Category: One Among the Dead

Day 438:

Woke up and it was rainy and wet and grey – exactly the kind of weather the skeletons like to use for hunting – so I headed back to the mines.

At one point I thought I’d managed to avoid any kind of provocation today. It was quiet and calm and, sure, I could hear a zombie yelling its fool head off, but it sounded like it was at least a few floors below me.

Nope, it was on the other side of the wall I was digging through.

Fortunately it wasn’t very strong. Do zombies have the ability to die of hunger I wonder?

Day 437:

It took a good part of a day to return back to my home base topside. First, I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to take back — some of that weird blue rock, some of the weird red rock, some emerald, some gold — so I had to pack that up in a way I could carry.

I also had to make sure that I was leaving the space secure. That was standard practice before I landed on Rock O Death, but here in the land of shabby monsters it’s particularly important to ensure that you’ve closed doors and prevented the floors from blowing up.

Then there was the hike up 10 floors and across a significant distance (through a room with a couple hundred duckens too, thank goodness there’s no poop here) to the main base.

As hoped and predicted, I have wood here, so I won’t be chopping trees down tomorrow. Instead I might take a day off, then go back to the mines. Or I might go right back to the mines. Sometimes it’s hard to decide the night before.

Sun’s going down, so I’ll sleep to the sound of cows and duckens and make my decision in the morning.19

Day 436:

I’m 15 floors from my home base and I’m out of wood to make pickaxe handles.

I’ve been able to stay with this particular cache for the past few days. It’s clean and secure and I put a furnace thing in a while ago to make sure I could stay warm.

(I’ve done my best to vent the wood smoke, which is to stay there’s a bunch of stairs above me. I really should consider building proper chimneys.)

(Yes, I’m going to die of lung cancer here. If something else doesn’t kill me first.)

But it looks like tomorrow is a haul back to home base to grab some wood from stockpiles there… and if there aren’t any stockpiles it’s time to go chopping.

I’m hoping I have supplies. My hands have enough callouses as it is.

Day 435:

All the day I’ve been digging I can hear giant slimes bouncing around like green gelatin cubes from ancient Earth cuisine.

It’s seriously freaking me out.

I don’t think they can get where I’m working because they’re just too big, but the noise is maddening.

Day 434: I’m back down in the deep looking for diamonds.

Or rather, that’s the intent, but the ore that I’ve hit right now actually extends up a couple of floors in my weird world of colored chambers.

(I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I rotate between the colors of stone as I build down – granite, andesite, diroite, stone – so that I have a rough idea how many floors down I am just by counting how many times I’ve seen granite as I go down the steps.)

(I miss elevators.)

So I was all the way at the bottom of the world but then I hit this great patch of diorite which led into a patch of granite above it etc. etc. until now I’m three floors from where I started.

On one hand, I have to climb fewer levels of stairs to find a cache of supplies.

On the other hand, that’s a lot of digging.

So yeah, digging down from well above where I expect to find diamonds in the name of finding more diamonds. Normal for around here.

But I still haven’t taken my eye off the prize! Socks await!