The Mystery of the Griefer's Mark Read online

  The group began to cut the grass to search for seeds, but it was harder than they’d expected.

  “This is going to take forever!” said Lucy. She had yet to extract one seed.

  “Maybe we should try to find grass farther away from your farm,” suggested Max.

  The group found a lush area of tall grass outside of the village. They carefully broke the grass.

  “I found seeds!” Kyra screamed out in joy.

  “That’s fantastic,” said Steve.

  “I found them too!” Max had a bunch of seeds.

  The gang was excited about their discovery, but they were also growing hungry. Steve suggested they visit his friend Oliver the Village Farmer. “He has melons. If we trade emeralds, we can get melons, and we can eat them and then use their seeds to plant melons.”

  “Good thinking!” Kyra said enthusiastically, and the group made their way to Oliver’s farm.

  There were many ripe melons to choose from at Oliver’s farm.

  “My friends and I would love a few melon slices,” said Steve, handing the emeralds to Oliver the Village Farmer.

  “I heard what happened to your wheat farm. What a shame,” said Oliver as he handed the slices of melon to the group.

  “We just found seeds and we are going to help Steve rebuild the farm!” said Lucy.

  “That’s great. You have good friends, Steve. I hope you guys can rebuild it soon.”

  The group rested by a tree near Oliver’s farm as they took bites from the juicy melons, saving the seeds to plant near the wheat farm. When they were finished, they walked back to the wheat farm and began digging deep into the earth to plant the seeds.

  Lucy pointed to a small patch of land by a tree. “Should we plant the melon seeds here?”

  “Yes,” replied Steve, “and once the melons grow, I’ll look at them and think about what great friends I have and how helpful you are.”

  “We help each other,” said Adam. “I think we are lucky to have each other.”

  The friends agreed as they crawled into the hole the TNT had made and kept digging deep into the dirt and planting seeds. But then dusk began to set in.

  “We need to finish up here. It’s too dangerous now that it’s getting dark,” Adam told the group.

  Rufus barked and startled the group.

  “I don’t like the sound of that!” said Steve. “It sounds like Rufus is in trouble.”

  Steve crawled out the hole and everyone else followed.

  “What’s the problem Rufus? Are you okay?” Steve asked, but before he could check on the dog, he heard a shriek.

  “Help!”

  It was Lucy!

  A chicken jockey stood inches from her feet. The baby zombie riding a chicken clutched a sword as it advanced toward Lucy.

  “I don’t have a sword on me!” she called to the group.

  Max grabbed his diamond sword and lunged toward the chicken. It jumped back and he missed. Steve shot an arrow at the chicken but the baby zombie deflected it with its sword.

  Lucy tried to sprint but the chicken jockey was similar to a shadow; she couldn’t move fast enough to escape the green-headed jockey. Max jumped and landed behind the beast, throwing the zombie off the chicken with a heavy blow from his sword.

  The zombie fell hard on the ground.

  “I defeated it!” Max called out, but before they could celebrate the victory, another chicken jockey cornered Adam.

  Adam’s gold sword was no match for the black-eyed zombie. It threw Adam to the ground and his sword landed next to him.

  Steve grabbed Adam’s sword and struck the zombie.

  “Got it!” Steve was excited.

  “I think we should get inside before more mobs show up. It’s getting dark and we’re tired,” said Lucy, and they sprinted toward their new little house.

  As they got into their beds, Lucy asked the group, “Do you think we’ll find Henry?”

  “I hope so,” said Max.

  “Hope?” Steve was upset. “Of course we will find Henry. We have to find him.”

  When they woke up, Steve hopped down from his bed and fell right into another hole. He brushed off the dirt, looked up, and found his friends standing next to him.

  “Another hole!” said Max.

  “I guess the griefer dug it while we were sleeping.” Steve said, looking down the narrow path.

  “I don’t see any doors,” said Max.

  “I think we’re trapped!” cried Lucy.

