While the jGuardians were fooling around with their team-building competition, Arthur and Grimly were taking care of important business.

They walked through a large city in what looked like the very south of Arlepia.

Pretty tiled roads, aqueducts and more people than any other place in Arlepia, tall lanterns stood on the sides of the streets.

Many homes, some already taken over, others stood empty, the city looked like it could host two-thousand people comfortably, though it was the capital city of Arlepia.

The homes themselves were made from brick and plaster, most two or sometimes even three stories high, they had nice tiled roomes of oranged and yellow tiles.

"So that's your plan, to flood the world with a massive wave?" asked Grimly walking behind Arthur as he plucked his guitar.

"That's right, by making this world uninhabitable I will prevent life from forming... that's the only way to stop the course of faith..." Arthur replied.

"Faith?" asked Grimly with a raised eyebrow.

"Mmm..." Arthur looked up to the cloudless sky.

"I realised a long time ago that faith is not a fan of re-dealing the cards you were dealt..." Arthur replied,

"So if I'm doomed to play a losing game in this life and the next, I'll burn down the entire casino so no games can take place!" he exclaimed.

"I like your thinking!" Grimly replied with excitement.

He plucked some strings on his guitar playing a few chords.

Arthur looked back to Grimly.

"What about you?" he asked.

"Me?" he looked shocked at the question.

"Oh, I already told you, I just want to stop existing..." he replied dismissively.

Despite this Arthur kept looking his way, beckoning him to elaborate.

Grimly let out a sigh and looked away.

"Be it in this world or on earth I was a musician at heart... but with no talent making a living off music is tough..." he replied.

"At every turn life would be desperate to kick me in the dick, y'know..." Grimly replied.

Arthur nodded understandingly.

His face lit up with a smile as he began to recall something from his past back on Earth.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I remember once when I was twenty-two I went out to my usual spot, I'd play my guitar and sometimes somebody would appear and drop a few coins into my hat,"

"I had a bigger crowd than usual... which is to say a crowd at all!" he chuckled.

"It was some tourists recording me playing the guitar."

His face suddenly soured.

"The next day some dumbass teenager walked up to me while I was playing and snipped the guitar strings before running off,"

"Why? What did he gain from doing that?" he asked nobody in specific.

Realising he was visibly upset he breathed a sigh and returned to his usual tired look.

"That was just one of the many times everything went to shit... Eventually, I ran out of people to free-load off so I ended up on the street, my only achievements were a few music courses that I probably overpaid for anyway..."

"I gambled everything on a ticket to the city, well, suffice it to say my gamble didn't pay off, I ended up out on the street before I caught some disease, and then I ended up in debt because of the treatment..."

His eyes began to water as he reached up with his sleeve, "Ah, shit, I didn't want it to come off as a sob story, I was just a dumbass trying to follow my dreams like some fifteen-year-old movie protagonist..." he replied fake-laughing.

Arthur's face remained unchanged as he looked ahead.

"You weren't a dumbass... faith doomed you from the start... no matter what dream you would have had, no matter what you chose to do with your life, you were doomed to fail..." Arthur said sounding bitter.

They took a turn down an unpaved alleyway.

Arthur began speaking,

"Like I told you, I was born into this world..." Arthur began.

"In about seven years from this point, I would have been born to two parents of unconfirmed IRL age, deciding they didn't want to deal with a kid while out on adventures and whatnot, they left me out in some street," Arthur explained.

"I grew up doing odd-jobs around this city, from cleaning to cooking, I never let the bad pay and terrible treatment get to me!" Arthur exclaimed.

"No matter how many times I'd get robbed or beaten I'd get back to my feet and get back to work,"

"My mentality was always 'If I reach rock bottom I can only go up!'"

"Well, after reaching the age of eighteen I decided I had enough money to give it a shot, everything I saved up for my entire life up until that point!" he exclaimed.

"Five-hundred and eighty-three gold,"

"A small, two-room building was just barely within my budget, I spent five-hundred gold on the building itself, I decided to follow my dream too, you see..."

"I opened up a noodle-restaurant!" he exclaimed.

Grimly blinked in surprise.

"A noodle restaurant? I would have expected something more grand from someone with your power!" Grimly remarked.

Arthur chuckled, "Yeah, I bed you'd expect something cool from a world-destroying edgelord, right?"

He let out a sigh.

"No, being a chef is all I ever wanted ever since I was a cook for this one inn when I was thirteen, I had a few guests a day at first, my food wasn't the best, but I was determined to learn!"

"Every meal I made for myself served a dual purpose, I tried different spices and recipes,"

"For a while there I felt things were looking up!" Arthur remarked.

"Sure, I'd have to sleep on the wooden floor in the kitchen, sure I made barely enough to buy the ingredients, but I was satisfied,"

"I thought that if that was how I'd spend the rest of my life, I would die with a smile! But me being happy clearly went against faith..."

"The biggest fear of any chef, a bug infestation appeared in my kitchen, I had to get into debt to get them cleared out..."

"Then people started giving out about the food,"

"The jGuardian introduced a rating system for all businesses, where every customer had the right to rate a magic plaque from zero to four, that way a business with less than one star would be cleared out for a more successful one..." he scoffed.

"Apparently they had a thing like that on Earth too... should you just go and try for yourself?" he asked rhetorically.

"And suddenly my restaurant complaints, long-term customers told me the food was "meh, at best..." or just leave..."

Arthur clenched his fist.

"And that's when he appeared... XxFoxlyxX, a frogman that somehow became the richest person in the world in the first year of this world..."

"He opened a restaurant, it wasn't even his passion, he said he'd "Give the food thing a shot for fun!", he ran so many other businesses, mining, dungeon clearing, tech, magic!" he exclaimed.

"But no, he opened up a fancy, four-start restaurant opposite my one and started selling pre-made, frozen foods and basic sandwiches, of course, people went to his restaurant, hell I went there myself and the food was better..." Arthur said bitterly.

"That was the last straw for me... twenty-three years and I have seen nothing but constant bad luck and a collective week of "alright poverty"..." Arthur said.

"That was when I realised faith must be some-... some magical god-like power that stops us from ever-changing our future... if it decided we suffer, we always suffer..." he said somberly.

"So I'll take it down! I'll remove all life from this world for their sake, how many other souls cling on until their death saying "Oh, what if tomorrow will be better" like poor, innocent fools? I can't bear to think about it..." he gritted his teeth.

"I understand..." Grimly said plucking a few more stings on his guitar.

They walked in silence for a while longer.

"We're here..." Arthur finally said standing in front of a normal-looking door with a metal plaque with "Not Lorb's room!" engraved into it.