. She gently petted the head and then took out a wooden bowl and started to milk the strider. She then took out another bowl and filled it, then she gave one to me.

"Drink this."

I looked at the drink, and then at her, and back at my drink but didn't move. She just smiled and drank her bowl of strider soup. After a few seconds of waiting and nothing happening, I decided to risk it as well.

The liquid run through my throat, and it felt like finally having water after 3 days of walking in the hot desert, and it didn't stop just there, the heat started to leave me, and I finally felt comfortable in my armor.

"This will give you about an hour of fire resistance, how do you feel?"

"This is amazing! I feel amazing, I feel like I can finally breathe normally."

She just laughed at my comment.

"I'm glad that helped you, unfortunately, we recently lost our bigger herd, so we have to ration what we have left."

She said with a sad voice.

"What happened?"

"You remember when I made that comment about you two stealing the red forest?"