by Mark Mulle
It was a pretty cool thing to look at. I had never seen such a friendly environment before.
“Treasure, huh?” Micah asked.
“Yup. Treasure. Gold and diamonds, some other cool things…they say that it’s inside a mountain guarded by a lot of monsters and apparently a dragon. I’ve read somewhere that there’s a strange village or town or something like that there, too. You’ll be amazed at the stories people tell about Minecraft.” Trent said.
“How do you know that this isn’t just something made up?” Micah asked.
Trent laughed.
“Well, you two come with me.” he said.
Micah and I followed him as he got out of the building and entered a small house on the other side of the camp. The interior of the house was pretty modest, sandstone walls and a wooden floor. Inside there were only a bed, a furnace, a crafting table, a double chest and a bookshelf. Trent closed the door and turned to us. He opened his inventory and equipped something.
“Here! This is how I know that the treasure is real.” he said, showing us the small golden object that he had in his hand.
“What’s that?” Micah asked.
I know, Micah is a trickster, all right!
“It’s a golden compass. I read somewhere that this thing leads you right to the treasure.” Trent excitedly said.
“Well if you have this, why don’t you just use it and find the treasure? Why are you still here, in this camp?” I asked Trent.
“Most of the guys are still noobs. They need some basic training before we head out. They’ll have to spend some more hours leveling up and learning how to do stuff, how to use tools and weapons properly. I like them, they’re good people and I don’t want them to get killed during our journey. The treasure isn’t going anywhere, either. I want it to be a great adventure for all of them. Why not?”
At that moment I realized that if we would tell Jake and his Greenfoot clan that these guys were so unprepared for an assault, he and his men would storm this camp and destroy each and every one of them and all that which they had built.
“Listen, Trent. I have to tell you this…” I started saying.
“What? No, Mike…” Micah said, trying to stop me.
“Look. We’re not really travelers. I mean we are, but we aren’t. We were looking for the same treasure that you and your guys are, but we got…uhm, captured by a clan in that forest over the river. They took away our golden compass and they made us come here and infiltrate your camp. They also have our friend Jerry with them.” I told Trent.
I couldn’t really keep on lying to him, because he was just a nice guy trying to have fun and helping new players also have fun and learn things.
“What? Why would they do that?” Trent asked.
“Because they want to see if you’re a threat or not. They sent us because they were afraid that you would outnumber them. Also, they know that you’re after the treasure and they don’t like competition,” I told him.
“Wow…what now, then?” Trent asked.
But at that moment we heard yelling from outside.
“Attack! We’re under attack!”
I was the first one to go through the door and when I got outside I saw something flying through the air, hitting one of the walls and exploding.
“TNT!” Micah yelled as he ran out of the house.
“What the…is it them?” Trent asked desperately.
“I don’t know. But they must have a TNT cannon or something. They’re not playing around.” Micah said.
Micah finished his sentence and yet another block of TNT came flying. This one went through the hole that the previous one had left in the wall and hit one of the small buildings that were inside the camp. The TNT exploded with a loud bang and after the smoke cleared we could see another one flying across the air and hitting the exact same spot. The third TNT block exploded on impact and when the smoke cleared we could see small glowing orbs inside the house and small tools, weapons and blocks floating on the ground. The explosion had destroyed a player that was inside the building.
“We’ve got to evacuate the camp.” Micah said.
“Let’s get inside and warn the others.” Trent said, as he was running towards the big building.
I equipped my iron sword and ran as fast as I could towards the building where most of the players were.
Behind us, blocks of TNT kept pounding the ground where the house was. TNT cannons are strong weapons but you can only point at it in a single immovable target, you can’t really steer them around.
We got inside the building and saw that almost all of the players that were there were looking outside through the large windows.
“Guys! Listen! We have to evacuate the camp! We’re under attack. Put on your best armor and equip your best swords. Stay together and don’t get lost from the…”
But Trent didn’t manage to finish what he had to say because behind us, the door and the wall around it blew up to smithereens.
