Author's Note

From now on I'll be trying to post new chapters every Wednesday. If for some reason I'm unable to post, then wait till next Wednesday, I'll try to do my best to stay consistent. Anyways, sit back and enjoy

∷ᒷ!¡ᒷ∷ᓵ⚍ᓭᓭ╎𝙹リᓭ

Chapter 5: Repercussions

• Commence (1) On Queue 2

“Augh… my head… ack-! Nevermind it’s my hand…”

As the anthropomorphic cat known as AntFrost began to lift himself from the ground, a sudden ‘BOOM!’ shook the entire area, causing him to fall over. He let out a hiss injured hand found itself supporting his body weight, which caused a good amount of pain to enter his mind. Falling onto his back, the AntFrost began to take deep breaths as he tried to recall what had occurred a few moments ago. BadBoyHalo had asked him to punch a tree, and…

“Dang it Bad!” The cat yelled out into the heavens, cursing Bad internally for causing the pain he was feeling in his hand. The loud ‘BOOM!’ shook the area he was in again, making AntFrost more angrier than before. “Alright! NOW WHAT!?” The anthro creature yelled as he lifted himself back onto his feet, growling towards the source of the noise, when he found himself staring at the face of a serpent’s head, or rather, heads.

Taken aback at what he was seeing, Ant began to walk backward to get a better view, and doing so confirmed his worst fears. Standing in front of him were four long swampy-green snake-like heads, all connected to a single body. It was enormous, the size of a dinosaur, and it looked straight at him, which Ant could only deduce to one thing:

“I’m going to be his dinner soon if I don’t get out of here!” The anthro cat panicked, his eyes turning to pinpricks. Before the hydra could get any closer, Ant let out a scream of terror as he pushed his feet as hard as he could, trying to run as fast as possible. Soon the hydra began to give chase, and despite its rather large body, it was able to keep up with the furry creature. So many near misses occurred as Ant nearly tripped over rocks, roots, and had various branches nearly knock him right back onto the floor. He could only run.

He soon stepped into a huge clearing, and he noticed that he was no longer being chased by the hydra. It seemed that it was afraid of venturing outside of its habitat, which would be the massive forest that he and the rest had spawned in when they first entered this world. Letting out a sigh of relief Ant began to walk forward, seeing a village in the distance. His excitement rose until the adrenaline inside of him fell enough for him to start feeling the pain coming from his hand. Unable to decide as to whether it was broken or not, Ant decided to walk towards it, seeing the town as a viable opportunity to find food and resources.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something green move in the background. He turned around, expecting to see some type of monster, or maybe even the hydra again, but found nothing. Scratching his head he looked in confusion at where he was staring at, but soon lost interest.

“It can’t be Dream right? The rest would’ve still been hunting him down, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be him after all, given that we don’t have a good record of killing him off early that much. Always the damn dolphins, always!” Ant thought to himself, remembering how in every single Manhunt Dream would escape certain death using the speed gained from dolphins. It was just so annoying, especially when the rare occasion where he would steal their dolphins.

The pain from his hand reminded the furry creature of his priorities. Even if it was Dream, Ant doubted that he’d be able to put up much of a fight, since, in a previous Manhunt, Dream punched Ant to death. Now imagine trying to fistfight with just one hand. And that’s not considering that Dream was able to break away long enough to get some tools, weapons, armor, etc. Nope, what Ant had to do was to heal his broken hand, and the village seemed like an ideal place for him at the time.

“Hmm… maybe there’s some villagers I can find! Oh! Imagine if we can find a librarian villager and trade with it for Protection IV books! That’d make us soooo OP!” Ant thought to himself, remembering how he and the Hunters dominated Dream after getting Protection IV. Unfortunately, they soon got portal-trapped in the Nether Roof, which forced them to kill each other to leave. Perhaps they can do some overpowered trick that only failed because of specific circumstances.

Upon entering the village though, Ant began to notice how quiet it was. It almost felt lifeless. Walking down the main street the trend would only continue, which began to creep out Ant.

