Mobs in the Mine Read online

  Lily checked her inventory. She had enough potions and arrows. Lily sprinted toward the skeleton army with her diamond sword and slammed it against as many skeletons as she could hit.

  Robin splashed potions on the skeletons, weakening them, as Lily destroyed the weakened skeletons with her diamond sword.

  “We make a good team,” Lily told Robin.

  “I wish we didn’t have to fight,” Robin remarked as she grabbed another potion and splattered it across the skeleton army.

  Lily felt confident they could defeat the bony mobs and the vacant-eyed zombies, but she faltered when she saw the sky fill with blazes and ghasts.

  Warren and Simon used their fists and arrows to defeat the flying Nether mobs one by one, but they were outnumbered. A townsperson fought alongside Warren and Simon, but she was hit by a fireball and destroyed.

  “I hope she respawns.” Lily could barely speak, she was so scared that her friends might be struck by a fireball and destroyed.

  “We have to defeat these skeletons and zombies so we can help them,” Robin called to Lily.

  Michael joined Lily and Robin in their battle against the mobs of the Overworld. But as he looked at the ground, he shouted, “Mr. Anarchy’s summoned endermites!”

  Endermites crawled on the ground of Lisimi Village. Michael struck the small, powerful insects with his diamond sword. The endermites that were biting his legs were spawning Endermen. Michael ran into the water to get away from the lanky mobs that let out piercing shrieks.

  Michael emerged from the water and was immediately struck by a fireball.

  “Drink milk,” Lily called out to Michael. “You don’t want to be destroyed by a Nether mob—you might not respawn!”

  A few more townspeople joined Lily and Robin in their battle. Lily was happy to see she had help. She was exhausted and could barely strike another skeleton.

  “I just wish it was daylight!” Robin looked up at the sky. She wished she could make the night pass quickly, but she was too busy battling the mobs to use her command blocks—and besides, they were too precious to use lightly, even in such an intense battle.

  Warren and Simon tirelessly shot arrows at the ghasts and used their fists to redirect the blazes’ fireballs back toward the flying beasts.

  Warren had only a few hearts left. He tried to dodge the blasts from the fireballs and grab some milk, but he couldn’t; the numerous fireballs that flew toward him overwhelmed him.

  Lily sprinted to Warren and gave him some milk. She feared the powerful Nether mobs.

  A fireball flew toward Lily, and she used her fist to destroy the blaze. She watched as more townspeople flocked to the shoreline to battle these mobs. Lily had an idea.

  “Does anyone have a potion of water breathing?”

  Ilana the Alchemist dashed toward Lily. “I do! And I have a lot!”

  “Everyone,” Lily called out to the folks batting the mobs, “we can escape by jumping in the water. Let’s meet at the shoreline. Ilana the Alchemist has a potion of water breathing.”

  “Don’t worry, you don’t have to trade anything for the potion. Just take it. I want to save everyone,” Ilana offered generously.

  The townspeople shielded themselves from the mobs and sprinted toward the water, drinking the potion of water breathing. Lily was the last person to drink the potion. She jumped into the refreshing blue water and swam deep underneath the ocean. Lily felt safe. She looked over to see the townspeople swimming next to her. She wondered how long they could stay under the water; she hoped they could stay there until morning. Once it was daylight, the mobs of the Overworld would disappear. They would only be left to battle Mr. Anarchy’s Nether and End mobs, and they could focus their full attention on surviving the dangerous fight.

  Michael, Warren, Simon, and Robin swam toward Lily. Michael called out, “I see an ocean monument.”

  Lily cried, “I see a guardian.”

  It was too late to battle the guardian. It had already struck Lily and she was hit with Mining Fatigue. She couldn’t move. She thought she was losing her final heart and was panicked that she’d respawn in the thick of the battle at Lisimi Village—or, worse, that she might not respawn at all.

  Lily was shocked when she saw someone swim toward her and hand her some milk.

  “Leon?” Lily asked as she sipped the milk. “What are you doing here?’

