Copyright

First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers Inc in 2015

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2015

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © 2015 by Sean Fay Wolfe

Cover art © 2015 by Max Gonzalez

Design by Victor Joseph Ochoa

Sean Fay Wolfe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008152864

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008152871

Version: 2017-05-18

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

PROLOGUE

PART I: WELCOME TO MINECRAFT

CHAPTER 1: Welcome to Minecraft

CHAPTER 2: The First Night

CHAPTER 3: Mines and Creepers

CHAPTER 4: The Adorian Village

CHAPTER 5: The Programme

CHAPTER 6: Stan and Steve

CHAPTER 7: The Thunderstorm

CHAPTER 8: Proclamation Day

PART II: BIRTH OF THE REBELLION

CHAPTER 9: The Shot Heard Round the World

CHAPTER 10: Flight to the Jungle

CHAPTER 11: The Apothecary

CHAPTER 12: The Desert

CHAPTER 13: The Abandoned Mine Shaft

CHAPTER 14: Avery’s Story

CHAPTER 15: The Portal

CHAPTER 16: The Nether

CHAPTER 17: The Fortress and the Blaze

CHAPTER 18: A Daring Escape

CHAPTER 19: The Town of Blackstone

CHAPTER 20: The Monster Slayer

CHAPTER 21: Oob’s Helping Hand

CHAPTER 22: The Siege

CHAPTER 23: The Twelve Eyes of Ender

CHAPTER 24: Within the Stronghold

CHAPTER 25: The End

ENLIGHTENMENT

PART III: THE BATTLE FOR ELEMENTIA

CHAPTER 26: The Speech

CHAPTER 27: The Battle for Elementia

CHAPTER 28: The Ultimate Sacrifice

CHAPTER 29: The Last Casualty

CHAPTER 30: The New Order

Preview to The Elementia Chronicles Book 2: The New Order

The Quest Continues …

From the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The hallway of the brick castle echoed ominously with footsteps as a figure ran down the corridor. His outfit was comparable to that of a medieval English king: red shirt, trousers of elegant design and a flowing cloak with white fur around the edges. This man was a player on the Minecraft server Elementia. His tag was Charlemagne77, known informally as Charlemagne.

The hall he ran down was lined with paintings of pixel art. Torches protruded from the walls and gave light to ward off the mobs, terrifying creatures that lurked in the dark. There were arched windows that revealed an expansive metropolis, sprawling as far as the eye could see, beyond the outer protective walls of the castle. All of this was made entirely of cubes, one metre long on each side, with textures that resembled brick, wood, glass and all sorts of other materials.

In this game, Minecraft, the entire world was made of these cubic “blocks,” which stood in formations with textures that were made to resemble the trees of the forests, the water of the oceans, the green grassy hills and the stone and minerals of the underground mines. These blocks also made up the castle and the city, textured as stone and glass. Living things were composed of blocks as well, including Charlemagne and all other people, animals and monsters that inhabited the spacious world.

Charlemagne ran because he was late to the meeting of the Council of Operators (though there were no operators on the council, despite the name). This council was made up of the highest-level players on the server, and was led by King Kev, most often referred to simply as “the King”. The meeting had been called to discuss a most important matter, a matter that, unbeknown to the council, would be the downfall of the King, Charlemagne and so many others. This one decision would be the downfall of the luxurious life that the high-level citizens of Element City enjoyed.

The man finally reached the iron doors and pressed a button on the wall. Five note blocks above his head activated and played a chime that functioned as the doorbell. Moments later the doors opened, and Charlemagne stepped into the council chamber.

There was a round table in the middle of the chamber, the King’s allusion to the mighty King Arthur. Around it sat six of the eight council members. The other two seats were situated at the right and left hand of King Kev, who sat upon a throne, elevated eight blocks above the floor, presiding over the council. The right seat held Charlemagne’s fellow adviser to the King, Caesar894, while the left was reserved for Charlemagne himself. The King looked down at Charlemagne. He changed his skin, Charlemagne noted. The King had, indeed, changed his appearance. King Kev now had on a baby-blue shirt with navy trousers and black boots, and he had even added a blood-red cape. The only thing that remained unchanged was his head: a golden crown perched upon his neat blond hair. But enough of this, thought Charlemagne, I have other things to attend to.

“Forgive my tardy arrival, Your Highness,” said Charlemagne, bowing by looking at the floor and crouching simultaneously with his golden sword drawn. This sword was ceremonial only; all council members and the King had one, though it was an impractical weapon.

“Forgiven,” boomed the King, pointing his own golden sword at Charlemagne in a sign either of welcome or intent to kill. “I trust your lateness has a good reason?”

“Oh, yes, my liege.” Charlemagne grinned. “My lingering among the low-level peasants under a disguise of leather armour took longer than I had anticipated, as I took part in a conversation regarding the local attitude towards certain aspects of the last major law you enacted.” At this, several council members cringed. Like most upper-class players, they were averse to mingling with the commoners.

“The Law of One Death?” asked the King.

“That’s the one, my lord,” Charlemagne replied. “The attitude of the common folk is mixed. Some, mainly those under level ten, say that it is a good law as it gives the game a higher risk factor, while most say that it undermines the superiority of the high-level folk. To be totally frank, I agree with both arguments.”

“You dare to question the reasoning of my law?” bellowed the King. “Have you no respect for my authority? I ought to have you executed at once.”

“Oh, no, Your Highness, that is not what I am trying to say at all!” exclaimed Charlemagne, although he knew the King would do no such thing to him. Charlemagne had enough skill to escape any attempt by the King on his life. Moreover, Charlemagne knew things about the King, dark things, and the King would be a fool to provoke Charlemagne into revealing them to the public.

“I agree with both arguments, but only to a degree. The game is much more … er … exciting now that you can die at any minute and be forever banished from the server, as opposed to simply returning to the last place you slept in a bed as is usual in Minecraft. However,” he continued, “this does mean that the game is harder for those who have worked their way to the top, such as the members of this council. We upper-level players have the best plots of land in the known server, and a bounty of well-earned supplies. If, say, I were to die, I would leave a plot of fertile land and a house full of diamonds, emeralds, gold … well, you get the point, and I would never be able to return and retrieve them. Meanwhile a player who has just spawned could waltz into my home and steal everything I owned, thus becoming rich by doing almost nothing! Well, you can imagine how the people in the city who have worked their way to the top feel about that.”

There was a murmur of agreement around the table.

“Hmmm,” said the King. “You may be right. This new law does undermine the level system that rightfully benefits our upper class – which is ironic, given the circumstances in which the law was imposed – but what do you propose we do to fix this problem?”

It was at this point that Caesar894, dressed as his Roman namesake, stood up. “I have an idea,” suggested the King’s right-hand man.

“Speak it,” replied the King.

“Well, it occurs to me that, within the walls of our city, we have almost no remaining fertile land. The forest beyond the city limits on all sides will not make good farmland. If we are to keep this city up to the standard we are used to, we must take multiple actions. First, we must not give away any more of this fertile land. Second, we must force the lower-level citizens of this city to leave. As Sir Charlemagne pointed out, they are likely to steal from us if we die or, even more likely, rise against us and murder us in our sleep just to take our supplies!

“The lower-level citizens of this city outnumber us two to one,” Caesar continued, “and if they should ever realize this, we would have a serious problem on our hands. We must force them to move from the city. If they do that, this city will have more land to be taken by those who deserve it.

“The Adorian Village can take on most of the outcasts, and there must be a fertile tract of land out there somewhere beyond the Ender Desert, even if our cartographers haven’t mapped it yet. Some of the refugees can settle there. One thing remains certain, however: the lower-levels must go.”

As Caesar894 finished his speech, the council members clapped their blocky hands in approval. The King stood up.

“Very well,” the King said. “The law proposed shall state the following: ‘All citizens of Element City with a level under that of fifteen are required to leave the city within one week of today’s date. After that date, all players under level fifteen found in the city shall be killed and their houses destroyed.’ Those in favour of this law?”

Ten geometrically shaped hands rose into the air.

These ten players on the Minecraft server Elementia had no idea what they had just done. They had no idea just how the people would react to this law. And they had no idea at all what this simple action would do to their way of life, to their citizens’ lives, and to the game of Minecraft itself. Still the King continued.

“Motion carried,” the King announced. “The law shall be put into place at the next Proclamation Day. It is time for the elite of this city to take back the kingdom!”

At that very moment, as the council cheered the King, a new player called Stan2012 appeared on Spawnpoint Hill.

CHAPTER 1
WELCOME TO MINECRAFT

It was dark in the Great Wood. Visibility between the tall trees surrounding the flowery hill was limited; who knew what was lurking in the shadows? The stars were still out, but the white square that was the sun had begun to peek over the horizon, giving the starry sky a faint pink-and-orange glow. The haunting howl of an Enderman pierced the peaceful dawn. It was this striking scene of the Minecraft server Elementia that met a new player who had appeared on Spawnpoint Hill.

This player was clearly new; he held nothing in his rectangular hand and was gazing in wonder at the infinite cubes of dirt, grass and oak wood that composed the meadow hill and forest that surrounded him now. He had dark brown hair, a turquoise shirt and blue trousers, the standard look for a Minecraft player who had not yet changed his skin or appearance. This player had never played Minecraft before. Unbeknown to him, he couldn’t have picked a worse time to join this server. His name was Stan2012.

Wow, Stan thought as he gazed around at the dimly lit morning. This is awesome! Everything’s made out of cubes! The dirt on the ground, the trees, even the leaves! And look at that stream over there. Even the water is perfect cubes! You can pick up these … blocks, and build stuff out of them? But there are blocks everywhere! Awesome! Oh, wow!

Stan looked around. The place where he was standing had clearly seen other players before, though he saw none now. He was surrounded by pixilated torches sticking up out of the ground, and there were signs and what looked like chests. One of the signs told him not to steal any of the torches, and another told him that he was standing on Spawnpoint Hill, where all new players entered the server. But it was one particular sign, which was located next to a chest, that caught his attention. It read: “If you have never played before, take a book from the chest.”

Stan walked over to the chest and opened it. It was sectioned off into compartments. One was full of loaves of bread, another was filled with what appeared to be swords constructed out of wood and yet another held books. Stan took one of these books and walked down the hill with it. He sat down on the bank of the nearby stream, dangled his feet in the water, and was about to begin reading when he heard a shout from behind him.

“Hey, wait up!”

Silhouetted against the brightening blue sky was a figure that appeared to be another player. As he walked down the blocky hill, Stan could see that this player was wearing a simple white tunic and white trousers and dark brown boots. He looked like someone who might make his home in the desert. The player reached the foot of the grass-block slope and stood over Stan.

“Hi,” he said. “My name’s KingCharles_XIV, but you can just call me Charlie. I’ve never played this game before and I have no clue what to do. Could you help me?”

“Maybe. My name’s Stan2012, but you can call me Stan,” Stan replied. “I’ve never played before either; I just heard that it was a fun game, and that this server is a great place to learn to play. The sign up there said that this book would tell us how to play.” He held up the book.

“Well then, let’s read it,” said Charlie. He sat down next to Stan and looked on as Stan read aloud.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Minecraft, new player. This is a very fun game with no particular goal. You can see that the world around you is made out of blocks. You can destroy these blocks with certain tools and place them elsewhere. After you have established a place to take refuge from the monsters of the night, you may work by day to arrange these blocks into fantastic structures. You are now standing on Spawnpoint Hill, where new players such as yourself enter the game. Before you can start building crazy inventions, you are going to want to join a community.

The suggested thing to do is to follow the path you can see. It will take you to the Adorian Village, a community dedicated to the training of new players. It is a day’s journey away, so take one wooden sword and two pieces of bread from the chest. The bread will keep you fed until you reach the village, and the sword can be used to fight off the monsters of the night. If you have not reached the village by dusk, take some blocks from around you and build a wall around yourself to keep out the monsters. If you need to know anything immediately, this book is full of information about blocks, crafting and monsters. Good luck, and see you in the village!

Stan flipped the page. That was the end of the introduction. On the following pages was information about the different blocks and their properties, instructions for crafting various tools and descriptions of a bunch of different monsters.

Stan looked at Charlie. “Did you know that there were monsters in this game?” he asked.

“Well, I heard rumours about this thing called a Creepy or something like that, but I didn’t think that it was actually real.”

“Well, let’s hope we don’t run into any of those, or anything else,” Stan said. “Now, do you see that road anywhere? ’Cause I kind of like the sound of this Adorian Village.”

“Yeah, we should try to find it. But where is the road? I don’t see it anywhere.”

They glanced around. They didn’t see a road, but Stan noticed something else. In the shadows of the trees was what looked like another player. The figure was the right height and had the right figure, but Stan couldn’t see his face.

“Hey, Charlie, look down there! Do you think he knows where the road is?”

“Maybe. Let’s go find out.”

The two walked down the hill and towards the figure. It was dark; the green foliage above them provided shade from the sun. As they got closer to the figure, he suddenly turned and walked towards them, arms outstretched.

“Great, he sees us! Maybe he’ll give us directions!” Charlie exclaimed.

“Yeah …” But something didn’t feel right to Stan. The player completely ignored them until they got close and then walked straight towards them with outstretched arms.

“Charlie, look out!”

“Stan? What’s your prob—Oh my God!”

The figure walking towards them had just walked under a patch of light. It was dressed like Stan was, but it had rotten green flesh and empty eye sockets. It smelled like death, and it was making soft moaning noises. The figure was still walking towards Charlie, who was immobile and wide-eyed with panic. Stan charged at the monster and did the only thing that he could think of.

He clubbed it over the head with his book.

The monster stumbled backwards a few feet but stayed upright, and again began to walk, this time straight at Stan. Stan started to run, but the monster was right behind him. He ran out of the woods, across the field, and suddenly stopped. He was standing in front of a ravine that he hadn’t noticed before, which cut straight through the field. It was deep; he couldn’t make out the bottom. He was trapped, with a fall to his death in front of him and the monster behind him. Afraid that he was about to die before he had even started playing the game, Stan balled his fists and turned towards the monster, ready to fight. Then he stared.

The monster had stopped chasing him. It was running back towards the woods, away from him and not towards Charlie. But the strangest part was that smoke was rising off its skin; Stan caught the putrid stench of burning flesh. The monster was making loud moaning noises and Stan was sure that it would be screaming if it could. Suddenly, the monster keeled over and burst into flames. It writhed on the ground until it had burned out of existence, leaving nothing but a small piece of rotten flesh in its place.

Charlie walked out of the woods, staring in shock at the small piece of flesh on the ground. Stan wore a look of equal bewilderment. Charlie turned to Stan.

“What was that thing?”

“I don’t know man, but it definitely was not a player.”

“Maybe it was one of those monsters that were mentioned in the book. Maybe it was a Creepy, or whatever you call it.”

“Let me look.”

Stan flipped open to the section of the book describing monsters, and on the first page he found what he was looking for. He read the description written next to an illustration of the monster they had just encountered.

ZOMBIES

Zombies are hostile mobs, or creatures, that spawn at night or in dark areas. They are the easiest hostile mob to defeat as their attack pattern consists of simply walking towards the player and trying to attack. They will burn when exposed to direct sunlight. They are also able to break down doors, and are the main attackers during a siege on an NPC village. They drop rotten flesh when killed.

As Stan finished the passage, Charlie said, “So that was a Zombie? And those things are supposed to be really easy to kill?”

“Apparently so,” replied Stan. He picked the flesh up off the ground. “Do you think this stuff is safe to eat?”

“I doubt it.” Charlie frowned, staring at the rancid lump of green and tan meat. “Check the book.”

After a little searching in the Items section, Stan found the page describing the flesh.

ROTTEN FLESH

Rotten flesh is an item dropped by Zombies and Zombie Pigmen and found in Temples. It can be eaten, but it is inadvisable to do so as it has a high chance of giving you food poisoning. It is not, however, poisonous to dogs.

“So, I guess we shouldn’t eat it unless we’re really, really desperate,” said Charlie.

“Yeah, you’re right,” agreed Stan. “Besides, we each get two pieces of bread from that chest up there, plus a sword. That sword should be helpful for fighting off any more monsters that turn up.”

