The Dragon’s Mountain, Book One: Attacked by the Griefers Read online

ran into, they had this.” Micah said.

  He searched through his inventory and equipped a small round object.

  “What’s that?” I asked him.

  “Oh, Mike. You’re still such a noob! It’s a compass.” said Micah.

  “It’s not your average compass. Usually they’re black and grey and have a red needle. This one is different – it’s golden.” Jerry explained.

  “Not only that, but listen to this: regular compasses point to your spawning point, right? Or they point to where your bed is. Not this one. This one points to something that has nothing to do with my spawn point. That and it belonged to the guys that were, coincidentally or not, talking about the treasure. Now what does that tell you, Mike?” asked Micah.

  “How did you get this compass in the first place?” I asked him.

  “Does it matter? I got it and that’s that. It’s the thing that will lead us to the treasure.” Micah said.

  “Wow. That’s quite a story, Micah.”

  “So are you in or are you out?” he asked.

  Micah didn’t really have to ask - I had the answer in my mind for quite a while.

  “I’m in.” I told him.

  “Great. What about you, Jerry? Are you in or are you out?” he asked.

  “I’m in, too. Just like we talked.” said Jerry.

  “Awesome. Well, gentlemen I believe that we are about to have ourselves an adventure, eh? Tomorrow we are going to pack as many supplies as we can and the next day, first thing in the morning we’re heading out.”

  It was already night time by then. It seemed that our discussion had taken up most of the afternoon. We talked a bit more about our past adventure and about the stuff that we had been up before our meet up. After that I showed the guys up to the bedroom.

  “Uh, sorry guys, I don’t have any spare beds. I kind of used up all the wool that I had saved.” I told them.

  “What? What did you use it for?” asked Micah.

  “Doesn’t matter. We have our own beds, remember, Micah?” said Jerry.

  “Sure, sure... I was just messing with him.”

  So they placed their beds in my giant bedroom and the three of us went to sleep. By the way, the reason that my bedroom was a giant one was because I hadn’t finished dividing my house into rooms yet. So yeah, I may still be a bit of a noob, but don’t tell anyone.

  Anyway, we woke up the next morning and got on with our planning and gathering of supplies and provisions.

  The first thing that Micah suggested had me feeling quite bad. His first order of action was to harvest all the meat that I could get. You know what that means, no more pigs and no more sheep. I had spent so much time raising those animals and the thought of it wasn’t that pleasant.

  Needless to say, I went on with it. We then had two-dozen pork chops and quite a bit of mutton. We then cooked all the meat in four furnaces, bunched it up with the rest of the food that we had and divided it amongst each other equally.

  The next thing that we did was to harvest all of the wheat crops and make bread. We then replanted some of the seeds and used bone meal to make them grow back faster. When the wheat was ready, we harvested and reseeded the ground and used bone meal again. We basically did that until we ran out of bone meal.

  We also harvested the sugarcane and stored it raw. You never know when you’re going to need it, ha-ha.

  After that I took the guys to the place where I had dug up a small mine. We figured that we needed to increase our coal stock. We mined until it was nighttime and then we headed back home. We didn’t find anything apart from coal and a few blocks of iron. The mine was pretty dry and we figured that we shouldn’t waste anymore time digging. Micah insisted that we stay on schedule. There was no telling how many people knew about the treasure and out of those people, how many were actually crazy enough to look for it.

  On the next day, we woke up and made sure that we left nothing of value behind. We got on our horses and said goodbye to my farm.

  It felt kind of strange for me to abandon my new home, but then again I was pretty psyched that I was once again together with friends.

  We rode off through the gates. Micah led the way, with the golden compass in his hand, while Jerry and I rode on each side.

  “What does the compass say, Micah?” I asked.

  “It says points to the east, I think.” Micah answered.

  To our east was a thick forest as far as the eye could see. I had never ventured in that direction before so I had no idea what lay ahead.

  Nevertheless, I felt as though we could face anything or anyone and come out victorious.

  We rode for a couple of minutes out in the open before we reached the forest. When we finally reached the tree line, Micah slowed down.

