I inch closer to him. “Hey, uh, I—”

He jumps. Turning around, his eyes fall on me, and his expression instantly spoils. “Oh, it’s only you. Um… Could you wait for a moment while I finish writing? I’m kind of in the zone, so…”

“A moment, or three days?”

He squints at me. Frowning deeply, he sticks his quill back in the inkwell, stands up, spins around and sits back down without turning the chair, leaving him to sit backwards on it, arms resting on the back rest. “Alright. So, you’re no better than my wretched little apprentice, huh?”

“If you’re calling me annoying, then probably, yeah.”

He frowns even deeper, to the point where he lets out a grumble. “You’re lucky I decided to learn Swedish on a whim, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to understand you.”

“Can’t you just read my—” Oh, no, wait, because I’m—

“You’re a God, technically speaking. And technically speaking, that means I should show you some amount of respect—but I’m not going to! And you know why? Because you’re a mean little twerp, and your hijinks may have cost me my most promising apostle candidate.”

“As in…?” I feel the name get stuck in my throat.

“Yeah. Your little friend. Poor man! What did he do to deserve a fate like that, huh? Really, you should’ve been the god of… the god of…” He racks his brains for a solid fifteen seconds. I almost feel bad for him, but when I move to suggest something, he interrupts me, exclaiming, “God of Stupid! That would’ve been fitting.”

“Yeah, maybe so,” I say. “It would certainly be deserved.”

He draws back, appalled. “Oh, no, no, don’t you dare—you do not get to be self-pitying about this! Or are you trying to pity yourself so nobody else has to? Because no one will ever want to pity you? Some god of hope you are.”

I hold up my hands in surrender. “Look, okay, I get it. I suck. Don’t think I don’t know it myself. Does it make you happy to know how keenly aware of it I am?”

“No,” he snarls. “That makes it worse. I want to hate you purely! If you’re being self-aware about your own sins…” He shakes his head. “Whatever. You’ve really put me in a bad mood, now. Heh, SuperMoleman’s disdain makes sense now.”

“...Disdain?” I echo. “He doesn’t hate me that much does he? I mean, I understand if he hates me—of course, I made sure of it—but I was thinking that, one day, when I get all better, I could beat the tutorial, and…”

“He doesn’t want to see you.”

“...What?”

“And he doesn’t want you to return to Earth, either. Which unfortunately means that we’re stuck with you. Are you happy? You succeeded in making him hate you! Great, isn’t it?”

“No, I—couldn’t you tell him that I’m trying to get better? To—to do better? Sure, we don’t need to ever be friends again, but I’d still like to see him sometime, or… or at least show him that I can get better. Then, he can… We can…”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“As desperate as ever. Pathetic.”

I fall to my knees. My hands are on my lap. Listless, unmoving. I stare at them. “I have to get better. If I get better, then, we can… I can…”

“Give it up. Get better all you want, save the whole world, he still won’t want to see you.” He sneers at me. “Is your motivation really that shallow? Are you too much of a coward to get better for your own sake?”

I grit my teeth. Not too fast, not too slow, I rise to my feet. Without stumbling, without swaying. “No. I want… I want to get better. Moleman is… He has his own life to lead, and I have mine. I told him as much, didn’t I? It’s too late to turn back. Maybe I’ll see him again. Maybe I won’t. Maybe, I never become a good person, like he is. But that’s okay. Right now… Simply trying is enough. For my sake. For the sake of my future.”

For a long moment, he looks at me, fingers steepled, his child’s face set in a paradoxically stoic expression. “Will you try to beat the tutorial?”

I pause. “I don’t know. Maybe. Right now, I want to keep going. One day, I might realize that my calling is here, in Purgatory. Or I’ll decide that I want to go home. That I have to. At that moment, if I feel that it’s right, I’ll go. And if not…” I chuckle weakly. “Well, you know all about it, don’t you?”

He stands up, turns around, and sits again to face his desk. “Who knows?” he says. “You’re outside My power. Where you go from now… Only you can tell.”

I draw closer to him. Words linger on my tongue. I take a deep breath. “Do you… believe that I can get better?”

“I only believe in fact,” he says, like a nerd. “But…” He glances over his shoulder, the shadow of a smile playing over his lips. “I do know that your domain is as such for a reason.”

Smiling, I step back again. “Thank you.”

And for a few seconds, I just stand here, and he doesn’t move, either. Something’s nagging at me. Some detail I’ve missed, something I was supposed to do…

“Oh, right,” he says, leaning over to open one of the drawers in his desk. “You came here to receive a quest, right? I almost forgot. Heh, usually I just ask challengers to find Me a rare book or conduct some experiment to prove or disprove a theory, but for you… I’ve come up with something delightfully diabolical. I hope you’ll be able to complete it within the coming decade. Otherwise, as a semi-God, you should at least live long enough to complete it within the next few thousand. It all depends on you.” He fishes around in the drawer for a moment or two before pulling out a small, black rock. He crushes it into powder in his hand, pours the dust onto his desk, rearranges it, and…

divine mission pertaining to the

Ledge of Lust>

Hell Difficulty First Ledge:

The Ledge of Lust>

<[Divine Mission:

Understand someone.>

I stare at the mission. I go for a change of pace and stare at his mischievous face, complete with shit-eating grin. I move to punch him, but as though by divine intervention, I magically receive the full understanding that punching him would not only not hurt him, it would actually cause the believers in the cathedral to flock up here to arrest me, which would in turn lead to my unfortunate execution. I draw myself back, letting my fist fall to my side. “You’re evil,” I say.

“I hope it won’t trouble you too much, ha-ha! I really do hope you’ll finish it within your half-mortal lifespan, Hope!” And he laughs, and he laughs, and then he laughs a bit more, because the god of knowledge is apparently a spiteful bastard.

Too angry to give him a proper clap-back, I storm out. Grinna accosts me on the way out, and I explain to her in small words that her chosen god is a brat and an asshole, to which she agrees with a laugh—one eerily similar to that of her master. Abruptly disgusted, I leave.

Once I’m outside, once I’m back up on a rooftop, I’m able to find some humor in what happened. Heck, maybe I’ll even laugh about it! Ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha. Ha…

I kick a roof tile and break my toe. The tile didn’t even budge. Grumbling, I hunker down and gnaw on one of my fingers. Understand someone, eh? I can understand people plenty! Easy. This is just… This is his way of telling me to prove that I can do languages without needing them automatically translated. That I can learn them, easy-peasy. Which I can! I’ve learnt Aetongue in like, a month! Or maybe two. I don’t know, time feels weird. But I did learn it. I bet the second I get to Fiir-ette and start talking, this quest will be cleared in no time at all!

…On that note, I think I can smell him over by the palace. Not inside it, but outside it. Oh, he’s probably waiting for me. I hope he hasn’t waited too long.

I’d better get going.