A/N:
HPE24: First of all, I'd like to thank everybody for those who have reviewed the previous chapter! Your birthday wishes really warmed up my mind! Also, I moved the character pictures to my deviantART account, and the link is on my profile. You can also see my other artworks in there, and I'll put up news or anything concerning my writing stuff in the journal section.
And let's see… I had some very chaotic days involving freezing classrooms, homework with a computer-ish calculator, quests for room allocations, reciting Chinese characters, and drawing shrivelled up mushrooms and an onion for homework. It's the only downside of attending art GSCE, and believe me, sitting on a cold stool for an hour, scratching the bumpy paper with a graphite pencil for a replica of some spices isn't nice.
Alpha198: At least you like drawing.
HPE24: Only for dragons and animals. I'm completely different when I come to drawing dragons. It's not like people or others. I get totally epically awesome!
Omega245: *rolls eyes* so is this it, o great creator of August 2012's fifth-most reviewed Minecraft fanfiction?
HPE24: Hey… I like that title. :P Also, I would like to congratulate exb756, a great and very nice Minecraft story writer, for beating my review number and taking the place as Fifth Most Reviewed Minecraft fanfiction writer! I'm one rank down, but I'm not sure how things will turn out after this update. Of course, my brother bombarded me with reviews few days ago, even though I SAID to review ONCE IN A WHILE. Now he's planning to do every chapter. *groan* Still, I'm not over exb yet. Well done to exb756's Gone! Also, I apologise dearly for the late update. I hope the length of this makes it up to you. And… that's about it, I think. Let's get on!
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Alpha198
"Wow, do you think this is a good idea?" I asked. We were standing at a distant corner of the village, waiting for other people to join us. Many people were outside, fending off another wave of monsters. We left the wolves at Xi's house, and hoped they won't mess with the mechanisms in there.
"It's the only way," shrugged Delta. "Besides, Upsilon approved this too."
"Still, barging into the monster base is as good as committing suicide," I replied.
"Don't worry, there are other people accompanying us," said Omega. "Hopefully we have a better chance of surviving this."
"Hopefully," I muttered. Turning my gaze randomly, I saw a little crowd of people walking towards us. As they got closer, I recognised some familiar faces.
"Yep, they're coming," I announced. "Let's see… there are Xi, Rho, Omicron, and… Sigma?"
"He's better already?" asked Omega.
"Seems so," I muttered. "And there are about ten people I don't recognise… and hey, what do you know, Delta's secret girlfriend's coming too."
"She's NOT my girlfriend!" said Delta hotly, his face reddening. "I never even talked to her!"
"Sure," I sniggered. "But you'll soon." Delta blushed even more, still glaring at me.
"Hey, uh… sorry for the long wait," said Xi, as the group arrived at the corner.
"Hey, no biggie," I replied. "So… is this it?"
"Yeah," said Rho. "Not much people are so eager to barge into the base, you see."
"Obviously," Omega muttered, rolling his eyes.
As quick as he could, Xi pointed out who was who to all of us. I was immensely disappointed to see Delta trying his best not to go red when Iota said hi.
"Why is she here anyway?" asked Delta quietly to Rho.
"We weren't very keen of her to come along," Rho whispered back, "but she was so stubborn. It's good to have an extra sniper on our side, though."
"Mmh, yeah," he mumbled. I couldn't wait to see Delta being a fool in front of Iota.
"Now that we're here," said Omega loudly. "What now?"
"Easy," said Xi, grinning. He walked up to the wall, which was made out of sandstone. He counted the blocks, and lightly pressed a piece of sandstone. A whirring noise distinctively came behind the wall, and moments later, the blocks retreated, revealing a dark and rather narrow hallway.
"What's this?" I asked.
"I discovered that this island and the other one are connected to each other deep down there. And when I mean deep, it's almost bedrock level," explained Xi. "I thought of using that land as my other workshop, so I created a way to reach it. If the monsters didn't tamper with it, this should take us right into the heart of the base."
"Cool," said Delta. "What's the plan anyway?"
"It's obvious, isn't it?" asked Rho. "Loads of TNT, lots of explosion and combustion."
I stared at him. "Seriously? Don't we have any tactics?"
"Well, since we don't know the building structure, yeah."
"Oh gods," Omega muttered.
"Fun!" said Xi.
"And the probability of us surviving…?" asked Sigma.
"Ah… about 5%," said Xi cheerfully.
