Still lying in bed I simply stared at the ceiling and made that sound Hurrrrrr hurrrrrr hurrrrrr I’d trade two hundred emeralds for something that could go over my ears and block that awful noise A pillow just isn’t enough Sigh This is the life of a villager We’re helpless against the mobs Monsters that is They arrive almost every night and there’s nothing we can do except hide in our little houses I wish we could fight them off Unfortunately villagers aren’t allowed to become warriors The village elders say being a warrior is too dangerous The only thing we can do is farm farm farm Harvest harvest harvest And stay indoors all night until the sun comes up Still even if we don’t have any warriors I’ve met some They sometimes visit our village Villagetown They never stay for very long though Just long enough to rest up and trade They don’t look like us at all They have swords and armor And they go exploring And adventuring I sometimes talk to one of them His name is Steve He’s a pretty cool guy A few weeks ago he killed a couple of zombies in our village My family was especially thankful for that One of those zombies had just stood right outside the front door looking in mouth hanging open making the loudest grunting sounds 2
Sometimes I wish I could be like Steve He gets to run around doing whatever he wants Every morning he must wake up and think Oh what will I do today Slay some mobs Explore some temples Find some treasure Meanwhile the most interesting thing I do is collect seeds I often wonder Does Steve have a village Where does he come from The next time I speak with him I’ll have to ask Anyway if I actually defeated a mob some day none of the other kids could call me a noob anymore According to most of them I’m just a noob worthy of my name Runt As you can imagine I get a lot of grief over this name Especially from Max He’s so annoying He always says I’m useless no good He wants to be a librarian and he thinks he knows everything because he’s read nearly every book in Villagetown That really doesn’t mean much at all though because a lot of books in our village totally stink I mean most of Max’s so-called worldly knowledge comes from a series titled The Adventures of Cow the Cow Whatever If I ever become a warrior he’ll be saluting me And after he salutes me he’ll be shining my boots and 3
addressing me as Sir or perhaps Commander and asking me how many slices of pumpkin pie I’d like for lunch Okay so our village is boring at times Here’s another thing I don’t like about it the trading For example if you want some cookies well it’s not like you just go down to the store slam three emeralds onto the counter and call it a done deal No no no In reality you walk into the store hoping the guy selling the cookies is having a good day If he’s not he’s going to hurrrrr for what seems like forever as he thinks about a fair price and the whole time your stomach’s rumbling and you’re telling yourself things like Maybe I should just have a raw potato instead In fact I had to spend a total of ten emeralds on this diary you’re reading right now That librarian totally ripped me off My mom gave me those emeralds for lunch at school If she found out that I spent a week’s worth of lunch emeralds on a diary But I guess the librarian was nice compared to that blacksmith a few days ago He wanted thirty emeralds for a pair of leather boots and the boots weren’t even in new condition Seriously would someone actually pay that much 4
Then again my friend Stump said he once sold a moldy potato to a warrior for five emeralds I guess that warrior was really hungry I have to watch out for more than just traders too Some of the villager kids are real jerks Especially that kid Max He’s always telling these unbelievable stories Well some kids believe him Max likes scaring anyone he can The other day he was telling some kids about a monster called the poo screamer Supposedly a poo screamer is a special type of creeper Creepers are green of course because they’re made out of leaves But a poo screamer is brown because it’s Um Made out of poo When it attacks it doesn’t hiss like normal It makes a loud gurgling sound Or so Max says You really don’t want to be around when one of these things explodes 5
