Chapter 6-Journey to the End

That morning Steve headed to the meeting platform after feeding his horse, Dash, an apple. When he reached the meeting point many heavily-armored warriors were there, chatting and laughing with each other. They were standing next to a flat patch of land. Steve walked up to them, waving.

“Hey guys!” They turned around. ” Didn’t, uh, someone used to live here? ” They stuttered before saying anything. “BlackKnight7286 used to, but then he left. Rumors say he went to the Great Deep Ocean and sells Scutes, Turtle Shell helmets and Tridents on the beach” They explained. “BlackKnight-I mean, TurtleKing4646, he changed his username-apparently got quite rich from looting shipwrecks” “So nobody lived there?” Steve asked. “Well, it was just a storage room” said Tim’s voice, but Tim wasn’t there. A sipping noise filled the air, and suddenly Tim appeared, grinning and holding an empty bucket of milk.

“Boo!” He said. “You scared me,” Steve told him. They all laughed. Steve moved forward, and pulled the 11 iron blocks out that were in his inventory and placed them on the ground. The other warriors did the same, until they had a shining 9-by-9 pyramid. Steve carefully placed the Beacon on the ground and a glistening beam of light instantly shot out. Steve placed a sign on the pyramid and wrote: “This beacon was built by the community of this village. The Wither that dropped this Nether Star killed many users. The Wither has been avenged.” He then climbed down to the ground and placed a lectern and chest. In the chest he placed stacks of different-colored stained glass. He placed a book in the lectern titled “Beacon Beam Color Codes”

“Please make a copy of this book and give it to everyone in the village” He told the warriors. “Please tell the farmers to speed up production of sugar cane, and breed more cows and chickens”. “We need ink sacs as well,” Steve told them before one of the users ran away. Suddenly, a private message filled Steve’s screen. It read: “Steve, our miners have cleared most of the mountain of ore. If we want this factory to survive, we can’t mine here much more. We have sent all our ore, coal and cobblestone in minecarts to you. Some miners are coming as well. Please find a way to get more-CreeperKiller64” Steve quickly forwarded the message to Alex and Tim. A second later, Alex replied: “Three words: The End City” “Are you sure?” Steve replied. “Positive-gather the warriors and let’s go,” Alex said.

A second later, she was next to (rather inside) Steve. “How’d you-” Steve started. “I TPed,” Alex said, grinning. Tim walked over. “I heard about our trip to the End” He said, whispering. “I’ve already briefed the warriors” “Good,” Steve replied. “Also, the Council approved our request” He added. “Nice work, Tim,” Alex remarked. “The stronghold is at Mushroom Island.” She declared. “The supplies are in my shulker boxes” Alex continued. “We’ll take the horses-the warriors are waiting for us at the south gates already” She finished as they ran off to get their horses.

10 minutes later, Alex, Steve and Tim charged out the south gates, the two squads of warriors following close behind. Half an hour later they passed from the wide-open grassy plains to the leaf-green forest. Birch and Oak trees dotted the hilly landscape. The horses rode on until they reached the entrance to a small cave. The players steered their horses inside and dismounted the strong animals. Tim placed fence posts outside the rocky hole and tied the horses to the posts with a lead. Steve placed a campfire inside and they cooked beef to eat. Later they placed their beds and fell asleep.

That morning the adventurers all ate apples and bread for breakfast. Tim untied their horses and they rode away toward the flower forest biome. The colorful square flowers seemed to welcome them to this beautiful, blocky place. The horse’s hooves made a soft Ca-clunk on the soft grass. Animals greeted the adventurers as they headed toward the Great Deep Ocean, the counterpart of the Great Lava Ocean in the Nether where they had gone days ago.

The horses passed onto the sandy beach that sat alongside the Great Deep Ocean. In the ocean they saw a shipwreck that randomly spawned, although this one was repaired. Turtles chirping and Dolphins whistling filled their ears, a welcome to the dangerous and very deep ocean. A user with an eyepatch and a dark blue gold-buttoned overcoat walked towards them, the words TurtleMaster4646 floating above his head.

So the rumors were true. After a large meal of fresh cooked cod and a loaf of bread outside on the beach (they were too many to fit inside). Fence posts and torches were placed outside to resemble tiki torches, which both lit up the area and scared away mobs. TurtleKing4646 agreed to tell them the location of Mushroom Island for 165 tokens (the in-game server currency).

They stayed the night at his ship, and in the morning they bought boats and turtle shell helmets to help his small shop make some profit. Then the warriors along with Tim, Steve and Alex boarded their boats and set off toward Mushroom Island, land of the Mooshrooms.

The players rowed their boats across the ocean. Dolphins occasionally jumped in front of them, chirping and whistling. Alex hoped their horses, who they had left with TurtleKing, were doing okay. She had left many hay blocks to feed them. She still worried, even though TurtleKing had assured her they would be okay.

Their small wooden boats soon hit the mycelium shores of mushroom island. Red and white spotted cows, Mooshrooms, wandered around. Alex distributed wooden bowls to everyone after she had crafted them and they all went off, milking the Mooshrooms and drinking their stew. When their hunger bars were all full they pulled out iron pickaxes and shovels and started mining into the soft, fungus-like ground.