“Did I somehow walk into an Abandoned Village, because it almost certainly feels like it… damn… hopefully, it's not the case, otherwise I won’t be able to defend myself that much. Wait… is that a hospital?” Ant asked himself internally as he looked and saw a rather colorful hospital. While he was certainly happy that he found a hospital, he became confused. “Wait. Villages don’t have hospitals. And they don’t have buildings like these.” The cat thought to himself as he looked around and saw that the buildings in the village looked nothing like Vanilla Minecraft Villages. There was even a massive castle for crying out loud! “Perhaps this is part of some of the mods Bad was talking about… something about RLCraft or something like that. Whatever, if this village is abandoned I’m certain they wouldn’t mind me… borrowing some healing items, and if not, at least I can get some more direct help.” Ant said to himself as he began to head towards the front doors of the hospital.

The moment he opened the doors all that he could see was chaos. Nurses rushing around everywhere, doctors screaming for order, it was just a mess. He opened his mouth to ask a question, and his voice was silenced by the huge amount of noise around him. Instead, he decided to go around the hospital by himself, the doctors and nurses completely ignoring and even being unaware of his presence.

“So apparently there’s hospital villagers? Are they even villagers? They’re probably NPCs. They also look like ponies for whatever reason.” Ant thought to himself, noticing the distinguishable how their snouts, ears, and tails looked like that of a pony. Suddenly Ant found himself getting knocked onto the floor by another figure, falling onto his back.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” A feminine voice said. Ant looked up and saw a white nurse with pink hair lowering her hand to grab his paw to pull him up. Before he could even warn her though, the anthropomorphic cat felt a sting of pain coursing through his body as the nurse pulled on his injured arm, causing him to hiss and the nurse to reflexively flinch. “Are you hurt here? Sorry! Let me pull you up with your other hand.” The nurse said as she quickly switched to his other hand and pulled him up. Now on his feet again, Ant tried to soothe his injured hand but it was futile, so instead, he tried to distract his mind by asking the nurse a question.

“Who are you? What’s happening here?” AntFrost asked as the nurse began to walk away, making sure that he was still following her.

“My name is Nurse Redheart. We’ve recently had a medical emergency going around here, but I think I can take a second to heal your hand.” Redheart replied as she pulled up a medkit from a nearby desk they walked past and began to tend to Ant’s hand. “May I ask your name, how did you cause this injury, and also how did you end up all the way here from Abyssinia?” The nurse asked, causing the furry creature to blink.

“I guess the NPCs in this Minecraft world are way more advanced than I thought.” The anthropomorphic cat thought to himself. “Don’t know what Abyssinia is, but hopefully I can get away without too much suspicion?”

“Oh! My name is AntFrost!” Ant replied, only to shift nervously as he saw the nurse raise an eyebrow.

“Ant Frost?”

“Yes, AntFrost.” The anthro cat replied, letting out a nervous laugh. “I know right? A bit ironic that I’m a cat and yet my name starts with Ant.” His eyes shifted nervously, hoping that his explanation wrapped things up well. Redheart slowly nodded.

“Alright… Now can you tell me the cause of the injury?” The nurse asked as she finished bandaging up his hand within a few moments. Out of the corner of his eye Ant was able to see a health diagram of his body. His hand was displayed in yellow, which supposedly meant it was injured, however as the bandage began to do its work, it turned green, his empty heart containers filling themselves up. Upon realizing that he had to answer the question, Ant let out a nervous laugh.

“I punched a tree.”

A dead silence suddenly sprung between the two, with the nurse just simply giving him a dumbfounded look. She tried to speak, make sense of what he just said, only to find nothing.

“I-I… I…. I-...!”

“Nurse Redheart, your presence in Room 4B is required.” A male voice said. The two turned around to see a doctor who was holding a clipboard, gesturing to Redheart to come with her. The mare, still stuck in her confusion, took a long time to respond, resulting in the doctor clearing his throat to grab her attention. “Remember that the kids are in Room 4B Redheart.” The nurse blinked and gasped in panic.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I’ll be going there right now!” The white mare said before following the doctor, before glancing at AntFrost for one last time. “Hope to cross paths with you soon Ant.” The nurse said before the two turned around the corner and disappeared.

