Well guess what? I got a part three for ya!

“Hive, please be okay!” I could hear sobbing around me as something was being forced into my mouth. I could feel someone grabbing my chin and moving it up and down, almost as if forcing me to chew. Whatever I was chewing, it felt soft… warm… it melted in my mouth.

I slowly opened my eyes with a groan to find a half eaten loaf of bread in my mouth and Sun quickly backing away. Was she trying to feed it to me?

Weakly, I reached up and grabbed the loaf, biting back into it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t like your traditional video game. Eating this bread didn’t make me feel better instantly, but I could feel the effects gradually occurring.

I weakly sat up, looking down at my arm. It was covered in scratches. I could vaguely remember what happened. All those zombies…

The zombies!

I quickly looked out the broken window to see what was going on. Loud groans echoed through the village, but… so was the smell of smoke.

I looked around to see all the zombies burning up in the daylight and trying to run away before their bodies fell into a pile of dust, only leaving behind scraps of stinky rotting flesh.

‘That’s just nasty,’ I thought to myself. But I’m the bright side, we had survived the first night. I went from house to house, breaking down the barricades over the doors I had managed to get to last night. Miraculously, a good number of villagers had survived.

And the minute the villagers came out of their homes, they started cheering my name (which they probably overheard from my friends). “Hive! Hive! Hive!”

I almost felt guilty… and a bit overwhelmed. Back in the real world, I was a bit of an introvert. Social interaction was very draining and sometimes anxiety-inducing. This was certainly one of those times.

But for the time being, I put on a happy facade and waved. This village seemed like it needed protecting. I wouldn’t mind doing such a thing. If I’m a hero to these people, then I may as well embrace this role.

”YOU MONSTER!!”

Of course there’s always that one guy.

We all turned to the back of the crowd and saw a lone villager crying as he gripped some sort of ripped cloth. I could piece together what he was about to say.

“How can you idiots chant his name?! If he were really a hero, there wouldn’t have been any casualties! And yet this is all that’s left of my wife!” He walked up to me and held up the cloth right in front of my face. Good thing one’s sense of smell is stunted in this world.

Some of the other villagers were trying to calm him down, but he kept insisting that I was the bad guy. Like I said, there’s always that one guy whose judgement is clouded… although I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sympathize. If I was the only one who lost a loved one in an attack, I’d be a little cross with whoever was supposed to be ‘saving’ these people.

Should I say that out loud? Probably not.

“I understand you’re upset,” I said in a calm voice. “Loss is hard. I’ve lost lots of people in my life.” I couldn’t help but look back to all the funerals I had been to. My grandparents… my step-mom… “But I promise you, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you and the rest of this village don’t meet the same fate.”

The villagers seemed to mumble among each other. Did I say something wrong?

One of them eventually stepped up. “What will we do? How will we protect our village?”

I looked around, trying to find an answer. The mountain we scaled to get here! There was a cave opening in the side. I then turned to my friends and made a motion to huddle up.

“Allie, get us wood. Lots of it. I wanna see a chest relatively full when we’re done.” “Mystic, get an animal farm going. We’ll need multiple sustainable food sources.” “Sage, go with Mystic. If she can get wool, make us some beds so we can sleep.” “Sun, you’ll come with me. We’re gonna go mining in that cave over there.” “We’ll all reconvene at the end of the day.”

We all nodded and split up. The others went on their way while Sun and I made our way towards the caves, pickaxes in hand.

If we wanted to survive, we’d need everything we can get our hands on.

Alrighty.

Sage… Mystic… Allie… Sun… and myself.

We were all trapped.

Mystic and Sun were hugging each other and crying, hoping they could find comfort in each other. However, with the banging sound of zombies at the door, it wasn’t working.

Allie was looking out the window facing away from the village, examining all the other mobs that were around. Nothing we hadn’t come to expect. Creepers, Skeletons, Spiders. Just our luck, there was even a Spider Jockey out there!

Sage and I were trying to figure out where we could go after this… but neither of us had a plan. For now, we just had to coop up in this tiny house and hope morning would come sooner than later.

But suddenly, a bloodcurdling scream rang through the village!

It sounded like someone was in immense pain. The five of us looked around at each other, trying to rack our brains figuring out what could be making that noise. It was unlike anything we had heard in Minecraft before!

Sage moved to the window looking out into the village to see what it was, and what he saw was enough to make even the bravest of heroes shudder!

One of the villagers was out there, and the Zombies were digging into him in a much more gruesome manner! Digging their ugly green nails into his wrists to hold him down as they opened their mouths, seemingly unhinging their jaws! That alone was hideous enough, but the worst part was the awful explosive crunching sound that happened when the zombie finally bit down, crushing the villager’s head in its mouth!

I had to do something! But what could I do? All we had was a singular wooden sword… and with all those zombies out there, it would be a death sentence trying to fight them off…

“PLEASE!!! NOT MY BABY!!!”

Another villager cried out… that was it! As I pulled out my wooden sword, I dove through the window, causing the glass to shatter everywhere!

