George savored his steak, as he took a seat on the hay bales by the farming field. It was a quiet place away from the rest of the crowd of players.
He leaned back resting his head on the tree behind him.
He'd finally made it. He was safe with in a walls of the base. After everything that had happened he was finally with his friends again, relieved he could finally do something about this glitch.
But the more he learned about the world around him, the more out of reach beating the game felt.
There were people out to kill him.
George shuddered at the thought, from the outside world there was almost no way to tell, but once one joined they would be immediately hit with such a reality, and it was frightening to think about the number of players who logged in, only to just die.
And become enderman bait.
"You not going to join everyone?" A familiar voice asked, prompting George to turn around and gave his masked friend a smile. "They're all at the eating hall."
"No, I just figured I'd just meet everyone tomorrow." George replied. "I'm still really tired, and I think my mind needs a break."
Dream chuckled. "Yeah from all the stalking you did of my profile."
George shot up, his glasses falling on his face. "I did not stalk!" He argued over Dream's laughter. "I merely checked and noticed something. Who the hell told you anyways?"
"Bad did." Dream answered, obviously amused by his friend. "You'd have known that if you ate with us, but then again it's not like I can blame you when I'm doing the same thing." He said as he took a seat next to George, pulling out a bowl of mushroom stew.
George smiled, pulling up his shades as the sun's rays hit his eyes. "Why the hell do you guys eat dinner so early?!"
"So we can all get to sleep before night duh." Dream responded. "I mean the base is full of torches, but just in case monsters spawn."
He perked up slightly at the mention of mobs. He hadn't actually encountered one yet, but he wasn't even confident he could beat a simple zombie in his state.
"Interesting." George said, as he took a better look at the base. It was huge, and heavily fortified and well hidden. It must've taken a while to build. "Are like all the players here?" George asked. "You know the ones who aren't trying to kill us."
Dream shook his head. "I mean certainly a lot of them, but no, not all." He said. "There are other bases like this one, led by different people, and we usually team up for the important stuff."
"Interesting." George tilted his head at the new information. "Hmm, who leads this one? Do you, Commander Dreeeaam?" George said, joking exaggerating his friends name causing him to chuckle.
"It's a board of a bunch of really good players." He explained, amused at his friends antics, or more less happy to just be with him in general. "But yeah, I guess I'm a part of that board."
"Interesting." George repeated. "So how many people are here?"
"I don't know, few thousand." Dream shrugged. "We're one of the bigger bases though."
"Inchrestin-" George repeated again causing Dream to roll his eyes under the mask.
"Enough with the inchresting, you're such an idiot." He said making George lightly giggle.
He moved closer to Dream, his childish laugh's echoing. Dream was about to blush at the sudden proximity before George started yelling straight into his ear.
"Interesting! Interesting! Inchresti-"
Dream pushed away his friends face with a laugh.
"Shut up."
Dream lifted up his mask ever so slightly as he took a sip from the stew. His mouth was visible, curved into a bright smile from laughing with his best friend, and George just couldn't look away from it.
Dream's smile.
Dream has dimples.
George felt a slight blush form at the sight of it, immediately turning around to look away. Of course Dream had to have dimples.
George giggled to himself, continuing to eat his food. Why should it matter to him that Dream has dimples?
It doesn't.
It doesn't matter to him whatsoever.
"Mmm! Minecraft steak is so good!" George said, half because it was actually really good, and half because wanted to take his mind off of his friend.
"You're just so used to McDonalds all the time." Dream quipped. "It always tastes the same so you get sick of it after being here so long."
"How long have you been here though?" George asked, Dream looked at him weird assuming he should already know the answer. "Steve said something about time going faster." He explained, Dream's confusion diminishing.
Dream tilted his head at the question, as if counting the time he's been here. "5 months."
George felt a slight pang in his throat as he heard those words. To him it was a few weeks without his best friend, to Dream it was months, but Dream seemed completely fine. And part of him was upset that his friend didn't seem as affected as he was.
George scoffed to himself at the thought, why should that even matter?
"You okay?" Dream asked, bringing George out of his thoughts again. Damn, he needed to stop zoning out.
"Yeah," George assured, but he could tell Dream was skeptical even through his mask, so he decided to play it off as a joke. "I'm fine, just so horribly depressed that you had to live without me for so long."
"I took it as a blessing," Dream joked back, causing George to roll his eyes. His friend was an idiot. "But it's nice to know you just couldn't live without me!"
