by Cube Kid
That was where, weeks ago, I’d dug up a bunch of sand to make bottles.
"That’s it!" Stump said. "Sand!"
All eyes were on him. He put his hands on my shoulders.
"This time, I’m the one with the crazy idea."
The big day.
Building Test III.
Students had come up with all kinds of defensive concepts. Let’s go over a few of them, shall we?
First, Team Pebble made a lava trap. There were a few people who said they just copied Mike’s house. Still, the teachers had never seen Mike’s house, and Mike wasn’t around to defend himself. So Pebble’s crew made out well today.
Team All Girls, with Emma, Mia, Sophia, and the rest, came up with something way cooler. They called it the lava water door. Basically, you put some lava over a door and water in front of it, like this:
(It can protect against the biggest explosions. The girls did a demonstration using two blocks of TNT. What a show!)
"Like a frozen burrito cooked too long in a microwave," Steve said.
The lava and water combined to form stone. Additional explosions could remove the stone, and the lava and water would continue to make more. A regenerating shield. There were a lot of neat concepts like this.
There were even a bunch of new item concepts that I will go over later. (They’re classified right now. Top secret.)
Still—and I’m not trying to brag here—nothing was as cool as what Team Runt had come up with. You see, there’s no good way to prevent mobs from digging under the city. However, the village can at least make a system that warns us when they do.
Allow me to explain the
Tunnel Warning System.
Here’s how it works:
The ground in this world comes in layers. There’s the grass layer, which is grass-covered dirt—that’s a single block thick. Then there’s the dirt layer underneath that. It goes down for five or so blocks, roughly. After that, it’s all stone until you reach bedrock deep down.
In short, the mobs dug a tunnel in the dirt layer because it’s way easier. Tunneling through stone takes a very long time. So all we’d need to do is place a wall of sand around the village in the dirt layer. Then whenever the mobs dig through the sand, it will collapse. This will break the redstone circuit on top of the sand. As a result, the redstone repeaters in that area will no longer glow. So the guys guarding the wall at night—Brio’s men, humans—will at least have some kind of warning.
Yes, Team Runt came in first place. The teachers really loved this idea because we have a ton of extra redstone lying around.
Team All Girls came in second, and
Team Pebble came in third.
I have no idea what rank I am. I guess I’ll find out.
Teachers and students were scattered all around. Everyone was chatting about the new inventions on display. Everyone except Breeze and me.
"Runt?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you afraid?"
"Always. If my dreams don’t involve endermen, it’s the mobs attacking."
"Me too. I always have nightmares about getting captured again … and returning to his dungeon."
"I won’t let that happen," I said.
"Promise?"
"Promise."
This weekend, we’re getting another break. I’ve decided to spend all Saturday and Sunday in the libraries with Max.
Long ago, during that second war, a lot of information was lost. Wizards’ towers, the biggest libraries … all burned, all blown up. But if even a shred of that ancient knowledge still exists somewhere in our old, dusty books, we have to find it. The stuff we build now is noob-tier compared to what the ancients once made. The rocket potion I crafted earlier is an example. Max thinks the advanced crafting table has a five-by-five grid instead of three-by-three. Crafting on a table like that would be much harder. In addition, there’s an even better crafting table that has seven layers of seven-by-seven grids. In other words, 3-D crafting. That’s crazy. But then, what am I doing thinking about all this stuff? I don’t even have a diamond sword yet! A diamond sword … It seems hard to believe, but I can actually afford one now. My friends have a sizable amount of emeralds as well.
I turned to Breeze. "Let’s go find the others, huh?"
"Why? What’s up?"
I reached into my inventory and gave her a stack of emeralds. "We’re going shopping, that’s why."
"I don’t think Stump will want to join us," she said. "He keeps talking about how he wants an obsidian sword, just like Notch."
"I’m working on that." I winked. "This year, I plan on giving him an early birthday present."
"Speaking of Notch," she said, "it’s strange that he hasn’t said anything to us about the lost information. But then, maybe we’re not very important … "
"Don’t think like that." I gazed at the cloudy sky. "He’s just … busy."
Just then, I thought I heard faint thunder coming from up there. But it wasn’t stormy out. Just a layer of white clouds. Nah. It must have been my imagination.
We took off in search of our friends. I started thinking about what items I was going to buy. If I actually do buy a diamond sword, I’m gonna use all my experience points enchanting it. That thing is gonna glow so bright that if I ever meet skeletons at night, they’ll start looking for trees to hide under! When Pebble sees me wielding that, can you imagine the look on his face? He took off with a scowl after he found out his team got third place.
He probably went to go work on
another fake diary.
Today was one of the best days of my life. So I’m going to warn you now: I’m including a lot of details.
Details on how
I’ve become the—
Oops.
I almost ruined the surprise.