“Agreed. So let’s get the stuff and go! It’s still morning; we’ve got an entire day to get to this Adorian Village before more monsters come out tonight.”

The two players walked back up the hill to the chest, where they each took two pieces of bread and a wooden sword. They then went to the top of the hill and looked around until Charlie spied the path. Bread in their inventories and swords in hand, Charlie and Stan started on the road to the Adorian Village.

CHAPTER 2
THE FIRST NIGHT

The trees around the pathway had been cleared out, so there was light shining down on the two players as they walked down the road to the village. There were no monsters on the path, but they spotted a few in the woods. Zombies seemed to be the most common, as they were all over the place, but the players noticed a few others, too. Charlie pointed out, deep in the woods, what appeared to be a Zombie but thinner and less substantial, and Stan could have sworn that, from what he could see in the dim light, it was holding a bow and had a quiver of arrows on its back. Once, when Stan looked up into the trees at the sides of the road, he saw a flash of blood-red eyes contemplating him from one of the higher limbs. None of these mysterious creatures, thankfully, pursued the players.

“We’d better hurry and get to that village,” said Charlie, looking nervous. “I don’t want to be out here when it gets dark enough for those things to come out and hunt.”

Stan nodded in agreement, but things did not go well from that point on. The path became less clear as they went deeper into the woods, and a few times they found themselves accidentally straying onto side trails that led to dead ends. One of these paths turned out to have a Zombie at the end of it. Stan and Charlie barely managed to outrun it before it lost interest in them.

The sky began to turn a shade of beautiful pink, but the two players were unable to appreciate it as they made their way back onto the main road after their fifth detour and saw no sign of a village when they looked ahead.

“I think we’d better make a shelter for the night,” said Stan. “We’d better make a wall two blocks high so that we have at least some type of barrier that the monsters won’t be able to get over easily.”

“You’re right,” said Charlie. “I’ll go get some dirt blocks. You try to get some wood from these trees. Meet back here once you’ve got the stuff.”

Stan nodded and the two set off in opposite directions.

Gathering the dirt was faster than Charlie had expected; after being hit a few times the blocks of dirt came loose, ready to be picked up and added to Charlie’s inventory. He had amassed a whole stack of dirt blocks by the time he went back to meet Stan.

Stan did not have nearly as easy a time; he had to punch the sections of the tree trunks over and over to get them to break off. It hurt, too. “What … I … wouldn’t … do … for … a … chain … saw …” Stan growled through gritted teeth as he punched the tree trunks, leaving the leaves suspended in midair. Stan was quickly realizing that Minecraft didn’t always follow the laws of physics.

After about an hour the players met back on the road, and by the time night had fallen they had constructed a small rectangular box out of dirt and wood, two blocks high on all sides, with no roof. They ate their first pieces of bread, and then hunkered down in their fort.

“Brace yourself,” said Stan. “The attacks should start any minute now.” Charlie gulped and pulled out his sword.

But to their surprise, nothing happened for quite some time. They just sat in their shelter, hoping no monsters would show. They popped their heads up over the wall every now and then to make sure that there was nothing, and in fact, nothing was what they saw every time. When the half-moon was at its highest point in the sky, Stan was about to say that there were no monsters around, and that they should just break camp and continue, when an arrow whizzed past him, grazing his shirtsleeve.

“Incoming!” he yelled to Charlie as a firestorm of arrows began to fly over their heads. Charlie ducked. He looked through a small gap in the wall and saw about four animated Skeletons, all standing at a distance from their shelter and raining arrows down on them. He stared at them, but he jumped back from the hole a second later as his view was obscured by the head of a Zombie.

“Zombies!” Charlie yelled to Stan. “And Skeletons, too! There’s a ton of them, and” – he looked through a few other cracks in the sides of their shelter – “they’re swarming the wall!”

He was right. From all sides, the four Skeletons were firing arrows at the players, and about six Zombies were forming a rabble around their fort, trying to walk straight through the wall. But the horror didn’t stop there.

“Tssssskeeeeh!”

Something large had fallen down from the trees and landed right behind a cowering Stan. Without thinking, Stan whipped around and slashed his sword as hard as he could. He made contact; the monster was knocked back and he sliced at it many more times before it finally died. Then he got his first good look at it and his heart gave a terrified jolt.

Stan was staring at the dead body of the largest Spider he had ever seen. It had a whole mess of glowing red eyes on its head; the rest of its hairy body was dark grey. Stan knew then that this was what he had seen up in the trees during the day. The Spider’s body vanished, leaving a thread of fine string in its place.

More Spiders began dropping from the trees. “Charlie! Help me!” cried Stan as he tried to beat back the horde of Spiders with his wooden sword. Charlie yelled in horror as he saw the Spiders rushing his friend, and he used his sword to get the attention of a few of the monsters that had focused on Stan. In the midst of the attack, Stan managed to cut away the tree limb above them that the Spiders were climbing along to drop into their shelter, effectively cutting off the flow of arachnids from above.

“We won’t have to worry about them any more,” sighed Stan.

However, he turned out to be quite wrong. The Spiders were able to climb over their wall to attack them. The players resigned themselves to the fact that they would have to battle the Spiders all night long, and they put their backs to each other and drew their swords.

It was a long, hard night; the supply of Spiders was seemingly endless, and the players couldn’t lift their heads up too high thanks to the barrage of arrows flying overhead. Miraculously, neither of the players lost any health that first night. The Spiders attacked them, but Stan and Charlie managed to keep the giant bugs at bay and killed them with wild, frenzied sword slashes.

After a few hours, the sky began to turn pink and then blue. The storm of arrows ceased. Spiders stopped climbing the walls. The players were safe.

“That,” mumbled Charlie wearily, “was a very long night.” He slid back against the wall.

“Yeah, I wanna sleep, too, but we have to go,” said Stan through a poorly stifled yawn. “We have to make it to the Adorian Village before nightfall, or we’ll have to put up with all those Spiders again.”

“You’re right. I guess we should go.” Charlie stood up, but then he screeched and quickly crouched back down.

“What is it?” asked Stan.

“Don’t look over the wall. Just don’t,” whimpered Charlie. He sounded petrified.

Stan looked over the wall. What he saw made his stomach flip.

The road ahead of them was covered with Spiders. They were everywhere, crawling around and getting into fights with one another. There were no Zombies or Skeletons left, but there were so many Spiders that Stan’s knees failed him and he sank down next to Charlie.

“Why aren’t they dead?” asked Stan. “I thought that monsters burned in the sunlight.”

“Well, apparently the Spiders don’t. What do we do? Fight them all?” Charlie looked at their wooden swords. They were covered with Spider guts from the previous night, but through the gore Charlie could see that they didn’t have much more left in them. A few more hits and the swords would break apart.

“No, that’s a bad idea,” said Stan. Then something occurred to him. “Hey, Charlie, if these Spiders are still here, then why aren’t they climbing over the wall to attack us like they did last night?”

Charlie thought about it. “That’s a fair point. Do you think that Spiders only attack at night?”

Stan knew what he had to do. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.” He started to walk towards the wall.

“Hey, where are you going?” yelled Charlie.

“I’m going to see if these Spiders are going to attack me if I’m outside the wall.”

“But what if they do?”

“Then I’m dead.”

“Dude, no you can’t …”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Well … um …”

“I didn’t think so.” Stan began to climb over the wall again.

“Wait,” said Charlie. He handed Stan his sword. “Take this,” he said. “Yours is about to break, and if you have to fight off all those Spiders, you’ll need a sword.”

“Thanks. Wish me luck,” said Stan with a nervous catch in his voice, and he jumped over the wall and closed his eyes.

Nothing happened. Stan opened his eyes. The Spiders were still minding their own business, as if Stan had never scaled the wall. As Stan tiptoed tentatively among the Spiders, none of them even acknowledged his existence. He did this as hastily as he could, not wanting to take any chances, and he didn’t stop until he came to a portion of the road not littered with Spiders.

“It’s OK, Charlie, they’re not hostile. You can come over now.”

Charlie was petrified, and his blocky hands were shaking as he collected the string from the dead Spiders within their fort (perhaps they would find a use for it later), scaled the wall and sprinted through the pack of Spiders to join his friend.

“Well,” Charlie said with a sigh. “I’m glad that’s over.”

Stan nodded. “Amen to that … hey, look!”

He walked over to a pile of bones and arrows. He picked up one of the bones.

“One of those Skeletons must have dropped this when it burned up in the sunlight.” He handed the bone to Charlie. “Do you think it could be useful?”

“Check the book,” Charlie replied, now examining the arrows. “Look up bones and arrows in there.”

Stan opened the book to the Items section and read aloud:

BONES

Bones are items dropped by Skeletons when killed. Bones have two main uses. One can craft a bone into bone meal or use the bone to tame a wild wolf into a dog. This may take multiple bones.

ARROWS

Arrows are items that can be either found when dropped by a dead Skeleton or crafted from flint, sticks and feathers. Arrows can be fired as projectiles out of either a bow or a Redstone Dispenser. They are also shot by Skeletons.

Stan closed the book. “Looks like the bones will come in handy if we run into a wolf. And we’d better get a bow so we can use these arrows.”

Charlie agreed, and the two broke their shelter down, saving the materials for later use. They began walking back down the path, en route for the Adorian Village, with plenty of daylight and the prospect of a day of smooth sailing ahead of them. They had just stopped to eat their last pieces of bread when something jumped out of the woods.

It was a player holding a sword, made out of what looked like stone, pointing right at Stan’s heart.

CHAPTER 3
MINES AND CREEPERS

This player had the same body as Stan and Charlie, but Stan could tell by the appearance of this player that she was a girl. She had blonde hair that extended beyond her blocky head to create a ponytail behind her. She was wearing a leather tunic, neon-pink shorts and blue shoes.

Stan then thought, Why am I thinking this? She’s pointing a sword at my chest!

“Give me all your materials,” said the girl in a monotone, “or your friend gets a blade through his chest.”

Charlie, who had been paralyzed with fear up until now, quickly scrambled to get out all their materials. He laid them on the ground: his own damaged wooden sword, a piece of bread, a pile of dirt, a piece of rotten flesh, a bone, five arrows, some wood and a whole mess of Spider string. The girl looked at them with a distasteful eye.

“I should have known. You two don’t have anything good, do you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I don’t know. I have … this!” And Stan, who had remained perfectly still up until this time, suddenly whipped out his wooden sword. Taking advantage of the girl’s diverted focus, he cut her across the chest, knocking her backwards. She fell to the ground and cringed; the cut had not actually hurt, but the leather armour on her chest had fallen off, revealing an orange T-shirt with a heart in the middle that was the same neon-pink as her shorts.

Stan stood over her, his wooden sword now pointed at her, and Charlie quickly joined him, his quivering hand pointing his sword at her also. Stan, sounding much braver than he felt, said, “I wouldn’t try anything if I were you. There’s two of us and only one of you.”

She pulled herself up and, to Stan’s surprise, looked almost bored as she said, “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna try. There’s no point. Killing you two, which I could easily do, would accomplish nothing. You’re just a couple of noobs. Let me know if you decide to attack me or let me go or whatever. I’ll just sit here.” And with that, she sat on a nearby tree stump, put her hands behind her head, crossed her legs, and closed her eyes as if she were lounging on a beach chair by the sea rather than being held at sword point. Stan felt himself flush.

“How do you know that we’re new at this?” asked Charlie defiantly, his hand still shaking as he pointed his sword towards her heart.

“Yeah, what if we’re, like, complete masters at this game who are just carrying around bad stuff to fool people like you?” spat Stan bitterly.

She opened her eyes and looked at Stan.

“Well, one, you’re on the road to the Adorian Village, which is for players under level five. And two, any smart player would carry around any weapons he had for self-defence, now that the King passed that new law.” She closed her eyes again.

“What new law?” wondered Charlie.

She opened her eyes again. “And three, only noobs don’t know about the law that bans you from this server after you die once, instead of just losing all your stuff and going back to the spawn point like you usually do in Minecraft.” She closed her eyes again.

“Hang on a second,” said Stan. “If you aren’t new, then why are you carrying around a stone sword? If I had to guess, I’d say stone is pretty common around here.”

She opened her eyes and a bitter look came over her face. “Oh, that. It’s, like, the stupidest thing ever. I was on this server called Johnstantinople once – run by a guy named John, go figure – and I was doing really well. I found an abandoned NPC village with an iron sword and a bunch of apples in the forge chest, and I was going around killing monsters, when this Griefer came up from behind me and killed me! I went back to the spawn point, I killed a bunch of Creepers, and I got sand and crafted a ton of TNT, and I traded a golden apple for some fire charges that this guy got from the Nether, and I griefed the house of the guy who killed me by blowing up his house! Unfortunately, turns out that that guy was John, who ran the server, and he banned me.

“It is so unfair! So now I had to join this stupid server, and there’s no NPC villages anywhere, so I had to kill this sleeping guy, take this lame stone sword, and … you’re not following anything I’m saying, are you.”

Again, it was a statement, not a question, and again it was true. The boys stood there with a look of bewilderment on their faces; they had not followed any of her rant from the mention of PCD towns or whatever she said. They were utterly confused, so the girl just got up and walked away.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” yelled Charlie.

“I’m going to find some people with stuff that I actually want,” she replied, heading for the woods.

“Wait up!” Stan yelled, walking after her. “Why don’t you come with us?”

She whipped back around to face him. “WHAT?” she and Charlie yelled at the same time.

“You can’t be serious, Stan. She just tried to kill us!”

“You expect me to come with you noobs?”

“She’ll turn on us as soon as we fall asleep!”

“If you think I’ll protect you, then you’ve got another think coming!”

“SHUT UP!” yelled Stan, so loudly that both Charlie and the girl did.

Turning to the girl, Stan said, “Look, if you attack people who have better weapons than you, then you’re going to get slaughtered. Come with us to the Adorian Village. They’ll help you get a new iron sword, and then we can go our separate ways.”

The girl thought about it while Charlie stammered weak protests, which Stan ignored.

“Fine,” said the girl. “I’ll come with you, but just until we get to the Adorian Village. After that, I’m going to leave you two to fend for yourselves.”

“Good,” said Stan. Charlie looked at him incredulously, but he could see that Stan had made up his mind, and he doubted that he could change it.

“Come on,” said Stan. “The path leads this way.” He started walking down the path and the others followed.

“By the way, my name’s KitKat783,” said the girl. “But you can call me Kat.”

“My name’s Stan, and this is Charlie,” said Stan, gesturing to Charlie, who feebly raised a blocky hand. With no further words, Stan walked off, followed by the smirking Kat and the scowling Charlie.

They walked along the path in silence. Stan was followed by Kat, with Charlie taking up the rear. “I don’t trust her behind my back,” he’d whispered to Stan. They kept walking until about noon, when Stan spotted something on the side of the road. He pointed it out to the others. It appeared to be a large hole in the ground, lined by stone, with darkness inside that extended deep underground. He noticed black specs on a few of the stones that he could see.

“That’s a mine!” cried Kat excitedly. “There are minerals inside it if you mine them out! Let’s go in there!”

“Are you crazy?” snapped Charlie, still upset that Kat had come with them. “It’s all dark in there. There’s bound to be monsters.”

“Eh, don’t be a baby,” smirked Kat. “See that black stuff?” She gestured to one of the stones flecked with black. “That’s coal ore. We can make torches out of the coal to see in the dark and ward off the monsters at night. Besides, even if there are monsters in there, we can fight them off. We’ve all got swords. We’re all big boys here, except for me, and ironically, I’m probably the least scared to go in there.”

Nobody argued with her. Stan was a little unnerved at the prospect of heading into a dark mine after the episode with the Spiders. He did need to make a new weapon soon, though, and it would be nice to have a sword made out of stone rather than wood, though he had no idea how to make one. He also wondered what other kinds of minerals were in there. His desires and curiosity overpowered his fear, and he said, “All right, Kat. I’ll go into the mine.”

“I don’t care what either of you say, I’m not going in there,” Charlie retorted. “I remember the Spiders. I’m going to stay right here, thank you very much.” And with that he walked to the middle of the path, plopped down a piece of wood from his inventory, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared at Stan and Kat defiantly.