“See ya soon I guess!” Ant yelled after her, before turning around towards the doors and heading out. The anthro cat found it fortunate that nobody was perturbed by his appearance, and considering that Redheart mentioned Abyssinia, he presumed that they thought that he came from there. “Perhaps some research about that place could help me. But in the meantime, time to find some supplies. Maybe I can mine some diamonds for my friends. Diamond gear would easily scare Dream away.” AntFrost thought to himself as he opened the doors and left the hospital. “Hope whoever is in the emergency room is fine.”

Looking around, Ant noticed the large castle that he saw before when he first entered the village. When he saw the broken window though, he became perturbed. “Did nobody notice the broken window before? Let me check what’s inside and then tell them whatever I found.” Ant said as he walked towards the main door and tried to push them open, but was unable to open up. He tried the reverse, but the result was the same. Looking up at the broken window, AntFrost sighed. “Welp, hopefully nobody notices me climbing through this window.”

Using his cat-like reflexes, AntFrost climbed up towards the window before jumping through, landing with a nearly silent ‘thud’ as he began to look around his surroundings. He could see that doors were left hanging open, items were scattered around. The anthropomorphic cat stepped through one of the open rooms to discover what used to be an armory room, now looted and just a mess.

“If Dream had gotten here first, he’s probably so overpowered by this point.” Ant thought to himself as he looked around the room, opening chests and finding barely anything of use inside of them. Anything that could’ve been useful was gone, most likely looted by Dream. The only things that Ant could find that was a set of iron tools, some bandages, and nothing else.

“There’s gotta be something else in this castle that I can find.” The furry creature thought to himself as he headed outside of the room and began to search deeper into the castle.

“What did I do?”

The green-hooded figure known as Dream began to pant after running for half an hour deep into the forest. He didn’t care if any mobs tried to hurt him, he was highly geared and probably near unkillable at this stage. He just needed to get away, get away from the scene.

The speedrunner couldn’t help but chuckle. He was near-invincible at this point and could easily go to the Nether, craft some Eyes of Ender, and beat the Ender Dragon. So why did he feel like his life was still in danger?

A mental image played through his head, causing Dream to hold himself in pain. Those eyes. The eyes of both his friends and those that he bumped into. Pure fear and terror. Were those the eyes that would’ve been on Tommy’s face if his exilement and psychological torture by Dream occurred in real life? All thoughts, just reduced to the simple ‘flight or fight response. Just imagining it again caused Dream a massive headache he didn’t want to deal with.

“They’re probably NPCs… everything that occurs here is fake… so why are these things bugging me? It’s just like what happened when they first began to chase me. This place is supposed to be a game, and yet I ran away as if my life is in real danger! What’s going on here?” Dream thought to himself as he recovered his breath and slowly began to walk through the dense forest. His perturbed face returned to a more neutral one as he sighed. “Whatever. I’ll figure this out when I leave this place. I shouldn’t be in this dilemma. This is all a game. Period. No more questions asked. Now… how will I widen the gap between me and the Hunters more than I already did?” The diamond-covered figure asked himself, before noticing a patch of nearby flowers in the distance. A smile crept through his face, and a memory of how the last Manhunt ended played itself across his mind.

“Yes… perfect. Fireworks! Even if the hunters somehow obtain better gear than what I have, which is doubtful, nothing can beat the power of fireworks! Let me grab an entire stack of them!” Dream thought as he walked towards the fields of blue flowers and began touching one of the flowers. A chill went down his spine out of nowhere, but he simply ignored it as he began to break the entire field. Soon a sizable chunk of the field was now within his inventory, and Dream couldn’t help but let out a smile, forgetting everything that occurred in the past, and only focusing on victory.

“I’m pretty sure that this world might have so much overpowered stuff that I can loot. If I’m to win, I’m going to have to take everything and leave the Hunters with nothing.” Dream thought to himself as he looked into the distance, a small castle sitting on the side of a mountain just barely visible. “If this mod has taught me anything, it’s that castles bring overpowered loot. Maybe in a few days I’ll go there, but first, I think I’m going to stay in this forest and see if there’s any way I can get quick access to the nether right now. Maybe kill some mobs along the way.” The masked person said with a smile, walking deeper into the forest, unaware of a strand of green fur falling off from him.