Diary of an 8-Bit Warrior (Book 1 8-Bit Warrior series): An Unofficial Minecraft Adventure

by Cube Kid

  “I just don’t know how we’re going to get real zombies into the village safely. The elders will never agree to that. And they’ll never agree to letting me take you guys outside.”

  “There has to be a way,” said a boy named Mound.

  “I’ll think of something,” said Steve. He paused. “All right. That’s all for now. Class dismissed. Have a good lunch.”

  Of course, after most of the students cleared out of the cave, Max just had to come up and say something.

  “Wow, Runt,” he said, looking me up and down. “I didn’t know noobs could fly. I sure learned a lot this class.”

  Razberry grinned at me. “Watch out for those practice dummies, huh? They are REALLY dangerous!”

  The two snickered again and took off.

  Steve gave me a pat on the back.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It happens. Even to the best of us.”

  “Yeah, sure,” was all I could say.

  I didn’t let it get to me, though. I don’t consider myself a kid anymore. Even if I’m still twelve, the village has a lot of problems and I have to help solve them. The biggest problem being the army of mobs that may attack our village again. There haven’t been many attacks recently, but it’s probably because they’re planning.

  An army,

  just waiting to strike.

  An army controlled by someone named Herobrine.

  Who is Herobrine, anyway? A wizard like Notch? Or some kind of freaky monster?

  I had a dream that Herobrine lived in a big castle, and I helped attack that castle and ran my sword through Herobrine himself.

  But I don’t even know what he looks like. So in my dream, I imagined Herobrine to be something crazy.

  Pumpkin pie hands?!

  No, no, my dream wasn’t THAT crazy.

  Besides, there’s no way Herobrine looks like that. If he did, all it’d take to defeat him would be sending Stump after him. (Stump can eat even more food than I can, and that’s saying something.)

  Jeez . . . I’ve got to stop thinking about food. My stomach is rumbling, and my food bar is almost empty. I need to go get something to eat. Otherwise, I’m going to start eating this diary.

  Bye for now.

  Okay, so, as established yesterday,

  there’s a new problem.

  Even though we have Steve and Mike teaching us the ways of monster slaying—and even though we have a cool little secret cave—the practice dummies can only go so far.

  Dummies don’t move like real mobs. They don’t attack like real mobs. (I’m thankful for that.) And they certainly don’t smell like real mobs. (I’m super extremely enthusiastically oh-my-Notch thankful for that. I still can’t eat apples due to the whole rotten apple plus sweaty feet smell a wet zombie gives off.)

  What I’m saying is, we need real mobs if we want to push our combat scores higher. As you can see, my combat score needs serious improvement.

  So after school today, I had an idea.

  An even better idea than the furnace house.

  I’m fully confident in this!

  I’ll explain.

  You see, we need real mobs, right?

  But the big problem is, mobs usually travel in packs. Go beyond the wall at night and you’ll get mobbed by a mob of mobs. MOBBED.

  Plus, how can you contain a single mob? Leashes won’t work, from what I understand. And asking a few zombies to please just stroll into the village so we can beat on them won’t work. Therefore, I came up with an ingenious solution.

  I’m going to craft . . .

  A monster box.

  It’s like this. Mobs spawn in dark places, right? So why not create an area—pitch black, no light—for the purpose of spawning mobs?

  You might call me crazy, but today I began working on my monster box. I built it on my family’s house, on the side of my bedroom.

  Of course, my dad came over to see what all the fuss was about.

  “Whatcha doing, son?”

  There was no way I was going to tell him I was building a room for mob spawning, so I had to come up with an excuse. A lie, in other words.

  “I’m building a mushroom farm, Dad. It’s for a school project.”

  He glanced at the structure, shrugged, even smiled.

  “A mushroom farm, eh? That’s my boy! Make sure to put slabs on the floor so mobs don’t spawn.”

  “You bet.”

  He nodded. “I’ll let you get back to it, then.”

  After he walked off, I felt a little sad. First, I had just lied to my dad . . . Second, I remembered, I’m going to have to tell him my dream of becoming a warrior.

  He’ll be crushed. I know. But it’s for the greater good. All the farms in Minecraftia won’t do us any good when the mobs finally figure out how to break the wall and an army of zombies comes pouring in.

  And we can’t expect old man Urf to fend off the hordes with his stick. We students, the young generation, we’re the only hope this village has. Steve wants real mobs, so we’ll get real mobs.

  I sealed the monster box up as soon as my dad was out of sight.

  It’s kind of scary knowing mobs might spawn right next to my bedroom, while I’m sleeping, just a few blocks away.

  Actually, knowing my luck, maybe nothing will spawn at all. For now, I’ll just wait and see what happens. I should probably talk to Steve and Mike about this, but after thinking, I decided against it.