  Steve looked up, somebody had placed a large rock over the entrance to their home.

  “How are we going to get out?” asked Adam as a cave spider crawled up behind him.

  “Adam, watch out!” said Lucy.

  Kyra knocked the spider off the wall with her sword and it fell to the ground.

  “This is a death trap. We have to find a way out!” said Adam.

  “Shhh!” Steve put his finger over his lips.

  “How can you tell us to be quiet at moment like this?” asked Kyra.

  “Do you hear that?”

  They listened and heard a muffled sound coming from the other side of the wall. They put their ears up to the dirt wall and the sound grew louder.

  “It sounds like somebody calling for help,” said Steve.

  “It sounds like Henry!” said Lucy.

  11

  SLIMES, SILVERFISH, AND SAVING FRIENDS

  “Henry!” shouted Lucy.

  “We’re coming to save you!” said Max.

  Steve took out his pickaxe and banged into the wall of the tunnel; dirt began to crumble, and a large pile of gravel fell from the top of the wall and landed on the group.

  “Stop, Steve!” Adam shouted.

  “This isn’t going to work,” said Max as the gravel came down even faster and it looked as if they were going to be buried in a landslide.

  Lucy shielded her head from the gravel that was falling down on the group. “But we have to find Henry,” she said.

  “We’ll find another way,” said Steve.

  Henry’s cries grew louder and the gang realized he was on the other side of the wall.

  “Henry?” Lucy called out.

  “Help!” His voice boomed through the wall.

  “Can you hear us?” Lucy asked.

  Henry didn’t answer. He just kept repeating “Help.”

  “At least we’re getting closer,” said Lucy. “Even though he doesn’t know we are trying to save him.”

  “Oh no!” screamed Steve. As he put his pickaxe down, he realized he didn’t just break through the dirt wall in this tunnel of terrors but he’d also cracked open a monster egg and silverfish were slowly making their way out of the cube.

  “Watch out!” Adam shouted as a silverfish crept close to his feet.

  “Jump up on that pile of dirt,” Steve told him. “They can’t reach you at that height.”

  Adam took out a splash potion to kill the silverfish. “Stop!” yelled Max, “Splash potions will attract the other silverfish. Throw gravel on it instead.”

  Adam took a handful of gravel and threw it at the black-eyed silverfish and instantly destroyed the evil insect.

  “There are two more!” Lucy said looking at the silverfish that were creeping toward them. “We have to kill them without waking the others in the egg!”

  Max took out his diamond sword and struck one of the silverfish; with one hard blow the silverfish was defeated. Lucy destroyed the other with her diamond sword.

  “Good job!” Steve said, sad that he couldn’t help. Without his diamond sword, he was unable to fight off many of the hostile mobs they’d encountered. He wanted his sword back, and the quicker they got to Henry, the sooner they would find the griefer and get to the bottom of this chaos. But with a monster egg in front of them which could unleash an infestation of silverfish at any moment, the group had to navigate carefully.

  “I’m too afraid to move,” Max told the group, as he tried to make his way past the monster egg.


  “We have to move further down the tunnel,” said Steve.

  The group tiptoed past the egg and held their breath as they silently made their way deeper into the dark tunnel.

  “We need a torch,” said Lucy.

  Nobody in the group had one and they all knew this made them incredibly vulnerable.

  “I’m scared,” said Kyra as the tunnel grew darker and the possibility of being attacked by a creature of the night grew more realistic every second.

  “I can’t see an inch in front of me,” said Steve.

  “But I can hear something!” Max called out in terror.

  “Henry?” asked Lucy.

  “No! Listen!”

  Click! Clack! The sound of some creature hopping and landing on the ground echoed through the walls of the tunnel.

  “It sounds like slime!” cried Adam.

  As they inched their way farther into the tunnel, the sound grew louder.

  “Get your stone swords out!” Steve told the group. “We have to battle slimes!”

