Herobrine's Message (21 page)

He couldn't wait to get back to Jayden and discuss the
fact that Sirus was still alive. That meant that somehow, something had gone wrong in the coding of Elementia, allowing Sirius to respawn after he'd been killed. And if it had happened once, G realized that it was possible that it could happen again. . . .

S
tan?”

“Hold up!” Stan cried out, holding up his hand and stopping dead in his tracks. Leonidas, who had been walking alongside Stan, stopped abruptly and turned in alarm. “Stan? Can you . . . hear me?”

“Yeah, I can,” Stan replied, raising his hand to silence a perplexed Leonidas.

“Come to . . . SalAcademy. I have something . . . to tell you . . .”

“I'm on it,” Stan replied, and with a pop of static, Sally's voice disappeared.

“What
was
that?” Leonidas inquired, sounding confused.

“That girl Sally just contacted me,” Stan replied.

“Again?” Leonidas groaned. This had happened quite a few times before, and it always slowed their progress.

“Afraid so,” replied Stan, and with that he sat down on the ground, taking a deep breath and preparing to disconnect from Elementia.

“Now wait just a sec, Stan!” Leonidas interjected, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him back to his feet. “Do ya
really
have to go see her right
now
? Do ya realize just how close we are to Element City? If we
traveled all day, we'd be there by nightfall, get a good night's sleep, and we could spend the entire day tomorrow figuring out how to get past the Noctem forces outside the city walls.”

“I know that, Leonidas, but I still really have to do this,” Stan replied firmly. “I seriously do have important business to take care of. The fate of Elementia may depend on it!”

“I still don't understand why ya can't just tell me what this incredibly important
stuff
you have to do is,” mumbled Leonidas bitterly.

“Trust me, if I told you, you'd think I'm crazy.”

“I think you're crazy now,” retorted Leonidas as Stan made his way to sit down again. “At the very least, though, could you join this other server in a more hidden spot? You realize I'm gonna have to defend the place you left while you're gone.”

Stan nodded, and immediately, the two of them scouted the swampland around them until they came across a cave. They walked down into it and found a pool of molten lava, providing a nice, inconspicuous source of light at the bottom. Leonidas noticed a rectangular indentation in the wall, as if somebody had tried to dig through but hadn't gotten very far.

Stan sat down next to the pool of molten lava as Leonidas drew his bow. Leonidas looked on as Stan took a deep breath, and a moment later, he disappeared. Leonidas took his position looking up at the cave mouth. He was a little
annoyed at Stan for forcing him to do this, but at the same time, he was intrigued by what this mystery task could possibly be.

Stan opened his eyes and once again gazed over the familiar sight of the midday sun peaked in the blue sky over the endless field of green grass. Intent on locating Sally, Stan turned his head to the right, only to find himself face to face with a Creeper.

“Augh!”
bellowed Stan as he summoned a diamond axe into his hand with the power of his mind and sunk it as hard as he could into the creature standing beside him. As it fell over, Stan was shocked to see Sally's body fall to the ground with a smack, a tiny Creeper Head and a diamond sword bursting out of her inventory as she did so. Seconds later, there was a pop as Sally reappeared next to Stan, giving him an accusatory glare.

“What was that for?” she demanded. “I was just trying to have some fun!”

“I'm sorry, you scared me!”

“Ugh . . . I forgot who I was dealing with,” spat Sally, walking over to her items and retrieving them from the ground. “The great Stan2012 . . . the guy who's gonna save Elementia from descending into chaos, and also has a spaz attack the second a Creeper looks at him funny. Don't worry,
noob, next time I'll play a slightly more tame prank on you. Hmm . . . I know! How about I replace Element Castle's doorbell with a farting sound? You think you could handle that without freaking out?”

“Well, you're forgetting one thing,” retorted Stan, flustered with embarrassment. “In order for that to work, you'd kind of have to be
in
Elementia, Sal.”

“Ouch,” she replied, her eyebrows raising. “To be honest, I didn't think you'd go there so easily. Oh, and speaking of which, thank you for killing me by sinking a diamond axe into my chest, Stan. That didn't give me any horrific flashbacks of the Battle for Elementia at all.”

