A Fierce Battle with the Ender Dragon

While Lü Zhenghao was losing it, Chen Ze had already crafted some torches.

Looking at his stack of torches, he said happily, "Guys, these torches will definitely be enough. Now let's head underground."

With that, Chen Ze picked up his pickaxe and started digging down.

He didn't dig straight beneath his feet. He had just checked the chat and learned that there was a mineshaft below, so he might take fall damage.

In that case, he might as well dig a staircase and descend bit by bit.

Beside his coffin-box house, Chen Ze found a good spot and began digging diagonally downward.

Every seven or eight blocks, he planted a torch on the wall. The pace wasn't slow at all, and he even found some ores he hadn't seen before.

"This is iron ore, right? It's yellowish brown. I'll make a furnace and smelt it."

With that, Chen Ze opened his inventory, crafted a Crafting Table, and placed it on the ground.

After checking the item list on the right, he quickly crafted a furnace, set it down nearby, and started smelting the iron.

While the iron was smelting, he suddenly heard a faint noise.

He had never heard it before. It sounded like boiling water, bubbling away.

"Where's that sound coming from?"

Puzzled, Chen Ze started digging into the walls around him.

Soon, a glimmer of red light appeared before him.

The next moment, the red stuff in front of him flowed toward him like liquid.

He immediately heard the sound of health being lost, and his character cried out in pain.

"Whoa, what is that!?"

When he tried to leave, his feet felt as though they were stuck, and he moved very slowly.

After jumping and hopping his way out of the red liquid, he still had the burn indicator on him, and his health kept dropping.

His heart-shaped health bar at the bottom emptied, and he returned to the spawn point.

After respawning, Chen Ze steered his character back into the mine tunnel he had dug.

When he reached the bottom, he found that all his items had disappeared. What was going on?

Chen Ze was dumbfounded for a moment. Where were his things?

The viewers in his livestream cleared up his confusion.

[Brother Ze, that's lava. Dropped items get melted by it.]

[Yeah, Brother Ze. I just came from Muyu's stream and saw that lava turns into Obsidian when it meets water. That's the material for a Nether Portal.]

[But you need a Diamond Pickaxe to mine it. Other pickaxes can't mine Obsidian.]

[It's true. I just tried mining Obsidian with an iron pickaxe. I spent a whole minute digging and got nothing.]

[Bro, you're hardcore. But I didn't expect you to be progressing so fast too.]

Reading the chat, Chen Ze felt his head starting to ache.

All his things were gone, and now he had to prepare his tools all over again.

By the time Chen Ze had his tools ready and set off underground again, he discovered that someone had already entered the Nether, far ahead of him.

There were so many hardcore players. How were they progressing so fast?

By now, Chen Ze knew he probably couldn't be the first to kill the boss, the Ender Dragon, so he simply settled in to enjoy the game.

As he played more and more of it, he truly began to appreciate the game's charm.

You could play survival, fight monsters, and explore the world, or gather materials in survival and construct buildings. Of course, you could also enter creative mode and build whatever you liked.

Aside from its graphics, this game could be called an epoch-making, perfect game in every other respect.

Chen Ze glanced at the viewer count in his livestream.

345,200 viewers.

It was even higher than when he normally streamed other games, and he was genuinely won over.

It had started as a simple advertisement, but he hadn't expected it to spark a gaming craze. The viewers had all fallen in love with the game, and he had gained tens of thousands of fans in one go.

Good grief, just who was Suye Game Company? How had they come up with such a creative idea and made this game?

By the time he successfully mined Obsidian and entered the Nether, someone had already killed the Ender Dragon. It was a gaming streamer named Muyu.

After killing the Ender Dragon, Muyu's livestream audience shot up from ten thousand to over three hundred thousand, propelling Muyu into the ranks of top gaming streamers.

It made some gaming streamers green with envy, especially those who hadn't played Minecraft. Their viewer counts had dropped by more than half that day. If they had known, they would have jumped on the bandwagon too.

The next day, following in the footsteps of the other streamers, Chen Ze finally reached the End.

He looked up and saw the enormous black dragon flying overhead. His mind went blank, and he was genuinely awestruck like never before.

"Damn, why does this dragon feel so imposing?"

A blast of dragon breath struck him, and his health plunged by nearly half.

He quickly took a bite of an apple, then pulled out his bow and aimed at the tops of the massive black pillars around him.

There were healing crystals on top. According to the other streamers, you had to shoot down those healing crystals before fighting the boss, or the damage you dealt wouldn't keep up with its healing.

Explosions rang out one after another atop the massive black pillars, and Chen Ze destroyed every healing crystal.

Chen Ze glanced at the two stacks of arrows he had spent so long gathering in his inventory, and his confidence soared.

He drew his bow and fired, arrow after arrow striking the Ender Dragon. Its health dropped visibly.

But the next second, the Ender Dragon swooped down at him, slammed into him, and knocked four hearts off his health.

Bang!

The Ender Dragon sent him flying into the air. Watching the ground recede, Chen Ze broke out in a cold sweat.

He quickly opened his inventory and pulled out a golden apple.

It was a Golden Apple he had crafted using gold. He had only made two because he didn't have much gold, but he couldn't worry about that now and ate one immediately.

After he ate the Golden Apple, the red hearts in his health bar immediately changed. His remaining six hearts began recovering rapidly, and two extra yellow hearts appeared above them.

When Chen Ze fell from the sky, his character hit the ground with a bang, losing eleven hearts of health.

Fortunately, he had eaten a Golden Apple. Otherwise, his health would surely have been wiped out.

At that moment, the Ender Dragon flew onto the platform in the middle. Chen Ze glanced at his gradually recovering health, raised his sword, and charged.

He had prepared for this. He had watched other streamers fight the Ender Dragon and knew that at this point, he had to use a melee weapon to hit it.

As Chen Ze kept attacking, the Ender Dragon flew into the air again.

Nearly half an hour later, Chen Ze looked at the Ender Dragon, which had only a sliver of health left. His breathing stopped as he focused completely on the crosshair of his bow.

Aim-lead the target-fire!

The arrow flew from his bow and struck the Ender Dragon squarely.

At that moment, the Ender Dragon let out a mournful roar and crashed heavily to the ground.

Chen Ze felt as though his heart was about to leap out of his chest. He had never experienced such a thrilling, exhilarating feeling in a game before.

All he wanted to say now was, "This is so damn fun!"