All the players huddled up to the opposite part of the room and some of them took out their pickaxes and started chipping away at the sandstone blocks in the wall, trying to dig their way out of there.
When the smoke from the TNT explosion cleared we saw a group of players standing there with swords and bows.
They weren’t wearing green leather armors, though. All of them wore full sets of armors made out of iron, all of them, apart from a single one. This player was wearing a set of diamond armor, but with a black leather helmet on his head.
I turned to Micah.
“Micah…is that?”
“Zeke…” Micah said.
The player with the diamond armor and black helmet slowly walked towards us.
“Hello, Micah. Mike. Long time no see, huh?”
“What are you doing here, Zeke?” Micah asked.
“Well, you know, pillaging and plundering, Micah.” Zeke said.
Trent ran from his players and up to Zeke.
“Look, man! Take it. You can have the compass. I don’t want the treasure anymore.” Trent said.
Micah chased after Trent.
“No, Trent, these aren’t the guys that I was telling you about!” Micah yelled.
“Shut up, Micah! Give me that thing! What treasure?”
“Leave me alone Micah! You are the one that doomed us all! Here’s the golden compass. Take it. Leave us alone and stop destroying our camp. Take it, put it with the other one you have, I don’t care.” Trent said. He handed the golden compass to Zeke.
Micah however showed his skill in battle, running around, jumping on blocks to dodge incoming fire of arrows, and avoiding being cornered by Zeke’s men.
I managed to take down an enemy bowman, attacking him from behind as he was shooting at someone else.
Within minutes the camp was emptied of most of its inhabitants. Trent and his clan members escaped through the hole that they had dug up in the wall.
Micah and I managed to break through the enemy lines and ran towards the river while Zeke and his gang was busy taking down the camp.
The sun was rising after the bloody battle and the night’s monsters were burning under the rays of light.
When we got back to where we left our horses, there was no sign of them. We had no time to waste looking around for the horses so we ran back into the forest on foot.
It had taken us two days to reach Trent’s camp on horseback, traveling on foot however would take almost double that much.
We ran and we ran and when the night came, I stopped to build a shelter.
“No time for that, Mike” Micah said.
“Well what do you suggest, Micah? Should we carry on running through the night? What if we get swarmed by monsters?” I asked him.
“There is no time to waste, Mike. There just isn’t. I haven’t seen any sign of Zeke all day, but if I know him like I think I do, he’ll come after us like an enderman. There’s a reason why he was my right hand, M
ike. He knows his way around a forest and he can track down most Minecraft players with ease. Don’t dig, don’t chop any wood, and just don’t do anything. He’ll know that we were here.” Micah said.
“And what are we supposed to do, then?” I asked him.
“We run. We reach the Greenfoot base and we get Jerry and the compass. Then, we get as far away as possible as quickly as we can.” Micah said.
“What about the monsters?” I asked.
“I’ll gladly take my chances with them than risk running into Zeke. We’ve got a treasure to find and I don’t want Zeke to have it.” Micah said.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked.
“Yeah. Just follow me closely, don’t linger and don’t go attacking any monsters, no matter what. If you stop running all of them will swarm you. Come on!” Micah said.
He then bolted further into the forest.
I quickly followed.
Although the sun had set for a few minutes, zombies, spiders, skeletons, creepers and endermen were already roaming through the forest.
We ran through the woods, jumping, dodging and zigzagging through hordes of monsters.
At first the only mobs that followed us were zombies and creepers. The zombies were pretty easy to outrun, apart from the small ones that were pretty quick actually. Whenever we passed a zombie we just hit him with a sword to knock him away from our path and ran as quickly as we could.
After we managed to escape our first cluster of zombies I saw a strange mob following us at quite a high pace.
“What in Herobrine’s name is that?” I asked Micah.
He turned around and looked at the incoming mob.
“Ha. I haven’t seen one of those in quite some time.” Micah said.
