Dungeon Crawl! Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Mojang AB and Mojang Synergies AB. All right reserved.

  MINECRAFT is a trademark or registered trademark of Mojang Synergies AB.

  Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, and in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  rhcbooks.com

  minecraft.net

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781984850652 (trade)—ISBN 9781984850669 (lib. bdg.)—ebook ISBN 9781984850676

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Prologue: It’s Only Fair to Tell You Now: The Evoker King Wins in the End….

  Chapter 1: “Step into My Parlor!” It’s the Polite Way to Say: “Come Here, I’m Gonna Eat You Now.”

  Chapter 2: Don’t Blame the Scarecrow for Being Creepy. It’s Sort of His Whole Job.

  Chapter 3: All the World’s a Stage. and All of Us, Merely People in Chicken Outfits.

  Chapter 4: You Can’t Go Home Again! (Well, You Can, but You Might Not Like What You Find There.)

  Chapter 5: The Dungeon Welcoming Committee Deserves Zero Stars from a Disappointed Visitor.

  Chapter 6: The Ol’ Trapdoor Trick…I Can’t Believe They Fell for That.

  Chapter 7: The Floor Is Lava! Also, the Walls Are Lava! Oh Man, Everything Is Lava!!

  Chapter 8: There’s No Such Thing as an Unwanted Cookie.

  Chapter 9: Keep Your Head in the Game! But Imagining You’re a Wizard Is Okay, Too.

  Chapter 10: Introducing…Block Party! They’ll Knock Your Block Off!

  Chapter 11: Many Hands Make Light Work. (Lacking Thumbs, Many Feet Tend to Be Less Useful.)

  Chapter 12: Team Po Versus the Block Party (Remix)! In Which Our Noble Heroes Lay Down the Smackdown!

  Chapter 13: The Show Must Go on. Don’t Let It Go on Without You!

  Chapter 14: Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You….

  About Minecraft

  About the Author

  Five unlikely heroes stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark. They had traveled great distances and overcome many threats. Now they were deep underground—deeper than they’d ever been. And they needed to go deeper still.

  The fate of the world depended on the success of their quest.

  The alchemist held out a potion. “Does anyone need healing?” she asked.

  The knight hefted his shield. “Not me. Between my shield and this diamond armor, nothing’s been able to touch me.”

  The rogue twirled her sword. “I’d take another invisibility potion,” she said. “It makes my sneak attack unbeatable.”

  The wizard stroked his beard. “I’m glad you’re on our side, you rascal,” he said, chuckling.

  The ranger strung her bow. “If everyone is ready, we should push forward,” she said.

  They were heroes. They were a team. And they were confident that they could handle anything this dungeon threw at them.

  If only they knew what awaited them.

  If only they knew they had played right into their enemy’s hands.

  If only they knew that this time…they would lose.

  The nights weren’t as scary as they used to be.

  Po Chen looked up at the full moon. It wasn’t like the moon back home. This moon was square and pixelated. Blocky.

  Recently, Po and his friends had discovered that their science teacher’s virtual-reality headsets were special…really special. The headsets transported them here, to a world that looked and behaved almost exactly like Minecraft. As far as Po could tell, he and his friends were somehow inside the game. It was exhilarating and mysterious…and scary.

  Because Po and his friends weren’t alone. This world was full of creatures—or mobs, as they were called in Minecraft. Not all of them were friendly. And many of the most dangerous mobs came out at night.

  Po and his friends used to hide as soon as the sun went down. But that was before they’d found the materials to craft powerful weapons and armor. And more important, that was before they’d learned to work as a team.

  Now, on this night, Po and his friends weren’t hiding. They were hunting.

  “I hope we see a spider soon,” he whispered. “And that’s something I never imagined I’d say out loud.”

  “We’ll find one eventually,” Ash Kapoor said. Po still thought of her as the new girl at school, but she’d been with them for nearly all of their Minecraft adventures. “Spiders are fairly common in forests like this one.”

  “And if we don’t have any luck here, we can start checking caves,” said Morgan Mercado. He was one of Po’s oldest friends. “It might be easier to find spiders in a cave, actually. Their beady little eyes glow red in the dark.”

  Morgan and Ash were like walking encyclopedias for Minecraft. That was helpful…except on the rare occasions when this place didn’t follow the rules.

  “This is so typical,” Jodi Mercado complained. She was Morgan’s little sister, and she loved most animals—just not the creepy-crawly ones. “The one time we want to see a spider, there aren’t any around!”

  “We could split up,” suggested Harper Houston. “Then we could cover a larger area.”

  Harper was one of the smartest people Po had ever met. But that didn’t sound like a particularly smart plan to him.

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “Don’t split the party!”

  “Don’t what the what?” asked Jodi.

