A Devil sat at a desk in a damp, dark room. He was, in a turn of character, actually doing the copying work he’d been neglecting for so long now. Though it wasn’t because he suddenly felt remorseful about forcing his co-workers to pick up his slack, or anything along those lines.
No, it was because he was terrified.
He’d just gotten word back. Arlan Nota was confird alive. And the wall was destroyed. The soldiers were all either dead, retreating, or deserted, leaving the Devil with absolutely nobody left to kill the fugitive.
He’d lost, plain and simple.
The war against Arlan Nota wasn’t over—far from it—but the Devil knew that his superiors wouldn’t be looking at this with a charitable view. They wouldn’t be considering it as a simple temporary setback that the Devil could still save if he got so more ti.
He’d proven himself, ti after ti, to simply not be good enough for the job.
And so he had no doubt he’d lose that job.
So may think he’d have been ecstatic about that. The Arlan Nota case was what caused him so many problems in the first place—wouldn’t it be great if he didn’t have to worry about that anymore? But he knew what it’d an if he proved himself useless to the Demons.
In the massive common room he worked in—hundreds of paces long and wide, filled wall-to-wall with desks—the walls were lined with doors. Most of those doors led to hallways, where one would be taken through a series of rooms with Hall Monitors in them to guide Demons to their destinations. The life of a Hall Monitor was seen as the lowest of the low—sitting around, doing absolutely nothing for hours upon hours upon hours on end except for maybe giving one or two Demons directions on where the nearest office complex was, or sothing.
The life of a Hall Monitor was effectively being condemned to a death of boredom. A mind-numbing existence of nothingness.
But there were so doors that didn’t lead to hallways. So led to private offices, like the Devil’s old office, located through door 214.6b, that was now occupied by his replacent, Plindakin’porbindoplandimoni’aasiindorkaanpondindindodondi’papossin. All of the 214 doors led to offices.
But so of the doors led to other things. Door 999, for example.
That door led to the execution room.
When an underling misbehaved, refused to follow orders, or underperford to such an extre degree that they proved themselves useless in all circumstances, the Seventh Circle of the Underworld decided that they had no more use for that Demon. And they were dealt with thusly.
The Devil had, in effect, done all three of those things. He’d acted in an extraordinarily impolite fashion toward his superiors, he’d failed to uphold his copying work deadlines several tis, and now he’d failed to uphold his most important duty: kill Arlan Nota.
So he was working as hard as he could to try and prove his worth in so other fashion. Naly, his ability to copy. It was low, tedious, boring, humiliating work, but at this point, it didn’t matter. He didn’t want to die, and if this was what it’d take, he’d do it.
So he worked as quickly as he could, writing down the sa docunts over and over. This eleven page docunt needed nine copies so it could go out to the nine general officer second class secretaries in order to get confirmation on an order for new materials being used in the pins so army colonels wore on their shirts. This fifteen page docunt needed twenty-one copies so it could go out to all newly-assigned employees at a manufacturing plant to show them the exact guidelines and regulations for assembling said pins.
He had about three hundred more docunts like those to copy over, and they were due in not enough ti for him to actually get them done. Not even close. But perhaps, he thought, he could get enough done that his superiors would understand he could at least be of basic use as a copier. It would be a ek, worthless existence, but an existence nonetheless.
It didn’t take long for him to be interrupted.
As he worked, scribbling as quickly as he could on a sheet of paper, he heard a series of stomps coming up from behind him. He almost didn’t want to look back out of pure fear, but curiosity won him over, and he glanced back.
A Devil woman—his direct superior—and a security detail of a half-dozen Nefariors approached down the narrow hallway. Nefariors were the direct evolution past Infernals, and their bodies showed it well. They were taller, beefier, and looked even more misshapen and deford. Their muscled bodies bulged out so much that they almost didn’t have necks at all, their massive shoulders taking its place, and their thighs and calves shifted and flexed with each movent so much that it looked like they’d explode at any mont.
These were the soldiers used as front-linesn in the wars the Seventh Circle fought against the other circles. The regular Infernals were effectively trainees, borderline civilians still moving through the equivalent of boot camp before they could really get so action in the constant wars with the other Circles of the Underworld. That was why it was so easy for the Devil to get his hands on such a large contingent of them for the Overworld invasion—sothing that, by comparison, was of very little importance.
The “boot camp” of the Underworld was very different from the military training Humans got in the Overworld, which the Devil had, of course, researched while planning his assault against their military. Where the Humans seed to operate under the strange idea of preserving the lives of their fellow n during training, the Demons operated under another idea: if you died during training, you were too weak to fight in the main conflict anyway.
And so, Demon boot camps typically sported a mortality rate of around 97.63%. Of course, that number varied—acceptable rates fell between 97.61% and 97.65%—but that was the general rate. And it was set at that number so as to weed out any and all weaklings from the pack.
It wasn’t as though the Demons killed all of these young Infernals for fun, of course—that would simply be inefficient—but rather it was out of necessity. It wasn’t common for a Demon’s species to change like that, from one to another. This was because, unlike most monsters of the Overworld, they didn’t evolve through Level-ups. Instead, specific species had the ability to, through consumption of a specific substance, change into another.
So of them were like the Flaling, which evolved into its next form—the Ashlocke—through consuming sothing relatively common—for the Flaling, it was a charred corpse. Or the Zelus, which evolved into a Salvite through consumption of another Zelus. Infernals were quite different, however. Because what they needed to consu was much, much rarer.
