The almost gallant figure standing between the squad of armored eldritch humanoids and the strange woman boldly endures a powerful blow from an enraged and tall figure. The blow has the force to shatter bone, but since it only collides with a shield it does nearly no harm to the young man who opts to tank it.
The mysterious man has been transformed by perks he possesses, perks which have transformed him on every level. The perks he is affected by are not subtle things that only slightly affect him, they are powerful esoteric properties that have transformed him on every level.
One perk that is vitally affecting him at this very moment is an attractiveness perk named “Eye of the beholder”. This remarkable thing has made him more attractive than it is possible for humans to be, transforming him aesthetically in such a way that to be in his presence is akin to to being in the presence of an angel of beauty or demon of seduction on a purely physical level. He possesses a handsomeness that transcends species, and that, coupled with his gallantry is very powerful.
He has lovely looking, handsomely messy brown hair and powerful though slender muscles. He has changed, somewhat, on a physical level since he’s arrived in this world due to perks he possesses. His growth has been magnified by perks he possesses and that, coupled with the busyness of his daily life, has resulted in him becoming both stronger and stronger looking as a result of the labor he does every single day.
He lashes out with the glowing sword in his hand, aimed at the knee of the tall monster he is fighting. His blade darts through the air between it and his target and strikes true, causing the monster to fall even as it lets out an incredibly loud wail of pain. At the same time the area around the monster’s knee begins to radiate white light, the potent effects of the holy nature of the weapon dealing extra damage to the monstrous figure.
The other endermen, ten in total, hear this and scream in anger right before they charge at the fierce warrior. The warrior does not look up at them and instead he forcibly wrenches his blade from the knee of the fallen enderman he is confronting and using it to smoothly decapitate the creature.
As its purple blood flies into the air, Joaquin smiles and looks up at his foes. Rips and tears appear in front of the creatures and the woman the man is rescuing watches as the endermen suddenly vanish into thin air.
Their angered screaming doesn’t vanish but it does suddenly sound like it’s coming from elsewhere, some place noticeably far away. A pair of the ten of them scream for a bit longer before suddenly stop screaming, having taken enough fall damage to end them instantly after landing on tall ledges in another part of the cave, but Joaquin notices that not all of them do and is only barely able to react in time to turn into a blow that hits him with bone shattering force and send him reeling back. Joaquin is decidedly grateful to the nature of Minecraft which causes him to only feel pain for an instant, as the blow hits hard enough to actually lift the man off of the ground.
Two of the remaining eight endermen focus on the enderwoman. They also safely endured Joaquin’s dimensional trickery, and through the same method as their friends: by teleporting. They appear right in front of her brandishing their weapons, and lifting them up to strike her down as Joaquin deals with the enderman in front of him.
The two mannequins dart at the endermen readying themselves to strike down their target, but they are brutally and violently intercepted by the remaining six endermen. Three of them tackle each of the mannequins, and proceed to attempt to wail on the curious beings, but they are quickly annoyed to find that the agile mannequins are not quickly struck down. The creatures have been being instructed in how to fight by the constructed guardian at night while their master has been sleeping, and the end result of that is directly visible as the mannequins dexterously prolong their lives by dodging countless blows, and even attempted stabs at the hands of their foes.
A powerful looking enderman glares at Joaquin and cusses in the eldritch speech of the monstrous race. The hateful monster’s gaze is so focused on the face of the enemy who has slain three of its companions that he doesn’t notice when the blade in Joaquin’s hand is suddenly replaced by an open, modern water bottle which Joaquin instantly and abruptly douses the enderman with. The liquid in the bottle is not water, which the enderman realizes instantly. Joaquin has doused the enderman in holy water, derived from an item that the jumper owns, and the enderman is suddenly forced to reel away from the enemy in front of him as the water’s twofold harm is felt by the rampaging monster.
The enderman doesn’t even get to scream as pain courses through his body. The first sort of pain is almost a normal feeling, like the sensation of eating something too spicy and feeling the heat spread through one’s whole body. The second kind of pain, on the other hand, is far less natural. It’s the sensation of light and life coursing through a body made of darkness, of life-energy colliding with weaponized, sapient entropy. The pain is so visceral that it stuns the part of the enderman’s brain capable of sapient thought. Joaquin capitalizes on this, and he tackles the monster, right as he opens a tear in reality high above the fighting behind the creature and sends him out of the fight, by making the creature plummet to his death.
