Ya'll better be ready for a short novel lol

It all began with such good intentions. My three friends and I decided to try out the new amplified worlds option while creating our world, thinking it'd be a fun challenge to settle such a place. Not knowing what to expect, we kept the difficulty on hard.

We spawned atop the tallest in a range of mountains, which extended far beyond our render distance to the north and west. To the east we saw nothing but the sea. A deep valley opened up to the south of us, sheer cliffs dominating our view on each side as we created switchbacks down our mountain. Small ponds dotted the floor of the valley, with dark oak trees and giant mushrooms covering what sparse available land there was to grown on. My friends and I set about gathering wood, I decided to chop down some of the mushrooms for a fine stew. My comrades seemed content with their apples that they had gathered from the trees.

Not long after we reached the valley floor it got dark. We took shelter in a small cave for our first night, managing to scrape together a few pieces of coal for torches. My friends fought off zombies deeper in the cave while I scavenged a half broken bow and two arrows from a few skeletons outside.

But as the sun came up we started to realize we had a food shortage. We knew we couldn't build here.

Now I had shared almost all of my mushroom stew. Almost all. But I held onto one of them after noticing a lack of animals in the world. My friends had already eaten their apples and had resorted to eating zombie flesh. We tried moving further into the mountain range to find a source of food, anything… but to no avail. My friends' hunger bars only deepened. I held out for as long as I could, but once I lost the ability to sprint I had to eat. All of my friends heard the greedy slurping, knew what had taken place before they turned to look.

Of course they asked for the rest of my stew. But I had none to give, only my empty bowl. I tried to tell them, but they wouldn't believe me, couldn't see past their hunger bars… without warning, they pounced on me. In the ensuing chaos, I punched one of my friends off of a cliff, killing him. I knew there was no going back now.

So I ran.

I ran back towards the valley where we had weathered our first night, my aggressors in pursuit, though much more slowly as they couldn't sprint. There I gathered a few more mushrooms before my newly respawned friend and my pursuers caught up with me. In a panic I crafted a boat and made a dash for the sea, with my meager food supplies and my generous amount of wood and coal I knew I could survive if I could get away. In desperation I nocked one of arrows back and let loose at my the pack on my heels. This cost me dearly, as it gave them time to catch up and knock off a few precious hearts.

By this time we had made it to the coast, I quickly threw my boat in the water and zipped off over the darkening bay. My old friends scrambled around the shore, cutting down trees for their own boats, but by the time they had the planks I was long gone. Not wanting to risk chasing me off the map into the night, they hunkered down in a dirt shelter for the evening.

I spent days exploring the wilds. Alone, outcast, gathering what supplies I could, surviving solely off of mushroom stew and fish, along with the occasional piece of raw mutton or chicken when game was present.

But always my old friends hunted me. Lusting after my precious stew. Never satisfied with their apples and rabbits.

After some time they cornered me on a jungle island. They'd had much time to prepare for this day, but so had I. They came with iron tools and bows. I'd thought the tall spires of land with even taller trees would discourage them from coming after me. I was wrong. I tried raining down what few arrows I had from above, but there was no stopping their advance. Ditching my bow, I retreated to my "shit has hit the fan" spot. In my exile I had hunted creepers, saving every pinch of gunpowder they dropped. For all my efforts I had managed to craft two blocks of TNT. I knew I had but seconds before my friends found the entrance to my makeshift shelter (really just a hole in a tree) so I set the TNT on either side of myself and set the tree on fire. In my final moments I gulped down the rest of my glorious mushroom stew.

The resulting explosion killed me instantly and killed another one of my friends indirectly through fall damage, as well as hurting my two other friends.

In the end, they may have gotten the satisfaction of killing me, but those bastards never took my stew.

Lmao this whole ordeal was too much fun for me not to share, sorry for the wall of text