I woke up early the next morning, as I had been doing for the past month. I pulled on some clothes, brushed my hair and grabbed my sword, ready to head down to the training area. This was my way of trying to get better, trying to find my gift. I walked quietly out of my room, down the corridor, past the rooms of my friends and down the steps to the training room. I took my position in front of the dummy and started practising. I practiced for 20 minutes then took a break, leaning against the wall.

"That's good."

I jumped, startled, my gaze snapping up towards the sound of the voice. Herobrine was sitting in the branches of one of the trees, smiling at me from across the room. I stopped leaning on the wall, tilting my head slightly.

"How did you know I was here?" I asked.

Herobrine chuckled. "Not much happens here that I don't know about. And I don't sleep too well," he answered, shrugging. "Neither do you from the looks of it."

I sighed. "I've been trying to find my gift," I told him, gesturing to the torn dummy with my sword.

He dropped down from the tree and came towards me. "If you ask me, I think you're trying too hard."

"But this is how Sub did it."

"True. And Sky found his by accident, Bajan developed his and Jerome's natural ability turned out to be more than what he thought. You're so urgent to be like the others that you're pushing yourself. This way, it's unlikely that you will find it."

I sighed again. "I guess. But I feel like I'm useless. I don't want to be the reason someone is hurt."

Herobrine put his hand on my shoulder and I looked at his face. "You won't be," he said.

I nodded, unconvinced. Herobrine saw this and tilted his head slightly. He took my sword, put it against the wall, then stepped back and held out his hand, palm facing me.

"Punch my hand."

"Why?"

"You're only focusing on your sword fighting, but what happens if you don't have a sword? Now punch my hand."

I hesitantly punched his hand with my right.

"Harder!"

I punched again, harder this time.

"Use your entire body, not just your arm. Step into the punch."

I did as he said and felt my arm shake with the force. But Herobrine didn't even waver.

"Again!"

I punched his hand over and over. My muscles were hardened from a month of sword training, but even my hardest punches didn't shake Herobrine. I kept punching until he told me to stop. My knuckles were red and sore.

"That's better," he complimented. I shook my head.

"You didn't move at all, not even when I did my hardest punch," I told him, retrieving my sword.

"Well, remember that I've been training and fighting for longer than you've been alive."

"How old are you anyway? If you don't mind me asking," I said as we walked up the stairs.

"Oh, hard one. Um... I don't know exactly how old I am, but I would say... 1000 years maybe?"

"1000 years?" I asked disbelievingly. "How? Minecraft only came out a few years ago!"

"Remember that time passes differently here. One day in this world is only, what, 10 minutes in yours?"

"20 minutes for day and night," I said. Then a thought struck me. "Wait. When we've been here, time has still been going in our world?" Herobrine nodded. "So we've been away from our world for..." I tried to do maths in my head. "Ten hours? More?"

"Yes," he answered.

"Wha... my parents would be freaking out! They'll call the police or something if they knew I was missing! And what about Sky, Bajan, Jerome and Sub? They all put out videos once a day on YouTube, their subscribers will be worried sick if a video doesn't go out!"

"I know, I know but I had no choice!" Herobrine defended.

I sighed. "Yeah, you're right."

By this time, we had reached the kitchen and we went inside. Everyone was already awake and eating when we arrived.

"Where have you guys been?" Jerome asked.

"Downstairs," Herobrine answered.

"Well Bajan wanted to make breakfast. Yours is over there," Sky said, pointing to two plates that sat on the bench.

"Is it any good?" I asked, grabbing my plate and sitting down.

Sky shrugged. "Not really," he said, smiling.

Bajan reacted instantly. "I'll have you know that I did cooking classes in school and I worked at McDonalds for a year!"

We laughed and I started eating. The food was very well cooked, despite Sky's cheeky comment. I finished off my food, famished from the training with Herobrine. I washed up my plate just as Herobrine clapped his hands together.

"Okay, so we need to face Entity and Null in less than a week," he started.

