Emma remarked, “If we did know, don’t you think we would have gone with him?”
Lily inspected Mr. Anarchy’s small prison cell to see if there were any clues. A lone silverfish crawled across the floor in the dimly lit room. She plunged her sword into the monster, destroying it with one strike from her sword. But as her sword hit the ground, the block it struck broke.
“I thought this was a bedrock room. How can a block in its floor break?” Lily questioned.
The group was stunned. But before anyone had a chance to respond, thunder boomed throughout the town.
“Someone summoned a storm!” Simon hollered.
“Are you sure it’s not a natural storm?” asked Sunny.
“No, we’ve seen this before.” Michael stared at Emma, Otto, and Matthew as he spoke.
Matthew shrugged. “We didn’t have anything to do with this storm, I promise. We’ve been trapped in this prison.”
Michael was too busy battling the zombies that lumbered toward the prison to respond.
Ilana sprinted into the village, armed with a bunch of potions. She splashed potions on the zombies, weakening them. Lily and Robin plunged their swords into the weakened zombies, effortlessly destroying each one.
But no matter how many zombies they destroyed, more crept toward the town. The iron golem did little to stop the zombie invasion.
“We need to end this storm and find the monster spawner that’s creating all of these zombies.” Michael was annoyed. He wanted to find Mr. Anarchy, and this zombie attack was wasting his time.
“I bet the griefers in the blue hats staged this attack so they had time to escape,” Lily said as she exhaustedly destroyed another zombie.
Without warning, the sun came out, and the zombies disappeared. “Finally,” uttered Michael.
Lily and the others ran back to the prison. They rushed into Emma, Otto, and Matthew’s cell and interrogated them.
Simon asked, “What do you know?”
Robin demanded, “Tell us, now!”
“We are innocent,” Emma pleaded. “Leave us alone.”
“We don’t believe you.” Michael was frustrated.
“We don’t have any information!” Otto screamed. “Leave, now!”
Lily was frustrated. She wasn’t getting any information from Emma, Otto, and Matthew, and she was beginning to lose hope. “This is pointless.”
Peter reassured her, “We will get answers. We can’t give up.”
Everyone turned around when Juan ran into the prison.
Juan breathlessly exclaimed, “I have very important news.”
“What?” Lily asked.
“I’ve seen the two people who helped Mr. Anarchy escape. They came into my butcher shop yesterday,” said Juan.
Everyone’s eyes widened at the news. Lily remarked, “They must have been staying close to the town.”
Robin asked, “Did they talk to you?”
“Yes,” Juan recalled, “they spoke to me. They wore blue hats, so I know they were the same people. They asked me lots of questions about griefers and all of the trouble we’ve had in Lisimi Village, and about the prison.”
“Did you answer them?” asked Lily.
“I told them we had the griefer situation under control and that the villains were in prison. I feel awful, like I gave them too much info,” confessed Juan.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Lily reassured him.
A voice boomed, “She’s right. You didn’t do anything wrong, Juan.”
The gang swiftly turned around and saw Mr. Anarchy standing in the center of the village. He held a diamond sword and stood next to the two people who had rescued him from the prison.
“What do you want from us, Mr. Anarchy?” Lily shouted.
“Haven’t you done enough damage?” Michael hollered.
“No,” he smiled. “I guess I haven’t. You can’t stop me. Can’t you see how I was able to trap people on the server when I was in prison? There’s no way you can control my actions. I’m too powerful.”
Lily called out, “Are you done gloating yet?”
Blossom shook as she stood face-to-face with the person who admitted to trapping her on the server. She wanted to destroy him. She shouted, “Why us? Why did you trap us on the server?”
Sunny screamed, “I want to go home.”
“We all do, right?” Mr. Anarchy looked over at his sinister sidekicks, but they didn’t acknowledge Mr. Anarchy’s question. He repeated it, “Don’t we all want to leave this server?”
