The Case of the Creepers Page 3

  “I worked hard on this treasure hunt, and I just want it to be fair,” declared Billy. “This means a lot to me. Also, I don’t like to get treasure I didn’t earn. It’s not about simply winning to me: it’s about skill.”

  Spencer didn’t want to hear Billy lecture him on what was right or wrong. Spencer was done talking, and he leaped at Billy.

  “Look!” Aaron yelled before Spencer reached Billy.

  “What?” Spencer asked.

  “The wolf!” Aaron said. “It’s gone. I watched it disappear.”

  Billy looked down, but Aaron was right. Lucky was gone. “Now do you believe me?”

  6

  RAIN

  Lucky began to bark.

  “The wolf just came back. What type of game are you playing?” Spencer asked Edison and Billy, and then he looked at Aaron and said in a loud voice, “I don’t trust these two. I think they’re trying to trick us.”

  “We’re not,” pleaded Edison. “There is somebody who is probably using command blocks to stop hostile mobs from spawning. There must have been a glitch, and they accidently removed all of the mobs.”

  Marie reminded them, “We have only a week to complete the treasure hunt. I want to get my treasures, and I’d like to stop talking about people trying to destroy the treasure hunt. Honestly, it’s a waste of time.”

  “I agree.” Spencer climbed back into the crater and dug for treasure.

  Edison was shocked when he saw Billy climb into the crater and mine for diamonds and emeralds. “Billy, aren’t you going to help solve this case?”

  Billy hit his pickaxe against the blocky ground. “Maybe it was all a glitch. Or maybe this was a part of the contest. I have no idea, but Marie is right. We have only one week to complete the contest. If someone did use command blocks to stop hostile mobs, then we all benefited.”

  “Benefited?” Edison questioned.

  “Okay, maybe that was the wrong word, but what I meant was that we all had an easier time getting the treasures, so the contest is fair,” Billy explained as he picked up a diamond from the bottom of the crater and handed it to Edison.

  Edison tried to comprehend Billy’s change of heart and his logic as he climbed into the crater and joined his friend.

  “We’ve found a great mine. There are so many diamonds here,” exclaimed Marie.

  “I know.” Spencer handed Aaron another diamond.

  Edison worried that they weren’t getting enough diamonds, and he hoped Billy wasn’t upset because they were sidetracked for a portion of the contest. Edison was mining the crater, extracting diamonds and emeralds, when he saw Marie and Spencer leave the mine.

  “We have more than enough diamonds. We have to find our next treasure,” Marie told Pierre.

  “Great.” Pierre asked, “Where are we off to next?”

  Marie replied in a whisper, and Edison couldn’t make out her destination. As the other two teams exited the cave, a thunderous boom shook the ground, and they could hear the rain pounding down outside the cave.

  “Help!” Marie screamed.

  Edison rushed outside, but Billy stayed behind. Edison called out to his friend, “Aren’t you going to help?” But there was no reply.

  When Edison reached the exit, he saw five skeletons surrounding Marie and Pierre as they tried to defeat the bony beasts with their diamond swords. Edison put his pickaxe away, took out his diamond sword, and joined Marie and Pierre in battle.

  As they leaped at the skeletons, Edison could feel an arrow pierce his unarmored arm, and he cried out in pain as he lost a heart. Edison knew this meant there were more skeletons behind them. He called out to Billy, but his friend didn’t appear.

  Marie destroyed two skeletons and Pierre obliterated the remaining three as Edison raced toward the new crop of skeletons that attacked them.

  “How many are there? I can’t even count,” said Pierre.

  “At least twenty,” Marie said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

  Edison reached into his inventory and pulled out a bottle of potion and splashed it on the skeletons, but it only weakened them and didn’t destroy them.

  He called out, “Billy! Come here!”

  Billy finally raced toward his friend. “And we thought there weren’t any hostile mobs?”

  “I know,” said Edison. “This is awful.”

  Billy blurted out a plan. “You splash the potion, and I’ll strike them with my sword.”