Joaquin turns in time to see the pair of endermen swing their weapons towards the woman he is endeavoring to protect and he reacts by violently outstretching his hands and projecting two subtle rips in reality. The edges of the swords the endermen are swinging disappear for a second before another pair of rips appear behind the heads of the endermen and the blades of their weapons reappear, impaling them on each other’s swords. Their blades violently penetrate their own heads and dark blood appears on the swords when their ends emerge out of the other ends of the heads of the eldritch monsters.
The figure doesn’t even turn as he faces the enderwoman and uses his inventory to equip a few more bottles of holy water. He chucks them at the ground near the strange endermen attempting to pummel the mannequins and listens as the creatures are hit by the splashing water, screech in pain, and are promptly defeated one by one by the mannequins with methodical, singular strikes since the creatures are stunned. The sounds of experience orbs hitting the ground fill the air as several endermen are unceremoniously dispatched.
“Whoa… That was crazy.” I mutter as the final two endermen I am fighting fall to their knees, and then fall forward before vanishing in puffs of smoke and leaving behind a pair of eyes of ender. My mind is teeming with new memories, ones I now own as a result of defeating the attackers who were aiming for this woman’s head, but I ignore them for now. I dart forward and with a thought teleport, activating my newest ability, over to the side of the tall, hurt woman I have just rescued.
The sensation of teleporting is a strange one, like I have just taken a long, unwieldy step and only barely avoided falling. Still, I do not fall, and when I reach the side of my new ally I look her and appraise her using “Upgrade”, a potent “Enchanter” perk in my possession that lets me learn the qualities and traits an object or person possesses as well as allowing me to learn their current state.
A text box appears in front of me that outlines the abilities and traits possessed by this figure. Some of her abilities are almost a touch like mine, which is both strange and exciting. She has some knowledge of topics like teleportation, including technology that can allow for teleportation, and she has some knowledge of alchemical magic.
She has a name I learn, memorize, and instinctually recognize that I cannot even begin to pronounce it, so I don’t even try, but I do immediately learn something interesting: she has been poisoned by something dubbed “Water venom”, which I realize must be why she’s so out of it. Water is, somehow, harmful to endermen, so if there is water in “Water venom” then it makes sense that she'd be in pain and out of it.
I order the mannequins near me to collect the weapons and then go help with putting up the wall so that we can leave, even as I kneel down next to the wounded woman. She is still out of it but I reach into my inventory and I equip a handy bottle filled with a strange silver liquid. This is but one of the potions I made and had on hand, just in case something bad happened during this conflict and as I shut my eyes I feel quite happy that I prepared this in advance.
The silver liquid is a “Neutral Potion”, an amorphous, flexible liquid that is receptive to supernatural energies and mystical intent. By holding a bottle filled with the stuff I can morph it into a potion based on a spell in my arcane arsenal. I could make a harmful liquid that I can use as a sort of splash potion, like I used my holy water bottles, or I could make something restorative. I intend to make something restorative.
I concentrate on the silver liquid and I envision the arcane energies inside of me, fuel I expend whenever I cast anything more complex than the simplest spells in my magical arsenal. I will the energy to transform from its idle, stem-cell-like state, and to turn into potent healing and curative energy. I feel the liquid in the bottle in my hand begin to bubble as the “Neutral Potion” is morphed into a potent potion of restoration, which I immediately and ungently administer to the creature.
The woman imbibes the liquid, which is still silver, and as she does I watch her body begin to subtly glow. Her eyes shift as she drinks the potion and I see sense begin to return to them, al while I feel strength and vitality begin to return to her. As it does I hear the distant sounds of combat getting less and less intense, and I watch the tiny amount of light in the cave beginning to disappear as more and more of the wall sealing this place off begins to get placed.
When the woman is done with drinking the potion she groans in pain, but her purple eyes flutter fully open and she studies me. I smirk but don’t look at her, instead I tilt my head up and glance at the distant combat.