The two ignored him and crafted a portal to the Nether. Mr. Anarchy didn’t help them. He stood silently by, looking confused. Sweat formed above his brow as he watched Lily trying to stop the two people who he had thought were his sidekicks. When they had offered to help him escape the prison, Mr. Anarchy had assumed they wanted to help him escape, and thought he could help them, in turn. But now Mr. Anarchy wondered if Pablo and Ronan were really running the show, and if he was their sidekick.
Mr. Anarchy gasped as Lily shot an arrow at Pablo and Ronan, but they dodged it and continued to construct the portal.
Blossom was infuriated. Mr. Anarchy wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice Blossom as she sprinted toward him. She made the most of the opportunity and struck the evil griefer with her sword.
Taken by surprise, Mr. Anarchy didn’t have time to grab his sword and fight back. To escape, he hopped on the portal to the Nether, while Pablo and Ronan ignited it. As purple mist surrounded them, Blossom jumped onto the portal with Mr. Anarchy, and the whole group disappeared into the Nether.
4
ESCAPE TO THE NETHER
“Blossom!” Sunny shouted to his friend as she disappeared into the fiery biome.
“We need to find her,” Lily said, grabbing obsidian from her inventory. “I only have a couple of blocks. Does anybody have obsidian?”
“Yes,” Peter said, and he placed two blocks of obsidian, completing the rectangle. “We just have to ignite it.”
Sunny was the first to hop on the portal. “We need to find Blossom.”
“And stop Mr. Anarchy,” Michael reminded them.
“I’m not worried about Mr. Anarchy. I just want to find Blossom,” Sunny reiterated.
“We know you do, but if we don’t find Mr. Anarchy, more people will be zapped onto this server,” Peter called out as the purple mist surrounded them and they arrived in the fiery Nether landscape.
Sunny gasped. “This isn’t what I expected.”
“Watch out!” Lily cried. “Ghasts!”
Michael’s eyes widened as he watched an endless number of ghasts flying through the air. “I’ve never seen this many ghasts in my life.”
“This is highly unusual. Someone must be behind this attack,” Lily theorized.
“I agree,” Simon said as he grabbed his bow and arrow and aimed at the flying white beasts. “It has to be Mr. Anarchy and his evil minions.”
“I miss Blossom!” Sunny called out.
“This isn’t the time to look for your friend. We have to fight to survive.” Michael looked over at Sunny. “Use your fists to deflect the fireballs.”
“I have snowballs.” Sunny took a couple of snowballs from his inventory and threw them at the ghasts, destroying two of them.
“Excellent!” Michael smiled.
Lily struck a fireball with her fist and it flew toward the ghast that had shot it, destroying the blocky white mob.
Several of the ghasts unleashed high-pitched sounds that deafened the gang. Sunny cried out, “Make them stop!”
“We can’t!” Lily used her fists to destroy as many ghasts as she could. “The only way of stopping them is destroying them.”
Robin aimed her bow and arrow at the ghasts, striking a few. Michael threw his last remaining snowballs at the floating mobs. Lily used her fists, since her inventory was dangerously low. As Peter aimed his arrow at a ghast, Lily cried out, “Watch out! You’re on the edge of a lava river.”
&nb
sp; Peter looked down. “Thank you! I was so distracted by the battle, I didn’t notice the lava.”
“The Nether is awful,” Sunny declared as she threw his final snowball at a ghast and destroyed it.
Lily tried to be optimistic. “I think we’ve destroyed a bunch of the ghasts. We’re going to be okay.”
“You spoke too soon,” Michael hollered as a gang of blazes flew beside the ghasts.
“Blazes!” Sunny was terrified. He was scared of blazes when he played the game, and now he had to encounter them in real life. He began to shake. “What am I supposed to do? I am out of snowballs.”
Ilana exclaimed, “I don’t have any fire resistance potions.”
Peter called out, “I have some snowballs, Sunny.”
Sunny and Peter concentrated as they threw the snowballs. They didn’t have that many, and they had to use them wisely to destroy the blazes.
Lily and Robin annihilated the last few ghasts and helped the others defeat the blazes. When every flying, hostile Nether mob was destroyed, Sunny asked, “Can we look for Blossom now? I am very worried about her.”
