Hels Rebellion

Chapter 33: When All Else Fails

If there was one thing Mumbo was good at; it was redstone. He was good at it, well-versed and familiar.

But it had to have been at least a week since he had even touched the substance.

He missed the comforting buzz of a workspace alive with redstone energy. The feeling of hot wires and cold metal. The idea of a purpose.

Even when his inventions failed, he felt like he had done something useful. Helped someone else know how not to do something, that had purpose.

Right now, he felt completely worthless.

The hermit exhaustedly dug through his redstone shulker. He hadn't touched the box since the day Grian disappeared, other than dropping it down into the grass of his sorting room.

Everything he needed was there, just about. Just... an idea...

With a sigh, he turned away from the shulker and sat in the dirt. He reached into his inventory and pulled out one of his journals. A leather-bound book that certainly looked like it had been well-used.

He flipped through the pages with narrowing eyes, dissatisfied with any of his ideas.. not one looked even fun.

Grumbling, the hermit tossed the book onto the ground next to his shulker. He leaned against the stone column of his tower, looking up at the portals above.

Iskall had told him not to work on the portal without him there. The older hermit was obviously anxious about the entire ordeal, returning from his base with a handful of crystals and runes and other artifacts.

He looked a bit mad, dropping all the resources onto Mumbo's bed with a proud smile. He had explained his plan pretty thoroughly - as thoroughly as Iskall was capable of -

Building a portal to another world seemed... possible, but the chances that Grian was just in that world were low. Perhaps if they had a specific item? Stress always talked about how most players can be summoned one way or another - which was mildly terrifying.

Stress also seemed to be good at figuring out which items or blocks can locate players. But.. she had also been quite distant recently, despite living next to one another, he had barely seen the other hermit at all recently.

It seemed maybe the exhaustion was getting to her.

The hermit took a glance around - he needed to get back to Grian's base. It had much more room inside than his did, and it served as the perfect place to build a portal. He picked up his redstone shulker, bending with a grunt to scoop up his journal and put it back in the box.

He placed the shulker into his inventory.

Maybe he could go ask more hermits for help? Who was good at redstone? There were quite a few options.

His mind drifted back to Zedaph, it had been a while since he'd really seen the other brit - and he looked worse for wear the last time they had spoken. Mumbo figured the man would want to help out anyway that he could. He was also staying with Impulse and Tango, two more players with redstone prowess.

Not to mention Iskall had told him to talk to someone else too, he hadn't really been speaking to the other hermits as much.. he knew they were worried.

They were the perfect candidates!

He was arriving at Impulse's pyramid in just moments, gliding down through one of the waterway entrances. As he landed, his eyes traveled straight to the build in the center. There was a large oak cube protruding from the center of the concrete core of the temple.