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Tragedy swims through the dark swamp as lightning lights the hell around him. o Hurry guys!o he shouts to the others, o we have to make it out of here alive!o

Menace tries to reply, but chokes on swamp water while slowly, slowly sinks on life-taking quicksand. You realize the situation is hopeless as you struggle help Menace. It is the hell of a living nightmare.

You finally drag Menace out and hope for some miracle, or at least for Foxy to come back and help you out of this living nightmare.



o That deserter,o Tragedy snarls, his face twisted in a pure look of hatred, as if he were reading your thoughts, o Io ll get her back one day. She left us to starve and rot to death after she took all of our food and animals thoughtlessly. How thoughtful of her! I just love this kind of people!o


You smile a bit in these dire circumstances; Tragedy had a great reputation for being caustic and sarcastic, even at the most gloomy of times. You then flinch again as lightning strikes a tree fifty blocks ahead of you. You see a faint flash of fire, then a smoldering of flames as the rain instantly puts it out. As wolves howl in the distance, a shiver runs down your spine.


o We must continue,o Tragedy urges, o I dono t want to stay here forever and watch our little remaining food supply slowly run out.o



o Just wait until Menace wakes up. Then we can continue and get out of this wasteland,o you reply. As you finish your sentence, a loud boom fills your eardrums and pain shoots up your back. The world around you slowly, slowly, and ever so slowly, fades away and disintegrates into a dark, empty world devoid of anything except darkness. And more darkness. And despair.











It all started around three Minecraft months ago (one Minecraft day and night is around twenty minutes). You are Salvage, a plain, average-looking teenage boy with dark blue eyes and jet-black hair. You always wear an Old Navy T-shirt and worn jeans, no matter what the weather.


You, at age fifteen, have few friends; the only friends that play Minecraft, your favorite game, are Menace, a disgraceful-looking, hulk-of-a-boy giant, who towers above most adults and is a literal o human scarecrow,o Foxy, a sly-looking, tomboy girl, who looks like she could be your best friend and your worst enemy at the same time, and, last but not least, Tragedy, a nimble and clever adolescent whom is apparently one of the most unfortunate people you know.


Ito s a stormy night. Lightning booms in the distance as Tragedy, Foxy, and Menace have a sleepover at your house. After a wonderful dinner of your favorite Mexican food, you and your friends get down to work. Menace hosts the server, and just as you and your friends start to test the server, it happened. Lightning strikes the house as the best and worst event of your life slowly unravels.

---

You groan as you slowly come to your bearings. Your body aches all over as you stand up and observe your surroundings. o Why is everything so blocky and Minecraft-like?o you wonder to yourself. You see Menace a few blocks away lying face down on the grass; Tragedy is moaning next to him.


o BOO!o You jump, and see Foxy right in your face. o Io ve figured out what happened after I woke up a few minutes ago,o she tells you, o but I wono t tell you until the others wake.o You grunt and start to flex your limbs and walk around. You are in what it seems like to be a Minecraft o plainso biome, with a forest biome to the north and a lake to the east. You notice Tragedy struggling to his feet and hurry to help him.

o Thanks, bro,o he mutters, o Now where in the world are we?o

o Thato s what Io d like to know,o Menace agrees.o Hey guys!o Foxy calls from the forest, o Over here!o You, Tragedy, and Menace half-walk and half-crawl to her. By the time you finally reach her after what it seems to be ages, she already cut down a few trees by punching them.


o Okay, now what?o Menace questions.


o Now, I tell you why and how we are here. I read this on a Minecraft Wiki article a few days ago. It was something like if you are charged with extreme electricity---in our case, the lightning that struck the house---, you somehow get zapped into the game of Minecraft. The only way to get out is to kill the Enderdragon, or to die while if youo re in hardcore mode. We have no idea if we are, though. If we die and are not, then we get trapped in the Nether, the hell of Minecraft that Io m sure you guys all know, or, even worse, the Void, an eternal world of darkness and despair that lies beneath the lowest bedrock layer of any world, which Io m sure you guys also know.o


o Cool story!o Tragedy replies with a touch of amused sarcasm. o Leto s all punch trees now; ito s already noon.o He instantly goes to punch the nearest birch tree. You and your friends clear away a huge section of the forest when the sun begins to set. You and Tragedy build a shelter while Menace is on the guard for hostile mobs and Foxy continues to punch trees.


Once nightfall arrives, you and your friends are safe in your wooden house. Tragedy and Foxy make a makeshift strip mine and gather lots of cobblestone, as you craft and accord tools and swords with the wood and cobblestone your friends had gathered. Menace amuses himself by punching zombies and creepers to death outside.