“Fine,” said Stan. “You stay out here. See if you can find any more food; we’re almost out. Kat and I will grab some coal and stone and stuff.” And with that, Stan turned and walked towards the mine.

“Hold on,” Kat said, and she threw him something that he caught and examined: a pickaxe made of stone. She held up an identical one.

“It hurts your hand and takes forever to punch through rock, and you don’t get anything from it. You’d be best to mine stuff with a pickaxe.”

Feeling a little bit stupid for his ignorance, Stan set into the mine, pickaxe in hand, tailed closely by Kat.

His first stop was the coal ore he’d seen. He took his pickaxe and mined a good-sized lump of coal in a matter of minutes. He saw that the coal ran in a vein, and before long he had collected about ten lumps of it. He brought them over to Kat, who was hacking away at a stone wall.

“Good,” she said. “Let me see those.” He handed her the lumps. She pulled some sticks from her inventory and fastened them to the coal to make torches. Each lump of coal yielded four torches, so they had forty in all.

“Now we can go deeper into the mine, where there isn’t any natural light,” she explained. They ventured further, placing torches along the wall as they went. Stan noticed that the torches ignited the second that Kat attached them to the wall, with no matches or lighter or anything. Strange …

“Hey, look over here!” Stan ran over to a spot on the ground flecked with black. “More coal! I’m going to dig this out,” he said. “Could you get me some stone for a new sword? And get some for Charlie, too.”

“Whatever,” she said. She started hacking into the wall at a new location, gathering up tremendous amounts of stone chunks. Stan dug into the coal vein. He was about to dig into the eighth piece of coal when Kat said, “Hey, Stan! Come check this out!”

Stan walked over to her. She had made quite a dent in the wall, and she was staring at a block that was different from the stone all around her. This block was flecked with little spots that looked similar to the coal ore, but were light brown instead of black. Kat stepped back.

“I’ve never seen that before. Do you think it could be gold?”

“It might be. Hang on, put a torch up,” Stan said. Kat obliged. Stan pulled out his book and turned to the section on blocks. He found a page describing gold ore and showed it to Kat.

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t match the colour. Gold ore has yellow flecks; these flecks are tan. Check out the other pages.”

Stan turned to the previous page. He held that illustration up for Kat.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed. “What is it?”

Stan read from the book.

IRON ORE

Iron ore is an ore block typically found in mines or mountainous regions. When smelted, it produces one iron ingot.

Stan looked up.

“Do you know what an Iron Ingot is?” he asked.

Kat shrugged her shoulders. “Look it up,” she said.

He did.

IRON INGOT

An iron ingot is a crafting item. It is most commonly obtained by smelting iron ore, but can also be found in the chests of Dungeons, Strongholds, Abandoned Mine Shafts, Temples and NPC villages, or by killing Iron Golems and (rarely) Zombies. The iron ingot is an essential crafting item for a wide variety of things, including iron swords, iron armour, iron tools, buckets, shears, iron bars, tripwire hooks and many other things. Tools and armour made from iron are of a higher quality than stone or leather, respectively, but of a lower quality than diamond.

Of this entire passage, one small section caught Kat’s attention.

“Iron sword?” she exclaimed. “So if I smelt this stuff, whatever that means, I can get an iron sword?”

“Apparently,” said Stan.

“Sweet!” shouted Kat gleefully, and she began hacking away at the wall of ore. The two players hacked at the wall and managed to get out four blocks of iron ore before they hit stone again.

“Let’s look around here. Maybe there’ll be some more!” She was about to take her pickaxe to the adjacent section of the wall when she heard a bloodcurdling cry echoing from the top of the cave.

“Aaaaauuuuughhhh! Stan! Heeelllllpppp!”

“Come on!” Stan shouted to Kat, and the two raced up the mine and into the light.

After Kat and Stan had vanished into the mine, Charlie stood up and walked around, a scowl on his face.

Stupid girl, he thought, looking around and spying a patch of wheat next to a sign that said “Take what you need, but replant.” Why should she get to be in our group? She nearly killed us! What does Stan see in her? It was true, he thought as he harvested the wheat, that the girl did seem to know her way with a sword. Ah, what am I talking about? I don’t know that. I didn’t see her actually fight! For all I know, she’s never killed anything in her life. I’m ditching her first chance I get, the arrogant brat.

And now look what she’s done, he thought as he began to break the leaf blocks on the trees. He had read in Stan’s book that every now and then an apple would drop from a leaf block if you broke it. She’s gone with him into a mine, delaying us from getting to the Adorian Vill— Wait a second, he thought, not noticing the apple dropping from the block he had just broken.

What if it’s a trap? What if she’s just lured Stan down there to kill him, and she’s going to come back and finish me off? I have to go find them! He quickly picked up his sword and was about to dash into the mine to save his friend when something stopped him.

A little way into the darkness of the mine, he saw a figure. It looked like a monster of some sort. He was about to run, but his curiosity got the better of him because it was the most bizarre thing he had ever seen. He edged slightly forwards to get a better look. It was as tall as he was, two blocks high, but it didn’t have any arms, and it stood upright on four stubby legs. He couldn’t see well, but he could have sworn that its body was flecked with different shades of green, with some white in there, too. He edged a little closer. This turned out to be a huge mistake.

The creature suddenly turned towards him. He had gotten too close. It stared at him, and he had never seen such a terrifying face in his life. It looked like a morbid, green-speckled jack-o-lantern. It had empty black eye sockets and a gaping hole of a mouth that was open in a horrible upside-down grin.

He swung with his sword, and the monster was knocked back, but his wooden weapon had reached the end of its life. The spent blade splintered into a thousand pieces, and Charlie threw the useless handle aside as he screamed into the mine for his friends to help him.

This creature was fast but silent as well. The Zombies made moaning sounds, the Spiders made a clicking sound, and you could hear the rattling of a Skeleton’s bones as it moved. But this thing was absolutely silent. As it chased after Charlie, he could barely hear the sound of its footsteps. Also, the Zombies and Skeletons burned up in the sunlight, and the Spiders hadn’t paid him or Stan any attention. But Charlie was running around in the path in direct sunlight and the thing kept following him, not slowing down or taking any damage. Charlie did not want to know what would happen when the thing finally caught up to him.

Kat and Stan burst out of the mine just as Charlie was running back towards it, still being followed by the monster.

“Guys, thank God! I’m so glad that you’re—”

“Get down!” Kat cried.

The monster was upon them, and it was starting to hiss and swell like an overinflated balloon. Kat pushed Stan, who fell backwards into the mine, and she tackled Charlie out of the way just in the nick of time. There was an earsplitting explosion, and a cloud of dust rose over the road. Then, all was quiet.

As the dust cleared, Stan got up and came out of the mine. The monster was gone, and in its place was a huge crater, blown right into the middle of the dirt path. Stan stared at it, and Charlie and Kat got up. Kat turned on Charlie.

“How did you get a Creeper on your tail? I thought you were staying out of the mine!” she yelled at him.

“Wait … that was a Creeper?” asked Stan.

“Yes, that was a Creeper! Why did it start following you?”

“So that’s the thing that everyone talks about?” asked Charlie, wide-eyed with shock and horror. “I’ve seen the posters online … but I always assumed that they, like, broke into your house and stole your stuff or something! They blow up?”

“Yes – now for the last time, Charlie, how did it get on your tail?”

“I went down into the mine.”

“Why?” Kat demanded.

“I … uh …” Charlie thought that it would be a little bit rude to tell Kat that he’d gone in the mine to stop her from betraying him and Stan after she had just saved both of their lives from the Creeper.

“I, uh, wanted to help you guys. I wasn’t finding any food, and I didn’t want to be useless, so I, uh, went in after you guys. Followed the line of torches … Yeah! And, uh, then I saw that thing and tried to fight it off but my sword broke, so I called you guys for help because I knew you had swords that were … uh … un-broken?” he finished lamely. Kat was staring at him with a look of half exasperation and half amusement.

“Uh-huh,” she said in a teasing voice. “Well, we’d better get going. We should really get you an ‘unbroken’ sword, and I don’t know how to make one. So you didn’t find any food at all?

“Well,” replied Charlie, “I found some wheat and a few apples. I don’t know if we can do anything with the wheat, but the apples are edible.”

“Well, that’ll have to do,” replied Kat. “Let’s go.”

As the three players continued on the road to the Adorian Village, Charlie sighed, resigning himself to the fact that now he could never abandon this girl who had saved his life.

They still had plenty of daylight left. The path was going in a straight line, and they were beginning to see hovering chunks of leaves with no trunks on the side of the road. This meant that they were definitely close to civilization.

“Excellent,” commented Stan as they passed a watermelon farm with a sign that was identical to the one at the wheat field. “We can get some food from this field. Just don’t destroy any of the vines.”

Each player picked a watermelon and destroyed it. There were multiple watermelon slices yielded from every destroyed watermelon, and the players ate all the juicy fruit to completely assuage their mounting hunger. Kat, who was particularly hungry, even ate the two raw pork chops that she had in her inventory.

“Hey,” she said through a mouth full of watermelon and uncooked pork chop to the two disgusted-looking boys, “ih mayna be preddy, butet getsa zhob bun.” When their faces changed to confusion, she swallowed and said, “Hey, it may not be pretty, but it gets the job done.”

Charlie rolled his eyes at her. Stan was about to crack a joke when, for the second time that day, a player burst from the woods with a sword in his hands.

This time there was no hesitation. Within seconds all three players were on their feet. Kat held her stone sword in front of her in a guard stance, and standing behind her were Stan, clutching his heavily damaged wooden sword in shaking hands, and Charlie, who had balled up his fists and was getting ready to fight, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet.

This player was dressed like a Secret Service agent. He had on a black tuxedo and black shades covering the eyes on his olive face. He was holding a golden sword in an attack stance, ready to kill the first one to make a move.

Kat spoke first. “What do you want?” she asked.

The player’s eyebrows creased as he pointed his sword at her. “What do I want? Well, there are a lot of things that I want. I want my old life back, for one. Everything was perfect—”

“Yeah, yeah, we couldn’t care less about your ‘oh, woe is me’ story. Get away from us before you do something that you’ll regret. There’s three of us and only one of you, and two of us have swords. I suggest that you just crawl back into those woods you came from.”

The player looked mortally offended. He pointed his sword at Kat.

“I will not have you telling me what to do! You are all noobs, armed with primitive weapons of wood and stone, while I, I am the most honourable Mr A, the most powerful warrior this server has ever known! If you knew only half the reasons that I want new players like yourselves dead—”

“Oh, just shut up!” Stan interjected. “There is no way you’re going to win against us, honourable Mr A! Besides, if you really were honourable, you wouldn’t attack players armed with ‘primitive weapons’ through ambush. That’s just a low thing to do. I don’t care what you were – it’s obvious that you’re nothing special now. Just leave us alone! We haven’t done anything wrong. You’re just being a … a … a Griefer, that’s what you are!” He didn’t know exactly what the term meant, but it had the effect that he’d intended.

Mr A charged the trio. Stan was glad for an excuse to fight. He was getting heated. As Mr A’s sword was about to come down on Stan’s head, Stan raised his own sword in a parry. Both swords broke at once; the wooden blade shattered just as Charlie’s had, and the golden blade bent back in on itself and fell off the hilt. Furious that his sword had broken, Mr A flew at Stan with his fist. Stan raised his arms to guard against the blow when, at the same time, Kat sliced Mr A’s leg on one side and Charlie punched his head on the other. The Griefer went tumbling head over heels and slammed hard onto the ground. He immediately got back up, but he held his torso with his hand, his face in a grimace.

“Fine! You win. But don’t think for a minute that this is over. I will find you again, and when I do, you are worse than dead! Now, good luck getting out of this!” Mr A whipped out a bow and fired an arrow. He wasn’t aiming for the players, but at something in the woods. Stan, Charlie and Kat watched the arrow fly as Mr A sprinted into the woods on the other side of the path.

They heard a pained yelping noise as the arrow connected with its target, and a moment later, a white beast with glowing red eyes jumped out of the woods. It was a wolf, provoked by Mr A’s arrow, that set its sights on the nearest target: Stan.

Stan was unarmed. It was all he could do to try to outrun the wolf, but it was swift as it ran, faster than the Creeper, faster than Stan could sprint. The wolf pounced on him, pinning him to the ground. The beast growled, its evil red eyes glowing, and was about to tear into Stan’s throat when there was a whistling noise from behind it. The animal’s head whipped around.

Kat was standing near Stan and the wolf, holding out the bone that she had just snatched from Charlie’s inventory. The boys watched in awe as the wolf’s eyes stopped glowing red, becoming a sad, black colour. The wolf cocked its head slightly to the left, paused, and walked slowly towards Kat. It came to a stop in front of her, and she gave the wolf the bone.

The wolf wasn’t on the attack any more. It sat down in front of Kat with its tongue out and its tail wagging. Kat grabbed a red collar from her inventory and fastened it around the wolf’s neck. The wolf had been tamed by the bone.

“That’s twice I’ve saved your life now,” Kat said smugly to Stan as she petted her new dog on the head. “I think I’m going to call him Rex.”

“Oh, imagine that, a dog named Rex. How creative,” mumbled Charlie under his breath, but Kat didn’t hear.

“Stan, could you look up dogs in that book of yours? I want to know how to take care of this little guy.”

Stan obliged, mouth still hanging open at the way she had tamed the wolf. He opened his book and flipped through the pages of animals and monsters, but he didn’t find anything about dogs.

“Try wolf,” she suggested.

He looked up wolves, and there was a page on them.

WOLF

A wolf is a neutral mob found in forest regions. It usually travels in packs. A wolf is usually not harmful towards a player, but if attacked a wolf will become hostile and attack with similar speed and jumping ability to that of a Spider. When a wolf is attacked, all other wolves in its pack will also join in attacking the wolf’s attacker. A wolf can be tamed by feeding it bones dropped by Skeletons. A tamed wolf can be made to sit still or to follow the player around. When a player attacks or is attacked by a mob, the player’s wolves will join the player’s attack. A wolf’s health is indicated by the angle of its tail. The lower the tail droops, the lower the animal’s health is. The wolf can be healed by feeding it any kind of meat. It will not contract food poisoning from rotten flesh or raw chicken as a player might.

Kat glanced at Rex’s tail. Though it was still wagging, it was drooping almost to the ground.

“Looks like he took a lot of damage from that arrow, and he must’ve been separated from his pack. Poor little guy,” said Kat with a look of pity on her face. Stan looked at her, baffled, as he rubbed at the scratches Rex’s paws had left on his neck.

“Charlie, let me see that rotten flesh you have.”

Charlie extracted the meat from his inventory. He handed it to Kat, and Rex started eating it out of her hand. Instantly, his tail shot up.

“Well, looks like we’ve got a dog!” she said to Stan and Charlie.

“Wait,” said Stan. “What do you mean, we? I thought you were ditching us as soon as you got that sword of yours.”

“Are you kidding?” she said with a grin. “If it weren’t for me, you would be torn to pieces by Rex here,” she said, gesturing to Stan, “and both of you would be lying in pieces around that mine thanks to that Creeper. Without me, you two would both die, and let’s face it, that would just be a lot of tedious paperwork for the ops of this server. Now come on,” she chirped, blind and deaf to Stan’s and Charlie’s indignant faces and stammers of protest. “Let’s get to that village. I need a sword!”

And they continued down the path, munching on Charlie’s apples, the boys still fuming, the girl still laughing. By the time the sun had started to sink in the sky, two towers came into sight, and the three players heard someone yell.

“New players! New players incoming! Welcome to the Adorian Village, new players!”

CHAPTER 4
THE ADORIAN VILLAGE

The Adorian Village was unlike anything Stan had seen in Minecraft. The only man-made objects that he had seen up to that point were signs, chests and torches. In this village, everything appeared to be made of manufactured blocks.

The buildings were mainly made out of three materials; there were wooden planks stacked on top of each other, glass panes in the windows and stone that wasn’t as natural as the stone in the mine but rather put together in chunks, like a cobblestone street. Torches were everywhere, and the road was paved with gravel.