  With Marie and Pierre by their side, they were able to annihilate some of the skeletons, but every time they destroyed a skeleton, a new batch would walk toward them. The terrain was flooded, and Edison’s feet were sinking into the soggy ground. He shivered as he splashed potions on the skeletons. Although he felt invigorated as he watched the skeletons grow weak after being doused with his strong potions, he also knew that he had a limited amount of potions and didn’t want to use them all up on this one battle. When he splashed the skeletons with the remaining bottle of potion, the sun came out, and the skeletons disappeared.

  “Well,” Marie said, “now we know there are hostile mobs.”

  Billy asked, “What happened to Spencer and Aaron? Did the skeletons destroy them?”

  “I don’t know,” said Marie. “When I came out, they were already gone.”

  “I wonder where they went,” said Edison.

  “I did see purple mist,” remarked Pierre. “Perhaps they went to the Nether.”

  “We don’t have time to worry about Spencer and his assistant,” Marie remarked. “We have to go.” To avoid letting Edison and Billy know where she was traveling to next, she quickly splashed a potion of Invisibility on Pierre and then on her body, and they were gone.

  “I think it’s strange that Spencer disappeared and suddenly we were attacked by skeletons,” said Edison.

  “Edison”—Billy didn’t look up from his map as he spoke—“I don’t want to play detective during the treasure hunt. I’ve been waiting for this hunt for such a long time, and I don’t want anything to ruin it.”

  “Okay,” Edison said. “I will try to stop playing the role of detective and will focus on being your assistant. I know how much this means to you.”

  Billy pointed at the map. “The next place we have to go is the Nether. Did you pack obsidian?”

  “Of course.” Edison pulled the obsidian out from his inventory and began to craft a portal. He wanted to prove to Billy that he could be a good assistant.

  When the portal was finished, they stood together on the small platform. The duo was covered in purple mist as they emerged in the hot and harsh Nether.

  Before they had a chance to adjust to this hostile dimension, Billy screamed, “Watch out, you’re about to fall into lava.”

  Edison looked behind him. There was a large lava river, and he was just one step from falling back into it. As he sprinted from the lava lake, a cluster of ghasts flew above them. Edison was about to deflect a fireball when an arrow struck his shoulder. He slammed his fist against the fireball and then turned back to see who had shot the arrow, but nobody was there.

  7

  NOT IN THE NETHER

  “Ouch!” Billy said as slammed his fist against a fireball.

  “Was it hot? Did you get burned?” asked Edison.

  “No.” Billy tried to look back, but he couldn’t. He was too busy battling the ghasts that flew overhead. “I am being struck by arrows.”

  “Me too,” said Edison. “But I have no idea where they’re coming from.”

  The duo used their fists to destroy the ghasts with their own fireballs, and once the final ghast was annihilated and the sky was clear of hostile mobs, they sprinted deep in the Nether in search of the person who was attacking them with arrows. They traveled along the lava lake and up a bridge, and although they had a great view from the bridge’s platform, they didn’t see anybody.

  “Even if they used a potion of Invisibility, we’d be able to see their bow,” Billy remarked as they stood on the brid
ge.

  “I see a Nether fortress.” Edison pointed to a small structure behind an obsidian pillar.

  “Let’s go.” Billy climbed down the bridge, and they raced toward the Nether fortress.

  As they made their way toward the fortress, two zombie pigmen walked by them. They were able to avoid eye contact and didn’t provoke the pigmen, but something caught the pigmen’s eyes, and they became hostile. Edison and Billy watched as the pigmen lunged at something they couldn’t see and grew more and more frustrated.

  “We’re not alone,” said Billy.

  The zombie pigmen focused on Billy and Edison and raced toward them with their swords. Edison struck one of the pigmen with his diamond sword, but the mob was stronger than he imagined. No matter how many times he sliced into the pink-and-green speckled belly of the foul-smelling undead pig, he couldn’t destroy it.

