Diary of an 8-Bit Warrior: Crafting Alliances: An Unofficial Minecraft Adventure

by Cube Kid

  With that, he suddenly flew up into the sky.

  Notch turned to us. He didn’t say anything for a second or two.

  Even though it wasn’t a very long time, it felt like forever. When he finally spoke, the expression on his face could have made a ghast look happy.

  "Build, you fools!"

  That was it. That was all he said. It meant fortify the village. It meant prepare for the next attack. Without another word, he took off into the sky. He was chasing Herobrine. Before long, the two of them had vanished into the clouds.

  Everyone just stared upward. The humans were too confused about what had just happened. Some had the most clueless expressions. Some of them might have been great players back home, but here, they didn’t understand a thing. As for us villagers … well, most of us were too scared to speak or even move. Finally, Elisa, the Legion sub-leader, joined Kolbert and the mayor.

  "So, um, now what?" she asked.

  "What do you mean?!" the mayor snapped. "We build, just like he said!"

  Kolbert nodded. "I never thought I’d ever agree with an NPC, but yes—we won’t give in to the likes of him!"

  "We will fight to the last noob and villager!!"

  Another human named Minsur raised his sword. "Yeahhhh!!

  The Legion doesn’t know defeat!!"

  Steve and Mike looked at each other in a glum way.

  "Everyone meet at the city hall!" the mayor shouted. "We can’t just stand around! Notch is up there fighting for us at this very moment!

  "We are at war!"

  At city hall, while we waited for the mayor to start speaking, everyone was talking about what had happened.

  Notch this.

  Herobrine that.

  Their magic was so cool!

  Are we really going to surrender?

  Does anyone know how to craft the sword Herobrine was using?

  (That last question was mine. Tee-hee. Of course, no one knew how.)

  My heart had stopped pounding by then. I expected more to happen, honestly … but seeing Notch break out of the polymorph spell had been pretty cool. (Herobrine’s lightning, ehhhhhh, not so cool. It hurt. A lot. If that’s what charged creepers have to go through, I almost feel sorry for them.)

  The mayor finally spoke. "First, let me say that I don’t believe we should surrender. I just didn’t want him to hurt anyone."

  "You mean we’re actually going to fight back?" a girl asked. That was Sophia, someone on Team All Girls.

  "Herobrine seems so strong," her friend Emma said. "How can we possibly defeat him?"

  "We’ve faced many hardships before," the mayor said. "Humans in the form of griefers, trolls, and noobs. Mobs who have grown ever smarter—who use tactics like creeper bombs and zombie ladders. But soon we will face our biggest threat: Herobrine himself. As we understand, his main army is stronger than anything we’ve seen so far."

  "How do you know, sir?" That was Pebble. He was in the front row. The mayor’s little pet.

  His buddy, Rock, joined in: "Your excellency, have you seen his army?"

  "I haven’t," the mayor said. "But … there are some who have."

  The mayor turned to Brio and then stepped away from the wooden block he’d been standing behind. Brio took his place and gazed into the crowd.

  "Please come up," Brio said. At first I thought he was speaking to me. But then I realized, no … he was talking to someone right next to me. Breeze.

  She glanced at Stump, Max, Emerald, and me, then pushed her way through the crowd. Stump and I looked at each other with expressions that said, "What in the Nether is going on?!"

  "For those of you who don’t know me," Brio said, "I am the mayor’s head assistant. I haven’t lived in your village for very long. I come from a village to the east of here, near Herobrine’s castle. And this—"

  He put his arm around Breeze.

  "—is my daughter."

  Wow.

  Wowowowow.

  So that explains a lot. Everyone around me was totally freaking out, but they stopped as soon as Brio continued. "Over a year ago, our village was attacked," he said. "Many lives were lost that day. However, my daughter and I, we … we were captured. Even then, the mobs were under Herobrine’s control. They took us to his castle, where we were held prisoner. And Herobrine, he … "

  Brio looked downward.

  "He experimented on us."

  When I heard this, his words were flint and steel and my mind was a block of TNT—my mind was BLOWN. Breeze, the silent girl. The weird girl. The girl a lot of kids whispered about.

  Herobrine had tried to turn her into some kind of super-soldier?! What kind of experiments did he do?!

  I was so curious … but Brio answered before I could even ask.

  "He infused us with magic," he said. "The same way one enchants a tool or a piece of armor, he … enchanted us."

  To my right, Stump gasped. "So that explains their purple eyes. That’s why Brio wears sunglasses! That’s why Breeze hides her face with her hair!"

  "Man," Emerald said, "what did Herobrine do? Throw them onto an enchanting table like they were items or something?"

  "I remember reading something about that in the ancient texts," Max said.

  As Breeze stood next to her father, she lowered her head as well.

  I felt so sorry for her. She must have felt like an outsider. A freak. It explained so much. Why she was so quiet and … why she was so strong.

  "While we were held prisoner, we overheard many things," Brio said. "We learned that the purpose of his experiments was to create an army stronger than anything this world has ever seen. But villagers are good at heart. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t control our minds. Before long, we managed to escape. Our village was in ruins by then, so we moved west … and found yours."