Emerald has a crush on Kolbert. At least I think she does. She’s really secretive about it, though. I figured it out from her reaction to the picture I drew of him earlier. She insisted that I redraw him. In her words, to "do him justice." According to her, he looks way more dashing than my original drawing suggests. I’ve also been asked to point out that Kolbert doesn’t actually have a beard. He just turned fifteen.
Wahhhhhh!
So I’d given him a beard! So what?
I think beards look funny, so I put one on him. What’s the big deal? Also, I’ve apparently misspelled his name. Also, the color of his armor is all wrong. Oh no! Also, the armor itself is all wrong. He never wears a helmet. Dear Mr. Diary, what have I done?! The truth is I never put much time or effort into including Kolbert in my diary. Why would I? For the longest time, the guy was a total jerk. Ordering me around. Telling me to do this and that. I’m not your pack animal, bud. Do you see a chest strapped to my back?
All things considered, I should have made Kolbert look like a cross between an enderman and a mine cart!
Lately, however, he’s come around. He’s been a lot nicer to us. Courteous. Respectful. The longer he stays here, the more he involves himself with our kind. He swore to protect us, no matter what. He even saved the village from a creeper attack the other night. All by himself. Maybe that’s why Emerald forgave him. She bought him a gift today while we were shopping at the Clothing Castle.
"What? My parents told me to buy him something," she said with a shrug. "After all, he, um, did kinda save us and all."
Yeah …
If there’s one thing I learned today, it’s to never let Emerald buy armor for me.
She bought him a scarf. Not a helmet. Not a cap or a hood. Not anything a knight might typically wear. A black wool scarf. I told her that Kolbert would probably go diving in the Nether before putting that thing on. Puddles, the shopkeeper, thought otherwise.
"But it’s the same color as his armor," she said. "Don’t wo
rry, sugar block. He’ll love it!"
Yes, Puddles is a she, not a he. She has a deep voice for a woman and wears a witch-style hat so low that you can’t really see her face.
I need to start paying more attention.
"He’ll like it," Emerald said. "After all, this
scarf is enchanted with Protection III."
Stump spit out bits of pumpkin pie. "Protection III?! How much did you spend on that?"
"Two stacks."
Two stacks of emeralds. Sure, that sounds about right. That’s about what a diamond goes for these days. To our shocked expressions, she rolled her eyes.
"Those came out of my father’s inventory. Not mine. He says we need to strengthen our alliance with the humans."
When she said that, our eyes grew even wider. Puddles made a slight gasp. She didn’t know much about the humans and thought their taste in fashion was terrible.
"Side with them? Now, why would we do that?"
AN ALLIANCE?
It’s not unthinkable. We need them and they need us. But first, the humans will have to come to terms with their issues. Right now, there are a lot of humans in our village. New ones wander in every day. Strangely enough, they’ve become divided into two factions, each with entirely different beliefs. One group believes that this world isn’t real. They’re known as the Seekers—seekers of the truth. If you ask them, this is all some kind of elaborate virtual reality show. Alternatively, it’s the result of some accident involving their Earth technology. That group throws around many theories, attempting to explain this world in human terms. In their way of thinking, it doesn’t matter how they treat us, because NPCs don’t have real feelings. To them, even if we display emotions, that’s the result of programming, scripting, AI—stuff I don’t understand.
The other group disagrees. They call themselves the Believers. They believe in the impossible: that the game has somehow come to life. At the very least, they’ve given up trying to understand and have come to accept this world for what it is. The two groups often have heated discussions over this. They discuss it more than they do pizza, which is saying something. Their biggest quarrel occurred when Kolbert, their leader, suddenly changed his mind. He’s a Believer now.
"These people are real," he said the other day. "As such, they should be treated accordingly."
I only hope he can sway some more humans to his side … Call me picky, but I like it better when they don’t treat us like slaves.
Kolbert talks about that stuff in his diary. I read most of the entries. I even copied one section down. It’s from a few days ago, when Emerald tried speaking to him.
That villager girl talked to me again. It was eerie. Seeing her sent chills down my spine. There was emotion in her voice. Warmth in her smile. A soul behind her eyes. I had once assumed that these people were NPCs. But right then, the truth became so clear. Standing before me, a girl who was once just polygons was now real live flesh and blood. Although I couldn’t understand how this had happened … I understood that it had happened.
A world made of cubes—once so many countless pixels—had inexplicably sprung to life.
Hurmmm. I want to get a full copy of his diary now. By the way, we ran into him after we left the Clothing Castle. Emerald gave him the scarf—and crazily enough, he actually liked it.
A lot of kids at school joke about how he acts like a wuss sometimes. A little girly. Come Monday, after they spot him walking around with that thing on, that’s all we’re gonna hear.
Not every human is like Kolbert, though. Many are still rude to us, making comments. My friends and I passed some of them on the street.