  “Don’t split the party,” Po repeated. “In other words: We need to stick together. It’s the first rule of surviving a cooperative game!”

  Harper rolled her square eyes. “I’m sorry. Are we really supposed to take strategic advice from a guy dressed like an insect?”

  Po looked down at his digital avatar skin. He was pretty sure his real body was back in the school computer lab.

  When they were in this game world, Morgan looked like Morgan, and Ash looked like Ash. Their avatars were just blocky versions of themselves. But they didn’t have to be.

  Po liked changing up his look. He put a lot of thought into his appearance, choosing a different skin almost every time he slipped on his headset. Today, he’d chosen to look like a humanoid housefly. His body was black and shiny. He had a pair of cute little wings attached to his back, but they were just for show.

  “I figured somebody needed to be the bait for this spider hunt,” he said, puffing out his chest heroically. “But if you want me to shoo…”

  “You’ll do, Po-fly,” said Jodi, and she patted Po’s wings affectionately.

  Ash was walking at the front of the group, and Po noticed immediately when she stopped moving. She waved her blocky fist to get their attention.

  “Over there,” she whispered, and she pointed through the trees. Po saw a pair of beady eyes in the shadows beneath the forest canopy. They glowed red in the dark.

  “Let’s get a little closer,” Ash said. “Quietly! Then when we’re close, we can surprise it.”

  They crept forward. Po didn’t even
bother taking his sword out yet. A single spider wasn’t much of a threat.

  He moved forward slowly. Slowly…

  Way too slowly.

  “Hey, what gives?” he said. He felt stuck to the ground. Moving forward took far more effort than it should.

  “Cobwebs,” said Ash.

  Ash was right. In the dark forest, Po had missed them completely. They’d all waded hip-deep into a thick net of webbing.

  “Webs in a forest?” Morgan said. “And this many of them? Something isn’t right.”

  “It’s the Evoker King,” said Jodi. “He’s messed with us before. And he’s doing it again.”

  At the sound of their enemy’s name, Po felt a chill. For as long as they’d been coming to this place, they’d seen evidence of a being who called himself the Evoker King.

  They had learned long ago that the Evoker King was able to bend the rules of Minecraft.

  And if that wasn’t scary enough, they had recently learned something new: the Evoker King wasn’t a person at all, but an Artificial Intelligence set loose in the game.

  Po shivered at the thought of what an AI could accomplish in a world built out of computer code.

  Unfortunately, Po’s involuntary shiver sent a vibration through the cobwebs…and right to the spider.

  The red eyes up ahead turned to look at him.

  So did another set of eyes to the left.

  And a third set to the right.

  There were red eyes all around them, even above them, looking down from the trees. They twinkled like bloodred stars.

  Po suddenly regretted his choice of outfit. He didn’t like the idea of being a fly caught in a web.

  And he decided that maybe the nights here were still a bit scary after all.

  The hunters were now the hunted.

  Jodi tugged at the cobwebs surrounding her. She wasn’t completely stuck, but the webs were slowing her down. And the oncoming spiders clearly didn’t have the same problem. They skittered over the sea of webbing at full speed.

  “Somebody do something!” buzzed Po. “I must look delicious right now!”

  “There’s no time to escape,” Ash said. “We have to fight.”

  Morgan held up his sword. “They’re coming right to us, so just be ready to hit them when they get close!” he said. “If you time your swing right, you’ll be okay.”

  “Don’t miss, don’t miss,” Jodi muttered under her breath. She held her sword like a baseball bat. She waited as a spider came closer…closer…

  She swung! The sword knocked the spider backward. It recovered quickly, and it pounced once more, but Jodi was ready. A second hit was enough to destroy it. The spider flopped onto its back and disappeared in a puff of pixels.

  “I should play more baseball,” Jodi said.

  “Don’t let your guard down,” Harper said. “There are more spiders where that came from.”

  “We wanted spiders,” said Jodi, readying her sword again. “We got spiders.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” said Po as the next one moved in for the attack.

  * * *

  When the last spider fell, Jodi and the others turned their attention to the cobwebs. Using their swords, they hacked a path through the sticky strands until they were all free. Ash picked up the strings left behind, and Harper went around to collect the loot that had been dropped by the spiders.

  “Beautiful!” said Harper. “I was hoping for a spider eye or two. But there are at least ten here.”

  “So do you have everything you need for your potions?” Jodi asked.

  “More than I need,” said Harper. “Between these eyes and the blaze powder that the Librarian left for us, we’re in good shape. Let’s head back.”

  “I remember the way,” Ash said. Jodi was always impressed with Ash’s sense of direction. It was just one of many talents Ash had honed as a Wildling Scout.

  Ash led them out of the woods, over a hill, and toward a small blocky structure in the distance.