  I noticed a tear running down Breeze’s cheek—it looked like a small glass square. Whatever she had experienced back then, it must have been horrible.

  "And there you have it," the mayor said. "This is what we’re dealing with, folks. An army of magically enhanced mobs—we’re not talking about a random group of potion-chugging, helmet-wearing zombies this time. Please forgive me for not telling you sooner. I simply didn’t want to cause a panic. In the end, you can feel safe knowing that we have people here who have actually seen Herobrine’s castle with their own eyes. They know what we’re dealing with."

  Many villagers nodded to each other.

  There were many hurrrs and hurms

  and rhurrrggs.

  "So everyone put your tryhard pants on," Brio said. "We all have to do our part. We all have to do extra chores now. Even you, students. No more games on the weekends. No more hanging out at the fountain after school. This village is going to become an efficient, mob-slaying, redstone machine. And you are just one of its many redstone circuits."

  Many students groaned.

  "Aw, man. Wars are so lame."

  "This isn’t fair! I was supposed to go fishing this afternoon!"

  "If this village is a redstone machine," Emerald said, "I’m a repeater, not a circuit."

  "Extra chores?! I already have so much homework!" The girl who shouted this glanced back up at the sky. "I really hate you, Herobrine!!"

  An old man simply asked, "Ehh? What are ‘tryhard pants’?"

  (For the record, my tryhard pants are ALWAYS on. I NEVER take them off.)

  So like the mayor said, everyone must work constantly. With the threat of a huge mob invasion, there’s simply no more time for anything else. That includes getting ice cream, which is something my friends and I almost always do on Sunday afternoons.

  So annoying.

  Herobrine, you’re messing up my schedule, man!

  School, school, school.


  Chores, chores, chores.

  Will there ever be a time when it’s just play, play, play? I should look at the bright side, though; after this, Pebble will probably be way too tired to harass me much.

  Speaking of Pebble …

  I was standing in line with Stump, Emerald, and Max. We were waiting to get our assigned chores. And Team Pebble was a little ways behind us in line. I heard Pebble say, "If a bunch of endermen attack, all we need to do is send Runt at them. He cries so much he’s like a walking fountain! No enderman would get within twenty blocks of him!"

  A bunch of kids laughed. It got worse, though. Soon after that, the mayor approached Pebble. "I want you to make some more posters. You are excused from doing chores. Have you and your friends come to my house."

  "Nice! Thank you, your excellency!"

  Wow.

  I guess being a war hero really has its perks. Pebble shoved me out of the way as he passed me. "Later, noobling," he said. "Work hard for me, huh?"

  Sap, Donkey, and Sara smirked as they walked by.

  Rock winked at me. "Enjoy your chores."

  Then the mayor called Emerald and Breeze over. They were going to make their own posters, the mayor said. After all, in her own way, Breeze is an actual war hero. She survived whatever Herobrine had done to her.

  "What about our friends?" Emerald asked, pointing to the rest of Team Runt.

  Breeze glanced at me. "Can they come with us, too?"

  "Afraid not," the mayor said. "Girls only. I want the other girls to see that they can be strong too!"

  Emerald and Breeze nodded and waved good-bye to us.

  "Sorry, guys," Emerald said. "I tried."

  Breeze looked sad. "I’ll come help you when I can."

  Watching them go, I felt so jealous. Especially when I listened to the chores Drill and Brio were giving the rest of us kids. They all sounded so terrible …

  First, there was the slopper. That’s someone who has to craft mushroom stew, over and over. Our village has a lot of extra mushrooms. They’re not really used for anything except stew. So the mayor said that we should all try to eat mushroom stew as much as possible and save all the other food for when things get really bad.

  I don’t understand the logic behind this. (Remember that villagers are strange sometimes. Before Steve showed up, we hadn’t even thought about building a wall. A WALL. How sad is that?)

  Then there were the sorters. They have to organize the contents of chests in the village supply rooms. That doesn’t sound bad, until you think about what kind of items they handle. Spider eyes. Rotten zombie flesh. Slimeballs. Bones. Oh, and gunpowder, which is basically a creeper’s innards.

  The repairers work with the sorters. They go around the village finding two of the same item with low durability and combine them to take advantage of the 5% repair bonus. Some of the most common items that need repairing are leather boots—I’m guessing most of these unlucky kids will end up smelling like feet.

  Hurrggg.

  There were a lot of chores like that. That was why, when it was finally my turn to be assigned, I was silently praying to Notch:

  Please don’t let my chores have anything to do with mushroom stew.

  It didn’t look good, though. Drill was the one assigning me.

  He grinned. "Hello, Runt. Ya wanna hear the good news or the bad news first?"

  "Good news, please."

  "All right. You’ll be working with Stump."

  Wow.

  That was good news.

  Ridiculously good news.

  The best possible news ever.

  (Well, maybe not the best. He could have said something like, "Your job will be tasting cookies to ensure their quality and freshness.")

  Still, I wasn’t complaining at all. In fact, I cheered and gave my best friend a high-five. (By the way, Steve said that in the original game the villagers didn’t have fingers. But here they do. They’re blocky, though. Steve said our fingers look like big French fries. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. And hey, if it’s bad, well … in this world, his fingers look just the same!)

