Last Block Standing! (Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles #6)

by Nick Eliopulos

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  © 2021 Mojang Synergies AB. All Rights Reserved. Minecraft and the Minecraft logo are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  rhcbooks.com

  minecraft.net

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781984850690 (trade) — ISBN 9781984850706 (library binding) — ebook ISBN 9781984850713

  ep_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Prologue: Don’t Hold Your Breath for a Happy Ending

  Chapter 1: The Beginning of the End (and I’m Not Gonna Cry!)

  Chapter 2: Don’t Forget to Stop and Smell the Rainbows! (Though You Might Need to Bring a Stepladder.)

  Chapter 3: Something Is Rotten in the State of Minecraft….

  Chapter 4: It’s Still Minecraft! Just Without the Mining. Or the Crafting. Who Are We Kidding? It’s Broken.

  Chapter 5: The Kids Are in Trouble. Make No Bones About It!

  Chapter 6: The Best Plans Involve Ghosts! Which Is Ironic, Because Ghosts Aren’t Big Planners.

  Chapter 7: The Enemy of My Enemy Is This Guy I Know. Let’s Give Him a Chance!

  Chapter 8: The End City: Come for the Sights. Stay Because You’re Trapped. Forever!

  Chapter 9: A Moment That Was Long Overdue: The Librarian Comes to the Rescue!

  Chapter 10: Welcome to the Team! I Hope You Survive the Experience.

  Chapter 11: Even an Artificial Intelligence Can Make a Mistake…and Have Bad Breath!

  Chapter 12: Meanwhile: Stealth Squad Is Go!

  Chapter 13: Little Sisters. They Grow Up So Fast! Especially When Their Minds Expand to Encompass an Entire World!

  Chapter 14: The King Has Fallen. Long Live the Queen!

  Chapter 15: To All Things, an Ending. but in Every Ending, a New Beginning. (and Cake, Sometimes!)

  Epilogue: The Point in the Story Where Things Get Worse…

  About Minecraft

  About the Authors

  Six figures stood in the shadow of a great tower. Inside that tower, high above them, was their enemy. He called himself the Evoker King, and he had the power to destroy the game they all loved.

  The first figure was determined to stop him. “This is it,” she said. “The final battle.”

  The second figure nodded in agreement. “We’re ready,” he said.

  The third figure looked up at the tower, and his head spun. “Speak for yourself.”

  The fourth figure put a hand on his shoulder. “we’re with you all the way,” she promised.

  The fifth figure pointed her sword at their new companion. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  The sixth figure trembled. It wasn’t easy being the new kid on the team.

  But their whole plan relied on him. So he put on a brave face.

  “Sure,” he said. “Let’s take back Minecraft and build a better world.”

  Ash Kapoor stepped out of the darkness and into the light of day.

  For a moment, she expected the sunlight to dazzle her eyes and warm her skin. But the sun was artificial, and its light didn’t make her feel any warmer. The trees were artificial, too, and the grass, and the river running nearby. It was all virtual. Digital. A video game version of reality.

  Here, even Ash’s body was an avatar. It looked like her, but it was boxy, as if constructed using building blocks. Ash looked at her cube hands and knew they were not made out of skin or bone or living cells, but out of millions of tiny bits of light and color called pixels. Her real, flesh-and-blood body was sitting in her school’s computer lab. So were the real bodies of her friends Morgan, Jodi, Harper, and Po.

  She looked at her friends’ avatars now. They had just finished fighting their way through a difficult dungeon. She could sense that they were all tired and a little cranky, but she couldn’t tell that by looking at them. Avatars didn’t get dirty or battle-damaged. They didn’t get bloodshot eyes or messy hair. They always looked the same, unless you chose a new “skin” to change your appearance.

  They had all used different skins during their dungeon delve so that they would look like fantasy heroes. But they were back to normal now. They no longer looked like mythic heroes. They just looked like a bunch of kids.

  Well, all of them except Po Chen. As the team’s unofficial goofball, he had decided to keep wearing his dungeon skin. He looked like a wise old wizard.

  “That was epic,” Po said, not sounding very wizard-like at all.

  “It was a disaster,” said Morgan Mercado. “We failed. The Evoker King has the Foundation Stone!”

  Morgan’s little sister, Jodi, shrugged. “We don’t even know what the Foundation Stone does. Maybe everything will be okay?”

  Harper Houston shook her head. “Didn’t you hear the way the Evoker King gloated? And that wicked laugh?” She shuddered. “Nobody who laughs like that is up to anything good.”

  Ash thought Harper was right. Part of her wanted to find the Evoker King immediately. Whatever he was up to, they could still stop him. Maybe.