I can see my guardian combatting a number of undead corpses. Rebis is in mid-air, benefiting from the fact that I have passively been training the perk which allows her to exist at all, and fighting skeletons, zombies, and creepers up on ledges a fair distance from me. My mannequins have downed potions and I am watching as the arcane liquid coursing through them heals each of them, since they were tackled by gigantic endermen. Behind me the mannequins tasked with installing the wall are hard at work.
I glance up at the natural ceiling that defines the upper boundaries of the cave. As I do I imagine creating a small hole up on the surface and just dropping alchemical weapons into the cave and destroying anything that may spawn here before leaping down and using torches and other light generators to illuminate the cave. I mentally map out how many resources it’d take for me to do this, as I already have the enchanting skills needed to turn objects into light sources, I’d just need to see how bright I could make objects.
I eventually refocus and smile as I look at shut my eyes and turn in the direction of the woman I have saved. The darkness behind my eyelids isn’t a whole lot darker than the cave, especially as the light creeping into the cave grows a bit dimmer every few seconds.
“Hey there. My name is Joaquin. How are you doing, Eliza?” I ask, referring to her by the first few letters of her very long name. For the first time I allow a part of my mind, specifically the part of my mind that can mentally multitask, to focus on the memories coursing through me.
The part of my mind that can mentally multitask, a part of me empowered by a perk named “Magic Weaver”, focuses on the memories I acquired when I defeated the endermen who came to assasinate “Eliza”.
I possess a number of memories from each of the warriors I have defeated, including the ones slain by the mannequins, but they primarily show me the same sequence of events from different angles. I get to see a view of an underground city, but only as a sort of silent movie with occasional text boxes to provide context.
I know that the city of the endermen is not located far from here, though it is far enough that I’d have to go out of my way to interact with it anytime soon, a city of darkness where endermen live and serve creatures of darkness known as “Sculk”. I instinctively realize that this city must be where the assassins are from! In this city the endermen receive telepathic communiques communicating their next orders after every assination.
I watch a montage of the assassins participating in a series of assassinations targeting a range of lifeforms, from villagers and illagers alike, as well as other creatures like specific undead and even other members of their own kind. In between each assassination they’d return to the city and get new orders, as well as new equipment, such as new weapons like the strange “Water Venom” and even, on occasion, new armor to keep themselves safe.
The assassins never falter in their execution of their orders, but curiously when they get the order to assassinate the woman they came here to kill none of them recognized her from the city. This doesn’t stop the telepathic handlers the assassins have from revealing bits and pieces of information about Eliza, which is curious as it suggests that the sculk get some sort of external knowledge about the world beyond their patches of sculk blocks. I wonder if she is an alien of some sort, or simply not an influential figure until the strange creatures of darkness decided to kill her off for reasons the ender-assassins never bothered to question.
As I see their skill I mentally note that the reason I succeeded in a fight against them is because I have stuff they could have never seen coming. My teleportation abilities are both different from and superior to their own, and I have nasty weapons in the form of holy gear and holy water, plus my ability to handle their strikes, provided I see them coming, is not something endermen can counter. If I had been forced to rely on Minecraft’s normal gear and lost my abilities I absolutely would have lost against them.
Ten Endermen versus one annoying lad with subpar gear? That’s a short fight unless someone is using truly ridiculous Minecraft strategies.
“Uh… Thank you, stranger.” “Eliza” eventually tells me, moments after I finish giving myself a snapshot view of the memories of the dead entropy-monsters I absorbed. I chuckle and grin at her even as I get up and offer her my hand. She takes it without hesitation, and I look away from her as I open my eyes while pulling her off of the ground. Behind us the wall is nearly completely formed, and I take this moment to take a breath and prepare to project my voice.
“Alright, ladies and mannequins, we’re leaving! Go and grab a teleporter, either Rebis or myself, and hold on tight.” I command, my voice exploding out of me and resounding throughout the cave supernaturally loudly. This, caused by a bardic perk, causes Rebis, who has been using “Rips and tears” to facilitate her movement, darts from ledge to ledge and occasionally fights in midair while distracting ranged foes, to turn towards me and nod.