  13

  SUMMONING A STORM

  “Mr. Anarchy didn’t destroy me with his Nether mob,” Leon tried to explain, but he was distracted when another gray guardian swam toward him.

  “We have to swim,” Lily exclaimed.

  Lily and Leon swam away from the guardian and toward the ocean monument, avoiding blasts from the hostile fish and entering the grand underwater temple.

  “Lily!” Michael called out. He was busy battling an elder guardian. Lily charged toward the powerful elder guardian and struck it with her diamond sword, slamming her sword into the side of the fish.

  When the fish was destroyed, they swam further into the monument, wondering if they might find gold blocks inside. Lily always loved being under the water, and she was surprised how easy it was to swim in this deep blue ocean while navigating her way through the monument. The water felt calming and the monument was peaceful, despite the presence of hostile mobs.

  “Gold blocks!” Simon called as they swam toward him.

  Warren spotted Leon swimming alongside Lily. “What are you doing here?” Warren struck Leon with his diamond sword.

  “Stop!” Lily cried. “Leon helped me.”

  “Helped you?” Warren couldn’t believe Lily was defending Leon.

  “Yes, he gave me milk when I thought I was about to be destroyed.”

  Michael said, “He’s not getting any gold blocks.”

  Warren picked up the gold blocks and filled his inventory. He handed them to his friends, but they didn’t give blocks to Leon.

  “I can explain.” Leon wanted to clear his name.

  “We don’t care,” Michael said and swam out of the monument. As Lily swam behind her friend Michael, she saw the other townspeople swimming to the surface.

  A townsperson called out, “It’s daylight.”

  Everyone rushed to the surface and swam to the shoreline. There were still a handful of blazes and ghasts floating in the sky. Lily and her friends aimed bows and arrows at the Nether mobs and destroyed them, but there was no time to celebrate their victory. Just as the last mob disappeared from the sky, the sound of thunder boomed throughout the town.

  “A rainstorm!” Michael exclaimed. Thunder crashed again, and a single bolt of lightning shot through the sky. Leon was opening his mouth to defend himself again when the bolt struck him, erasing him from town. With a final groan of thunder, the short rainstorm fizzled out and left the townspeople wondering at Leon’s sudden disappearance.

  “Where did he go?” asked Robin.

  “I assume he went back home.” Lily looked over at the space where Leon had just stood. She had never heard Leon’s explanation, but she knew that he had saved her from battling the hostile mobs on her own in the water.

  Michael and the others muttered that they were happy he was gone, but they also added that they were jealous. Tensions in the town were running high, and everyone wanted to go back home.

  Lily stood by the remnants of her home. Wolfie barked and ran by the large hole where her small cottage once stood.

  “I used to wish I could spend my entire day playing Minecraft, and now I just want to leave and go home and play outside with my friends.” Tears filled Lily’s eyes.

  “You don’t mean that. You just want to leave this server.” Simon knew Lily was one of the biggest Minecraft fans.

  “Help me rebuild.” She scoured her inventory for supplies to rebuild the cottage, but she didn’t have enough resources.

  Robin offered her a few wooden planks and said, “We have to find out if Mr. Anarchy or the person in the green jumpsuit destroyed your house. I
t would be a shame to rebuild it, just to have it blown up again.”

  Michael added, “What about Leon? He could have destroyed your home, too.”

  “We have way too many suspects.” Lily’s head was spinning. She hated all of these distractions. Weren’t they supposed to focus on finding their way home? Weren’t they supposed to summon a storm?

  “I know we have a lot of suspects, but we still have to figure out who did this,” Robin said as she poked through her inventory searching for more supplies for Lily’s cottage.

  Lily looked at Warren. “Let’s have that town meeting now.”

  “Okay.” Warren nodded. “Good idea. We should host it now that we are free from hostile mobs.”

  The group called all of the townspeople into the center of town. Juan the Butcher, Fred the Farmer, and Emily the Fisherwoman joined the meeting. Warren addressed the small crowd. “Everyone did a fantastic job battling the hostile mobs of both the Overworld and the Nether. Now we need to focus on our plan for getting home. Does anyone have a new idea?”

