Book Three: Part 2 Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay

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СКАЧАТЬ as he nodded in agreement, but then, his face hardened. Stan focussed, and once again, the words flashed in his mind.

       DISCONNECT FROM SERVER?

      “Yes.”

      “The preparations for the attack are all ready, sir,” Sirus reported, standing in full salute and sounding official. “We’re directly underneath the main street of the Adorian Village, and we’re all ready to, you know, totally blow our way in and take out all the Noctem soldiers by surprise. Haha, they won’t know what hit them!”

      “Thank you, Sirus,” Bob replied, nodding his thanks. “Please go and prepare the troops for the assault. I’ll be there in a minute.”

      Sirus nodded and took off as Bob turned to his brother, who was sitting next to him alongside all the other Elementia leaders in the base of the cave. “Come on, Ben,” he said, commanding Ivanhoe to walk away from the circle. “Let’s inspect the troops. And get ready, guys, we’re gonna launch the assault as soon as Stan gets back.”

      Bob and Ivanhoe walked away from the circle of players and towards a mass of troops further down the tunnel. Ben followed them. Leonidas watched them go and looked around.

      This cave wasn’t a natural mine that had been expanded, like the bunker beneath Element City had been. This was a square-shaped tunnel, carved through the stone block underground by hundreds of miners, desperately digging as fast as possible to avoid the encroaching Wither that was blasting its way in, with Noctem troops not far behind. About twenty troops had stayed behind in the bunker to man the redstone traps that had been set up, and although the Noctems hadn’t followed them into the tunnel they had dug out of the cave, they hadn’t heard back from the troops either.

      Leonidas, lost in his train of thought, suddenly realized that everybody was looking at something. He followed their line of vision and saw that everybody was staring at Sirus, who was conversing with the two police chiefs in his jittery fashion.

      “I still can’t believe that he’s alive,” Kat said.

      “I still don’t completely understand that,” Cassandrix said, turning to face Kat. “Could you please explain to me what happened to him? And why everybody finds this so amazing?”

      Kat was quite pleased to find that Cassandrix was talking to her in a civil manner. Although Kat tried to be pleasant towards her, Cassandrix only returned the attitude half the time, while reverting to her snappy, unbearable personality the rest of the time. Kat was glad to see that, today at least, she was being agreeable, and answered her question.

      “You see, Cassandrix, Sirus was our redstone engineer during the Battle for Elementia, when we first took down King Kev. That was back before the Mechanist joined us.”

      Hearing his name, the Mechanist looked up, revealing his tired and stressed face for a moment before returning to the book he was reading.

      “Anyway, a lot of players died in that battle, and he was one of them. And even though none of us saw it, one of our friends named Archie said that he saw Sirus get killed in battle. Apparently, it happened right as the battle was ending, right before the castle tower blew up, in fact. We all thought that he was dead, and according to him, he was. Yet somehow, he managed to come back.”

      “I see,” Cassandrix replied, looking mystified. “But … do you have any idea how? I mean … the server’s difficulty is locked on Hardcore, and there’s no way to change it unless King Kev himself did it. And even then, he gave up his operating powers! So there’s no possible way that Sirus could have gotten back onto the server through simply respawning!”

      “Yer guess be as good as any o’ ours, lass,” Commander Crunch responded solemnly, “but fer now, thar’s no way t’ know fer certain. More than likely, it had t’ do wit’ some sort o’ glitch, but fer now, we ’ave more important thin’s t’ worry about.”

      There was a dark silence around the circle of leaders. They all knew that that was the understatement of the century. Nobody knew what to say. They all knew exactly what they were about to go into, and yet at the same time had no idea.

      “I still can’t believe that the Noctems managed to find us,” muttered Kat.

      “Why is that so surprising?” Charlie demanded defensively. “They’ve been inspecting every block of the city nonstop since they’ve broken through the wall. It’s not that surprising that they’ve managed to find us!”

      “Calm down!” exclaimed Kat, shocked by Charlie’s aggressive tone. She had no idea what had come over him since they had rescued him from the prison on the Mushroom Islands, but Kat didn’t like it one bit. She had expected that by now he would be back to his normal, friendly, soft-spoken self, but if anything he had only gotten worse.

      “What I meant,” Kat continued cautiously, “was that Ben and Bob have been sending spies out into the city, to see how close the Noctems were to finding us. According to the intelligence they gathered, the Noctems were doing most of their searching in the Merchant’s District, on the total opposite end of the city. If that’s true, then it makes no sense that they managed to discover us here so quickly.”

      “Well, however it came about, th’ attack couldn’t ’ave come at a worse time,” Commander Crunch replied darkly. “We ’ave t’ act fast, now that th’ Noctems know where we be, ’n’ we ’ave no time t’ put together an actual invasion plan. We be forced t’ jus’ rush willy-nilly into th’ Adorian Village, ’n’ hope that this cockamamie assault wit’ no thought put into it somehow works.”

      “You’re right,” growled Leonidas in disgust. “Why couldn’t the Noctems have broken in, like, just two or three days later? That would have made everythin’ so much easier!”

      Suddenly, Charlie leaped to his feet, prompting all to turn towards him. He looked distressed and mortified, and it seemed as if he were on the verge of tears. For a moment, nobody moved as Charlie looked like a deer in the headlights of his friends’ concerned looks. Then Charlie turned around and marched away from the circle without a word, a sob escaping his mouth as he limped down the tunnel.

      “Wha’ be his problem?” Commander Crunch asked incredulously as he turned to look at his comrades, and saw that nobody had the slightest idea what was wrong with him.

      “I’ll be right back,” Leonidas said determinedly and, before anybody could stop him, he stood up and took off down the tunnel after Charlie.

      “What do you want?” demanded Charlie as Leonidas caught up to him, weaving around a group of soldiers pulling on diamond armour as he went.

      “I wanna know why you’re so upset, man,” Leonidas said straightly. “You’ve been totally out of it ever since we met up, and you seem like you’re upset with me. Listen, dude, I know I haven’t really known you for long, but it’s pretty obvious to me that you’ve got somethin’ going on.”

      “Oh it is, is it?” Charlie spat, looking beyond outraged. “Well, thank you for noticing!”

      “Charlie, listen … I know that your injury has been bothering you—”

      “Shut up!” Charlie bellowed at the top of his lungs, causing all in the vicinity to turn and stare at him. “Just shut up and go away! I don’t want you to be here! Just … leave!”

      And Charlie СКАЧАТЬ