POV: Forgotten Knight

The war was a short one but very brutal.

It was nothing as we have ever seen before. Everything that the enemy touched started to corrupt, and lost men on the battlefield turned against us in the form of monsters.

Nobody knew who started it, and nobody knows who won at the end, we only knew that the portal was closed all of the sudden without a sign.

But the world was too damaged after the war. While the source was blocked, the corruption was still spread through the world and it kept opening small portals for the monsters to spawn at night.

But the corruption didn't just bring monsters to our world, it also started to change blocks, trees, and even people.

So the world decided to cut the broken parts and seal them away with the unbreakable block.

I was snatched away by the word as well, healthy or not, the corruption was too strong for me to oppose, so I joined their ranks not too long after.

But I was different from the other monsters, I was special, and I was chosen by darkness to rule over the fortress.

The world has forsaken me, but the unknown embraced me and accepted me.

So I killed everyone in the fortress, raised them as skeletons, and put them to guard it.

I was the ruler of the undead fortress for hundreds of years, I was something that I couldn't even dream to be when I was alive.

But it all ended abruptly once a sudden structure appeared out of nowhere in the middle of my fortress.

It was a frame made of obsidian, but inside the frame was an image of a room filled with blocks long forgotten by time.

It was a portal to my original world.

"Finally! I shall rule the world that abandoned me. Fear shall run through their bones!"

But before I could gather my skeleton army, a group of people covered in enchanted diamond armor started to attack my base.

They went through my soldiers like they were made of paper. I only managed to escape since I was the only monster with diamond armor.

But with that defeat, my hatred towards the living only grew stronger, I wanted revenge, but I was too weak to get it.

So I looked for an opportunity, I looked for a chance to strike back.

I saw them explore the new world, I saw them trade with the locals that I did not even bother to acknowledge their existence. I waited days, months even years.

It would've been impossible task for the living, but I did not have such weakness, I was undead.

I'm a withered skeleton.

And one day, the opportunity came. Suddenly the reality around the fortress started to bend, the space was in conflict with itself and an explosion was heard in the portal room.

Everyone at the fortress started to panic, so I took that opportunity and attacked in the confusion.

By the time they realized what was happening, I already killed the most powerful people, the rest were not a challenge to me.

Once I took over the fortress, I raised them to join my cause as withered skeletons. They were more powerful than any normal skeletons, and they had better armor as well.

But unfortunately, they were still as dumb as the original ones, only following my orders without much thinking.

I finally looked at the final room.

The portal room.

The place looked awful, like the aftermath of a big explosion, but the most important piece was still there, the portal was in the middle of the crater, but with the exception that it didn't show the other dimension. It was only an empty obsidian frame.

I didn't know how to turn on the portal, but I knew that they knew how to, and they could do it whenever they wanted. They could come back whenever they finished with the aftermath of the explosion and retake the fortress.

So I decided to repair the room and filled it up with my best archers and warriors.

And waited, waited for weeks, for months, I waited for years, and then hundreds of years. And then the living finally came, but not from the portal.

The living infiltrated my fortress from the outside instead of the other dimension.

They were 3 strangers with just some iron armor. A pitiful sight to see, but the desire for revenge on the living was still strong as ever.

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"I shall take your souls, pitiful mortals."

POV: ??????

We looked at the fortress in front of us. It was different from what remembered in the game, it was much bigger and much more complex.

There were some additional rooms that I didn't recognize, every one of them still in the same style as the rest of the fortress.

"Is this what a fortress looks like? No wonder it's called like that, I don't see anyone being able to attack it."

Said Bobby in awe.

"This is not how a normal fortress looks like. This is way bigger than the ones that your kingdom has."

"Why do you sound so surprised by the fortress, weren't you suppose to know about this?"

"I did know the location of the fortress from some ancient text that I found where my ancestors traded with its inhabitants. But I've never been to this place myself, it was too far and the outsiders stopped making contact with us hundreds of years ago so there was no reason to check it out."

Blue Flame responded to the question. Which did not help me lessen my worries about the undead army patrolling the walls of the fortress.

This was supposed to be an unclaimed fortress with a few monsters here and there where we could deal with them.

Not this unbeatable fortress.

"I think we should give up on this fortress. I don't see how we can defeat so many monsters packed in one place. And we don't even know what controls them."

I said that with regret.

The journey was long and tiring, and the sudden surprise did little to boost our morale.

"I don't think we should give up yet, It's true that we can't capture the fortress, but we can gather some information at least."

Blue suggested.

"The security looks pretty tight, how do you suggest doing that?"

"Explorer, how fast can you mine?"

"Faster than normal people, why?"