“Ooh,” cringed Stan. He had almost forgotten that. “Sorry . . .”

“Eh, whatever, I don't really care. Just watch what you say to people, noob. Anyway, there are a few really important things we've gotta discuss,” Sally said solemnly, and immediately, Stan wondered what could have made Sally suddenly so serious.

“First, though, let's do a little review. You know, just to be sure you retained everything from the last time we met up.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Stan replied.

“All right, noob . . . Take care of this for me.” And Sally closed her eyes and stretched out her hand, instantly causing a wall made out of wood to appear.

Stan took a deep breath and stretched out his hand. He focused hard on a feeling of warmth building up inside of him and then, with all his mind, he pictured a Ghast. All at once, a fireball shot out of Stan's hand, rocketing forward until it hit the wooden wall in a burst of flames. With a grin, Stan proceeded to launch a volley of fireballs at the wood until finally, it all burned away.

“Okay, then . . . try this one!” cried Sally, and a solid stone wall appeared in place of the wooden one. Stan focused all his power into his fist, imagining the explosive power contained within a lightning-charged Creeper as he did so. Stan launched a punch in the direction of the wall, and he felt a pulse of invisible energy leave his fist. An instant later, there was a powerful rupture in the center of the wall, which formed a circular hole. Stan fired off a blitz of continuous punches at the wall until, finally, the last stone block had disappeared.

“Not bad at all,” replied Sally with a smirk. “But now, here's the real challenge!” Sally stretched out her hand, and concentrated as hard as she possibly could on a patch of ground in front of Stan. Then, all at once, a swarm of about ten Blazes encircled Stan, taking deep metallic breaths and preparing to fire.

“Don't use a weapon, Stan,” ordered Sally with a leering grin, “and get out of this one.”

With only an instant to think, Stan realized what he had to do. He leaped into the air, narrowly dodging the storm of fireballs flying in his direction. The Blaze's projectiles all hit one another, yet they took no damage from the resulting fire bursts. The smoking mobs made of yellow rods rose up toward Stan, ready to pursue him, but Stan was prepared.

He took a deep breath, stretched out his hand, and after a moment, an arrow appeared from nowhere at the tip of his hand and flew directly into the skull of one of the blazes. With a laugh, Stan proceeded to fire a rapid chain of arrows as fast as a machine gun, which mowed down the entire row of mobs in a matter of seconds.

Sally clapped her hands together as a shower of Blaze Rods showered down onto her, and Stan landed gracefully on the ground a moment later. “Well done, noob,” she said with a kind smile. “I've taught you well.”

Stan gave a dark chuckle of reply. “Yeah, you have . . . although I hope it doesn't end up being useless. What's the status on getting me those powers in Elementia?”

“I'm glad you brought that up, actually,” replied Sally, summoning herself a chair of leaf blocks to sit on, raising her feet on an ottoman made of a sponge block and crossing her legs at the knee. “We have to talk about that.”

“Oh, boy,” replied Stan, conjuring up a similar chair for himself out of wool blocks. “In my experience, ‘we have to
talk about this' means that I'm gonna walk away from this conversation unhappy.”

“Well, unfortunately, you're right,” Sally replied, and Stan gave a preemptive sigh of disappointment as Sally continued.

“I've been doing a lot of digging into Elementia's coding, trying to find a good access point to try to hack operating powers onto you. What I've found, though, is security has been increased big time. I'm not sure why, because I've been covering my tracks pretty well, so nobody can tell that I've been looking in there. And for some reason, most of the security seems to have been added to the player files—in other words, the place I have to hack into in order to give you operating powers.”

“Well, that's just wonderful,” sighed Stan in exasperation. “Why do you think that is?”

“I was about to ask you the same question, noob. I can't think of any reason they would beef up the firewalls and safeguards of the player files . . . unless, of course, you've told anybody about our plan?”

“I promise you, I haven't,” replied Stan quickly, raising his hands into the air. “I'm not going to tell anybody about the plan, no matter what, not even Kat or Charlie when I finally get to see them again. I haven't even told Leonidas, and he's the only player besides you I've been able to talk to for weeks.”