  Billy slayed his pigmen with two strikes from his sword, and this impressed Edison since he was slowly losing his battle with the sole pigman. “Help!” he shouted to Billy.

  Billy ripped into the pigman, destroying the beast with a few hits from his diamond sword, and the pigman dropped a gold ingot on the ground. “Wow,” Billy said as he picked up the gold ingot and the gold nugget his zombie pigman had dropped. “They drop very valuable treasures. Put these in your inventory. We can show them to the committee and will see if they can count toward the treasure we are gathering for the contest.”

  As Edison placed the treasure in his inventory, he felt another arrow pierce his arm, and he screamed out in pain. “What is going on? Who is shooting arrows at us?”

  Billy replied, “I don’t know, but I’m sure we’ll find out when we try to get the treasure from the Nether fortress.”

  Edison pulled a bottle of potion from his inventory and took a sip. Then he handed it to Billy. “Take this. We need all the strength we can get before we enter that fortress. I think we’re going to be battling a lot more than blazes and magma cubes.”

  With a full health bar, the duo used their renewed energy to sprint toward the fortress. Approaching the grand fortress, they were stopped when a group of blazes flew above the entranceway, carefully keeping watch by the fortress.

  “You have snowballs, right?” asked Billy.

  “A bunch,” confirmed Edison.

  The blazes shot a slew of fiery balls toward them as they pulled out their snowballs and simultaneously leaped from the explosive ammunition. Billy threw a snowball at a yellow blaze. The ball landed on one of the blaze’s many limbs but didn’t destroy the tricky beast. Edison also threw a snowball at the blaze, striking the blaze’s face.

  Edison loved the feeling of a cold snowball. The heat from the Nether was weakening him, and it was refreshing to have an ice-cold snowball in the palm of his hand. He didn’t want to let go of the snowball, but he had to aim it at the blaze that flew in front of the fortress entrance.

  Pow! The blaze was destroyed, and Edison was confident he could destroy the other blazes. He slammed another ball into a blaze’s warm yellow body, obliterating the mob.

  “We only have one left,” said Billy. His voice was upbeat, and he was hopeful this battle with the blazes would be over soon.

  Edison pulled a snowball from his inventory and threw the ball at the blaze, destroying the final beast. They picked up the blaze rods that dropped to the ground.

  “We did it,” Billy said as he hurried through the entrance of the Nether fortress. But as he entered, Billy could hear a familiar noise. Something was bouncing around, and it sounded like magma cubes.

  “We’ll never get to the treasure if we have to battle these magma cubes,” Billy said as he pulled out his diamond sword and followed the sounds from the cubes.

  Edison spotted the red-, orange-, and yellow-eyed cubes in the center of the Nether fortress and used his enchanted diamond sword to slice into the flesh of the large, slimy, dark cube, which then broke into smaller cubes. Billy fought the smaller cubes while Edison broke another larger cube into pieces. Edison picked up the magma cream when all of the magma cubes were destroyed.

  “Let’s hope this place hasn’t been looted yet,” Billy said as he searched for treasure.

  Edison quickly gathered soul sand and Nether wart and placed it in his inventory.

  “Come on, Edison.” Billy was annoyed.

  “You promised that I could gather ingredients for potions, and you know I never get to travel to the Nether,” explained Edison.

  “Well, make it fast. I am going to look for treasure,” said Billy.

  Billy dashed down a corridor, and as he turned, he spotted a chest. “I think I found treasure!”

  Edison rushed to his friend and watched as he opened the chest, which was filled with iron horse armor. He placed the goods in his inventory. “I’m so glad we were the first ones to get the treasure from this fortress. Now that battle with the blazes and the magma cubes seems worth it.”

  “True,” Billy said as he raced through the fortress in search of more chests. He hoped he’d find diamond horse armor next. He searched in each room until he found a chest. “I found another one.”

  He opened the chest and pulled out obsidian. Edison placed the precious block in his inventory. He felt another arrow pierce the side of his arm, but this time when he looked back, he saw a familiar face standing behind him.