As the three players entered the village through a tall wooden gate between the two watchtowers, they saw a player walking towards them. He had brown hair, and he was wearing a red jacket over a white shirt with blue jeans. As he met the players, he introduced himself as Jayden10, and told the players to come with him to meet the mayor of the town. He then walked down the gravel street towards a large brick building; Stan, Charlie and Kat followed.

Going down the street, Stan saw players everywhere in the village. One player appeared to be exchanging two apples with another player for a piece of flint and a metal ring. Through a large window, Stan saw a whole group of players sitting around tables that had tools dangling from them. One of these players gave a final strike with a hammer to the object on his table and held it up for examination; it was a shiny metal pickaxe. To the right of the brick building was a large wooden building with a vast expanse of land behind it that held multiple types of animals as well as fields of wheat, pumpkins and watermelons. Stan had never before seen anything in Minecraft like what these players were doing. He was getting excited. The players appeared to be friendly – they waved to Stan and one of them even yelled “Nice dog!” to Kat.

“Here we are,” said Jayden, gesturing to the immense brick building, “Town Hall. Our mayor, Adoria, lives here. She is the founder of this village, and one of the highest-level people here. Come inside. She likes to meet all new arrivals.” And he walked inside.

The three players exchanged quick glances with one another and then went in after Jayden, leaving Rex sitting outside.

Stan was impressed. The corridor that they were in had a red carpet, and it was lined with electric lamp blocks that surely would have been on if the sun hadn’t been streaming in through a magnificent glass roof. The parts of the wall not covered by lamps had different paintings. A small one had a sunrise on it, a wide one – Charlie jumped when he saw it – had a Creeper’s face, and one painting depicting a game of Donkey Kong took up a whole wall. All of these paintings were heavily pixilated.

Jayden pushed a button at the end of the hall, and an iron door swung open. Inside, Stan could see a player, a girl judging by the plait of her black hair, sitting at a desk, writing in a book. She looked up at the sound of the opening door.

“Hello, Jayden. These are the new players, I assume?” Her voice was kind – it reminded Stan of his mother.

“Yes, Adoria, ma’am,” Jayden replied respectfully.

Adoria stood up. Stan saw that she was wearing a pink blouse and a red skirt.

“Well, then, welcome to the Adorian Village, new players. I am Adoria1, founder and mayor of this community. But please, call me Adoria. What are your names?”

Stan spoke up. “My name is Stan2012, but you can just call me Stan. This is KingCharles_XIV, or Charlie.” At this Charlie gave a polite nod, and Stan continued, “And this is KitKat783, or Kat.”

Kat said, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

“Pleased to meet you too, players. Tell me, have you ever played Minecraft before?” inquired Adoria.

Stan and Charlie shook their heads, while Kat said, “I have, but on a different server, and I wasn’t there for long. I’m not much more experienced at this game than these two.” Stan and Charlie shot her incredulous looks but they backed down as they caught her eye.

Adoria nodded her head. “I understand. In that case, we in this village will be more than glad to help you learn how to play this game. We have a programme here that teaches you everything that you need to know about Minecraft in five days. Do you think you would be interested in that? The deal includes food and a temporary place to stay.”

Stan said, “It sounds good to me.”

“I’m game,” said Kat excitedly.

“Count the three of us in, then,” said Charlie. “But what kinds of things are you going to be showing us?”

“We have a group of people in this village dedicated to training new players. Each has different strengths that they will pass on to you. They will show you how to fight, craft, create and other such things.”

“So, it’s your job to train new players to prepare them for the server?” asked Kat.

“That’s right,” replied Jayden. “Almost every new player on this server came through our programme first, including most of the population of Element City.”

“What’s Element City?” asked Stan.

“The server’s capital,” said Adoria. “Element City is where most people go after they go through our programme. It’s situated on a huge open plain, surrounded by forest on all sides, and it has the greatest population of any settlement on this server. That’s where people build their houses and a bunch of crazy contraptions and structures and all that. At the centre of the city is Element Castle, where the King of this server presides over a council that makes the laws of the land.”

“Sounds like an interesting place. Do you think we should go there after we finish your programme?” asked Charlie.

“Um … yes, I don’t see why not,” replied Adoria. But her hesitation was not lost on Stan, and she didn’t meet Charlie’s eyes when she said this. Stan wondered what was wrong with Element City.

“So, is there a place for us to sleep?” asked Charlie, yawning. “I’m bushed; we haven’t slept yet, and we’ve been on the server for almost two days now!”

“Oh, by all means, go ahead!” said Adoria with a warm smile. “You’ll find some things for you in your rooms at the motel. Jayden, show these players to their rooms, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Jayden. “Follow me,” and he left the room. Stan, Charlie and Kat followed him out of the hall, picking Rex up where he’d waited by the door.

“So,” said Jayden as they left the building, “what kind of materials do you guys have so far?”

“Not much,” replied Charlie, looking in his inventory as he walked. “Just … a stack of dirt, five arrows, some string and some wood. You guys got anything else?” he asked as he looked to Kat and Stan.

“I’ve got a stone sword and pickaxe, some cobblestone and a few torches,” replied Kat. “Stan?”

“Oh, I’ve just got some coal, the pickaxe you gave me, and the book.”

“Come on, you guys! To survive in this game you’re gonna need better stuff than that!” Stan could tell that Jayden wasn’t being condescending – he was just ribbing them. Stan laughed with Jayden.

“I guess Stan and I owe you a thank you,” said Charlie. “Without those swords and the bread and the book, we definitely wouldn’t have even come close to making it here. We wouldn’t even have survived the first night with those Spiders!”

“Yeah … thanks a million,” agreed Stan, shuddering as he remembered fighting off the Spiders.

“Ah, don’t mention it,” replied Jayden with a shrug. “Besides, it wasn’t me who put those out there – it was my friend Sally. She’s the one who goes out there and replenishes the stock at the spawn point every week. Speaking of which, why did it take you guys two days to get here, anyway? It’s only a day’s journey.”

So Stan and Charlie told Jayden about the time that they had had getting to the village, about getting lost, and the Spiders, and running into Kat (who added to the story from that point on), and the mine, and the Creeper, and Mr A. Jayden seemed taken aback by the story of Mr A.

“You guys ran into a Griefer?” he asked sceptically. “But none of you are even level four yet! The best weapon you have is a moderately used stone sword! Why would anyone want to attack you?”

“Well, he was about to tell us in a melodramatic monologue, but I believe that that was the point when Kat told him, and I quote, ‘we couldn’t care less about your “oh, woe is me” story,’” replied Charlie, grinning at her.

“I regret nothing,” smirked Kat. “So, Jayden, what do you do around here? It must get pretty boring.”

Jayden shook his head. “No, not really. It’s fun to teach the new guys, like you. At the school, I teach axe fighting, and I help my brother on his farm. Plus, Adoria sends me on missions. I actually just got back from one a little while before you guys got here,” he added as the four finally arrived at the motel, a sprawling four-storey complex made of mainly wood planks. Stan saw a hole in the side of the building that was closest to him, next to several chests and a sign that said Construction in Progress.

“Well, here we are, home sweet home,” announced Jayden, gesturing to the building. “You guys are lucky. You’ll be bunking with me and my friends tonight. You’d ordinarily get your own rooms, but we’ve been so swamped with new players lately that there isn’t any room left for you in the main wing, and the expansion isn’t done yet. So, come with me.” He started to climb a ladder up to the roof.

“Wait!” cried Kat. “What about Rex?”

Jayden paused. “What? Oh, your dog. Just leave him there, but don’t tell him to sit. I think he’ll find his way up on his own.” He continued to climb.

Shrugging, Kat gave Rex a quick scratch between the ears and went up after Jayden, followed by Charlie and then Stan.

Jayden’s room was situated on top of the fourth-floor roof. It was a large room, big enough to comfortably hold eight players. Jayden flipped open the wooden door and was greeted by two distinct voices. The other three followed him in.

There were four beds sitting on the floor, two of them occupied with people. Like the rest of the town, the room was lit by torches, and there was a table with tools hanging from it that was identical to the one Stan had seen in the building in the village. Next to the table stood a stone oven with a fire lit in it. The walls were lined with paintings, and there was a large chest next to each bed. Next to the door was a box with a slot on top.

The two players in the beds looked unlike anybody Stan had seen in the game so far. One of them was dressed like the Skeletons that had made Stan’s first night in Minecraft so difficult. Stan would have panicked if it weren’t for the red hair on top of the player’s head, which distinguished him from a monster. The other player looked exactly like Stan did in the standard look for Minecraft, except that he was gold. His hair, skin, arms, body, and legs were completely golden. The only thing that told them that he wasn’t some sort of statue was his pair of green eyes.

“Yo, Jay! Good to have you back!” boomed the Skeleton. He had an unexpectedly deep voice.

“Good to be back, Archie! I tell you, that trip was absolute torture!”

“No,” said the gold one, in a disconnected voice. “Torture is being trapped in a pit of burning Netherrack that was set as a monster trap in the middle of Ender Desert, and only getting out because some guy happens to—”

“Enough, G, you’ve told us the story, like, a hundred times!” whined the Skeleton in an exasperated voice.

“Still, what could you have possibly done that’s worse than that?” the gold guy asked, now in a regular voice.

“Dude, didn’t you hear Adoria give me the assignment? I had to go to the nearest Mushroom Island and take back samples of the mushrooms there, and I also had to learn how to farm them from the tribe living there. She also made me lure two Mooshrooms away from the island and across the ocean using wheat and bring them all the way back here.”

“Ouch!” yelled the gold one. “That is pretty bad!”

“You’re telling me. The worst part was trading with the tribe there. I tell you, to be iffy about trading two Mooshrooms for four trees and bone meal when you don’t even have trees on your island! Still, you can’t say you’ve lived until you’ve killed a Spider Jockey while keeping two Mooshrooms interested in you with wheat. So, where’s Sally? She back yet?”

“Oh, she tried a new shortcut to get to the hill. She said that it would take her anywhere from half to double the normal time, she’s not sure. She said not to worry if she was late.”

“So, Jay, who are these guys anyway?” asked the Skeleton, pointing at Stan, Charlie and Kat, who had entered the room and were listening to the conversation with a mixture of confusion and admiration for these players who had clearly seen so much of the game.

“These are new players. The motel’s full today so they’re staying in here.”

“Excellent. I just love a good slumber party,” said a girl’s voice from behind them. They all turned around.

A girl was leaning against the doorframe. A plait of black hair ran down her back. She was wearing a green tank top and a black skirt. She was holding an iron sword with fresh Spider guts on the blade.

“Look what the ocelot dragged in! Sally’s back!”

“Glad you’re not dead, Sal.”

“What took you so long, girl?”

Sally gave a tired grin that suggested that she was dealing with little siblings who were entirely too happy to see her after a long day. “Do you remember when we used to greet each other with a nice ‘Hello’?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” said the Skeleton. “Would you prefer that?”

“’Course not!” Sally laughed. “I’m just reminiscing. So, you gonna introduce me to these noobs?”

“If you insist,” Jayden said. “You’re lucky I hadn’t already introduced them to Archie and G, or I wouldn’t have wasted my breath on you,” he added good-naturedly. “This is Kat, Stan and Charlie,” he introduced them, pointing them each out in turn. “New guys, this is Archie” – the Skeleton nodded – “Goldman, aka G” – the golden guy nodded – “and Sally.” The girl nodded.

“’Sup, guys,” said G. “Cool dog, Kat.”

“What are you talking … what …?” Kat’s eyes widened as she looked behind her. Rex had just walked in the door and was walking over to Kat, who petted the dog, still looking amazed.

“How did Rex manage to get up the ladder?” she asked.

“Nobody knows …” replied Archie ominously.

They all stared at the dog for a moment and then looked away. None of them made eye contact with Rex for the rest of the night.

“So, anyway, why are these noobs staying in here?” asked Sally, frowning as she leaned against the doorframe.

“Could you please stop calling us noobs?” asked Stan. “It gets really annoying after a while.”

“Sorry, buddy, I paid my dues. I was a noob like you once, but then I took an arrow to the … heh, heh, heh, just kidding. My point is, people are gonna call you that until you pass, say, level ten. But until then, you’re just gonna have to put up with it. We all did,” she said, gesturing to herself, Jayden, G and Archie.

“Fine, I can accept other people calling me that,” said Stan, “but could you guys not, seeing as I have to live with you for a few days?”

“Hmmm …,” said Sally, pretending to think. “Uh, yeah, no, I think I will call you that. I probably wouldn’t if it didn’t annoy you so much though.” She shrugged.

Stan sighed. “Is she always like this?” he asked, turning to Archie.

He laughed. “Of course not! Sally is an absolute pleasure to live with. She’s not aggravating, obnoxious and condescending to us guys – whatever would give you that idea?”

Sally rolled her eyes. “Are you finished?”

Archie replied, “Well, as I glance at that sword in your hand, I think I’ll say yes?”

They all laughed.

“So, you guys starting the programme tomorrow?” asked G as Sally went to the chest next to one of the beds and put a sword and some watermelon in it.

“Apparently so. Jayden mentioned that you four teach the classes. Is that right?”

“Yep,” replied Sally as she sat down on her bed with her legs crossed. “I’m gonna teach you guys everything you need to know about sword fighting and crafting.”

“Yes, and when she says everything, that includes the how-to of disemboweling a Spider,” added G, and they all laughed again. “Anyway, I’ll teach you how to fight using a pickaxe, and everything you need to know about mining.”

“I myself,” boomed Archie, “will be instructing you on the precision art and skill of the launched projectile forged from the stone of gravel, the spindle of a tree and the coat of a bird. In other words, I’m teaching archery. Go figure,” he said, gesturing to his Skeleton costume.

“I’m teaching axe fighting and farming technique,” said Jayden. He reached into the chest next to his bed and pulled out an axe. But this wasn’t just any axe. The blade was created from diamond, and though the wooden handle was worn, the diamond still glinted in the light of the torches, sharp and deadly. Stan stared at it. It was the most impressive thing he had seen in the game so far.

“This is my most prized possession,” he said. “My brother gave it to me when I left his farm.”

“Stop showing off,” moaned G. “We can’t all have diamond tools,” and he opened his chest to get some food.

“Hold up! What’s that?” interjected Charlie, pointing to something in G’s chest.

“What, this thing?” he asked, and he pulled out something just as impressive as the diamond axe – a pickaxe, forged from solid gold.

“How can you say you have bad tools when you have that thing?” asked Kat, and Charlie and Stan nodded in agreement.

“What? Oh! That’s right, you don’t know, do you?” G laughed. “Well, it may look cool, but golden tools aren’t very practical at all. They break absurdly fast. They actually break faster than stuff made out of wood. The only upside to them is that they break stuff quickly, and even then a golden pickaxe can only break cobblestone and coal ore. I mostly just carry mine around for show, to go with my image.” G gestured to his golden body. As G sniggered at his own whimsy, Stan noticed Kat raise an eyebrow and give an amused chuckle.

“Well, I’m exhausted,” said Jayden, yawning. “That mission was awful, and I’m sure that you guys must be spent after all that you went through to get here.” The three new players nodded gratefully. “G, Sal, pull out the extra beds. Charlie, Kat, Stan, you guys should eat something before you go to bed. Try this.”

Jayden reached into his chest and pulled out two cooked steaks and a cooked pork chop. He handed a steak to Stan and Charlie, and the pork chop to Kat.

“Mmm,” said Kat, licking her lips when she’d finished, “that was so much better than the raw one.” Charlie rolled his eyes.

All fed, the seven players climbed into their beds, and five of them were out cold almost immediately. Stan was just about to fall asleep, too, when he heard a voice from behind him.

“You asleep, noob?”

Stan flipped over in his bed to face the one talking. Sally was crouching down next to his bed. “I’ll take that as a no, then,” she said.

Stan sat up. “Can I help you?” he asked.

Sally sat down next to him. “Yeah, you can,” she asked. “Is this your first time in Minecraft?”

Stan nodded.

“Have you ever played a game like it before?”

Stan looked at her. “How many games like Minecraft are there?” he asked.

“Not important.” She shrugged. “I guess my question is … do you feel like you’re something special?”

