Quest for Justice (29 page)

Archie continued to talk to DZ. G and Bob asked the other three about Oob, who was now cowering behind Charlie.

“So, how did you guys come across this NPC? And, more important, why is he still with you?” asked Bob. The three players explained briefly about all they had seen and done after Stan had left Blackstone.

“So, what's your name? Oob?” asked Bob, speaking gently to the NPC, who still looked terrified. “I hear that you're pretty brave. I've never heard of an NPC taking out anything living before, and they just told me that you took out a Griefer that had attacked them three other times!”

Oob looked around Charlie's shoulder and replied timidly, “Yes. He hurt Charlie, Kat, and DZ, and he was trying to hurt Stan. They are my friends, and I do not want them to be hurt.”

“That's awesome of you, my man,” replied Bob with a kind smile, which Oob hesitantly returned. “We need more guys like you. In fact, a bunch of us guys that don't want to see good people hurt, like you, are gonna try to take down the king of all the players, so he won't be mean to them anymore. You want to help us with that, buddy?”

Oob raised one eyebrow. “If I did not want to help, then why would I be here?” he asked, as if asking a dim child why they had tried to lick an electrical socket.

Everyone chuckled, but Archie quickly pointed out that they had been standing exposed in the open for far too long. He walked off toward the entrance to the mine, Bob and G on his tail, and the other five followed.

“So, why are you guys setting up your operations underground?” Charlie inquired of G, but G didn't answer. He was too busy speaking with Kat, whom he was now walking next to with less than an inch of space between them. Rolling his eyes, Charlie redirected the question to Archie.

“Are you kidding? Do you know how many Griefers we've had to put up with so far? It's ridiculous!” Archie said, throwing his arms in the air. “The King has sent about fifty scouts to this village so far. We'd be sitting ducks out in the open! We have about ten of those guys in a prison in our underground base, but the rest of them have been driven away by our automated defenses.”

“You mean you set up redstone circuitry?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, sure,” said Archie. “It was just basic stuff at first, you know, your arrow dispensers, your tripwires opening pits, stuff like that. But then, when the guys from Blackstone showed up, there was one guy with them, went by the name of Sirus666. Oh man, he completely vamped up our systems after that. Our camp is now automated with defenses that'll pretty much instantly hurt anything that comes near it and that'll kill them if they come too close. You should see some of the ridiculous things he's designed. Long-range TNT cannons, automatic lava flows, rigs that drop you into a pit filled with Silverfish. You name it, we've got it.”

By now they were deep in the mine, and they walked up to a section of wall that looked just like any other, a ridge over smooth stone. G detached himself from Kat for a moment to take his pickaxe and toss it up on top of the ledge. Instantly, there was the click of a pressure plate being activated, and the wall split open to reveal a passage just wide enough for a player to walk through. They filed through in a single-file line, with G staying to the back and snatching his pickaxe before entering and resealing the entrance.

After a short walk down the corridor, Stan found himself in an open room. It was composed mainly of stone blocks, with cobblestone flecking the walls here and there. There were various chests, torches, doorway, signs, and a Nether
portal in the room, but Stan only had eyes for the five players sitting in the center of the room in wooden chairs, who all turned to look at them when they entered.

The Apothecary, who had been toying with the brewing stand in front of him, gave them all a warm smile. Bill and Ben, with their respective fishing rod and sword swung over their shoulders, gave a hearty “Hey!” in greeting. Jayden surveyed them all with a tired grin. However, there was only one player who jumped up and sprinted toward the group at top speed, launching herself into Stan's arms.

“You're back!” exclaimed Sally as the others filed into the room to meet the players now walking over to greet them. “I'm so glad you're here. I was worried sick while you were out there.”

“Don't worry, Sally, I'm here,” said Stan, feeling more at peace than he had in a long, long time. “I really missed you, you know. I can't tell you enough how glad I am to be back here.”

“Eh, it's good to see you too, noob,” smirked Sally as she instantly became twice as composed and stepped backward, out of Stan's arms but still holding his hands. “It's a crazy world out there, huh? I hear that someone's been doin' a little bit of dragon slaying lately, eh? Noob, that is epic stuff!”

