Stonebrook High School

Chapter 37

"... What."

Magnus blinked and then scrunched his nose at the brown-haired boy. "What, have you not noticed all the griefers around here trying to find me?"

Axel and Jesse looked at each other and the former shrugged. "But... that's kinda awesome, right?"

"Hah–no." Magnus did some sort of eye-roll while shaking his head. "You've heard about the whole 'Challenging the King for His Crown,' right? It's like, their thing. So as long as I'm king, I can't leave this tower."

He turned around, facing his back to them. Axel stepped forward and said, "I know how you feel." Magnus looked back. "No, you don't." The large male looked down with what could be embarrassment or shame. "Yeah, you're right."

"I don't get it," Jesse said, shaking his head and letting his arms fall. "You're Magnus. You can just walk right out of here."

"Nope. I can't," said the bald man. "Would be too much work. One step out would be one step too much. But you know what is definitely less work?"

"Uh... what?" shrugged Axel.

"A battle to the death for my crown."

"That's more work," Jesse frowned, crossing his arms.

"Not even," Magnus scoffed. "With all those people trying to find me, they're all going to try to kill me. But I am Magnus. I'm the best griefer there is. I can get rid of my opponents in a 1v1 faster than any of Ellegaard's stupid redstone thingamadoohickeys."

The twin rolled his eyes while Axel jumped up and down and giggled in a manly style. "Oh my god, I totally want to see that." The griefer chuckled. "Of course you do!"

"So, what do you want to do?" Jesse asked, leaning on his crutches.

"A 1v1... duh. Didn't I say that?"

"No, no, no, I meant, 'What are we going to do in the 1v1'."

"Well..."

They talked about it for a while and went back and forth, spewing out ideas here and there. Some ideas clashed with others and eventually, a full-blown fight escalated out of what should have been a friendly group brainstorm.

"Shortstack, that's not going to work! We need explosions! Fireworks! Explosions! Lava! If we don't, the people won't believe it at all."

"Magnus, one of could die, and we don't need that right now! We need to get out of here as quick as possible, so let's just sneak out of here! We can make a distraction!"

"But Jesse, explosions are cool! And the griefers outside are kind of wild, too, so the 1v1 match would totally calm them down because they're not creating the excitement anymore!"

When had Axel become so good at psychology and making connections? Plus, he was on Magnus's side, where any of them could die. Jesse thought hard for an improvisation.

"Okay, how about this. Magnus, you're still going to make explosions, but Axel and I will run off in the other direction and distract the griefers. We'll take the amulet with us. As we're running, you need to make one gigantic, flamboyant trap that will KO all of them in one hit. You could make a sandpit and have TNT in the circle so when they hit the center, the TNT blows up and they all fall! When most of them are trapped, we'll run to the obsidian border and if there are still people outside, you can hit them with some smoke bombs and dynamite, okay? But don't kill anyone!"

Jesse watched as Axel and Magnus looked back and forth at each other, waiting for a concrete answer. Magnus shrugged.

"Sounds like a good idea to me. And besides, I'm not a killer. I'm a griefer."