“I guess this is where you are living,” said Julian.
“Good guess,” Valentino replied and he struck Julian with his diamond sword.
As they battled, it occurred to Julian that it was unlikely that William was still in the desert. Valentino lived here; he would have already found William if he were here. Julian realized that once this battle was over, they were going to have to start their search anew.
Outnumbered, it wasn’t long before Valentino and his friends were destroyed. “Let’s get out of here,” shouted Julian.
He sprinted out of the desert temple and the others followed. When they were far from the desert temple and hidden by trees in the jungle, Julian told them, “I don’t think William is being held prisoner in the desert.”
“Why?’ asked Toby.
“I think Valentino would have found him by now,” he replied.
Then Ezra made an announcement, holding up some papers in his hand. “Valentino dropped these during the battle. I think they’re the missing journal pages.”
“That’s amazing. Great job.” Oliver was thrilled. “Hopefully this will bring us one step closer to finding my old friend.”
The group gathered around Ezra. They wanted to know what the journal said next.
“Read it,” said Veronica. “We all want to know where William is being held prisoner!”
“Do you think Valentino has read this already?” asked Jack.
“I’m not sure,” Ezra replied, “but I think we still need to read it. It could help us.” With that, he began to read from the journal’s pages.
16
JOURNAL ENTRY: ALMOST HOME
Day 8: The Overworld
Charles called out, “It’s time to give up, William.”
“Never,” I shouted.
“I’ll give you credit, you did a good job getting out of the Nether. I didn’t think you’d make it to the Overworld. But now it’s over. You’ve lost.” Charles let out another sinister laugh.
I took out my sword and leapt toward Charles. Before his army could stage an attack, Esther sprinted over to me and whispered, “Meet me in the jungle.” Then she splashed a potion of invisibility on me and on the others.
We sprinted toward the jungle. When we reached the trees and began to reappear, I asked, “What should we do now? Since Charles is in the desert, I’m sure that is where Oliver is being held prisoner.”
“We just need to come up with a good plan. It looks like he has a lot of soldiers in the desert.” Sean paced back and forth. “How many bottles of the potion of invisibility do we have left?” he asked.
We didn’t have any potion left in our inventories. We had just used the last of our stores, and we were out of spider eye. We were going to have to fight this battle without the benefit of invisibility.
“Quiet,” said Esther. “I hear something.”
We all stood still and listened. We could hear Charles ordering his men to find us. “Soldiers, they can’t be very far from here. We have to keep looking. I won’t be happy until they are destroyed. I’ll put them on Hardcore mode and then we’ll be rid of them all for good. Oliver, too, when we get back.”
My heart beat fast. I couldn’t let them destroy Oliver. I had to battle Charles. I hid behind a tree and, when Charles was in sight, I took out my diamond sword and sprinted toward him. I struck him twice and with that he was destroyed. His soldiers began to shoot arrows at me, and I sprinted as fast as I could out of the jungle.
Once I stopped sprinting, I found myself at a beach. I looked for my friends, but they weren’t behind me. I had fought Charles and abandoned my friends to battle the soldiers on their own. I felt awful. I walked along the water and tried to come up with a plan. I knew I had to make my way back to the jungle and the desert. I had to find my friends.
As I walked toward the jungle, I heard a voice call out in the distance, “William.”
It was Sean. I ran toward him. “I’m so happy to see you. Where are the others?”
“They’re building a small house in the jungle. We defeated the soldiers and found an isolated part of the jungle where they won’t find us,” explained Sean.
“I feel awful for taking off after I battled Charles. I didn’t mean to abandon you.”
“It’s okay. We all make mistakes,” Sean said and he walked me toward the small jungle house.
When I entered the house, I apologized to the group. Night was setting in and everyone was crawling into bed. “It’s okay,” Molly said. “We just need to get some sleep. In the morning, we are going back to the desert. We will free Oliver. This battle is almost over.”
