"Yeah. I'm not sure I want to risk that without a lot of preparation, if at all."

She flips to the page.

She winces. "It's as you feared. The quest book wants us to go to the Nether."

"Ugh. It's necessary for some of the better techs, but still. Definitely need to get very well geared up before we risk that."

She shakes her head. "Agriculture would be practical to check out next. On the other hand, Rebirth sounds neat."

"We can look at them both, then."

Hazel flips back to Agriculture.

"Compost, huh? Farmer's delight again. So it's farming and planting. I guess that was expected."

Then she flips forward to rebirth. 

"Oh. Oh no. Oh yes? Okay, I'm having mixed emotions here. On one hand, minecraft HRT. On the other hand — having to collect, uh, that."

Her face scrunches up in disgust. "Oh gross. We'll do it, because magic HRT has got to be pretty fucking wow, but automating it is some pretty heavy motivation to hit the Nether and make brass."

"Yeah, I think they've got us good with that one. Hard to make brass without blaze burners."

She tilts her head. "Do you actually know anything about Create: Estrogen? I've heard of it as a meme but I've never tried it. Did you ever consider it for a pack before?"

She nods. "We've definitely thought about it. Core device is the centrifuge, which processes filtered horse piss into estrogen. Gets into some Celeste references, too, if I remember correctly."

"Yeah. I could maybe stand for a little less realism in my alternate-reality HRT. But I will at least take it existing."

Hazel looks back at the book. "That leaves exploration, factories, magecraft, and Building Up."

She flips back to Building Up. 

She flushes a little. "Well, um. Someone certainly is invested in us getting along well."

"Um." She blushes vividly. "That. Is not wrong, but the ROBs don't need to say it like that."

She looks away and mumbles. "But they're not wrong."

Hazel flushes as well, but nods quickly. "Y-yeah, that's very true for me too."

She quickly flips to the next chapter she hasn't read — Factory.

"Yeah, okay, so Factory is the Create chapter, it'll detail what integrations we have, that makes sense..." She flips forward again, hoping for something more interesting to fill the gap in the conversation. "For Magecraft there's..." 

"Okay, so it's enchanting? Seems kind of small as a subject to get its own chapter... maybe there's some enchanting enhancement mod? I guess we'll just have to figure it out." 

Still desperate for a real topic of discussion, she flips back to the last chapter she hasn't looked at, Exploration. 

"And I guess we have Atlases rather than some less immersive minimap mod. That's cool, I guess?" 

"Waaaiiit." She grins. "I recognize that icon in the exploration reward. That's a lodestone. You can set a compass to point at one instead of at zero-zero. That's a really great way to always find our way home."

"Cool! Is that a modded thing, or in the base game, or what?"

"Base game," she replies, nodding. "Tricky to obtain normally. You need a netherite ingot."

"Whoa. I wonder if anyone actually crafts them..."

"Good question. We've never tried."

She looks at the chapter list.

"Have we covered everything? I suppose it'll unlock more stuff with time. What new quests do we have in First Steps?"

"Oh, yeah, let me see... There's "build a campfire", "get an iron pick", and "get a set of iron or leather armor." Oh, and livestock."

Hailey laughs. "I can take care of all three of those right now, without leaving the house."

She hops up and grabs a few logs, a piece of coal, a few sticks, and lots of iron from the chest and furnace. Then she gets to crafting. "Okay. Crafted a campfire, probably place it down in the other room at the other end of the hall. Next, a pick. Finally, iron armor. Figure we go right to a whole set each?"

"Yeah, for sure. Sin will feel a lot safer with some protection." 

Hazel winks. 

"I bet."

She gets to crafting, making two of everything, and then tosses one of each to Hazel. "I'mma put the campfire down across the hall."

"Careful of the sm— minecraft physics. Still, I would watch it just to make sure there isn't some realism boosting mod going on."

She nods as she heads off. "I'll watch it for a few minutes while I tidy up that room, just to be sure."

Across the room, she finds a cauldron on the south wall, held to the walls by chains. Also, a lot of stair blocks being used as tables that interfere with her current plans, so she clears those out, starting in the middle of the room. Once the center's open, she throws down the campfire to complete that quest too, and gets to emptying out the rest of the room. It all turns out to be just spruce stairs, apart from one lone chest holding a pair of leather boots — and that completes another quest.

"Hey! There was a pair of leather boots in here, and that completed another armor quest. Got a bunch of smithing templates for it all."

She looks at the ceiling. Has any smoke collected?

No.

Sweet. She jogs back down the hall to the bedroom. "No smoke."

"Glad to hear it. I guess it's time we slept. Or, well, skipped the night."

Hailey flushes and nods. "Yeah, I'll just throw the last of the ore into the furnace for the night."

She does so, then strips out of her armor, shoes, and skirt, and scoots into bed.

"I'm not going to bother getting all the way undressed. It should... ease the transition a little."

Hazel takes off her shoes and lies down in bed. She snuggles cautiously up to Hailey.

"Ready?" She asks.

She nods, smiling softly. "Ready."

And then they both close their eyes.

Once again, there's a sense of time passing, warmth, and safety. Hazel awakens back on her feet at the foot of the bed, once again kicked completely out of bed by minecraft physics.

"Whuff. Less bad than last time now that I know to expect it, but..." She shakes her head. 

She looks over at the Pirates with a soft smile and waits to see who it'll be today.