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Manufactured in Canada, June 2014
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Cover photo credit Megan Miller
Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-442-4
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220-443-1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Life on the Farm
Chapter 2: Something Goes Wrong
Chapter 3: Down the Hole
Chapter 4: Treasure Hunters in the Temple
Chapter 5: Booby Traps
Chapter 6: Dungeons and Explosions
Chapter 7: Caves, Storms, and Other Threats
Chapter 8: Skeletons
Chapter 9: Taming the Wolf
Chapter 10: Witches!
Chapter 11: Diamonds and Lava
Chapter 12: It’s Nether Ending
Chapter 13: Journey to The End
Chapter 14: The Ender Dragon
Chapter 15: Going Home
Chapter 16: Zombie Showdown
Chapter 17: The Party
Chapter 18: I Hate Goodbyes
1
LIFE ON THE FARM
STEVE WASN’T A RISK TAKER. HE LIVED A SIMPLE life on a flourishing wheat farm, where he grew carrots, potatoes, and pumpkins and bred pigs. Afternoons were spent talking to Eliot the blacksmith or Avery the librarian, who lived in the nearby village. In the village, he’d trade wheat and coal for emeralds.
He used the emeralds to adorn the walls of his home. Yet that morning, he decided to head to town and exchange some of his extra emeralds for iron. Steve wanted to craft iron armor. Although he never planned on using it, he was cautious and knew it was important to have armor. He also liked crafting things.
Eliot was in his shop when Steve arrived and said, “Hi, Steve. Looking for more emeralds?”
“No,” Steve took out the emeralds, “I have too many. I’d like to exchange them for iron ingots.”
“What are you going to do with iron?” Eliot asked as he gave Steve the blocks. “Build another Golem? You were so nice to build that for our village.”
“Thanks, but I want to craft armor,” replied Steve.
“Are you going on an adventure?” Eliot couldn’t believe his ears. Steve was the last person he’d expect to want armor or go on an adventure.
“I hope not!” Steve smiled, “I just thought it would be good to have in my inventory.”
“Enjoy crafting, Steve.” Eliot gave him the iron ignots.
On the way home, Steve ran into Avery the librarian, who said, “You should come by the library, Steve. We have lots of new books in.”
“I can’t today,” he told her. “I’m crafting armor.”
“How exciting!” exclaimed Avery, “Are you planning an adventure?”
“You know me,” Steve remarked. “I like to stay out of trouble and stick close to home.”
“Sometimes people don’t plan adventures, they just happen.” Avery had read every adventure tale in the library; she loved those stories.
“That’s true,” Steve smiled at Avery. “But I’d rather just keep the armor in my inventory and read about adventures in books.”
Steve crafted his iron armor. He tried it on and walked around his house. “I must look like a warrior,” he said to himself as he put the armor away and took a short walk before dusk. Steve would never venture out at night; he knew that was when creepers could attack him.
His farm wasn’t far from the water, and he walked over and looked out at the enormous blue ocean as he wondered what lands might be on the other side. He had never hopped on a boat to find out.
If Steve had an adventure story to tell, it would be about the time he once tamed an ocelot. Lost in the vast, unexplored jungle, surrounded by bushes deep in the jungle biome, Steve spotted an animal racing past him toward an overgrown patch of grass and weeds. As the animal’s pace slowed, he could make out its yellow fur covered in black and brownish spots. It was a wild ocelot!
The ocelot’s piercing green eyes stared menacingly at Steve. Steve’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted to tame this wild beast. He offered the feline raw fish, which the hungry ocelot eagerly accepted. With each bite, the ocelot transformed into a tame animal. Slowly the cat’s skin took on a ginger tone until it resembled a typical tabby cat. The ocelot’s tail shrunk, signifying it was no longer feral. Steve named the ocelot Snuggles. He’d be the first to admit he felt safer on the farm with Snuggles. As everyone knows, ocelots scare off creepers. Steve was afraid of creepers.
Steve knew that if you were careful, you could avoid running into any creepers, skeletons, spiders, silverfish, zombies, and other hostile mobs whose sole purpose was to attack. In fact, Steve had helped secure the village from a zombie attack. He built a fence all the way around the village and placed torches along the main street so all the land inside the wall was brightly lit day and night. This way he could be sure that zombies wouldn’t spawn in his village. As Eliot the blacksmith mentioned, Steve had also built an Iron Golem to protect them. He placed iron blocks and a pumpkin on the ground and watched as the tough, mighty beast got to its feet. As Steve watched the monstrous stone creature lumber toward the village, he was sure it would be able to keep him and his villager friends safe from zombies and other mobs.
When he wasn’t protecting his home from predators, Steve spent his time making coal out of wood. He traded the coal with Eliot the blacksmith for pickaxes, which he used for mining. He also traded his wheat for cookies from John the village farmer. When he mined for gold, he usually traded it for books with Avery the librarian. Between the villagers and the farm, he had all his needs provided for and a safe place to sleep every night. He loved coming back to the farm and hearing Snuggles meow as the ocelot relaxed in the greenery.
