The curse came off the black crystal at the end of last episode, but the hall isn't empty. "The fire monster is still here." The counter opens at Scoti 143, Basket 120.
Back up the ladders
The plan is the old ladder tower: climb, pillar up the gap where the ladders stop, and drop into the water on the far side if the fire comes. One of them takes their armor off first. Part of the climb needs an ender pearl thrown onto the ladder, and that goes the way the last few throws went. "Oh, I was stuck in the ladder. Tell me how close he is." Chat reads "Scoti_Garbidis was killed by magic," and the counter goes to 144.
There's a second problem. The bottom of the crystal box is bedrock. "I wasn't anticipating there being bedrock."
Just pillar up
So they build a new tower out in the open, and the white smoke never reaches the top. "All we need to do to beat the levels, just pillar up real high. Why didn't we think of this earlier?" Basket switches off the screen display for a cinematic look at the hall from up there.
The box has a bedrock top too, with a small lip, so the way in is from the side. Inside there is one black crystal, "surrounded by skulls and wither skulls in a very scary shape."
Someone else's crystal
Then Scoti disappears and ends up somewhere else, without the crystal. There's a book. "Finally the black crystal is mine again. Thank you, young warrior. You have done all the work for me." The writer waited in the shadows while they found the shadow keys and broke the shrines, and now has "taken control of the remaining creatures of the exile." The book ends, "Now go. I must be alone with my crystal."
The room is like a prison cell, with an iron pick and a sign that says dig. Scoti digs, and the walls are full of silverfish. There's no sword, since the trip up was made without good gear. Chat reads "Scoti_Garbidis was slain by Silverfish," and the counter goes to 145.
One of them goes back to the box to check. "Oh no, oh god, it's gone."
Into the shadows
After a break the counter reads 146, with no death line on screen to say how. Scoti comes back with a stone sword. "The stone sword is good stuff." They head down past lava, talking about capping it with a water bucket, and red chat arrives: "[Aris] Fool! I told you to leave. My new army is strong ... and it keeps growing by the second. You have no chance!"
A sign over a chest gives a way in. "Perhaps you can lure Aris out of the shadows by destroying the spawners that he uses to grow his army."
Prepare for battle
Another sign says to "make sure that the middle of this room (by the lava sphere) is fully loaded before going down the stairs." Then the screen reads "Aris" and "Prepare for battle!"
Below is a checkered hall with spawners. "These are wither guys." The rule is to stay back when they die, because they drop potions. They light the place up and start on a spawner, but nobody is geared for a boss fight. "Let's call this an episode, and we can start fresh with as good a gear as we can get next time."
Three deaths this episode, all Scoti's. The counter ends at Scoti 146, Basket 120. The monument isn't shown, and Aris has the black crystal, so the totals stay at 15 of 16 crystals and 11 of 12 emerald blocks.