Hermitcraft: Escaping Insanity [FIXING SOME CHAPTERS]

CHAPTER 2

Xisuma was in the middle of making final adjustments to his item sorting system when something unusual happened.

Not the chat.

The console.

A notification appeared across his screen, clean, system-level, impossible to miss.

"Grian joined the game."

Xisuma froze.

"A new Hermit?" he muttered, staring at the message. "This late in the season? I thought we weren't adding anyone."

That alone was strange.

But what followed unsettled him far more.

Whenever a new Hermit joined the server, Xisuma was always notified in advance. Background checks were mandatory, compatibility, intent, stability, potential risk. Hermitcraft ran on a strict whitelist.

No one joined without his explicit permission.

So why had someone entered the server without him knowing?

There was only one group capable of bypassing server restrictions entirely.

Watchers.

Xisuma immediately accessed the player's data, scanning through the code line by line. He searched for familiar Watcher signatures, patterns he had learned to recognize over years of administration.

There were none.

But something else stood out.

A corrupted line of code.

It wasn't Watcher interference, but it wasn't natural either. The corruption looked unstable, torn, as though the player had been forced through a boundary rather than invited in.

"Maybe that corruption caused him to slip through," Xisuma murmured.

A serious problem, but one he would deal with later.

Right now, he needed to assess the newcomer.

Threat or ally.

Xisuma grabbed a stack of firework rockets, equipped his elytra, and launched himself into the sky.

"Spawn point first," he said quietly.

He flew straight toward the Shopping District.

Before Grian lost consciousness, all he saw was light.

Blinding.
Sudden.
Overwhelming.

For a split second, he thought it was the end,

Then he woke up.

His vision was blurred, heavy, barely able to focus, but something felt wrong.

Soft grass beneath him.

Cool wind brushing against his skin.

The sound of something mechanical—faint, rhythmic.

Machines?

Confusion crept into his foggy mind.

"There's no redstone in Yandere High," he thought weakly.

Then the memory hit him.

Sam, Yuki, the Massacre

The knife, Coming down.

Panic surged through his body, forcing him to jolt upright—

Pain exploded through his side and head.

He gasped sharply, clutching at the wound as dizziness washed over him. His head throbbed violently as he forced his eyes open and looked around.