Greetings.
I am a man in a suit who has fallen into the world of Minecraft.
At last, I made up my mind.
OjiCra is going to challenge the master of the Minecraft world.
Yes.
The Ender Dragon.
But before I can fight it, I need to reach The End.
To reach The End, I have to find an End portal inside an underground stronghold.
The direction of an End portal can be found by throwing Eyes of Ender.
Throw an Eye of Ender, follow it, throw another one, and keep going.
That is how I began searching for the stronghold.
And the journey ended in a very surprising place: a village.
Getting Ready to Fight the Ender Dragon
The previous trip went very badly.
I took a woodland explorer map out into the world, lost my beloved mule, and came home with almost nothing to show for it.
That was enough to make me want a fresh goal.
So I decided to aim for the Ender Dragon.
### Eyes of Ender Are Essential for Finding the Stronghold
To reach The End, I need to enter an End portal.
That End portal is hidden somewhere in a stronghold underground.
Digging around blindly would be difficult, so I need Eyes of Ender.
When thrown, an Eye of Ender flies toward the direction of the End portal.
If I keep following that direction, I should eventually arrive above the stronghold.
First, I prepared the Eyes of Ender.
I crafted blaze rods into blaze powder.
The other ingredient is an ender pearl.
Ender pearls come from Endermen, but Endermen hit hard and are not exactly easy to fight.
They also do not show up all the time.
So the easier route is trading with a cleric villager.
Combining blaze powder and ender pearls gives me Eyes of Ender.
An Eye of Ender can also break after being thrown, so for a long trip it is better to bring several.
### Follow the Direction the Eyes of Ender Point
With Eyes of Ender ready, I got on my horse and set out.
I expected a long journey, so I brought supplies, including a bed.
I threw the first Eye of Ender.
The direction it flies is the direction of the stronghold.
I moved forward, threw another Eye, and repeated the process.
I hoped I might find something interesting along the way.
Swamps and water got in the way, so I wore my Frost Walker boots and led the horse across with a lead.
The Eye of Ender kept flying in the same direction.
The gate to the final battlefield must be far away indeed.
After traveling quite a distance and getting rather tired, I found a village.
It was a village with houses standing across a river.
Night was falling, so I stayed there and rested.
The next day, I continued in the direction the Eye of Ender had been flying.
Then I threw one again to check.
Wait.
It was flying back toward the village.
I returned to the village and threw an Eye from inside it.
It dropped near a hole in the middle of the village.
So the stronghold seems to be beneath this village.
Well now.
I asked the villagers whether there was an old legend about a stronghold beneath their village.
Their answer was, roughly, “Haaahn!”
Which I choose to interpret as, “Yes, we have heard of it.”
What a strange bit of fate.
I will use this village as a temporary base and start exploring the stronghold from here.
This should be exciting.
That is all for this time.
Greetings.