Today I played Minecraft as usual in my Aternos Minecraft server. By my friend's
recommendation, I also installed a Fabric client-side Quality of Life mod called
Xaero's Minimap. It was a godsent. It allowed me to view the terrain and mob's
location and also item drops on the ground. Mobs are denoted by yellow blips
while item drops are denoted by red blips. Other players are denoted by white
blips. Xaero's Minimap is dynamic too. When you go up a level or down or enter
a closed space, the minimap will adapt accordingly and render a different map.

Because of the world has scarce exposed iron deposit, I didn't progress that
much during this time. I can't craft a full suit of iron armor and had to make
do with with leather for the time being. I also gradually collected the lava
that pooled inside my cauldron and stored it inside a ditch I made inside my
base. I also encountered an armadillo but because I have no experience with one
I just collected its dropped scutes and continued my daily routine.

I used my meager amount of strings to craft two fishing rods and fished away
until both of them had 1 durability point left. At that moment, my level had
increased to level 42. It's ironic isn't it, having level 42 but no iron armor
or tools except for an iron legging and an iron pickaxe. I hoped to find an
enchanted fishing rod with mending or other good enchantments but alas, I only
got some enchanted books without any stats relevant to the fishing rod and some
saddles.

Then, out of nowhere, my friend (other, not the one who lent me his elytra)
joined to my world. He was unluckly though. He spawned in the bottom of the
ravine, where the ancient city is located. He died and respawned there again
but managed, by sheer will and caution, to emerge to the surface unharmed. He
did have a near death encounter with the warden though but his nimble action
and quick thinking saved him.

I also experimented with the PurpurMC plugin system and installed two plugins,
namely EssentialsX and EssentialsX Discord. I wanted to bridge the internal
Minecraft chat into a Discord channel. I followed the documentation on the
plugins' website and after some manual configuration and toiling, I got it
working. Not only was the chat from Minecraft relayed to my Discord channel,
messages from my Discord channel were also relayed back to the internal chat
in Minecraft.

Finally, my friend (who had lent me his elytra) asked if we wanted to host
our own Minecraft server on a dedicated VPS. I rallied my friends to chip in
and made a new Discord server for us. I designated my friend (elytra) to be
our treasurer to handle payments and renewals and also him to be a Discord mod.
Over time, the member count increased and the cost that is borne by each member
went down. I also enacted rules to keep the server from becoming unruly.