“I’m sorry.” Peter held his diamond sword tightly. “They escaped.”
Mr. Anarchy stood and watched the gang battle the trio of griefers. Simon looked over at him. “Aren’t you going to help us?”
Otto shouted at Mr. Anarchy, “No, you work with us. You know how to play this game right. You know it’s about survival and it’s not about working together or building pointless theme parks that only distract you for a little while. You know it’s all about control.”
“I don’t know,” Mr. Anarchy stuttered. “I don’t know what it’s about.”
“Help!” Lily cried as Emma slammed a diamond sword against her arm.
“I can’t,” Mr. Anarchy cried.
“You have to!” Lily was reaching out for Mr. Anarchy.
“How can you ask me to help you? You know why I can’t,” he pleaded.
“I’ll give you milk. I’ll make sure you won’t get destroyed,” she promised.
“I can’t take that chance. Being on Hardcore mode means the end of me. I can’t trust that Ronan and Pablo haven’t put me on Hardcore mode,” Mr. Anarchy said as he darted away from Emma’s sword.
Lily intervened and struck Emma. Lily knew Mr. Anarchy possessed special skills that the other griefers seemed to lack. She had to get him off of Hardcore mode so she could convince him to use his intelligence to help others, but she wasn’t sure how she could do it.
Mr. Anarchy was frozen. He didn’t know what to do.
Otto aimed his arrow at Mr. Anarchy and struck his arm. Mr. Anarchy grabbed his arm. “Don’t do that again, Otto.”
“You’re a traitor. You didn’t help us escape, and now you’re going to let us battle these players on our own. You aren’t a griefer. You just cause grief!” Otto shouted.
Lily was shocked when the trio of griefers stopped battling them and started to attack Mr. Anarchy. He didn’t fight back. He just grabbed some milk and drank it.
Simon cried out in pain when an arrow struck his arm. He turned around to see Pablo and Ronan sprinting toward him. He leapt at Pablo with his diamond sword, but Pablo just brushed off the blow.
“What’s going on here?” Pablo questioned Otto and the others.
“Mr. Anarchy wouldn’t help us fight,” Emma replied as she pounded her sword into Mr. Anarchy’s arm.
“Leave him alone,” Pablo demanded. “He’s useless.”
“Useless,” Mr. Anarchy repeated without any expression.
“We thought he knew how to get off this server, but he can’t do anything. He doesn’t even have our backs,” said Pablo.
“When we needed you, you weren’t there,” added Ronan.
Mr. Anarchy didn’t reply. He just looked at the group of griefers and, using his last bit of strength, he grabbed a potion of invisibility and splashed it on himself to disappear.
10
BACK TO THE OVERWORLD
“Where did he go?” Lily called out, but she didn’t get a response. Instead Emma, Otto, and Matthew aimed their bows and arrows at her. When they fired, Lily was instantly destroyed.
Lily respawned in her bed and let out a sigh of relief. She was glad her house was still standing.
“Lily!” Robin called out. “You’re here!”
“Where’s Blossom?”
Robin spoke quickly. “She’s been taken prisoner.”
“By who?” asked Lily.
“I guess when we were gone, Otto, Emma, and Matthew escaped. They recruited the townspeople to be a part of their army.”
“Recruited?” Lily was suspicious. She assumed Otto, Emma, and Matthew used fear tactics to convince all of the townspeople to become griefers. She hoped that she could reason with them.
“It doesn’t matter how they got the entire town to join forces with them. The problem is that it’s going to be a tougher battle than we ever imagined.” Robin’s voice shook. Lily knew Robin must have seen some truly awful things happen in the town to be this frightened.
Lily looked out the window, realizing that the sky was cloudy and it was raining. “Rain! Now we have to fight hostile mobs, too!”
“And we have to free Blossom,” said Robin.
The duo didn’t wait for the rain to stop. They sprinted into the center of town and made their way to the prison.
Lily felt an arrow pierce her back. “Ouch!” she cried.
“Skeletons!” Robin called out.
