I was able to pull the sword out of my chest, but the pain returned along with it.
"What just happened…" Erik said as we all walked back towards the village.
"We lost…" Jamie answered.
"Are you okay?" I asked Erik and Jamie. They looked at me in confusion.
"Dude, you just had a sword lodged in your chest and you're worrying about us?" Erik asked, as the enemies followed close behind us, still with swords out. As we entered our house, one of the pumpkin guys searched us for any tools we could use to break anything, while the other broke the door off, and filled it in with cobblestone, effectively locking us in.
Jamie sat at the table, and so did Erik.
"What are we going to do?" I asked.
"What can we do?" Jamie replied. "We lost our village, it's under their control now and there's nothing we can do about it. Only thing we can do now is hope they dont kill us."
"Under their control? Says who?" I asked.
"Mike… you just saw a Chinese herobrine kill our village leader, and he lodged your own sword into your chest. Face it, we're fucked either way." Erik replied.
"I appreciate the positive outlook, but it's over now." Jamie replied.
Looking out the window, I saw all the pumpkin head players meeting up in the middle of the village, some of them were forcing the last of the villagers into a random house and blocking it off, but one of them didn't fit. The herobrine player was talking to them about something, but I failed to overhear it.
"That herobrine dude is their leader…" I said. "If we find a way to take him o–"
"Will you shut the hell up already?" Jamie interrupted. Turning around, I saw her take her worn out armor off, setting her diamond helmet on the table. There was a giant crack in the middle of it.
Erik pulled out his iron sword. The blade was snapped clean in half.
"Oh shit…" I commented, looking at it.
"Yeah." Erik said.
"Well… they mentioned that they were going to loot everyone or something, what do we have in the house?" I asked.
"It doesn't matter, they're going to take everything, including what we have in our inventories." Jamie answered.
"Not if we hide it first." I suggested.
"And where the fuck would we hide it?" Jamie replied. I kneeled down to the floor and began to break the cobblestone. As I swung at it, I looked out the window to make sure that nobody could see what I was doing. Thankfully, it seemed as if the incursion people were getting ready for bed.
"Hey, looks like the invaders are going to wait till morning to do anything with us, let's take advantage of all that time and hide all of our shit in here…"
"Do you have any idea how long it's going to take to mine all that out without any tools?" Jamie asked.
"All I need is three blocks of stone, and I can craft myself a pickaxe, then get some for all of you." I said, continuing to punch the floor. Sure enough, cracks began to form, but they were spreading very slowly.
"How much stuff do we have upstairs?" I asked.
"A lot." Jamie replied. "You're wasting your time."
The first block broke. Taking a look at my inventory, they had forgotten to take my other two pieces of cobblestone, so I rushed up the stairs to craft another one. As I came down, Jamie and Erik looked as if they had lost hope. Regardless, I continued to mine the floor out. I dug out a 3 by 5 by 5 hole. Climbing out, I got Jamie's attention.
"The hole's ready, we can start putting all the stuff in here and I can fill it in when we're done."
She didn't move.
"What about you Erik?" I asked. He didn't move either.
"Well, I guess I'll do it myself."
I began to walk up the stairs, and headed towards my room. Opening the chest, I emptied the most valuable stuff in it into my inventory and headed downstairs. Climbing down into the small hole I built, I placed two chests and emptied my stuff into them. Climbing back out, I started heading back up to get Eriks stuff. Heading down, Jamie got up.
"I'll empty out my room…" She said, going upstairs. As I went down, I realized that I was going to need more room, so I began to dig out the wall to extend the size. As I was digging the floor transitioned from stone to gravel. When Jamie went down with her stuff, I decided that I would break the gravel to replace it with cobblestone. I began punching the first block as Jamie emptied her stuff into a chest when…
The entire section of gravel gave way, and I fell along with it. Luckily, I was able to grab onto the edge of the stone as the gravel continued to fall, revealing…
A ravine.
Jamie immediately rushed towards me, just as I was about to lose my grip.
"Grab my hand!" She said, As I grabbed her hand, she struggled to pull me back up. I was able to place my other hand on the edge of the ravine and pull myself back up, stumbling over on Jamie.
We paused to catch our breath.