  It’ll be a little surprise.

  In the words of Cow the Cow . . . Tee hee.

  Nothing spawned in the monster box last night.

  I’ll just keep waiting.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, I’m the second highest level student at school.

  Even if my actions and failures come with a few laughs, I’m no longer “noob” status, but “not bad,” “pretty cool,” or even “that furnace house kid” or “green egg kid.” All that really means, though, is that kids ask me to help them with their homework.

  At this rate, I’ll soon overtake Max.

  He can sense it, I think. That must be why he’s been bullying me more, calling me more names, and just being more annoying in general. Today, he kept showing off his record book in class. He angled it in my direction so I could see it. Gave me a big wink.

  Trading and building are pretty much the only areas I beat him in. I guess he just wanted me to know he’s number one, and it’s always going to be that way.

  In brewing class, a boy named Rock asked Max if he could help him with his homework.

  Max glanced at him, then at me, and said: “I don’t know. I’m pretty busy these days.”

  Then Max whipped out his record book—suuuuuper slow—so everyone could see.

  “I need to work on my combat score,” Max said. “It’s so low.”

  The truth is, Max’s combat score is the highest out of all 150 students. He was just bragging.

  Then our brewing teacher told us there was an extra brewing class today, after school. Attendance wasn’t required, but anyone wanting some additional practice with potions could come.

  Max whipped out his record book AGAIN—and again,

  reeeeallyyyy sloooow . . .

  He had to work on his mining, he said quite loudly, because it just wasn’t high enough.

  The only student with a higher mining score than Max is Pebble, and that’s because Pebble comes from a family of miners.

  Okay, Max. We get it. You’re the best.

  So annoying.

  During combat class, Max approached me.

  “You know,” he said to me, “I don’t know how those teachers found out about that pickaxe. Do you know how many emeralds I spent on that thing?”

  “Go away,” I said.

 
“As you wish, Head Nanny Runt. I’ll just go sweep the floors and you can inspect them later and tell me how I’m doing.”

  Head nanny? I’ll show you head nanny, I thought. I practiced as hard as I could; swung my sword with all the strength I had. My practice dummy shook from the repeated blows.

  Then I glared at Max.

  Max thrashed his own dummy, and returned the dirty look. I couldn’t see his eyes, because of his glasses, but his eyebrows were furrowed. He must have been angry.

  We kept chopping at our dummies and glaring at each other for a while.

  I remembered all the times he bullied me, all the things he said—“head nanny,” “noob,” calling my cat Fluffles “Danger Kitty,“ sabotaging us in the mining test—and my anger just exploded.

  With a huge leap, I dived at my dummy, trying to perform another critical strike. This time, I didn’t forget to swing my sword.

  I hit with such force, the dummy was nearly knocked over. One of its arms flew off, as did its head.

  I gave Max another angry glare.

  Steve clapped nearby.

  “Nice job, Runt! I saw that! Your first critical hit, huh?”

  After class, I found my score was up.

  Max was looking at his own record book, shocked. His combat score had only risen 2%—from 17% to 19%.

  My score was now higher than his. I showed him my record book.

  “Maybe you can teach me a thing or two about fighting, Max,” I said. “My combat score is so low.”

  He gasped.“Hurrrrrrrrrrr!”

  This morning was kind of weird.

  Max wasn’t in class today. It was the first time he didn’t show up at school. I began to wonder if what I did yesterday really hurt his feelings or something.

  Then after school, as I was walking home, I ran into him in the street.

  “Listen,” Max said. “I want to talk to you.“

  “Leave me alone,” I said, and walked past him.

  “Hey,” he said, “just listen, huh?”

  “Listen to what? Head nanny? Noob master? Fluffles the Danger Kitty? Or maybe you’re going to tell me more about poo screamers.”

  Almost before I finished my sentence, he stepped closer with a serious face and said: “I was suspended from school today.”

  For a second, my brain couldn’t process what had just been said.

  Suspended?

  Max had been suspended from school?

  As in, he was no longer a student?

  “Only for a day,” he said. “Today.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Someone ratted me out,” he said. “Pebble. That miner kid. I bought that pickaxe from his dad, you see. So his dad came to school and told the teachers I was the one who bought it.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “My only guess is I must have made him angry when I was showing off my scores the other day.”

  “Still,” I said, “why would Pebble do that? I thought you guys were kind of friendly?”

  Max removed his glasses. His dark eyes seemed even darker.

  “You really don’t get it, do you?”

  I blinked. “Get what?”

  “You and I,” he said, “we’re the top dogs. Everyone wants to take us down.“

  Another blink.

  Max put his glasses back on. “When you went nuts in that trading test,” he said, “and got a perfect score, what do you think happened?”

  “Um, my level increased?”

  “Yeah, and so now you’re the second-highest-level student, right?”