  But they’d all been through a lot. They needed to rest and heal. They needed to restock their supplies and repair their weapons. And they all had homework waiting for them back in the real world!

  She was just about to suggest disconnecting for the day…when she saw something strange out of the corner of her eye.

  In the distance, the landscape was shimmering. Far-off blocks seemed to be blinking out of existence and reappearing as quickly as they had vanished. At first it was only the blocks at the far horizon, but as she watched, the strange effect moved toward them like a wave.

  “Does anybody else see that?” she asked.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Morgan. “But it’s coming this way.”

  “Brace yourselves!” Ash said as the blocks all around them flickered. She saw her avatar arms pixelate, and her friends winked briefly out of existence.

  It only lasted a moment. The rippling wave moved into the far distance, and everything looked just as it had before.

  “What in the world was that…?” Ash said. “Some kind of glitch?”

  Harper frowned. “The last time we called something ‘just a glitch,’ it was the Evoker King hacking our entire school.”

  “You don’t think that was him, do you?” Morgan asked. “Did he already do something with the Foundation Stone?”

  “We need more information about what the Stone is,” Ash said. “Otherwise, we’re just making wild guesses.”

  “Huh,” Po said. “That’s weird….”

  Jodi turned to him with concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was gonna change my skin real quick,” he said. “But it’s not working.”

  Harper put her hand to her chin. “Curious. The a
nomalies are multiplying….”

  “Maybe we should set up our beds and disconnect,” said Ash. “It’s got to be getting late, anyway. We’ll regroup tomorrow.”

  Morgan seemed uncertain. He looked to the horizon, in the direction that strange wave had come from.

  “Don’t worry,” Ash said. “We’ll find him. We’ll stop him.” She put a blocky hand on his shoulder. “Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Ash waved goodbye to her friends on the school lawn, then rode her bike the short distance home. The air was crisp, and she smiled at the feeling of real sunlight on her face.

  She had only been living in the area for a little while, but Jodi, Morgan, Po, and Harper had all helped her feel like she belonged here. She’d also joined the local chapter of the Wildling Scouts, co-built a bat sanctuary, and stage-managed a school play!

  Ash realized she didn’t feel like “the new kid” anymore. She had really made a home for herself here.

  As she pulled up to her family’s house, Ash was surprised to see her mother’s car in the driveway. Her mom often worked late. Most nights, Ash and her father cooked dinner together, and her mom took care of the dishes.

  When Ash walked through her front door, both her parents were there. It looked like they’d been waiting for her.

  “Hello, Ash,” said her dad. “I’ve baked you a cake.”

  “Why don’t you have a seat?” said her mom. “We have some good news.”

  “Great news,” said her dad a bit too quickly and too enthusiastically.

  Ash thought their smiles looked a little forced.

  Whatever news they had for her…she thought it probably wasn’t good news at all.

  The next morning, Morgan awoke feeling anxious. There were too many unanswered questions about what he and his friends would face the next time they put on their VR headsets.

  Morgan’s science teacher, Doc Culpepper, had invented those headsets, and she had asked Morgan and his friends to test them. She seemed to have mostly forgotten about them since then. Doc liked to hop from one project to the next. For an adult, her attention span seemed awfully short.

  The kids had told Doc that her headsets were amazing, which was true. Through some advanced science that even Harper didn’t understand, the goggles seemed to transport their minds to another world. A world that looked and acted almost exactly like Minecraft.

  But Morgan and his friends had soon realized they weren’t alone in that virtual world. They shared it with a menacing being known as the Evoker King…and a helpful entity who called herself the Librarian.

  The kids had decided not to share those particular details with Doc. The last thing they wanted was for her to take the headsets away to dissect them.

  On their walk to school, Jodi quickly picked up on Morgan’s mood. “What’s eating you today, big brother?” she asked.

  Morgan sighed. “I’m just going over everything in my head. We never found Doc’s missing sixth headset, you know….”

  “And you thought that whoever had the headset was secretly the Evoker King.”

  “But the Evoker King turned out to be an artificial intelligence,” Morgan said. “He’s one hundred percent digital. It’s the Librarian who has the headset…and a secret identity.”

  “Do you have a theory about who she might be?” Jodi asked.

  “I don’t,” he admitted. “But she obviously knows more than she’s told us. If we can find her, she might be able to tell us what the Evoker King is really up to. Or what the Foundation Stone does.”

  “In the past, the Librarian has always found us,” Jodi reminded him. “Not the other way around.”

  “Maybe that needs to change,” said Morgan.

  By now, the siblings had arrived at the front lawn of the school. Morgan saw Harper and Po, but Ash wasn’t there. That was unusual. Ash was often the first to arrive.

  “Where’s Ash?” he asked. “We need to make a plan.”

