Quest for Justice Read Free Page A

of the road, he saw a flash of bloodred eyes contemplating him from one of the higher limbs. None of these mysterious creatures, thankfully, pursued the players.
    â€œWe’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 turnedout 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.
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œYou’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’talways 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.
    â€œBrace 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.
    â€œIncoming!” 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.
    â€œZombies!” 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.
    â€œTssssskeeeeh!”
    Something large had fallen down from the trees and landed right behind a