by Cube Kid
“It’s him!” said Ben.
“Yes! He’s here!”
“Who?!” I shouted.
Skyler turned to face me.
“Runt! Listen! Remember what you saw when you were—”
The scene cut away. Again, darkness. A man appeared in the inky gloom. He looked like Steve, yet there was something creepy about him. He . . . had no eyes. Or, rather, his eyes were white. And glowing. White light emerged behind him, and smoke, as if from a massive fire.
Something was burning.
The roaring sound came back again, deafening this time.
The man’s eyes grew brighter and brighter until everything was white.
“Wuah”
I sat up in bed, wide-awake, and remained like that for a while. An eerie feeling lingered on the edge of my mind. Those three kids said Notch sent them into my dream . . . Is something like that possible? Are they from Earth? Maybe they play that Minecraft game, like Steve and Mike used to. Is our village really in so much danger? We haven’t had a mob attack in quite some time.
And who was that guy with the glowing white eyes?
He didn’t seem very friendly.
After I brushed off the fear, I opened up Jello’s item chest and fed him some bread.
“You don’t happen to know a wither skeleton, do you, Jello?”
I petted him. He was cool to the touch.
“No, of course you don’t. It was just a dream.”
There was a huge meeting this morning. The mayor finally talked to everyone about the ever-encroaching forest.
“As you are all aware, a vast number of dark oak trees have been growing in the east,” he said. “This area is considered dangerous. Sunlight won’t reach the mobs there, which means they can travel around during the day. We’re currently experimenting with ways to deal with this problem, should the trees grow too close to the village.
“Don’t be alarmed. We’ve survived many attacks in the past, and we’ll survive so many more. This is simply the next step in the mobs’ strategy, and it’s a very obvious one.”
Brio—the guy with black sunglasses—joined the mayor at the oak block.
“From now on, the students will face more and more difficult classes, harsher training, and . . . each student must submit an idea to help protect our village. This will be your final test before you graduate.”
The mayor nodded.
“Students, you must train your hardest. The
mobs are improving quickly, it seems. So must we. I’ve noticed petty squabbles between some of you, and I suggest you end them today. The real enemy lies beyond those walls, not within.”
That was pretty much it. So, the trees allow mobs to hide from the sunlight. Zombies and skeletons can move around during the day, as long as they stay within that forest.
But is there more to it than that?
Skyler, Ben, and Katie
seemed to think so.
Hmm.
Later, in combat class, I had to be partners with Breeze again.
I got to enjoy another hour of being screamed at by Drill, crawling through mud, and a weird girl as my partner. Max and Stump have been having a blast in comparison.
Needless to say, it’s been the worst week of my life.
It soon got worse. Brio and the mayor observed the combat class today, from a distance. After class, Drill spoke with the mayor.
Drill said that Breeze and I are such good partners, we should work together every class . . .
That teacher is too mean.
Too mean.
Call me a potato jockey: okay, that’s fine, I can roll with that. But working with Breeze every day until I graduate?! What is this?! Such cruelty! Such pain!
I complained to the head teacher, but that was useless. He likes Breeze. He thinks she’s a great student. When I mentioned how weird she is, he didn’t believe me—in fact, he gave me the “Runt just invited me to a slumber party in the Nether” look.
Why does everyone give me that look?!
Why
The weird dreams came back tonight. This time, it was the events of Sunday—in reverse. So, in a way, it wasn’t so much a dream as it was me remembering things. There wasn’t much sound while the scenes played out, just an eerie static or buzzing noise.
Creepy, right?
I tried my best to remember what I saw that day.
It was like a zombie, or a skeleton . . . something standing upright. . . except it was huge.
It was almost as tall as the dark oaks. Not even endermen are that tall. What was it? I couldn’t make it out clearly. It was too far away, and my eyes were all watery from the wind. I soon began dreaming for real:
Nonono.
NNNNNNo.
This dream is not turning into a nightmare. Come on, Runt. This is your dream. You’re the boss in here. Control this thing.
There we go! Now this is a dream!
Yeeeeahhh!!
I don’t wanna wake up!
Breeze was such a noob today.
My new “partner” did almost everything wrong. One of her potions even exploded in brewing class. Afterward, she just blinked, sneezed, and said, “Oops.”
“Wow,” Pebble said, “looks like you two noobs are made for each other.” Almost everyone in class laughed.
Max and Stump gave me a guilty look. At least they were having fun . . .
Anyway, I had to get away from her. So, during lunch, I took off to the school library. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had seen in the forest, anyway, and wanted to do some research.