“Why, yes. I mean, that’s what my mummy tells me every night,” said Stan sarcastically. “‘Stan, no matter what those mean boys tell you, just remember that you’ll always be special to me.’ Is that what you mean?”

Sally giggled, which seemed oddly out of character to Stan. “You’re funny,” she said.

“Am I?” asked Stan, getting aggravated again. “Is that why you woke me up? So I could make you laugh? I’m exhausted.Please just let me sleep.”

And with that he flopped back down on his bed. Unfortunately, he had misjudged the exact position of the pillow and he ended up with his head on the floor, a painful throbbing in his skull from the impact.

As he sat up he could see Sally was not even trying to keep a straight face, just holding her mouth and trying not to burst out laughing and wake up the others. Stan couldn’t blame her. It must have looked pretty ridiculous. “Not a word,” he said as he sat back up. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”

Sally eventually calmed down, and when she did, she rolled her eyes and said, “We’ll talk about it later. You need some sleep. G’night, noob.” And she stood up and lay down in her own bed.

Nice girl, thought Stan as he drifted into sleep. Annoying though.

CHAPTER 5
THE PROGRAMME

“Goooooooooooooooood moooooooooorning, freeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh meat!”

Stan sprang up and out of bed, startled by the deafening noise. He looked wildly around and saw Kat and Charlie still in their beds, Kat swinging her sword (which she had apparently slept with in her hand) around, yelling, “Die die die die die!” Charlie sat bolt upright, his hand clutching his chest. Archie was standing on top of the table with the tools on it, his hands cupped; clearly, it had been him who had yelled. G and Jayden were behind him, laughing hard at the new players’ reactions.

“Oh God, you three … you three should have seen the looks … the looks on your faces!” Jayden managed to get out between laughs.

“We’ve had some pretty … some pretty good react … reactions,” wheezed G, clutching his sides, “but you guys … that was so over the top! Especially you, Kat! ‘Die die die die die!’” he said, setting off another round of laughter.

Kat stood up, walked over to G, put her hands on her hips, and stared at him in the eye. “That was not funny! What if I had hit someone? Someone could have died!”

“I’m sorry, but why were you sleeping with a sword anyway, Kat?” asked Archie.

“Aw, did da wittle girl have a bad dweam about da cweepas comin to get her?” said G in a mock-baby voice, to another round of hysterics.

Kat pocketed her sword, walked up to G, who was now cramping with laughter, and punched him hard in the chest.

“Ouch!” G yelled, doubling over. “Man, Kat, that actually hurt! Should I punch you now? Huh?”

Kat smirked. “Even in a game, I doubt that you would hit a girl, unless she was armed and trying to kill you.”

“Huh? What was that about girls trying to kill people?”

Sally had just walked into the room. She said, “Kat, if you want to kill these five, I’m more than happy to help you.”

“I’d like to take that offer, please,” Kat replied, rubbing her eyes, “because they just woke me up by yelling at me.”

“It was hilarious!” laughed G. “She started freaking out with her sword, which she slept with …” and the three older boys fell to the ground in fits of laughter.

“You three are so immature,” she said arrogantly. “Anyway, get off the crafting table, Archie. I’m crafting us some breakfast.” He complied, still sniggering.

“Where’d you go this morning anyway, Sal?” Jayden asked inquisitively.

“Yeah, we had to pull the prank without ya,” added G.

“Pardon me, boys, but I think you’ll be happy when you see what I have planned.” Sally reached into her inventory and pulled out three buckets of milk, an egg, some sugar and some wheat.

“Oh boy, Sal, are you making what I think you’re making?” Archie boomed eagerly.

“Well, when it’s my turn to make breakfast, I prefer to do it right,” she said as she started a complex series of crafts with the food items. “Especially when we have guests.” And Stan could have sworn that she caught his eye.

“Here we go,” she said after a minute of waiting. She held up a square cake. From what Stan could see, it was strawberry shortcake, which he didn’t understand, as Sally had added neither strawberries nor frosting. “Dig in.”

There were six equal pieces of cake. Everybody was given a slice except for Sally. Stan was about to eat his piece when he looked at Sally. She was glancing at him in an expectant way. Stan had a feeling he knew why.

“Uh, Sally? Do you, uh, wanna have some of my cake?”

“Why, thank you, Stan, I would like that very much.” She grabbed a knife from the table with the tools and cut Stan’s piece down the middle. She took half of it and ate it in one bite, giving a loud burp afterwards. G and Archie sniggered, but Stan wasn’t sure if it was because of Sally belching or him sharing his cake.

After they were finished eating, Jayden stood up. “Alrighty then, thank you, Sally, for the excellent breakfast.” There were murmurs of consent. “If anyone is still hungry, we’ll stop by my brother’s farm on the way to the school for watermelons. New inductees, put all your things in the extra chest in the corner over there, and follow me.”

After they had put their things away, the players left the building and went down the ladder, leaving Rex sitting in the room. As they walked down the main road of the village, they stopped just before the Town Hall and turned into the farm to the right of the Hall.

“This is where my brother lives,” explained Jayden, as they walked under the hedge that marked the entrance to the farm. “He’s the most productive farmer in this entire village, and the only one who is a higher level than Adoria. He’s level fifty-four, five higher than she is. The only problem is that he’s—”

“Hey, Jay!”

A player with wild grey hair and farmer’s clothing was running up to them, holding what appeared to be an iron hoe.

“Hey, hey, you guys! Hey, you guys are new?” he asked Stan, Kat and Charlie in a jittery fashion. “Ya look new, carryin’ around all dat stone crap, ya know, hey! Hey! Ya want some Lightnin’? Cause I know this great place where—”

“Steve, again? Really!? I thought that we agreed that you wouldn’t be QPOed on duty!” Jayden cried in an exasperated voice.

“I ain’t QPOed, whadevah’d give ya dat ideeeeee-ooooooooooooohhhh …” and then the crazed player – Steve, Jayden had called him – slunk down to the ground, clearly passed out.

“Oh, for the love of God,” moaned Jayden.

“What the … what … what just happened?” asked Kat, looking repulsed at the still body on the ground.

“Is he gonna be OK?” asked Charlie.

“Well, Charlie, yes he is, but I’m getting awfully sick of healing him,” sighed Jayden as he pulled an apple out of his bag. This apple was shimmering golden in the sunlight, and Jayden bent over and stuffed it into the player’s mouth. Jayden stood up.

“To answer your question, Kat, he was on a potion called the Potion of Swiftness, also called QPO or Lightning. It’s a potion that’ll give you a quick burst of energy, but it will make you weak for a short while afterwards. Steve here took too much QPO one night at a Spleef match, and he hasn’t been able to drink it without passing out afterwards ever since. It’s a shame. It really did help him run this farm more productively.”

“Hold on,” said Stan. “He runs the farm? That’s your brother?” He decided to save the question of what Spleef was for a later day.

“Yep,” said Jayden grimly. “You see, the only way to heal him is to give him a golden apple, which would normally heal you from an injury. The problem is, apples are really rare, and gold isn’t that common either, and that’s what you use to craft the golden apples.”

Steve had begun to stir. As he came to, Stan took an opportunity to look at the farm.

It was gigantic – it must have taken up a quarter of the entire Adorian village. There were fields and fields covered in wheat, pumpkins, watermelon and tall stalks that Stan couldn’t identify. Irrigation ditches ran between the plants. Cocoa bean pods grew on logs that looked like they came from a jungle. There were also pastures. There was a whole herd of cows and a group of pigs. Stan saw some sheep with white, black and brown wool, and some with no wool.

Stan looked around and also saw chickens, a pool filled with squid, some wolves and some things that looked like wild cats. But the most peculiar thing was something that resembled a cow, except that it was red and white and covered with mushrooms actually growing out of its back. While there were herds of the other animals, there were only three red-and-white cows – two large ones and a small one. Stan guessed that these were the things that Jayden had just led to the village from the Mushroom Island. What did he call them? Oh yeah, Mooshrooms. Funny name …

Steve had come back around and was beginning to stand up. He put his blocky hand to his head and moaned.

“Oh … ugh … oh, what happened?”

“Don’t give me that!” fumed Jayden. “You know perfectly well what happened. You know that you can’t be QPOed on the job! I’m running out of golden apples to heal you with. Apples don’t just grow on trees! Well, not in this game, anyway … but the point is, you’ve gotta be more responsible, Steve!”

“Hey, who are those guys?” asked Steve, who had not been listening to Jayden and was now looking distractedly at Stan and his friends.

Jayden looked furious and was about to yell at Steve again when G said, “Don’t, Jay, there’s no point. Steve, this is Stan, Charlie and Kat. Guys, this is CrazySteve1026, aka Steve.”

“Hey, noobs,” said Steve, disregarding the exasperated sigh of Stan and the smirk of Sally. “About tuh start da programme, I assume? Yes? Alrighty den, what can I help ya with, little brother?” asked Steve, turning back to Jayden.

“We just need some watermelons,” said Jayden. “Sal made some cake for breakfast but some of us are still …”

“Say no more, Jay,” said Steve. He then proceeded to walk over to the nearby watermelon field and bring his hoe down into two watermelons. They burst open, leaving a mess of watermelon slices in their places. He picked them up and walked over to the group of players, handing two slices to each of them.

“Man, dis shtuff ish good,” mumbled G.

“Yeah, you should make a watermelon cake next time, Sal,” boomed Archie.

“You’re welcome,” spat an annoyed Sally.

Once they finished their watermelon, Steve said, “Alrighty den, all fed? Good, den off ya kids go. Have fun at ya little programme. Be careful. Any more deaths and da King might shut da programme down.”

Charlie spat out his watermelon. “What?” he sputtered. “What’d you just say?” But Steve just laughed manically and went back to the farm to feed some wheat to the Mooshrooms. The seven players walked out of the farm feeling excited and, in Charlie’s case, petrified.

Stan, Kat and Charlie weren’t the only ones starting the programme. There were also five other people there, all boys under level five, all determined to learn how to play Minecraft. After a brief introduction to the other five, the group was divided in half. Four of the other players went with G to learn about mining and pickaxe fighting, and Stan, Kat, Charlie and one other boy who looked exactly like Stan in darker clothing went with Archie to learn archery.

Archie took them to the firing range. It was a long clearing located deep in the woods, away from people. Archie explained the proper technique of handling the bow. Stan and his friends listened intently, but the fourth player couldn’t focus. He just kept staring at Kat with his mouth open. It was apparent that he hadn’t expected to find any girls in Minecraft.

After the explanation of the theory, they started target practice. There were lamps located on the range at different distances and heights. Archie stood to the side as he flipped switches to turn the lamps on and off. The goal was to hit the lamp that was on. The only one who was OK at the archery was Kat. She managed to hit one lamp twice before it switched off. Stan hit one of the lamps every time he shot, but it took him time to think about the trajectory of the arrow and he hardly ever got a hit on a lit lamp because the lamp changed before he could fire his shot.

Charlie was abysmal. He only hit a lamp one time, though he was the one who shot the most arrows. His arrows usually landed a good distance away from the target. Once his arrow came dangerously close to impaling Archie in the chest, but Archie whipped out his sword and deflected it. The other boy on the range might have been a good archer, but he didn’t do anything because he still couldn’t stop staring at Kat.

After target practice, it was around three in the afternoon judging by Archie’s clock, and he said that it was time for the last activity of the day: sparring. The fighters were given diamond armour, which Archie told them had been enchanted to take all damage from the arrow fire without damaging the players themselves. Archie called the armour “training suits.” The players also were given a bow and a stack of arrows and told that the first one to score three hits with the arrows won.

The first match was Kat versus Stan. Stan knew who was going to win, and though he tried to fire as quickly as he could, Kat had won before he managed to sink a single arrow into her armour. The match lasted five minutes, and though Archie was hiding it well, they could tell that he was impatient by the time it was over.

The match between Charlie and the other boy was over in ten seconds, but that was mainly due to the fact that the boy couldn’t stop gaping at Kat for long enough to stop Charlie from actually walking to within one block of him and firing the three arrows into his chestplate at point-blank range. Archie proceeded to slap his own face with his blocky hand at this.

The match between Kat and Charlie lasted longer than the one between her and Stan, but that was mainly due to that fact that Charlie’s strategy consisted of running in an unpredictable pattern and not trying to shoot at all. The match stopped after Kat ran out of arrows. Archie then rolled his eyes, stood up, whipped out his bow, and proceeded to fire three arrows at the still-moving Charlie in a matter of seconds. All three arrows sunk themselves into Charlie’s headgear.

After a long day, Archie stood up, sighed, and said, “Let’s go.” It was clear from the tone of his voice that he didn’t think that any of them had a knack for archery. They all walked back to the motel to go to bed feeling slightly disappointed.

As everyone was getting ready for bed, Sally asked Stan as she pulled off her armour, “So, what did you think of your first day of training?”

“Well,” said Stan, “let’s just say I hope tomorrow is better, a lot better.” And they both laughed.

The next day was considerably more enjoyable by all accounts. After a breakfast of bread, the four new players followed G to the outskirts of the village and took a ride in some mine carts to the entrance of a large mine.

The upper mine was illuminated by torchlight, but Stan still couldn’t make out the sides. It was enormous. As they went further down, there were fewer torches, but Stan could now see dozens of players hacking away at the sides with pickaxes. Stan guessed that this was where all the good materials were.

The mine carts took them past several stops at different levels, and all the way down to the bottom of the mine. Down there, Stan saw a room constructed out of cobblestone, with torchlight inside. The four new players and G walked into the room, and G explained Mining 101 to them. He showed them how to distinguish the seven different types of ore: coal, iron, redstone, gold, lapis lazuli, emerald and diamond. Then he showed them which materials the pickaxes were good for mining and offered some basic mining safety tips: don’t dig straight down, watch out around gravel and sand, and so on.

Once they were done, G took them out of the cobblestone-block room, gave out stone pickaxes, and taught them how to fight with them. Once again the training suits were put on, and there was another tournament. To everyone’s surprise, the one who excelled fastest at pickaxe fighting was Charlie. They had to get three hits in on their opponent, and Charlie beat Stan in the first round and then Kat in the second round. Needless to say, Kat obliterated the other boy. The best moment was during Charlie’s fight against Kat. He was up by two points when Kat took a lunge at him. He fell back and threw his pickaxe through the air, knocking off her helmet.

They then started to mine. Stan did all right. Gravel only fell onto him once, and he got out of it pretty quickly. He also found some coal and iron ore, and even two blocks of lapis lazuli ore, which G said was a rare block used to make blue dye. Kat did about as well as him, not having any gravel fall on her, but not finding any lapis lazuli either. Charlie, however, excelled once again. He seemed to have a sixth sense that told him which way to dig to find the best materials. He brought up much more iron than either of the others, and he also found five lapis lazuli ore blocks and even some gold ore, which G said was very rare. It was a shame, said G, that all materials found during the programme went to the stores of the village.

“But don’t worry, I’m sure that you’ll find really good stuff mining on your own, Charlie,” said G with a smile. “You have the best mining instincts of anyone I’ve ever taught.”

The three went home feeling content that they had done better at mining than they had at archery, with Charlie absolutely beaming at his newfound prowess.

They had a dinner of watermelon and some more bread, and they were going to bed when Sally spoke to Stan yet again.

“Tomorrow you guys are with me,” she said to him. “I’m teaching you sword fighting and crafting.”

“Is that so?” said Stan. “Well, I look forward to it.”

“Just know,” said Sally, “I have high expectations for you.”

Stan’s stomach flipped. “In what? Sword fighting or crafting?” he asked. Immediately afterwards, he felt like an idiot.

She looked him in the eyes and smiled. “Both,” she said, and she went off to bed.

The following day, after bowls of mushroom stew for breakfast, they headed into the dojo above the crafting building to train in sword fighting and crafting.

Stan was nervous. Before the archery and mining lessons he had felt excited, yes, but not nervous. He remembered the exchange with Sally last night. She had high expectations for him. He couldn’t let himself mess this up.

Stan, Kat, and Charlie sat down across from Sally. The other boy had been moved to the class with his other friends after a not-so-subtle request by G and Archie. Stan listened intently as Sally explained that the most important aspect of sword fighting in Minecraft was to not think too much and to basically just do what felt natural.

