The arena was a very impressive place, a circle with a diameter of five-hundred, seats that could hold thousands of people. In the middle, dramatically emphasized by a circle of light, was the actual battleground. In this arena epic battles were fought. The floor had pistons under it and was capable of forming a mountain or a valley and you could flood the arena with water or lava.
Fire was brought into one of the arena's preparation rooms, it was made of stone brick and its cracked and mossy variants. Fire took some deep breaths to calm himself down, he needed to be perfectly calm for the battle, only that way he could outsmart the Shop Guy. With brute force he would not be able defeat him. Fire was sure that the Shop Guy would take diamond gear with the best enchantments available. He wouldn't have any potions because all the good alchemists refused to make potions for the hackers and spawned in potions were of questionable quality.
Fire stood up and walked towards the iron bars blocking the door to the arena.
He shouted "I am ready!"
freeZe was about to start worrying about where Fire was, but then a text message appeared before her eyes, it was one of the lead hackers broadcasting a chat message, which hadn't happened ever, to her knowledge.
"Epic duel in the arena starting in ten minutes!"
freeZe turned around and grabbed her brother's shoulders and said: "That must be Fire, maybe the Shop Guy finally snapped and challenged him."
Ambigious was a little confused by his sister's reaction but nodded: "Yeah…"
freeZe's voice was full of worry: "We need to get there! But how?"
The second broadcast message appeared: "To watch the battle, use /arena spectator seats!"
"Great, we don't have access to the chat." Ambigious moaned.
"What could we do?"
TehLulz, who was called by freeZe's scream, said: "We could hope that someone picks us up."
"What?" freeZe asked.
"Oh, you were sleeping when Fire told us that story, it was when you fell and broke your legs, remember that? Fire told us that once in a while his friends show up here in the quarry, one time they managed to smuggle in an invisibility potion so Fire could sneak into the hacker's building and listen to what they were saying." TehLulz explained.
"What did they say?"
"He didn't tell us, he said that it wasn't that important."
Ambigious interrupted them and said: "I'll go get Unchosen, he is still at the fireplace." He walked off.
TehLulz continued: "The point is, why wouldn't they come now? I think they also know that Fire has to do something with this 'epic duel'."
The iron bars rose up and fell down again after Fire had walked through, now he stood on the edge to the arena, in this case it had formed a circle of sand with water around the outside. Fire himself had designed this preset for the arena, it was supposed to be used as arena in a battle against weak monsters and apparently they thought that they could taunt him by using this preset and thus comparing him to a monster, a weak monster.
Fire didn't feel offended by the usage of this preset, in fact he was confident because he knew the secrets he had built into it. One of them was a secret escape route into the machine room he built to give the fighters a way to escape the monsters and in his case his opponent if he couldn't defeat him. He would run straight to the preset switches and would flip the "incinerate survivors" lever, which would unleash an almost never ending stream of fire charges and for the finish some TNT and in this case, "some" meant "a lot" or even more clearly "a literal ton".
Fire continued to walk into the arena, behind him the sand on which he entered the arena sunk into the water to block his way back. In front of him, the other bars opened and his opponent walked out of the door, still in furious rage but now in full diamond gear, obviously enchanted.
PvP in the arena was off when no battle was happening, it only got turned on as the battle began to prevent angry contestants from hurting one another when they were not ready. Fire was ready, he now only needed to wait for the ten minutes to run out, eight were left.
The four other members of the firegroup were desperately trying to find a way to get to the arena without using the command and came to the conclusion that it was impossible.
"But why did he even accept the challenge to fight him, it is certain that he is going to lose." Unchosen said with a fair bit of panic in his voice.
Ambigious was angry instead of scared, he growled: "If we ever get out of here, I will find out where those hackers live and stab them in their sleep."
"That doesn't help Fire now, we need help!" Said freeZe.
Suddenly they heard another voice, it sounded soft but had a little scratch to it, a tiny bit like a cat talking in a human language, it seemed to belong to a man.
It said: "Need a hand?"
They heard a slurp and a person in full diamond armor appeared behind them. They turned around and stared at the man that interrupted their talk.
"Wait, you are one of Fire's friends, right?" freeZe said.
"Correct, but we don't have much time. Here, drink that, we will explain everything later."
With these words he gave them four tiny vials with a grey and semi-transparent liquid in them.
Unchosen asked: "What is this… stuff?"
"Invisibility potion, now drink!"
Ambigious was the first one to drink, he shook after drinking.
"That stuff is ice cold!"
Everyone else also drank.
"When is it going to kick in?" TehLulz asked.
"Any second now." Fire's friend answered.
"Wow, look at my hand, it is transparent now, wait, it is gone." Ambigious said.
freeZe said: "Now only your clothes are left, oh, what about the clothes by the way?"
"They will become invisible in a few seconds, I don't have enough time to explain why, I can only tell you that I am among the best alchemists on the server."
After their clothes had vanished the mysterious person said: "Okay, everybody grab my hand so that the teleportation affects you too."
"Ready" Said Unchosen and TehLulz, who had grabbed his right hand, Ambigious and freeZe took his left hand and also said "Ready".
"I am going to enter the command now, be silent and do not bump into anyone. Three, two, one, go!"
They felt how they were flying over the map with high speed and ended up in the arena.
"Quick, follow me!" Fire's friend said and ran up some stairs to an area of the seats where no people were sitting.
"Epic duel in the arena starting in five minutes!" The broadcast said again.
"You all there?" He asked and a quadruple "Yes" came back.
"Good. Come, let's go to the bars."
The arena was covered by a hemisphere of iron bars assembled in a somewhat random grid with chains hanging down from them, the holes were not big enough to keep someone from fitting through it they really wanted to. The iron bars were mainly for show but also to keep fighters who were flung by explosions or preset-specific contraptions from flying into the seats and landing on the people sitting there.
"You all there?" he asked again and got the same answer again.
The second broadcast message appeared again: "To watch the battle, type /arena spectator seats!"
The tension in the arena was very high, the two fighters were ready to fight. Now everybody was fevering towards the moment that the battle would begin. When it was one minute before the battle, the broadcast repeated the last two messages. The Shop Guy activated his kill aura, his arms disappeared, which was caused by them moving very quickly and trying to hit every possible target in range, combined with his sword and Fire's lack of armor it basically made it obvious who would win.
Fire stared at his opponent. He had a plan, but executing it would be hard, but for emergency he had a second plan and if this one would fail, he had a third one, and if that one failed he would be dead. Fire was not afraid of dying, neither in Minecraft nor in real life, he just didn't want to. He lost that fear after he had died the first time on this server, it had been a very strange experience, nothing he would like to repeat and definitely not something that was possible to describe with words.
The broadcast said: "Let the battle begin!"