  “Haven’t seen her,” Harper said. Po shrugged.

  Jodi peered down the sidewalk. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon,” she said.

  * * *

  But Ash never showed up on the lawn. Morgan couldn’t find her at her locker, either. She slipped into homeroom mere seconds before the late bell rang. She gave him a little wave, and Morgan noticed she had dark circles under her eyes. It looked as if she hadn’t gotten any sleep.

  He wanted to ask her about that. But Ms. Minerva, their homeroom teacher, had already started taking attendance, and talking wasn’t allowed during attendance.

  Apparently, no one had ever mentioned that rule to Doc. The science teacher burst into the classroom in a fit of excitement. “Class!” she said. “Look! Look outside the window!”

  Morgan turned his head in the direction she was pointing. It was easy to understand why Doc was so excited. Stretching across the sky was the most magnificent rainbow Morgan had ever seen.

  He’d seen small rainbows before. But this one looked like a drawing out of a storybook. It seemed to spring from the trees and spread through the blue above before arcing back down to the ground. He could clearly make out each color, from red to violet.

  The whole class oohed and aahed, Morgan loudest of all.

  “Can anyone tell me what causes a rainbow to appear?” Doc asked.

  Morgan didn’t know the answer, but others did. Several students raised their hands. Jodi cried out, “Leprechauns!”

  Before Doc could call on anyone to answer, Ms. Minerva cleared her throat. Loudly. She glared at Doc over her glasses.

  “Excuse me, Doc,” said Ms. Minerva. “But this isn’t your classroom. It’s mine.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” said Doc. “The world is our classroom, Minerva! And we have to provide lessons whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. We have to be flexible.”

  “Sounds a bit chaotic,” Ms. Minerva replied. She tapped her attendance log. “And it’s irresponsible to get distracted before taking attendance.”

  “A little chaos can be good,” said Doc. “If you’re too obsessed with rules, you can sometimes miss out on important opportunities.”

  To make her point, Doc pointed again to the classroom window. Morgan gasped. In the time that the teachers had spent talking, the rainbow had disappeared.

  “Too bad,” said Doc. “We missed our chance.”

  “That’s a pity,” said Ms. Minerva. “But, Doc, who’s watching your homeroom right now?”

  “Oh, they’re busy taking care of the frogs,” answered Doc.

  Ms. Minerva tapped her chin. “Isn’t this the same class that let the frogs loose the last time you left them alone? If I recall, we were finding frogs in desk drawers and wastebaskets for weeks….”

  Doc’s eyes went wide. “Oh no!” she moaned. Doc hurled herself out the door and whipped around the corner at full speed.

  Ms. Minerva smirked and returned to making her attendance log.

  “Well, that was very exciting, but let’s all settle down,” she said.

  Morgan could tell that she thought she’d won the disagreement. But he wasn’t so sure.

  And he still didn’t know where rainbows came from.

  Throughout homeroom, Morgan’s eyes kept drifting back to the window. The rainbow never came back. But thinking about it did take his mind off the Evoker King for a while.

  The bell rang, and Morgan sprang from his seat. It was his day to feed the class hamster, Baron Sweetcheeks. He loved the hamster, and always snuck him a few extra pellets.

  While he prepared the bowl of food, Ash approached. She picked up the hamster and nuzzled him. He chirped happily.

  “Morgan, we need to talk,” she said.

  “I was just about to say the same thing to you!” he said. “I was looking for you this morning. The Evoker King—�
�

  “The Evoker King will have to wait,” she said. “I’ve got bad news, and if I don’t tell you right now, I’m just going to burst into tears and not be able to say anything at all.”

  That got Morgan’s attention. He put down the hamster food and looked at Ash. Her eyes were wet.

  “Ash, what is it?” he asked.

  She took a deep breath before answering. “It’s my parents. Yesterday they told me…they said…”

  “What?” said Morgan.

  “We’re moving,” said Ash. “Morgan, I’m leaving Woodsword. Forever.”

  Po wondered if his wizard face showed just how upset he was. Maybe the beard hid his frown?

  He didn’t get angry very often. Usually, he tried to laugh about stuff that bothered him. But today, he was angry. “I don’t understand how your parents could do this to you,” he said.

  Ash’s avatar just shrugged. “It wasn’t really their decision. My mom’s job makes her move sometimes.”

  “Could she get another job?” asked Harper.

  “Could she do her job remotely?” asked Jodi. “Everything is virtual these days!”

  Despite his anger, Po chuckled at that. Everything certainly was virtual, where they were standing.

  “My mom’s definitely not going to get another job,” Ash said. “And she has to work on-site, but she likes that. She’s an engineer. It’s her dream job.”