I watch as she glances at the ground and teleports to it, crossing a distance of perhaps sixty feet in the air in a single instant thanks to the power I received from killing endermen and having “Killer Parkourist”. The instant that she hits the ground she glances at my guardian and teleports beside her, before grabbing her in a hug and then teleporting behind me, appearing on top of the wall. She calls out to me and tells me to hurry up.
I place a hand on the enderwoman’s shoulder and quietly ask if I can leave and bring her along for the ride. I can feel her heart hammering in her chest, but she simply nods and I teleport us to a place that Rebis can see, an area on the other side of the wall.
The instant we appear there Rebis instructs the guardian to place the last stones in the wall, and to touch the mannequins. Her instructions are followed mere attoseconds before Rebis teleports the creatures next to us, though several creatures are hugging Rebis and the guardian, as the two of them have awkwardly managed to transport six mannequins with them.
“Okay… I guess we did it.” I remark, as I study everyone. My guardian is covered in foul green blood, Rebis’s clothes are stained with white dust from the bones of the skeletons she fought, and the mannequins who fought alongside me are still a bit banged up, but no one is permanently injured, or even still hurt… And we have Eliza with us now. I momentarily wonder about what to do when I begin to hear groans from the other side of the wall. The sounds allow me to easily make a choice regarding what to do and where to go. If I want to conquer the cave I can just use the strategy I came up with a few minutes ago. Bombing and then illuminating the place is a perfectly fine, viable strategy here. And I can’t do it right now, I’d need more magic than I currently have.
“Alright, the time for introductions is not now. Eliza and I are going to move. Everyone else… it’s time to say bye, for a few minutes at least.” I remark, which causes Rebis to grin at Eliza before she vanishes. No one else pays the stranger any mind as they opt to return to my inventory. They vanish nearly instantly, and Eliza and I are left to ourselves. I turn to face her even as I summon my sheele.
“Hello friend. Please climb up there and show me what you see.” I say to the elemental, which nods at me, before leaping off of my shoulder and flying away. I finally turn to face Eliza. I have a curious look on my face, I can feel it from the way that my smile feels on my face, but I can’t help it.
“Okay Eliza, I know you must have many thoughts and questions, but we should probably get moving.” I exclaim, even as I frown gently. Her eyes narrow in suspicion as she studies me and I sense her keen mind appraising her situation.
“I… I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I have at least a few pressing questions. First, who are you? You are calling me by a pet name of some sort but I don’t know how you know even that much of my name.” She says, asking a reasonable question. I think for a moment about how to answer it. As I do, Rebis highlights a cleric ability I possess, which I decide to incorporate into my answer with a gentle smile.
“I possess unusual powers. One of the powers I possess is the ability to take some memories from those I defeat. The endermen hunting you were assassins from a dark, underground city. Their memories included a bit of information about you.” I exclaim, telling the truth though also opting not to reveal the full length of my knowledge or the precise source of my knowledge, instead substituting a true source of knowledge in the exact place of where I learned what I know. I pause for a moment as “Confession” activates and I watch Eliza’s face relax.
“My name is Joaquin. I am a traveler. I have set up a camp not far from here. We are still close to where you were pursued, so I think we should leave and go there. Soon.” I tell her, and she pauses before eventually nodding at me. I smile and put my hand on her shoulder again. I teleport the two of us put to the top of the canyon, and when we reach the top I let out a gentle laugh.
“How can you do that?!” She asks, as she almost falls over dealing with the strange feelings that accompany teleportation and I tell her that I’m something new, not like anyone she’s ever met. This activates “Confession” yet again, and she silently frowns but still accepts my answer.
It only takes me a few moments to begin to guide Eliza, my new friend, to where I previously planted the cube that can be transformed into my portable, private cabin. In a matter of minutes I’ll go ahead and plant the cube in the same place and reactivate it.
As Eliza and I begin to make our way back to my home base it doesn’t escape my notice that she grows more relaxed as we get further and further away from the cave. That’s fair, it’s where she almost died after all. It takes us the better part of an hour to make it from the canyon back to the beach, but by the time a full sixty minutes have passed since I left the canyon, Eliza and I are back inside of the cabin and she is looking around in awe of the place.
