We arrived at the cave where everyone was waiting for us anxiously since we had been gone for a few hours.

Planing took longer than we expected, but everyone was relieved to see us getting back with no harm.

"Witches of all kind, I know you are all tired and waiting for the news about our homes. Unfortunately, I don't bring good news, the Piligers, took everything from us and left nothing behind, not even a piece of wheat on our farms."

Everyone was listening in silence and the news didn't cheer anyone.

"But our hope is not lost dear witches, as someone was willing to help us in our times of need. That person is Trader, he has all the materials necessary to start a new compound for everyone to live in and much more. I want everyone to remember this favor, as we will pay it back later."

I didn't say anything about payment, but I guess Flora didn't feel comfortable just taking stuff for free, so I wasn't going to say anything about it.

But now everyone had their eyes on me, and I could feel awe, fear, admiration but most was hope.

Which made me feel a little awkward with all those stares.

"We would get our revenge on those Piligers, but first we need to rebuild our Clan! We won't do it on the surface anymore, instead, we will do it underground. So pick up your tools, brothers and sisters! It's time to come back, it's time for those Piligers to know the wrath of the Witches!!"

Everyone cheered in the room as they got up and ready for work.

But we had to stop a few of them since they were too injured.

The biology in this world is interesting, to say the least, it can heal any superficial injuries in a few hours just with some food.

But if a limb is missing, you need to drink a regeneration potion, otherwise you'll have a smaller health pool.

So once everyone was well-fed and fully regenerated, we walked back to the surface through the long dark tunnels.

Since the tunnels didn't have any touches, we had to be careful where we stepped and had to fight a few monsters.

But that was mostly my problem since no monsters attacked the witches.

Cheaters.

We arrived at the surface with no one getting injured, but once everyone saw the state of their home evryone broke down and started crying, we had to take a long break for everyone to recover.

"Everyone get up, we can't rebuild our home while still thinking about what we lost. Yes, we would have some time to mourn what we lost, but first, we need to have a safe place to rest our bodies."

Elder Flora decided to encourage the survivors one more time which brough determination.

Half a day was already gone, so we wouldn't start the underground project yet. Instead, we would build a small camp on the surface where we would sleep then start the underground compound.

There were a little over twenty witches left, so I wouldn't need to build a large wall, but it would still take some time to finish this.

And for this, I needed to make everyone tools, so, Froggy, and the Elders went back to my base where I made everyone iron axes and pickaxes.

After I hand it to them so I wouldn't clog my inventory, I took stacks of cobblestone blocks and went to the surface.

Then we all start to build the walls of the temporary base.

It looked ugly, to say the least, the shape was a simple square and the fact that it was all made with cobblestone made it look like a prison camp. But it did its job so I couldn't complain about it too much.

While some of us were busy with the wall, another team left with their new axes and cut down the forest around us, but I specifically requested them to plant saplings once they got them, since the lack of trees would bring more attention when the base is finished.

But I had to be honest, while they worked slower them me, it got done much faster than I expected.

Even when I worked with the whole village, it wasn't as efficient as them.

I could only guess the reason was the size of the group which left a few people not knowing what to do, so they tried to look busy but ended up distracting the others who actually knew what to do.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Here, there were only a little over twenty people and everyone wanted to do something to be distracted from the dark thoughts that loomed over everyone's mind.

Now that the wall is finished, we would build the temporary houses out of the wood we got.

I may not care about how the wall looks, but I couldn't let living people just live in some boxes, so I made a simple design, only with wood where two people can live comfortably.

I could've built enough for everyone to have their own small home, but Flora told me that was a bad idea, since now we need to be closer not isolated as a community.

I agreed with her and changed the plans by making the houses a little bigger and closer to each other in case some help was needed.

Once the houses were finished, the sun was almost setting so I had to quickly get back to my base and make beds and get some food.

Luckily I had all the materials and plenty of food.

So once everyone had their white bed in their homes, I laid everything that I had, from breed to beetroots soup.

We also made a huge fire in the middle of the base where we all sat down and enjoyed its warmth.

This seems to bring up the mood of everyone as they soon start to talk with each other, trying to lift up their spirits.

It was a beautiful sight to see.

Some people went early to sleep while others stayed longer and even fell asleep there.

