Day nine is the last day of the Max Writer Challenge, and it opens on Basket in third person by the spawner in the workshop under the desert. The plan from the last episode still stands: catch two zombie villagers, cure them, and start a village. The recording buddy is on the voice call again, and only Basket's screen is in the video. Basket spends the whole day underground at the spawner.
The routine at the cells
The cells in the workshop wall are dark now, and zombies spawn in them. Basket explains the routine: "You gotta wait for this thing to poof before it's gonna make the dudes even appear." Then it's open the cell, look, and close it again. "Break the thing, see it's never a zombie villager, kill the guy, put it back." And even with a villager, the work wouldn't be done: "Then I have to wait for that to successfully work twice, and then wait for it to cure."
So that's the day. Basket breaks the cobblestone slabs, a zombie walks out, Basket looks it over and swings the diamond sword. Rotten flesh piles up and gets eaten between fights.
One at a time
The spawner is slow. "I'm only getting one zombie spawning per, I think, burst." It can put out more than that, but Basket has only built so many cells for it to fill: "I guess I have less spawning spots because I only have these chambers."
Basket also isn't sure what counts as a village. Even with two cured villagers breeding, "I don't know if I have to have a house or more than one house before I actually technically succeed or not."
Golden pants
About two thirds of the way through, a zombie in golden armor comes out of one of the cells. It's still a regular zombie, and it dies like the rest. Right after, Basket opens the inventory, where the tooltip reads Golden Leggings with Fire Protection I, and puts them on under the diamond chestplate.
The last few spawns
The zombies keep coming one at a time. Another one in gold armor shows up in a cell later on. Every zombie Basket checks is a regular one.
With the day almost over, Basket decides on one more spawn "and see if I'm lucky." Basket stands over the spawner and waits. Then: "Oh, it didn't work. Okay, F5."
How it ends
The camera flips to third person, and Basket stands in the workshop by the chests, alive, in the diamond chestplate and golden leggings. Basket sums it up: "I wasn't able to get any zombie villagers from the spawner for some reason, but I built a cool water elevator."
So the challenge ends without a village. On screen, no zombie villager was ever found, none was cured, and there are no villagers to build one around. Basket makes it through all nine days alive in hardcore. Then the credits roll, and nothing plays after them.