To beco a Nefarior, an Infernal needed to drink a God’s blood.
That was, of course, not sothing the Seventh Circle had an infinite amount of. In fact, they’d only ever acquired a single piece of a God’s corpse, and had been using it to sustain their battle efforts for millenia. They were just lucky that Lunae’s ring finger was large enough to contain so much blood.
So it made sense for them to be so careful in who, exactly, they gave that limited supply of God blood to. Any ti a new Infernal spawned, it was thrown straight into the Demon’s military training camp to ensure it was of good ttle.
What did that training camp consist of? Well, the Devil didn’t know the fine details, but he was aware of the general idea. Newborn Infernals were tossed into the Ten-Million-Pace River of Lava, which ran for long enough for them to spend around their first year in. After about eighty percent of the Infernals were culled through that thod, the surviving ones were thrown off a cliff, then got all of their extremities amputated in order to test their regeneration, then they’d be asked to stab themselves in the heart to test their willpower.
And then, once they’d been cut down to around six percent of their original numbers, the Infernals would begin actual combat training. They’d do that for so more years, until the very end, where they’d be asked to each spar against a partner to the death. That cut the survivors down to the appropriate figure. After living through all of that, the Infernals were given one drop of Lunae’s blood to drink.
And those Infernals turned into what was standing in front of the Devil now.
Six of them. Their skin was technically red, but their blue-blooded veins ran so thick, all across their bodies, that they almost seed purple. They all approached, stomping along and knocking aside desks, workers, and anything else that happened to get in their way.
And they flanked the Devil’s superior, who spoke to him in a curt, official voice. “Greeting, Xhag. You will co with , now.”
“A, a, a most formal expression of greeting, Superior Quinmorada’qualticularoohdodonmi’asmomonomomonminmi’oohdoohdimyuumyuuquanquimi’jinndarrqyuqyakwuquoquanki’miminanmujardinmani’quokinwukanquokokanki,” the Devil hurriedly stood from his seat and gave a bow to his superior. “As you can see, I was just working very hard on my copying work. You can see that I’ve gotten quite a bit of it done in just the past few hours. In fact, if you look here—”
“With . Now.”
The Devil’s face paled.
“Nefarior number four. Grab him and take him with .”
One of the Nefariors stepped forward and wrapped its massive hand around the Devil’s shoulder, dragging him along as the superior turned and walked away. The Nefarior followed, pulling the Devil along with them.
“L-listen,” the Devil begged as they walked, “I offer my sincerest, most formal expression of apology for my failure with the Arlan Nota project. But please, I can offer my uses in so other way. You—you saw how I was copying back there, right? I could be one of them! Please! Just let —”
His superior stopped and looked back, up at the Nefarior that had him detained. “Take him through Door 999.”
The Devil’s eyes widened. “No, no, please, you can’t do that. I’m not so Gargoyle, you can’t just execute ! I’m a Devil! A fucking Devil! You can’t just execute soone of your own kind! Do you understand ?!”
She stayed turned away from the screaming Devil as he was dragged toward the door. He pushed and clawed at the Nefarior’s hands and arms, trying his damndest to pry himself from the thing’s invulnerable grip. He used his magic, despite knowing fully well that they had resistance to it. He tried screaming, punching, biting, anything, to get away from that door.
But despite it all, he was dragged, pace after pace, to his death. Nothing he did even slowed the Nefarior down.
“Please,” the Devil cried, tears falling down his face, “don’t. Have rcy. I know I ssed up. I know I did. But I’ll do better. I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t ever—”
He was cut off by the Nefarior putting its hand over his mouth and opening Door 999. He had his head forcibly turned toward the door as the Nefarior reached its other hand forward to turn the knob and open the stone slab.
The funny thing about Door 999 was that nobody knew what was through it. Because if you went through, you died. And you couldn’t see through it, either. It wasn’t really a “door” at all. Well, there was a physical door there, but through the door was actually a teleporter that took you soplace else. A rectangle of space that linked up to so mystery location.
The Devil had heard what felt like an infinite number of theories about what was through that door. So said it took you to the bottom of a lake of lava, where you’d either burn to death, or if you had the heat resistance to survive it, suffocate. So said it took you to the top of so massive cliff, where you’d fall straight down for a full year before reaching the bottom of the pit and dying on impact. So said it was actually a grid of tiny teleporters, and each little square of your body would be teleported soplace else, neatly dividing your entire body into chunks of at.
He’d never taken part in that theorycrafting, instead wanting to focus on his work. But now, he regretted it. It wouldn’t have done anything to save him, but at the very least, all he wanted was so sort of certainty. So sort of knowledge of what kind of fate he’d et.
The Nefarior opened the door, and the Devil saw the familiar black void of a teleporter. It was what all of the Seventh Circle’s teleporters looked like—void-black squares in space that connected to so other teleporter, sowhere else in the Underworld.
He’d gone through teleporters thousands—or maybe even millions—of tis in his life, but this ti it felt completely different. It was like he could feel a cosmic coldness of death radiating off of this one, the air being sucked out of his lungs in real ti as he was pushed toward it.
“Please!” he shouted one last ti, voice muffled by the Nefarior’s hand. “I don’t want to die—”
The Nefarior gave him one last shove, he flew straight through the teleporter of Door 999, and—
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