Читать книгу Quest for Justice - Sean Wolfe Fay - Страница 9

The trees around the pathway had been cleared out, so there was light shining down on the two players as they walked down the road to the village. There were no monsters on the path, but they spotted a few in the woods. Zombies seemed to be the most common, as they were all over the place, but the players noticed a few others, too. Charlie pointed out, deep in the woods, what appeared to be a Zombie but thinner and less substantial, and Stan could have sworn that, from what he could see in the dim light, it was holding a bow and had a quiver of arrows on its back. Once, when Stan looked up into the trees at the sides of the road, he saw a flash of blood-red eyes contemplating him from one of the higher limbs. None of these mysterious creatures, thankfully, pursued the players.

“We’d better hurry and get to that village,” said Charlie, looking nervous. “I don’t want to be out here when it gets dark enough for those things to come out and hunt.”

Stan nodded in agreement, but things did not go well from that point on. The path became less clear as they went deeper into the woods, and a few times they found themselves accidentally straying onto side trails that led to dead ends. One of these paths turned out to have a Zombie at the end of it. Stan and Charlie barely managed to outrun it before it lost interest in them.

The sky began to turn a shade of beautiful pink, but the two players were unable to appreciate it as they made their way back onto the main road after their fifth detour and saw no sign of a village when they looked ahead.

“I think we’d better make a shelter for the night,” said Stan. “We’d better make a wall two blocks high so that we have at least some type of barrier that the monsters won’t be able to get over easily.”

“You’re right,” said Charlie. “I’ll go get some dirt blocks. You try to get some wood from these trees. Meet back here once you’ve got the stuff.”

Stan nodded and the two set off in opposite directions.

Gathering the dirt was faster than Charlie had expected; after being hit a few times the blocks of dirt came loose, ready to be picked up and added to Charlie’s inventory. He had amassed a whole stack of dirt blocks by the time he went back to meet Stan.

Stan did not have nearly as easy a time; he had to punch the sections of the tree trunks over and over to get them to break off. It hurt, too. “What … I … wouldn’t … do … for … a … chain … saw …” Stan growled through gritted teeth as he punched the tree trunks, leaving the leaves suspended in midair. Stan was quickly realizing that Minecraft didn’t always follow the laws of physics.

After about an hour the players met back on the road, and by the time night had fallen they had constructed a small rectangular box out of dirt and wood, two blocks high on all sides, with no roof. They ate their first pieces of bread, and then hunkered down in their fort.

“Brace yourself,” said Stan. “The attacks should start any minute now.” Charlie gulped and pulled out his sword.

But to their surprise, nothing happened for quite some time. They just sat in their shelter, hoping no monsters would show. They popped their heads up over the wall every now and then to make sure that there was nothing, and in fact, nothing was what they saw every time. When the half-moon was at its highest point in the sky, Stan was about to say that there were no monsters around, and that they should just break camp and continue, when an arrow whizzed past him, grazing his shirtsleeve.

“Incoming!” he yelled to Charlie as a firestorm of arrows began to fly over their heads. Charlie ducked. He looked through a small gap in the wall and saw about four animated Skeletons, all standing at a distance from their shelter and raining arrows down on them. He stared at them, but he jumped back from the hole a second later as his view was obscured by the head of a Zombie.

“Zombies!” Charlie yelled to Stan. “And Skeletons, too! There’s a ton of them, and” – he looked through a few other cracks in the sides of their shelter – “they’re swarming the wall!”

He was right. From all sides, the four Skeletons were firing arrows at the players, and about six Zombies were forming a rabble around their fort, trying to walk straight through the wall. But the horror didn’t stop there.

“Tssssskeeeeh!”

Something large had fallen down from the trees and landed right behind a cowering Stan. Without thinking, Stan whipped around and slashed his sword as hard as he could. He made contact; the monster was knocked back and he sliced at it many more times before it finally died. Then he got his first good look at it and his heart gave a terrified jolt.

Stan was staring at the dead body of the largest Spider he had ever seen. It had a whole mess of glowing red eyes on its head; the rest of its hairy body was dark grey. Stan knew then that this was what he had seen up in the trees during the day. The Spider’s body vanished, leaving a thread of fine string in its place.

More Spiders began dropping from the trees. “Charlie! Help me!” cried Stan as he tried to beat back the horde of Spiders with his wooden sword. Charlie yelled in horror as he saw the Spiders rushing his friend, and he used his sword to get the attention of a few of the monsters that had focused on Stan. In the midst of the attack, Stan managed to cut away the tree limb above them that the Spiders were climbing along to drop into their shelter, effectively cutting off the flow of arachnids from above.