  Lily interrupted, “No need for new ideas! I am going to summon a storm.”

  “How?” Warren asked, and the townspeople murmured to each other questioningly.

  “I have command blocks!” Lily said, digging in her inventory. She unearthed one of the multicolored blocks and presented it to the cheering crowd.

  14

  REBUILD AND RETALIATE

  As the clapping and cheers roared all around her, Lily placed the command block on the ground. “We don’t know exactly how accurate this lightning bolt will be,” she called, “so whoever it strikes is the lucky person who will get to go home. We hope we have enough for everyone to use.”

  With that, she used the command block to summon a lightning bolt. It hovered in the air for a moment, gathering more electricity and growing more powerful. Then it flashed toward the ground, striking a townsperson with a brilliant flash.

  But when Lily’s eyes adjusted again after the bright light, the townsperson was still standing in the spot they were struck in. The crowd and Lily’s friends gasped, clearly realizing just what she had—the command block hadn’t worked.

  “What?” Lily called out in anger.

  A voice rose through the crowd. “It’s not as easy as you think.”

  Lily looked up and saw Mr. Anarchy stepping out of the assembled group.

  Lily leapt at him, but he splashed a potion on himself and disappeared.

  Warren sighed. “Okay, so the command blocks didn’t work. We can’t give up. Does anyone else have any ideas for escaping the Overworld?”

  But just then, a townsperson dressed in a red sweater called out, “Over there! There’s the Prismarine!”

  Lily ran toward the Prismarine, cornering him by the large roller coaster. She turned around to see the entire town crowded behind her.

  “What do you want?” The man in the green jumpsuit cowered.

  “Who are you?” Lily asked.

  He shook as he responded, “I’m Matthew.”

  “Why are you dressed like one of the Prismarines?” Michael asked.

  “Because I am one. Or, well, I was one. I escaped, but recently I was invited to participate in a Minecraft Olympics competition, and I didn’t realize it was on this server. I joined, and then I was zapped back in. When I arrived here, I felt like it was all a bad dream. I didn’t want to be here. Now I am just hoping that I’ll be struck by lightning or that Brett and Greta will notice I’m missing and try to save me.”

  “You know Brett and Greta?” Lily’s heart skipped a beat. She missed her friends dearly and wanted any information about them.

  “Yes.” He sighed. “I do know them.”

  “Can they actually rescue you?” asked Lily.

  “I don’t know. I hope so,” Matthew explained.

  “Mr. Anarchy is awful,” Lily shook her head. “We have to stop him.”

  “I’m not so sure this is the work of Mr. Anarchy. It sounds like Leon is behind this,” Robin said.

  Lily wondered if Robin was right. How could they be sure that Matthew was telling the truth? “But Leon was working with Mr. Anarchy, and recruiting players to replace him on Mr. Anarchy’s team.” She narrowed her eyes at Matthew. “You’ve been back on the server a long time, and we’ve hardly seen you. Have you been working with Mr. Anarchy, just like Leon?”

  “N-no,” Matthew said. “I swear!”

  “Come on, Lily,” Simon said. “If he’s a Prismarine, he’s a friend. We can’t let Mr. Anarchy keep us from trusting our friends.”

  Michael nodded. “So, if you escaped, does that mean that all of your friends are still in the real world?” he asked.

  “I guess so.” Matthew took a deep breath and wiped the tears from his eyes. “I never wanted to be back here. I just want to leave. Can you summon a lightning bolt?”

  “I wish it was that easy. I summoned one earlier and it didn’t get us anywhere. I want to go home, too,” explained Lily with a sigh. Her friends were right—how could she not trust Matthew?

  “The one cool thing is that once you get zapped back into the real world, it’s like you never left. I was zapped back into the same point in time that I was trapped on the server. My parents didn’t know I was gone.”

  Lily was relieved to hear this, because she had spent a lot of time worrying about her parents and how upset they must be because she was missing.

  “I guess that means we aren’t missing that math test,” Simon joked. “That was the only good thing about being trapped here.”

  “Seriously?” Lily asked Simon.

