No one put away their weapon in the event that Hemiola’s surrender was some kind of feint, but they approached him anyway.

“I’m not gonna look a gift-horse in the mouth, but uh… why?” Natsuko asked.

Hemiola no longer wore a patronizing grin. In its place was a grim frown. “This was a gamble from the beginning. If you all figured out this dungeon was a special event field then I lost my advantage. At that point my choice was either to surrender and have my say, or suffer more kicks to the jaw, and I do not relish the latter.”

“Bummer,” Sofiane said. He walked up and struck Hemiola across the cheek. “That’s for Baran and Xiuquan, you murdering prick!”

Hemiola accepted this with nothing but a grunt. His surrender had done nothing to replace his convictions about dimension-jumping being a gift.

“So… what now? Are you hoping we’ll let you go so you can return to dimension-jumping people?” Natsuko asked.

“No. You know as well as I do that I would come after you all. And outside of a special event field influenced by you all, I win. Your only option is to kill me right here,” Hemiola said.

Natsuko grimaced. He was right about that. It was the same dilemma Frederick had placed her in, except this time the people threatened were her friends instead of random Non-Heroes. She clenched her fists.

“You’ll be the first and last that I do this to, understand?” Natsuko said. “Don’t you dare say some shit like, “carry on my mission,” because I won’t! When we’re done here I’m getting rid of this stupid bottle and we’re gonna track down wherever you hid Shui’s papers and we’re gonna destroy them so forced dimension-jumping gets buried forever.”

A hint of a smile made its way onto Hemiola’s face. “I’d be happy to help with that. Shuixing’s research is right back where I took it from. I gathered it all in a folder and had Lawrence the general store owner hold onto it to avoid Heroes finding it. He’ll sell it to you for one Ying if you ask for a “physics textbook.”

Shuixing exhaled three weeks worth of anxiety in one breath. The long nightmare wrought by her research was finally coming to a close. With that problem dealt with, there was only the final task.

Natsuko raised the bottle over a kneeling Hemiola.

“Wait, Natsu!” Shuixing said.

Natsuko lowered the bottle. “What? Please don’t hit me with a “we can’t become like him” speech. I’m killing him.”

Shui shook her head. “That’s not it. I wanted to ask him a few more questions while we have the chance. He still hasn’t told us who, or what, the Yishang and the Celestials really are, other than that they’re some kind of being that profits off us.”

Hemiola’s gaze turned to Shuixing. She saw something in his eyes that looked like hope for her to carry on the torch and she shuddered. Bypass pig-headed Natsuko, go straight to her pliable friend, that was his thought. Shui returned a stern expression to make sure he knew that wouldn’t happen.

“Just tell us,” Shuixing said. “Or don’t. But the knowledge dies with you, and you seem to think it’s quite precious.”

“That’s not really much for me to add,” Hemiola said. “It’s a rather abstract relationship I have with the Yishang. They speak to me through written commands or through Peng-wu. If they truly are a different kind of being than us, I would have no way of knowing. But I suspect two things: One, that we were created in their image and must look similar to them. I think the “Ero-Art” number testifies to that. Two, that their own world must share some incentive structures which form the basis for our world. By this I mean it is not a coincidence that some Heroes must fail and be buried to make room for the new.”

Natsuko and Sofiane grumbled at that, but Pechorin hummed as though something clicked in his head.

“As above, so below,” he said.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Hemiola chuckled at that.

“Ya gonna tell us what that means, or are we playin’ the Pechorin guessin’ game again?” Daisy asked.

Hemiola cut in with obvious frustration at the fact that only Pechorin had picked up the insinuation.

“It means that not only Heroes, but entire worlds rise and fall in popularity. There comes a time when the Celestials are no longer satisfied with the newness of Heroes, but want an entirely new world to play in, one with ever more marvel and distraction to keep themselves entertained. Po-Lin may have more longevity because of the unpredictable intelligence they imbued you all with, but it won’t last forever. I suspect, based on the Yishang’s decision to create a special event surrounding the permanent death of Heroes, as we so kindly obliged them in enacting, this end is coming soon. They would only resort to such a gimmick if they were under pressure to keep the numbers going up.”