Mungo the Overlord was the biggest mob I’d read about. Thinking back, the thing I had spotted on Sunday could have been a huge zombie. I remember reading about giant zombies. They were super rare.
Fast-forward an hour: I didn’t find any mobs, even legendary ones, in the library’s books that fit what I had seen. Afternoon classes went by in a blur. I didn’t even pay attention to Drill’s shouts; I just did my push-ups, ran my laps. He was a bit hard to ignore, though.
“I’VE SEEN SILVERFISH CRAWL THROUGH COBBLESTONE FASTER THAN YOU!!”
After school, I told Steve about my sighting. He laughed it off.
“Probably just a cow. There might be a few zombies out there, but that’s it.”
The mayor said the same thing.
“You want me to modify my plans because you think you saw something?”
Stump also blew me off.
“Lay off the potions, dude. Really.” His blue eyes, normally cheerful, were filled with worry.
“Can’t you just be a normal kid and stop getting into trouble? What happened to just studying hard and becoming warriors?”
Hurrrg.
(I haven’t had a good old-fashioned hurrrg in a while.)
However, when I mentioned my dream to Max, he nodded slowly.
“I saw something, too,” he said. “Heard something, rather. The other night. My dad and I had an argument, so I stepped outside and went for a walk. Went to the east wall. Something moaned so loud out there I had trouble sleeping when I went back home.”
“So I’m not the only one, then.”
“How about we go find out?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I say we head over there tomorrow night,” Max said. “Just sneak out of the village and go find out what’s in there.”
“Are you crazy?!”
“Maybe. After all, what sane person would ever want to fight mobs for a living?”
Stump’s words came back to haunt me: (Can’t you just be a normal kid and stop getting into trouble? What happened to just studying hard and becoming warriors?)
I told Max that I didn’t want to do anything crazy anymore.
&n
bsp; “Besides,” I said, “if the mayor ever found out about this . . .”
“He won’t find out,” Max said. He clapped his hands together. “It’s like this, Runt. Let’s say the mayor’s right, and there’s nothing out there except some zombies. Maybe a skeleton or two. Then we won’t be in any danger at all. I’ve got some Potions of Invisibility. We’ll be totally fine. However, if the mayor’s wrong and we’re right, then the village really needs to know.”
I couldn’t believe this kind of stuff was coming from Max . . .
But what came next—
“I love my village,” he said, “and I’m prepared to take minor risks to help the people I love.
My family.
My friends.
“The little kids that play in the street near my house. I’m not gonna let the mobs get them.”
He had a kind of strength when he said this, a confidence I’d never seen in anyone else, not even Steve—it was impossible not to feel moved. And at that point, I understood: these are the words of a warrior.
I stood up straighter.
Nodded.
Even smiled.
We crept out of the village after the sun went down.
The east wall of the village didn’t have a gate, but there was a secret trapdoor that allowed easy passage. We crept through the tunnel and exited into the plains.
Max wasn’t kidding when he said he had Potions of Invisibility. He’d been stockpiling them. I didn’t ask where he’d gotten so many golden nuggets. Even a single potion had a pretty steep price—eight per potion, plus a fermented spider eye—yet Max handed me five without batting an eye.
“How long do these potions last?” I asked.
“They’re extended,” Max said. “Eight-minute duration.”
At five potions each, we had forty minutes to snoop around. We chugged a bottle each. At first, it was difficult walking without seeing our legs or hands. The closer we got to the dark forest, the more my heart sank into my stomach. There was no sound beyond the soft crunching of grass underneath our feet.
“This way,” Max said. “The valley. See it?”
“Yeah.”
We crept forward, slowly, slowly.
I could hear him breathing, and he could no doubt hear me.
Both of us were afraid.
“At least this place still has animals,” I whispered, pointing. “Maybe it’s not so bad here?”
“Quiet.”
“What is it?”
“Listen.”
We stood there for a long time—at least a minute, although it seemed like forever—invisible, barely breathing.
Then Max’s footsteps broke the silence.
“Let’s go.”
We stepped into the forest. It was gloomy, hard to see, and I regretted not bringing some potions of my own—Night Vision.
“Saplings,” I said.
“Let’s keep going.”
We crept forward, waited, listened, looked around, and when we felt we had two minutes left on our invisibility, we drank another potion each—just to be safe.
At one point, I thought I heard a crunching sound.
I bumped into Max, almost knocking him over.
“Forward,” he said. “Real slow.”
We moved forward, past some big trees . . .
And then—
I almost screamed—
but Max, despite being unable to see me, put his hand over my mouth.
