July 5th 2018


After a rough semester in school I finally had plenty of free time to play Minecraft. I decided to boot up my PC and open up my launcher – which was untouched for a long while. The PC started to lag, but that may be because the launcher was updating. This took a few minutes, which was pretty unusual knowing that it takes a few seconds to a full minute. The launcher was ready to load. I decided to also insert the pixelmon mod into the Minecraft folder since I got bored on playing vanilla Minecraft. Having done that, I clicked the play button and waited as Minecraft loaded.

I suddenly heard a very loud static sound blasting out from my speakers just a moment after Minecraft loaded, which made me jump off the chair. I thought it was a faulty cable or the speakers are old already, so I had to ascertain by looking at the back of the speakers, although none of the wires were loose as I checked behind. Then I remembered having a similar situation that happened back around 2015 or 2016 while playing pixelmon so I assumed this is part of the mod.

Minecraft started normal nonetheless. I haven't played pixelmon for a year or two – seeing that there's a whole bunch of content so I decided to create a single player world to familiarize myself with the environment – as I was too excited that I would be bothered spending several minutes finding a good multiplayer server.

The world loaded, and I was met with the usual greeting screen. I decided to pick cyndaquil as that was my favorite starter pokemon, then I was placed at the plains. "Not bad honestly," I thought, until a pidgeot randomly decided to fly low across me. I hunkered down, narrowly missing that unexpected encounter.

"God damn…" I slowly uttered as my heart raced a little, before puffing it all out - assuring myself everything was fine. Hoping that no strong pokemon would go in my way, I wandered around the plains in pursuit of a village with a PokeCenter. Unfortunately, there was none at my sight - having wandered a few hundred blocks around, but luckily I have found a standalone center at the forest south from where I spawned.

I foraged a handful of apricots of different varieties and other essentials so far during the pursuit. Having started an apricot farm, I grinded up my cyndaquil's level until evolving into a quilava – knocking out weak pokemon before I proceeded to dig down a mine. I dug in until I got easy access to a cave. Unfortunately, a squad of geodudes stood in my way and charged against me and quilava into a battle until my quilava eventually fainted.

Which is, actually better that way, as I can focus doing Minecraft stuff before doing the fun stuff. Albeit tedious, I spent long enough collecting resources – two stacks of iron, too. Fortunately, I did not have to worry about hostile mobs – as there weren't any. I went back to the pokemon center, and healed my Quilava.

I played long enough acquiring resources, exploring around and building up my base that I saw the sky curtaining from the window beside me. At this time, I collected 108 pokemon in total, and had assembled a full team – a typhlosion, a walrein, a heracross, a leafeon, a torkoal, and a marshtomp. The reason for this was because I wanted to fill up my pokedex, and to save different varieties of pokemon just in case I want to switch to another. A tedious journey but probably worth it.

I spent a few minutes trying to remember where I was - just a few days after this encounter writing this paragraph, but I was near the savanna biome far away from my base where I saw this huge blue blob hanging around near the river just concealed by the trees within my distance; I assumed that it was a boss wailord. To snatch this opportunity, I sent out my leafeon to battle it - which initiated the battle, except for some reason, my screen went black except the GUI and my crosshair. I thought it was the wailord blocking my screen, but I swore the textures were there, and not supposed to be pure black inside.

I brushed it off and proceeded to begin my first move. Commanding my leafeon to use Leaf Blade to the wailord, he managed to land a critical hit, which drained almost all of his HP due to his grass weakness. Wailord used a status move that I don't remember, then I took the wailord down, relishing its rewards. As I exited the battle screen, the game screen was still black. Assuming this was a bug of the mod, I rejoined my world which dissipated the issue.

Just when I was about a hundred(ish) blocks away from my base - constantly pressing F5 every few moments lest I or any of my pokemon succumb to danger either from strong pokemon or natural formations, I noticed a black dot on the back of my head where it's not supposed to be there. Knowing that I usually use the skins that I created, I was keen on making sure there were no errors or inconsistencies. I paused Minecraft, uploaded the skin to a skin maker website and looked at the back of my skin's head. However, there was no black dot to be found.

I quickly grew suspicious – my mind phasing back to those occurrences that I had experienced last year. However, I shouldn't easily be that scared from a family friendly game, right? I resumed back to playing the game, and the dot was still there. Eventually it started to bother me a bit, so I rebooted Minecraft and my skin came back to what it was.

I went back to my base and harvested more apricots, smelting them to make more ultra balls with the iron ingots that I've saved. I head to the Pokemon PC to configure my team. Just when I was about to switch my walrein to a shiny cinccino, my game crashed. I reloaded my world, and both of the pokemon mentioned, vanished.

My body wanted to cripple in shambles at that point. The cinccino was the ONLY shiny pokemon that I owned during that run; this drained almost all the juice out of my body as that was the pokemon that I had caught around twenty minutes ago. I hunched with my head, pounding the desk, eyebrows creased.

Then I heard my character getting hit by something. I immediately adjusted my posture as my eyes snapped to what appears a spider (not a spinarak, joltik or any of those spider pokemon), but a hostile spider mob attacking my character. Thump! Thump! My eyes darted to the health bar and noticed that it was close to empty. I made a sharp turn to the door which was already opened, but the spider managed to pounce behind me, killing my character.

"FUCK!" I exclaimed to the top of the lungs and banged the desk. The door behind me opened – turns out, it was a parent narrowly staring at me.

