Suddenly I was. There's no other way I can describe what happened. One moment nothing existed. No hands, no face, no arms or legs, nothing and then, quite suddenly I was. Square head, long rectangular arms and legs, a face. All that I am now came into
existence in the span of a second. Then, as suddenly as I had, an entire world simply was. Out of the darkness it sprang into being. I opened my eyes and found myself standing in front of a dark cave with trees next to me. Lots of oak trees were all
around me and some birch trees, but somehow I knew I would want the oak. Instinctively I knew that they dropped apples so I might get a little food while I gathered the wood I would need. “Why do I want to gather wood?” I wondered. Was I going to build
something? Images flashed in my mind of tools. I had no tools. That's what I needed the wood for. I punched the individual blocks of the tree slowly breaking them down into manageable blocks that I could carry with me and use. “This doesn’t even hurt!” I
thought out loud. I found it difficult to fathom how strong I seemed to be. That first tree soon came to be little more than leaves decaying above me, dropping saplings and apples occasionally on the ground. Studying the log blocks I had gathered I found
I could make wood planks out of them and I converted them all. I tried to break them down further and realized that I could turn the planks I had just made into sticks, so I did this with a few of them. Something inside me was telling me I would need some
sort of table to make much more and so I put four wooden planks together to make a workbench and placed it right at the cave entrance. At this point, I hadn’t ventured over 5 blocks from where I came into existence. Using the workbench I combined sticks
from my pack with my few remaining planks to make a wooden pickaxe. It didn’t appear particularly durable, but it was my first tool and it would do for now. The sun traced ever further through the sky like a diabolical countdown timer marking the minutes
until night would fall and bring its darkest creations to bear down upon me. I did not understand what terrors the night held, but I was not eager to find out. I took a few cautious steps into the mouth of the cave, pickaxe held at the ready. The grass
and dirt of the surface soon gave way to the hard smooth stone. “This looks like it would be much better for making tools,” I thought to myself as I examined the stone walls of the cave. The stone was worn smooth by some natural force I did not yet know
or understand. It was cold to the touch and very, very hard. I swung my pickaxe hard at the wall. It had little effect. I swung again, and again, and again. A small section of the wall began to crack and fracture, then finally a small chunk of it broke
off leaving a minuscule divot in the seemingly unbreakable stone. I grabbed the chunk of stone and tucked it away in my pack, then got to work on the rest of the wall. Soon there were several pieces of stone stacked up in my bag and while it felt like a
long process to get them, it really only took a few minutes. The sun had moved further along in the sky tracing a deceptively graceful arch up and back down toward the horizon. The sight was beautiful to behold, but like most things of beauty, I knew it
could only lead to despair. As I dug more of the wall out I spotted a vein of coal further down in the cave. “I could use that to make some torches,” I thought, “But I'd like a better pickaxe first to get at it.” I took the stone I had gathered and the
sticks I had leftover and went back to the workbench to put together a better pickaxe. I put the materials together and made a stone pickaxe and a stone ax as well. I took the ax in hand and proceeded back into the cave ready for anything that might try
to jump out at me from the shadows. I looked around carefully as I reached the vein of coal, but saw and heard nothing. Satisfied that the coast was clear I took out my new pickaxe and started digging out the coal. It seemed to go faster than the stone
did initially, but there was a lot of it and it still took a while to gather it all. As I dug, I listened carefully for anything sneaking up behind me, but thankfully nothing ever came. When the coal was all gathered, I affixed several pieces to the last
of my sticks to use as torches. “I can use these to light up this cave and keep the night and its terrors at bay.” I placed several torches around the cave making sure that, should I leave nothing else would take up residence. “This cave will be a decent
shelter,” I thought, “But I need to make something comfortable to sleep on.” I grabbed my ax and left the cave looking out into the distance to find something that might serve as suitable bedding. I saw nothing. Then, suddenly, I heard a bleat roll
quietly out of the distance. A sheep was somewhere nearby. “Wool would make a perfect bed,” I thought. I quickly climbed the small hill outside of the mouth of the cave and there it was. I had found the sheep. It was not only close I was practically on
top of it. Quickly I ran over to it and struck it several times quickly with my ax. The sheep cried out and then vanished leaving some mutton and a bit of wool! I grabbed the meat and the wool. The wool was so soft and very, very fluffy. “I can’t wait to
sleep on this!” I knew I would need more than this little bit though to make a bed. Off in the distance, I could see yet another sheep grazing on a grassy patch under the trees. I ran toward it, but it didn’t move. It seemed that the animals in this world
had no immediate fear of man at least not until you gave them a reason to. I covered the distance to the sheep quite quickly and swung my ax at it several times in succession. This one only dropped a small bit of wool, but it was one step closer to a good
night of sleep. Looking around, I could see no more sheep in the area. I decided it would be prudent to head back toward the cave as the sun had nearly completed its journey back down toward the horizon. As I climbed back up the hill, I heard that now
familiar sound that signaled the presence of a sheep once more. I quickly checked the position of the sun. “I think I can make it in time,” I thought to myself. The third sheep was somewhere in the distance, but it was further off than the others had
been. I could tell it was a bit off to the South. I jumped into a nearby tree to try to get a better line of sight on the sheep but still saw nothing. Another tree was nearby, so I jumped across to that one, then to another, and another quickly getting
the hang of jumping from tree to tree as I went. Finally, I spotted the sheep and jumped out of the tree slicing down with my ax and using the momentum of the fall to aid the blow. The sheep never knew what had hit it. A little meat and wool fell to the
ground, and I scooped it up and headed back toward the cave I had lit up earlier. On the way back I spotted another cave and though the sun was well on its way to its nighttime hiding place, I couldn’t resist the urge to explore this new cave. I proceeded
into the dark hole in the surface and started placing torches to help me see and keep creatures away. Just about 20 blocks or so in, hiding in a corner I spotted something I had not yet seen in this world. It was a small vein of iron. This close to the
surface, this was an incredibly rare find. I pulled out my pickaxe and started digging out the semi-precious metal, the setting sun urging me on faster and faster. It didn’t take long as there wasn’t much to gather. There were only 9 bits of the material
in the vein, but that was enough to make a new pickaxe and have plenty left over to use for weapons, armor, or tools later down the line. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more to the cave, and it proved to have little more than the iron to offer. I
decided it was probably time to head back to the original cave and dig in for the night. The sun had set while I was exploring the second cave and it was now dark though still early in the evening. I ran as fast as I could back to the cave entrance
jumping at the slightest move of every shadow and quickly picked up the workbench and took it and all the materials I had collected deep into the interior of the cave. There was a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. I set up the workbench and used
it to make a modest furnace out of some stone I had collected earlier in the day. I quickly placed the furnace down near the workbench, filled it with my leftover bits of coal, and placed my raw mutton on the open flames to cook it and have it as dinner,
and maybe also lunch tomorrow. The last touch needed was a cozy wool bed. I gathered together all the wool I had managed to gather and a few remaining pieces of wood planking and went to the workbench to assemble it into something resembling a bed. With a
little time and a little effort, the materials were soon converted to a brand new bed with white sheets. I placed it down on the cave floor near enough to the furnace to enjoy the benefit of the heat it put out in order to stave off the cold of the cave
and the night. With one more look around the cave to make sure nothing had snuck in I finally relented to the weight of fatigue pulling down heavily on my eyelids, crawled in between the sheets, and at long last drifted off to sleep.
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