The monster had stopped chasing him. It was running back towards the woods, away from him and not towards Charlie. But the strangest part was that smoke was rising off its skin; Stan caught the putrid stench of burning flesh. The monster was making loud moaning noises and Stan was sure that it would be screaming if it could. Suddenly, the monster keeled over and burst into flames. It writhed on the ground until it had burned out of existence, leaving nothing but a small piece of rotten flesh in its place.
Charlie walked out of the woods, staring in shock at the small piece of flesh on the ground. Stan wore a look of equal bewilderment. Charlie turned to Stan.
“What was that thing?”
“I don’t know man, but it definitely was not a player.”
“Maybe it was one of those monsters that were mentioned in the book. Maybe it was a Creepy, or whatever you call it.”
“Let me look.”
Stan flipped open to the section of the book describing monsters, and on the first page he found what he was looking for. He read the description written next to an illustration of the monster they had just encountered.
ZOMBIES
Zombies are hostile mobs, or creatures, that spawn at night or in dark areas. They are the easiest hostile mob to defeat as their attack pattern consists of simply walking towards the player and trying to attack. They will burn when exposed to direct sunlight. They are also able to break down doors, and are the main attackers during a siege on an NPC village. They drop rotten flesh when killed.
As Stan finished the passage, Charlie said, “So that was a Zombie? And those things are supposed to be really easy to kill?”
“Apparently so,” replied Stan. He picked the flesh up off the ground. “Do you think this stuff is safe to eat?”
“I doubt it.” Charlie frowned, staring at the rancid lump of green and tan meat. “Check the book.”
After a little searching in the Items section, Stan found the page describing the flesh.
ROTTEN FLESH
Rotten flesh is an item dropped by Zombies and Zombie Pigmen and found in Temples. It can be eaten, but it is inadvisable to do so as it has a high chance of giving you food poisoning. It is not, however, poisonous to dogs.
“So, I guess we shouldn’t eat it unless we’re really, really desperate,” said Charlie.
“Yeah, you’re right,” agreed Stan. “Besides, we each get two pieces of bread from that chest up there, plus a sword. That sword should be helpful for fighting off any more monsters that turn up.”
“Agreed. So let’s get the stuff and go! It’s still morning; we’ve got an entire day to get to this Adorian Village before more monsters come out tonight.”
The two players walked back up the hill to the chest, where they each took two pieces of bread and a wooden sword. They then went to the top of the hill and looked around until Charlie spied the path. Bread in their inventories and swords in hand, Charlie and Stan started on the road to the Adorian Village.
The trees around the pathway had been cleared out, so there was light shining down on the two players as they walked down the road to the village. There were no monsters on the path, but they spotted a few in the woods. Zombies seemed to be the most common, as they were all over the place, but the players noticed a few others, too. Charlie pointed out, deep in the woods, what appeared to be a Zombie but thinner and less substantial, and Stan could have sworn that, from what he could see in the dim light, it was holding a bow and had a quiver of arrows on its back. Once, when Stan looked up into the trees at the sides of the road, he saw a flash of blood-red eyes contemplating him from one of the higher limbs. None of these mysterious creatures, thankfully, pursued the players.
“We’d better hurry and get to that village,” said Charlie, looking nervous. “I don’t want to be out here when it gets dark enough for those things to come out and hunt.”
Stan nodded in agreement, but things did not go well from that point on. The path became less clear as they went deeper into the woods, and a few times they found themselves accidentally straying onto side trails that led to dead ends. One of these paths turned out to have a Zombie at the end of it. Stan and Charlie barely managed to outrun it before it lost interest in them.
The sky began to turn a shade of beautiful pink, but the two players were unable to appreciate it as they made their way back onto the main road after their fifth detour and saw no sign of a village when they looked ahead.
“I think we’d better make a shelter for the night,” said Stan. “We’d better make a wall two blocks high so that we have at least some type of barrier that the monsters won’t be able to get over easily.”
“You’re right,” said Charlie. “I’ll go get some dirt blocks. You try to get some wood from these trees. Meet back here once you’ve got the stuff.”
Stan nodded and the two set off in opposite directions.
Gathering the dirt was faster than Charlie had expected; after being hit a few times the blocks of dirt came loose, ready to be picked up and added to Charlie’s inventory. He had amassed a whole stack of dirt blocks by the time he went back to meet Stan.
Stan did not have nearly as easy a time; he had to punch the sections of the tree trunks over and over to get them to break off. It hurt, too. “What … I … wouldn’t … do … for … a … chain … saw …” Stan growled through gritted teeth as he punched the tree trunks, leaving the leaves suspended in midair. Stan was quickly realizing that Minecraft didn’t always follow the laws of physics.
After about an hour the players met back on the road, and by the time night had fallen they had constructed a small rectangular box out of dirt and wood, two blocks high on all sides, with no roof. They ate their first pieces of bread, and then hunkered down in their fort.
“Brace yourself,” said Stan. “The attacks should start any minute now.” Charlie gulped and pulled out his sword.
But to their surprise, nothing happened for quite some time. They just sat in their shelter, hoping no monsters would show. They popped their heads up over the wall every now and then to make sure that there was nothing, and in fact, nothing was what they saw every time. When the half-moon was at its highest point in the sky, Stan was about to say that there were no monsters around, and that they should just break camp and continue, when an arrow whizzed past him, grazing his shirtsleeve.
“Incoming!” he yelled to Charlie as a firestorm of arrows began to fly over their heads. Charlie ducked. He looked through a small gap in the wall and saw about four animated Skeletons, all standing at a distance from their shelter and raining arrows down on them. He stared at them, but he jumped back from the hole a second later as his view was obscured by the head of a Zombie.
“Zombies!” Charlie yelled to Stan. “And Skeletons, too! There’s a ton of them, and” – he looked through a few other cracks in the sides of their shelter – “they’re swarming the wall!”
He was right. From all sides, the four Skeletons were