"Are you okay?" she said.

I briefly turned my head on her, but did not respond.

"You don't have to be so angry, it's just a game." She then closed the door.

My face smeared in red from the screaming, I heaved a heavy sigh - my palm rubbing against my face. I still had some of my pokemon in my side; however, I did not want to lose my items so I reluctantly pressed the respawn button, which placed me back to the spawnpoint instead of the PokeCenter. Luckily, I knew where I had to go. I sprinted a few hundred blocks south and there I was, except all of my items that were dropped have vanished, despite taking minutes to go there.

I felt unmotivated to continue until the next several days passed. I spent another few hours acquiring most of the resources I previously had lost, including the ultra pokeballs. At that time, my average pokemon level was around 50ish from the tedious battling of other trainers. I wanted to catch my favorite legendary pokemon victini so I went to the nearest savanna that I could find. On the way I stumbled by an ultimate boss donphan which I had the advantage.

I came in contact with the donphan and initiated a battle, which led to three of my pokemon fainting. My body was surging in excitement when I saw that I received a master ball. From the extreme hills I could already see the savanna, so I spent the rest of the day hanging around there - eagerly waiting for a victini to spawn. Since legendary pokemon occurrences are rare, I wanted to create another base around that savanna. However, I did not have wool in my inventory to create the bed. Just as the sun sets, I began going back to my base.

Besides the pokemon screaming their names every few seconds, I heard a groaning sound that faintly crossed my ears, which sounds familiar but doesn't feel right. My mind registered it as a pokemon cry, although I wanted to investigate a little; the noise repeated again in an even more faint tone but I wasn't able to discern it. It didn't repeat afterwards. I continued my journey back to my base.

Exiting the savanna, an arrow suddenly struck me in the side of my view. I turned around and saw it was a skeleton. I whispered "oh shit" before running away from the skeleton on the way home. Shortly, I realized that this isn't supposed to happen - since hostile mobs can't spawn in pixelmon unless toggled. I paused the game, checked the world settings, and noticed the option for spawning hostile mobs was turned off. That's when my eyes started to roll up.

I turned the option on and then off - in hope that this occurrence didn't happen again. Of course, it wasn't in immediate effect, so I had to wait. Then I realized something that I may have forgot to configure something. Heading back to the options again I noticed the difficulty was set to hard. No wonder why mobs started to spawn. Setting the difficulty to peaceful seemed to solve the problem.

I then went back to my base in order to get the wool in one of my storages; there was wool, fortunately. Taking the wool and a bunch of apricots from my chest, as well healing my pokemon, I then headed back to the savanna and started creating my second base, which took no more than fifteen minutes. However, I noticed something out of the ordinary – one of the cobblestone blocks I placed at the roof seemed to emit wooden footstep sounds instead of their usual sounds when walked on, despite no wooden blocks surrounding the block, although the rest of the blocks seemed to be fine.

I replaced the cobblestone block with the same block, but it emitted the same sound. I replaced it to a different position – same sound. "Strange," I thought. I placed the block back to its place and went to the floor of the base at the same position where I placed the rooftop block; the noise emitted in the floor seemed to be right, and it was cobblestone, too. I returned up to the roof and stepped on the same cobblestone; its sound effect changed to the right place.

"Huh, that was weird," I said. "Was it just me, my mind making things up?" I went back to my base as I did little configurations in the exteriors, waiting the legendary notification to broadcast. This took a few days along with catching other strong pokemon until a victini spawned just fifty blocks near the savanna hill, where I was able to catch it with ease.

Luckily, the spot where I caught the victini was near a village looming out of the fog just obstructed by the hill I was standing nearby. I went to the village and used the PokeDollars to buy some essentials, while the cautious person I was - habitually pressing F5, yet noticed something in my skin – one of the eyes in my Minecraft skin wasn't the same as the other, which I swore I didn't design it that way (the eyes consisted of two black dots each in a vertical line, or chibi-style eyes in other words – with the eye having an additional dot placed above the line as of noticing that change). Annoyed by the skin change, I restarted Minecraft and rejoined the world that I was playing. Somehow, my skin remained the same.

I uploaded the skin back to the skin editor, which then froze my posture in place when I saw the black dot in the editor this time. My throat was in a state of narrowing; I felt I needed to take quick action. I hastily edited my skin back to where it was, closed Minecraft, then changed my password in both my email and my Minecraft account.

Thereupon came another problem when just as I changed my password for the Minecraft account, I wasn't able to log in with the new password; clouds started to blur my thoughts. I quickly clicked "Reset Password" which then I was sent an email. I waited a few minutes for an email to pop up, but there was no email. Checking in the spam folder and there was no email to reset the password. I repeated the same procedure again, and for the third and fourth time, yet still no email.

Spitless, I stared at the screen with skin prickling as if I was surrounded by cacti. I swore that I never shared my password to anyone – not even my parents or other family members, and I practiced proper security measures. "I don't want to buy the game again. I don't want to buy the game again," I repeated myself hopelessly. Inside I knew that I needed to contact Mojang. I head to the website and reached the contact page. However, my heart was beating so fast that I wasn't able to properly formulate a sentence.

The next day, I woke up yet was still anxious; it wasn't as worse than yesterday, at least. I head to the PC and filled up the form with the appropriate information. Luckily, I had all of the important details I needed to include, although it took almost to an hour to dig up older emails. Double checking the information and the form, I proceeded to submit the form and prayed that I was met with good luck.