Lily turned around and saw an enormous skeleton army standing behind her. She grabbed a potion of strength and drank it, then grabbed another potion and splashed it on the skeletons.
“We have to destroy them while they’re weak. I don’t have that many resources left,” Lily told her friend.
Robin and Lily struck the bony beasts, destroying multiple monsters. When each skeleton was destroyed, Lily picked up the bones they dropped on the ground.
“Watch out!” Robin called to Lily, but it was too late.
Kaboom!
The creeper exploded and Lily lost hearts. “I don’t have any milk left,” Lily cried as she spotted a horde of zombies lumbering toward them.
“We need help,” Robin wailed as the rain fell and the hostile mobs continued to spawn in the dimly lit town.
Lily noticed a few familiar townspeople in the distance. “Maybe we can get them to help us.”
“No!” Robin was frightened. “We have to get away from them. They attacked me before. They’re also the same people who put Blossom in the bedrock prison. They believe we’re the enemy.”
“How can that be possible?” Lily thought this was a ridiculous idea, but she quickly changed her mind when the townspeople spotted them and started to shoot arrows at them.
“Surrender!” one of the townspeople called out.
“We’re not your enemy,” Lily pleaded.
Her inventory was low. She was cold. It was raining. There were zombies lurking close by, and she saw skeletons spawning in the distance. Lily was ready to surrender. She was fed up.
The townsperson shot an arrow at Lily. She only had one heart left. “You’re our prisoner now.”
Lily bowed her head, sighed, and surrendered.
Robin followed Lily as they were escorted into the bedrock prison that they had once constructed for Mr. Anarchy, Emma, Otto, and Matthew.
Though she didn’t know what would happen next, Lily was happy to be reunited with Blossom.
“I can’t believe they captured you,” Blossom said.
“I know.” Lily’s head was down. She was devastated. “It appears that the entire town is now a part of a griefer army.”
“Yes,” Blossom explained, “Otto, Emma and Matthew convinced the entire town that we knew the way off the server. They said that we were the reason no one was getting back home.”
“How could they believe that?” Lily questioned.
“Everyone is desperate. They’ll believe anything.” Robin tried to understand the reasoning behind the townspeople’s decision to join the griefer army.
“How are we going to get out of here?” Lily moaned.
Lily was utterly surprised when she heard a voice call out, “I can help you.”
11
COMMAND BLOCKS
“Mr. Anarchy!” Lily couldn’t believe it. “How did you find us?”
Robin quickly added, “And can you help us?”
Blossom questioned her friends, “Help us? But he’s evil. He’s one of them.”
Lily’s heart skipped a beat. She was waiting for Mr. Anarchy to realize his power and join them in their dream of escaping the server. She hoped he’d make the right choice. She looked at him and smiled. “Show them you’ve changed, Mr. Anarchy. Robin and I can’t be the only ones who have noticed it.”
“I want to change. I really do,” he confessed.
“Why are you so evil?” Blossom questioned.
“Tell them, they’ll understand,” Lily said gently.
“But how can I? After all I’ve done?” he questioned.
“You�
��re not the only one who lost hope along the way. We all have at some point, but you were zapped onto the server alone. We, at least, were together when we got stuck here. If I didn’t have Simon and Michael, I might be bitter, too,” Lily sympathized.
“How did you know I felt that way?” Mr. Anarchy smiled, and let out a sigh of relief. “You really understand.”
“You don’t have to be alone,” Lily said. “Help us.”
“How?” he asked.
“You’ve done it before.” There was a twinkle in Lily’s eye as she spoke to Mr. Anarchy.
“I will help you. I’m sorry I’ve caused all of this,” Mr. Anarchy confessed.
“How can we trust you?” Blossom wasn’t convinced Mr. Anarchy was telling the truth. “Weren’t you zapping people onto this server just a few days ago?”
Mr. Anarchy had no response.
“What made you change your mind?” Blossom protested. “You just zapped Sunny and me onto the server, and now you claim that you’re good. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Mr. Anarchy explained, “I thought Pablo and Ronan could help me with a plan I had for getting off the server. They questioned my power, and I had to find a way to prove it to them, which is why I zapped you and Sunny onto the server. I apologize for that, and I will do anything in my power to help both of you escape from this world.”