I covered my head with my hands. "We're so screwed."
"Hey, be optimistic!" said Xi. "If we manage to get inside the island unnoticed, then it's 7%."
"That's no better," Delta pointed out.
"What? It's two numbers up!" exclaimed Xi.
I was about to say a rebuttal when a huge explosion erupted above us, bringing back to our senses.
"Less talking, more moving," said Rho hastily.
"Right," I agreed. I took one look at the long, dark, and never-ending corridor, and turned to Xi. "Er… you can have the honour."
"Fine," said Xi, rolling his eyes. He stepped into the tunnel, and the rest of us followed. Once we were all in, Delta, who was at the very back of the line, pulled a lever, shutting the entrance right after a particularly loud Creeper detonation. Noises outside ceased abruptly and we were in darkness filled with an eerie silence.
X
Xi lit a torch, and we started to walk down a staircase, Delta taking them down after the crowd passed. No one talked, and the corridor was silent except for our footsteps.
The hallway was endless. There were occasional twists and turns, but we managed to get down from the stair and walk on flat ground. I noticed pieces of black-dotted rocks jutting out from places, with nearby areas smoothened by stones. I found it weird not to see any mobs spawning here, as the darkness level was enough to spawn zombies and Creepers. They were probably all forced to spawn above us for army reinforcement. Come to think of it, we never actually saw a monster boss in the first round, and got some mutant Spider Jockeys instead. Why didn't they just show their miserable face up in the battle and wipe us out in one go? If the Creeper King was stronger than ordinary monster bosses, he surely could have done that.
My mind drifted onto thinking about the infamous Creeper. From what we have heard from careless monster leaders, he was dangerous, and more powerful than any of them. Maybe the size was bigger too. I had a vivid memory of Delta telling crazy Creepers who got zapped by lightning and caused massive damage over the world. If the king had that power, we were all dead. Without knowing, I was fantasising about what possible dangerous weapons the creeper had.
I was on the verge of imagining a gigantic Creeper shooting hundreds of explosive arrows and dropping nuclear weapons when Xi stopped, and I almost ran into him. It took a while for everybody to stop in their spot and wonder what the hell was going on.
"I think we're here," whispered Xi. He pressed his ear to the left wall, and listened intently. After four seconds or so, he withdrew, and said, "I don't hear any movements, but I know there's a room in this direction."
"Bust open?" I asked hopefully, tugging at my pickaxe.
"Feel free." I started hacking away at the stone, drilling through the surface. People nearby started to do the same, and the wall cleared off after four layers of rocks. I peeked using a corner, and saw an empty chamber, lit only with two torches. It wasn't that big, but I saw some kind of an entrance leading to an unknown place.
"Did you make this one too?" asked Omega, surveying the room.
"Yep," Xi confirmed. "I made it few years ago, except that I-uh-didn't need it anymore, so I ditched it. The original entrance must be few blocks away from our spot right now."
"Is it safe to explore?" asked Delta.
"Hopefully. Let's just see if the monsters took over my old lab." Xi crossed the room, and went through the hole/entrance. Naturally, we followed.
What met us was another long corridor with sudden turns and stairs. A distant torchlight marked another change of route.
"How big is this place anyway?" whispered Rho as we spent another 10 minutes walking up and across the corridor.
"Quite large," panted Xi, as he continued to climb the 40 block-long stairs. "I started building this when I was thirteen."
"What?" I asked incredulously. "Does that mean you fiddled with wires and created mechanisms during your teens?"
"Yeah," Xi answered. "I-I started building stuff at the age of ten."
"Hardcore," Omega whistled.
Now the tunnel was lit with plenty of torches, and widened enough for all of us to walk comfortably without lining up. But there were still lots of curved tracks with sudden stairs leading upwards.
We were about to turn another corner when Rho tensed. He motioned us to stop, and had a little peak outside. Withdrawing as quietly as he could, Rho faced us, and mouthed 'skeletons'.
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I leaned over, and had a glimpse of ten skeletons scouting around, their bows loaded. Great, we had to fight through this.
Rho suddenly seemed to have an idea. He silently pulled out a small pebble from his pocket, resting it against his bowstring. He pulled it back, and released it.
The pebble flew through the air quietly, and shot into a rather huge hole on the other side, landing somewhere in there with a sharp clack.