After she explained and demonstrated some different techniques, she pulled three training suits out of her inventory. “Stan, Charlie, Kat, please come up here.”

They did as she said, not knowing what would happen next. G and Archie had called them up two at a time to fight, not three.

“Put these on,” she commanded, holding out three sets of diamond body armour. They obliged. As Stan was pulling on the diamond trousers, he saw Sally pull two stone swords and one iron sword out of her inventory.

“Kat, Charlie, come stand over here,” she said. They walked to where she was standing. She threw Charlie and Kat the stone swords. “Stan, just stand there.” She threw him the iron sword.

“Kat, Charlie, when I say go, you are going to attack Stan with everything you’ve got. Stan, you have to defend against both of them. As usual, you are out after three hits.”

Stan was dismayed. He had never really fought another player with a sword in his life. He knew that Charlie wasn’t any better than he was, but Kat had supposedly done all that stuff on the other servers. She had killed a player and taken his sword and pickaxes! How was he going to beat her?

“Sally, can’t I get some advantage or something? Like I have four hits and they have two? Wouldn’t that be fair?”

Sally sniggered. “Stan, imagine if a group of about twenty players armed with loaded bows and diamond swords jumped out of the woods and ambushed you. Would that be fair? No, but you’d still have to fight, right? You would, ’cause you know what? Sometimes life isn’t fair. And I was nice. You have an advantage. You have an iron sword and they both have stone, so don’t be a wimp, noob! Now take your positions!”

Up until this point, Kat had been smirking and Charlie had been looking confused, but now they both dropped into fighting stances, swords raised. Kat wore an expression of aggression, while Charlie wore one of apprehension about attacking his friend. Stan was petrified, but he could see Sally’s mind wasn’t changing, so he readied himself to fight.

Sally sat down in a wooden chair with her legs crossed. “OK then … FIGHT!”

Stan was caught totally off guard, but both Charlie and Kat rushed him at the same time. Charlie gave an uppercut to Stan’s right arm, and Stan dodged him by sidestepping left. However, he forgot about Kat, who brought her stone sword down onto his helmet with an almighty clang that reverberated in his skull.

Sally yelled out, “Point to Kat and Charlie! Stan, you’ve got two hits left … Charlie, three … Kat, three. Back to positions.” They walked back to their original positions and dropped into fighting stances once again. “Ready? And … FIGHT!”

This time Stan was ready. Charlie rushed first and tried the same uppercut attack, and again Stan dodged, but when Kat swung her sword to his left side he spun his iron sword and blocked Kat’s attack. The two players pressed into each other’s weapons. Kat was stronger than Stan, but Stan had better leverage. Stan was about to overpower her when he felt a dull pain at his right rib cage. Charlie had spun back around and hit him hard on the right side of his body armour. It had hurt, too.

Again, Sally called out, “Point to Kat and Charlie! Stan, one hit left … Charlie, three … Kat, three.” But instead of calling out “ready,” she walked over to Stan. She stood behind him, put her hands on his shoulders, and whispered in his ear. “Stan, you aren’t going to win if you put all your energy into fighting one of them. When one of them strikes you, dodge it, and use the opening to come back in and deliver a strike. And better yet, use their own energy against them if you can. Also, remember, go for the weakest link first.” With that, she went back to her chair. Stan felt weak-kneed as she was so close to him, but immediately got back into his fighting stance, knowing what he would do next.

Sally announced, “Match point! Ready? And … FIGHT!”

Stan moved instantly. He cut hard to the right, towards Charlie’s side. Kat couldn’t attack him, because Charlie was in between them. Charlie took a slash with his sword at Stan, but Stan feinted backwards, and at the first opportunity he rushed forwards and thrust his sword with all his might at Charlie’s stomach. The direct blow glanced off his training suit, but Charlie still doubled over, the wind knocked out of him.

“Point to Stan! Stan, one hit left … Charlie, two … Kat, three.” As they reset, Stan caught Sally’s eye. She smiled, and instantly another plan, more brilliant than the last, popped into his head.

“Match point! Ready? And … FIGHT!”

Stan stood still, and Charlie rushed towards Stan. Knowing what they were trying to do, Stan feinted right and slammed his sword into Charlie’s back, forcing Charlie to the spot where Stan had just stood. Just as Stan had expected, Kat jumped up. Not aware of Charlie’s new position, Kat brought her sword down where Stan had just been standing, but instead of hitting him on the head, she clubbed her partner. His helmet flew off, and Charlie hit the floor like a ton of bricks.

Sally yelled, “Point to Stan! Stan, one hit left … Charlie, zero … Kat, three! Charlie is out!” But Kat and Stan didn’t notice as they were both checking to see if Charlie was OK, and even as she said it, Sally was standing up to join them.

“Charlie, are you all right?” cried Stan, his voice hoarse with worry.

“Oh God, Charlie, I am so sorry!” yelled Kat, tears in her eyes.

“Charlie? Charlie, can you hear me?” said Sally, bending over Charlie’s unconscious form. Stan noticed the slash on his head, and his stomach felt like it had dissolved. Charlie couldn’t be … no, he refused to let himself think it. Sally waved her blocky hand over his closed eyes. When there was no response, she reached into her inventory and pulled something out. It was a golden apple, like the one that Stan had seen Jayden give to his unconscious brother. The second Charlie swallowed the shiny fruit, the wound on his head disappeared, and he sat upright, holding his head.

“Well, that was unpleasant,” he said with a dark smile.

Kat gave a shout of relief while Stan yelled out, “Thank God you’re alive, man!” He turned to Sally. “What happened? I thought you said that the armour absorbed all damage!”

“It’s supposed to,” Sally said, frowning. “Let me see Charlie’s helmet, Stan.” Stan picked up the helmet from the floor and handed it to her. She examined it. “Well, it looks like somebody didn’t enchant this helmet correctly. It appears to have been given Blast Protection instead of just normal Protection, so you wouldn’t get hurt by an explosion – but you would by a sword. How did we not catch this in review?

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter, we can fix it,” she said. “And, may I say, that was an excellent move, Stan. If Charlie were in any condition to fight right now, he would have lost the match due to taking damage from both you and Kat. And Kat! To produce a strike with a stone sword that does that much damage to someone wearing a diamond helmet! Very impressive, both of you!”

Stan tried not to look too proud of himself, seeing as he had just injured his best friend. Kat, meanwhile, was trying to hide the fact that she was blushing.

“Well, Charlie, you’d better not fight any more seeing as you don’t have a helmet, but we still have to finish this fight. Kat, where’s your sword?”

“Over there,” she said sheepishly, gesturing to a handle and several chunks of stone. The impact with Charlie’s helmet had reduced her weapon to rubble.

“Girl, you are good at this!” Sally laughed as she picked up the remains of Kat’s sword from the floor. “It must have taken a ton of power to shatter a stone sword in one blow. Here,” she said, picking up Charlie’s sword off the ground and tossing it to her. “Match point! Ready? And … FIGHT!”

This time there was no contest. Kat was simply more talented with a sword than Stan was, and she delivered a blow to his leg and won the match in a matter of seconds.

“Point to Kat! Stan, zero … Kat, three. Kat wins!” she boomed. “Now, come on, I still have crafting to show you guys.”

The three friends stripped off the training suits with pleasure – they were really quite uncomfortable after a while. They followed Sally down the ladder and into the crafting room below them.

Sally explained that the tables with tools on them were called “crafting tables,” and that they used these to create a wide variety of different items. Sally handed them each a copy of a book exactly like the one Stan had gotten out of the chest that first day in Elementia.

Sally gave Stan, Kat and Charlie instructions to craft certain items, and she said to use anything in the chests to do so. They all proved to be quite capable of crafting. They crafted their own wooden planks and then crafting tables, and then some sticks, a stone sword, a stone axe, a bow, some arrows and leather armour.

After they had learned how to craft sufficiently, and Sally had explained how to smelt (changing the properties of certain blocks by putting them in a furnace), they headed back to the room, with a long, hard, successful day behind them. Sally once again came to talk to Stan. He was waiting – it was becoming a thing that they did. She sat down.

“You’re really good with a sword,” she said.

“No I’m not! Kat was better!” he said, wondering why she would say this.

“Yes, she is better with a sword than you are. But you were innovative. Once you realized what you were doing, you managed to score two points with two people going against you. That’s not something just anybody could do.”

“Thanks,” he said, smiling at her. “I had a good teacher.”

She smiled back at him. “You’d better get to bed, noob. Tomorrow’s your day with Jayden, and you can’t expect him to be as nice as me. Get some rest. You’ll need it.” And with that she went to her own bed.

CHAPTER 6
STAN AND STEVE

Stan woke up the next morning to a hissing sound.

“Very funny, guys,” he mumbled. “That actually sounds a lot like a real Creep—aaauuuggghhh!”

This time, it was no prank. An actual Creeper was standing right next to Stan, and he was staring right into its horrible, empty face. The monster was beginning to swell, and in the split second before the inevitable explosion, Stan flew at the monster and punched it in the face.

To Stan’s amazement, instead of exploding, the Creeper flew backwards. As it walked back towards him, it suddenly keeled over sideways, an arrow protruding from the side of its head. Everyone woke up to the sound of Stan’s yell, and Rex started barking. Archie still stood with his bow in hand, aiming exactly where the monster’s head had been. The body disappeared, leaving a small mess of grey powder beneath it.

“What’s going on?” yelled Kat, holding her sword up.

“Yeah, what’s with all the noise?” whined G. “I’m trying to sleep here!”

“A Creeper got in,” said Stan.

“What?” said Sally, looking dishevelled, not at all like her usual self. “How did a Creeper get in … hang on. Why is it so dark in here? Where are the torches?”

She was right. The windows around the edges of the building provided the only source of light. Besides that it was dark.

“Yeah, where are the torches?” asked Jayden, who was still breathing heavily. “Did someone steal them?”

“I guess so,” said Charlie, looking around. “But why? Why would somebody break in here just to steal the torches? And the door?” he added, for he had just noticed that the door, too, was missing.

“It was probably just some random Griefer. You know, a player that likes giving other players crap for no reason,” said Archie, putting his bow back into his inventory. “Felt like having a laugh by making it so that monsters could just come in here in the night.”

“Yeah,” said Stan as he remembered how Mr A had attacked them for no apparent reason. “Yeah, a Griefer would do something like that.”

“Well, it’s good that thing woke us up, actually. I was about to oversleep,” said Jayden. “It’s my turn to make breakfast, so I’ll go get some stuff for that. Sally, you go down to the storehouse and craft us a new door and some torches.” Sally nodded and ran out of the hole where the door used to be, followed closely by Jayden.

Sally came back shortly, and she put new torches on the walls and fixed the new door in the frame. Jayden arrived not long after, holding some wheat and a brown powder. He put it on the crafting table, and before long he had created a batch of cookies. Everyone had some – they were chocolate chip, and they tasted delicious.

“OK,” said Jayden after they had all finished and Kat had calmed the still-barking Rex by feeding him some rotten flesh. “Come with me, you three. We have axe training and farming today.”

Kat and Charlie filed out of the room with Stan in the rear, feeling sure that he would not be very good at axe fighting. Frankly, he had always been slightly awkward, and he did not imagine that swinging a long stick with a hunk of metal on the end would be his forte. As he realized this, Stan felt suddenly sullen. Charlie had proven to be exceptional with a pickaxe, and the same with Kat and her sword. If he couldn’t master axe fighting, what would he have to fight with? But as Stan left the room, he could have sworn he heard Sally whisper, “Good luck, noob,” in his ear and instantly, he felt more confident.

They followed Jayden down the road and were surprised when they entered Crazy Steve’s farm.

“What are we doing here?” asked Stan.

“Well, what better place to learn about axe use than at a farm?” asked Jayden. “As part of the programme, you’ll be doing some volunteer work here, helping my brother with the farming.”

This made sense, and the four players walked into an empty yard enclosed by fences. In the adjacent pumpkin field, Crazy Steve was tilling some new land with his hoe. Stan was relieved to see, judging by Steve’s calm and methodic demeanor, that he was not QPOed.

“Hey, bro,” the farmer said, and he tipped his straw hat as the teacher and three students entered through the gate. “Ya three gonna help an old farmer with his work today? Dose Mooshrooms are giving me quite a hard time, and I could use da extra hands.”

“You’ll get your help, Steve,” replied Jayden. “We have axe fighting to do first.”

Stan’s stomach did another flip as he thought of the pressure surrounding his mastery of the axe, which Jayden pulled out of a chest in the enclosure.

“The key,” said Jayden, holding up the axe and demonstrating proper form, “is to let the axe guide you. It knows what to do. You are not the master of the axe. You are simply its modest guide.”

“Oh, brother,” grumbled Kat under her breath. Jayden proceeded to explain the basic mechanics of axe fighting, which Stan understood surprisingly well.

“To help you appreciate the art, each of you must pass a challenge.” He called out, “Yo, Steve! Toss me four pumpkins, stat!”

Crazy Steve may have been old, but he was strong. He picked up four pumpkins growing in the field and tossed them all to Jayden in two throws. Jayden put three of the pumpkins in the chest and then pulled out something Stan had never seen before. It appeared to be a large block made out of snow. Jayden took out another. He put one snow block down towards the back of the empty lot, and put the other on top of it. He turned to Stan, Charlie and Kat.

“Your goal in this exercise is to get across this red line.” He gestured to line of red dust behind the pile of snow that Stan hadn’t noticed before. “You also must kill the enemy that I am about to create.”

The three new players all started talking at once.

“What do you mean, create?”

“Why isn’t the snow melting?”

“Are you going to make a Creeper or something?”

“How does that work?”

“Why isn’t the snow melting?”

“How are we supposed to survive without armour?”

“This honestly can’t be safe!”

“Why isn’t the snow melting?!”

Jayden waited for the questions to die down before he continued. “I’ll demonstrate, and all your questions will be answered. Charlie, could you come here, please?”

Looking scared stiff, and with good reason, Charlie walked over to the tall pile of snow. Jayden tossed him a pumpkin and said, “Now, Charlie, when I say go, put that pumpkin on top of the snow pile. Got it?” Charlie nodded, looking confused. Stan shared his puzzlement. He had no idea what Jayden was about to do.

Jayden stood at the opposite end of the enclosure from the red line and pile of snow and pulled an iron axe out of the trunk. He stood with the axe at his side, got in a fighting stance, and said, “Ready, Charlie? And … GO!”

Charlie placed the pumpkin on the snow pile, and immediately fell backwards screaming, a look of horror and amazement on his face. The pile of snow with the pumpkin had turned into some type of animated snowman. Sticks had sprouted out of its sides, and it was hurling snowballs that it seemed to procure from nowhere rapid-fire at Jayden, who was running towards the snowman. Jayden was agile – not one of the snowballs hit him as he charged the snowy beast.

Then, as Jayden reached the snowman, he jumped in the air and did a sort of midair twirl, just dodging one of the snowballs, and his axe sliced through the bottom chunk of the snowman. Another twirl saw the middle section cleaved in two, and with another jumping spin the axe sliced clear through the pumpkin head. The snowman was seriously damaged, not throwing snowballs any more, and seemed to be struggling just to stay upright. Jayden was ruthless, though, and with one last jump into the air he delivered an almighty blow with the axe straight down on the snowman’s head. The entire pile of pumpkin and snow fell to two sides, snowballs rained onto the ground, and the pumpkin burst apart and split into nothing but seeds and a few pieces of orange flesh.

Completely ignoring the gaping mouths of his three students, Jayden wiped the snow and pumpkin guts off his axe and calmly walked across the red line.

Stan, Charlie, and Kat exploded into cheers. None of them was entirely sure what they had just seen, but it was certainly spectacular. “That was amazing!” Stan yelled.

“Yeah, it was! And what exactly was that thing you just killed?” asked Kat.

“Oh, that was just a Snow Golem,” explained Jayden. “They use snowballs to keep away monsters and unwanted guests. So, which of you wants to try first?”

The smile fell from Stan’s face. He had forgotten that he would have to do what Jayden had just done. Jayden made it look so easy! What if I just end up looking like an idiot? Stan thought.