I was lucky to have such great friends. I was the one who needed to find Oliver, but they were in this with me. I wouldn’t abandon them again, no matter what.
I couldn’t believe we were just a short distance from Oliver and that we might be able to rescue him in the morning. I could hardly sleep, I was so excited. Then I began to worry. Charles had mentioned that he was going to put Oliver on Hardcore mode. I hoped we would get there in time.
In the morning, we ate some apples and came up with a plan to defeat Charles.
I suggested summoning the Ender Dragon like Oliver and I had done in the past. Everyone agreed that was a great idea. We used command blocks and summoned several Ender Dragons to fly in the direction of the desert. This was how I defeated Charles before, and I would do it again. We stood outside the desert and watched as the dragons flew toward them.
We could hear cries for help as the soldiers battled the Ender Dragons with arrows and snowballs. The soldiers fought very hard, but soon it went quiet. We entered the desert to survey the wreckage. Two Ender Dragons flew through the sky, and we hit them with snowballs to scare them off before moving on to explore the desert temple. We had to make sure that Charles was defeated, and we had to save Oliver.
As soon as we entered the temple, Molly asked, “Do you hear something?”
We all stopped. There was a muffled cry for help.
“I think that’s Oliver!” I shouted.
We ran toward the sound of Oliver’s voice, but as we turned a corner, we were ambushed by Charles, who lunged at us with his diamond sword.
“You thought you defeated me, didn’t you? Well, you didn’t!” Charles laughed and struck me with his sword.
My energy level was growing low. I couldn’t withstand a serious battle. I didn’t want to waste my energy fighting Charles—I wanted to free Oliver.
Thao struck Charles with his diamond sword.
“Hah! You think you’re going to get away with this, Thao? You can never beat me.” Charles let out another laugh and then called out, “Soldiers!”
A group of soldiers emerged from another room in the temple and started to attack with their diamond swords. Knowing it was a losing battle, we sprinted from the temple. This time at least we were leaving together.
“Watch out, Thao!” Molly called out.
An Ender Dragon flew down and struck Thao. He was weakened but not destroyed. I threw a snowball at the Ender Dragon and it exploded. Meanwhile a band of soldiers rushed toward us, Charles shouting, “There is no escape!”
I looked at the End portal that spawned in front of us. I called to my friends, “Hop on! We’re going to the End!”
17
SLIMES AND SURPRISES
They are in the End!” Harriet called out.
“We can’t be sure,” said Jack. “Maybe they defeated the Ender Dragon and respawned in the Overworld.”
“At least we know that William probably isn’t in the desert. I don’t want to go back there to fight Valentino,” commented Toby.
“Did somebody say my name?” Valentino stormed over to them. He lashed out at Toby and struck him with his sword.
Ezra rushed Valentino, splashing a potion of weakness on him. Harriet hit Valentino with her diamond sword and he was destroyed.
“We have to be on the lookout for the two purple-helmeted treasure hunters.” Oliver to
ld them. “They’ll be around here somewhere.”
“Look!” shouted Harriet.
Everyone looked, expecting to see the two purple-helmeted treasure hunters. Instead they saw five blazes flying through the Overworld sky.
“He’s summoned more Nether mobs!” cried Veronica.
“Get your snowballs out!” Julian ordered.
The group battled the yellow mobs. They threw snowballs as they dodged the fireballs that rained down on them.
Valentino must have respawned nearby. He was back, and this time he was with the two purple-helmeted treasure hunters. They attacked the group with a potion of weakness. It looked like all was lost. Weakened, they didn’t have a chance against the yellow beasts from the Nether.
Harriet grabbed a potion of healing from her inventory and drank it quickly, then passed it off to her friends. With her newfound energy, she lunged toward Valentino with her diamond sword.
“You have no clue where William is,” she shouted at him.
“Neither do you.” He laughed. “But I know where Charles is hiding.”
