Wazzup people?
As you probably noticed already, I changed the cover, yay!
I think that I'm going to stop writing this little paragraph at the beginning unless I actually have something important to say since it's pretty useless :P
Enjoy the chapter~
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Grian sighed as he looked at the pile of books that was standing before him.

He never thought that one day he would've had to go through all of them again, but here he was.

Those books were given to him by the Watchers and when he escaped their realm he decided to bring them along.

After settling in Hermitcraft he had thought of throwing them away and yet he never did. Everytime he tried he could almost hear a voice inside him telling him not to do it.

It was almost as if they held some sentimental value for him, his time with the Watchers wasn't that bad after all-

'NO, GRIAN WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?! Remember what Echo said, you must prove where you allegiance lies.' The dirty blond player shook his head.

'The Watchers are your enemies, those ruthless monsters never cared about you and never will. You're loyal only to the Hermits and the Evolutionists, NOT the Watchers'

H𝙹w cᔑn y𝙹⚍ bᒷ s𝙹 s⚍rᒷ?

Grian gasped and started looking at his surroundings frantically. Nobody was there. He was alone.

'ugh, all the stress of knowing Evo's condition must've gone to my head. I should really start looking for the right spell instead of standing still and doing nothing.' he told himself, trying to push all of his negatives thoughts away and wanting to calm his breathing down.

He took one book from the pile and sat on the ground.

'Alright so, Taurtis said he was able to come here using his an Netty's Server Pendent so I should probably take a look at mine too.' He thought.

Grian closed his eyes and started to concentrate his magic as a squared pendent appeared around his neck.

He took it off and laid it on the ground in front of him but when he opened his eyes he jumped back in surprise

He expected the pendent to contain a yellow flame since that was Hermitcraft's specific color but he had never seen anything like that before.

Inside the pendent there were three different colored embers, all crashing against one another.

One was yellow and the more he looked at it, the more Grian felt comfortable. It looked very nice and warm, it kinda reminded him of Hermitcraft.

Another one was of a dark purple. Although it looked a bit weaker than the others it still shown bright. That made him remember his friends from Evo, although they weren't together, they would always share an unbreakable bond.

The last one was somehow different from the others. It didn't spark any good memories in Grian, it just looked like...

A lilac ember

Realization struck him like a lightning. That wasn't any random flame, that was the same cruel and purple fire that destroyed Evo.

Suddenly he wasn't in his base anymore, he was back in Evo's spawn and everything looked exactly like in his last dream.

The player looked at his surroundings terrified. He was in the exact same spot where he was dragged away by the Watchers two years ago.

Grian's breathing started to speed up uncontrollably, everything looked exactly the same.

Same destroyed buildings.

Same purple flames.

Same friends screaming his name.

What started out as a low whisper was now becoming louder and louder.

Grian...

Grian...

GRIAN SNAP OUT OF IT!
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X was sitting in a grass field near his base and was looking at his communicator with a worried gaze.

Since he saw Grian's friend falling from the sky, he's been looking through the server's code to see in what condition its defence system was.

Hermitcraft was a whitelisted server, which meant that nobody should've been able to access it without having received an invite.

If there wasn't any problem in the server's defence system, how did Taurtis manage to get in?

This question was the only thing that Xisuma could think of.

Although he wasn't considered the "supreme ruler of Hermitcraft"or anything of this sort, he was the one that took care of the technical stuff. What was he going to say to the hermits if he wasn't even able to keep intruders out?

No matter how much time he looked through it, he couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. No glitches, no tears of the system, NOTHING.

Xisuma sighed and threw himself on the ground frustrated.

"The code looks perfect, there is no way anyone could've violated it. I guess I'll just need to accept the fact that Grian's friend just magically appeared out of nowhere- THAT'S IT!" He suddenly exclaimed

He shot up in a sitting position. "Taurtis comes from a server that was corrupted by magic so it's obvious that his code is a bit messed up! If I want to get to the bottom of this I'll need to ask Grian to help me, if he was trained by the Watchers he should be able to detect their magic. Great thinking XisumaVoid!" He compliment himself.

He quickly got back on his feet and took off to reach Grian's base as soon as possible, not caring about the fact that he's been talking to himself this whole time and that his neighbors probably think he's bunkers by now.

Luckily it didn't take him long to reach the Jungle Gang's territory and he was now flying over it, looking at his fellow Hermits' bases.

Iskall's Omega Tree Of Doom,

Mumbo's mega base,

Grian's Hobbit Hole engulfed in purple fire,

Scar's magical village,

Stress'- WAIT WHAT-

X snapped out of his thoughts and took another look at the gremlin's base. Although its entrance looked fine, the admin could see that the inside of the base was filled with purple flames.

He quickly swooped down and landed right in front of the Hobbit hole.

"Grian?! Are you in there?!" He yelled.

Xisuma waited a couple of moments for a response but all that he could hear over the sound of the fire was a whispered "this can't be happening... Nononono... Please stop..."

'Grian must be stuck in there!' He thought. The admin started looking frantically at his surroundings to see if he could find any way to get in without touching those weird flames.

It if was just a normally he would've just walked right through them because thanks to his suit and helmet, it wouldn't have bothered him that much.

Unfortunately that wasn't just a normal fire, it was a magical fire, and X wasn't sure of what would've happened if he tired to cross it. Although it didn't seem like it was actually burning any part of the base, despite being made out of wood, that wasn't a reason to just blindly throw himself inside it.

He was still looking for a way to get in when he once again heard Grian's scared whispers.

His servermate needed his help and he needed it fast. Without thinking twice, he ran inside the base.

Xisuma started looking at his surroundings frantically, looking for any signs of the winged player.

