[ProGamer01 was slain by Dingle342] (I know, not the most creative names)
A young man with tousled black hair and warm brown eyes gazed incredulously at the flickering light of his computer screen, his expression showing disbelief.
Playing on a modded Minecraft server with friends was usually fun, but at that moment everything soured.
"Are you freaking kidding me?" he hissed into his microphone, anger bubbling inside him. His friends were scattered across their screens.
"Hey, take it easy, George, it's just a Minecraft server," someone chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.
But George wasn't in the mood for jokes. Frustration lingered on him. His heart pounded against his ribs as he gripped the mouse tightly. His hand on the mouse tightened, turning his knuckles white.
Then, out of nowhere, a sharp pain pierced his chest, leaving him momentarily stunned. The familiar sights and sounds of the game began to blur, fading into silence. Before he could understand what was happening, everything went dark.
George opened his eyes and looked around in confusion. Upon seeing the familiar blocky landscape of his favorite game, his eyes immediately widened.
"Is this... Minecraft?" he muttered in disbelief.
George looked around in a panic.
"How is this Minecraft!? What's going on!?" he yelled, his eyes glistening with tears that threatened to fall. The prospect of being in Minecraft did not sound particularly appealing to him.
'My parents, my friends, what's going to happen to them!?'
After dwelling on his thoughts for a while, George decided it was time to take action, to distract himself from the looming sadness. The environment around him consisted of a few scattered mounds, with grass covering the entire area. There were rarely any trees nearby.
"So it's a plains biome then," George thought to himself. He sat down on the ground and began punching the earth. After a short while, the grass block he was hitting suddenly compressed and shrank in size. He had successfully mined the block.
"So I can mine," George whispered to himself.
He stretched out his hand towards the miniature version of the grass block and grasped it. Suddenly, a menu popped up in front of him.
George recoiled in surprise and almost dropped the grass block he was holding. He instantly recognized the menu.
"It's the inventory?"
George looked curiously towards his realistic 3d model, right beside the armor slots. And then he noticed a small menu to the right of his 3d model.
"Wait, the TechnoBaubles mod?!"
So the world was modded, he noted. George stretched out his finger until it landed on the grass block on his hotbar. He traced the finger upwards, towards the rest of the inventory. The grass block followed. He let go of his finger, and the grass block he was holding onto suddenly disappeared.
George quickly took the grass block back to his hotbar, and as expected, it reappeared in his hand. Putting it back into his inventory.
"Cool, I have an inventory!" he remarked excitedly, his earlier sadness suppressed.
George started walking to the nearest tree, intending to craft some beginner tools. When the tree was an arm's length away, George raised his fist and smashed it toward the cube-like trunk of the tree. After a few hits, it dropped, and he picked it up.
[Quest completed, mine wood.]
[Reward: Mossy Core(Moss Overgrowth)]
An item suddenly appeared on his right hand. And sure enough, it was the Mossy Core.
"Holy shit!! The mossy core?! That's insanely good."
For those who are unfamiliar with the Moss Overgrowth mod, it introduces a block called the Mossy Core, among other features. When placed down, the Mossy Core slowly spreads and transforms the surrounding blocks into moss or moss variations of those blocks. The best part is that the Mossy Core serves as an anti-infection mod. All the mobs and blocks it generates are completely harmless to players and even provide buffs. They even attack other hostile mobs.
'This will turn the entire area into a safe haven! I won't even have to worry about the night,' George thought excitedly.
George crouched down, and carefully placed the miniature Mossy Core on the ground. For a short while, nothing happened.
"Why is nothing happening-"
The block immediately expanded into a 1x1 meter cube. Instantly, the first few surrounding blocks turned a lighter green, resembling light moss.
George quickly backed away, frightened by the sudden change. The light green blocks rapidly spread beneath his feet, and he felt a bit apprehensive. After observing the spread for a while, he shifted his attention to the ground. The texture of the "mossy grass" was almost identical to that of normal grass.
Suddenly, a grotesque humanoid figure emerged from the mossy ground. It resembled a typical Minecraft zombie, blocky and tall, but it had patches of green moss covering parts of its body and a large flower sprouting from its shoulder.
As he took a closer look at the zombie, a menu popped up, hovering above the zombie.
[Mossy Zombie
HP:28 (These values include the effects)
Attack damage: 6.3
Effects: Strength 2, Resistance 2]
"Interesting, it's pretty powerful."
George studied the zombie for a moment longer, watching while it stumbled around, before deciding to continue punching the tree beside him. When he glanced back at the tree, he noticed it had transformed. The rough bark had smoothed out and turned green.
"Does this still count as wood?" he wondered.
He mined down the entire tree and opened his inventory. In the top left corner of the menu, he spotted a blue pixelated book icon.
"There is questing too? Well, I guess I did finish a quest."
George decided to examine that later. First, he placed the new "moss wood" into the 2x2 crafting menu, and sure enough, it turned into moss wood. He then put the moss wood into the standard crafting table recipe, and a normal crafting table appeared.
"How does that work? Wasn't the wood green?" he wondered.
He placed his finger on the crafting table and dragged it into his hotbar. After that, he set it down on the ground and watched it expand. George facepalmed.
"It's just going to turn into moss. I wasted wood!"
But strangely, the moss did not transform the crafting table into moss. It even retracted slightly, as if responding to his concerns.
"Well, I guess the mossy core technically listens to the player, but that usually requires someone to craft a mossy order," he remarked.
After crafting himself an axe and a pickaxe, he noticed it was slowly getting dark.