“What?” Harriet asked, surprised.
“Looking for me?” Charles called out.
Now they were up against Charles and Valentino together. This was their toughest challenge yet. As Harriet struck Valentino, she said, with disgust dripping from her words, “I knew you two were working together.”
“Where is William?” demanded Toby, joining in the fight.
“Stop,” roared Charles.
Surprised, everyone did as Charles had asked.
“Everyone, please put down your weapons,” he continued.
Confused, it took a moment for everyone to comply. They watched each other, unsure. But Charles was the first to drop his own sword, and the others slowly followed suit.
Harriet was the last to drop her weapon. She wondered if she should strike Charles while she was at an advantage. But she didn’t. That wouldn’t be playing fair. Still, she was shocked that everyone had listened to him and that the fighting had stopped.
“I never saw William after he traveled to the End,” Charles began. “But you have his journal. You have proof that he returned. Give us the journal.”
“We did have the journal,” Julian replied. “I mean, we do have the journal, but it’s missing pages. We don’t know where William is. We don’t know if he’s still in the End.”
Charles looked at the group and took out his sword again. “You had better not be lying to us. If you know something and you aren’t telling us or if you’ve hidden the missing pages, you will all suffer.”
The moment of peace was broken. Harriet retrieved her own sword and struck Charles. He grabbed a potion of harming and splashed it toward her, but she jumped back. Jack gave Charles a push and Charles fell right into the potion he had intended for Harriet. He called out to his soldiers, “Help me!”
But the gang was too fast. They leapt at Charles and destroyed him. Then they battled the soldiers, Valentino, and the two purple-helmeted treasure hunters. When everyone was destroyed, Julian picked up some pages that had fluttered to the floor.
Julian said, “I think these are the final pages from the journal.”
“I wonder who had them. If it was Charles or Valentino,” Veronica asked.
Oliver, who was known to be extremely trusting, shocked everyone when he said, “I bet Charles and Valentino didn’t even know someone had those pages. It could have been one of the treasure hunters or someone from the army. Or maybe it was one of us?”
They looked at one another suspiciously. Was one of them keeping secrets? Had one of them been hiding the pages?
Harriet broke the tension. “Before we start questioning everyone about the journal pages, we should read them.”
And once again, Julian read out loud.
18
JOURNAL ENTRY: IT’S THE END
Day 9: A Call for Help
If someone is reading this, I have survived the End and returned to the Overworld. Sean also respawned with me. We never saw Thao, Molly, or Esther again. We searched for them, but with Charles on the hunt for us, it became too dangerous and we went into hiding.
We felt the best way to escape was to spend time beneath the sea. We gathered potions for underwater breathing and spent a long time in an underwater temple. Sean and I changed our skins to make sure nobody would recognize us. For a while, we were safe.
But one day, a stranger appeared and in a low, familiar voice told us, “I know who you are and you can’t hide any longer.” He was the same man who had kept us prisoners in the Nether.
We tried to escape, but the stranger followed us wherever we went. The stranger seemed to always know our next move and found us in the jungle and the desert. As we fled, we searched for Oliver wherever we went, but we never found him.
We finally settled in a remote part of the mountains and we thought we were safe again. We lived a peaceful existence, but we missed our friends and I still hoped to find Oliver. We decided to come up with a new plan. One that would set us free from Charles and save Oliver. But that never happened. Today the stranger arrived, this time with an army wearing black robes. We fought back, but we were outnumbered. They chased us into a stronghold, one they’d kept us in before. The only way we could escape was through the portal in the End room.
I am standing in front of the portal now. My heart is beating fast and I am writing this quickly before we must return to the End and battle the Ender Dragon a second time. I hope we survive. I hope we respawn in the Overworld and that we will be placed in a location far away from the stranger and from Charles.
I will respawn. The last place I slept was the house I built in the jungle. If you find this letter, please send help!
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An Explorer's Guide to the Nether Page 6