Luckily the base wasn't too big so it didn't take long to notice his dirty blonde hair inside the fire.

He was crouching on the floor shaking and his eyes were glowing with a purple light, one that resembled the flames around him.

"Grian! Are you alright?!" X yelled as he ran at his friend's side.

Despite the admin's yells though, Grian just kept on staring at nothing.

"Grian we need to get out of here! Grian? Grian! Grian snap out of it!

Suddenly the player gasped as his eyes went back to their normal color.

"W-what...?"

"Good, you're okay! We need to get out of here! Your base is on fire!"

Grian looked at Xisuma a bit confused before realizing what was happening and starting to chuckle.

"I would say that I'm surprised but it happened so many times already that I'm not even scared anymore." He sighed.

Xisuma gave him a questioning look before gasping as all of the fire that lightened the room a couple of seconds ago started disappearing.

"What just happened?" The admins asked, still looking at his surroundings dumbfounded.

"M-magic...?" Grian managed to respond while he tried to compose himself.

"But why was your ba-" "ANYWAY!" Xisuma was cut off by his freaked out servermate.

"W-what can I help you with?" He continued as the most obvious I-act-like-I'm-fine-but-I'm-obviously-not smile appeared on his face.

Although he was tempted to change the subject and just move on with his day since Grian didn't seem to want to talk about it, X knew that bottling up emotions wasn't healthy and since it was clear that his friend wanted to do just that, he wasn't having it.

"I could ask you the same thing." Xisuma responded, making Grian flinch.

"I know that I probably shouldn't stick my nose in other people's lives but it's pretty obvious that something is troubling you and as your admin and friend it's my job to make you feel better!"

The admin have Grian a reassuring smile but after hearing the last part of his speech, the gremlin seemed to feel even keep uncomfortable and a awkward silence fell on the duo.

"Oooor, I could just leave and let you do whatever you were doing and-"

"You're a really good admin X"

Grian cut Xisuma off as a sad smile formed on his face.

"If only I had half of your competence I'm sure nothing would've ever happened." He added as he picked up his pendent and started fidgeting with it.

"What do you mean?" X asked as he stepped closer to his friend.

"Although the Evolutionists considered me their admin, I never took care of the technical stuff, the Watchers did." The avian explained.

"All that I did was give a random speech everytime we jumped through a portal and that's it. I didn't help the Evolutionists with emotional burdens and I pranked them everytime I had the chance, I must've been and awful servermate." Xisuma listened without saying a word.

"And look what happened to Evo now! Those players were under MY protection and I managed to let them down in the worst way possible! This pendent was the last thing that tied me to them and look at its condition!" He exclaimed, shoving the Server Pendent in X's face.

The player looked at the necklace in surprise. He then turned his gaze to Grian.

"Even if we manage to save them, the Evolutionists will probably hate me." The blond player said, on the verge of tears.

"Since the day I came to season 7 I started having dreams about the Evolutionists and about how they struggled to survive in Evo while I was gone. They deserve a far better admin than me... They deserve someone like you." He then added as he raised his gaze, looking X dead in the eyes.

"I just want to be a good admin... How do I become one? How can I be like you?!"

The two players stared at each other in silence.

"How do you do it?"

"W-what?"

Grian looked at Xisuma confused.

"You've seen the Watchers destroying your server and have been kidnapped by them. You've been forced to go through a presumably hard training to become something you despised... And yet here you are." X said, pointing a finger towards his servermate.

"You're a proud member of our dysfunctional family, you always come up with funny concepts and pranks to make other people smile and you make magnificent buildings that leave everyone dumbfounded." He added.

"Any other person would've broken down a long time ago and would've never accomplished all that you've done. You're stronger than you know Grian and if the Evolutionists know you, I'm sure they're waiting for you to save them, knowing that their proud admin will do the impossible to help them!" He finished, giving his friend a warm smile.

Grian stared at him in disbelief, not saying a word.

"W-was it a bit weird? I'm sorry, I told you I'm not as good as Joe when it comes to-"

The blond player quickly walked up to him and hugged his admin.

"Thank you X, you're the best." He finally said.

"Anytime." The admin simply replied, hugging back.

"Sooo... Is there and actual reason you came here other than being a great friend?" Grian asked as he and Xisuma let go of each other.

"Well, I wanted to ask you to help me check out the server's defence system. I wanted to be sure that-"

BOOM

Suddenly a large explosion was heard and the ground started shacking.

The two players exchanges glances and then Xisuma quickly started looking through his communicator.

"An unknown player just joined the server but I can't figure out what their username is, it looks like it's written in... Galactic?"

"What?! Let me see!" Grian exclaimed as he leaned over X's shoulder.

The moment he read the new player's name, the blond boy took a step back with an expression of pure horror on his face.

"We need to alert the other hermits and make sure they're safe! Quick!" Grian exclaimed as he started running towards the entrance of his base.

"W-why? What's going on?!" Xisuma asked as he hurried after his friend.

"A Watcher has joined the game"
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Ok so-
Part of this chapter was written in my room, like the rest of this book.
Another part in a early morning during my trip to reach my summer house.
Another part on a ferry.
Another part in my summer house, right after 13 hours straight of travelling.
Another part at the beach.
And finally another part at the pool.
I have absolutely no idea if this is decent or not but this is what you get :P
As you probably already guessed, I'm on vacation (don't worry, I'm not skipping school, in Italy the summer break finishes in September) and I have hardly any time to write. Basically I brought a friend of mine along this year so I spend most of my time with her and I don't intend to explain to her how I can't hang out with her because I need to write a story about magical people based on some English YouTubers that play Minecraft.
So yeah, don't expect any other updates for the rest of the week, sorry folks TwT
With that said though, I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
~Star