"6 days to be specific," Sky interrupted.

"Sky?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

"Okay."

"So we need to leave here in four days," Herobrine continued. "I know where he is and it'll take us a day to get there. We then have one day to scout out and make a plan."

"How do you even know that we need to face him in a week?" Bajan asked.

"He contacted me, said that we had better be there in a week or he'll come here. And I want my castle to stay in one piece," Herobrine told him.

"Okay. So we'll need to start packing stuff: weapons, food, armour," Bajan reeled off. "Herobrine, do you have any potions we can use?"

Herobrine shrugged. "I've got a room that's full of stuff. I'll dig through that, see if there's some there."

"Good. Jerome, Sky and Riley, go down to the armoury in the training room. Grab spare weapons for all of us. Make sure they're sharp. Sub, you and I will get the armour. Everything we find, put it here," Bajan said. He pointed to a open space of the floor.

We nodded and went off to do our various jobs. Sub and Bajan went off to the right side of the castle while we went to the left side. Herobrine went up to one of the rooms in the many towers, saying that he might be back in a few hours. Sky, Jerome and I went to the training room and Jerome flicked the lever, revealing the secret armoury.

"Okay, I'll grab the axes. Sky, get the swords and Riley, you can get the bows," he said, walking to the axe section. 

Sky nodded to me and left, going towards the swords. I went for the bow section. There were dozens of bows hanging there: plain wood ones, ones with carvings, ones with gold and diamond inlaid in the wood and one that was multi-coloured. I took one that Bajan often used and also a golden one for Sky. I took a few wooden ones too, just to make sure. There were rows of quivers full of arrows and I grabbed several of these too, making a mental note to get more when I dropped this stuff off.

Sky was still getting some swords and Jerome had already left so I walked up to the kitchen alone. Jerome and Sub were there, sorting out the armour and axes. I left the bows with them and went back down to get more arrows, stopping to help Sky, who was carrying way too many swords. Luckily, they were all sheathed otherwise we would have been killed. I took a few more quivers and went back to the kitchen. Bajan was there now, but Herobrine was still finding those potions.

A few hours later, we had packed everything we could. Herobrine had come down from his storage room dusty and coughing, holding several glowing bottles in his arms. They were neow in a bag, carefully packaged so they didn't shatter. Another bag held the quivers of arrows, while the bag next to it held bows. A special bag held Jerome's axes and two bags held the various collection of swords. There was a spare bag for food, as it would need to be packed just before we left. Bajan wanted to pack armour, but Herobrine said "It would be next to useless because you guys haven't practised fighting with armour yet and it's gonna take you more than a week to get used to it." Bajan tried to protest at first but was convinced otherwise by Herobrine.

With the bags in the corner of the kitchen (don't ask me why the kitchen had become the room where we meet because I have no idea), we sat down at the table and began to talk strategy while Sky and Sub made sandwiches as a late lunch.

"There's an old stadium thing here," Herobrine said, pointing to the map he had brought down. "It's very big, made out of marble and quartz. Entity will have a good view of the surrounding land and who's coming."

"So how do we get there unseen?" Bajan asked.

"Can we dig a tunnel?" Sky asked, setting down plates of sandwiches.

Herobrine shook his head. "It'll take too long. But there is a forest right here." He moved his finger a few centimetres to the right, tapping a darker section of the map. "We can arrive here late afternoon then use the night to scout out."

"If we do that, we'll need two nights, half of each to scout out the area and half to sleep. We can sleep till later in the morning and attack Entity at about noon on the second day," Bajan said, frowning in concentration. "We'll need to leave in three days to do that."

"But with all this baggage, we'll be more tired and therefore slower," Jerome pointed out.

"So two days?" Sky asked.

We looked to Herobrine and Bajan for confirmation. Both nodded their heads.

"So that's what we'll do: Head out in two days, reach there in a day and a half, scout out the area for two half-nights and then confront Entity," Herobrine summed up.

We nodded and I took a deep breath. For the hundredth time, I wondered what I got myself into.