“HIVE, NO!!” I heard Sun call out to me, but it was too late. I had to protect these innocent villagers somehow! I found the Zombie that had picked up a baby Villager and quickly stuck my sword into its body. It dropped the baby who quickly ran back to his mommy as it fell to the ground in a poof of smoke, leaving nothing but a pile of stinky rotten flesh!

The minute that mother and son were back in their house, I put two wooden planks in front of their door. The Zombies weren’t getting through that.

But now I was stuck out here. All I could do was fight back the oncoming horde! And combat was not my forte in Minecraft! So I kept running, swerving around them, in an attempt to separate them and make it easier to fight. It seemed to work. I had gotten them separated and was able to fight them almost one at a time!

But it didn’t last long as I felt claws digging into my back! A Zombie had found it’s way behind me and hit me! I quickly turned around to slash at it. I managed to kill it, but not before the horde from before gathered back together and entirely surrounded me.

With just one hit, I stumbled onto my back and was immediately dig into by the zombies! Pain may not have been a thing in this universe, but I still felt like I was going to die! My entire body was vibrating, as if replicating the idea of pain!

I watched my health bar deplete as I closed my eyes… surprisingly enough, I felt myself slowly going unconscious… the last thing I saw was a shade of purple flying through the sky…

Was this it?

Was I really going to die?

And on the first day?

I mentally waved goodbye to all my friends, certain I would never see them again. I could almost hear them screaming and crying now… as my consciousness faded.

“Hive… Hive wake up! Please!”

Thanks. Would you like me to continue it? Cause I’d be happy to!

Oh boy, the time had finally come! Minecraft in NR (New Reality)! Being a casual Minecrafter for a few decades now, I had to get in on this! Of course, I quickly picked up my copy from one of the last remaining GameStops in my area (probably one of the last in my country) and hurried home! All I could think about was the game! I quickly put it into my system and turned it on! A bright flash of white light engulfed me momentarily as I closed my eyes before…

I was here.

I was in Minecraft!

It seemed like I had spawned in a forest biome! A perfect place for my first test! I turned around to face the tree next to me, curled my hand up into a fist and delivered a mighty punch, fully anticipating pain. After all, punching a tree would hurt, right?

Much to my delight, it didn’t. It felt like I barely touched it! And yet, a massive crack formed in the side.

As I continued punching the tree, I saw multiple notifications in the chat log! My friends were joining the server! About five of us in total! Whenever there’s a new game, we always play together and this was no different! We quickly began testing all sorts of different things. How would jumping feel, given how much higher Minecraft players can jump compared to humans? How would our bodies react to fall damage? How would food taste?

Everything worked exactly as we expected it to. Jumping felt natural. Falling sent a painless vibrating feeling through my body as if to indicate pain. Food tasted like what it did in the real world and was also a lot easier to consume.

Soon, the sky was painted a light orange and we had realized just how much time we had wasted testing all these mechanics. Shit. We had to find somewhere to hide and fast.

Luckily, while Sage was scaling a mountain, testing altitude related things, they had noticed a village. We just had to make my way over there, confiscate some beds and we’d be fine. I’d probably log off afterwards since it really felt like I had wasted the entire day playing this game. I was probably hungry in the real world, although I wouldn’t know. Even so, I could really go for some garlic crusted bacon pizza. It almost felt as if the thought was making my hunger bar deple-

“Hey guys?” Allie quickly got our attention with her concerned tone. “The Leave button is… a bit weird.”

We all opened our in-game menus and, much to our surprise, it was just a blank button. I tried pressing it, but when I did, a new message popped up which practically covered our entire sight:

“You’re Trapped!”

We all looked to each other, a newfound level of fear in our faces. Before we could think any more, we received a notification in the chat log.

“Welcome, players, to the toughest game of your life! As you’ve probably noticed, the button to leave your games is gone! This is not a bug! I have trapped you all in this game! You must survive for as long as you can! All the servers will function on Hardcore rules! You will be locked on the hardest difficulty! You only have one life! And the most important rule: If you die in the game, you will die in real life! So play cautiously!”

As we read this, we could all feel our stomachs sink! This was not what we signed up for! What would happen to our bodies in the real world? How would we survive?

I was the first one to shake the terror off, so I looked around at my paralyzed friends and quickly shouted “GET TO THE VILLAGE!!”

Upon this exclamation, everyone burst back into action! We hightailed it to the village, making it at breakneck speeds and locking ourselves up in a surprisingly tiny house!

One of the beds hadn’t been taken, but upon attempting to sleep in it, I was forced out of it as if by a mysterious force, as a message was displayed in my vision.

“You may not rest now, there are monsters nearby.”

I looked out the window and, just as we suspected, a horde of zombies and skeletons was making their way towards us.

“Mystic, block the door!” I exclaimed, prompting our friend Mystic to pull out some wooden planks she had saved and place them in front of the door. We were safe… for now.

It seemed like some of us had started to break into a panic. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling the pressure as well! We were stuck in a death game! I looked around, finding a chest with some bread, an Oak Sapling, and an emerald. All we could do was sit in the house and wait for everything to die down.

Would we be able to survive here? I don’t think any of us had the answer to that question.

Does it matter? Minecraft is an entirely new beast. Make this story your own!