Ender flaps after them, not even panting.
"No, not Butch...I mean, yeah, he shouldn't have taken that risk since the battle of the Jungle Temple." I kick my horse forward, following Butch's dark mount.
"And now, all of a sudden, we find three of them together?" Stitcher says. "You're right, I don't like it.
"Me neither," Crafter adds. "Did you notice how the other two were waiting for us? It was like they were working together."
"I don't like the sound of that," Digger says, his booming voice filling the forest with thunder. "Creepers that are smart can only cause trouble."
"Well, they're gone now, so they couldn't be that smart." Hunter says.
Glancing over my shoulder, I stare at the craters that the creepers had left behind in the floor of the forest, deep wounds in the lush grass-covered ground. I could see the piles of gunpowder that floated at the bottom of the craters, but didn't bother to stop and collect it; we had lots of TNT and didn't need any more right now.
"We'll need to watch them," I said. "But there's something not right here. Blazes destroying the forest, and now the creepers."
"You are never satisfied unless there's some monster king chasing you," Hunter says with a smile. "Well, you'll just have to get over yourself this time. There is no creeper king trying to come after you."
"Is that true?" I ask Crafter.
"Guys, task at hand or what?" I giggle, "Look, as much as I enjoy your entertaining fights, we got Shado to take care of."
"Hunter is right. A creeper king hasn't been seen for a long, long time," Crafter says. "The last time someone saw a creeper king was during the Great Zombie Invasion, but as the story goes, he suddenly disappeared in the middle of that struggle."
"You mean he was destroyed?" I ask.
"No, they say the creeper king just gathered his warriors and disappeared right in the middle of the conflict," Crafter explained. "If the creepers had stayed in the fight, the NPCs might have lost that war."
"Is that why the creepers weren't punished after the war?" Stitcher says.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"You notice how creepers don't burn in the sun?" Crafter says. "Creepers and spiders had a small part to play in the Great Zombie Invasion. As a result, at the end of the war, they were not punished. They can still live under the great blue sky."
"But if the creeper king wasn't captured at the end of the war, is it possible he's still alive?" I ask.
"Impossible," Butch says over his shoulder, his staccato voice cutting through the air like a machine gun. "No on has seen him. It's been too long. The creeper king is dead."