“Who are you?” Edison asked as he pointed his diamond sword at the gray-haired man.
The man didn’t answer. Instead he slammed a diamond sword into Edison’s side, and Edison cried out in pain. Anna raced to Edison and handed him some milk to restore the hearts he lost from the attack. Billy lunged at the mysterious man, but as he swung his sword at the older man, the sword disappeared.
“What?” Billy looked at his empty hand in disbelief.
Anna and Princess Hannah grabbed their swords and raced to the old man, but when they reached him, their swords also vanished.
“You’re Hal,” said Edison. “You’re hacking the universe. You’re making things disappear.”
“Now I know why everyone thinks you’re such a talented detective. Good job, Edison.” With that comment, Hal splashed another potion on Edison, and he was destroyed.
Edison spawned in his bed, but he looked down, and Puddles wasn’t by his side. He called out for the ocelot, but Puddles didn’t arrive. Edison wanted to get back to his friends. When he tried to TP to them, it didn’t work.
“What’s going on?” Edison questioned, even though there was nobody there to hear him.
Edison attempted to TP again. As he tried, he lost a heart in his health bar. Now if he even attempted to TP, he would be damaged and lose hearts. He was panicked. He worried about Hal’s capabilities. Edison looked over at his potion stand. He wanted to brew more potions because he wanted to be prepared when he saw Hal. However, he realized he was still out of Nether wart, which was an essential ingredient.
“Edison!” Billy crashed through the door.
“What happened with Hal? Where are Anna and Princess Hannah?”
“It was awful.” Billy caught his breath. “They all disappeared.”
“What do you mean? He destroyed them?”
Billy replied, “No, he didn’t destroy them, but he has special powers. He’s a master hacker.”
“What type of powers? Where are they?” asked Edison.
“I don’t know, but I think they’re in the dungeon with Princess Hannah’s family.”
“We have to find them,” Edison said, then added, “I also can’t find Puddles.”
“Do you think Hal did something to the universe that removed the ocelots?” questioned Billy.
“I don’t know, but we have to find out,” said Edison.
The duo sprinted out of Edison’s bungalow toward the desert. But they stopped when they heard someone say, “Where do you think you’re going?”
7
ROBBED
Edison pulled a bottle of potion from his inventory, but like the diamond sword, it vanished before his eyes.
“What are you doing?” asked Edison.
“I have the power to take any item you own.” Hal walked closer to Edison and pressed an enchanted diamond sword against his chest.
“Why are you doing this?” Billy screamed as he sprinted toward Hal with a wooden sword. When Billy reached Hal, the sword was no longer in hands.
Hal replied, “Why not?” and disappeared.
“I’m so glad he’s gone.” Edison let out a sigh of relief.
“But he stole our swords. I had only a diamond sword and a wooden one, and now I don’t have any. What are we going to do? I can’t battle Hal or anyone now. We have to go mining so I can craft another one.” Billy said this all in one breath, and he was exhausted.
“I have only one sword left, or I’d lend you one. I do have a bunch of potions, but the only way we can fight him is if we surprise him,” said Edison.
“How can we surprise him? We don’t even know where he lives.” Billy was very upset. “And I want to find Anna. I don’t like the idea of her being trapped somewhere.”
“And Princess Hannah,” added Edison.
“Yes, we have to find them,” Billy agreed. “And we have to stop Hal, but how?”
How? That was a question they had asked a lot. They were always trying to solve cases, and with each case, there was a point where they were left questioning how they could solve it. At this point the case seemed impossible, but Edison and Billy never walked away from a challenge.
“We have to find Hal!” declared Billy.
“But how? Where is he?” asked Edison.
Edison was shocked when he heard a voice call out, “I’m right here. I’m everywhere.”
“Hal!” Billy screamed and lunged toward the gray-haired man, clutching his only bottle of potion from his inventory, but it vanished before he could throw it.