"That was close…" She said.
Still trying to process what the hell just happened, it took me a while for me to notice that I was now on top of Jamie.
"OH SHIT, I'M SORRY!" I yelled, rolling to the side.
"What? What did you do?" Jamie asked, confused.
"I fell on top of you…?" I replied, stepping away.
"Well, it was either that, or you would've fallen into the ravine and died…" Jamie commented. "I'd much rather have you survive…" approaching the ravine, I looked down to see how deep it was. Almost the entire bottom part of it was filled with lava. Jamie approached me, grabbing my hand.
"Don't get so close to the edge you idiot…" Jamie said, pulling me back. As she took a look over the edge, she turned around.
"Well, I hate to admit it Mike, but I think you just found our escape route."
"It's a ravine… how the hell would we get down there safely?" I asked.
"I have a water bucket. We could literally escape right now." Jamie replied.
"Well, let's go get Erik then…" I replied. As we returned to the entrance to the hole, we climbed back up.
"Hey Erik!" I stated. "I think I found our ticket out of here!"
Just as I said that, the cobblestone on the door frame began to break. I panicked and placed a block of cobblestone to fill the pathway. The blocks of cobblestone broke, opening up the doorway just more. It was the pumpkin heads. They had a villager accompanying them, and pushed him into our house, re-sealing the doorway behind them. Looking at him, he had an enderman skin equipped. He had a look of uncertainty in his face.
"Who the hell are you…" I asked.
"I'm Josh." The player introduced himself. "The invaders uhhh… they put me in here because there wasn't enough room in the house they were going to put me in."
"Well, you just got lucky, we have an escape strategy."
"Escape?" Josh asked.
"Yeah." I answered. "There's a ravine directly underneath this house."
He jumped with joy.
"YES!" He exclaimed.
"Dude shut the fuck up, you're gonna get us caught…" Erik said.
"Oh yeah, right… sorry." Josh replied.
Looking to see if the coast was clear, I broke the block of cobblestone to reveal the tunnel again, and we all climbed down. Looking at the Ravine, Josh looked back at us.
"How will we get down here?" He asked, as I replaced the cobblestone block.
"Water." Jamie said, approaching the tunnel and emptying her water bucket on the edge. "We'll ride it down."
"Hang on…" I said. "Who's going to fill the source?"
"What do you mean?" Jamie asked.
"If the pumpkin dudes or whatever the hell they're called find this hole and ravine, that water source will get them to us faster. Someone has to break it when we go down." I explained.
"Smart…" Josh replied. "I take it you're the main breadwinner of the house?"
"Uuuh…" I stuttered. "Actually… She is." I pointed towards Jamie.
"Oh… dating?"
We both looked at each other.
"Nope." Jamie replied. "I'm not into that shit anymore."
"Hmm, that's too bad. You two would make a great couple." Josh commented. I cringed, and so did Jamie.
"I KNOW right!" Erik added.
"I swear, if one of you makes one more comment on that kind of stuff, imma push you over the edge." I threatened.
"Okay… fine, we'll shut up about it." Erik replied.
As we all approached the water source, we looked at each other.
"Who wants to bre–"
"I'll do it." Jamie interrupted.
"Are you sure?" I replied. "If you don't time it properly, you'll die from fall damage."
"I'm sure." Jamie replied. "Besides, I'm the one that got you all into this mess in the first place."
Josh was the first to ride the waterfall down to the bottom of the ravine. Erik soon followed. Taking one last look at Jamie, I too jumped into the stream of water and rode it down to the bottom of the ravine. As I hit the ground, I looked up. Sure enough, the water was now going downwards, and I could see Jamie freefalling, but the water was too far away.
The water was residing too fast.
I rushed under the depleting waterfall and held my hands out, preparing for the worst. Holding my breath, I aligned myself to catch her in case my assumption about the water was right. Soon, the water completely depleted into the ground and disappeared. Holding my hands out still, I was able to catch Jamie before she would've met an unwelcoming fate.
Putting her down, I went back to Josh and Erik.
"So… what's the plan now?" I asked them, as Jamie approached me.
"Hey…" She said. "Thank you for… you know, catching me…"
"Yea, no prob." I answered.
