Block by Block--A Minecraft Novella

PART FOUR

PART FOUR

            “A wooden sword?” Tweety looked at the carved wood that she gripped in disgust. “Can’t I get, like, a diamond sword or something?”

            Pika snorted. “Dream on,” she said.

            Lola shrugged, “Okay, Pika’s going to teach you close combat and I’ll teach you far-range combat.” Tweety gave her a confused look. She rolled her eyes. “Pika will teach you how to use a sword and I’ll teach you how to shoot a bow.” She repeated, speaking to her like she was speaking to a baby.

            “O-kay,” Tweety said sarcastically.

            The two sisters stood in silence for a moment in the meadow right beside their house as they watched Pika haul a giant armor stand to them. As she finally reached them, she set down the stand and wiped off a bead of sweat. “Thanks for the help,” she grumbled.

            Tweety looked at the armor stand. “Where is the armor?” she asked.

            “What?” Lola looked at the stand. “We aren’t going to waste good armor just so you can attack it. Let’s just get started…we don’t have a lot of time.”

            Pika took an iron sword and walked up to the stand. “Okay, let’s talk about technique for a second. Strike fast. Don’t wait for them to attack. You attack first. If they’ve got the same strategy and are striking fast too, don’t just stand there and try to hit them. I like to jump, hit, and retreat a little, and then repeat. Got it? Okay.”

            Tweety shrugged. Technique was probably the easiest part, so she didn’t have fully understand that.

            “Mobs, now. With spiders, get the higher ground. When the spider nears, move backwards so that if the spider jumps, it does not get close enough to hit you. Aim the sword towards the front and top of spider, in case it jumps.” Pika said.

            “Skeletons are harder. They’ll shoot at you, so it’s almost like you’re playing ring-around-the-rosy, running around. You might dodge some arrows while you strike.”

            “Zombies are pretty easy. There’s no real strategy, except walk backwards as you strike.”

            “Creepers are hard, but there’s two ways to kill them, depending on whether you want to kill them or just set them off. If you want to set them off, run up to them, and when they start making that sizzle noise, you run. If you want to kill them, run up and strike and run back. You keep doing that until they die. Okay?”

            “And lastly, endermen. They’re really hard to kill, because whenever you try and strike, they teleport away. You have to strike fast at their legs, and you just might kill them. Got it?”