Both teams had been playing with their hearts fully devoted to the obligation.

When the observers, the people putting the stakes into the game, left their ranks - both teams felt the reduction in obligation, a reduction caused by the irrational behavior of the observers. Sports was so important, why were they leaving?

The fear of this new phenomenon drove them to investigate, maybe to eradicate this problem once and for all, before it could corrode the basis of their existence.

The competition was over and the true battle had begun - and it started with the identification of the truly arcane enemy. It was more important than continuing a low stake game. Imagine their faces when they found out that the enemy that was corroding their basis of existence was another basis of their existence - food and the lack of thereof.

Their observers found the lack of food more important than the obligation of sports.

It was a painful realization for the athletes. After all the training and tension and the disappointment of loss that they had been through, all in order to get loved for victory, the food, which was taken for granted until now, seemed so meaningless in comparison.

Some of them stopped at their position and returned to play a game with incomplete teams as the other former players joined the people in their search for food.

Could food save them? Probably the only thing that could save them, would be if a nuke could pierce the bunker in which NiceTeal had bunkered all that food - which had not been possible and even if it could the food would end up irradiated, poisoned.

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This would be a thought that would come up in a mind that was not clouded in desire.

As established a mind clouded in desire will not search for the conclusion that the desire can not be quenched. The mind will come up with more and more radical methods that will delay the inevitable, the unquenchability of desire.

Is an hour, day, year, decade, century of life enough from now?

Yes a century is enough, most would answer, it is more than most get.

If it is a century, how about at the end of the century, when it is only an hour of life left?

Your friends, your family, your loved ones, your work all that has to pass in the next hour.

You have 60 minutes and they are ticking away so fast, do you feel fulfilled and content?

No matter the time, there will always be an hour of life left in the end.

At first the mind is quenched and then it is parched, it screams out for more.

That is when it made up a lie called infinity in times of quenchment.

When the lie can no longer persist due to reality... to quote a famous preacher:

"And there it is, friends! The ugly truth!" - Heimskr

Chaden found these people that were hiding in their homes, hiding food, weren't joining the party, betrayed the party, betrayed the game, the obligation.

It was their obligation to be happy and they were doing the opposite.

Punishment would be administered and the food would be replenished.

For now.