"What other shit did Bad tell you?" George asked, playfully frowning. He could see his friend's cocky grin, and though he should've been annoyed at it, he couldn't help but smile back.
Dream laughed, relaxing as he took a sip of his stew. "Nothing else."
They both sat in a comfortable silence as they ate, relishing the extra bit of safety that they felt. But that feeling didn't last long as George remembered those players out to kill them. They weren't NPC's. They were real people who had lost hope on beating the game.
And to result to that, how hard did it have to be?
"Do those people have names?" George asked. "You know the ones who want to kill us, as a group do they have a name?"
"I don't think so." Dream replied. "Like Sapnap just calls them 'those assholes' or something stupid like that."
The Brit laughed again. That was totally something their friend would do. "So the 'assholes' are the ones with the ability to respawn, interesting-"
"I think you misunderstood me." Dream cut off his friend causing him so give Dream a confused look. "They can't all respawn, mostly only the generals can."
George still sat there confused, nodding but obviously not fully understanding what his friend was trying to say. "Wait so how do they get respawns again?"
Dream clicked his tongue, realizing he hadn't explained it very well. "Someone. Someone in their group with the power to switch the gamemodes or rather game difficulty of certain players. Look at our hearts George, we're in hardcore."
George took a look at the bottom of his vision with his hotbar and spotted it. His hearts to represent his health had a slightly different texture, the indistinguishable sign of hardcore minecraft.
He winced at the sight of it. Sure, he definitely should have expected it, but now it just felt a bit more real.
George frowned to himself. If the players they were up against were on easy then they would not only be able to respawn, but they would also take much less damage. "Wait so why don't they just make everyone in their group a easy diffuculty then, like wouldn't it be super OP they could just respawn all the time and take crazy risks."
Dream smirked at the question, as if he was expecting it. "The board discussed this a lot already, but we just guessed that changing game difficulty isn't as easy as typing in a command." Dream explained. "So that's kind of their motivation, kill a lot of us, prove they are valuable enough to have respawns granted to them."
George scoffed. "That's sickening."
"Exactly."
"So who is this 'someone' who doesn't want us to beat the game so badly that he'd give out free respawns to kill us?"
Dream stayed silent for a bit, his mood worsening at the thought of it. He thought it was hidden by his mask, but George could notice his fists clenching from the corner of his vision.
"We don't know." He said, almost feeling defeated.
"How? You've been here for what, 5 months?" George asked, hiding his frustration.
Dream just nodded, not bothering to reply. It was evident that it's been eating away at him for a while, and George suddenly felt bad for being frustrated in the first place.
George wanted to stop questioning his friend, ease the tension in the atmosphere and joke around a bit more, but one question kept creeping back into his mind.
"Dream, how did you respawn?"
Dream didn't answer, his expression hidden beneath the mask he pulled back down. He stayed quiet for a bit, as George tried desperately to search his friend. He couldn't tell what he was thinking, nor could he even get a grasp of his expression, but he could sense a strange feeling he bottled up at the mention of those words.
A strange sense of guilt.
"I... I don't know." He finally answered, avoiding eye-contact with his friend. Eye contact that was impossible to begin with due to the mask.
George just wanted to rip the stupid thing off.
He sighed deciding to change the mood.
"Alright where's our progress?" George asked, changing the topic slightly. "Let's beat this game already come on!" He joked, exaggerating a playful sense of enthusiasm.
Dream looked back at his friend with a smile. "We've got about 150 pearls in this base, but in the others' I'd say we have about 800 in total including ours."
George nodded before processing what his friend had just said. He shot his Dream a pure and utter look of confusion, causing Dream to laugh.
"What do you mean 800!?"
"Oh, did I forget to mention, instead of 12 eyes, we need 1200."
[A/N]
Ahh yes, the info dump chapter. Hopefully a lot of stuff has been clarified and answered. If you guys still have questions, feel free to ask and I'll just let ya'll know if its a spoiler.
As of when I'm writing this we have 30 votes and 300 reads let's see how that changes lol.
^^^^
POGGGGG
LAST THING:
School has been giving so much homework it's killing me, like it's way more than I thought it would be. I also have to prep for a math competition (yes it's as depressing as it sounds) so would you guys mind if I changed the update schedule to twice a week? How does every Monday and Friday sound?
^^^
Btw this won't be in effect yet, I'll just let you all know once I need extra time and if ever it will likely only be like this for a couple weeks.