Ms. Minerva waved him away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It seems we don’t need your services after all.”
The man was clearly confused. “Isn’t this the school with the bats?”
“It was the school with the bats,” answered the teacher. “Now it’s the school with students who are intelligent, compassionate problem-solvers.” She winked at Po and his friends.
“That’s cool,” said the exterminator. “How about roaches? You got any of those?”
Ms. Minerva took him by the elbow and steered him back toward his van. “We can handle things from here,” she said. The exterminator grumbled, still not sure of what had just happened.
As the exterminator drove off, Po and his friends exchanged high fives and fist bumps.
Ms. Minerva approached them. “I had to check the entire school to be sure,” she said. “But it’s true. There’s not a single—”
Suddenly, Doc came hurtling out the front doors of the school. “Nobody panic!” she cried. “I can fix our problem! Probably.”
“Wow,” said Po. “Does everybody come to school on Saturdays?”
“I’ve been here all night, perfecting this,” said Doc. She held up a strange contraption. It looked like an oversized tuning fork, but it had wires running along it and buttons that lit up like Christmas lights.
“By using the principles of echolocation, my crooning fork should produce a sound that will repel the bats without causing human ears to bleed. Again, probably.” She cleared her throat. “I just have to find the things first. The school is still infested, isn’t it?”
Ms. Minerva smirked. “You missed all the fun, Doc. These five solved the problem for us.”
“Follow us,” said Ash. “We’ll show you how.”
The school property went far back. They led their teachers past the main office building. They led them past the portables. They led them past the playground. And they kept going.
Finally, they came to a wooden structure at the far end of the lawn. It looked like a shed—the sort where a groundskeeper would store gardening tools. But it had dozens of long, thin openings along the top.
“Has this always been here?” asked Doc.
“No, we built it last night,” said Ash. “While my scout troop sealed up the school to keep the bats out, Ms. Minerva helped the five of us put this structure together. We wanted the bats to have someplace nearby to call home.”
“We call it the bat house,” Po said. “For obvious reasons. Now that I say it out loud, I feel like we could probably do better.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Doc. She shoved her device into her satchel. “Because that piece of technology was completely untested and, if I’m honest, a bit of a long shot.”
Ms. Minerva considered the bat house. She ran her fingers over a set of carved initials. “You know, it didn’t even occur to me to ask last night,” she said. “Where did you get the materials to do this?”
Po saw Ash deflate a little. “We had to take apart some of my tree house,” she said.
Ms. Minerva smiled sympathetically. “That was very generous of you.” Doc nodded in agreement.
“We’ll replace it, Ash,” Morgan promised. “We’ll make it even better than before.”
“It’s all right,” said Ash. “It was for a good cause. And Harper gave me some great advice.”
Harper nodded. “That’s right. Sometimes you have to take something apart to build something even better.”
“I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson this week,” said Po. After a dramatic pause, he added, “And that lesson is…not everyone likes clowns.”
The kids laughed.
Ms. Minerva shushed them. “They’re sleeping,” she said, peering in through the bat house window.
“They’ve got the right idea,” said Jodi, rubbing her eyes. “It’s been quite a week.”
A new day dawned on the Minecraft village. Ash and her friends were there to greet it.
But they also had work to do.
They had depleted their inventory while fighting off the monstrous mobs. Their tools and weapons were all damaged. Food was in scarce supply.
Together, they came up with a plan to get themselves back on their feet as quickly as possible.
Morgan focused on digging. The mountain was rich in mineral ores. And what they couldn’t use, they could trade.
He was careful not to dig too deep, though. He’d had enough of hostile mobs for a while. At one point, the sound of a single bat squeaking sent him running for the hills.
Jodi was on Overworld duty. She hacked up trees, gathered apples, and tended crops. With the bone meal from defeated skeletons as fertilizer, the crops grew extremely fast.
Po was their runner. In his custom mail carrier skin, he would visit Morgan and Jodi, and they would give him any extra materials they didn’t need to keep. Then he would deliver those materials to Ash before turning around to do it all over again.