After you and your friends continue to do this for a few days, you and Foxy make a wheat farm and lure several cows and a few sheep to your improved cobblestone shelter. You and your friends have a stable food supply now from the wheat (three wheat is one loaf of bread) and cows (cows drop steak when killed), as well as beds to sleep in when ito s night (beds are made from wool and wood). Tragedy has mined nonstop for along time now, saying that he isno t tired due to the fact that sleep is optional in Minecraft; he had already found lots of coal and iron ore, as well as some redstone and even some gold. Because of this, everyone now has full iron armor, tools, several swords, and a clock to tell whether it is day or night.


Just when you are longing for some excitement or at least some entertainment, Tragedy makes an exciting discovery. In his expanded strip mine, he finds a huge deposit of about twelve diamonds, one of the most valuable, useful, and rare items in the game. With those diamonds, you make everyone a sword and Tragedy a pickaxe and a shovel for his mining. A few Minecraft hours later, Tragedy surprises everyone with his Nether portal, made out of obsidian that only a diamond pickaxe can mine.


o Leto s go,o he shouts to the others, o we need Blaze rods (which drop from killed Blazes that are found only in the Nether) anyway to craft Eyes of Ender if we are to ever find the End, where the Enderdragon is located.o One by one, you and your friends step in the portal. You go right before Foxy, the last person, and just as you start to warp into the Nether, you see her with a huge grin of her fox face as she starts to raid the community chest. Too late to stop her, you curse her as you warp into the hell of Minecraft.





Once your eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness of the overabundance and brightness of lava in the Nether, you hurry to catch up to Menace and Tragedy and tell them the bad news. As you repeatedly try to call them, a Ghast ambushes you from behind and deactivates your portal. You curse again and pray that Tragedy or Menace had thought to bring flint and steel to relight the portal, just in case, as you struggle to catch up to them while avoiding the Ghasto s fireballs at the same time.



When you finally catch up, they already found a Nether Fortress (where Blazes are found) and are wandering around in search of a o Blaze spawnero (a monster spawner in which specific mobs are constantly spawned). After you tell them the news, they shrug you off and tell you that she cano t find a stronghold (where and End portal is located) without Eyes of Ender (crafted from Ender pearls and Blaze powder [from Blaze rods]; they can be thrown to show the direction of the nearest stronghold).

After what it seems like to be days, Menace finally spies a Blaze spawner and you, Tragedy, and Menace proceed to gather as many Blaze rods as possible. After obtaining about a stack (one stack on items is usually sixty-four) of rods, you and Tragedy stand by and watch as Menace kills one after another without exhaustion or injuries, while you and Tragedy have both.


o Enough,o you finally mutter, o we have enough rods to make ten stacks of Eyes of Ender, as long as we have enough Ender pearls (dropped from killed Endermen). Leto s go back now. Dono t worry; I have flint and steel.o

---

You, Tragedy, and Menace trudge through desert, swamp, and tundra biomes, following the purple line of Eyes of Ender to the nearest stronghold. After what it seems like centuries, you run out of Eyes of Ender and so does Tragedy, right in the middle of a huge swamp wasteland. However, Menace still has a stack of Blaze rods and fifteen Ender pearls. Before you get a chance to tell him to craft them into Eyes of Ender before your food supply runs out, a thunderstorm strikes and leaves Menace sickly paralyzed after a dangerous encounter with quicksand.


As you lay by him, waiting for him to wake up in the miserably cold and soaked conditions of the thunderstorm, a loud boom fills your eardrums and pain shoots up your back. The world around you slowly, slowly, and ever so slowly, fades away and disintegrates into a dark, empty world devoid of anything except darkness. And more darkness. And despair.

---

You feel yourself falling and falling through a world devoid of anything except darkness and despair, just like Foxy had described. Falling, falling, and still falling, for eternity... your head aches and you cano t thinko ¦ you are still fallingo ¦ BOOM!


You suddenly wake up in a cold sweat and see that you are in your bedroom, with Menace, Foxy, and Tragedy watching attentively at you.


o What happened?o you ask them.


o It turns out we were in a hardcore world, and we all o diedo when lightning struck the tree we were under. Additionally, it turns out that time froze in the real world when we were stuck in Minecraft.o Menace replied.


o Oh, and it turned out that Foxy wanted to stay in Minecraft as long as possible, so when we already o diedo and were falling in the void, she went on and lived a life in Minecraft,o Tragedy explained. o However, she eventually got bored and missed the real world, so she decided to kill the Enderdragon. And she did. The end!o


o Yay,o she muttered, clearly uninterested.

---

You and your friends are playing Minecraft again right after that conversation.

o Hey,o you say, o do you guys want to try Skyrim, a really fun game I discovered a few days ago? Io m really good at it.o

o Oh weo ve played it for weeks,o your friends all reply at the same time. o Okay.o



After a few minutes in Skyrim, lightning strikes the house again.

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