The next day came with a beautiful sun, and soon everyone was awake once again, but today, we would start the real project.

Before we started I brought some brewing stands and enough materials to make two potions of Night Vision for everyone.

Then, we tasked the witches who needed to reset their madness timer by brewing those potions.

While they were busy with that, I and a few other witches decided to look for a place to start.

In the end, we decided to build the entrance not too far away from the camp.

Since the base would be underground, we first had to build a staircase that would get us to the level we wanted to start digging.

We tossed around a few ideas, such as building it straight down and placing stairs on the wall, but a few of them reminded us, that everyone would be too tired after mining all day to climb over 100 blocks.

And it would be too cramped for everyone's comfort.

The next suggestion was a 4x4 hole, but that wasn't good either as people would get dizzy while going down, and once again it would be too cramped.

The final suggestion was a 6x6 hole with a slime bed at the bottom in case anyone fell down, or wanted to reach the bottom faster.

I even suggested a system with pistons that pushes slime blocks and we would be thrown to the surface, but they were skeptical, to say the least.

Cowards! I'm sure Violet would appreciate my idea more.

So we got digging, and each one of us took one block to mine down, with the exception of me who took four blocks, since I had an enchanted diamond pickaxe and could broke blocks faster than them. Even with all of that, I was still ahead.

But 10 blocks deep I remember something very important.

"Stop! You over there, go to one of the Elders and request to make Haste 2 potions for everyone that is digging, they should know where to get the materials."

One of the witches that I was pointing my arm froze before making sure I was talking with him.

"Yes, you, sorry I didn't get your name."

"M-my name is Sandy, and I don't think I can make such requests from them."

The man was too afraid of the sudden responsibility and didn't have the guts to talk with their former superiors.

"Don't worry, tell them that I sent you and it should clear out everything."

After a little more encouragement, he finally climbed the stairs out of the hole.

"Sorry if this seems rude sir Trader, but why did you send him to get those potions?"

"It's not rude to ask, so don't worry about it. As for the reason for why I sent him to do that, it's to help us mine faster."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You will see soon."

While it was still early, we decided to take a break and chat a little.

An hour later Sandy came back with his inventory full of potions, Haste, and Night Vision.

Once everyone had a potion in their hands we went toward the next step.

"Ok everyone, drink up the Haste potions!"

And everyone did after me.

Soon I started to feel the effects of the potion, so I turned back to the block beneath me and broke it much more quickly than before.

And just like that, the project timeframe got greatly shortened.

We decided to build the clan ten blocks above the bedrock layer, it was deep enough that nobody would dig into it by accident, and there weren't a lot of tunnels mined at that level.

So a few hours passed, the stone layer was long left behind, and now I was excited to reach bedrock.

"Finally! It's so annoying to dig so wide, everyone stop at that level, we reached where we wanted!"

The sounds of pickaxes suddenly stopped, and a loud cheering soon followed.

Some of them wanted to take a break on the way here, but since they didn't see me stopping they couldn't stop either.

So reaching this level was a green light for them to finally rest.

Luckily or unluckily, we didn't hit any cave systems, so no monsters bothered me, but that meant I had to mine a lot more blocks.

But the first step was done, so I quickly got up with the others and mined around to make a small room for us to sit.

"Well guys, are you ready to start the base?"

The only responses I heard were growls of pain and frustration which made me smile.

"Of course, we would take a break first."

Everyone let out a sigh of relief once they heard that.

Witches from what I saw, weren't too keen on doing physical labor, so their bodies are not used to this kind of stress.

We all sat down and ate what was left from yesterday night, but I kept on munching my favorite food, the golden carrots.

"So did you think how your new house is going to be?"

I left the question in the air while everyone was thinking about their answers.

"I always wanted a two-story house, but I don't know if we have enough space to build that big."

"Don't worry, there would be plenty of space for you to use, this could be used as an opportunity to build your dream house."

Once again everyone was lost thinking about the future, but this time there were smiles on their face, and there was hope for tomorrow.

We continued talking like this for an hour, we talked about homes, we talked about dreams, and fears, and everyone started to loosen up.

"Everyone! I know we have a lot of ideas to test out, but for that, we need to finish the hole first, so let's take out our pickaxes and build that future!"

Everyone cheered and got back to work.

It was time for phase two.