“How much longer?” Shuixing asked, unable to disguise the nervousness in her voice.

“Two years by my estimate,” Hemiola said. “Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. But the numbers will start to go down across the board within half that time, and then you all will know that I was correct.”

“Correct about the timeline, sure,” Sofiane said. “It’s this shit about “the other side,” I don’t buy.”

Hemiola raised an eyebrow. “I have been there already. Do I seem afraid to go again? Perhaps this time the Yishang will exterminate me for good rather than bring me back as their servant. All I ask is that you remember what I’ve said when the time comes.”

“Done yappin’?” Natsuko asked.

Hemiola nodded.

Natsuko turned to Shui. “Done asking him questions?”

It felt as though Shuixing ought to ask him more, but nothing was coming to her. She knew questions would start flooding in after she had had some rest and some time to think through the load of information that had been dumped on her. If it had been feasible, she would’ve preferred to keep Hemiola around as a resource, but he himself said that was impossible. For safety reasons, Shui took him at his word. Though, one final question did wiggle its way to the surface.

“If we— suppose we did want to fight the Yishang… if it came to that. How could we do that?” Shuixing asked.

Hemiola laughed. “You can’t. You can only try to escape.”

Shuixing bit her lip.

“Alright. You’ve already gotten a shitton of final words, so now I’ve got some for you,” Natsuko said. “See you in hell.”

She swung the bottle down. At the last second, Natsuko felt a twinge of regret that almost caused her to stop the bottle, but still half-full of wine, the momentum carried it through, and with the same undignified slapping noise and physical distortion as every one of his victims, Hemiola was thrown through the ground.

With Shuixing’s guidance they were able to execute an upward dimension-jump back to the surface. Waiting there were at least three or four other Hero teams looking to pounce on them after following Xiuquan’s team, all with hopes of poaching the Yishang’s reward.

“Hey, hey, hey! Back the hell up, idiots! We took care of the killer! The Yishang’ll call the event off… soon…ish,” Natsuko yelled.

Ice shards and lightning bolts and once-in-a-millennia starbeams fired at them but a sandstone rhinoceros goring the closest Hero for his entire health pool was enough to quiet their attackers down. As soon as the fight was over, a hawk swooped down and landed on an outcropping in full view of everyone and gave a scream that made everyone turn and look.

The hawk rubbed its beak. “My apologies, I prefer not to do that.”

Something turned in Natsuko’s stomach. She’d always mistrusted Peng-wu, but after everything they had recently learned, the hawk instilled in her a visceral repulsion. Judging by the looks of discomfort on the faces of the other four, they shared her sentiments. However, no one said anything. All of them realized that the secrets Hemiola had spilled were the kind that the Yishang might take extreme action to keep contained.

“The official proclamation from the Yishang is that Team Natsuko has resolved the Hero-killer crisis by slaying the murderer,” the hawk Pengwu announced, punctuating with another screech.

The assembled Heroes wandered off in disappointment. Just a couple weeks prior, Natsuko might have felt like gloating. But now she just saw some 15 souls deprived of what was probably the only shot they had left to live a good life and pull themselves out of unused obscurity. Sure, that goal was a little ridiculous in light of the truth about Po-Lin and its approaching end, but Natsuko empathized with it. After all, this whole escapade had been kicked off by her, Shui, and Sofiane trying to do exactly that. If another Hero had been given the bottle and framed for a forced dimension-jump murder, she might have been in that crowd herself.

Even more ridiculous, Natsuko now had a itty-bitty, tiny, infinitesimally small bit of sympathy for the Heroes at the top of the Use-Rankings, sprinting as hard as they could to stay on a treadmill that was always going faster. They were arrogant assholes, sure, but what did that even matter when the Yishang finally decided to pull the plug? They’d be washed down the drain, same as her.

No one felt like asking the hawk Peng-wu if the Yishang’s reward applied to them. The only winners in all his were the Yishang and their temporary numbers-boost anyway. Natsuko hoped the amount of money they got from killing Heroes was worth it.