  “You know how bad I am at long division!” Simon defended himself. “And Mrs. Sanders was about to give me detention for passing notes in class.”

  Although Matthew had brought them good news, Lily still wanted to find a way home. But she also realized something else. “If Matthew and Leon weren’t responsible for destroying my house and arranging these attacks, we only have one suspect.”

  “Yes,” Michael agreed. “It has to be Mr. Anarchy.”

  “We still don’t know how to get home, but we can’t wait for Mr. Anarchy to destroy more homes and send Nether mobs to attack us and erase us from the Overworld,” Warren said. “I think we should look for Mr. Anarchy.”

  “Yes,” Lily said. “It’s time to settle this, once and for all.”

  The townspeople agreed, and they followed Lily and her friends out of town and to the hole housing the minecarts. The friends and villagers piled into the carts and traveled to the jungle biome.

  “This is Mr. Anarchy’s house,” Lily told the townspeople.

  Matthew shuddered when he saw the temple. “I was trapped in here for so long. I can’t go back here.”

  Ilana said, “Why don’t we douse ourselves with potions of invisibility? Then we’ll be able to search for Mr. Anarchy without his army trapping us.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Lily remarked. “But I don’t think we have to do that.”

  Michael walked closer to the jungle temple and asked, “Where are the blue griefers?”

  “You noticed that, too?” Lily said.

  Simon ran into the jungle temple and cried out, “It’s empty!”

  15

  CEASEFIRE

  “Where’s Mr. Anarchy?” Lily wondered aloud as she explored his empty jungle temple.

  Robin called out, “The command blocks are missing.”

  Michael added, “I bet he relocated.”

  “Do we have to look for him?” Matthew asked.

  Simon looked around the barren temple and remarked, “I think this is a trap. He knew we would come here to battle him.”

  “Do you think he found a way out of here?” Lily mused. “Maybe he’s back in the real world.”

  “I don’t think so,” Michael said. “But that is a possibility.”

  Lily remembered Leon telling them about a room where a team of players were working on helping Mr. Anarchy escape from the server. She rushed do
wn the hall in search of the room. She hoped Mr. Anarchy had left these people behind—it seemed like the sort of thing he’d do. Lily searched for a room like the one Leon had described, but she couldn’t find one.

  “Remember Leon told us about that room where Mr. Anarchy had his team of players that worked to get him off this server?”

  “Yes,” replied Michael.

  “I don’t see a room like that anywhere in this temple!” Lily had searched the entire temple and there wasn’t a door to open.

  “I wonder if Leon was making that up,” said Michael.

  Lily noticed a piece of redstone dust on the ground. “What’s this?”

  She walked over and banged her pickaxe against the floor. Pieces crumbled at her feet. She called the others over. “Look what I found.”

  “It’s a button. Should we press it?” asked Michael.

  Lily nodded and, after hesitating for only a moment, she pressed the button on the floor, activating pistons that were in a piston door. They looked up and saw a secret stronghold.

  “Wow,” Simon marveled.

  “Shhh!” Lily warned him. “I bet Mr. Anarchy is hiding down here.”

  They walked into the stronghold together. Lily placed a torch on the wall and explored the dark and musty room. A skeleton spawned in the corner of the dimly-lit room.

  “Watch out!” Simon cried to Lily.

  Suddenly, an army of blue griefers stormed toward them. They held diamond swords and leapt at the group.

  “You weren’t gone. You were just hiding!” Lily exclaimed, lunging at a blue griefer.

  Mr. Anarchy called to them, “It took you long enough. I wondered if you’d ever find us.”

  “What do you want from us?” Lily yelled. “Isn’t it bad enough that you’ve trapped us on this server? Now you want to torture us, too?”

  Michael cried out, “We want a ceasefire.”

  “A ceasefire?” Mr. Anarchy was curious. He motioned to his soldiers to lower their weapons, and Lily and her friends did the same. Everyone looked at Michael.

  Michael explained, “We all want the same thing. We want to leave this server in the Overworld. Can’t we work together to find a way out of here? Why are you busy battling us? It doesn’t make any sense.”