“I’ll take the bullet,” Charlie said meekly, stepping forwards. The others looked surprised, even Jayden, though he still tossed Charlie the axe. Charlie never volunteered to go first.

“Well, snowballs don’t hurt, do they?” said Charlie, taking his stance as Jayden readied the Golem. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Famous last words, thought Stan.

And he turned out to be right, as Charlie’s trial was a bona fide disaster. The second Jayden yelled go, Charlie dashed forwards, but he instantly fell back on his butt, still grabbing the handle of the axe – he had clearly underestimated its weight. With Charlie on the ground, the Snow Golem had a clear shot at Charlie with the snowballs. Each snowball knocked Charlie into the air a little, but he was so bad at dodging them that he was actually blasted into the air by the rapid-fire stream of snow. It was only a hoe thrown spear-style by Crazy Steve, which impaled itself in the Golem’s face, that stopped Charlie from being lifted to a fatal height. Still, Charlie was pretty badly hurt when he fell back down, and a disgruntled Jayden had to pull out another golden apple to fix Charlie’s leg.

Kat’s trial was almost as bad. She decided to throw the axe with all her considerable strength towards the Golem’s head. It would have worked had her aim been better. The flying axe ended up hitting and killing a cow in the adjacent field. From there, it was all Kat could do to keep from being lifted into the air as Charlie had. She was better at dodging than him, but she had no weapons, and she only dodged about half the rapid-fire snowballs. Jayden had to pull out a bow and arrows from the chest and fire three shots into the Snow Golem’s pumpkin head to put an end to it.

Finally, Stan took the axe. He dropped into a fighting stance with a nervous pit in his stomach. He hoped he wouldn’t just drop the axe like Charlie, or do something else to make himself look stupid. Jayden put the pumpkin head in place, the Snow Golem became animated, and Stan took off.

The first thing he noticed was that the axe wasn’t as heavy as he had thought. It felt rather light in his hand as he ran with it trailing behind him. The second thing he noticed was how easy it was to dodge the snowballs – he simply knew when to duck and weave around them, and in no time, Stan had reached the Snow Golem. What happened next was so incredible that even Jayden didn’t believe his eyes.

As he neared the Snow Golem, Stan had a brilliant idea. Instead of trying to copy what Jayden had done and doing a triple spin, Stan launched himself forwards into the air and spun with all his might, axe stretched in front of him. He slammed into the Snow Golem with such speed and such incredible revolution that the Golem was cut into dust as if it was in a blender set to liquefy.

Stan landed with one hand and two feet on the ground, well past the red line, breathing hard, his axe held in the remaining hand, and there was no evidence that there had ever been an enemy there. Nobody could even see any pieces of the pumpkin. The only evidence of the snow was the light dust hanging in the air, creating a rainbow in the light from the square sun.

There was an absolute explosion of cheers from Charlie, and Kat and Jayden just looked amazed. Stan’s smile filled his face. The move had seemed so natural, so easy! Then he noticed Crazy Steve’s face, and his smile faltered.

The look was shrewd and calculating. It was as if the old-timer was seeing Stan for the first time and was now trying to figure something out about him, as if there were something hidden in Stan’s pixilated body that he was trying to decipher. But his friends came over, and Stan soon forgot about the old farmer.

“That was amazing!” cried Kat.

“Wow! Awesome, man!” exclaimed Charlie.

“How did you do that!?” asked Jayden, eyes wide.

Stan shrugged, unable to stop grinning. “I don’t know. It just kind of happened.”

“Well, it was amazing!” Kat said again, and Charlie nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

“I think we may have just found your talent!” said a smiling Jayden. Stan’s heart leaped. And as the training continued, it seemed that Stan had indeed discovered something that he could do without trying. Like Charlie with the pickaxe and Kat with the sword, Stan blew away all the others in the sparring ring. He even managed to just beat out Jayden. Now Jayden was even more impressed, not to mention slightly jealous.

After a farming lesson that was no problem at all (though none of them particularly liked farming, they were all capable of doing it with ease, and Steve really appreciated the help convincing the stubborn Mooshrooms to breed), they put away their axes and hoes and headed out. Jayden was just about to exit under the hedge when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

“Yo, Jay!” Stan turned around and saw Crazy Steve speaking to Jayden. Jay turned. “Could I talk to Stan here for a few minutes?” Jay nodded and walked off, the others following behind him.

“Come on, noob,” said Steve as he walked back into the farm. Stan was apprehensive. He had had misgivings about Crazy Steve since the episode with the QPO and was not keen on talking with him one-on-one. When they got to the cow fence, Crazy Steve sat down on a stretch of fence and looked Stan straight in the eye.

“Look, kid,” said Crazy Steve, “I realize dat ya may not think much’a me since dat whole QPO thing, but I’ve been on this server a real long time. I’m level fifty-four, da highest in da village. I’ve got a whole lotta knowledge worked up about da server, who runs it, and how it works. Do me a favour and remember dat as I talk to ya, OK?” Stan nodded, unsure of where this was going.

“Like I said, I’ve been here a real long time, and frankly, da server’s never been in worse shape than it is right now. Don’t interrupt,” he added as Stan opened his mouth to ask what Crazy Steve was talking about. “Dem in Element City, dat run da government, dey don’t like people like ya. Freshies. Beginners. Noobs. Ya get it, don’cha?”

Stan nodded, his gut knotting at this revelation, and asked, “But why? Why do they not like us? And what does this have to do with me?”

Crazy Steve’s reply was cut off when an arrow sunk into his temple.

Stan’s shock vanished immediately when he heard the twang of another arrow being fired. He rolled off the fence and grabbed the iron hoe that Crazy Steve had dropped. He threw it in the direction of the arrow. The hoe connected, and Stan saw a player with a black ski mask, bare muscular chest, and black trousers and shoes stumble backwards, holding his face.

Stan used the time it took his attacker to recover to look at the player beside him. Crazy Steve had fallen to the ground and now lay unmoving, bleeding from the arrow in his head. All of the items that he carried were strewn on the ground about him. There was no doubt about it – he was dead.

Stan’s brain did not have time to process this horrific turn of events. He grabbed Crazy Steve’s iron axe and looked at the murderer just in time to see him send another arrow flying towards Stan’s head. He deflected it with the axe and then charged his assailant.

The murderer was now on the run. He had pulled out a piece of flint and an iron ring, and he was striking them together to create showers of sparks, setting fire to anything in his reach. The melons, the fence around the pigpen and the logs of cocoa beans were instantly set ablaze, and the fire was spreading fast, quickly blocking off Stan’s pursuit of the murderer.

Stan’s brain went into emergency mode. Without hesitating, he shoved all of Crazy Steve’s items into his own inventory, grabbed the old farmer’s body, and bolted towards the exit, yelling for Jayden. Stan burst through the hedge archway, which was already burning, and saw Jayden running back, a look of horror on his face, closely tailed by Kat and Charlie.

The second Jayden saw the burning farm his eyes widened in shock, but it was the sight of his dead brother that made him go completely berserk. He grabbed Stan by the shoulders and shook him back and forth, yelling, “What happened?”

“A player with a ski mask killed Steve, tried to kill me and then set the farm on fire!” choked out Stan. He found it hard to breathe due to the smoke and his horror at Crazy Steve’s untimely demise.

A flash of recognition showed momentarily in Jayden’s eyes, and Stan could tell that this … this … Griefer, with the ski mask, had struck before. Jayden yelled at the top of his lungs at the sky, cursing the Griefer, his eyes and veins bulging. Stan, Kat and Charlie stood beside him, looking terrified.

Stan stood there numb for the longest time. He was vaguely aware of Jayden breaking down sobbing next to him, of Adoria’s voice yelling, of people running past him with water buckets. He realized that the inferno was gradually dying down. Before long, there was no more fire to brighten the dark night that had fallen in the midst of the firefight.

Stan snapped out of his trance when he heard Sally’s voice next to him. “You all right, noob?” she asked gently.

Stan looked at her. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t all right, and that Crazy Steve could never return to the server due to his banishment, and that he couldn’t understand why someone would kill another player if they knew that eternal banishment was the consequence … but instead he looked her in the eye and said, “I’ll be all right.” Her eyes were full of tears, and he didn’t want to seem weak to her, not after she had believed in him.

“Sally, we have a big problem!” Adoria exclaimed as she rushed over to them, panic in her voice. “I think that there’s a possibility that this attack may not be isolated. We need to get all the lower-levels into the mine, but there won’t be room for all of them down there. The mine wasn’t meant to hold the number of people we have now. Any more than two-thirds of the current population would make it too susceptible to accidents. I’m out of ideas, Jayden’s still distraught, and Archie and G are still busy preparing to evacuate the lower-levels. What do you think we should do?”

The panic in her voice led Stan to speak. “We’ll leave,” he said. Sally and Adoria both stared at him. “We’ll leave, Charlie, Kat and I. If there’s any chance at all that there are more Griefers coming, we’d stand the best chance of survival. We’ve finished the programme. Send us out, ask for other volunteers to leave, and you can stay and defend everyone left in the village.”

Adoria opened her mouth to protest, but Sally cut her off. “That’s actually not bad thinking. Those who’ve completed the programme will have the best shot at surviving, and we upper-levels will have to stay here and defend the village. We can send volunteers who have completed the programme into the forest, towards the city.”

Adoria protested, “But what if they run into Griefers along the way?”

“They won’t,” Sally responded. “The Griefers avoid the main road in case they come across well-armed travellers. They’re cowards, all of them. And besides,” she added, smiling at Stan, “that Griefer didn’t run away for no reason. Am I right in thinking that you fought him off?” Stan nodded.

“OK,” Adoria said, and she ran off towards the mine, skirt billowing in the wind, to make the announcement.

Stan looked at Sally and said, “Sally, I—” but he was cut off by Sally kissing him on the cheek.

“Come back and visit someday,” she said, and she ran off to join Adoria. “Oh, and take some weapons and food from the storehouse!”

CHAPTER 7
THE THUNDERSTORM

I knew it! I knew it! I knew she likes me! Oh, man, I am definitely coming back to this village as soon as I can! Wow, I don’t know what I expected from this game, but that was not at the top of my list! Wow …

These were the thoughts that filled Stan’s head as he sprinted out of the Adorian Village, tailed by Kat and Charlie, as the rain started to fall. They had not been thrilled when he told them that they had to leave, but they were very excited at the prospect of new weapons.

Kat now ran right behind Stan with a bow slung over her back, a quiver of twelve arrows and a gleaming iron sword dangling at her side. Rex was dashing along at her heels. Charlie was close behind the dog, with an iron pickaxe in his hand, and a whole mess of watermelons in his inventory. He held the group’s food. Stan was in the lead, holding an iron axe in his hand and a crafting table, furnace and some coal in his inventory. They were well trained and on the move. In their minds, any enemies that they encountered out here, in the light rain that had started, were dead meat.

In due time, they stopped to take a breather. While they caught their breath, Charlie said, “Wow, what a day, right?”

“Yeah,” replied Kat. They certainly were in no mood for laughter, but they had recovered from the initial shock of Crazy Steve’s death.

“I still don’t get it, though,” she said. “Why did that guy pick Crazy Steve out as a target? He was a farmer! He helped lower-levels!”

Something connected in Stan’s mind as she said this. Crazy Steve’s last words came back to him. Them in Element City, that run the government, they don’t like people like you. Freshies. Beginners. Noobs.

“You don’t think that the assassin was with the government, do you?” asked Stan.

Charlie and Kat looked at him in shock. “Why would the government send out assassins to kill people that gave food to their lower-level citizens?” Kat asked sceptically.

“That’s just it, though,” said Stan, standing up. “He gave food to lower-level citizens.” He told them about his conversation with Crazy Steve and what the old farmer had said about the government.

This left Kat looking bewildered, while Charlie asked, “Why? How does that make any sense?”

“I don’t know,” Stan replied. “Crazy Steve was just about to tell me when …” He sighed, looked away from the other two, and sighed again. They got the message.

“It’s certainly a weird theory,” said Kat, also standing, “But we’ll think about it later. We need to get going!” She had to yell to be heard over the sound of the rain, which was falling hard now. Stan saw a lightning strike in the distance, which Rex barked at. In the illumination from the lightning, he noticed a tower a way off, right in the middle of the path.

“What’s that?” he asked, gesturing to it.

“What’s what?” yelled Kat.

“That, the tower up there!” he yelled back, and another lightning strike illuminated the sky, letting Kat and Charlie see the tower as well.

“Maybe it’s a shelter! Or another player’s house!” yelled Charlie.

“Maybe! Let’s go there, because we need to get out of this storm! This lightning is getting dangerous!” screamed Kat over the whistling wind and pounding rain.

The thunderstorm was beginning to get dangerous, with the bolts extremely frequent now. Once, lightning struck a tree right next to Kat and it caught fire, causing her to give a screech of surprise. Fortunately it was immediately extinguished by the rain.

As they approached the tower, they noticed that it was actually a pyramid, and that it covered the entire road. Stan was suspicious. Something felt wrong. As he walked closer, his suspicions were confirmed. The entire pyramid was made of stacked blocks of TNT.

“Why would someone put this here?” asked Kat.

“I don’t know, but I don’t feel safe near it,” replied Stan.

“Why?” asked Charlie, walking up to the pyramid. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

As if on cue, the worst thing did happen. Lightning struck the top of the pyramid, and the powder in the block was ignited. It began to flash dangerously.

“RUN!” screamed Stan as the block exploded. As the three players and Rex ran for it, the entire tower exploded from the top down, with each explosion sending lit TNT blocks flying everywhere like lava spewing from a volcano. Luckily, they escaped the range of the explosions with top-speed sprinting. As they gazed at the exploding pyramid it became clear that the explosives were underground, too. They could hear the explosions continue on for about sixty seconds before the tumult finally stopped.

The rain had died down, so they could talk in normal voices again. There was dust in the air now from the explosion, just like the Creeper explosion in the mine on the way to the Adorian Village. But this explosion was much larger, and it had blown a huge fissure in the middle of the road. They were cut off from the other side.

“The woods, then?” Stan said in an unnaturally high voice. They looked at each other. They remembered what Sally had said. The Griefers avoid the main road in case they come across well-armed travellers. Straying off the road would lead them directly into enemy territory.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, we don’t—” started Charlie, but he was cut off by Kat.

“Don’t kid yourself, Charlie. Stan’s right.” They could tell from her trembling lip that Kat was making a determined effort to keep her cool. “Come on,” she said, and she started into the woods, Rex at her heels, growling in a low tone. Charlie made a high-pitched squeal, but he forced himself to follow Stan into the forest.

It was dark. Stan could barely make out the neon orange of Kat’s shirt. Every now and then, there was another flash of lightning, and Stan could make out a Spider web, a tree trunk, a Zombie lumbering in the distance.

Suddenly, there was a rustling to Stan’s right. There was something in the underbrush, and it was running straight towards him. “Run!” he yelled, and he started running, hacking branches out of the way with his axe. Kat and Charlie looked confused for a second, but when they heard the rustling they followed suit.

Stan burst out of the forest and into the light, now on the other side of the giant crater. Kat burst out right after him, closely followed by Rex and Charlie. Stan whipped out his axe and raised it above his head, Kat drew her sword and dropped in a fighting stance, and Charlie held his pickaxe in trembling hands. Then, the thing that had been chasing them burst into the clearing.

“Are you kidding me? You were scared of this little guy?” laughed Kat as she walked up to the pig and stroked it behind the ears, which it seemed to like. Rex came up to the pig and started sniffing it.

“Honestly, Stan, don’t do that!” said Charlie, his eyes wide, holding his chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“I’m sorry, all right?” said Stan, but he was smiling. It was a cute little pig. “Kat, get Rex away from that pig. I could use some meat.” At Kat’s command Rex left the pig alone and sat at her feet. “Bye-bye, little guy,” said Stan, and he raised his axe and brought it down on the pig, just as lightning struck.

His axe was countered by a golden sword.

Kat’s jaw dropped, Charlie gave a yelp, and Stan nearly fell back, eyes wide, as he saw the monster that the pig had transformed into upon being struck by lightning.

