Battle for the Nether Read online

  They approached carefully, with Crafter leading the way, Gameknight following close behind. Heading first for the smaller room adjacent to the tower, they peeked around the remains of a wall. The entrance to the room had been completely blown away, the side of the structure obviously the victim of a creeper explosion. They must have been commanded to blow open this structure so that the mobs could get inside.

  As the duo jumped over the shattered wall, they found that the room was partially destroyed, with one wall almost gone. The far wall was still solid, and the wooden door leading to the next room remained intact, but stood open. Sorting through the debris, they picked up pieces of wood and stone to add to their inventory. As he collected block after block of wood, Gameknight was surprised to find a golden sword, or a butter sword as some called them in the Minecraft community, buried amidst the rubble. Its keen edge sparkled in the bright sunlight, the golden blade shimmering with an iridescent blue glow. It had some kind of enchantment on it; magical power was locked within the blade.

  “Crafter, come look at this,” he said.

  The young NPC came quickly to his side and looked down at the shining weapon. It bobbed gently above the broken floor, the blade almost glowing as shafts of sunlight streamed in through the gaping hole in the wall and reflected off its edge.

  “You think a user left this here?” Gameknight asked.

  “I doubt it. We haven’t seen a user on this server yet.”

  “Then how did it get here?”

  Gameknight reached out and picked up the enchanted golden weapon, putting his stone sword back into his inventory. The new sword gave off a subtle whistle as he swung it through the air, its razor-sharp edge slicing with keen efficiency. He wondered how many lives this sword had taken, how many families it had destroyed, how many hopes and dreams it had extinguished. Gameknight shuddered at the thought and hoped that the user who had crafted this weapon had been a kind soul—not like he had been, a griefer. In the past, he had played Minecraft like a cyber bully, using his expertise and library of hacks and cheats to get weapons and items to make him much more powerful than the other users. He’d then used those items to take advantage of those around him, killing them for their inventory or maybe just for fun. He had played the game at the expense of others, rather than with them, and had learned the painful consequences of those actions on the last server. Although it had taken him awhile, Gameknight had learned the true meaning of sacrifice with his and Crafter’s death; he finally knew what it meant to selflessly do something for someone else. Pulling his eyes from the shining blade, he looked at Crafter.

  “I’m not sure how it got here,” the NPC counseled. “But we should keep it in case it proves useful.”

  Gameknight nodded.

  “Come on, let’s check the other side of the tower,” Crafter said as he stepped through the open door that led to the tower room, stone sword held out before him. Gameknight followed close behind with his golden sword held at the ready, anxiety pulsing through his veins.

  Though they already knew the tower had been damaged, the two friends were still shocked at what they saw. The base of the tower had been blown open, the ladders that led upward to the higher floors now laying on the ground. The ceiling was completely destroyed, leaving the roof of the tower now visible from the ground floor, with patches of blue sky showing through small holes. Gameknight knew from the last server that the tower room also covered the long vertical tunnel that led to the crafting chamber, deep underground. Usually hidden under the cobblestone floor of the building, it was now clearly visible, the floor completely blown away. A gaping hole marked the location of the tunnel. It looked like a festering wound in the flesh of Minecraft. Hastily constructed steps had been carved into the side of the hole until the blocky stairway met the ladder that descended into the depths.

  “Come, we must go down and see if everyone is alright!” Crafter shouted as he ran forward, taking the steps two at a time.

  “But we don’t know what’s down there,” Gameknight cautioned as he took a step backward, the serpent of fear slowly coiling around the last vestige of his courage, ready to strike.

  Crafter stopped and turned to look at his friend.

  “There might be people down there that need our help.”

  “Or a monster horde,” Gameknight replied.

  “We have to help those in need, and can’t delay. Now come on.”

  Gameknight stayed still, his gaze slowly lowering to the ground, fear ruling his mind.