“How?” Blossom wanted to go home very badly. Every time she thought about her home, she started to tear up.
“I have a plan that could get us off this server,” said Mr. Anarchy.
“What is it?” asked Lily.
“It’s rather complicated, and I need command blocks. All of my command blocks are in a stronghold in the jungle biome.”
“How are we going to get to the jungle biome?” asked Robin.
“I’m not sure,” Mr. Anarchy answered honestly, “but we’re going to have to come up with a plan together.”
“Where is everyone else?” asked Lily. “Where’s Michael? He was destroyed and I thought he’d respawn in Lisimi Village.”
“I saw Michael,” Robin said. “He was battling townspeople. I tried to help him, but he disappeared. I’m not sure if he saw me.”
“We have to find him, and the others,” said Lily.
“Don’t you think everyone will eventually end up here?” Blossom questioned.
“Yes, I’m sure they’ll be captured. There’s no doubt about that, since we are seriously outnumbered, but we can’t wait around for them to arrive.” Lily wanted to break out of the prison. She wanted to find her friends and she wanted to stop the townspeople. They had to realize they had made the wrong decision. She had to convince the townspeople that they had been tricked.
Mr. Anarchy said, “I know a way to escape. Does anybody have a pickaxe?”
Suddenly Lily remembered the hole on the floor that she had seen inside Mr. Anarchy’s prison cell. She replied, “I don’t have a pickaxe.”
“I do,” Blossom grabbed a pickaxe from her inventory.
“Could it be that we only have one pickaxe?” Mr. Anarchy searched through his inventory, but his pickaxe was missing. Robin couldn’t find one either. “I guess we’ll have to make do with this one.” Mr. Anarchy banged his pickaxe into the prison floor.
Lily looked down and spotted a large tunnel. “Wow, can we really escape from here?”
“We have to keep digging the tunnel. I was never able to finish it,” said Mr. Anarchy.
“How did you do this? This is a bedrock prison,” Robin marveled.
Mr. Anarchy smiled. “A good magician never reveals the secret to his tricks.”
Lily knew Mr. Anarchy still carried many secrets, and he was once one of the most powerful griefers in the Overworld, but she had to trust him as they climbed into the tunnel and made their escape from the bedrock prison.
12
SWAMPLAND
“Should we place a torch on the wall?” Blossom asked. “I’ve only been in a tunnel while playing the game, never while actually in it. Sunny and I were traveling to a stronghold and we placed a torch on the wall.” Blossom began to sniffle as she reminisced about playing the game with Sunny.
Lily was stunned when Mr. Anarchy attempted to comfort Blossom. “It’s okay. We will get you out of here. Don’t cry.”
Lily remarked, “Wow, you’ve changed, Mr. Anarchy.” After checking her inventory, she added, “My inventory is empty. I don’t have a torch. The only thing I have left is a diamond sword.”
Robin had a torch, so she placed it on the wall. But the light wasn’t strong enough to stop hostile mobs from spawning.
“Skeletons!” Lily shouted.
Three bony beasts aimed their bows and arrows at the gang. Mr. Anarchy ran toward the skeletons and struck one with his diamond sword.
Lily, Robin, and Blossom followed Mr. Anarchy, and together they slayed the skeletons. Mr. Anarchy called out, “It looks like it’s all clear.”
“How are we going to dig the rest of the hole? We only have one pickaxe,” Lily reminded Mr. Anarchy.
“We’re going to work together,” he replied as he banged the pickaxe against the wall.
Lily was speechless.
Mr. Anarchy called out, “I see light!”
Blossom stood next to him. “Yes, I think we can crawl out of the hole.”
Mr. Anarchy helped Blossom make her way through the small hole and onto a grassy patch. Lily, Robin, and Mr. Anarchy followed Blossom.
“It’s getting dark,” Mr. Anarchy commented as he looked up at the sky.
“Do you think we should build a house for the night?” suggested Lily.
