I waited a week or two to receive a response. Surprisingly my expectations turned out pretty low for them as they responded four days earlier than a week. They handed me a link to change the password, and so I typed out a much more secure password, and even wrote it in one of my notebooks. Relieved by the politeness and cooperation of the support team, I headed down to the launcher, and logged in using my new credentials.
I loaded up the pixelmon world that I haven't touched for several days, only to be met with the same error message that I've gotten last year ago. Although as I paid more attention, the message was "Illegal Position" instead of "Illegal Stance". With the same frustration as before, I tried to not let it consume me.
I did some research about this particular issue. Apparently it seemed that most people experienced this in older versions, which came quite shocking to me considering my world belonged not to the latest version, but considered one of the newer versions. Given the information to fix the problem, I downloaded an editor to configure my file. My mind, anticipating that to work was only met with the same error.
Then I wondered if my PC had some hidden malware in it. Clearly I haven't visited any suspicious sites, nor clicked suspicious links in the past few months, nor downloaded any new programs recently. I popped out Malwarebytes to initiate a full scan in my PC. While doing that, I opened the task manager to check if suspicious processes were running, including the ones that may be disguised. Taking the time to check all the processes, it appears that I had none. Although I was still wary of something sophisticated hiding deep in my system.
As Malwarebytes completed the scan, it stated that there were no viruses, except a PUP belonging to an old version of Cheat Engine I used to use back in 2014. For safety I quarantined the PUP, and even uninstalled Cheat Engine. I also opened up windows defender and ran a full scan just to make sure that no malware really was lurking in my PC. Although this took a bit longer than Malwarebytes.
Thirty minutes of waiting, the scan was complete. Windows defender didn't detect any viruses. I then checked the Minecraft folder – this time taking more time to look closely for any suspicious clues, which apparently there were none, for now.
I removed the pixelmon mod and switched to the vanilla version of Minecraft. Instead of creating a customized world, I attempted to create a normal world. I expected the world to be met with the same "Illegal Stance/Position" error, but strangely there was none as it loaded – no unusual occurrences either. Likewise, I spawned in an average forest biome, but in a relatively small but sustainable island. I did what the average Minecraft player would do.
One hour in, and so far everything seems to be doing good – no unusual occurrences still. Having already mined four diamonds, I was able to build a nether portal just under an hour of total playtime, which even luckier, brought me near a nether fortress fifty blocks away from the portal. I never thought that I was half to "beating" Minecraft, especially for the first time in the Java Edition.
Two and a half hours in, I got the blaze rods, almost had a full diamond set, and a pouch of handy potions, and even had one wither skull out of sheer luck while exploring the fortress. However, I still felt that I wasn't very ready to fight the ender dragon, seeing that my enchantments and other equipment were a bit lacking. I spent the rest of my time using fishing rods to get the enchanted books I needed.
The next day, I spent a little while killing endermen to get half a stack of ender pearls. Then I proceeded to use all the pearls for half a stack of ender eyes. The reason was I was pretty paranoid as I could run out of ender eyes during the journey, then I almost forgot that I didn't have enough arrows to destroy all ender crystals.
Unfortunately I didn't have a chicken farm, so I spent extra time hunting skeletons every night, which took an additional hour and a half, along with occasionally killing chickens, and digging gravel for the crafting of arrows. Finally, I said to myself that I was confident to go, so I head to the south west – where the eyes were hovering. This led me two thousand blocks total to the direction the eyes were heading to. Eventually I lost a handful of ender eyes, but a majority remained what was still sufficient enough to fill an empty end portal.
Just as the eyes started to point down near the swamplands, I started to dig down in that spot – albeit creating a straight yet crooked hole in case I happen to stumble upon a lava lake under the way. Luckily the hole I created bore me easy access near the portal area. Destroying the silverfish monster spawner, I inserted the ender eyes in each portal, and behold the end portal as it shimmered.
Before entering the portal I exhaled one deep breath, praying that this round would better go smooth. I hopped in the portal, which transferred me into a small platform which was confined underground. I still wasn't feeling ready that much so in order to become fully prepared, I scurried to the bathroom to relieve myself a wee.
As I returned to my room, I noticed that the monitor was black – entirely black. Until I realized my PC shut down. Strangely my PC decided to turn itself off in the most exciting period, just before I returned. This absolutely was the first time that I encountered this problem. I swore my antiviruses both stated that my PC was clean of viruses. Hoping that nothing suspicious was brewing in my PC, I booted it up again and while containing my excitement, I ran the full scans again, which both came up clean thirty minutes later.
"Huh, that's weird," I thought. I was pretty scared at first, as I thought there might be some virus still lurking there, but then I knew that the power cord may be to blame. I craned forward and checked my PC behind; nothing seems to be the source of problem – the cord was firmly connected, as I made sure of that. Strangely the Event Viewer didn't log the shutting down of the PC nor there were any critical errors indicated by the program; it was almost as if a ghost tried to shut down my PC which worked. Not that I believe in paranormal activity, but that was surreal as I thought.
My mind thought that it also could be the CPU overheating, but that's not the cause considering my CPU almost never overheats, and my chunk distance was set to 10 at this time. Nevertheless I returned to the game, and saw myself teleported back to the overworld, still in front of the portal; I assumed the game didn't save into the end the time my computer crashed. I went back into the portal – all ready to fight the dragon.
This time, I spawned in with the platform floating, and waited a few seconds for the rest of the chunks to load as I organized a bit of my inventory. I looked around 360 degrees, and the end island seemed that it didn't want to load. After ten additional seconds, I decided to press Ctrl+A to reload all the chunks; nothing appeared. It was just me and the obsidian platform under me. Pressing F3, I noticed that I was near the centre of the world, yet nothing was generating, then I saw the FPS meter was soaring very high – spiking up to 1,000+ FPS, which is something I rarely have ever saw since the very first time installing Minecraft.
In attempt to solve this bizarre issue, I rejoined the world, but still ended up in the same platform in a vast void of nothingness; there wasn't even a sign of the ender dragon at all, nor the boss bar at the top of the screen. In order to deal against this sense of uncertainty, I placed a cobblestone block at the right edge of the platform – albeit cautiously, just to see if anything happens. Nothing really did happen a few seconds later, even when placing a line of cobblestone blocks.
My teeth clenched tighter, so I backed off the line in case the unknown decides to lob something against me. About a minute passed yet nothing happened, besides the occasional ambient roaring within the atmosphere. It was then I had to make a tough decision of falling down the void which undermined hours of progress.
The death screen appeared in front of me, but both the respawn and the main menu button seemed to be greyed out. Perhaps the island was generating the time I had jumped off or something was overloading the game? Maybe it was both. Being the impatient me, I manually had to quit Minecraft and reopen my world. Which unfortunately was met with the same, familiar error instead of the death screen.
"Illegal Stance". Shouted the words in my screen. Not only this is grinding the gears out of me, but knowing that this particular glitch heralds bad luck which happened last time, I had to delete this world – which I reluctantly did considering the wasted hours in that session. To be even more cautious of the glitches, I exited Minecraft, and completely deleted every Minecraft folder and finally reinstalling the launcher and minecraft itself. Thirty minutes doing the procedure, and it still didn't seem to work – every world that I created was met by the same error over and over, regardless of any fixing.
Three days forward, I was completely unmotivated to play Minecraft due to my game being corrupted by the glitches. Until my sister came in and said - whimpering, "Did you delete one of my worlds in Minecraft?"