Stan smirked. Yep, this was Sally, all right.

“What's funny?” she asked.

“Nothing, nothing,” said Stan, although he had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. It seemed that Sally was trying to cover up her emotional outburst from moments earlier by being all cool and collected and frankly a little tomboyish. Stan found her need to try to do this quite endearing.

“So what've you guys been up to around here? I bet it's not more dangerous than recruiting abroad for a rebellion, killing a dragon, and getting rid of a notorious Griefer.”

“Oh, cry me a river. Do you have any idea how annoying it is to put up with ten Griefers a day? What did you have to deal with, one idiot that the NPC managed to beat and three sad excuses for assassins, over a couple of weeks? And besides, we've had to mine out a whole new section, and we lost two of our guys to a lava flow the other day. Also, I believe that the dragon you killed attacked you by, oh, let's see, flying directly toward you and flying away if you shot it before it got there? Does that sound about right, Stan?”

Stan was stunned. Why did he even bother to try to win an argument with this girl? In any case, it didn't matter. He wasn't in the mood to talk right then anyway.

“What've you guys got in the way of food around here?” he asked Sally, looking around for a chest.

“Actually,” replied Sally, sitting down on the nearest chair and gesturing to Stan to pull up a seat next to her, “we've got a guy who just went down to the mess hall to get food right
before you left. He'll be back soon.”

Stan was hungry, but he occupied himself until the player with the food returned by talking to Jayden, the Apothecary, and the other two Nether Boys while Sally talked with Kat, Charlie, DZ, and Oob.

“Hey, Stan! Nice axe!” exclaimed Jayden as he caught sight of the diamond axe hanging at Stan's side. “Where did you get that?”

“The blacksmith in Oob's village gave it to me. I tell you, those NPCs were great. They gave us everything we needed to get to the End and back, and they really seemed to like us.”

“I'm not surprised,” said Jayden bitterly. “The King's been abusing the NPCs for as long as I've been on this server, imposing wheat quotas on them and whatnot.”

The Apothecary, meanwhile, was delighted to see that they had managed to get back from the End in one piece, and he asked Stan what Enlightenment was.

“Well . . . actually, I have no idea what it was,” said Stan truthfully. He had seen the words of two beings in apparent conversation about him while he was going through the portal back to Spawnpoint Hill. However, he had no idea who these beings were, why they were talking about him, or exactly what they meant. He explained it the best he could to the Apothecary, but it still seemed ambiguous. He made a mental note to himself to discuss it with the others later. Stan was
just starting to discuss useful axe-fighting techniques he'd learned with Jayden when he heard a voice.

“Okay, people, steak and pork chops right over here!”

The shout tore Stan away from Jayden, and he spun around in disbelief. He knew that voice; he had heard it before. There was no way that he could possibly be alive. Stan had watched in horror as the flames razed his house to the ground and bricks were thrown through the windows by the prejudiced bigots back in Element City. Yet there was no mistaking the player—the distinguishing black body, feathery texture, and yellow beak were all there. As Stan looked in utter incredulity at him, the skepticism was reflected on Blackraven's face. They held each other's gaze for a moment, and then Stan ran to Blackraven with wild joy breaking onto his face, followed an instant later by Charlie and Kat, both of whom shared looks of equal disbelief.

“You're alive!” Charlie managed to get out. Charlie's features were lifted in a way that Stan had not seen in him since before the death of his cat.

“Why, yes, last I checked. But what are you three doing here?” Blackraven responded.

“What do you mean, what are we . . . what are
you
doing here?” asked Kat through her tears of joy. She was elated that the one who had taken them under his wing, so to speak, had survived the cowardly attempt on his life in Element City.

“Simple: I crawled into the hidden cellar underneath my shop,” said Blackraven, still looking back and forth between each of the players. “But what are you three doing here?”

“Wha . . . what are you talking about? We are the ones that started this whole thing!” Charlie exclaimed.