“You’re not playing fair,” Billy cried as Hal struck him with his diamond sword.
“Who said I had to play fair?” Hal asked as he sprinkled some potion of Invisibility on himself and disappeared.
Edison rushed to his friend’s side. “Are you okay?” Edison grabbed some milk from his inventory and handed it to his friend.
Billy sipped the milk. “What is wrong with that guy?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to stop him and find our friends.” As Edison spoke, he eyed his brewing stand and noticed the large chest where he stored all of his potions was missing. He sprinted to the stand. “Billy, I think Hal stole all of my potions.”
“How many do you have left in your inventory?”
Edison panicked when he counted the potions and realized he had only four bottles left. “Four.”
“I don’t have any. Before we stop Hal, we have to brew more potions,” Billy said. “If we don’t have a well-stocked inventory, we’re just wasting time.”
“I agree,” Edison said. “But I don’t have any Nether wart, and I need that to brew lots of potions. “
“We’re going to have to go to the Nether. I have all the supplies to build a portal in my inventory.” Billy walked out the door of the bungalow and began crafting a portal to the Nether.
“I’m not sure we should travel to the Nether now,” Edison said. “We should go to the desert and save our friends.”
“There’s no point if we don’t have any resources,” protested Billy.
“But why should we bother brewing a bunch of potions if Hal has the ability to steal from us?”
“We can’t even stage a surprise attack if we have no weapons,” Billy rationalized.
“What about a bow and arrow? Or we can use command blocks to summon a Wither or an Ender Dragon, and he’d have to battle those mobs.”
“And so would we,” Billy dismissed Edison’s strategies of attack.
“But the Nether? Now?”
“I think it’s the only way we can save our friends. You know I’m a good treasure hunter, and I’ll be able to gather all of the resources very quickly, right?”
“Yes, I know you’re a great treasure hunter, but still it’s a big trip.” Edison realized there was no reason to protest. The portal was almost finished because Billy had been constructing it the entire time Edison was trying to come up with another plan.
“Just put on your armor,” said Billy.
Edison pulled out his diamond armor and suited up. “I wish we didn’t have to go to the Nether.”
“I don’t know any other way. We will go to the Nether and gather Nether wart and maybe some other ingredients, and then we’ll head back. It won’t take long, I promise.”
Edison had made promises like that before. They were hard to keep, but they were always set with good intentions. However, Edison knew a trip to the Nether wasn’t going to be quick. It would take time to find the Nether wart, and they’d have to fight fiery mobs. He quickly checked his inventory and counted the snowballs. He had enough snowballs and arrows to survive and gather the Nether wart, although he still reluctantly stood on the platform and watched as the purple mist surrounded them.
As they stood on the portal, Billy called out, “Edison, who is that?” Edison looked out through the purple mist and saw two men wearing blue baseball hats and sunglasses. They were identical. Billy screamed out to them as they entered Edison’s bungalow.
“Stop! That’s not your house. You can’t go in there!” Billy’s voice was loud, but the men didn’t turn around.
“I have to stop them,” said Edison, but it was too late. They were in the middle of the Nether, and a cluster of ghasts flew toward them.
Two fireballs shot at them, and Edison used his fist to deflect the ball that flew close to his unarmored body.
“What happened to my armor?” Edison screamed as he looked at his shirt. “I just had armor on.”
“I know what happened,” Hal called out as he charged toward them with a diamond sword. The two men with blue baseball caps and sunglasses trailed behind him.
8
NETHER START
“We’re outnumbered,” Edison whispered to Billy.
“Use your bow and arrow,” Billy said as he pulled his bow from his inventory and shot an arrow at Hal. He was surprised the arrow struck Hal’s arm and he cried out in pain. Billy thought the arrow would have disappeared midflight.
“You can’t escape me.” Hal was infuriated. He looked back at the identical guys behind him and ordered, “Go get them!”