“We understand,” Lily reassured him. “We will help your friend.”
Peter broke away from the group and walked along the lava river, calling out to the others, “I see a Nether fortress.”
“Where?” Ilana raced to Peter’s side.
“It’s behind that large pillar.” He pointed out the Nether fortress in the distance.
“That’s so far off,” Sunny cried.
“I know, but it might contain treasure,” Peter reminded him.
“And a bunch of fantastic resources for brewing potions like netherrack, which I desperately need,” added Ilana.
“Also, that’s the type of place where Mr. Anarchy and his minions might be hiding,” Michael suggested.
“Do you think Blossom is in the Nether fortress?” Sunny was extremely hopeful.
“We won’t know until we travel there,” Lily said, and the gang walked along the lava river toward the large fortress.
As they neared the structure, three blazes shot fireballs at them. As the group battled the pesky mobs, they heard the roar of a familiar voice coming from inside the Nether fortress.
5
OVERHEARD
Mr. Anarchy howled, “Pablo and Ronan, you aren’t what I thought you were! You said you were here to help.”
“Shh!” Lily told the others. She peeked her head inside the Nether fortress. “We can’t let him know we’re here.”
Ilana whispered, “Maybe we should use a potion of invisibility?”
“Good idea,” Lily said, and Ilana handed the potion out to the others.
One by one, the group sipped the potion and began to disappear. They walked into the Nether fortress just as the argument escalated between Mr. Anarchy and the griefers.
“How could you do this to me?” Mr. Anarchy cried.
“You’re done,” Ronan yelled. “Your game is over. We control this server now. You didn’t follow our rules, so now you have to pay the price.”
“But to actually use command blocks to put me on Hardcore mode and destroy me? That’s horrible. I won’t only be erased from the game, I might possibly be erased from existence!” Mr. Anarchy cried.
“That’s a chance we’re willing to take,” Pablo said as he placed command blocks in the corner of the Nether fortress and began to place Mr. Anarchy on Hardcore mode.
“You were never really that evil,” remarked Ronan.
“What?” Mr. Anarchy was confused.
“And you weren’t that smart either. You got caught. We had to help you escape from prison. If you were a true evil mastermind, you wouldn’t have been rotting away in a bedrock prison!” shouted Pablo.
“But it wasn’t really about being evil. I wanted to escape. I wanted—I still want—to go home. I have been stuck on this server for such a long time. It’s hard to be here. You know how I feel; both of you wanted to get zapped back to the real world,” Mr. Anarchy sobbed.
“And you did a great job getting us back home, didn’t you?” Ronan stood by the command blocks and yelled at Mr. Anarchy.
“You promised to get us back home, and you failed. Now you’re going to be punished.” Pablo walked over to the command blocks.
“Please,” Mr. Anarchy pleaded, “don’t destroy me.”
“You destroyed yourself.” Ronan walked toward Mr. Anarchy and held his sword against his chest.
“I tried,” Mr. Anarchy confessed. “I really tried to send you home. But I don’t know how to get off this server. If I did, would I still be here?”
“So you admit you’re a liar?” Ronan’s blade rubbed against Mr. Anarchy’s arm.
“I wouldn’t say a liar. I mean, I’m trying to figure out how to get off the server, and I did get others off,” Mr. Anarchy explained.
“But you just said you didn’t know how to escape.” Ronan raised his voice.
“We’ve had enough of you, Mr. Anarchy!” Pablo screamed as he worked on the command blocks.
“But I can help you,” Mr. Anarchy whimpered.
“How?” Pablo looked up.
“I’m the only one who can zap people onto this server. Haven’t I done enough? You made me prove my power by zapping those two people onto the server the other day. You know I didn’t want to do it, but I did it for you,” Mr. Anarchy spoke hurriedly, trying to prove his worth.
Sunny’s heart was beating rapidly, but he couldn’t do anything about how upset he was. He was so angry that he and Blossom were randomly zapped onto the server to prove Mr. Anarchy’s strength and power that he wanted to attack Mr. Anarchy and the two griefers, but he knew he couldn’t let them know the gang was there. He had to stick with his friends and stay invisible, but this seemed like an impossible challenge.