He grabbed me, and we both backed up, until the mobs were out of sight and only the crunching sounds of the shovel could still be heard. “This is insane,” Max whispered.
“The mobs . . . they . . .”
I was thinking the same thing.
I . . . can’t believe it. The mobs made this forest? A skeleton was holding a shovel. A zombie was holding a sapling. But . . . they’re mobs! Not villagers! Not Earth kids! Not noobs, or warriors, or even iron golems, who often hold flowers the same way that zombie was holding that baby tree—so delicately, with the utmost care.
That zombie was acting like he didn’t want to damage the sapling’s roots. He probably had a respectable Farming score.
Mobs!!
With Farming scores?!?!
Mobs that know how to farm?!
How can they . . . how did they . . . they’ve been planting trees?!
How?! How is that even possible?!
What, they’ve got farming classes over there in Mob City, do they?!
I mean, I assumed this forest would be crawling with them, but to think that they actually created—
Boom!
Boom!!
Boom!!!
The ground was shaking slightly. A massive creature shambled toward the skeleton and the zombie.
It must have stood at least six blocks high. Its fists were one block across; its head was slightly bigger than that.
My scientific calculations
concluded that this could mean only one thing:
RUNRUNRUNRUN
RUNRUNRUNRUN.
Max and I made it back in one piece. None of the mobs noticed us. Not even the big guy with tree trunks for arms. We found Stump and told him everything. Of course, none of us had seen or heard of a mob like that. We wanted to know what it was.
Max suggested we try to find more information in a library. The three of us headed to the biggest library in the village and began looking through a bunch of ancient, dusty books.
Breeze slipped into the library shortly thereafter. She entered when two other kids were leaving to prevent me from noticing her. But I saw her thin form—like a blurred shadow in the dim corner of the library—just as she zoomed behind an aisle of books.
Max eventually found what we were looking for. A librarian can come in handy, after all. It was a book with a simple green cover and an even simpler name:
Legendary Mobs of Minecraftia.
Despite its boring outward appearance, this book was filled with a lot of crazy stuff. It’s an encyclopedia of legendary mobs—boss monsters, as they’re referred to on Earth. Well, the three of us sat around and flipped through its chapters.
By the way, all of the mobs in this book were 100% real. Some of them sounded downright terrifying, such as the screaming cow (all living things close enough to hear its cries get the wither debuff).
Or the obsidian giant (it’s nearly twenty blocks tall and the only weapon that can harm it is a diamond pickaxe).
Then I found one that sent a chill down my spine.
“That’s our mob,” I said.
Stump seemed skeptical.
“You’re sure? Maybe it was an enderman?”
“No, this thing was no enderman,” Max said. “Every time it walked, it created a mini earthquake.”
“Well, if this guy’s really out there,” Stump said, “then this village is in big trouble. Says here Urkk is a midlevel boss mob. Can take out iron golems without even trying and hurl creepers up to fifteen blocks for a ranged explosive attack. This ability has earned him the nickname
‘The Creeper Express.’”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“. . .”
Everyone fell silent for a moment, considering these words. Max then read aloud from the book.
First, Urkk is seven blocks tall. He’s got special bone armor made from the bones of wither skeletons.
(The book estimates that this guy has maybe three times the life-force of an iron golem.) That’s a lot of hearts. But the craziest thing about him is his weapon: a modified fishing rod—a special, unique item. How he crafted it is still a mystery to Minecraftian sages.
It has a longer reach than a normal fishing rod with a fast-flying hook. But what makes this fish
ing rod truly deadly are the Pulling II and Sharpness VII enchantments, meaning it pulls hooked targets closer and deals an incredible amount of damage when it does.
“I didn’t even know a seventh level of Sharpness existed,” Breeze said. All three of us looked up at her in surprise. (Even though I had seen her enter, I’d already forgotten about her.)
Max shrugged. “Boss mobs like this tend to have crazy items and abilities.”
The fear snuck up on my heart like a creeper that had drunk a Potion of Invisibility. “How can we defend ourselves against this guy?” I asked.
Max shrugged again. “Don’t get hooked?”
“Come on,” I said. “There has to be something else.”
Stump pointed at the bottom of the right page. “He has a phobia.”
“Huh?” I said.
“What’s that?” Max asked.
“It’s another word for fear,” Stump said. “You know how creepers are afraid of cats? Skeletons, dogs? Well, he’s got one, too.
“He’s afraid of heights.”
“Interesting.” Max read some more. “So, he’s terrified of any vertical drop greater than five blocks.”
Suddenly, Stump rose from his chair. “What are we doing here?! We’re just sitting around talking! We’ve gotta go warn the mayor!”