The two men in blue baseball caps, who Edison assumed were Hal’s makeshift hacker army, sprinted toward them, but before they reached Edison and Billy, they were struck by fireballs from the ghasts, and they lost hearts. Hal screamed at his minions, and Edison realized that Hal wasn’t as organized as he appeared.
Edison used this opportunity to shoot an arrow at Hal, which struck his other unarmored arm, and he yelled, “Give me back my armor!”
Edison knew if he didn’t get his armor back, he’d never survive. He didn’t have any diamonds, and it had taken him a very long time to gather all of the precious stones to craft the armor and the sword. Without good armor he would have a hard time surviving in the universe.
“I want my armor back!” Edison demanded again.
Billy was still wearing his armor and was worried it would disappear as he shot arrows at the two men in baseball hats. One of the men was already weakened from the ghast’s fireball and was destroyed.
“You’re going to pay for this,” hollered Hal.
Edison shot an arrow at the other minion, destroying him, and screamed at Hal, “Your army is weak, and you’re a thief. Give me back my armor.”
“Never!” Hal screamed and disappeared.
“Thankfully, he’s gone,” Billy said as he kept an eye out for fiery mobs in the sky.
“But I have no armor. There is no way I’m going to survive, and I want to save our friends. What am I going to do?”
Billy remembered the chest Anna had in her home. It had extra armor and supplies, which she was always willing to lend people when they were in need. “How about going to Anna’s and getting armor from her chest?”
“I guess so. I don’t think she’d mind,” said Edison. “And if I don’t have my armor, I won’t be able to save her.”
“We just have to get the Nether wart, and then we can go to Verdant Valley. But if we don’t get the Nether wart now, I don’t have any more resources left in my inventory to construct another portal,” explained Billy.
“Okay, but we have to find a Nether fortress,” said Edison as they walked along a hot lava river. “We always seem to find Nether wart there.”
Edison was upset that he didn’t create a Nether wart farm. He had once met another alchemist who had a Nether wart farm, and he always thought it seemed like a great idea. As he told Billy about the Nether wart farm, Billy asked, “Why don’t we ask that alchemist for Nether wart? The entire Overworld is in trouble, and we need to get all the help we can.”
Edison hadn’t seen this alchemist in a long time. His name was Julian, and Edison had met the other alchemist when he was low on potions for his stand. They did a trade so Edison would have enough potions for his customers. He knew Julian lived in a forest biome quite far from them, and he wasn’t quite sure where Julian’s town, Forest Haven, was located. He didn’t want to travel to see Julian, but Billy was right: they needed help. They couldn’t do this alone. This wasn’t a simple case of finding someone or stopping a griefer. This was trying to stop the destruction of the Overworld. They were dealing with a master hacker. He wished he could find Andrew. Andrew had told them that he had been following Hal for a long time. Edison was sure Andrew knew a lot about Hal and probably knew his weaknesses.
Edison’s mind was brought back to his current situation in the Nether when Billy climbed high atop a bridge over the lava river and called out, “I see a Nether fortress.”
“Great!” Edison exclaimed and followed Billy toward the Nether fortress. Edison’s heart raced as they approached the fortress. There were blazes on the ground, and the fiery beasts rose and readied for an attack when they spotted Edison and Billy. Without his armor, Edison felt incredibly vulnerable and worried that he would be destroyed before he could extract the Nether wart from the fortress. Usually Edison was excited when he saw a blaze. Even though it was a hard mob to destroy, you were rewarded with blaze rods. He used the blaze rods when crafting a brewing station.
One of the blazes shot a trio of potent fireballs at them. Edison jumped back to avoid the blast as he aimed his bow and arrow at the multi-limbed yellow mob that rose from the ground.
Billy aimed his arrow and destroyed a blaze. “Got it!” he called out and picked up the blaze rod, which he handed to his friend.
“Thanks!” Edison said as he watched his friend destroy the other blaze. He leaned over and picked up the blaze rod.
