by Tracey West
Clay zoomed up and ejected from his cockpit, sending his Rumble Blade shooting right at Sparkks. Then he leapt up, sword ready for whatever came his way.
“Knights! We have to get Lance’s parents back!” he cried.
“I think Lance wants the gold back, but he’d like his folks to live with Jestro,” said Aaron, flying past on his hover shield.
A swarm of chattering, bouncing monsters surrounded the heroes. The knights were fighting a good fight, but they were simply outnumbered.
“Merlok, we need more power!” Lance yelled as a troop of Globlins bounced toward him.
Inside the Fortrex, Ava was furiously typing into the command center keyboard.
“Don’t get your chain mail in a bunch!” she replied. The knights could hear her through their helmets. “We’re working on it!”
Behind her, the orange holographic image of Merlok 2.0 glowed brightly.
“Yes! Yes!” Merlok cried, as the power surged through him. “Get ready for a NEXO Power!”
As Merlok powered up the download, the knights kept battling monsters.
Macy faced Sparkks and spun around, building up momentum for her attack.
Whack! She smacked him with her mace, and the big, one-eyed monster fell backward. He knocked into a sealant vendor’s wagon, sending a box of coins scattering across the road.
At the sight of the shiny coins, the greedy monsters went nuts!
“Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!” they chanted as they scrambled over one another—and pushed aside the knights—to pick up the fallen gold.
“They’re completely money crazy,” said Clay, waving his sword at a passing Globlin.
“Huh?” said Macy, pushing a Scurrier away with her power mace. “Remind you of anyone?”
Just then, the helmet of every knight began to glow and beep. Merlok 2.0 was ready for the download. Clay, Macy, Axl, Aaron, and Lance raised their shields toward the sky.
“Merlok!” Lance cried. “NEXOOO KNIGHTS!”
A glowing holographic creature appeared—it had a body like a lion and the face and wings of an eagle. The creature was a symbol of the NEXO Power they were about to download.
“NEXO Power: Griffin of Graciousness!” Merlok 2.0 announced.
Lance’s shield glowed brightly as it downloaded the NEXO Power. The energy spread throughout his armor and into his lance.
The other knights powered up, too. Aaron’s crossbow glowed with the energy. So did Clay’s sword, Macy’s mace, and Axl’s double-sided axe.
Powered by the Griffin of Graciousness, the knights tore like tornadoes through the army of monsters.
“Hyah!” With one whack of Macy’s mace, six Globlins dissolved into a purple cloud. It streamed back into The Book of Monsters.
Slash! Just one blow from Clay’s sword sent eight Bloblins back to the book.
Bam! Wham! Smack! In seconds, the knights had dissolved more than half of the monsters.
From his perch in the Evil Mobile, Jestro’s eyes grew wide with fear.
“Now what?” he asked The Book of Monsters.
“We gotta make a deal!” the book said.
Jestro shook his head. “No way!”
“We got no choice,” said the book. He shouted out to the knights. “Hey, hold on! We don’t want to fight. We want to make a deal!”
The knights stopped fighting and looked at each other, confused.
“What did he say?” Macy asked.
“He says they want to make a deal,” Clay replied, but he didn’t sound like he believed it.
“Look, we just want to give you Lance’s parents back,” Jestro said, and The Book of Monsters gave him a look. “Oh, and all the gold.”
“What?” Macy still couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“That actually sounds like a win-win,” said Aaron.
“No deal!” Lance called back. “We’ll take the gold and you can keep my parents.”
Jestro frowned and turned to The Book of Monsters. “What?”
“Sounds like some kind of reverse psychology trick,” the book guessed. “We gotta make some new outrageous demands of our own! That’s how these things work.”
Jestro nodded. “Right,” he said. Then he shouted back to the knights again. “No deal! You take the gold, the crazy rich people, and we want …”
He looked around. There wasn’t much in the town of Seeling except for stuff you could use to seal things with. Then he spotted something.
“We want a bunch of weather-proof caulk for some, uh, home renovation projects!” Jestro finished.
“What?” asked The Book of Monsters.
Jestro put a hand over his mouth. “We gotta weather-seal the new hot tub,” he reminded the book in a low voice.