  I looked at Drill fearfully. "… and the bad news?" I asked.

  (No mushroom stew. No mushroom stew. No mushroom stew. Please, please, please, please, please … )

  The combat teacher grinned even more. "In three hours, your arms will know the true meaning of the word ‘pain.’"

  He handed each of us a stone axe.

  At least it wasn’t some wooden bowls.

  Before, when I thought about fighting mobs in a war, I imagined dropping a mountain of zombies.

  I imagined diamond swords and high-level enchantments. I imagined people cheering my name.

  Not this.

  Yeah. We’re choppers. That’s a fancy word for lumberjack. You see, the village needs more arrows. Enough to fill five double chests. That was why Drill ordered Stump and me to go to the tree farm. (The place where I first met Breeze.)

  So starting today, we go to school every morning. Then, when school’s over, we don’t head home. We must chop trees. So many trees.

  "Why do birch trees have to be so tall?" I asked.

  That’s the annoying part of harvesting wood. There’s always that last block you can’t quite reach. So you need to throw down a wood block from your inventory and jump on top of it. Then after harvesting the once unreachable block, you have to harvest the other block a second time.

  I almost wished I was an enderman. Stump finished chopping his own block and wiped sweat from his brow. "It could be worse," he said.

  "Yeah? How?"

  "We could be doing this on Earth. Mike once said the trees there fall over after being chopped."

  "Seriously?"

  "That’s what he said. And when they do, the lumberjacks shout, ‘Timber!’"

  "What does that mean?"

  "I have no idea. Anyway, let’s be thankful we’re here, huh? At least the trees won’t squash us."

  "Good point."

  Man, Earth really is a strange place. Some of the people in my village say that Earth is just a myth. When I hear about things like trees that fall to the ground, I almost want to agree with them. I mean, come on. Falling trees? Who could believe that? There’s no way that could possibly be true …

  I soon finished chopping another block. I let out a huge breath. "You know, it really is quiet out here."

  "Yeah … " Stump glanced at the surrounding trees. "It’s almost like we really are … out there."

  Out there. He meant beyond the wall. Even though the tree farm looks like wilderness, it’s near the center of the village. I picked up an oak sapling that had fallen from the leaves overhead.

  "This is what it would be like." I planted the sapling in the grass at my feet. "To be a warrior, I mean. A real one, like Steve. All alone. No one around for thousands of blocks. No one else to rely on but yourself."

  "I dreamed I was outside once," Stump said. "I had a log house in the woods. I went out to explore and got lost. The sun was going down, and I couldn’t find the way back. I panicked after that. I started running. The forest was getting darker and darker and my house was nowhere in sight. I couldn’t even see torchlight. And I wasn’t sure if I was getting closer or moving farther away … "

  After he told me this, the forest suddenly seemed so scary. We drew closer to each other. Both of us looked around with wide eyes.

  "Sounds more like a nightmare." I paused. "You know, someday, if we ever become warriors, the mayor might actually send us … out there."

  My friend swallowed nervously. "You mean, like scouts?"

  "Maybe. I heard the elders talking about it the other day."

  "I guess that makes sense. We need to know what’s going on out there."

  "Exactly."

 
We chatted like this for a while. It was honestly like the good old days, back before I started this diary. Back when I thought Herobrine was just a fairy tale. Back when the mobs weren’t so clever. Back then, Stump and I often went to places like this and just talked and talked about anything and everything. So even though today came with a lot of hard work, it wasn’t all bad.

  For at least an hour today, we totally forgot about the war. The mobs. The two wizards. The possibility of our village being utterly destroyed. While we swung our axes and talked about random stuff, it was like we were innocent kids again. But eventually we had to come back to reality. It was something that couldn’t be ignored. You just couldn’t avoid it. These days, you can’t get a cup of tea in my village without hearing about Herobrine at least fifty times. He’s trying to take over the world … with a huge army of mobs … and there’s almost no one left to fight him. There’s Notch, sure. A handful of villages in the west, yeah. And then there’s this village … with tryhard noobs like myself … and a bunch of clueless humans.

  "I wonder if the wars in the past were the same as this one," I said.

  Stump shook his head. "There were a lot more people back then."

  "I guess you’re right."

  I thought back, recalling what Mr. Beetroot had taught us in history class the other day …

  Long ago, this world was once filled with all kinds of people. There were people who were part wolf … others who were half pig … even people who looked like the humans from Earth.

  There were kings and princesses, valiant knights who slew the fiercest mobs … merchants, scholars, wizards, thieves, and everything in between.

  But now,

  there is nothing.

  When you look at my world now, it’s mostly wilderness—an endless amount of grass blocks, dirt blocks, stone, sand, and water blocks. These simple cubes form hills, mountains, deserts, valleys, rivers, lakes, forests, swamps, plains, chasms. But when it comes to civilization, my world doesn’t have much to offer. Every now and then, you might spot a village. That’s all that remains. It’s hard to imagine that those lands once contained towns and cities, castles—vast kingdoms. Knowing that, one must ask … where did all the people go?