Sean Wolfe - The Complete Elementia Chronicles - Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message

Stan snapped out of his trance when he heard Sally’s voice next to him. “You all right, noob?” she asked gently.

Stan looked at her. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t all right, and that Crazy Steve could never return to the server due to his banishment, and that he couldn’t understand why someone would kill another player if they knew that eternal banishment was the consequence … but instead he looked her in the eye and said, “I’ll be all right.” Her eyes were full of tears, and he didn’t want to seem weak to her, not after she had believed in him.

“Sally, we have a big problem!” Adoria exclaimed as she rushed over to them, panic in her voice. “I think that there’s a possibility that this attack may not be isolated. We need to get all the lower-levels into the mine, but there won’t be room for all of them down there. The mine wasn’t meant to hold the number of people we have now. Any more than two-thirds of the current population would make it too susceptible to accidents. I’m out of ideas, Jayden’s still distraught, and Archie and G are still busy preparing to evacuate the lower-levels. What do you think we should do?”

The panic in her voice led Stan to speak. “We’ll leave,” he said. Sally and Adoria both stared at him. “We’ll leave, Charlie, Kat and I. If there’s any chance at all that there are more Griefers coming, we’d stand the best chance of survival. We’ve finished the programme. Send us out, ask for other volunteers to leave, and you can stay and defend everyone left in the village.”

Adoria opened her mouth to protest, but Sally cut her off. “That’s actually not bad thinking. Those who’ve completed the programme will have the best shot at surviving, and we upper-levels will have to stay here and defend the village. We can send volunteers who have completed the programme into the forest, towards the city.”

Adoria protested, “But what if they run into Griefers along the way?”

“They won’t,” Sally responded. “The Griefers avoid the main road in case they come across well-armed travellers. They’re cowards, all of them. And besides,” she added, smiling at Stan, “that Griefer didn’t run away for no reason. Am I right in thinking that you fought him off?” Stan nodded.

“OK,” Adoria said, and she ran off towards the mine, skirt billowing in the wind, to make the announcement.

Stan looked at Sally and said, “Sally, I—” but he was cut off by Sally kissing him on the cheek.

“Come back and visit someday,” she said, and she ran off to join Adoria. “Oh, and take some weapons and food from the storehouse!”

I knew it! I knew it! I knew she likes me! Oh, man, I am definitely coming back to this village as soon as I can! Wow, I don’t know what I expected from this game, but that was not at the top of my list! Wow …

These were the thoughts that filled Stan’s head as he sprinted out of the Adorian Village, tailed by Kat and Charlie, as the rain started to fall. They had not been thrilled when he told them that they had to leave, but they were very excited at the prospect of new weapons.

Kat now ran right behind Stan with a bow slung over her back, a quiver of twelve arrows and a gleaming iron sword dangling at her side. Rex was dashing along at her heels. Charlie was close behind the dog, with an iron pickaxe in his hand, and a whole mess of watermelons in his inventory. He held the group’s food. Stan was in the lead, holding an iron axe in his hand and a crafting table, furnace and some coal in his inventory. They were well trained and on the move. In their minds, any enemies that they encountered out here, in the light rain that had started, were dead meat.

In due time, they stopped to take a breather. While they caught their breath, Charlie said, “Wow, what a day, right?”

“Yeah,” replied Kat. They certainly were in no mood for laughter, but they had recovered from the initial shock of Crazy Steve’s death.

“I still don’t get it, though,” she said. “Why did that guy pick Crazy Steve out as a target? He was a farmer! He helped lower-levels!”

Something connected in Stan’s mind as she said this. Crazy Steve’s last words came back to him. Them in Element City, that run the government, they don’t like people like you. Freshies. Beginners. Noobs.

“You don’t think that the assassin was with the government, do you?” asked Stan.

Charlie and Kat looked at him in shock. “Why would the government send out assassins to kill people that gave food to their lower-level citizens?” Kat asked sceptically.

“That’s just it, though,” said Stan, standing up. “He gave food to lower-level citizens.” He told them about his conversation with Crazy Steve and what the old farmer had said about the government.

This left Kat looking bewildered, while Charlie asked, “Why? How does that make any sense?”

“I don’t know,” Stan replied. “Crazy Steve was just about to tell me when …” He sighed, looked away from the other two, and sighed again. They got the message.

“It’s certainly a weird theory,” said Kat, also standing, “But we’ll think about it later. We need to get going!” She had to yell to be heard over the sound of the rain, which was falling hard now. Stan saw a lightning strike in the distance, which Rex barked at. In the illumination from the lightning, he noticed a tower a way off, right in the middle of the path.

“What’s that?” he asked, gesturing to it.

“What’s what?” yelled Kat.

“That, the tower up there!” he yelled back, and another lightning strike illuminated the sky, letting Kat and Charlie see the tower as well.

“Maybe it’s a shelter! Or another player’s house!” yelled Charlie.

“Maybe! Let’s go there, because we need to get out of this storm! This lightning is getting dangerous!” screamed Kat over the whistling wind and pounding rain.

The thunderstorm was beginning to get dangerous, with the bolts extremely frequent now. Once, lightning struck a tree right next to Kat and it caught fire, causing her to give a screech of surprise. Fortunately it was immediately extinguished by the rain.

As they approached the tower, they noticed that it was actually a pyramid, and that it covered the entire road. Stan was suspicious. Something felt wrong. As he walked closer, his suspicions were confirmed. The entire pyramid was made of stacked blocks of TNT.

“Why would someone put this here?” asked Kat.

“I don’t know, but I don’t feel safe near it,” replied Stan.

“Why?” asked Charlie, walking up to the pyramid. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

As if on cue, the worst thing did happen. Lightning struck the top of the pyramid, and the powder in the block was ignited. It began to flash dangerously.

“RUN!” screamed Stan as the block exploded. As the three players and Rex ran for it, the entire tower exploded from the top down, with each explosion sending lit TNT blocks flying everywhere like lava spewing from a volcano. Luckily, they escaped the range of the explosions with top-speed sprinting. As they gazed at the exploding pyramid it became clear that the explosives were underground, too. They could hear the explosions continue on for about sixty seconds before the tumult finally stopped.

The rain had died down, so they could talk in normal voices again. There was dust in the air now from the explosion, just like the Creeper explosion in the mine on the way to the Adorian Village. But this explosion was much larger, and it had blown a huge fissure in the middle of the road. They were cut off from the other side.

“The woods, then?” Stan said in an unnaturally high voice. They looked at each other. They remembered what Sally had said. The Griefers avoid the main road in case they come across well-armed travellers. Straying off the road would lead them directly into enemy territory.