The team’s iron-bladed shovels tore into the ground. Soon they hit stone and switched to pickaxes. They carved into the ground, one block at a time, until one of them called out “Mossy stone bricks-I’ve found it!” They soon funneled over to the other branch of their excavation site. The warrior mined a small staircase into the maze-no, labyrinth- of underground chambers. They soon stepped into the dark, musty stronghold, some of them earning the achievement “Eye Spy” as it was their first time in a stronghold.

Steve quickly lit a torch as he placed it on the wall and it bathed the dark tunnel in light. “Wait,” Alex said, pausing. She pulled out some of the mycelium she had mined and climbed up the staircase. She jumped, placing it under her boots-the “noob jump” technique. She pillared up four more blocks and quickly blocked the tunnel/shaft they had mined, blocking the sunlight. It soon became eerily dark in the stronghold. She mined down her mycelium tower and re-entered the stronghold.

The group of armored warriors quickly moved down the hall, while Steve lit torches and placed them on the wall as they went. The soldier’s iron boots clanked on the ground with every step on the stone brick floor of the stronghold they took. “Where are all the silverfish?” Tim asked, breaking the eerie silence. “I don’t know,” Steve replied. Soon they reached a crossroads.
“Which way should we go?” Alex asked. Steve shrugged, then
placed a torch on the wall. It illuminated the wooden face of a chest. “This way!” Tim called, running down the tunnel. They reached
the chest and all opened the wooden lid. Alex pulled out ender pearls, bread, iron horse armor, a saddle, 2 golden apples and a few diamonds. Then she laid an Ender chest on the floor.
She emptied all of the loot into it and then mined it up with her Silk touch pickaxe.
They continued down the hall while Steve asked “Why did you take all the loot?” Alex replied, saying ” Our purpose of going to the End City is to prepare the village for upcoming battles, not improve our personal resource stores,” “Our war council has predicted there will likely be a large attack soon” she finished. Steve frowned. He hadn’t been to that meeting because he was competing in the village’s annual Elytra ability course,
They soon found a stone doorway, blocked with an iron door resting inside the doorframe. Tim pushed to the front and drew his diamond pickaxe. “Stand Back!” He warned. He shattered the door with his pick, revealing a library. “Nice!” One of the warriors exclaimed. “Our barracks need an enchanting room”! They all pulled out iron axes and began gathering the books. When the teams had mined up all but one one 8-block long bookshelf, they discovered a chest hidden on the top of the bookshelf. They opened it and found it filled with paper, empty maps, and an enchanted book with Mending. Steve mined up the chest with his iron axe and said “For later,” Alex shook her head and led the group out of the room.
A loud scritch-scritch-scritch noise filled the stone corridors. “I’m betting that’s our silverfish spawner” Tim guessed. “How much?” Steve joked. Tim shook his head and continued down the tunnel. They followed the noise into a large stone chamber with iron bars lining the walls. A glowing black cage rested in the middle of the stairs leading toward their goal-the end portal. The spawner started spitting out silverfish. Steve struck one with his Netherite sword, and 40-50 of monster eggs lining the portal room cracked.  “Pillar up!” Alex screamed. The team immediately obeyed.
They hit the hundreds of silverfish with their swords and arrows, protected from their bites because they were above their bite range. Tim placed blocks of soul sand when he could and the silverfish climbed on top of the blocks and suffocated, although this was ineffective because there were so many there was hardly space to place the brown blocks. Steve placed some cobblestone blocks behind him and walked to the end of his bridge. He sprinted forward, and took a flying leap. He landed on one of the end portal frame blocks. He quickly destroyed the stone brick stairs and the spawner with his enchanted diamond pickaxe while the rest continued hacking at the silverfish. He then reached down and destroyed the stone bricks lining the lava pool under the portal frame. The lava seeped out, covering the floor in the hot, destructive liquid, burning the silverfish in seconds. He then surrounded it in cobblestone and watched the rest of the group pillar down. The battle had taken a toll on their sword’s durability, so Alex placed an anvil and passed diamonds to the soldiers to repair their enchanted swords.
Steve, who had a Netherite Sword, and didn’t need to repair it as it had a crazy amount of durability, (and forgot a Netherite ingot to repair it) sent a private message to the village’s army leader.
It read: “We’ve reached the portal room. Send in the reinforcements,” While Alex was placing eyes of ender in the portal frames, 20 warriors,
5 squads, of warriors teleported into the portal room. “Nice” Alex exclaimed. “Divide into your squads” she instructed the army. She placed a shulker box in front of each squad.
“Drink your invisibility potions and before you enter the portal,” She continued. “Fill up your shulker box with loot from the end city,” “Your squad leader will build your flying machine to take you to the outer islands,” Alex instructed. “Each squad take a different building in the end city, if a member of your group  dies, put their items in the box and send me a message through the chat, “If you need to reach us, send one of us a private message,” Steve told them, pointing to Tim, Alex and Himself. “Everyone understand?” The army nodded. “Before we go all set your respawn point to this bed,” Steve said, placing a bed. “If you
die TP to your squad leader and take your stuff out of your box”

Steve hastily replaced the stairs he had mined to prevent the silverfish from attacking him, while the warriors all set their respawn points to Steve’s red bed. He took a step back. Then Steve charged forward and leapt into the portal with Alex and Tim at his side, and the warriors following close behind.