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Look, admin wasn’t exactly a species, it also wasn’t exactly a job. You weren’t necessarily born an admin, but most admins were. And of course you could also just stop being an admin if your connection to your server is shredded and also your server collapses and enough of your players perma-die.
Being an admin was different from being a god and also different from being a player. Every admin was a player but not every player was an admin. So theoretically if somehow someone’s play status got revoked they would also lose their admin status, if they managed to regain playerhood, something that should be impossible to take away in the first place, it’s unknown if they would regain their admin status.
Grian would tell you that it’s very conditional actually, with admin status being wonky and prone to turning on and off randomly if you try to use it. So he didn’t. Besides, he liked being player sized, he’d given everything to be a player again, why would he give up any of the aspects he’d once so longed for and missed?
Which was to say that Xisuma was the only admin on Hermitcraft, along with being Hermitcraft’s admin.
But admins have a tendency to be…well…bad.
Power has a tendency to corrupt, and often admins who were born as admins, which were the strong majority, felt that non-admins were far beneath them, to the point that they would harm their own players and think nothing of it.
Xisuma was not like this. Many admins were shunned and even attacked if they treated their players as equals. Obviously many admins had been rightfully put in their place by various players whose species or powers gave them the upper hand. And sometimes admins were players on other admins’ servers, every ‘rule’ had a thousand exceptions. But what counted as an exception varied depending on which power-hungry admin you asked.
Hermitcraft was often a target of admin attacks, Hermitcraft was a beacon of peace and friendship, cooperation and equality, where players and admins and hybrids and all sorts of species were treated as equals. Where the players had as much say in how the server was run as the admin did. This deeply offended many admins, and while servers like this were fairly common between friends, usually they were small enough not to get noticed, but Hermitcraft was famous for so many things.
‘Bad’ admins were a known danger of joining new servers, it was safest to stay on public servers that either had no admin or had a team of them strong enough to repel attacks on them for being ‘extremist’ and letting players have rights.
The worst horror story of course was about admins eating players. And it was a sad fact that it was truthful. Admins as a whole were entirely capable of eating players, very few species hit over 15ft tall and the average admin was anywhere from 20ft to 30ft tall no matter their species. Theoretically admins were this big to fight off the void beasts and whatever monsters crawled out of the space between servers. In practice many admins scarfed down any players they felt like eating and often made deals with the monsters hiding in the void.
Xisuma was not like this.
For one, Xisuma himself was one of the ‘monsters’ that lurked in the void and ate servers and passing players. Well, his species wasn’t actually big enough to eat servers but players tended to think everything in the void was the same sort of thing. But void beasts were the creatures they were usually referring to when they talked about the horrors, void monsters were just various void species in a society that happened to be rather evil and inhumane and revolve around eating sentient and sapient beings.
Xisuma was a voidwalker, he had not been born an admin, as void admins did not exist as they were not players.
But voidwalkers had the capability to be players, it was just that any players born amongst them tended to get eaten by their siblings before they could grow up.
Xisuma might have been born an admin actually, there would have been no way for him to know when he lived in the void and had never even seen a server before.
But regardless of his backstory, Xisuma was a good admin, and he was strong enough on his own to repel most attacks on Hermitcraft. And his players were filled with various beings and deities and species that were just as powerful as him, and together they kept Hermitcraft safe.
But just this fact made quite a few admins angry.
Scott managed to send out a warning to Xisuma that someone had been attacking the firewalls of MCC and when they couldn’t break through the firewalls set up by a team of experienced admins they’d headed off in the direction of Empires and Hermitcraft. Scott had retreated to Empires to help fwhip defend it in case they would target there next, but he was more worried about Hermitcraft as he was fairly certain the attackers were a large group of admins who were known for targeting ‘good’ servers.
Xisuma tried not to be too worried, he warned everyone to gather at spawn but didn’t tell them why yet. Hermitcraft hadn’t faced this scale of attack before, sure, they’d fended off smaller groups of admins, plenty of hackers, dozens of void beasts, and even Watchers, but no matter how good the firewall was, eventually brute force would crack it.
Xisuma would just have to get them to give up before they managed it.
Xisuma was 30ft tall, he was large even for an admin, and sometimes his height alone was intimidating enough to get other admins to back off. Unfortunately he doubted it would be enough as he felt the first barrage against the firewalls.
He couldn’t even take a breath to tell his players what was happening, although it only took a minute before the more coding adept figured out that Hermitcraft was under attack.
Xisuma was doing his best.
It wasn’t good enough.
The smallest of cracks in the firewall…and as fast as he patched it up, he wasn’t fast enough.
The admin appeared and Xisuma would have to trust his players to fight them off while he held the firewall.
At first they seemed to be doing well, Doc had a mean swing with the metal arm and all, and Etho False had done something that sent the admin stumbling. But then the admin managed to scoop up Skizz. Skizz wasn’t weak but with his arms pinned to his sides he couldn’t fight back as the admin lifted him up towards their mouth.
Grian had launched himself into the air and was dive bombing the admin to try and force their grip to loosen, it would have worked even, but the admin was moving too fast, they’d have Skizz in their mouth by the time Grian hit them.
Fuck. Xisuma thought, and in the privacy of his own mind this was definitely the time to swear. He was going to have to grab Skizz, but that would break his concentration and the other admins would get in and he wouldn’t be able to keep track of everyone in the fight. No. If he did this he was going to have to somehow contain everyone in the same place, somewhere he could easily defend without having to worry about any of the Hermits being separated.