“We won’t have to worry about them any more,” sighed Stan.

However, he turned out to be quite wrong. The Spiders were able to climb over their wall to attack them. The players resigned themselves to the fact that they would have to battle the Spiders all night long, and they put their backs to each other and drew their swords.

It was a long, hard night; the supply of Spiders was seemingly endless, and the players couldn’t lift their heads up too high thanks to the barrage of arrows flying overhead. Miraculously, neither of the players lost any health that first night. The Spiders attacked them, but Stan and Charlie managed to keep the giant bugs at bay and killed them with wild, frenzied sword slashes.

After a few hours, the sky began to turn pink and then blue. The storm of arrows ceased. Spiders stopped climbing the walls. The players were safe.

“That,” mumbled Charlie wearily, “was a very long night.” He slid back against the wall.

“Yeah, I wanna sleep, too, but we have to go,” said Stan through a poorly stifled yawn. “We have to make it to the Adorian Village before nightfall, or we’ll have to put up with all those Spiders again.”

“You’re right. I guess we should go.” Charlie stood up, but then he screeched and quickly crouched back down.

“What is it?” asked Stan.

“Don’t look over the wall. Just don’t,” whimpered Charlie. He sounded petrified.

Stan looked over the wall. What he saw made his stomach flip.

The road ahead of them was covered with Spiders. They were everywhere, crawling around and getting into fights with one another. There were no Zombies or Skeletons left, but there were so many Spiders that Stan’s knees failed him and he sank down next to Charlie.

“Why aren’t they dead?” asked Stan. “I thought that monsters burned in the sunlight.”

“Well, apparently the Spiders don’t. What do we do? Fight them all?” Charlie looked at their wooden swords. They were covered with Spider guts from the previous night, but through the gore Charlie could see that they didn’t have much more left in them. A few more hits and the swords would break apart.

“No, that’s a bad idea,” said Stan. Then something occurred to him. “Hey, Charlie, if these Spiders are still here, then why aren’t they climbing over the wall to attack us like they did last night?”

Charlie thought about it. “That’s a fair point. Do you think that Spiders only attack at night?”

Stan knew what he had to do. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.” He started to walk towards the wall.

“Hey, where are you going?” yelled Charlie.

“I’m going to see if these Spiders are going to attack me if I’m outside the wall.”

“But what if they do?”

“Then I’m dead.”

“Dude, no you can’t …”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Well … um …”

“I didn’t think so.” Stan began to climb over the wall again.

“Wait,” said Charlie. He handed Stan his sword. “Take this,” he said. “Yours is about to break, and if you have to fight off all those Spiders, you’ll need a sword.”

“Thanks. Wish me luck,” said Stan with a nervous catch in his voice, and he jumped over the wall and closed his eyes.

Nothing happened. Stan opened his eyes. The Spiders were still minding their own business, as if Stan had never scaled the wall. As Stan tiptoed tentatively among the Spiders, none of them even acknowledged his existence. He did this as hastily as he could, not wanting to take any chances, and he didn’t stop until he came to a portion of the road not littered with Spiders.

“It’s OK, Charlie, they’re not hostile. You can come over now.”

Charlie was petrified, and his blocky hands were shaking as he collected the string from the dead Spiders within their fort (perhaps they would find a use for it later), scaled the wall and sprinted through the pack of Spiders to join his friend.

“Well,” Charlie said with a sigh. “I’m glad that’s over.”

Stan nodded. “Amen to that … hey, look!”

He walked over to a pile of bones and arrows. He picked up one of the bones.

“One of those Skeletons must have dropped this when it burned up in the sunlight.” He handed the bone to Charlie. “Do you think it could be useful?”

“Check the book,” Charlie replied, now examining the arrows. “Look up bones and arrows in there.”

Stan opened the book to the Items section and read aloud:

BONES

Bones are items dropped by Skeletons when killed. Bones have two main uses. One can craft a bone into bone meal or use the bone to tame a wild wolf into a dog. This may take multiple bones.

ARROWS

Arrows are items that can be either found when dropped by a dead Skeleton or crafted from flint, sticks and feathers. Arrows can be fired as projectiles out of either a bow or a Redstone Dispenser. They are also shot by Skeletons.

Stan closed the book. “Looks like the bones will come in handy if we run into a wolf. And we’d better get a bow so we can use these arrows.”

Charlie agreed, and the two broke their shelter down, saving the materials for later use. They began walking back down the path, en route for the Adorian Village, with plenty of daylight and the prospect of a day of smooth sailing ahead of them. They had just stopped to eat their last pieces of bread when something jumped out of the woods.

It was a player holding a sword, made out of what looked like stone, pointing right at Stan’s heart.