"Well use your mining skills with this."

He said while taking out a bowl with strider's milk.

"You want to swim in lava and climb through one of those pillars?"

Blue just nodded his head in affirmation.

I'm sure this could go wrong in so many ways, but I'm also more intrigued by the chance to do an infiltration mission, through a lake lava on top of that.

"Let's give it a try then."

We drank magic soup and went for a swim in the lava.

The sensation was weird, it felt like we had an invisible layer of protection between the melting lava and us.

I didn't feel anything but the heat was still strong.

We managed to arrive at one of the pillars and I started to mine it with my iron pickaxe.

The pillars were big in length and height, so it took an hour to arrive at the top, luckily we didn't need torches since there's no such thing as total darkness in the Nether.

We carefully looked at the long halfways and bridges for any skeleton patrol.

We then quickly entered the closest room once we saw that it was clear to move.

The room was small but had a few chests in it, I opened one and I was shocked by what I saw.

"Why is this chest full of stacks of blase roads?"

Both Bobby and Blue shoved me to the side to see the chest as well. Then with trembling started to take out the items.

"T-this is such wealth. Who would leave those just laying around?"

The rest of the chests were also full of different ingredients for potion brewing.

Blue and Bobby quickly filled their inventory of those Ingredients, and I took only a stack from the rare or annoying ones to get such as rabbit's foot, Glistering melon, Ghast tear, pufferfish, golden carrot, phantom membrane, and of course fermented spider eye.

I didn't have a lot of items on me, but with the new stacks, it started to get full. And I'm more than sure that my brewing friends we're filled to the brim with these items.

I looked around the room more carefully in case I missed something, and we did.

In the corner of the room was a brewing station on a brick block and it looked like it had 3 potions made and forgotten.

I opened that inventory of the station and was shocked to find that it had invisible potions.

"Hey guys, stop looting and look at what I found."

The two of them stopped and looked at the two potions in my hands.

"Is that what I think it is?"

Bobby then quickly took a potion from my hand.

"It is! it's a level 6 potion, the invisibility potion. This is something few people ever achieved in the whole history of my kingdom."

"That means we can use this in case of emergency if we get found out."

Bobby looked offended by the suggestion of using this priceless treasure, but he understood the intentions and nodded his head.

Each one of us had a potion in case of emergency, which was better then nothing.

This was only the first room and we already were shocked by its riches. So we decided to risk it and explore further.

But it wasn't as easy as the first time we did it, there were more patrol teams walking the hallways, and we almost got caught a few times. But by accident, we found out that while the skeletons were moving organized, that didn't mean they knew what they were doing.

We found out that the skeletons weren't actually smart, I don't think their even satinet. They were more like robots following an order, and if suddenly a block appeared in the middle of the road, they just passed it like it was supposed to be there.

So whenever we saw a group of skeletons coming toward us we just boxed ourselves and let them pass.

This way we managed to check a few more rooms. Unfortunately, we didn't find too much like in the first one, the most we got was a chest with a few stacks of gold which Blue Flame was more than happy to take them.

We continued to explore the fortress until we got closer to the center. For some reason, the patrol teams got fewer than before, and then we saw something different than usual.

At the end of a hallway stood a lone skeleton, guarding the entrance of next room. But it wasn't a normal skeleton, this skeleton was equipped with iron armor, and instead of a stone sword it had an iron one.

"What should we do? I don't think it would move anytime soon from there, and we can't dig our way there either."

"Well there's only one, so I think we can take him as long as we don't get hit by the sword. I don't know how withering debuff feels like, and I don't want to find out either."

I was supposed to get its attention while they hid. Once the skeleton passes the wall the two of them will quickly attack it from behind and kill it.

The two of them were a bit hesitant but accepted the plan.

I then walked in the middle of the hallway in plain view.

"I'm here you uh... you ugly!"

The skeleton just tilted its head before coming towards me with the sword ready to fight.

I turned the opposite way and started to run, with the skeleton right behind me.

Once I passed the meeting point I quickly turned and blocked with my shield the incoming sword.

"Attack now!"

When I said that the head of the skeleton just flew out of its body hitting the floor hard.

But instead of the monster just dropping to its knees and die, he just started to frantically swing its swords in hopes to hit someone.

We were taken by surprise but managed to gather ourselves and attack the skeleton in coordination.

After a few heavy swings, the skeleton finally stopped moving.

"I did not know that they can do that, I hope we don't -"

But before I could finish my thought I was interrupted by the sound of footsteps walking toward us.

We all looked where the skeleton was guarding and saw in horror how a group of skeletons in full iron armor marched towards us.

"Oh no, RUN!"