  “What happened to my friend? You still have your name floating above your head, but no silvery thread connecting you to the server. You are part of our world and part of the physical world, the one in the Prophecy. You are the User-that-is-not-a-user, savior of the last server, and soon the savior of this server. But you cannot save us if you don’t start, if you don’t try. Come, there will be people in need, people who need to know that the User-that-is-not-a-user has finally arrived. It is time for you to be what you were meant to be.”

  Gameknight’s head sank lower, cowardly shame coursing through his body.

  “I . . . ah . . .”

  “I don’t understand what’s going on,” Crafter snapped. “But I’m going down there with or without you.” Turning, he ran down the steps, then climbed onto the ladder and started descending down the vertical shaft that led deep underground.

  What am I doing? Gameknight thought. I can’t just let him go by himself . . . but . . .

  He was so afraid.

  Looking around, he noticed that he was now completely alone, and the sun was heading toward the horizon. Night was coming soon. As he watched Crafter’s sandy blond hair disappear into the dark tunnel, Gameknight felt, for the first time since meeting Crafter, totally alone. Glancing around the half-destroyed village, he imagined monsters rising from the destruction to attack him. Could he protect himself until Crafter returned? Would he return? Then images of a zombie horde waiting deep underground now haunted his imagination, their dark claws reaching out for his friend. He had to help him—he had to be at Crafter’s side in case there was danger.

  I won’t let you go down there alone!

  Gripping his sword tightly, he moved forward, one uncertain step after the next. With a sigh, he finally plunged into the pit, following his friend into the darkness.

  Running down the steps, he quickly found the ladder and started to descend. All of the torches that normally dotted this vertical shaft had been removed, the darkness hiding imagined monsters and creatures that reached out and fed his ever-present fear. Moving his hands, one after another, he quickly made his way down the ladder, establishing a rhythm that kept him going in spite of the fear that nibbled at the edges of his mind.

  Suddenly, a light flared far below him. It was a torch lighting the end of the ladder; it was Crafter. Accelerating his pace, Gameknight shot down the dark tunnel attempting to catch up with his friend. In a few minutes he reached the bottom of the ladder, glad to have solid ground under his feet again. But he could tell that he was not alone.

  “You decided to come,” a voice said from the darkness.

  “Yeah, I wanted to come and help,” Gameknight lied.

  “I knew the User-that-is-not-a-user couldn’t resist the chance to help those in need, to help Minecraft,” Crafter said as he stepped out of the shadows and into the torchlight.

  “Well, come on. Let’s find your villagers and figure out what happened here. Lead on.”

  Crafter nodded, then drew his sword and headed down the horizontal tunnel that was connected to the vertical one they had just descended. Darkness filled the passageway, with more fictional beasts reaching out at Gameknight from his imagination. He followed close behind Crafter, his eyes trying to penetrate the shadows, to no avail. He clutched his sword so tightly that his fingers hurt, but for some reason the pain seemed to push back the shadowy beasts that hid within his mind. His fear was held in check . . . for the moment.

  They traversed the tunnel q
uickly, sprinting the last thirty blocks when they saw the end lit with torches. As they entered the next illuminated chamber, Gameknight eased the grip on his sword and moved the blade to his left hand, flexing the right to get blood flowing again through his fingers. The chamber was identical to the one in which he’d first met Crafter. It was a large, round room with no real features—no furniture and no decorations, just stone walls dotted with torches. But the far end of this chamber was bathed in darkness, the torches there gone. He could remember passing through a similar chamber for the first time in the last server, and being surprised at what he had seen. Would it be the same thing here? Would he see a cavern filled with NPCs crafting the items that Minecraft needed?

  Or would the room be filled with a mob of Minecraft monsters, ready to tear him apart?

  Fear raged through him, filling him with dread, but he knew he had to continue. He couldn’t turn around without losing the respect of his friend—his only friend—so he moved one foot in front of the other as he followed Crafter through the chamber.