The skeleton sentries whipped their skulls to the direction where the noise came from, and started to sprint towards it, chattering excitedly. Once they disappeared to the darkness, we slowly edged out, and broke into a run, successfully passing the once-guarded corridor.
"Smart thinking there, Rho," Omicron gasped after passing one more corner.
"Yeah," I agreed. "But won't they come back soon?" As if on cue, the sound of clanking bones increased, coming straight from that hole.
"We have to move," hissed Delta, and we sprinted along the hallway, weapons in our hands just in case we ran into monsters.
We did, eventually. Four spiders shrieked in surprise as we skidded to a halt, equally alarmed. But after twenty seconds, nothing was left of the spiders except for their drops. Judging by the sounds behind us, the skeletons were pretty close.
We ran about twenty more blocks, and arrived at an intersection where three more tunnels opened up to separate directions.
"Which way?" I heard Omega yell.
"Right side!" Xi replied, and we all followed that direction.
Xi, Rho, Omega, Delta, Iota and I were on the lead, our weapons raised. Iota sped up, and turned left, her bow loaded. After one second or so, we heard her scream "Cave Spiders!" followed by an arrow hitting its target.
The rest of us caught up with her, only to be met by twenty (yes, twenty FREAKING blue spiders) of those poisonous arachnids, all of them snapping their mandibles threateningly. I could see the spot where one of them perished by Iota's arrow.
Rho charged, swinging his blade and decapitating three spiders in one slice. Delta and Omega hacked the limbs of two spiders, and I swung my zanite sword vertically across a spider's back, chopping it in half.
Eighteen against twenty was reasonably good, but the spiders had the advantage of poison. Three of them leapt at one of the Users, and mercilessly tore at him. By the time they retreated, the man was clearly dead. Another guy screamed at my left, as four spiders bit him on his limbs. So that was two casualties on our side.
The Cave Spiders began to drive us back, but I noticed that we were backing away at the direction we were heading at the first place. We seemed to have changed sides without noticing during the fight. Ha, those bugs were stupider than I thought.
Other than four spiders, the rest of them were obliterated off the planet. Spider eyes and string lay on the ground, with some half-dissolved spider parts. I wondered if it was appropriate for Iota to see this, but then, she already popped open a spider's eye just now.
The surviving spiders didn't seem to care that they were outnumbered. They shrieked furiously, and pounced.
"Hold on, I got this," said Rho confidently. The sword flashed through the air, beheading two perfectly. He jabbed the sword forward, skewering the rest on the centre of their chest. The spiders screamed in agony, as they died a slow, painful death on the diamond sword.
Sigma did a quick head-count. "Sixteen of us survived," he concluded. "Those two were not so lucky."
I looked back at the two corpses on the floor. But before we could do anything else, the skeletons finally caught up with us, standing at the opposite end of the tunnel.
X
"Incoming!" I yelled, as the skeletons began to shoot, arrows aiming straight at us. I leapt in front of all other people, and managed to deflect arrows off using the flat side of my blade. Sigma joined in, and we pretty much managed to get arrows off our team.
"Get your bows out!" I heard Delta yell behind me, followed by shuffling and fumbling over bows and arrows. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw everybody raising their bows, aiming at the skeletons.
One of the arrows from the skeletons flew out of my reach, and hit a User squarely on the chest. He slumped forward, and the arrow he was holding ricocheted off to the ceiling. That was the third person to die in our team.
Determined not to let anyone die again, I gripped my sword tightly, blocking arrows as much as I could. Waves or arrows came behind me, lodging themselves in the skeletons' eyeholes or ribcages. Five of them disintegrated after three minutes, and the rest of them were soon slain by more arrows.
"I hope this is it," Omega muttered. Sadly, he was wrong.
More monsters poured out from the intersecting tunnels: an assorted mix of spiders, skeletons, zombies, and Creepers.
Oh damn, Creepers were bad news in here.
Apparently, Xi had the same thought too. "RUN!" he yelled, and all of us obeyed without objection. Fighting a squadron of Creepers under a sandy island was as good as going into a field full of cockatrices unarmed.
Some archers, like me, were behind the group, sniping at monsters occasionally. I thought I managed to blind a spider on the left side. Too bad they had more than two eyes.
After passing another left fork, we arrived at a stair, which was wider than others we went through. I seriously hoped this was the way out.
A Creeper crawled towards us, and started to swell. And it exploded.