  “I can’t see where they are or how many slimes are there,” said Max. He squinted in the dark, but without a torch, he felt like this was a fool’s errand. “How are we going to fight them if we can’t see them?”

  “Just listen!” said Steve. “Use your sense of hearing. When we hear them get louder, we will have to lunge at them with our swords. It’s our only hope!” Steve held onto his stone sword with both hands.

  Click! Clack! The sound of the slimy creature’s gelatinous body landing on the dirt ground was growing louder.

  “It sounds like there are two slimes. If there were more, it would be even louder,” Max said as he walked slowly toward the sound.

  “I think I see light!” Lucy called out.

  “That’s not light,” said Kyra, “it’s the reflection from the green slime!”

  “They’re here!” Max screamed out and struck one of the green slime cubes with his sword and it splashed all over the group.

  “Save the slime drops!” said Steve, “They’re useful.”

  Adam plunged his sword into the other green cube as it hopped toward them.

  “Thankfully, we’re safe!” Lucy called out.

  “Ouch!” Kyra screamed out in pain.

  “What happened?” asked Lucy.

  “I was bitten by a cave spider!” Kyra said weakly.

  Adam gave her milk to combat the venom and Kyra drank it.

  “Where’s the spider?” she asked.

  Before Adam could look for it, he too was bitten. He quickly drank milk as well.

  Then Kyra saw the spider crawling toward Steve. “Steve, next to your foot!”

  Steve threw gravel on the spider, destroying it.

  “We can’t keep going down this tunnel, it’s getting us nowhere,” said Steve.

  “And we are getting low on resources,” added Lucy, “We need to mine for more minerals so we can trade with the villagers. We need to be prepared for a battle when we rescue Henry.”

  “But how are we going to get out of here?” Kyra asked as she lay in the corner slowly drinking milk.

  “We are going to have to dig our way out,” replied Steve.

  “Look what happened last time!” protested Lucy.

  But before they could argue over the best way to escape, Max called out to the group, “I found a door!”

  12

  I SPY THOMAS

  “Open it!” Kyra called out as she regained her strength and stood up.

  The group huddled close to each other behind Max as he slowly opened the door. With one foot in the door, Max called out, “This looks very familiar.”

  The group walked into Adam’s house.

  “I think we’ve done this before,” Steve joked.

  “Whoever is making these tunnels is leading us in circles. They want us to give up,” Max told the gang.

  Steve looked around Adam’s house. “At least the griefer hasn’t done any more damage since we were gone.”

  Adam sighed with relief. “I know, but we still haven’t found Thomas or Henry.”

  Steve inspected the house for holes in the ground. “There might be other tunnels that could get us back to Henry.”

  “I don’t care if you find the biggest hole in the world,” said Kyra, sounding exhausted. “I don’t think I would jump into it.”

  As the sky grew darker, the group walked toward their new house, but it wasn’t there.

  The griefer had used TNT to blow up the house and there was nothing but a large hole in the ground where the home once stood.

  “Where are we going to sleep?” Kyra cried out.

  “I knew the griefer would target the house,” Steve said as he paced, trying to think of a plan. But before he could find the time to come up with a good plan, they heard moaning in the distance.

  “Zombies!” Steve shouted.

  The group got their swords ready as a group of green-headed zombies crept toward them.

  Max fought off two zombies with his diamond sword. Lucy raced toward a group of zombies and battled them. Kyra joined Lucy. The fight intensified as the zombies fought back with all of their might.

  “Take this,” Adam yelled as he doused a zombie with a potion of healing.

  “Is that a potion of healing?” asked Lucy.

  “Yes, it actually harms zombies.” Adam said as the zombie started to grow weak and Lucy lunged toward it with her sword.

  “It seems like this army of zombies is never-ending!” Max cried out as he battled two zombies with his powerful enchanted sword.

  The group fought off the last of the zombies and headed toward Adam’s house. They were going to try to sleep, even though the exposed house made them an open target. They had no other choice; their energy levels were growing low and they needed to sleep and get food.