The mob came closer and closer. When I finally saw it I was lost for words. I had never seen such a mob before. Well, actually they were two mobs in one – it was a little zombie on top of a chicken. The baby zombie was riding the chicken just like a player would ride a horse. The small mob also had a golden sword in his right hand.
“Chicken Jockey,” Micah said. “They’re pretty fast; don’t get fooled by their size. Watch out. I’ll get his attention and you bash it from behind with your sword. We’ll bring him down in no time.”
“Let’s do this.” I said.
The chicken jockey charged at us. Micah jumped right into his path and hit it with his iron sword. I immediately jumped right behind the mob and did the same. The little zombie kept attacking Micah with all its strength, completely ignoring me. I used that to my advantage and kept slashing away at its back. Within seconds the small zombie and its chicken went down in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a golden sword.
“Nice. Now grab that sword and let’s go. No time to waste.” Micah said.
I grabbed the golden sword but when I looked up I saw that we were surrounded by mobs. It looked like we forgot to follow Micah’s advice about not stopping. While we were busy with killing the chicken jockey, other mobs swarmed to our location and surrounded us. Now, the mobs were advancing on our position. Three skeletons were right in front of us, about four zombies were coming up from behind us and three creepers were quickly advancing towards us from each side.
“Think fast Mike. Follow me! First, we rush the skeletons. Listen to me. Never stay still. Never. Come on!” Micah yelled.
After that, Micah charged the skeletons. He ran from side to side and not straight at them, avoiding the arrows that they shot. I did the same, staying closely behind him. The skeletons fired arrow after arrow but we kept our composure and managed to avoid getting hit.
The three skeleton archers were standing in a row. When Micah finally reached them, he positioned himself in such a way in which only one skeleton would face him. Thus, the skeleton shielded Micah from the other two archers. Skeleton archers are not that smart, you see, so if there is another hostile monster between you and them, they will still shoot at you, even if it means that they will hit one of their own. You even get an achievement if you use this technique and make a skeleton kill a creeper.
Anyway, Micah slashed his sword at the skeleton, taking a hit or two in the process.
I did the same, but I attacked the skeletons from the side.
Micah’s technique helped him a lot as he managed to destroy the skeleton fairly easy, because of the damage that the other skeletons did to it.
I however, didn’t manage to get the job done as fast as he did.
One skeleton was left. Micah and I turned our attention to it, but from behind us, a creeper started hissing. By the time I turned around, the creeper was already inflating, preparing itself to explode.
“Creeper!” I yelled.
Micah took a sidestep, but I wasn’t so lucky. The creeper exploded into a large cloud of smoke and threw me a couple of feet back, completely destroying the skeleton. I took a considerable amount of damage, but Micah was just far enough from the explosion to not suffer any damage.
“Are you alright, Mike?” Micah asked.
I had only two hearts left in my health bar.
“I’m a bit shaken up, but I’m good.” I responded.
The second creeper was running straight at us, hissing menacingly.
“Come on, let’s go!” Micah said. “No point in killing all of them”
I nodded and followed Micah.
We kept running and running until we saw no more monsters. We stopped for a moment, just enough for me to eat a couple of pork chops in order to get my health up.
“Are you ok?” Micah asked.
My health bar was starting to regenerate.
“I’ll be completely healed in a minute.” I responded.
“Cool. Let’s go. I have a bad feeling about all of this.” Micah said while turning around.
We kept running until the sun came up.
We still ran into monsters, though. The forest was pretty thick and so the hostile mobs managed to stay hidden in the shadows, thus avoiding being burnt by the sun’s light.
Micah kept running and running and so did I. We stopped for a couple of seconds every now and then, in order to eat. All the running and fighting took a toll on us and we got hungry quite often.
It was about midnight when Micah suddenly stopped. He looked around and turned to me.
“Look, Mike!”
“What?” I asked.
“That small hill over there. The one made out of stone.” Micah pointed.
“What about it?”
“We are getting close to the Greenfoot base.”
Micah then started running again.