It was like a player in form, and it had the general colour of a pig, but the flesh was rotting off all over its body, and part of its skull was showing through the side of its head. Its ribs stuck out of its stomach. It wore a brown loincloth, and in its hand was a golden sword that was locked against the steel of Stan’s axe. It appeared to Stan to be some king of pig-Zombie hybrid. And it looked mad.

The Pig-Zombie pressed the attack. It swung its sword in complicated patterns and drove Stan backwards. Stan tried to counter with his axe, but the attempts were futile. The Pig-Zombie’s golden blade dodged an axe blow and severed the axe’s blade from the handle. Stan’s weapon was destroyed.

Stan danced backwards, trying to avoid the sword slices, when a pickaxe flew through the air and embedded itself in the Pig-Zombie’s exposed skull. The attack did no damage whatsoever, but it had the intended effect. The Pig-Zombie turned his attention from Stan and now set its sights on Charlie.

Charlie might have thought through the desperate attack a little better, though. The Pig-Zombie was faster than he anticipated, and Stan watched in horror as the undead warrior rushed in and slashed Charlie’s leg and forehead. Charlie yelled out in pain, falling to the ground and grabbing his damaged limb and temple. The golden sword rose for the death blow, but before the inevitable strike, a white blur connected with the Pig-Zombie and it was knocked to the ground.

Rex, at Kat’s command, had tackled the Pig-Zombie. There was a moment when the two animals wrestled with each other, attempting to tear out the other’s throat, until Rex was finally overpowered. The dog was thrown to the edge of the crater, where he lay whimpering, unable to get up.

Upon seeing Charlie and her dog in such pain, Kat’s eyes blazed with fury, and she rushed the Pig-Zombie. The iron and golden blades clashed, and the two warriors began to fight. Kat’s skill was incredible, but was matched equally by the Pig-Zombie. And Kat was at an obvious disadvantage. She managed to slash the Pig-Zombie across the stomach once, but all that did was make some of its flesh fall off, not slowing it down in the least.

Stan felt hopeless. His axe was broken, Charlie was on the verge of death and Kat was beginning to wear out as she fought the Pig-Zombie. It was clear that it would take an incredibly powerful attack to finish off the Pig-Zombie, like an explosion of some sorts, like …

Stan suddenly felt something, like the air was static. He looked towards the source. A little ways down the road, a figure was emerging from the forest. It was as tall as he was, but with four squat legs. A Creeper. But there was something different about this one. It had little lines of electricity dancing around its body, and it was giving off a current that Stan could feel even from such a distance. It was as if the Creeper had been struck by lightning. Stan could sense that an explosion from a Creeper charged with so much electricity could be … fatal.

He knew what he had to do. He yelled, “Kat! Toss me the bow and arrows!”

Kat was tired from fighting the Pig-Zombie, and she knew that it would overpower her soon. As the Pig-Zombie slashed, she feinted back and gave an almighty attack with her sword, as if she were brandishing a baseball bat. The undead being flew backwards and slammed into a tree. She threw the bow and arrows to Stan, and took the opportunity to catch her breath.

Stan took the bow, positioned the arrow, took aim, and fired.

He hit his target. The arrow sunk deep into the Creeper’s head.

The Creeper looked at Stan. Its eyes glowed red, and the electric activity around its body increased significantly. Then the monster charged, full speed, towards them.

“What do you think you’re doing?” yelled Kat, but she had to turn her eyes back to her own fight. The Pig-Zombie was back on its feet, and it gave her a cut across the back that sent her tumbling. Her sword flew high into the air.

Stan knew that he couldn’t allow himself to think of his two fallen friends until he completed the task at hand. He caught Kat’s iron sword and rushed at the Pig-Zombie. The swords collided, and the two struggled to overpower each other. Stan stared into the beast’s face, noticing that one of its eyes was nothing more than an empty socket, and he saw out of the corner of his right eye that the Creeper was almost upon him. Stan feinted back and used all his remaining strength to thrust the sword into the Pig-Zombie’s stomach. Before the undead fiend had time to react, Stan flung the Pig-Zombie over his head, and it collided with the hissing Creeper. Stan dived out of the way just as he heard the tremendous explosion behind him.

Stan was badly rattled from the blast, and he knew that he’d been injured during the fight, but he forced himself to get up and survey the scene around him. Charlie was lying on the side of the road, the cuts on his head and leg bleeding. Rex lay on the edge of the crater, still whimpering. Kat was nowhere to be found. In the place where the two monsters had collided there was a crater, three times bigger than a normal crater caused by a Creeper explosion. The Pig-Zombie was gone, and all that remained was a pile of rotten meat and a bloodstained gold sword.

Wasting no time, Stan started to walk to the crater. Each step was excruciating, but he had to save his friends. He scooped up the golden sword and put both swords into his inventory. He held the rotten flesh in his hands. This he fed to Rex, whose tail instantly shot up, and he became the same dog again, licking Stan’s hand.

Stan hobbled over to Charlie next. He wasn’t moving at all, and his wounds looked worse up close. Fearing the worst, Stan reached into Charlie’s inventory and pulled out a watermelon slice. He stuffed it into Charlie’s mouth, hoping for a sign of life. To his relief, Charlie slowly started to chew the watermelon and then gave a sigh. Stan sighed, too, now sure that Charlie would be all right if he could find the right treatment quickly enough.

That left Kat. Stan had no idea where she was. He couldn’t see her anywhere. He was just starting to panic when he heard a raspy, female voice calling his name from within the crater made by the pyramid explosion. He looked into it and saw Kat lying spread-eagle on a ledge about five blocks down. As Stan punched his way through the dirt to get down to help her, it became clear that Kat had had the wind knocked out of her. Her breathing was shallow and raspy.

With great difficulty, Stan and Kat made their way out of the colossal crater and then, without a word, both fell to the ground, unconscious.

Stan woke up to the feel of Rex licking his face. Judging by the fact that it was early morning and the sky was no longer grey, they had been out cold for a while. Stan sat up and woke Kat.

“It’s funny,” she said with a grimace. “Each day I think this game couldn’t get any more dangerous.”

Stan nodded. He understood what she meant. “Well, let’s hurry. We have to get Charlie some help as soon as possible, and I have a hunch that we’ll find that in Element City.” Kat nodded and stood up. Looking at himself, he saw that he was covered in dust and debris from the explosion. “We’d both better jump in the water when we get a chance, too,” said Stan. “We’re a mess!”

Kat didn’t say anything, but got up and walked slowly and painfully over to Charlie. Stan followed right behind her. Together, with extreme difficulty, they slung the unconscious Charlie onto their shoulders, and started limping down the path once again.

It was agony. The Creeper’s explosion had damaged something within Stan, and every breath he took felt detached, like it was hurting rather than helping him. Kat, on the other hand, had a huge slash on her back from battling the Pig-Zombie, and she might have also suffered more injuries from being thrown into the crater. Charlie wasn’t capable of doing anything to help. The wounds to his head and leg were severe, and the thought of these wounds not healing was the only thing pushing Kat and Stan to continue down the path.

After what seemed like an entire day (though, in reality, the sun was high in the sky, and it was only about noon), a wall came into view. It was a huge wall, and the only things that Stan could see over the wall were the tall towers of what looked like a castle. Stan was just noticing the guards pacing back and forth on top of the wall, armed with bows, when something inside him gave an awful lurch. He found himself falling, blacking out before he had even hit the ground.

CHAPTER 8
PROCLAMATION DAY

When Stan woke up, he found himself lying on the ground. There were dirt and weeds beneath him, and brick walls rose on both sides of him. He had just noticed this when he saw Kat squatting down next to him, stuffing a golden apple into the unconscious Charlie’s mouth. Stan noticed that the cut on her back had vanished. She must have eaten a golden apple as well.

“Oh, Kat … what happened?” Stan asked, his hand to his head, as Charlie began to stir, his cuts already completely vanished.

“You passed out,” Kat said. “Right outside the gate. You and Charlie were both down, and I knew that I needed golden apples. None of the guards would even talk to me, and I had to look through about three shops before I found one that was willing to trade for three golden apples. I gave him the crafting table, the furnace and coal, the bow, the eleven arrows, the iron and golden swords, and most of the watermelon, and he still seemed to think that I was almost stealing by taking the apples from him.”

“Wait,” said Stan, trying to process what she had said. “Questions. What do you mean, shops?”

“Oh, well, we made it to Element City. Apparently, that’s what that wall was.” Stan noticed a row of buildings with players swarming in the streets. “And right at the entrance is the merchant’s area. They barter from inside their shops.”

“OK,” Stan said. “Where are we now?”

“Oh, I just dragged you two into the nearest convenient alleyway and then got the golden apples.”

“OK so … wait a minute … crafting table … furnace, coal … bow, arrows … two swords … watermel— You gave him all our stuff!?” Charlie said, for he’d recovered and was listening now, too.

“And he still thought I was ripping him off, even though I was still bleeding really bad myself,” said Kat, shaking her head. “I tell you, the people here are total jerks compared to the Adorian Village.”

Stan remembered how Adoria had hesitated before telling them that going to Element City was a good idea. This must be what she meant, he thought.

“I’ll say, though,” said Kat. “The guy seemed really surprised when I said that the wounds were from a Zombie Pigman. Apparently they—”

“Wait, what’s a Zombie Pigman?” asked Charlie.

The other two stared at him for a minute. Then Kat said, “Charlie, are you dense?”

Charlie looked confused.

“Dude, what did we just fight? What gave you cuts on the head and leg?”

Charlie concentrated for a second, and then his face lit up. “Oh, I get it! ’Cause it’s a Zombie but it looks like a pig and has the body shape of a man!”

Kat and Stan glanced at each other.

“Let’s hope that’s just a side effect of the apple,” said Kat dismissively. “Anyway, we’re here now, and Goldman told me that the thing that you want to do once you get here is get a job. They offer you lodging and food, and you work for them. Sometimes they’ll offer you a more tedious task, and they’ll pay you in materials. Those materials can be traded for other things that you need, and eventually you’ll be able to open your own house that you buy on the real estate market and open your own business beneath it.”

As she finished her monologue, Stan and Charlie looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“When did you spend so much time talking to G?”

“And why did you call him ‘Goldman’?”

Kat rolled her eyes. “I talked to him at night after training. It’s nice to talk to someone who knows what he’s talking about. And for the record, he prefers to be called Goldman, but he lets people call him G because Goldman is kind of a mouthful. I don’t mind, though,” she added, as Charlie and Stan sniggered. “Let’s go find jobs.”

And with that, the trio stood up, ate the last three watermelon slices, and, with nothing left to their names, walked out of the alley and into the street.

The city was breathtaking. The cobblestone streets were overflowing with people walking down the blocks. Above their heads, a monorail-like system of railroad tracks ran above the houses. And the houses were everywhere. The ground floors of the houses were various stores and shops, with the living quarters situated above.

Overlooking this metropolis were skyscrapers. The area they were in was clearly the merchants’ district, but there were other zones of the city as well, and one of them was filled with skyscrapers. The tallest buildings were three towers, connected by bridges at various points. The middle was crowned by a slender spire. However, the main building of this city was clearly the castle.

Raised up significantly higher than the skyscrapers, this building stretched into the clouds at its peak. The tallest towers of the castle, the ones that could be seen from outside the city over the high wall, must have literally been able to touch the clouds. And the castle was wide, too – it stretched halfway across the city. Even from this distance, they could clearly make out the flag flying from the castle’s bridge. It was emblazoned with a design of three beings: a Creeper, a cow and a player with pale skin, blond hair and a gold crown, who Stan guessed must be the King.

Kat let the boys marvel at the city for a few minutes, but then she forced them to start walking around and asking for work. They went door to door, asking if there were three jobs available. Stan noticed a pattern throughout the process. Whenever they asked for jobs, the first question that was asked was what level they were. Every time they said that Kat was level eight, Stan was level six, and Charlie was level five, they were turned down without further questioning.

After their twelfth rejection, Kat was looking exasperated and Charlie was looking downright irritated. Stan was about to say that they call it quits and tough it out in the alley for the night when he heard a noise behind him.

“Psst!”

His immediate thought was, Creeper! Being the target of three Creeper attacks will do that to a player. He whipped around and made to draw his axe (which he had forgotten he no longer had), but he realized that it was not a Creeper. A player gestured to them from a store across the street. This player had on the most bizarre getup they had ever seen. He appeared to be dressed as a black crow, complete with a yellow beak on his face.

“Psst! Come here, you three!” he whispered, which Stan didn’t get, seeing as all the other stores were closing for the night. And besides, why would he want to keep their visit secret from the neighbours? It all seemed a little sketchy to Stan.

The lights turned on as Stan followed the player across the street and into a store. He saw shelves and shelves stocked with rotten flesh, bones, string, Spider eyes and other things that were taken from the monsters of Minecraft. He also noticed the weapons. Swords of various materials were laid out on tables. Axes hung from hooks on the ceiling. An entire wall was completely covered with hanging bows. There were also mannequins dressed in full sets of leather, iron and diamond armour. Stan was impressed. He had a feeling that if this player wanted to hire them, he would like the job quite a lot.

They climbed up a ladder in the back of the shop and into the player’s house. It was very simple. The only items inside were torches on the walls, a bed, two chairs, a sapling tree on a block of dirt, some chests, a crafting table, a furnace and a counter with a machine with a button on it.

“Sit,” the player said. While Charlie and Kat sat on the chairs and Stan on the floor, they saw the player walk over to the machine and press the button four times. Four loaves of bread popped out of a hole in the front of the machine. He handed three of these to his guests and kept the fourth for himself. He sat down on the bed.

“Am I correct in thinking that you three are looking for jobs?” the player asked.

“Yes,” Kat said. “We’re new here—”

“Sh, sh, shhh!” said the player, looking nervous. For whatever reason, he clearly didn’t wish to be heard. “Not so loud! My name is Blackraven100, and I’m looking for some helping hands in my hunting business.”

“What do you mean, hunting business? Hunting what?” asked Charlie.

“Oh, right, I keep forgetting that you three are … lower-level players,” he whispered, as if it were an awful word. “You see, some rich players like to go hunting for Zombies and other mobs for sport. It’s great fun if you’re well prepared, and you can get some pretty valuable loot. I used to be one of those hunters, but ever since I passed level fifty, I don’t find it as fun as I used to. Now, I sell all the loot that I collected over the years, and I plan to buy an unsettled plot of land that I can build on.

“Unfortunately, my supply has begun to dwindle, and now I need some help with my hunting while I tend the shop. I need players to go into the woods, kill all the monsters that they can find, and bring the loot back to me. The pay will be high. So, what do you say? Obviously I would be happy to lodge and feed you.”

He looked at them expectantly. Stan, Kat and Charlie looked at each other. Stan was nodding, and Charlie was shrugging with a smile, so Kat said, “That sounds good. Thank you for hiring us. Nobody else would. By the way, why wouldn’t any of the others hire us? We’re very grateful that you hired us,” she quickly added, at which Stan and Charlie nodded. “But I’d still like to know.”

Blackraven closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. “Oh, some of the higher-level players here have a prejudice against anyone under, say, level fourteen or fifteen. It’s stupid, really. They say the upper-levels have been on the server longer and have had to fight their way to the top, and the lower-levels today don’t have to work as hard because they are building off what the upper-levels have done.”

Kat’s and Stan’s mouths dropped open, and Charlie actually said loudly, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! Do you know what we’ve been through since—”

“Ssssshhhhhhhh!” said Blackraven, cutting Charlie off. “The people around here aren’t fond of upper-level players who treat lower-levels kindly. Personally, I think that the whole thing is nonsense, but I can’t afford to voice the opinion when so many around me think that it isn’t.

“Now, let’s go to bed,” he said. He walked to the chest and pulled out some wool and wood. He walked over to the crafting table, and within minutes there were four beds lined up around the room, each occupied by a player.

As he lay in bed, Stan wondered if this unjust prejudice against lower-level players had been the motive of the Griefer that killed Crazy Steve, or even … the motive that drove Mr A, the Griefer that had tried to kill them so many days ago. Perhaps a lower-level player had once robbed him of his items, and he was struggling to get back what he had once had. Yes, that would make perfect sense

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.