Chapter Text
"The strongest will win no matter what."
Wemmbu wasn't really sure if he expected to win. He didn't know if he was truly the strongest. But he didn't expect it to go this way.
He knew he was low on resources. But with his armor so low on durability, he hadn't even thought about conserving pearls.
But as he fell into the void, out of pearls, no way to escape the situation, he thought of the bitter irony that it would end this way.
Why had he been so determined to kill Parrot? He should have just run when he had the chance.
He checked his inventory again. Nope. Nothing that could save him.
As he fell into the void, it became colder and colder. The wind whipped past him as the last light from the lava faded into the distance.
What about Eggchan? He should have rescued him from the end sooner. He just thought he had more time. And he never really got the chance to explain to anyone the real reason he hid his identity.
It was too late to do anything now. There would be no second chances.
In the near-pitch-black, just before the cold became unbearable and he started taking damage, Wemmbu could almost swear he saw an arrow of slow falling just miss him and fall past into the abyss…
…But what he didn't expect was to wake up and open his eyes again.
"Huh?" For a second Wemmbu didn't even believe what he was seeing. As he opened his eyes, the bright light of spawn during the day was a sharp contrast to the pitch black of the void. He almost didn't want to believe that what had just happened was real.
But it had to be. Because he was back at spawn. And dying had felt so real. Falling into the void was a type of pain you couldn't imagine unless you had been through it.
"Did I just… respawn?" He couldn't believe it. Everyone knew the server was hardcore. You got one chance and that was it. He had never heard of this happening before.
But nevermind about that. He hardly had any gear left in his ender chest, and he needed to worry about escaping spawn and re-gearing. Wemmbu ran past a few random players, who didn't even seem to recognize him as he passed them. So, they were completely new to the server then. He was glad of that, he was pretty sure if they had recognized him he would have been killed again or taken hostage.
He spotted a wither further up the path, and turned back to try and avoid it. But as he turned around, he ran directly into a random player with no armor-
-and he phased right through them.
"What was that?" He reached out again, watching bewildered as his hand went right through them. They didn't even seem to realize he was there.
"Hello? Can you see me?" Wemmbu asked, but there was no response. "Great."
So he hadn't respawned after all. He had just come back as a ghost somehow. Maybe it would have been better if he had died. Wemmbu racked his brain, trying to think of what to do.
He thought of most ghost stories. Ghosts didn't just appear for no reason. They had unfinished business, something or someone in their life they needed to resolve.
"Eggchan." Wemmbu thought out loud. For a second he felt a little embarrassed at thinking out loud like that, but he remembered no one could hear him anyway. But if there was any situation from his life that needed resolving, he needed to save Eggchan from the end.
Wemmbu entered the end portal closest to spawn. It wasn't like he had to worry about being ambushed, since no one could see him anyway. Even with the closest portal, it had been a long trek, since he didn't have an elytra or trident to aid him. After he had arrived at the location of the heavily griefed stronghold, he started to panic that there was no visible entrance and he couldn't break blocks. But he found that if he concentrated, he could phase right through them and straight into the stronghold.
Entering the end, Wemmbu came face to face with the memorable ancient debris door. It was crazy that no one had stolen the ancient debris yet, what with the end being overrun with bandits. He started to phase through the blocks, finding it significantly harder than phasing through stone. Maybe the difficulty depended on how hard the block was to mine?
Getting through the door, he hurried to find Eggchan. As expected, he was still hibernating in the same spot as usual.
"Egg! Can you see me?"
Eggchan didn't respond. He didn't even move one bit. If he had heard him, he would be awake by now.
Wemmbu's shoulders slumped. He had hoped that this would be the answer, but it didn't seem like it. And even though Egg was a scientific researcher or something who might know what was going on, Wemmbu doubted he'd get much information out of him in the current situation. Eggchan hardly even woke up anymore unless it was to talk to Wemmbu.
Disappointed, Wemmbu headed back to the exit portal. But before he left, he tested something quickly. He held his had against the bedrock, trying to phase through it. Nothing happened. It seemed his theory about harder to mine blocks being harder to phase through was correct.
If he was right about everything else, that would be a problem.
You see, when Wemmbu was on his way to the stronghold, he had noticed a complete lack of ghosts. He walked through the entirety of spawn, and yet not a single person recognized him. He had killed a lot of people, so if there were other ghosts walking around they would definitely have noticed him.
But if there were no other ghosts, then that meant he was one of the only ones. And there was one place he went recently, that may have been the reason why.
The dimension under the nether bedrock clearly held many secrets. And the group of players he encountered there who knew how to break blocks seemed like they were in some kind of cult with access to forbidden knowledge. If anyone knew why he came back as a ghost, it would be them.
Unfortunately, if he couldn't phase through bedrock, there was very little chance he could get into their dimension in the first place. Worse, if he got in there, it would be almost impossible for him to get back out. He didn't want to end up like one of those echoes, wandering a lost dimension for eternity.
So instead, he wandered everywhere else. At first, he would almost forget he had died. Someone would look in his direction, and for a second he would think they were looking at him. It surprised him less and less each time he would see them gaze right through him.
After a while, he started to wish he had just died in the void. What was even the point of him being here?
Wemmbu wished he had never stepped on that gold block.
For a while, it was kind of nice to not be seen. To walk into a crowded room, and have no one spare a glance in his direction. When he had been invis, it had been similar, but now he didn't have to worry about splashing invis, and he didn't have to worry that anyone he grew close to would abandon him if they knew who he really was.
That was the only upside.
After a week or so, he grew restless. After two weeks, he started to follow people around. At first he would just pick a random player, but after a while, he became curious about what specific people did on the server. He didn't really have any friends on the server except Eggchan, so instead he decided to follow around his enemies.
At first, he started following around Boosfer, but he was just so annoying that Wemmbu got sick of it within an hour. Then, he followed around Parrot for a while, then JadenMAN.
Now he was stalking LettuceK, who was currently leading a group of lawmen. Wemmbu wasn't quite sure where they were going, but they clearly had a plan. He followed them for a few minutes before he started to recognize the area, and realized that they were near Flame's base.
"Come out here and surrender yourself to the law or we'll have to force you to come with us!" LettuceK announced.
"Bro, seriously, this again?" Flame said, exhasperated as he walked out of his house. "How many players did you bring thi-"
Flame stopped short of finishing his sentence, and looked directly at Wemmbu.
"Wemmbu?"
"You can see me?"