  When morning arrived, the gang was surprised they made it through the night without having to battle off any hostile mobs.

  “We need food,” said Kyra.

  “I’ll go for a hunt,” suggested Lucy.

  “I’d like to get some apples,” said Steve and he joined her as she went into the fields to hunt for breakfast.

  As Lucy searched for chickens, Steve walked next to her. Just then he noticed someone sprint by them.

  “Lucy, did you see that?”

  “Yes. That was Thomas and he was carrying TNT!”

  “I saw the same thing,” said Steve. He was worried about how Adam would react. He knew Adam would be devastated when he found out that his best friend was actually the griefer.

  Thomas sprinted by again.

  “Do you think he saw us?” asked Lucy.

  “I’m not sure, but it looks as if he is piling TNT behind the tree by the water,” said Steve.

  “We have to follow him,” said Lucy as she walked toward the tree.

  “We can’t let him know we are following him. He might try to attack us.”

  “I have my bow and arrow. I am not afraid of him.” Lucy held her weapon tightly.

  “If we hurt him, we’ll never find Henry,” Steve said as they got closer to the tree.

  Lucy was angry. “He’s caused so much trouble and I want to know why!”

  “Shhh!” said Steve as they quietly approached the tree. Thomas wasn’t there, but there was a pile of TNT. Steve picked up a few blocks.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need to bring this back as proof. Or Adam will never believe us,” said Steve. He picked up some more TNT.

  Lucy reached over and grabbed a few blocks of TNT as well. “This will also stop him from using it. How can he blow up innocent people’s homes?”

  “And trap our friend,” said Steve as he picked up the last of the TNT.

  “He’s going to be very upset when he notices his TNT is missing,” said Lucy.

  “Exactly, it’s a part of my plan. When he realizes this is missing, you know he is going to come looking for it. That’s when we can trap him and find Henry. And I can finally g
et my diamond sword back.”

  “Great plan!” Lucy was impressed.

  “Well, I don’t know how we are going to trap him. So I only have half of the plan figured out,” admitted Steve.

  “Well, it’s a start,” said Lucy as they walked back to the others.

  The group was outside eating carrots.

  “Where were you guys?” asked Max.

  “Where’s the chicken?” asked Kyra.

  “And the apples?” added Adam.

  Finally Kyra asked, “What are you carrying?”

  “Is that TNT?” Adam was shocked.

  “Yes,” Lucy said as she placed the TNT inside the exposed living room.

  “Adam,” said Steve, anxiously trying to get the words out, “We found Thomas and he was hiding this behind a tree.”

  “No!” said Adam, “it can’t be, you must be mistaken.”

  Lucy sat down next to Adam and tried to comfort him. “I know he’s your friend, but he is the griefer.”

  “Why would he do something like this?” asked Adam. But the group had no response. They didn’t know what turned Thomas the Explorer into a griefer.

  “What are we going to do with all of this TNT?” Kyra asked as she stared at the pile of explosives.

  “We’re going to trap Thomas,” said Steve.

  “How?” asked Kyra.

  The group was shocked when Adam announced, “I have a plan!”

  13

  THE PLAN

  Adam took the TNT and hid it in his bedroom. “We don’t want to make it easy for Thomas. We want him to look for it.”

  “Do you think he knows we took the TNT?” asked Steve.

  “Yes. Who else would take it?” Adam opened his chest where he stored his potions. “It’s time for me to use the Nether Wart. I have to brew potions.”

  As Adam sat at his brewing stand and created a bunch of potions, the group started to rebuild the side of the living room of Adam’s house.

  Adam came into the living room and told them to dig a hole right by the front door. “When Thomas comes in, he’ll fall into the hole.”

  “You are using his own tricks against him!” Max said as he and Steve put the door on the front of the house.

  “Good plan, Adam,” said Steve, “That’s a great way to trap him.”