"What are they wearing?! Ninja outfits?!"
"Forget the robes! It’s still strange to see villagers wielding swords!"
"Hey! That’s the kid who’s always running around being weird! What’s his name again? Grunt?"
"You mean they actually have names?"
"Let’s go see what they have to trade."
Villagers wielding swords?!
Villagers having names
and being weird?!
Those things just aren’t supposed to happen, I guess. We’re supposed to just walk around randomly, make strange noises, and sometimes …
if we’re feeling adventurous … plant new vegetables.
Oh no, be careful—
you’re planting it next to the potatoes!!!
The humans continued talking as if we weren’t even there.
"I don’t want to trade with them. They’re creepy. Besides, it’s not like they have macaroni or something."
"Oh, man. Macaroni. I’d pay fifty emeralds for a single bowl!"
"Or some spaghetti … "
"With some garlic bread … "
"Topped with sprinkle cheese … "
The last two lines were said by human boys whose eyes started watering.
Hurggg!!
Stop crying already and eat some pumpkin pie, you noobs!!!
Stump gave the humans a tired look. "Maybe I should figure out how to craft a large pepperoni," he said in a low tone.
"If you did," Breeze said, "villagers everywhere would rejoice. You’d probably get voted in as the new mayor."
Yeah, don’t even get them started on pizza. They have heated arguments over it. "Supreme" this. "Stuffed crust" that. "Ham and pineapple all the way."
Suddenly, I had a great idea. Maybe I could try to make a few emeralds off their pizza craze. You see, this world already has pizza. Kind of. In a way. So I’ll sell it to them and profit! Here’s a poster I’m thinking about using for my future pizza shop:
The five of us eventually arrived at Leaf’s shop. In case you forgot, he’s the cranky old blacksmith I scammed a long time ago.
Yeah. That guy. I can’t say why we chose to visit him. Maybe we were too busy thinking about trading for more cool stuff. Come on, how could anyone not get excited at the thought of trading for cool stuff?! Max likes trading for cool stuff. Stump likes trading for cool stuff. Drill, the mayor, this one human named Sami—
everyone likes trading
for cool stuff!
I classify cookies as cool stuff, but when I get one, I immediately eat it and have to trade for another all over again.
Also, Breeze has never traded for cool stuff before because she used to live in a village where she couldn’t trade for cool stuff. Still, when I asked her if she wanted to trade for cool stuff, her face totally lit up like a firework rocket enhanced with a fire charge. Even cows would like trading for cool stuff, probably, except they don’t have hands with which to hold emeralds.
If cows could trade, grass farming would be a thing—and tools with Silk Touch would be even more valuable.
So we had a plan, then. We still had a bunch of emeralds and wanted to keep shopping. There was one problem. We were about to buy new weapons. We had to do it in a cool way. We had to do it like warriors, you know? In my opinion, real warriors would probably do the following:
1) Go into a blacksmith’s shop.
2) Slam the emeralds onto the table.
3) Ask to buy weapons that would make an obsidian golem cry.
4)Give the blacksmith a mean look. I mean, mean. The kind of look that says, "Don’t mess with me. I’m tough.
In fact, I’m so tough I have an item called Noob-On-A-Stick which allows me to ride ender dragons as if they were giant winged pigs."
Yeah, that’s what
real warriors would do.
So we did. Of course, considering what happened last time, Leaf just laughed.
"You call those emeralds, kids? I know yer tricks. Just a bunch of dyed green glass."
He actually bit into one just to see whether it was real. (I’m not sure why his biting an emerald would prove anything though, becau
se he doesn’t even have teeth.)
When he realized our emeralds were—unbelievably—real emeralds, his face lit up like a firework–rocket explosion enhanced not by a fire charge but a creeper head instead—which is just crazy. Don’t try to imagine that, okay?! I’m still trying to forget.
So anyway, at least now we had Leaf’s attention. "Make an obsidian golem cry, huh?" he said. He pointed at an iron pickaxe. "What about that? I bet that would do the job."
We gave him blank looks.
"You need diamonds to mine obsidian," Breeze said calmly.
"Oh. Of course, of course. I was just, um, testing you. No noobs allowed in my shop, see."
Awkward silence.
More blank stares.
The blacksmith glanced around his shop.
"How about this?" he asked, holding up an iron sword.
The sword wasn’t enchanted and had low durability on top of that. (Actually, it looked like it was only a few swings away from breaking.)
He looked at our still-blank faces and shrugged. "Well, it will definitely make a ghast cry. Guaranteed! Or yer emeralds back."
"Dude," Stump said, "are you joking? A pink tulip would make a ghast cry!"
Max sighed. "Imagine a sword that was so bad it actually healed whatever it struck. It would still make a ghast cry."
"Hurmpph!" Emerald whirled around. "That piece of junk would make me cry … if I traded for it."