Descent Into Overworld: An Unofficial Minecraft Adventure by Liam O'Donnell

than a pinprick of light, but it was enough.
    “This way,” Hamid said. He hurried to the light. “See? Yurei wasn’t lying.”
    The tunnel ended in an iron grate, two blocks high. On the other side, rock as smooth as a parking lot ran to the wall of Slashax’s fortress. A sea of creepers moved through the wide trench.
    “You got to hand it to the bonehead,” Ant said, peering through the gate. “Some forts have lava-filled moats. Slashax packs his with monsters.”
    “I’d rather face the lava,” Hamid said.
    Hidden by the iron grating, he watched monsters milling back and forth across the canyon. It was like trying to cross the road during rush hour. There was no break in the traffic of deadly monsters. Hamid knew that even chaotic systems like traffic held patterns. It was just like watching the data traffic on his Minecraft server. Seemingly random commands moving from a player’s computer to the server and back again, millions of times a second. In that constant flow of information, there was always a pattern. And in that pattern there would be a space to move. They just had to wait.
    “Get your pickaxe and be ready to dig,” Hamid said.
    Ant’s simple stone axe appeared in his hands. It was all they could craft back at Yurei’s shack after losing their stuff. It would have to do.
    A clear path opened in front of them.
    “Now!”
    Hamid whacked the iron grate until it broke. He raced out into the open with Ant at his heels.
    Monsters moved back and forth on either side. Their wandering had created a gap wide enough to run through unseen. But it wouldn’t last for long. Hamid pointed to a spot in the fortress wall. It was regular cobblestone and not impenetrable obsidian.
    “Dig there!”
    Ant didn’t need any further instructions. In a flash, they were whacking their axes into the stone wall as fast as they could.
    They broke through the stone only to find another layer behind it.
    “It’s too thick!“ Ant wailed.
    “Keep digging!“ Hamid said.
    Hamid chanced a look over his shoulder and immediately regretted it.
    A wall of green rushed toward them. The empty stares of too many creepers turned Hamid’s pounding heart to stone. Their gap was closing fast, like a wave crashing down on them. But this wave wouldn’t leave them wet.
    It would leave them dead.
     
     
     
     

Chapter 14
     
     
    Jaina was glad Principal Whiner was in Minecraft.
    At school, he had power and authority. Here, in this weirdo version of the game where skeletons talked, he was a noob. Whiner could command the skeleton guards, but he still didn’t know how to play Minecraft. And if there was one thing Jaina liked doing in Minecraft, it was owning noobs. She just had to wait for the right opportunity.
    With a pair of skeleton guards at his command, Whiner had led Jaina through a twisting maze of corridors deeper into Slashax’s fortress. With each step more questions filled Jaina’s thoughts. Where were they taking her? Did Ant and Hamid even know she was inside the game? And what about her only friend in this world, Bones?
    The little dog had fled when Whiner ambushed them. Jaina couldn’t blame the little guy. He was just a doggie, after all. He deserved to be with his pack and not following some strange kid deep underground.
    Ahead of her, Whiner marched wearing that smug look on his face he got when he had busted some kid, usually Ant, stuffing paper towel into the boys’ toilets.
    Jaina didn’t understand the old man at all. He ruled their school like an angry army general. He never cracked a smile and always barked at the students. Principal Whiner seemed so mad at everyone and everything all the time. In here, he was different. He seemed almost happy in a twisted kind of way. That scared Jaina even more. In here, he had an army of skeletons obeying his orders. Who knew the damage their principal could do? She needed answers.
    Jaina hurried her pace and caught up to Whiner.
    “Why do you dislike Minecraft so