When the duo entered the Nether fortress, they heard a bouncing sound in the main room.
“Oh no,” Edison said. “Magma cubes.”
“That’s not that hard to battle,” Billy tried to remain positive, but he had to admit that he was worried about his friend Edison. You could only survive a limited time in the Nether without armor.
“I see Nether wart,” Edison sprinted toward the staircase and gathered the Nether wart that grew on the side of the staircase next to a patch of soul sand.
“You get the Nether wart and soul sand,” said Billy. “I will deal with the magma cubes.”
Edison tried to pick the Nether wart as quickly as possible, because he wanted to help his friend, but as he pulled the Nether wart that grew in the Nether fortress, he felt a sharp pain in his back. He turned around and gasped when two wither skeletons stood inches from his unarmored body. His brown hair fell in his face and the wither skeleton’s sword ripped his gray T-shirt. He had two hearts left. He pulled one of his last bottles of potion from his inventory and splashed the wither skeletons, but his potion didn’t weaken the tough mob.
“Help!” Edison called out weakly, but his voice was low, and he knew Billy couldn’t hear him. Edison was ready to surrender when Andrew stormed into the Nether fortress wearing diamond armor over his denim jacket and destroyed the two wither skeletons with his diamond sword. He picked up a dropped skull and bone.
“How did you find me?” asked Edison.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” replied Andrew.
9
THE CHEST
Billy exploded into the main room, declaring, “I destroyed the magma cubes.”
“Good job,” said Andrew.
“Andrew.” Billy was shocked to see him in the Nether fortress. “Where are Anna and the Princess?”
“They’re in the dungeon. I was with them too, but I was able to escape. I followed Hal to the Nether. I had no idea I’d find you guys here,” he said.
“I’m glad you’re here. Do you happen to have any extra armor?” asked Edison.
“No.” Andrew looked at Edison’s unarmored chest. “We have to get out of here. You aren’t going to survive much longer without your armor. Also, I want us to find Hal. We have to stop him. He has something awful planned for the Overworld.”
“What?” asked Billy.
“He is going to hack the entire universe. He is going to steal everyone’s goods and then he wants to put the universe on hardc
ore mode,” Andrew explained as Edison gathered the last of the Nether wart.
“How do you know this?” asked Edison.
“I overheard him talking to his two followers,” he said.
“I hope that he isn’t far along with this plan,” said Billy.
“Me too,” Andrew said.
Edison finished gathering the Nether wart and said, “I’m ready to go.”
Edison was surprised when he heard someone call out, “Where are you going?”
Edison looked down at the Nether wart that was in the palm of his hand. It was missing. He looked at his inventory, ready to grab a potion to throw at Hal, who stood in the center of the Nether fortress accompanied by his two minions, but as he reached into his inventory, he found it was empty.
Billy looked at his inventory, and it was also empty. Hal laughed as he saw their shocked expressions.
“You’re no match for me,” Hal announced, and he disappeared along with his two minions and Andrew.
“What happened?” asked Billy. He was still trying to process the situation.
“Hal is incredibly powerful. I have nothing in my inventory,” said Edison as his eyes filled with tears.
“We have to get out of here.” Billy sprinted out of the Nether fortress and toward the portal back to the Overworld. “We have to get to Anna’s house and replenish our supplies.”
As they stood on the portal, surrounded by purple mist, Edison said, “If Andrew is correct, this is going to be a very hard battle.”
The duo emerged in Verdant Valley as a loud, thunderous boom shook the lush village. Two skeletons spawned inches from the duo as Billy said, “I hope he didn’t put the universe on hardcore mode.”
“Me too,” Edison said as he sprinted from the bony beasts. He had no weapons to fight any mobs, and he didn’t even have food to regain his energy.
Anna’s house was nearby, and Edison and Billy rushed through the rain until they reached her front door. When they opened the door, they found Hal standing in the small living room. He looked down at the chest. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
Trapped In the Temple Page 3