"Should we go that way or that way?" Erik said, pointing either way of the ravine.
I looked around to see if there were any landmarks of some sort. Down to the left of the cave and up a bit, was a destroyed bridge belonging to an abandoned mineshaft.
"Why don't we go down there..?" I suggested, pointing towards the broken bridge. "We may even be able to find loot on our way out…"
"Welp, I guess we can." Jamie answered. "Does everyone have weapons?"
"I still have the enchanted sword…" I said, pulling it out.
"I left my shattered iron sword at the house, but I got this…" Erik said, pulling out the enchanted wooden sword… again.
"Are you fucking kidding me..?" I said, chuckling. Jamie and Josh shared the laughs.
"Bro's got a sword weaker than Joe Biden's grammar…" Josh said.
I laughed so hard my chest started hurting again.
"Anyways, I got nothing… Josh said. "They took all of my stuff."
"Well, don't worry." Jamie reassured him. "We'll get you something."
"We can start him out with a stone sword." I said, taking out a pickaxe and beginning to mine out a chunk of the wall. "I don't have a crafting table, but we can just steal the wood from that broken bridge up there and–"
We heard a creeper from behind us. Josh jumped.
Turning around, we saw a creeper on the side of the ravine, just next to the lava. It was silently approaching us. Taking out my sword, I began to approach it.
"Mike?" Jamie called out, but I ignored her. As I got closer to the creeper, it hissed and started to expand. I swung my sword directly across its face, and it tipped over, falling into the lava and immediately going up into flames. Making my way back towards the group, the creeper let out one last painful hiss before sinking below the surface.
"What if that thing exploded?" Jamie asked me as we continued towards the bridge. "That could've gotten you killed!"
"Yea… but it didn't." I replied. "Stop worrying about me so much."
As we climbed up the side of the ravine, I broke out a few pieces of wood from the floor, then used it to craft a crafting table. Placing it, I took some more planks and crafted them into sticks for a stone sword.
"Here you go." I said, handing Josh the newly crafted stone sword.
"You need one too?" I asked Jamie.
"No, I have a bow, but no arrows." Jamie replied.
"Well, hopefully we can find some in this mineshaft." I said. As I went right, the others followed me into the darkness.
"Who here has torches?" I asked. Erik took one out.
"Get behind me then." I asked him. As he approached, I saw a chest in the distance. Approaching it, I opened it to find nothing but apples and string. There were enough apples to pass around, so I handed each of the others one, taking the last one for myself.
"How are we going to get out of here?" Josh asked.
"We find the exit. If we can't, we'll just mine up." I answered.
Soon after walking around the mineshaft and looking around the ravine, I realized that mining up was really our only option.
"Alright, we're gonna have to just mine up to the surface." I said, facing the others. Mining out a small piece of the wall, I began to buil platform to the surface, and the others got on it with me.
"Each of us breaks a block then places one below. I'll go first."
The mining upward was pretty uneventful until we mined into another cave tunnel. Looking at the wall, there was a chunk of iron.
"Wait up guys." I said, approaching the chunk. Getting out my pickaxe, I began to mine the chunk when I heard an enderman in the distance. I was soon able to finish mining it and approached the group again to continue mining upwards. Eventually, I broke a top block, and water began to flow into the hole we made, leaving us a tiny pocket at the top to breathe.
"Okay… this is our ticket out…" I said. "We just need to swim up, and we'll be free."
Everyone nodded, except for Josh. he looked to be distressed.
"I'll go first." I said, approaching the water and beginning to swim up. I could see Erik and Jamie following close behind me, but Josh was falling a bit behind. I couldn't see the surface yet. As I held my breath, I could feel strain on my lungs.
"This is just a virtual reality game…" I thought to myself. "Why the hell does everything seem so… real?"
Continuing to swim, we passed by some fish and plants. I eventually could make out the surface, but my lungs were beginning to give in. as I instinctively opened my mouth, water filled into my lungs. I sped up towards the surface. As I emerged from the surface of the water, I took a minute to catch my breath. Jamie and Erik followed.
"Uhhh…" Erik started. "Where's the other dude?"
Looking down into the water, I could see him sinking back down towards the bottom of the lake.
"Shit…"