  “Home, sweet home,” said Morgan.

  “It’s not much of a home,” said Jodi, and she made a face. The bunker was just so basic: a plain gray cube with a single door and no windows. She had wanted to make it a pyramid, or an obelisk—or a llama-shaped tower! But the group had asked her not to spend time or materials on a temporary shelter. It was simply a place to store their beds and crafting materials while they got ready for their next big mission.

  “Spawn point, sweet spawn point,” she said with a sigh.

  There was one artistic addition that Jodi had insisted on, though. She saw it now as they got closer. A blocky human-shaped figure stood watch over their shelter. He had a body of hay, wooden-fence limbs, and a carved pumpkin for a head.

  Jodi had named their new friend Scarecrow Joe.

  “Hi, Joe!” said Po, and he waved at the scarecrow. “What’s new?”

  The scarecrow, of course, said nothing.

  “I don’t think he likes me very much,” Po stage-whispered to Jodi. She giggled.

  Harper got right to work. She walked up to the cauldron that they’d left just outside the shelter. “The spider eyes were the last ingredient I needed. Now I can finally make these potions.”

  “And then we’ll be ready?” asked Morgan.

  “I don’t know if we’ll ever be ready to face the Evoker King.” Harper shrugged. “But after this, we’ll have everything on your list.”

  Morgan hopped up and down with excitement. He had drawn up a wish list of items: potions, arrows, diamond armor, and enchanted swords. They were all things that he thought would help them in their mission.

  Ash put a hand on Harper’s shoulder. “We can do this, Harper. Remember what the Librarian said? She told us that we’d find the source of the Evoker King’s power at the heart of the world. Coordinates zero, zero.” Ash pointed at their map. “We’re close. And we’ve been preparing for days. If we’re not ready now, we never will be.”

  “You’re not ready,” said a voice.

  Jodi looked around. Was it her imagination, or had that voice come from…?

  “Over here,” said the scarecrow.

  “Scarecrow Joe…?” she said.

  “Not Joe,” said Morgan. He drew his sword. “I recognize that voice. It’s the Evoker King!”

  The scarecrow’s eyes lit up. It turned its head to look at them and chuckled.

  “That’s impossible,” Ash muttered. But Jodi knew that the “impossible” was often possible in Minecraft, if you got creative enough. And while the Evoker King wasn’t exactly a creative type, he seemed to be really good at breaking the rules.

  “Put your weapons away,” said the Evoker King. “I’m not here to fight you. I’m here to help.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Po. He didn’t put his sword away, and neither did anyone else.

  “The path forward is full of danger,” said the King. “The item you seek is deep beneath the ground, locked away within a dungeon. You have no hope of reaching it. The dungeon is more than you can handle.”

  “You have no idea what we can handle,” said Ash. “We’re not afraid of your dungeon.”

  “And we’re not afraid of you,” said Morgan.

  “This is your final warning,” said the King. “Turn back now. Turn back…before it’s too late.”

  And with that, the scarecrow burst into flame!

  Jodi flinched from the fire. “Joe!” she cried.

  “That guy is the worst,” Po said.

  “He’s not really a guy,” said Harper.

  “He was trying to scare us,” said Ash.

  “And that means he’s scared,” said Morgan. “He knows we’re close to defeating him!”

  Jodi squinted into the flames. “Do you hear that, Evoker King?” She shook her blocky f
ist in defiance. “We’re coming for you, you creep!”

  Woodsword Middle School was practically vibrating with excitement. Students clustered in tight groups, bouncing in place before the morning bell. The chatter in the hallway was louder than ever.

  Po felt the excitement in his bones. He tapped his fingers on the spinning wheels of his wheelchair. “This might be the best day of school ever,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Morgan said. “The field trip to the landfill was pretty great.”

  “Nobody liked that field trip,” Po said. He turned in his chair and gave Morgan a suspicious look. “What’s wrong, buddy? You look sort of…green.”

  It was true. Morgan looked queasy. There were bags under his eyes, too, as if he hadn’t slept.

  Morgan sighed. “I’m nervous,” he said. “I’ve never tried out for a play before.”

  “None of us have,” said Po. “That’s what makes it so exciting!”

  Po had been quietly waiting for this day for a long time. Years, in fact. Every winter, the older students at Woodsword put on a play. Everyone participated—some as actors, some as dancers or singers, and some on the backstage tech crew.

  When he was a younger kid, Po had marveled at the performances. He could still remember the Russian dances of The Nutcracker, the cardboard-sword duels of Romeo and Juliet, and the papier-mâché chains rattled by the ghosts of A Christmas Carol.

  This year, Po and his friends were “the older students.” It was finally their turn to put on a show.

  Po hoped to be front and center.