The battle with Inferna moved to the outer islands of the End.
We crashed through chorus forests and shattered end stone, trading blows across impossible distances. Her fire scorched the landscape. My sword carved through her defenses. We were both wounded, both bleeding, both relentless.
"YOU LEARNED QUICKLY," she observed. "TOO QUICKLY FOR A HUMAN."
"I had good teachers," I replied. "Survival. Time. Desperation."
"AND WHAT DID THE WORLD TEACH YOU?"
"Everything it could. And a few things it couldn't."
---
Year 0.5 - Year 1.
The world had rules. I spent six months learning them.
Physics: Gravity affected some things but not others. Vanilla blocks floated. Manual blocks/items fell. Water flowed, lava burned, fire spread. Everything was consistent, even if it didn't match real-world logic.
Day/Night: Twenty-minute days. Ten minutes of light, seven minutes of darkness, three minutes of dawn and dusk. Monsters spawned in darkness, burned in light. Sleep skipped the night entirely.
Biomes: The world was infinite, or close to it. Different regions had different climates, different resources, different dangers. I found forests, deserts, jungles, tundras, oceans. I mapped what I could, marked what I couldn't.
Mobs: Animals spawned in light, monsters in darkness. They followed patterns, had behaviors, could be predicted and exploited. The more I fought them, the better I understood them.
Villagers: They were the closest thing to people in this world. They lived in villages, had jobs, traded goods. They could breed, die, be killed. They were simple but not empty.
Systems: Farming, mining, smithing, brewing, enchanting. The game had layers of complexity that I peeled back one by one. Each system connected to others, forming a web of progression.
By the end of my first year, I understood the world better than I'd ever understood the real one.
But understanding wasn't the same as mastery.
---
I built my first real base in a cliff face.
Stone walls reinforced with manually crafted iron bands. A farm on a terrace, irrigated by a natural spring. A mine shaft descending into the earth, following veins of ore. Storage rooms, living quarters, a forge, a brewery.
It took three months to complete. When I was done, I had something that almost felt like home.
Almost.
The problem was the villagers. Not the villagers themselves—they were fine, in their limited way. The problem was that they kept dying.
A raid here. A zombie siege there. A creeper explosion that destroyed half a village. I couldn't protect them all, and I couldn't save them from their own fragility.
After the fifth village I watched burn, I started keeping my distance.
It was easier not to care.
---
I found my first diamond at the bottom of a ravine, deep in the stone layers. Later I'd learn that the deepest ores---diamonds, redstone, lapis---appeared more frequently near the bedrock. In the updated world, they'd go even deeper, into the deepslate layers below Y-zero.
The blue crystal gleamed in the torchlight, embedded in gray stone. I'd been mining for weeks, descending deeper and deeper, following the game's logic about ore distribution.
Diamond changed everything.
Diamond tools were faster, stronger, more durable. Diamond armor was lighter and more protective. With diamond, I could mine obsidian. With obsidian, I could build a portal to the Nether.
The Nether was hell. Literally—lakes of fire, seas of lava, monsters that existed only to kill. But it was also a source of resources that didn't exist in the Overworld. Blaze rods. Ghast tears. Nether wart. Ancient debris.
Ancient debris was the key. Found deep in the Nether's basalt deltas, hidden among the lava seas and dangerous terrain. Processed into netherite, it made diamond look like iron. Netherite tools, netherite armor—it was the best the game had to offer.
Getting it nearly killed me. Dozens of times.
But I got it.
By the end of year one, I had full netherite armor, a netherite sword, a netherite pickaxe. I was as strong as the game allowed a player to be.
And I still couldn't leave.
---
Year 1 ended with a question I couldn't answer.
Why me?
Why had I been brought here? What was the purpose? Was there a way out?
I stood at the highest point of my base and looked out at the blocky horizon. The sun was setting—another day ending in a world that didn't change.
In the distance, I could see the lights of a village. Torches flickering in the gathering darkness. Life continuing despite everything.
I'd survived a year. I'd mastered the world's systems. I'd become strong.
But I was still alone. Still trapped. Still no closer to understanding why.
As the first stars appeared in the purple sky, I made a decision.
I would explore. Every biome, every dimension, every corner of this world. I would learn everything there was to learn. And maybe, eventually, I would find a way home.
Or at least, a way out.
What I didn't know was that home was already lost to me.
What I didn't know was that death wasn't done with me yet.
What I didn't know was that my real journey hadn't even begun.