  8

  SUSPECTS

  “This is my treasure. Hand it over,” the squeaky, high-pitched voice called out.

  “No way,” said Billy as he closed the chest and pulled out his diamond sword. “We got this treasure first, Herman.”

  “I was here before you,” declared Herman.

  “Where’s Sally?” asked Edison.

  “She dropped out of the competition,” he explained. “I’m taking her place. I am going to win without an assistant.”

  Edison thought it was very strange that Sally dropped out of the competition when she was so confident that she’d win. However, he didn’t have time to come up with any theories about Sally’s whereabouts because within seconds, Herman had darted toward him and torn into every unarmored limb, weakening Edison. Billy handed Edison some milk and then struck Herman with his diamond sword.

  After finishing the milk, Edison pulled a potion of Harming from his inventory and splashed it on Herman, leaving him with only one heart. Billy pointed out Herman’s weakened state. “You only have one heart left. We can destroy you, which will instantly eliminate you from the contest.”

  Edison said, “He’s already eliminated. He broke rule number two.”

  “What was rule number two?” asked Herman.

  “No cheating or battling other players,” said Edison as he held his sword against Herman’s small body.

  “Tell us where Sally is,” demanded Billy.

  “I’m right here.” Sally giggled as she spoke.

  “I’m going to report you two,” said Billy.

  “It’s your word against mine. Who says they’re going to believe you?” Sally laughed as she aimed her bow and arrow and struck Billy’s arm.

  Billy wanted to strike Herman, but he didn’t want to destroy him. He knew that could get them all kicked out of the competition. He said, “I just want to continue with the competition. I don’t want either of us to get kicked out. Can you guys just leave us alone so we can spend the rest of the week treasure hunting?”

  Sally paused. “So you’re going to let us get away with this? I mean, we did attack you.”

  Billy knew this wasn’t wise, but he was having such a good time searching for treasure, and the competition had barely begun. He said, “This is a warning. If I catch you trying to attack anyone else, I will report you to the committee.”

  Edison didn’t wait for a reply. He grabbed Billy, and they sprinted from the fortress and crafted a portal back to the Overworld. As they emerged in the center of the cold biome, they saw Lucky racing toward them with his tail wagging. Billy leaned down to pet the wolf.

  “Do you
think we made the right decision?” asked Edison.

  “I don’t know, but I didn’t want Sally ruining the entire competition,” said Billy.

  “I know, but she is probably going to attack another player. We have to report her,” said Edison.

  “Why do we always have to be the people who make sure everyone is doing the right thing? Why is this always our responsibility? Why can’t we just think about ourselves? We want to be a part of this competition. Why do we have to care about anyone else?”

  Edison understood what Billy was saying, but he knew that it was also important to look out for others. “I know we’ve played detective before and solved many cases in the Overworld, and I understand that it’s a lot of work, but we can’t just let bad people get away. If we do, we are just as guilty as they are.”

  Billy didn’t want to debate, especially when he knew what Edison was saying was correct. He looked up at the sky. “It looks like it’s almost dusk. I think we should build an igloo.”

  “I will help you build the igloo, but you have to promise me that if we encounter any other players who are breaking the rules of this competition that you will make sure you TP to the committee and report them,” said Edison.

  Billy reluctantly agreed as he put down the base for the igloo. “Okay, I will report them. I hope this was the only incident because I really want to complete the treasure hunt and travel to End City. I can just imagine all of the treasure we will find there.”

  With all that had been going on during the competition, Edison had forgotten about the trip to the End, and as he helped construct the igloo, his mind raced with thoughts of the Ender Dragon. He tried to recall the tips he had received from one of his customers. He remembered to attack the crystals because that would stop the dragon from replenishing its energy.

  As they placed the door and window on the igloo, the sun began to set. Edison looked out the window of the igloo onto the dark and icy landscape and said, “I don’t see any hostile mobs on the horizon.”