The expression on Blackraven's face showed unfathomable confusion, and he had opened his mouth when Jayden called over, “You didn't know, Raven? These three were the assassins I told you about. That's kind of funny. Did we really never get around to telling you who they were?”

“Are you serious? These were the three guys
I
told
you
about! You know, the players I had employed when that mob griefed my shop?”

“No kidding? You know Blackraven?” asked Jayden.

“No,” said Stan, irony dripping from his voice. “We ran over to greet him because he's a complete and total stranger.”

Jayden scowled.

Stan soon learned that while he and his friends had been gathering supplies, the team in the village, headed by the Apothecary, had concocted an entire plan of action for launching an attack on King Kev. The attack would be launched a week after Stan, Kat, and Charlie had returned from their journey. That time would be used to turn the supplies they had brought back from the King's cache into suitable gear for
the 150 fighters who were based in the village and formed the Grand Adorian Militia. The time would also be used to train Stan, Kat, and Charlie in special combat skills for the upcoming offensive.

The reason for the special training was that each of the three players had been given a specific task in the upcoming battle. Kat was in charge of ensuring the death of every member of RAT1, who were sure to participate in the battle in support of the King. Charlie was to be in command of a special team of a dozen troops that was to defend the base of the tower so that Stan did not have any opposition when he undertook his task.

The Apothecary, through his former allegiance to the King, knew that the King commanded his battlefield troops from the castle's bridge. Stan's task was to travel to the bridge by means of Ender Pearls and engage the King in combat. Stan was to ensure the King's death.

As for the others, they had designated tasks, too. The Nether Boys were in charge of killing the King's main advisor, Caesar. Sally was in charge of taking down the bull-man named Minotaurus who had destroyed the Adorian Village. Jayden was in charge of destroying Charlemagne. And the Apothecary was to act as the field medic. The other high-level players, namely DZ, Archie, G, Blackraven, and the mayor of Blackstone, were to be the five commanders of
the five legions of troops whose job was to capture or, only if absolutely necessary, kill as many of the King's men as possible.

The redstone defenses of the castle provided a different obstacle; however, the book that Stan had gotten from the Mechanist had mitigated this threat considerably. Stan gave the book to Sirus666, who Stan recognized as the first miner to join his side in Blackstone. Sirus would infiltrate the King's fortress undercover a day beforehand, and he would do his best to disengage the incredibly complex redstone circuitry by the time the attacks began.

Stan felt his nerves beginning to snowball as the day of battle drew near. To keep from psyching himself out, Stan played a trick on his mind whenever he found himself thinking about how nervous he was about fighting the King: he would try to remember every single detail of everything he had learned in training since returning to the village.

And there was no shortage of information to remember. Stan spent the next five days, from the time the sun surfaced on his golden clock to the time it completely vanished, training harder than he had ever done for anything in his life alongside Jayden and DZ. Jayden was the most experienced in the workings of fighting with an axe against a sword, and DZ had the most knowledge of anybody in the village about the King's style of sword fighting. As Stan soon found out,
it was not uncommon for the King to fight with two swords instead of one, a different fighting style reserved for only the most skilled sword fighters.

However, nobody who saw him during those five days doubted that Stan's prowess with an axe was exceptional, as was his determination to surpass King Kev in skill. After Stan had managed to disarm DZ of both of his swords and had shattered his iron chestplate with one swing of the axe, Jayden called out, “Okay, Stan, I think you're ready! Anybody who crosses you that doesn't have some sort of, like, incinerator ray or something is absolutely dead! Besides, we can't waste any more iron—that's the sixth chestplate you've broken today!”

Kat was also accelerating under her customized training regimen. She spent the week leading up to the invasion under the tutelage of Sally, who was teaching her how to fight with twin swords instead of just one. With dual blades it was possible to combat multiple enemies at a time or to have an upper hand in a one-on-one combat situation. Though Kat came out of Sally's program still preferring one sword to two in most situations, she felt firmly that there was no way that she was going into battle against the full force of the King's army with only one diamond sword strapped to her hip.