  Moving slowly, the duo reached the other end of the chamber, swords held tight. Where there had once stood an iron door and thick cobblestone wall, there was now only rubble. The wall and iron doors had been completely destroyed, and the remnants of their destruction floated on the ground. Gameknight could see that the stone walls were charred as if they had been subjected to some terrible heat.

  “Creepers?” Crafter asked, the word sounding as if it were poison on his tongue.

  “I don’t think so. Why would they have come down here? Besides, they wouldn’t leave any burn marks . . . it had to be something different . . . something from the . . .” He shuddered, not wanting to say the word.

  Stepping through the rubble, Crafter charged ahead, entering the crafting chamber with the reluctant Gameknight on his heels. They were both gree­ted with cries from villagers on the chamber floor.

  “They’re coming back!”

  “Quick, hide.”

  “Run!”

  “To the Minecarts, quickly!”

  “WAIT!” Crafter shouted as he entered the chamber, his voice echoing off the stone walls.

  All eyes moved up to the chamber entrance and were shocked to see an NPC with a sword—something that was unheard of. But then their eyes fell on Gameknight999. The villagers could see his name floating above his head, crisp white letters standing out against the gray stone walls.

  “A user?” someone shouted.

  But then their eyes carefully studied the space above Gameknight’s head.

  Users were always connected to their server through the server thread, a thin, silvery line that stretched upward from their heads, reaching up all the way into the sky, piercing any material in the way. Only NPCs could see the threads, which was how they distinguished users from other NPCs, but Gameknight had no server thread. He was disconnected, yet his username still floated over his head. He was a user, but at the same time, he was not a user.

  “User-that-is-not-a-user,” another voice said.

  “User-that-is-not-a-user,” yet another voice whispered.

  “User-that-is-not-a-user.”

  “User-that-is-not-a-user.”

  The words rippled through the chamber as villager after villager realized who he was. The Prophecy that all NPCs learned during childhood foretold the arrival of the User-that-is-not-a-user, signaling the time of the Last Battle—the battle for the survival of Minecraft. It would be a time when the monsters of Minecraft would try to destroy all servers on all the planes of existence until they reached the Source, where all Minecraft code originated. Gameknight’s presence here made two things abundantly clear for the NPCs: The Last Battle had finally arrived, and the User-that-is-not-a-user was there to save them.

  With this realization, a cheer erupted throughout the chamber. First it started as a single person yelling out, then the lone voice started an avalanche of jubilation which spread across the crafting chamber, making the walls reverberate and the ground shake.

  Moving down the sloping path, Crafter walked to the chamber floor, and Gameknight followed close behind. They could see the charred remains of crafting benches as they approached, along with craters in the floor where explosions had torn into the cavern. As they descended the pathway, Gameknight could feel all eyes glued to him, the NPCs’ expectations that he would save them pounding away at his soul like a mighty sledgehammer. When they reached the end of the path, Crafter jumped up onto a crafting bench and addressed the crowd.

  “Quiet down, quiet down,” he shouted over the din. “Tell us what happened here.”

  The crowd ignored the young boy glaring down at them and instead focused their attention on Gameknight, all of them talking at once, uncertainty and excitement filling the air.

  Crafter shouted again, but was still ignored. All of the villagers continued talking, murmuring to each other.

  Jumping down, Crafter ran to Gameknight and yelled into his ear.

  “Jump up onto the crafting bench and get them to quiet down, then find out what happened here!”

  Gameknight nodded and jumped up onto the crafting bench. Instantly, the crowd grew quiet, the villagers’ eyes all looking up expectantly at their hero, their savior.

  “What happened here?”

  “The mobs,” someone yelled from the back of the chamber. “They came out of the east at sunset.”

  “You mean zombies, spiders, creepers, endermen, and slimes?” Crafter asked. “The monsters of the Overworld?”

  “Yes,” someone answered.

  “But more,” another person also yelled.

  “More?” Gameknight asked. “What do you mean?”