Pablo said, “So you can zap people onto the server. Is that your only trick?”
“No! I did get that girl Blossom back home,” Mr. Anarchy said.
“That was an accident,” Ronan said. “You didn’t know how that happened. When we arrived here, she was gone.”
Pablo added, “We don’t know for sure that she got back home. It could have been a glitch. Maybe she respawned somewhere else in the Nether.”
“Okay. Forget about Blossom. I can’t take credit for that,” admitted Mr. Anarchy.
“I guess you don’t have as many skills as you think,” Ronan said.
“I’m also a master at creating storms and destroying Lisimi Village. I know these people, and I know their weaknesses.” Mr. Anarchy smiled. “That must make me worth something, right?”
Pablo and Ronan paused. They walked to the corner of the fortress to discuss this alone. Pablo looked over at Mr. Anarchy. “Don’t go anywhere. or I will put you on Hardcore mode. You are so weak, it would take one blast from a ghast to destroy you.”
“Why would I leave?” asked Mr. Anarchy. “I want to work with you.”
As Ronan and Pablo talked, a bouncing noise emanated from another room.
“What’s that?” cried Ronan.
Mr. Anarchy said, “It sounds like magma cubes. Have you ever fought these in the real world?”
“Yes,” Pablo declared, grabbing his sword from his inventory and lunging at the three cubes that bounced into the center of the room.
Ronan struck one of the cubes and it broke into smaller cubes. He tried to obliterate the smaller cubes, but he was having a tough time. “Aren’t you going to help us?” he called out to Mr. Anarchy.
“Now you need my help?” Mr. Anarchy said.
“Yes,” Pablo shouted, “now!”
“But I am very low on energy,” Mr. Anarchy reminded them.
Pablo took milk from his inventory and handed it to Mr. Anarchy. “Drink this, then help us defeat these magma cubes.”
Ronan annihilated two cubes, but three more bounced down the hall.
Mr. Anarchy slayed a cube with his diamond sword and gasped when he saw a blaze fly through the N
ether fortress.
Ronan tried to dodge the blast, but it didn’t work. He was struck by the fireball and lost a heart.
Pablo was also struck by the fireball’s blast, and he cried out.
Mr. Anarchy destroyed the ghast and the final magma cubes. “See? I am worth something,” Mr. Anarchy declared.
Ronan and Pablo weren’t listening. They were too busy staring at the players that stood in the center of the Nether fortress.
Lily looked at her hands and panicked. They weren’t invisible.
6
FAMILIAR FACE
“Lily!” Mr. Anarchy said. “And your friends. What a pleasant surprise.”
Pablo looked at Mr. Anarchy. “How did they find us?”
Sunny cried out, “Where’s Blossom?”
“Blossom is back in the real world,” Ronan said. “Or, at least, we think she is.”
“I want to find her.” Sunny was frustrated.
“If you can get back to the real world, please let us know how.” Ronan clutched his diamond sword and walked toward Sunny.
“We aren’t here to fight you,” Lily announced.
“Really? Then why are you here?” questioned Pablo.
“We want to bring Mr. Anarchy back to the prison. He caused a lot of trouble and he deserves to be there,” explained Michael.
“You can have him,” Pablo laughed. “He’s useless to us.”
“What?” Mr. Anarchy cried, but he stopped when he stared at the command blocks. He knew Pablo and Ronan hadn’t activated them yet, and he wanted to destroy them before they could put him on Hardcore mode.
“Now that you have Mr. Anarchy, can you leave us alone?” Ronan demanded.
Lily looked over at her friends. She knew they had to attack Ronan and Pablo, because they were griefers. If the gang let this duo escape, they could unleash a horrible attack on the Overworld, and they had the potential to destroy Lisimi Village. Yet Lily didn’t know how to communicate with her friends as they stood face-to-face with these griefers. Instead of talking, she grabbed a potion of harming and splashed it on Pablo and Ronan.
Ghastly Battle Page 2