When night began to fall, Steve immediately got into his wool bed. Nighttime was the most vulnerable time; as the sun sank in the sky, the shadows grew and the well-lit areas became darker until Steve’s village was the only place bright enough that the mobs wouldn’t spawn there. But outside the walls, he could always hear the zombies groaning and the strange skittering sounds of spiders. If you weren’t in your bed when night fell, you were pretty much an open target, but a well-built bed would keep you safe until daybreak. When dusk approached, Steve was always safely in his bed at the farm. Once Steve saw a tall, dark Enderman with a purple aura when he was out at dusk, but he knew not to stare. He safely made his escape and learned his lesson. When the lights began
to dim, it was time to go home. There was no reason to take chances.
But that night as Steve slept in the comfort of his bed, he heard strange noises coming from the village. The villagers were in trouble, and as Steve listened to the groans and the sound of wood breaking, he knew it could only be one thing—a zombie attack! He tried to convince himself that he was just hearing things and they were fine. But the noises wouldn’t stop. He imagined going into town and seeing the villagers turned into zombies, and he grabbed his clock to see how much time he had before morning. It was still so early; Steve clutched his clock tightly, wondering if he could wait until morning. But as he felt the clock tick in his hands and heard the villagers’ cries, Steve knew he had to help right away. And since Eliot knew that Steve had the armor, he was probably waiting helplessly for Steve to attack the zombies.
The other villagers were also Steve’s good friends. He liked villagers better than other explorers like him, because they couldn’t be griefers and couldn’t harm him. They had jobs and lived and worked together in the village, growing their crops and making useful things to trade. They followed predictable routines and never strayed far from home, but they helped one another and never caused any havoc in his life. Griefers were wanderers who spent their time playing pranks on other explorers and generally making trouble. They intentionally did bad things to other people to steal more stuff for themselves. There were some griefers who just picked on folks because they thought it was fun and they liked tricking people. They’d use TNT to destroy a house or lie and say they needed help and then attack. Steve didn’t want to lose his house or his stuff to any griefers, so he was careful not to trust anyone but his villager friends. And now zombies were attacking them. Steve had to help.
He tried to convince himself that the Iron Golem could handle the zombies, but the desperate cries from the villagers meant the Golem wasn’t powerful enough to defeat the zombies on its own. Or even worse, something had happened to the stone creature. Steve thought of Avery and the books he had gotten from her. He could imagine a zombie overpowering her as she raced through the streets in her flowing white robe. He wondered if the zombies were destroying John the farmer’s crops. He imagined Eliot trying to hide in his blacksmith shop from the vicious monsters.
The cries grew louder and the images of his friends being attacked by zombies swirled around in his panicked mind. Steve knew he had to help them. If he didn’t do something heroic soon, he would be a no-good coward who let the village get destroyed. Although it defied all of his instincts to avoid danger, Steve threw off his covers and got out of bed. He checked the room for spiders and creepers, then went to his chest to get ready. For the first time, he suited up in all the armor he had made, which he loved having but never thought he’d use. Luckily Steve had a well-stocked inventory—since he never battled, he just collected armor—of swords and other tools to protect himself. He took out his compass, iron sword, bow, and arrows from his inventory. Then he paused and grabbed his special gold sword, just in case he needed it. His hands shook. His heart raced. He was scared. It was the moment Steve had always feared, and now he was living it.
2
SOMETHING GOES WRONG
OUTSIDE STEVE’S HOUSE IT WAS PITCH DARK, making it the perfect hour for hostile mobs to feast. The monsters had started to climb over the defensive wall surrounding the village and were swarming the buildings inside. Many of the torches Steve had placed throughout the village were gone. He saw a shallow pit in front of him and knew that a creeper must have exploded, destroying the lights and leaving the village in darkness. As Steve made his way out of his home, he gasped. A spider jockey was crawling up the wall of his house. The spider’s red eyes glowed in the darkness as the skeleton sat on the aggressive arachnid. Steve knew that spider jockeys were rare and could destroy him in seconds. A spider’s vision was excellent, and the skeleton was a skilled hunter, which made a spider jockey a double threat. Steve felt his heart beating through his armor-clad body. He reached for his bow and arrow and took a deep breath.
Within seconds, the skeleton spotted Steve and started to shoot. An arrow flew at Steve’s chest but bounced off the armor. He sprinted away from the spider as it leapt from the wall toward him, and the skeleton’s arrows came closer to Steve’s unarmored legs. He ran as he narrowly avoided the arrows. Steve turned back and took aim at the spider but wasn’t able to kill the dreaded enemy as fast as he hoped. As more arrows flew toward Steve, he dodged them swiftly. At the same time, he reloaded his bow and shot again at the spider. Steve knew it was important to kill the spider before the skeleton; if the spider were alone, without being weighed down by the bony skeleton, it could destroy him in an instant.