  Silence filled the chamber at his question, the painful memories being replayed in the minds of the NPCs before him. Many of them turned their gaze toward the golden sword that was still in his hand, a look of fear painted across their blocky faces, their unibrows furled with dread.

  “Nether creatures,” someone said in a low voice, as if afraid that saying the word might summon the creatures into existence.

  “What?” Gameknight asked.

  “Nether creatures,” the voice said, loud enough for all to hear.

  Gameknight stepped off the crafting bench and moved to the villager that had spoken. She was an older woman with chocolate brown hair and bright green eyes. Her smock was a light green that complemented her eyes, and had a dark gray stripe running down the middle; her clothing betraying her occupation as a farmer.

  “What do you mean?” he asked in a reassuring voice, Crafter now at his side.

  “It wasn’t just the mobs of the Overworld,” Farmer said in a cautious tone (NPCs were named based on their job). “There were Nether beasts here: blazes, zombie-pigmen, and . . .”

  “And what?” Crafter asked, his voice shaking slightly.

  “Ghastssss,” she said, her voice trailing off like the hiss of a snake.

  Gameknight gasped in shock—no, in terror.

  The Nether was a land that existed in a parallel dimension, accessible only through teleportation portals. It was a dangerous place to visit, with burning sands, lava lakes, and waterfalls of molten rock. It was a terrible land of smoke and flame, and the ghasts ruled there. They were like huge, floating gasbags with gigantic cubic bodies and nine long tentacles dangling beneath them. With a childlike face and terrible, hateful eyes, they looked like vile, floating jellyfish. They roamed the Nether in complete safety, because the terrible fireballs that they could throw would eat through a user’s HP in seconds, killing them. If you stayed motionless for too long in the Nether, you tended to end up barbequed, unless you had strong armor and potions to protect you from fire, both of which were difficult to get. But to know that these creatures had come here, to the Overworld, was terrible news.

  One step below the ghasts were the blazes. A blaze was an elemental creature made of fire and blaze rods. Looking like floating, fiery apparitions, the blazes’ bodies were composed of long yellow
rods that rotated through their midsections; these were the blaze rods, the source of their fiery power. No flesh connected the rods together—no arms, no legs. Their flesh was flame. Bright yellow fire licked up around the blaze rods, giving the impression of a bodily form, with smoke and ash billowing up from the burning creatures. They were terrifying to behold. These creatures could also throw fireballs, but they always stayed close to the ground, so they could be killed . . . if you had strong enough armor to survive their barrage of flames. Blazes were creatures you trifled with only if you had to. They were powerful fighters, and hated everything living, with a thirst for death and destruction that could only be rivaled by the ghasts.

  At the bottom of the Nether hierarchy were zombie-pigmen. They looked and sounded like the zombies of the Overworld, but part of their bodies had a pinkish hue, as if they were part pig. This healthy side was in stark contrast to the zombie side, their exposed skull and ribs looking diseased and decayed. They were half-alive, half-dead monsters that hated the living and wanted to exact their vengeance on the NPCs and users of the Overworld.

  In the Nether, these creatures were armed with golden swords and sometimes armored. They were relatively harmless, as long as they weren’t attacked. If one was attacked, then all of the zombie-pigmen in the area would come to the aid of their brother and attack their assailant until he was killed; the relentless attack was nearly impossible to survive. Users that ventured into the Nether quickly learned to avoid these monsters, careful to give them a wide berth since accidently bumping into them could be misconstrued as an attack, and draw a violent response from all.

  Gameknight looked at the shimmering, golden sword in his hand, then shot Crafter a glance. The NPC nodded in understanding. This blade had come from one of the zombie-pigmen; it was a weapon of the Nether, a weapon of hatred and destruction. He wanted to throw the sword as far away as he could, but knew that it was stronger than his stone sword—sharper and more deadly—and in Minecraft, the person with the best weapons and armor tended to win, and tended to live. Putting the sword back in his inventory, he put a reassuring hand on the woman’s shoulder, trying to comfort her. The fear slowly faded from her face.