“No, we’re too close to town. It will leave us extremely vulnerable to the townspeople. They will be looking for us when they notice we’ve escaped,” Mr. Anarchy said. Beckoning to them, he sprinted toward the next biome.
Lily bit her lip, but she followed the gang when everyone else ran after Mr. Anarchy.
After they’d run for a while, Mr. Anarchy looked up at the sky. “We have to build a house now. Soon it will be too late.”
“Here?” questioned Lily. “On the edge of the swamp biome?”
“It’s fine,” Blossom said. “If we build it quickly we won’t get attacked by slimes or witches.”
Lily shuddered. “I guess we have to build the house super fast.”
Everyone grabbed resources from their inventories and constructed the house. Lily didn’t have anything in her inventory, and she felt useless. “What can I do to help?”
Robin handed Lily a wooden plank, and Lily helped construct the house with Robin’s resources. As she placed the wooden plank on the ground, another bat flew close to her head.
“A witch!” Robin cried.
Lily turned to see a purple-robed witch rushing toward them. Lily grabbed the only thing left in her inventory, a diamond sword, and took a deep breath.
The witch leapt at Robin, splashing a potion of harming on her. Lily struck the witch with her diamond sword. The witch lost a heart but was able to splash a potion on Lily. Lily was weak and didn’t have the energy to strike the witch again.
Mr. Anarchy sprinted toward the witch and fearlessly slayed the evil mob. The witch dropped a spider eye, and Mr. Anarchy picked it up and ran over to Lily. He handed her milk and the spider eye. “Here, take this. I want to help you replenish your inventory. It’s my fault that it’s empty. I was the one who made you use up all of your supplies in unnecessary battles.”
Lily sipped the milk and handed it back to Mr. Anarchy. He gave the milk to Robin, who drank it and restored her energy.
Robin thanked Mr. Anarchy. “I can’t believe you’re the same person who caused so much destruction in our lives.”
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Anarchy said and then hurried back to the house they were building. They had to finish the house before nightfall.
As they put the finishing touches on the house, Blossom heard a noise, and she paused. “What’s that?” Blossom questioned.
&nb
sp; Boing! Boing! Boing!
“It sounds like slimes!” exclaimed Lily.
Mr. Anarchy placed the door on the house. “The house is complete.”
“Let’s battle these slimes! We won’t be able to sleep unless we do,” Robin told the group. She sprinted in the direction of the slimes and slammed her sword into the first slime that approached them.
With multiple strikes from their diamond swords, the group was able to defeat the slimes. They were ready to go back to the house, when they heard a voice call out to them.
Lily couldn’t see who was calling to them. She feared it was a townsperson who wanted to attack them. She was exhausted from battling the swamp mobs and didn’t want to engage in another battle, but she had to find out who was in the swamp.
Robin said, “I recognize that voice.”
Lily heard the voice call out again.
“Help!”
“It sounds like they need our help!” Blossom walked in the direction of the voice.
Under a full moon, the group trekked through the dark swamp. They spotted Michael by the edge of a murky river, surrounded by slimes.
“Michael,” Lily called to her friend, “we can help you.”
Michael was losing hearts and he needed all the help he could get. Lily and the others annihilated the slimes. Mr. Anarchy handed Michael a potion of healing.
“Mr. Anarchy?” Michael questioned. “Why are you helping me?’”
“We’ll explain later,” Lily told him. “It’s too dangerous to be out in the swamp biome at night. We just built a house. We can take you there.”
The group ran toward the house. When they entered, they quickly crafted beds.
As Lily climbed into bed and pulled the wool covers over herself, she hoped she could really trust Mr. Anarchy. She wondered if he had truly changed his ways, or if this was a part of a larger, more sinister plan.
13
JOURNEY TO THE JUNGLE
When they awoke, Lily looked over at Mr. Anarchy’s bed, but it was empty. “Where did he go?”
Robin woke up and looked at Michael’s bed. “Michael is missing, too!”
Blossom walked toward the small window and looked out. “And it’s raining!”
Ghastly Battle Page 4
