"Nothing at all?" Nami asked, looking around the desolate landscape.
Above them, there was no sun or moon. The distant horizon was nothing but hazy gray stretching into infinity. The silence was so complete it felt strange.
For some reason, she felt a chill of pure dread.
In this vast void, there was literally nothing. If someone got trapped here alone, they'd probably go insane from isolation before they died of anything else.
"Let's get out of here," Marcus said, his voice pulling the dazed Nami back.
"Yeah... let's go back. This place gives me the creeps."
When they returned to the Going Merry through the portal, Nami felt the weird weight in her chest slowly begin to lift. The familiar sounds of the ship were incredibly comforting after that dead silence.
"I really think you should seal this thing up," she said, gesturing toward the portal room. "Before now, nobody bothered coming here because of you. But knowing Luffy's personality, he's been curious about this portal for a while. It's only a matter of time before he decides to explore it."
"Hmm? What are you doing? Going back in?" She watched in confusion as Marcus turned toward the portal again. "Isn't this over already?"
"Don't worry, I'll seal it up properly. But I still need to test some things in the Nether first. Go get some sleep, you look exhausted."
Nami considered arguing, but she was tired, and Marcus clearly had a plan. She nodded and headed for her quarters.
After she left, Marcus began sealing the portal room with wooden blocks, making it look like just another storage area.
Nami's concerns weren't unfounded. The Nether was exactly as dangerous as he'd suspected, which meant there was a real possibility that zombified piglins could wander through the portal into their world.
He wasn't sure what would happen if regular people encountered them. The zombified piglins weren't carrying those blades for nothing. If they dealt normal physical damage, that would be manageable. But if they attacked health directly, essentially draining life force itself, that would be terrifying.
He stepped back through the portal into the Soul Sand Valley.
After thinking it over, he pulled out a shovel and began making modifications to the area. Using soul sand blocks, he built a complete enclosure around the portal area.
From now on, this would be a restricted zone. Anyone who entered without permission would be forced to deal with the Nether's hostile environment. Without his specialized gear, normal people would never survive here.
But considering the possibility of accidental intrusions by his crewmates, he deliberately left a small safe zone near the portal, surrounding it with a ring of cobblestone blocks. This would give any unlucky intruder a brief chance to react and escape back through the portal.
After finishing the protective barrier, Marcus stepped outside his soul sand box and examined his work. The structure was functional but dark inside.
The lighting problem was easily solved, he used flint and steel to ignite some of the soul sand blocks. The blue flames that resulted were actually quite beautiful.
Soon he left the Soul Sand Valley entirely, heading deeper into the Nether. The zombified piglins that had spawned earlier were still wandering around aimlessly.
"Looks like this really is different from the game," he muttered. "Spawned mobs don't despawn here."
"This could be problematic. Once a fight starts, would it permanently draw their aggro?"
Just then, the sound of a baby's wail echoed through the landscape.
He frowned at the noise. A moment later, he spotted a ghast floating into view, a massive, white, jellyfish-like creature with tentacles dangling below its bloated body.
The ghast opened its mouth and spat out a fireball.
The projectile's speed was far faster than in the game, he barely had time to react as it streaked toward him.
"So there really are some changes from the original mechanics. Let's see if I can still deflect these things."
He adjusted his stance and swung at the incoming fireball, sending it flying back toward its source.
The ghast was struck by its own reflected attack and died instantly, letting out a final mournful wail as it dissolved.
Marcus walked over to collect the drops.
"No experience points..."
He wasn't really surprised by this. So far, the only ways he could gain experience were by changing major story events or by killing real-world animals that existed as Minecraft creatures, like the cows, sheep, and chickens they'd encountered.
The first method made sense, it meant he was altering the world's destiny.
The second was more puzzling, but he suspected it had to do with intelligence levels. In the real world, while cows, sheep, and chickens were still relatively simple creatures, they had at least some degree of awareness. Clucky was the perfect example, it had been able to understand human speech even before eating its Devil Fruit.
But the Nether was exactly as he remembered it from the game, which meant everything here was created by his own abilities rather than being naturally occurring.
He picked up a ghast tear and checked its EMC value: 789.
"Speaking of which," he said to himself, "the Soul Sand Valley should be spawning tons of ghasts, endermen, and skeleton archers. But why hasn't anything spawned in there?"
He looked back toward his enclosed portal area. The soul sand was completely empty, no endermen, no skeletons, and no ghasts in sight.
"That's really strange. And come to think of it, there aren't even any nether fossils buried in the ground, and the terrain is unusually flat. Could this not actually be a proper Soul Sand Valley biome?"
He frowned as a theory formed in his mind. When you first enter the Nether in Minecraft, it generates new terrain around the portal. When he'd collapsed earlier, he'd essentially been "generating" this version of the Nether. At that time, the dimension hadn't finished forming, but Nami had entered while the process was still ongoing.
Could her presence as a living being have somehow attracted or influenced the souls within the soul sand? Maybe her life force had drawn them together, creating this unusual formation.
If that were the case, then although this wasn't a true Soul Sand Valley biome, it had been shaped by Nami's soul in some way, resulting in this strange phenomenon.
"Whatever," he shrugged. "Not having hostile mobs spawn constantly is actually a good thing for me."
He shifted his attention to the zombified piglins wandering nearby.
They didn't drop experience when killed, but their loot dropped normally. And while individual mobs didn't despawn, new ones continued to spawn regularly.
That meant he could build a zombified piglin farm.
The question was how to deal with the spawn mechanics and create an efficient killing system.
But he decided not to take unnecessary risks in the lower Nether. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally anger a horde of dozens of zombified piglins and get overwhelmed.
As he explored further, he found what he was looking for: magma blocks. Mining just one was enough for his current needs.
He checked the EMC value: 15 per block. Not too expensive, and definitely useful for his plans.
He made his way to the bedrock ceiling and began stacking blocks upward, quickly building a tower that reached the maximum height limit at Y=255.
Without redstone components, he couldn't build a proper automated killing mechanism. The best he could do was a simple fall damage trap.
But the magma blocks would be crucial for spawn-proofing and mob filtering.
He'd collected enough during his exploration, though stepping on them had been an unpleasant reminder that he couldn't crouch to avoid damage like in the game.
He laid down bottom half-slabs over the magma blocks for safer placement. It was more tedious, but it worked.
As for using turtle eggs to lure zombified piglins? That wasn't necessary. And he didn't have any turtle eggs anyway, but he could simply use himself as bait.
The construction process took several hours. During that time, zombified piglins had already started spawning on his platform.
Fortunately, they ignored him completely as long as he didn't attack them.
On the circular platform made of magma blocks, zombified piglins crowded together in growing numbers. The spawn mechanics weren't limited by CPU like they were in the game.
The sheer density was both impressive and terrifying.
He had originally planned to build a multi-layered structure, but one level seemed more than sufficient given the spawn rates.
He moved to his designated position and prepared to activate the trap.
Taking out a snowball, he took aim and threw it at the crowd of zombified piglins.
The moment it hit one of them, everything changed.
Instantly, Marcus felt countless hostile eyes turn toward him. A chorus of pig-like screams erupted from the platform, like a war cry echoing across the Nether.
He could almost hear them shouting: "Comrades! Attack together!"
Thanks to the trapdoors he had installed around the platform's edge, the zombified piglins had no way to reach him directly. In their rage, they charged forward without thinking and plunged through the openings.
Below the platform, he had already set up a collection system with hoppers feeding into stacked chests, ready to gather all the loot from his mob farm.