Mythical Artifacts

Chapter 8: Driven by Greed

It was too ironic that the one person who hadn't been excited about the rumors was now holding the highly-desired weapon of power. It was too surprising that it took an entire ten days for anybody to find it. Lastly, it was too unfortunate that I was in such a bad situation.

Despite being with Ferbooper, Melongan, and soon MineAPI, it was not encouraging to see eight people — split into four teams — rushing toward the center where I was. Still, I had the most powerful weapon known to the world of Hypixel . . . but what could it do, exactly? It had been announced that it dealt a lot of damage and gave the holder athletic powers, but to what extent?

I spotted Mine running to us, ahead of everybody else. He started building up, assisted by the towers of wool already there. He reached the top, joining the rest of us, but I realized something was wrong with him. "Did they attack you?" I asked.

"No, but they're coming," he replied. He seemed tired, which was weird because tiredness wasn't a thing in minigames.

I scanned the area quickly. "Yeah, but we got The Sword," I said.

"Yeah, but . . . they have the best possible gear," he said.

"Wait, what?!"

"Full diamond. Ender pearls. They have everything you could buy."

Looking back toward the nearing players, I realized that what Mine said was true: everybody had the best possible gear. I exhaled, feeling worried — but my grip on The Sword in my hand tightened. "How do they, though?" I asked, turning to look at Mine. "No way has everyone gotten that many emeralds."

"I don't know," he answered. "I wanted to get back here as soon as possible to help, so I didn't look into it much."

"Well . . . at least I got this," I said, lifting up The Sword. "And we should all get emeralds and buy better gear before they get to us."

"The generators are broken," he said. "I only managed to get a little wool before the blast erupted."

"Oh. . . . Well, we can at least go to a base," I said. Looking around, I added, "We're getting a lot of unwanted attention right here."

"Those eight players have ender pearls, though, and we don't," he reminded me. "We couldn't get far."

As I considered it, I saw an ender pearl flying straight toward me. I ducked and turned, seeing that it simply went over all of us. I got back onto my feet and looked around me: all the players were surrounding the center structure on which we were all on.

One of them shouted from below, "SURRENDER THE SWORD!" The other seven agreed. They seemed to be teaming on us; the four of us were teaming too, but that didn't stop me from taking out my compass to report them. Immediately I realized that it was broken, glitching and refusing to do anything.

Suddenly, one of the eight below us threw a fireball, and it collided with the side of the structure, blasting blocks everywhere. The four of us were unharmed, but I looked at the damage in bewilderment. "I thought you couldn't destroy blocks in minigames," I said, getting to my feet.

"You can't," replied Ferbooper, sounding just as shocked as me.

We stared down at the players: they weren't doing anything, but were quietly discussing things with each other. I wondered what else had been messed up from the blast; The generators, I thought, my compass, tiredness, the block invincibility . . . and then what?

I tried to watch all eight players closely for movement, but I didn't see one of the players throwing an ender pearl up at us. It landed, and a player stood in its place. She instantly took action, placing down blocks of TNT everywhere. Ferbooper managed to knock her off, but it was too late.