Steve slowed down, and with a clear eye, he shot an arrow at the spider. Thunk! It hit the spider right in its belly. The creature fell to the ground, and the skeleton launched a solo attack. With one more expert shot, Steve was able to take the skeleton down.
He had defeated the spider jockey! He had never beaten such a tough enemy before. He grabbed the eye dropped by the spider and put it in his inventory, knowing it could be useful later. Bursting with energy from the conquest of the spider jockey, Steve set off to the village to fight zombies with a bit more swagger in his step. Now he was a warrior.
As he approached the village, Eliot the blacksmith ran past him toward his shop.
“Help!” Eliot screamed. “You have the armor, you can beat the zombies.”
Steve knew Eliot had faith in him, but did he realize how scared Steve was? Steve saw that a group of zombies surrounded a local village family, as they tried to open the door to their home. The villagers tried to shield themselves, but the green, vacant-eyed zombies tore doors from homes, shops, and restaurants. They shattered glass windows and ripped roofs from small homes. There was no place to hide. He wanted to follow Eliot back to his shop, but he knew hiding was a cowardly choice.
Steve looked for the pumpkin-headed Iron Golem. It was nowhere to be found. He walked over to a patch of grass. There he saw a large iron body broken on the ground. Its pumpkin head lay next to the slain Golem’s mammoth feet. A griefer must have come into the village and killed it with the intention of harvesting its iron. But he had no time to come up with theories on what had happened to the Iron Golem. Steve had a sea of zombies racing toward him.
Seeking cover behind a large tree, he hoped he could hide from the zombies. Yet he wasn’t safe; there was a group of them making a quick approach. Steve charged at them with his iron sword, destroying two instantly. After his battle with the spider jockey, he felt confident he’d win this fight quickly. He was wrong. Every minute, more zombies spawned. The injured zombies called for reinforcement, and Steve was quickly outnumbered. He knew his armor could protect him while he battled, but the sheer volume of zombies made him doubt that he could win. And Steve’s swords were wearing out; his first iron sword had worn out and broken earlier in the fight, and now his last one was almost useless as well.
Steve worried about the villagers. What if he couldn’t defeat the zombies? Would all the villagers be turned into zombie villagers? For all of the items Steve had saved, he didn’t have a potion of weakness, and he didn’t even have enough time to craft an Enchanted Golden Apple—the two items necessary to cure a zombie villager. Perhaps he could create an iron gate and put any zombie villagers behind it as a temporary jail. This would keep them from hurting him while he defeated the zombies. But time wasn’t on Steve’s side. He had to just keep fighting and hope he could figure out a way to save his villagers.
Steve went back into his inventory and switched to a bow and arrow. As he shot arrows at the zombies, he was able to knock out a few, but they had an army. His bow and arrow was no match for a platoon of the walking dead. Steve needed another plan. He thought of leading the zombies to the ocean or a cliff, as he knew they weren’t too smart, and he could probably trick them into running right off a cliff or drowning. He wasn’t even sure if zombies could drown, though,
and he was trapped in the village, anyway, with these bloodthirsty zombies who were quickly outnumbering the villagers. To make matters worse, each villager who succumbed to a zombie attack instantly transformed into a zombie villager. Steve saw the village butcher, still dressed in his white apron but now turned monstrously green and rotten, pushing at another zombie at the back of the crowd that continued to attack him. Steve’s old villager friends were now zombies, ready to destroy the one person who was trying to save and protect them. It was a losing battle! Steve took a chance and raced toward the zombies. He shot at them with his bow, taking them down quickly so they didn’t have a chance to call in reinforcements. Just when he thought he had won the battle, he saw one more zombie in the distance.
As the lone zombie walked toward Steve, he shook in sheer terror. He had had enough excitement for one night, and despite his heroics, he was still scared. His hand quivered while he fumbled with the bow. He could barely shoot an arrow. When he finally did, the arrow traveled slowly through the air and fell next to the zombie. The arrow crunched beneath the zombie’s feet as he closed in on Steve. Steve felt his heart beating in his chest, but he couldn’t let fear dominate his desire to save his friends.
Then Steve heard Eliot the blacksmith call for help. He knew a zombie must be cornering Eliot. Steve couldn’t let him down. He needed courage and strength.
Steve put away the bow and arrow and grabbed the most powerful gold sword from his inventory. He cradled the sword with his fist, but the powerful zombie grabbed the sword from Steve’s hands and snapped the weapon in half. It dropped the sword on the grass and reached for Steve. With no time left to get a weapon from his inventory, he was defenseless. Steve began to sprint away from the enormous green-eyed creature of the night.
He raced through the familiar streets of the village, ran into Eliot’s blacksmith shop, and slammed the door behind him. He figured that if he traded emeralds, he could get a new sword to defeat the zombie. But it was too late! Eliot the blacksmith was defeated and was spawning into a zombie. He had failed his friend. Steve was devastated and felt useless.
The Quest for the Diamond Sword Page 1
