The news from last time is bad: "Oh no, the sorcerer has turned Hilda into a pig." That still means bringing Hilda back to Alduini, and one of them wonders if riding the pig home would be allowed, as long as they have carrots on a stick. The death counter opens at Scoti 45, Basket 37.
Charged creepers and an emerald
First they clear the floor they're on. There are blazes on a balcony, a charged creeper around a corner, and then another one right behind somebody. "Behind you behind you behind you." One of them kills a creeper with a single hit and can't explain it: "How did I do that with one strike? I'm awesome."
An emerald turns up, and the plan is to drop it in the Ender Chest. The pig stays where it is for now. "We'll come back for her."
The fire level
There's no path on the next layer, so they build stairs up past the spot where one of them fell through before. Lava shows up quickly. "Okay, so this is probably the fire one."
Inside are charged creeper spawners under the stairs, zombies pouring out of somewhere, and a chest with a weapon in it: the Scroll of the Pyromancer.
They leave the scroll for the moment and push into a netherrack cave. One of them puts water on the lava and nearly falls in doing it. There's a blaze spawner hidden in a pillar of lava, and a fire pit with a hole that might go down into more of it.
The Fire Warden
The guardian here is the Fire Warden, and it hits hard. Scoti is trying to fight it without staying on fire, which means running in and out of the water, and the chat line follows: "Scoti_Garbidis was killed trying to hurt Fire Warden." The counter goes to Scoti 46.
The Fire Warden goes down while Scoti is on the way back. "Man, I missed the boss fight." It turns out not to be a boss with a message, just "a far more powerful mob," the guardian of the fire elemental. Most of the dropped gear is sitting on top rather than in the hole, and if that hole was lava, it isn't anymore. A bow is still missing. They also find a potion of fire resistance, a little late.
Past some redstone, the shrine itself goes quietly: "You have destroyed the Fire Shrine." That makes three of the four elemental shrines. "Now I just have to go to earth."
A trap they can see coming
Lower down, creepers keep coming out of doors tied to pressure plates. Then they find a room with a long red carpet leading to two enchantment tables. One of them calls it right away: "It's a trap."
So they slow down. They pull up the carpet, look under it, and trace the redstone, which links one side to the other. Breaking one line of redstone should do it. One of them admits the original plan was much worse: grab an enchantment table each and "hope one of us got one as we ran away."
It mostly works. Things open up along the whole line, and they look like potion dispensers. They come away with splash potions of necrosis, Instant Damage III and Wither III, and a lot of redstone.
They stash things in the Ender Chest and set the next stop: earth, "and then it's time for the boss." The counter closes at Scoti 46, Basket 37. The monument is still at 6 of 16 crystals and 4 of 12 emerald blocks.