  “Now, guys,” he said. “Don’t get carried away, okay? Keep close and don’t wander off. Long journeys like this one depend on the tightness of the group. This forest in particular seems really thick, so stay close and we’ll make it out safely.”

  “Understood,” I told him.

  “Sure thing, Micah.” said Jerry.

  And with that, we entered.

  We rode the whole day, but we didn’t encounter anything special. We stopped a couple of times when we ran into some chicken and some pigs. We got more meat and we went on our way. We finally made camp when it got dark. My friends were pretty skilled and knew their way with the sword and the bow, but we figured that there was no point in risking it. We made camp in a small clearing. We built a small wooden hut and placed our beds inside. We ate in order to gather our strength and went to sleep for the night.

  The next morning we got up, took down the wooden hut and got back on our horses.

  The second day was just as uneventful as the previous one had been. We rode, we camped and we slept.

  The third day we got up and rode again. The forest was proving to be much larger than we expected it to be. The compass kept pointing in the same direction so we stuck to it.

  On the fourth day, we saw something ahead of us. Buildings made out of wood and stone, directly above the trees. The compass pointed exactly in that direction, so we figured we would go as close as we could to the buildings and then go around.

  When we almost reached the buildings we heard a voice from our left. We turned around and saw a player, wearing a full set of green leather armor, pointing his bow and arrow at us.

  “Don’t come any closer! Who are you guys? What are you doing here?” the player asked.

  “Don’t shoot! We’re friendly. We’re just passing by.” Jerry said.

  I looked over at Micah and saw him put his compass in his inventory and take out an iron sword.

  “You there...with the sword…put that away!” said the player in green.

  “Or what? There is only one of you and there are three of us. What are you going to do? Shoot! I dare you!” said Micah.

  “What? Are you crazy, Micah?” said Jerry.

  I took a look around and from behind the trees came out about fifteen other players, all wearing matching green sets of leather armor, all of them wielding bows and pointing their arrows straight at us.

  I turned to Micah.

  “Uhm…Micah?”

  “What, Mike?” he asked.

  “You better put that sword away as the guy asks.” I advised him.

  “What? Why, Mike?” he asked again.

  “Uhm…look.”

  Micah did a 360 with his horse and when he saw that the green players outnumbered us five to one, he placed his iron sword back into his inventory.

  “Hey. Why can’t we all just get along?” asked Micah.

  “I see that you’ve met my clan.” said the first player.

  “Look, guys. We don’t want any trouble. We’re just passing by.” said Jerry.

  “So you’re not griefers or anything?” asked the player.

  “No. I assure you, we’re not griefers. Promise.” said Jerry.

 
The archer stood there in silence for a couple of seconds then he lowered his bow.

  “Alright, guys! Lower your bows. Let the noobs pass.”

  “I’m no noob.” Micah mumbled under his voice.

  The rest of the archers followed the instructions and lowered their bows. The player walked up to us, bow in hand.

  “What brings you to these parts, boys?” he asked.

  “We’re travelers, adventurers, nomads...or whatever you want to call it.” Micah said.

  “Griefers, noobs…” said the player.

  “Hey! I thought that you agreed that we aren’t griefers.” said Jerry.

  “I did, I did. I was only joking with you guys. My name is Jake32, you can call me Jake. This here is my clan. We call ourselves The Greenfoot Clan. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?”

  “Noobs.” Micah coughed.

  “I heard that. Try to be a bit more grateful that we didn’t kill you and take all your loot, okay?” said Jake.

  “Well, my name is Mike. Nice to meet you, Jake.”

  “I’m Jerry. And that over there is Micah.”

  “What? Is he your boss or something?” Jake asked.

  “Our boss? Something like that.” I said, laughing.

  “Cool. Why don’t you boys spend the night in our camp, eh? The sun will set in a few minutes. Wouldn’t want to get caught unprepared by any monsters, would you?” asked Jake.

  The three of us looked at each other for a moment, and then Jerry said:

  “Actually, I think we are going to have to say…”

  “Yes!” Micah said, abruptly cutting off Jerry’s sentence. “Of course we’d like to join you and your clan members. Come on, lead the way!”

  “Cool. Follow me.”

  Jake led the way. We followed closely. His clan men were right behind us. If anything, the whole scene looked as if