It was Ash’s job to trade the extra materials with the villagers. She had been keeping track of what was in their inventory, so she had a good idea of what they still needed. She was especially excited to trade their rotting zombie flesh to the priest, who then offered lapis lazuli for sale.
Lapis lazuli was a rare ore in a strikingly beautiful shade of blue. No doubt Po or Jodi would love to get their hands on it. But Ash knew of another use for lapis lazuli. She passed it to Harper, who was in charge of crafting new tools to replace their damaged items.
“Do you know what to do with this?” Ash asked as she handed over the lapis.
Harper smiled. “I sure do.”
Harper let Ash tag along when she went to the village library. Together, they approached the enchanting table with its eerie floating book. As before, the book opened at their approach.
“Magic,” Ash breathed. “Real magic!”
“With the lapis, along with all the experience points we got for fighting the mobs, we can do some magic of our own.” She rubbed her blocky hands together. “So where do we start? A flaming sword? A helmet that deflects arrows?”
Ash thought about it. “But which one of us would wear the helmet? Who would get to wield the sword? I wonder if there’s an option that will benefit all of us at the same time.”
“Let’s think about it,” Harper said. Then she looked around. “Huh. That’s weird.”
“What is?” asked Ash.
“I haven’t seen that librarian at all today,” Harper answered. “I assumed she’d be in here.”
“That is strange,” said Ash. Villagers were usually very predictable. She sighed. “One more mystery. Add it to the list.”
* * *
After a few in-game days of preparation, Ash finally felt confident that they were ready to move on. “I’m eager to see what else is out there,” she said.
“Even if it’s not friendly?” asked Morgan.
Jodi hopped in place. “We handled that horde,” she said. “We can handle anything!”
“Neither snow nor rain will stop us,” said Po, quoting an old postal service motto.
“And I’ve got something to make the journey a little easier,” said Harper. She held up a fishing rod for all to see. “Ta-da!”
“Yes!” said Jodi. “Finally, we’ll be able to eat something other than apples and bread.”
“But it’s not just any old fishing rod,” Harper said. “I enchanted it, so fishing will be easier.”
“Our first enchanted item,” said Po. “Now, that’s a special delivery!”
Jodi poked him and said, “Enough with the postal humor. Return to sender, mailman.”
“Male man?” said Po. “Isn’t that redundant?”
Ash noticed Morgan was lost in thought. “What’s the matter, Morgan?” she asked.
Morgan seemed he
sitant to say anything. “I’ve been thinking,” he said at last. “We figured out the mobs were relocating like the bats did. But the bats relocated for a reason. They were driven out of their home—out of their habitat.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this,” said Ash.
“Right,” said Morgan. “I’m wondering: Why were the monsters relocating? What happened to their habitat? Were they fleeing from something?”
“Fleeing?” said Jodi. “You think the monsters were running away?”
“Running away from what?” asked Po.
“Yeah. What could possibly scare a whole horde of zombies and skeletons?” asked Harper.
Morgan turned toward the mountain. “The answer’s out there somewhere.” He gripped his newly crafted iron sword. “It’s up to us to find it.”
is a game about placing blocks and going on adventures. Build, play, and explore across infinitely generated worlds of mountains, caverns, oceans, jungles, and deserts. Defeat hordes of zombies, bake the cake of your dreams, venture to new dimensions, or build a skyscraper. What you do in Minecraft is up to you.
Nick Eliopulos is a writer who lives in Brooklyn (as many writers do). He likes to spend half his free time reading and the other half gaming. He cowrote the Adventurers Guild series with his best friend and works as a narrative designer for a small video game studio. After all these years, Endermen still give him the creeps.
Luke Flowers is an author-illustrator living in Colorado Springs with his wife and three children. He is grateful to have had the opportunity to illustrate forty-five books since 2014, when he began living his lifelong dream of illustrating children’s books. Luke has also written and illustrated a best-selling book series called Moby Shinobi. When he’s not illustrating in his creative cave, he enjoys performing puppetry, playing basketball, and going on adventures with his family.
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Night of the Bats! (Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles #2) Page 5