“That was amazing!” cried Kat.
“Wow! Awesome, man!” exclaimed Charlie.
“How did you do that!?” asked Jayden, eyes wide.
Stan shrugged, unable to stop grinning. “I don’t know. It just kind of happened.”
“Well, it was amazing!” Kat said again, and Charlie nodded enthusiastically in agreement.
“I think we may have just found your talent!” said a smiling Jayden. Stan’s heart leaped. And as the training continued, it seemed that Stan had indeed discovered something that he could do without trying. Like Charlie with the pickaxe and Kat with the sword, Stan blew away all the others in the sparring ring. He even managed to just beat out Jayden. Now Jayden was even more impressed, not to mention slightly jealous.
After a farming lesson that was no problem at all (though none of them particularly liked farming, they were all capable of doing it with ease, and Steve really appreciated the help convincing the stubborn Mooshrooms to breed), they put away their axes and hoes and headed out. Jayden was just about to exit under the hedge when a hand grabbed his shoulder.
“Yo, Jay!” Stan turned around and saw Crazy Steve speaking to Jayden. Jay turned. “Could I talk to Stan here for a few minutes?” Jay nodded and walked off, the others following behind him.
“Come on, noob,” said Steve as he walked back into the farm. Stan was apprehensive. He had had misgivings about Crazy Steve since the episode with the QPO and was not keen on talking with him one-on-one. When they got to the cow fence, Crazy Steve sat down on a stretch of fence and looked Stan straight in the eye.
“Look, kid,” said Crazy Steve, “I realize dat ya may not think much’a me since dat whole QPO thing, but I’ve been on this server a real long time. I’m level fifty-four, da highest in da village. I’ve got a whole lotta knowledge worked up about da server, who runs it, and how it works. Do me a favour and remember dat as I talk to ya, OK?” Stan nodded, unsure of where this was going.
“Like I said, I’ve been here a real long time, and frankly, da server’s never been in worse shape than it is right now. Don’t interrupt,” he added as Stan opened his mouth to ask what Crazy Steve was talking about. “Dem in Element City, dat run da government, dey don’t like people like ya. Freshies. Beginners. Noobs. Ya get it, don’cha?”
Stan nodded, his gut knotting at this revelation, and asked, “But why? Why do they not like us? And what does this have to do with me?”
Crazy Steve’s reply was cut off when an arrow sunk into his temple.
Stan’s shock vanished immediately when he heard the twang of another arrow being fired. He rolled off the fence and grabbed the iron hoe that Crazy Steve had dropped. He threw it in the direction of the arrow. The hoe connected, and Stan saw a player with a black ski mask, bare muscular chest, and black trousers and shoes stumble backwards, holding his face.
Stan used the time it took his attacker to recover to look at the player beside him. Crazy Steve had fallen to the ground and now lay unmoving, bleeding from the arrow in his head. All of the items that he carried were strewn on the ground about him. There was no doubt about it – he was dead.
Stan’s brain did not have time to process this horrific turn of events. He grabbed Crazy Steve’s iron axe and looked at the murderer just in time to see him send another arrow flying towards Stan’s head. He deflected it with the axe and then charged his assailant.
The murderer was now on the run. He had pulled out a piece of flint and an iron ring, and he was striking them together to create showers of sparks, setting fire to anything in his reach. The melons, the fence around the pigpen and the logs of cocoa beans were instantly set ablaze, and the fire was spreading fast, quickly blocking off Stan’s pursuit of the murderer.
Stan’s brain went into emergency mode. Without hesitating, he shoved all of Crazy Steve’s items into his own inventory, grabbed the old farmer’s body, and bolted towards the exit, yelling for Jayden. Stan burst through the hedge archway, which was already burning, and saw Jayden running back, a look of horror on his face, closely tailed by Kat and Charlie.
The second Jayden saw the burning farm his eyes widened in shock, but it was the sight of his dead brother that made him go completely berserk. He grabbed Stan by the shoulders and shook him back and forth, yelling, “What happened?”
“A player with a ski mask killed Steve, tried to kill me and then set the farm on fire!” choked out Stan. He found it hard to breathe due to the smoke and his horror at Crazy Steve’s untimely demise.
A flash of recognition showed momentarily in Jayden’s eyes, and Stan could tell that this … this … Griefer, with the ski mask, had struck before. Jayden yelled at the top of his lungs at the sky, cursing the Griefer, his eyes and veins bulging. Stan, Kat and Charlie stood beside him, looking terrified.
Stan stood there numb for the longest time. He was vaguely aware of Jayden breaking down sobbing next to him, of Adoria’s voice yelling, of people running past him with water buckets. He realized that the inferno was gradually dying down. Before long, there was no more fire to brighten the dark night that had fallen in the midst of the firefight.
Stan snapped out of his trance when he heard Sally’s voice next to him. “You all right, noob?” she asked gently.
Stan looked at her. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t all right, and that Crazy Steve could never return to the server due to his banishment, and that he couldn’t understand why someone would kill another player if they knew that eternal banishment was the consequence … but instead he looked her in the eye and said, “I’ll be all right.” Her eyes were full of tears, and he didn’t want to seem weak to her, not after she had believed in him.
“Sally, we have a big problem!” Adoria exclaimed as she rushed over to them, panic in her voice. “I think that there’s a possibility that this attack may not be isolated. We need to get all the lower-levels into the mine, but there won’t be room for all of them down there. The mine wasn’t meant to hold the number of people we have now. Any more than two-thirds of the current population would make it too susceptible to accidents. I’m out of ideas, Jayden’s still distraught, and Archie and G are still busy preparing to evacuate the lower-levels. What do you think we should do?”
The panic in her voice led Stan to speak. “We’ll leave,” he said. Sally and Adoria both stared at him. “We’ll leave, Charlie, Kat and I. If there’s any chance at all that there are more Griefers coming, we’d stand the best chance of survival. We’ve finished the programme. Send us out, ask for other volunteers to leave, and you can stay and defend everyone left in the village.”
Adoria opened her mouth to protest, but Sally cut her off. “That’s actually not bad thinking. Those who’ve completed the programme will have the best shot at surviving, and we upper-levels will have to stay here and defend the village. We can send volunteers who have completed the programme into the forest, towards the city.”
Adoria protested, “But what if they run into Griefers along the way?”
“They won’t,” Sally responded. “The Griefers avoid the main road in case they come across well-armed travellers. They’re cowards, all of them. And besides,” she added, smiling at Stan, “that Griefer didn’t run away for no reason. Am I right in thinking that you fought him off?” Stan nodded.
“OK,” Adoria said, and she ran off towards the mine, skirt billowing in the wind, to make the announcement.
Stan looked at Sally and said, “Sally, I—” but he was cut off by Sally kissing him on the cheek.
“Come back and visit someday,” she said, and she ran