The Book of Monsters nodded. “Ah, good thinking.”
Lance was still considering the offer.
“Hmm,” he said. “My parents for a tube of sealant …”
Clay looked at him. “Really? Do you actually have to think about it?”
Macy didn’t give him a chance to back down.
“Deal!” she shouted.
“Burnzie! Sparkks!” Jestro cried. The two big monsters placed Goldie and Cuthbert in the middle of the square. Lance walked toward them, holding the giant tube of caulk. Lance tossed the tube to the monsters, and they let go of Lance’s parents.
Goldie and Cuthbert frowned and they walked away from the Evil Mobile.
“Shall we leave them a bad review online?” Cuthbert asked.
“Absolutely!” agreed Goldie. “That was the worst spa vacation ever!”
Back in Auremville, Lance and the other knights stood among the piles of returned gold in the grand hall of the Richmond Mansion. Goldie and Cuthbert happily perched in their golden chairs and smiled at everyone.
“Son, we are happy you’re a knight,” his father said. “And you have good taste in friends.”
“What we’re trying to say, Lancelot, is that it’s good to be home,” said Goldie.
“Well, mother, I didn’t think I’d say this, but it’s good to have you home,” Lance said. “And this whole knight thing has been growing on me … sort of.”
Macy elbowed Clay and smiled.
“Now be a good boy and count all the money,” Goldie told him.
Lance sighed. “Fine. I’ll do the servant’s chores, just this once.”
He looked around the room. There were stacks of coins, piles of coins, mountains of coins, everywhere he looked. He sighed again and started counting.
“One … two … three … four …”
Ava walked up to him. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m counting,” Lance replied.
“Seems pretty labor-intensive,” Ava said with a sly grin on her face.
“It is,” Lance said. “Say, could I pay you to count all these coins?”
“Sure,” Ava said, holding out her hand. Lance dropped some coins into it. Ava pocketed the coins and started typing on her tablet.
“Average weight of one coin,” she said, while she typed. “Circumference of said coin … total area of all coins … volume of area …”
She stopped typing and looked up. “You have one million, six hundred and eighty-five thousand, two hundred and twelve coins here.”
Lance looked surprised. “Really? How did you do that?”
“It’s called math,” Ava replied. “Try it sometime.”
Lance brightened. “Better yet, I’ll pay Dennis to do some math for me.” He ran off to find his favorite Squirebot. “Dennis? Dennis!”
“You can always ‘count’ on Lance,” Ava said, and then she groaned at her own joke. “I’m letting my cleverness go to my head!”
Back at Jestro’s castle, the evil jester sat on his throne, frowning. Nearby, General Magmar worked with Burnzie and Sparkks to seal the bubbling hot tub. Burnzie squirted the caulk out of the giant tube.
“I’m kind of missing my huge piles of gold,” Jestro said with a sigh as he
looked around.
“Hey, you still got a golden statue of yourself,” The Book of Monsters reminded him. “That’s quite a conversation starter. Besides, you need to be focused on the big picture: finding more evil books!”
Burnzie jumped on the big tube to get out more caulk.
Squish! It squirted onto Sparkks. The big monster tried to wipe it off, and his hand got stuck to his own leg!
“Books, books, books,” complained Jestro. “What am I, a librarian?”
“Look, when we find the magic number of evil books, well … then some real nastiness can be unleashed,” The Book of Monsters said, his orange eyes burning at the thought.
Burnzie pulled on Sparkks’ arm—and he got stuck to Sparkks! General Magmar tried to pull them apart—and he got stuck to them!
“Real nastiness?” Jestro asked, perking up.
“Trust me, joke-boy,” said The Book of Monsters, with a grin even more evil than usual. “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
LEGO, the LEGO logo, NEXO KNIGHTS, the NEXO KNIGHTS logo, the Brick and Knob configurations and the Minifigure are trademarks of/ sont des marques de commerce du the LEGO Group. © 2016 The LEGO Group. All rights reserved. Produced by Scholastic Inc. under license from the LEGO Group.
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First printing 2016
e-ISBN 978-1-338-08794-9
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