The stone roof collapsed, and tons of sand rained down upon us and the monster squad. We ran up the stairs as fast as we could, as the sand began to kill off monsters behind us. If we didn't make it up the stairs, we would die of suffocation like those unfortunate mobs down there.
As I ran, I heard a strangled yelp. I glanced back, and saw one of the Users grabbed by a zombie. He vanished from sight by the waves of yellow grains.
Gasping and panting, the rest of us collapsed on the smooth stone floor, as the sand managed to drown out the last monster cry. We actually managed to get up from the bedrock level all the way to here. With sacrifices, of course. I wondered how many more would die from this assault: Fourteen of us were left, and I doubted the possibility of us surviving the encounter with the Creeper King.
Judging by the distant rumble and shouts, the battle was still going on, and we were at ground level. The monster bosses were out here somewhere.
Xi was the one to get up first. He scanned the place, and pointed at one of the holes. "That's a new one," he said. "I didn't build that. Maybe the monster bosses are there."
"Right," I muttered. "Let's move."
Now that we were high up from bedrock level, the air was cooler. That was great for me, at least. Keeping the pace, we walked cautiously through the hallway, swords and bows raised. This was it: we were finally seeing who the mastermind behind all this is.
A dim light was at the end of the hallway, but I couldn't see anything else. Bracing ourselves, we moved forward.
By the time we stepped out from there, all we saw was a single torch at the middle, where the dim light was coming from. Other than that, it was completely dark.
Suddenly, the blackness retreated in a flash, and the whole chamber brightened up, except for the far end of the room. Now that I could see properly, the room was over fifty blocks high, with something lighting way up at the ceiling. The walls were mossy cobblestone, and more torches glowed on the floor. But other than that, the sight was truly horrifying.
A gigantic skeleton wearing an iron helmet stood at the left, its huge bow strung and ready to fire. That delightful female spider we met at the cold biome was there too, boring down upon us from the ceiling, attached by a single strand of string. Argentum the Mutated Silverfish shifted at the opposite side, all upgraded to his Kill-Mode. Monsters (I was surprised to see so few accompanying their bosses) surrounded them, all their eyes trained on us. Those cage-things (spawners?) were placed around at random places, each of them containing a tiny monster. We were surrounded.
"You have walked into your own deaths, Users," cackled Argentum, his slit eyes glinting with cold amusement.
"Ignorant beings, humans," mused the giant skeleton. "Never changed throughout those times."
"Indeed, Sceletus," the Spider Queen hissed. "How fun is it to play around with them?"
"Quiet," a cold voice silenced them. It came from the dark side of the room. "You have no right to say that after your failure, Nigra." That pretty much shut up the Spider Queen.
"So," the voice hissed. "I heard that four of you tried to meet those Terrarians over there, hmm?"
"Yeah," I said defiantly. "What about it?"
"It disrupted the peace we kept on for decades," the voice said. "We tried ignoring those outsiders as long as possible, but you nosy people had to join the rest of the hiders."
"Peace, huh?" I snorted. "Yeah right, after having those massacres across the three dimensions. You call that peace?"
"You insolent-" snarled Argentum, but the voice let out a chilling hiss.
"To us mobs, yes," the voice said calmly. "Users were nothing but threats to us. By vanquishing them and turning the fate around, we have found justice. And with new supreme beings to govern over them, this world will remain balanced and equal."
"Sure," Omega muttered. "And if you're one of those all-powerful beings, why don't you show your face up?"
The monster bosses tried to retort, but the voice spoke again, this time in some language that I didn't understand. Anyway, the huge monsters backed down immediately.
"You want to see me so badly?" the voice asked. "So be it."
Large footsteps echoed throughout the room, and as the thing got closer, I was able to see two big red dots glowing in the dark.
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A/N:
OMGSOSORRYFORTHECLIFFHANGERI APOLOGISE! DX So sorry people! It says like that on my schedule, so I had to write the ending like this. And sorry about those long gaps between updates, so go up to deviantART, and curse Block, whose look is revealed now. And please review, because I appreciate reviews more than favourites or alerts, and getting a mail about comments make me grin for more than three minutes. Please please please don't forget to review! :D
And also please check out my deviantART page, where you can find TMC characters, fan arts, dragon drawings, blu-tack sculptures, my self-drawing, and much more! I'll add journals about how my writing's going on in there, and if I feel generous, maybe some sneak peeks! I'm off for another round with Block with new weapons. Stay tuned!