Something about the Fake Avery got me thinking.
Obviously, Derek has spent some time in minecraft between his recordings (i mean, literally the entire timespan between him writing the "At the crossroads, don't turn left" thing and december 31st must be. a lot.) We can see that he has a new book and quill that he has started writing in. Ergo, he was actively playing for who knows how long. This part isn't recorded
Meaning that there is, theoretically, a chance that the start of the recording isn't his first time exploring The King's Realm.
Derek must've been in the game for like, a month or something at this point. Possibly longer. While he does mention passing out, I do not think that someone who still needs food could pass out for a MONTH and stay alive (unless there is some King bs involved but I highly doubt that The King would choose to keep D3r alive, lmao.) And he writes his second book, which means he actively played and went around enough to aquire the materials for a book and quill. Meaning that he played. Actively.
(I actually took a look at SFAWTDE to see if he had the materials—and he doesn't! He only has two squid ink sacs, and that's about it.)
D3rlord3 says he wrote the book, uploaded the video, and then went back to those gates. Undeniably, he spent the past month in there.
I know that what I'm about to say is a bit of a stretch, but. What if. What if he had already explored some of The King's Realm, and THEN went back to the beginning when he realized Avery would follow him?
We know from the first entries of the second book he writes that he wasn't fully...sane when he first entered. He could've easily wandered around aimlessly for a while. The mountain puzzle isn't exactly the same level in terms of difficulty as, say, the lake puzzle. You could at the very least get past it if you had enough blocks to do so.
Being mentally unwell, I highly doubt he could focus on what Avery is up to at this point, so he might not have immediately went, "oh my god Avery is gonna do it oh no" and so might have focused on another agenda. Maybe focusing on getting better, maybe traveling The King's Realm.
While I don't think this is what happened, I wanted to say all this so that I could make a justification about something that bothered me:
Remember how I mentioned Fake Avery?
Fake Avery as a whole doesn't make sense as a trap to me, I'll be real. D3rlord3 knows all there is to know about Avery. This is, like, the worst way The King could have tried to divert D3r's attention.
So what if the Fake Avery trap was never meant for D3rlord?
Assuming that D3rlord3 had already travelled through this point, The King might've...done whatever he does to interact with the world and lay a trap for the next person who would cross the mountains. Maybe The King's Realm assumed that, D3rlord3, having already crossed the mountains, would move forward, so it just assumed the next player to move would be Avery.
In order for this to work, the Fake trap would have to be something more automated and adaptive. Obviously, Avery would immediately know that whatever is standing in front of him isn't him. So, I propose that the trap works like this:
Player crosses the mountains.
Send someone Player would trust, so that Player stops progressing beyond the mountains.
Fake!Player guides the Player to somewhere else.
I was then stuck thinking of why The King might use something like this on Avery (wouldn't it be better if he went further into It's Realm?) but then realized the answer might be super simple:
The King wanted to waste Avery's time, so that he could properly prepare himself for the merging.
We know that the King needed time to get himself together, so that he could merge with Avery. This is, probably the entire reason the church exists, and why The King didn't immediately merge with Avery upon his arrival.
The idea that The King wouldn't have multiple traps like this doesn't sit right with me. Cuz like. The vibes I got from this dude in SFAWDTE was that it enjoyed messing around with D3rlord3 and how paranoid he behaved. (Dunno if this is pop knowledge, but the grass block wasn't the only trap that was clearly set off. The block order in the dropper was wrong. I think the places of the glass and the wood planks were switched or something. This means that The King Knew that trap was there for it and decided to make it clear that it Knew. Being smart enough to place the blocks back in place, and it doesn't put them in the correct ones? That sounds like mocking to me. Here you tried to set a trap. Here, It figured it out, and set it up wrong. It knows that you know. It wants you to know that it knows you know.
There is a reason that "You can't outsmart it" line is in the book.)
The existence of this trap would mean that The King attempted to waste Avery's time more than once, and that makes more sense to me.
For many, many obvious reasons, a Fake D3rlord3 would have worked better than a Fake Avery. Avery doesn't know how D3rlord3 is supposed to behave. Avery is less paranoid than D3rlord3. Avery already looks up to D3rlord3. Avery would have followed a Fake D3rlord3 to wherever The Fake wanted to lead him. Tragic, but Avery would have fallen for the trap.
This would also mean that D3rlord3 saved Avery from falling into another trap.