And it wasn’t like he had a choice because he wasn’t about to let Skizz get eaten.
So he moved.
In an instant he’d yanked his mask off, dragged the other admin away from his players and broken their hand yanking Skizz out of their grip. Already another admin had broken through and was materializing nearby. Xisuma dropped Skizz into his mouth and swallowed while he turned and grabbed the hermit nearest to him, he’d have to be quick.
Skizz was struggling in his throat as Xisuma dropped Bdubs into his mouth and swallowed thickly. The Hermits were staring at him in horror and confusion, but none of them had started running, they were bunching together for safety, good, together they were a force to be reckoned with.
Xisuma managed to snag Hypno and Keralis at the same time, he swallowed them quickly, feeling Skizz land in his stomach. Another admin was currently fighting with Doc, Xisuma didn’t want to leave Doc in danger, but he knew he had to focus on the players who couldn’t hold off an admin on their own.
Cub thrashed as he was dragged down Xisuma’s throat, Xisuma winced at the way the Hermits were attacking his insides and was only glad that the moment they were in his mouth their inventories locked up and they couldn’t use their weapons.
Joel was swallowed quickly, which caused Etho to launch himself out of the group at Xisuma, everyone else seemed split on if they should attack the invading admins that were trying to eat them, or Xisuma, their friend who was also trying to eat them.
Etho was harder to choke down, he tasted like the void and he clawed at Xisuma’s throat.
Xisuma spotted Grian diving at him when he managed to grab Pearl, he snatched the watcher out of the sky and shoved both of them into his mouth.
Oh Void his stomach hurt.
When he reached out to grab Scar, Gem stabbed his hand, Xisuma winced but grabbed both of them, feeling the needle sharpness of Scar’s teeth as he bit Xisuma’s hand.
Doc stumbled and the other admin grabbed him, Xisuma threw himself at the admin and yanked Doc out of their grip, stuffing Doc into his mouth before Doc had a chance to recover and fight back.
Jevin was standing next to Iskall, the two of them back to back, trying to keep an eye on the threats in every direction, but it made it easy for Xisuma to capture both of them.
Impulse seemed to have had enough and decided to attack Xisuma, Xisuma felt tears building in his eyes as he scooped Impulse up and dropped him into his mouth. Joe was easy enough to pick up. Mumbo seemed to be in shock, as he didn’t move at all as Xisuma dropped him into his mouth.
Ren and Stress were swallowed, Tango burned the roof of Xisuma’s mouth.
The weight in Xisuma’s middle was almost unbearable, and the way they were all fighting hurt, his stomach lining certainly bruised.
Beef shouted something at Xisuma, Wels could only punch and kick and look at him in betrayal. Zedaph screamed, xB thrashed. Cleo went limp once he dropped her onto his tongue, after seeing every other Hermit enter Xisuma’s gullet, once she was in his mouth she seemed almost resigned to her fate. Xisuma would have thought out of everyone that she wouldn’t have stopped fighting.
Xisuma swallowed.
At this point the other admins were staring at him in confusion. They had clearly not expected Xisuma, kind admin of Hermitcraft, to eat his entire player base that he’d protected with his life before this.
“Get out of my server.” Xisuma growled, hiding the pain from his stomach.
When the other admin didn’t react Xisuma dragged his mask back over his face before stabbing the admin through the heart. And because they weren’t whitelisted they couldn’t respawn.
Perma-death.
And then the fight was on.
At some point the painful squirming in his insides stopped, there was still squirming, but it was softer, less violent, Xisuma couldn’t focus on that, he had to drive away the people who had invaded his server!
Finally it seemed he’d killed enough of them, because the remaining few retreated. Xisuma closed the firewall behind them, clearing up the damage until no one could get through while he was weak.
Once he was done Xisuma collapsed, curling around his belly and passing out from exhaustion.
His players were safe.
His friends were hidden inside of him and even if they hated him now he had protected them. They were okay. They were all okay.
…
It didn’t take long for someone to figure out that Xisuma had collapsed from exhaustion. The Hermits were stuck in a pile, squished together, uncomfortable, but no more than at a sleepover where everyone piles onto one bed to gossip together.
There was guilt, because once Xisuma had started killing the other admins Grian had pieced together what was happening.
“Admins can only digest their own players if they are actively fighting their own code to do so.” he explained, “And none of us are dead.”
His meaning spread quickly.
Xisuma had been trying to get them all into one place where he could easily defend them and not lose any of them to chance and luck on the side of the invaders.
And while they’d prefer to be outside their admin, most of the Hermits could agree that a forced cuddle pile wasn’t the end of the world and they just wished they could get out and make sure Xisuma was okay.
While waiting for Xisuma to wake up, they got comfortable and tried to not cause any more injuries than the ones they’d already made.
…
Xisuma woke up with a full stomach, its contents weighing him down as he shifted to his feet. A hand drifted down to the barely visible swell of his belly, his fingers ran over it softly, careful not to press in. Xisuma sat back down and considered if it would be easier to cough all of the Hermits up or to teleport them out individually using a command.
He wasn’t certain he had enough energy for either.
But with how his throat felt a command would be better for his health.
So he started.
Once all of the Hermits were out he broke down and cried, apologizing over and over, pleading for forgiveness.
“Only if you forgive us for hurting you.” Keralis shot back.
Xisuma scooped his friends up into a hug, before setting them back down and wincing at every movement, his stomach was pretty badly bruised.
But it would be okay.
His players were safe.
And they trusted him.