The Complete Elementia Chronicles: Quest for Justice; The New Order; The Dusk of Hope; Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay

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СКАЧАТЬ be with you guys right now. But sometimes war is the only option. It’s a horrible option, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”

      “If we don’t take down the King, then things are going to just get worse from here. You know that, Charlie,” said Stan. “The King’s been abusing the people living here for too long, and he’s not letting up. And now, we have people, a lot of powerful people, ready to risk their lives to take him down, and we’re closer than ever to getting the supplies to do it. Are you saying you just want to give up?”

      Charlie sighed before answering. “No, you’re right, and I know you’re right. It’s just …” He paused as a tear rolled down his cheek and he wiped it away. “It’s not any easier.”

      Kat leaned over to Charlie and gave him a hug. Over her shoulder, Charlie glanced at Stan, and their eyes locked. Stan knew from the look in Charlie’s eyes that, as much as neither of them liked it, Charlie knew that they must carry on.

      Stan became vaguely aware of another presence joining them. He looked up and saw Oob looking down at them, the Iron Golem standing just behind him.

      “You are doing the right thing, Charlie,” said Oob, his face more serious than Stan had ever seen him. “And I thank you for making life better for us.”

      Stan smiled. This was the reason they were doing this, he thought. The lower-level players, the NPC villagers. Wasn’t this the reason that they were ready to fight? These people weren’t able to defend themselves, and while the King capitalized on this weakness by extorting them, there would always be those willing to defend them. The Apothecary, the Nether Boys, DZ, even the Iron Golem, Stan realized, were ready to defend themselves and others if the need arose, but that didn’t mean that they were vicious monsters. Hadn’t Stan seen the Iron Golem, just this morning, playing tag with the villager children?

      As if in response to his thoughts, Stan heard a metallic creaking and looked up. The Iron Golem had stepped forwards and walked right to Charlie. Charlie looked into the Golem’s red eyes, and the Golem extended its metal hand. Clasped in it was a red flower, a rose: the Golem’s gift to the heavy-hearted Charlie.

      Charlie smiled and took the rose. “Thank you,” he said to the Golem, and the iron obelisk nodded its head with a metallic creak in response. Charlie stood up and looked at his friends. “Come on, guys. We’ve got some Endermen to kill.”

      Glad to see that his friend was out of his stupour, Stan followed Charlie and Kat back to Oob’s house, where they found DZ already waiting and ready for hunting.

      “Hey guys! You ready to kick some teleporting butt?” he asked, eliciting the first smirk anyone had seen on Charlie since the siege. DZ took notice. “Hey, Charlie, you doing better, man?”

      “Yeah, I’m all right. I’ve gotta say, though, I do have an odd desire to kill some Endermen right now,” replied Charlie.

      “Now that’s what I’m talking about, man! Enderman huuuuunt!” DZ sang, pumping his fist in the air and doing a little dance of excitement.

      “Come on, guys. Let’s suit up and get out of here,” said Kat, pulling her armour out of Oob’s chest.

      After they had put on all their armour and equipped themselves with all their weapons, the four players and dog set out into the desert, with Oob, Mella, Blerge and Stull waving goodbye from their house.

      “OK guys, so here’s the plan,” said Kat. “We’ll all just look around the desert. The terrain is pretty flat out here, so we shouldn’t have much trouble finding any Endermen. When someone sees one, they call out, and everyone jumps to that player’s back to defend them. How many Ender Pearls do we have again?”

      “Well,” replied DZ, scratching his head, “I had six. What about you guys?”

      “I got two last night,” said Charlie.

      “And I got one,” added Stan.

      “Excellent!” said Kat, grinning. “We only need three more! All right, everyone, start looking!”

      Stan was excited. He had not realized just how few Ender Pearls they still needed to collect. He started scanning the darkening horizon, and the sun had just ducked out of sight behind the distant hills when Stan spotted his first Enderman. It was holding a sand block, and upon realizing it was being watched, its jaw dropped, and it stared back and shook as if it were racked with spasms.

      “I’ve got one!” yelled Stan, and the other three players rushed to defend his back. Sure enough, when the Enderman appeared behind Stan, it immediately found itself cut by two swords, an axe, and a pickaxe before it teleported away. It reappeared an instant later behind Kat, who spun backwards and decapitated it. She looked down at the tall, black corpse.

      “Yes!” she exclaimed, as she scooped up a turquoise pearl from the Enderman’s body. “Ten down, two to go!”

      And sure enough, the Enderman hunting was quick from there on out. With the desert plains providing minimum obstructions to their vision, they were easily able to locate two more Endermen very quickly and fought them by adopting the same strategy. Of the two, however, only one yielded an Ender Pearl.

      “Yeah, that happens sometimes,” said DZ, seeing the look of outrage on Kat’s face as she found that the second Enderman had no pearls. “It’s no big deal. We’ll just kill another one.”

      No sooner did DZ say that than Stan sensed a presence behind him. He spun around, ready to combat an incoming mob, but what he saw instead caught him totally off guard. Had he not been wearing an iron chestplate, Leonidas’s arrow would have impaled his heart. He gave a short shout of pain that alerted the others to the presence of his assailant.

      They wasted no time in reacting. Kat and DZ hastily drew their bows and fired two arrows in Leonidas’s direction. He ducked one and the other caught in the wood of his bow. Charlie and Kat rushed in to engage Leonidas at close range, where they had their advantage. DZ, however, was otherwise occupied, as Geno had just burst out of the ground, diamond sword glinting in the moonlight. Stan pulled himself to his feet, watching as DZ and Geno, probably the two most powerful swordsmen he had ever seen, locked blades in ferocious combat.

      Stan became aware of a sizzling behind him. He spun around and brought his axe down into the line of redstone dust on the ground, cutting off the electric charge that would have activated the TNT block that had somehow appeared directly behind him. He destroyed the TNT block in one punch, and he drew his axe to combat Becca, who was now rushing in to engage him.

      Becca may have been the demolition expert of RAT1, but she certainly knew her way with a sword. Stan had had quite a bit of experience, and his prowess with the axe had doubled since he first learned the skill from Jayden in the Adorian Village. Yet Becca was able to fight him on an equal level. It was only by a lucky uppercut that his axe managed to knock Becca’s iron sword out of her hand and into the air.

      Becca was not deterred. She immediately drew two fire charges, and with a quick flick of the wrist she was gone in a billow of black smoke. The force of the small fire knocked Stan backwards, and as he looked up he saw that there were also plumes of smoke where Leonidas and Geno had just stood. No sooner had he opened his mouth to ask where they had gone than an arrow came flying out of the smoke and embedded itself into Stan’s right forearm, which was unprotected by his armour.

      Though there was pain shooting up and down his arm, Stan did not allow himself to look at the wound. Instead, he drew СКАЧАТЬ