Black Rose

Technoblade ventured back to the deep mines to battle the wither, a place he never thought he would revisit. Wither bosses were not difficult to kill. However, it becomes challenging to hunt them if they are not contained. Technoblade spent a long time harvesting the toughest block he could ever collect previously before his nether adventures. Today, they were finally coming in handy.

Apart from making nether portals, obsidian can be used to craft enchanting tables. However, there wasn't much use outside of those, and Technoblade did not need more portals or enchanting tables. Hence, he would use these blocks to build the wither killing cage.

Withers had three heads. That also meant they were unable to escape using regular doors. However, their powerful explosions can break through obsidian with enough attempts and Technoblade did not have infinite obsidian. He had to plan his strategy properly, ideally to kill the monster within two minutes.

Back in regular Minecraft, players often shot at the wither until it was down to the last half of its health to finish it with powerful melee attacks and potions. Technoblade already had the potions he needed and golden apples on standby. Aftercraft was a game with adjusted difficulty according to a player's strength. He had no idea what the system admin had planned for him. The wither might have five heads for all he knew.

Regardless of the difficulty level of this boss fight, there was one sure method of winning against the wither, even without overpowered weapons and armour. Technoblade made sure he had enough arrows and borrowed one of his pre-made strip mines. The key to victory was retreating endlessly until the wither died. The weak often found cunning ways to win battles, and Technoblade wasn't ashamed of burrowing to minimise damages and maximise attacks.

The tunnel he selected was the longest, with the most random strips turning into each other. Technoblade cleared an area and picked a spot where he would spawn the wither. Although he might not be able to trap the weather in obsidian for long, the time he could buy and avoid getting wither damage at the start will give Technoblade the advantage to shave off health from the boss.

Building the wither cage, Technoblade counted the ceiling height. The initial blast of the wither was the deadliest, and to avoid it, Technoblade tried to cushion it off with more stone bricks. They would be destroyed in the initial explosion, but it would protect the precious obsidian at the ceiling and sides. Technoblade also layered the floor with obsidian, and the spawning platform was complete in less than an hour.

"I'll fight the wither in perfect condition tomorrow," he told himself and decided to sleep the night off in a safety shelter he made hastily.

Technoblade had a hearty breakfast the next morning and laid the soul sand in a "T" shape formation. Spawning the wither in Aftercraft wasn't very different from spawning one in Minecraft. He placed two skulls and took a deep breath. This was it.

Plop!

The final skull sat in place, and suddenly the world shook. Technoblade quickly ran out of his wither cage and loaded his arrow. This was it.

The wither slowly came to life with an animation far scarier than watching zombies crawl out from the ground. The wither skulls merged together, and the soul sand floated. The new wither boss in Aftercraft resembled the hellhound Cerberus a little, and Technoblade swallowed.

The boss had all its heads floating and spinning around the animated soul sand body. The tail flicked, and Technoblade groaned as a powerful gust of wind threatened to blow him away. He was at least fifteen blocks away from the wither and readied his shield in case the blast radius was bigger than he thought it was.

Heads spun around the wither, and as the three heads finally hovered at their respective spots, pulsing in blue and grey particle charges, Technoblade trusted his instincts to duck into a nearby mining passage instead of holding his ground with a shield.

KABOOM!

The mighty explosion shook the deep caves, and Technoblade's ears rang. For a while, everything in the world went white and silent. When he regained control of his body, the wither boss was screaming ferociously, hurling projectiles at anything and everything in the vicinity.

The obsidian structure held out even if Technoblade spotted cracks in them. However, the stone bricks and cobblestone surroundings did not survive the birthing blast. There was a small crater around Technoblade's obsidian cage and the wither fluctuated between red and black. All three heads were doing different things, and Technoblade reacted quickly, cordoning off his strip mine to prevent monsters spawned by the wither boss from coming after him.

Plenty of creepers had charged particles crackling all over them, and Technoblade groaned. This wouldn't do. The wither boss continued spawning charged creepers sporadically, and Technoblade swapped his bow for a pickaxe to mine upwards. He needed a higher angle to avoid the creepers below.

With so much time wasted, the obsidian cage started cracking even more. Technoblade finally released his first arrow and triggered the wither boss' health bar to appear before him. That arrow barely did anything to the boss monster, but it was now given a new ability to grow black roses near Technoblade if it saw him. The first black rose sprung beneath Technoblade, giving him the wither effect, and Technobalde panicked.

Retreating from the black rose that could have killed him, Technoblade drank milk. That's right. He came prepared. However, it was not a permanent solution. Thankfully, black roses could be destroyed by hand, and the wither effect did not activate while it was in his inventory.

Switching to his bow again, Technoblade aimed at the wither and started firing shots at it rapidly. He had to take the wither's health down before it broke free from the obsidian prison.