  “Right?”

  “And that means Pebble, who was originally the second highest, is now the third. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

  “Try anyway,” I said.

  “It means I’m no longer the one you have to worry about, Runt. You’ve made a lot of enemies, buddy boy.”

  Enemies . . .

  What Max was saying suddenly became so clear. At least twenty students, as far as I know, want to become a warrior. Probably more than that. The problem is, only five can become warriors.

  “Some of the kids are really jealous of you,” Max said. “You’ve drawn a lot of attention to yourself, doing so well in those tests. In fact, I might have done you a favor by preventing you from getting first place in that mining test.”

  I tried not to get angry when he said this. “Explain.”

  Max nodded. “I overheard Pebble talking with some of his friends the other day,” he said. “They were talking about you.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “They said you’re a noob. Said you have no business being a warrior. Said you becoming a warrior will endanger this village. Pebble even said he’s going to do anything he can to prevent you from becoming one.”

  “This is crazy,” I said.

  “It gets worse,” Max said. “Pebble said . . . his father is going to do something during the next mining test. Something about a cave-in. They’re going to try to hurt you, Runt . . . or worse. Now, I know, I’ve pulled a lot of pranks on you. But I’ve never done something like that.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Me either.” Max sighed. “You know, the kids who graduate in the top five . . . they’ll not only become warriors. They’ll have the option of becoming elders later, too. A lot of families here realize this. It’s a power struggle. They’re thinking about the future.”

  “Why tell me all of this?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s like this. If those other kids hate you so much, how do you think they feel about me? Maybe they’re planning to hurt me, too. A cave-in accident, who would know? I don’t exactly like you, Runt, but I respect you. You’ve got skill. And I think, for the good of this village, you need to become a warrior. I say we form a partnership. Work together. You, Stump, and me. It’s us against them.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  After all we’ve been through,

  now Max wants to team up?

  “What about Razberry?” I asked.

  Max shook his head. “Nah. I’ve already talked to him. He’s not concerned about his scores. His dream is being a baker, not a warrior.”

  “Hurrrrm. Well, I’ll think about it,” I said, which was a lie. There was no way I was forming a partnership with Max. At least not until he proved that he could be trusted. And apologized a billion times.

  And anyway, I didn’t know for sure if what Max was telling me was true.

  Maybe it was just another one of his tricks?

  This morning, I met up with Stump and we went for a walk around Villagetown. I told Stump everything Max said.

  While we were walking through the streets, we kept hearing adults talking about a “tree.”

  “Did you see the tree?”

  “Wow, it’s so big!”

  “A dark oak, eh?”

  “It wasn’t there last night!”

  I glanced at Stump, who just shrugged. Neither of us knew anything about this “tree.” We walked up to Leaf, the old blacksmith, and asked him about it.

  “Some kinda tree growin’ in the east,” he said. “Real big feller, too. Go see fer yerselves!”

  Of course, Stump and I zoomed across the village and climbed up the east wall.

  We were expecting the kind of giant tree found in fairy tales and storybooks. But from the wall, it looked more like a sapling. There haven’t been many monster attacks these days. I guess the adults have been bored, and a dark oak tree growing in the distance is “big news.” It’s not even that strange that a big tree like that is growing

  there. There’s a forest to the east. Probably the forest is just expanding. Forests do that, don’t they?

  Whatever.

 
All day today, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Max said. Are the other kids really so jealous of me?

  Stump’s the seventh-highest student as far as level goes—are they jealous of him, too?

  “Even if Max is joking,” Stump said, “he’s right, you know?”

  “Right? Right about what?”

  “You’ve out-leveled almost everyone,” he said, “but you shouldn’t get too confident. Things always change, and . . . when you feel too sure about yourself, you get careless and make mistakes.”

  Hmm.

  Stump’s got a point there.

  But then, me feeling too confident? I doubt that will ever happen. Even when I’m doing my best, I still doubt myself . . .

  In other news, nothing has spawned in the monster box. No sounds have come from it, at least. It’s just an empty room sitting on the side of our house. I put a mushroom in there just in case my dad decides to check. If he saw that there weren’t any, he might get suspicious.

  Later, Stump, Sara, and I got ice cream again. Sara forced me to try Creeper Crunch. Yuck. It was really bad. Not just really bad, but I’d-rather-eat-mushroom-stew-with-apple-chunks bad. If you’re ever in Minecraftia, and get ice cream, I suggest either Ghast Tear Swirl or Diamond Ore Chunk.

  I finally told my dad about my dream of becoming a warrior. As I expected, he was crushed. Actually, I’m not sure he even believed me. Later, I overheard him talking to my mom. They think I’m just going through a phase. They think I really want to be a farmer, because I made that “mushroom farm.” If only they knew the truth . . .