“Hmm,” murmured Sally, a disapproving look on her face. “Stan, I know that I've brought this up before, but . . . that player you're traveling with has committed some pretty horrendous crimes. What makes you so convinced that he's really on your side?”

“Believe me, Sally,” answered Stan with no hesitation, “I believe him. He nearly sacrificed himself to save an NPC villager. And he was raised by Oob's family. The Noctem Alliance lost him the second they attacked Oob's NPC village. He's a changed player now.”

“Okay, okay, I trust your judgment,” sighed Sally, nodding. “Just . . . promise me you won't tell anybody . . . especially him.”

“I promise,” repeated Stan.

“Okay, good. Unfortunately, though, noob, the increased security isn't the only bit of bad news.”

“Ugh . . . what else is new?” spat Stan in disgust.

“You see,” continued Sally, “when I was looking through the server's coding, I came across a few very interesting things. As it turns out, Elementia isn't like other Minecraft servers. It has a few unique tics to it that make it . . . different. And not in a good way.”

“Example, please?” asked Stan, despite not really wanting to know.

“I was getting to that,” growled Sally irritably. “One of the
biggest things I noticed is that, even though I thought there were no mods on the Elementia server itself, just on a few of the players, there actually
is
one.”

“Really?” Stan inquired, floored by this news. “But everybody tells me that, besides the whole you-can-only-die-once thing, Elementia is the same as every other Minecraft server!”

“Well, actually, noob, the mod I'm talking about ties into the . . . ahem . . . ‘you-can-only-die-once thing,' as you so eloquently put it. The mod in Elementia is called the Modelock Mod. I'd be here forever if I explained to you everything that this mod is doing. To put it simply, the Modelock Mod makes it so that not only can operators die and get banned like everybody else, which is another something that isn't like other Minecraft servers—usually the operators are unkillable—but operators also can't change the game mode.”

“Um, what do you mean exactly, when you say ‘game mode'?” asked Stan, puzzled.

“Well, basically, game mode controls the settings for how difficulty in Minecraft servers works. Like, Elementia is a Hardcore PVP server, which means that you get banned if you die, you regenerate health really slowly, and the monsters are locked on the hardest setting. But in a normal server, an operator could change Elementia into a Regular PVP server, which lets players respawn when they die and makes the monsters easier to kill.”

“So, are you saying that if King Kev hadn't installed that mod, and I got operating powers in Elementia, I could have made it so that people could respawn after they were killed here?” Stan asked, mortified.

“That's correct,” replied Sally grimly. “Because of the Modelock Mod, the only person in Elementia able to change the server's game mode was King Kev, and only back when he still had operating powers. And because he died and got banned from his own server, now it's impossible for Elementia's game mode to ever be changed again.”

“And . . . the only reason that King Kev isn't able to get back into Elementia . . . is because of that same mod?”

Sally nodded.

“Well, if that's the case, then King Kev is an idiot!” shouted Stan, leaping to his feet and punching his chair in frustration. “Why would he install a mod that could do that?”

“Well, I'll tell you at least one good reason,” replied Sally glumly. “I looked up the Modelock Mod, and apparently it's one of the highest-quality mods ever made. It would take somebody way more talented than me to hack it now that it's set up. Once it's installed, it's not ever getting uninstalled. I don't think King Kev himself could undo it if he wanted to. Elementia's game mode is permanently locked onto Hardcore mode, and it's totally impossible for anybody to hack their way back in—all because of this one mod.”

“Well,” sighed Stan, “as much as I hate to say it, it's probably best that we don't even try to get rid of it. The last thing we need is for King Kev to make his way back into Elementia.”

Sally nodded in agreement, but suddenly, her face looked even more distressed.

“Stan, to be honest, I really wish I could say that that was the worst news I have to tell you but . . . I can't.”

Stan stared blankly at Sally. What else could she possibly have found out? She didn't wait for his response before continuing.

“When I was looking through all these files, there was one other thing that I noticed besides the new security and the Modelock Mod. And that was that the normal programs were . . . I'm not sure how else to put this . . . starting to fade.”