The charged creepers in the small crater gave Technoblade the chills. The wither boss that kept spawning creepers would turn red whenever it was summoning monsters and black when other heads were attacking Technoblade. Apart from regular wither projectiles from the centre head, the last head would spy on Technoblade's movements to spawn black roses. However, the three heads were unable to attack simultaneously. It made sense as they only shared one body.

By accident, Technoblade shot the head that was turning red, and suddenly, the head went black, and the wither even stood still for a few seconds before flying around angrily, ramming at the obsidian again.

Could this be…?

There was no doubt! Trusting the gamer instincts that had never failed him before, Technoblade shot his arrows with more accuracy, aiming for the head that was turning red. Once again, the wither's attack was cancelled as it was immobilised for a few seconds.

Swapping over to his ice arrows, Technoblade repeated this technique and rejoiced when freezing debuffs worked against this terrifying boss. It also slowed the wither down enough for Technoblade to cancel the wither's attacks with better success.

Slowly but surely, the wither boss was down to half its health. However, its struggles were working against the obsidian prison, and Technoblade started drinking his potions. Things were about to get ugly.

The first obsidian shattered, and while the wither was still trapped, it started attacking differently. With a powerful tail flick, Technoblade was pushed back and took some damage from the new attack pattern. The area attack weakened more obsidian blocks even if Technoblade could cancel the wither's attacks by shooting at heads. He tried shooting at the tail, but it did nothing.

Thinking fast, Technoblade decided to risk it and ate a golden apple while jumping into the small crater of charged creepers below just as the wither broke more obsidian blocks. It would not be long before the horrifying boss broke free.

Equipped with a shield and water bucket, Technoblade landed safely and switched the bucket to a pickaxe as he waited for the wither to break the last obsidian block needed to get to him.

The charged creepers did not wait. They attacked Technoblade mercilessly, and Technoblade counted down nervously, keeping an eye on the effects of his golden apple. He needed all the resistance and defence he could get.

Crack!

Kaboom!

Just as the obsidian shattered, raining the wither boss on him, the charged creepers also exploded, and Technoblade dug down while standing in the water, holding a shield above his head and wapping the pickaxe for a fishing rod.

Sun Tzu would never fight two tigers at the same time. He pitted two powerful enemies against each other using wit, and the trick worked. The water minimised the impact of the explosions, and the shield protected him from the wither's projectiles. Although he was withered, the attack from both sides did not kill him. If anything, he survived and had enough time to drink milk while morse charged creepers set off like fireworks in succession around the boss who spawned them in.

Without time to recover, the wither took explosion damage consistently, and its health dropped by another twenty percent. Sensing its life in mortal danger, the boss tried to flee, but Technoblade came prepared.

"No, you don't!" he growled and fished the boss back.

The creepers tried to get to Technoblade as he trod water. Even without surfacing, his underwater breathing ability would keep him alive. However, Technoblade put his life on the line to take the wither down. The charged creepers surrounded him, and the floating wither boss, who could not run, exploded. Technoblade would duck down and dig a little deeper whenever they exploded before fishing the wither down with him.

This wasn't the kind of tunnel Technoblade thought he would build when fighting a wither, but it worked. Thankfully, he did not choose to dig all the way to the bottommost surface of the deep mines, or he would have no way to retreat.

With the help of charged creepers, the wither boss was finally down to the last ten percent of its initial health. Weakened greatly, the wither tried to charge at Technoblade, and the God of War was ready.

The wither spawned black roses around the water that Technoblade left behind, and the tactician cackled. As it turned out, black roses could not spawn anywhere with water. He was safe in the water.

"You picked the wrong fight," he told the wither and fished it towards him, slashing at it with his sword.

The effects of a strength potion and Technoblade's maximised skills took out a huge chunk of the wither's health, and with superior speed, Technoblade stabbed at it a few more times, even landing one critical hit.

With only three percent of its health left, Technoblade shot at it, trying to blast its way out of the deep mines. Fighting the wither underground was a good decision as the wither screamed in confusion, attacking Technoblade when it was shot at and trying to flee when it was not. However, it was too long a journey to the surface. Eventually, with one final arrow, the wither screamed its last cry and perished with the grandest explosion Technoblade had ever seen, taking all the stray charged creepers along with its death.

From the blinding firework display, a single star fell from above right into Technoblade's inventory.

Dragging himself out of the water and returning to the safety of his upper mines, Technoblade realised he could no longer sprint. Fighting the wither probably took up more time than he thought, and his stamina bar was close to zero. He would have collapsed asleep on his feet in a few more minutes, defenceless to any monster.

Thankfully, he returned to the safety shelter in the upper part of his strip mine and set down a bed, collapsing right into it as the stamina bar hit zero.