I could not believe how much ground we actually managed to cover by constantly running without stopping or resting during the night.
Finally, when the sun was beginning to rise again, we saw a familiar sight – the giant tree that marked the entrance to Jake’s Greenfoot base.
Micah stopped.
“You know that bad feeling that I told you I had, Mike?” Micah asked me.
“Uh…yeah?”
“Well, I’m having it right now.” Micah said.
And at that moment, from behind the trees that surrounded us came out no less than eight Greenfoot clan men, all wearing their distinctive green leather armors.
“What happened back there at the camp?” one of them asked.
“We saw explosions and then the two of you crossing the river and running into the woods.” said another one.
“Look, let us go up to the camp. We have to talk to Jake. We have to tell him a lot of stuff. We need to get our friend Jerry.” I told them.
“You are not allowed to enter our camp until you tell us everything that happened back there.” said the first Greenfoot player.
“We were attacked by another clan. They killed everyone in that camp and destroyed everything.” I told him.
“What? You better not be lying to us.” the Greenfoot player said.
“I’m n
ot lying. Where were you guys? You were supposed to follow us! Instead, you stayed in the woods, cowering and hiding behind the trees! We almost got killed out there!” I yelled at him.
Micah, who was oddly silent during the whole discussion turned around.
“Guys, let us in. Now.”
“What? What are you talking about? I told you two, you are not getting inside our base until…”
At that moment, an arrow flew through the air and hit the Greenfoot player right in the chest. The impact knocked him back a couple of feet.
A moment later, players in iron armors came out of the woods, charging on foot and on horseback. At the head of the attack was none other than Zeke. It turned out that Micah was right yet again – Zeke was that good of a tracker, he managed to follow us right back to the Greenfoot base.
Zeke and his army were now fighting, or should I say completely destroying the group of Greenfoot players.
The Greenfoot players were pretty skilled in fighting, but they couldn’t match Zeke and his men. The green armors were surrounded by iron.
Zeke’s men outnumbered them and Greenfoot players found themselves being scattered and perishing under the blow of swords.
What I found to be really amazing was that although the Greenfoot clan men knew that they could not win the fight, none of them were going to run. All of them stayed on the battlefield and faced their foes.
On the other hand, Micah and I turned around and leapt into the pond as soon as we saw that out of the eight Greenfoot players there remained only two.
We swam as fast as we could through the water, dove in deep and came out inside the tree. We climbed the ladder and reached the camp.
Jake and the remaining clan men surrounded us. Jerry was standing behind Jake.
“What’s going on down there? What happened to the others?” Jake asked.
“Enemies. Your men are gone.” Micah said.
“What?” Jake yelled. “What did you do? Who are these guys? What happened?”
“The camp on the edge of the forest is gone. Hostiles destroyed it. The same hostiles followed us here.” Micah said.
“What have you done?” Jake asked again.
But at that moment Zeke came through the entrance, followed by his men. Jake walked up to him, sword in hand.
“Look, man, I don’t know who you guys think you are but if you think…”
Jake couldn’t finish what he was saying, because Zeke hit him with his diamond sword. Jake was knocked back, flying through the air. The Greenfoot players then attacked the hostiles. Jake turned around and ran in the other direction.
“After him!” Micah said.
“What?” Jerry asked.
“He’s got my compass!” Micah said, already on Jake’s tail.
I looked at Jerry and the both of us knew that if we were to stand and fight we would face the same faith as the Greenfoot players from below.
Again, much to my amazement, the Greenfoot clan men that were in the camp kept fighting Zeke and his lot, even when their leader, Jake, ran away like a coward.
Micah, Jerry and I followed Jake through the camp. We managed to catch up with him as he entered the house in which the three of us spent our night when we first reached the Greenfoot camp.
“Nowhere to run, Jake. Give me back my compass and we’ll help you escape.” Micah told him.
“It’s mine now. In exchange for what you’ve done! You’ve destroyed my camp and my clan.” Jake said.
“Just give me back my compass, Jake. Or you’ll face a