At the high-pantheon shrines, Dan didn’t even bother kneeling which is considered very disrespectful.

While standing, he said, “If what the Trial in the Boneyard says is true, it’s all y’all’s fault this is happening to my world. I reckon y’all are as much my enemies as anyone else. I ain’t never begged before and I ain’t starting now, especially not to likes of y’all.”

Dan rubbed his face and let out a sigh. “I made a lot of mistakes and done a lot of failing myself. Failing in big ways. The type of failing there ain’t no making amends for. So, I guess I can’t judge y’all too harshly, not considering y’all fighting that big war to try and fix things and all.”

He looked around at each statue as if expecting something. I wanted to appear, laugh at him, and tell him that side never helps participants of the Game.

Before I got the chance, he continued. “I’m not sure how this’s supposed to work. I’m here if any of y’all want to help me get done what needs doing. I’ll only worship God, so I ain’t swearing to follow any of you. I will swear that I ain’t never stopping. I won’t never quit neither. Take it or leave it. Don’t matter none to me.”

Nothing happened for a while. As I expected. None of the other side’s high pantheon ever get involved. I’ve never heard of one helping a participant in any way.

Then the shrine of God’s Wrath, the archangel Kharahel, lit up.

[Really? Kharahel?]

Yes. I think he’s some sort of outcast that fights against his own kind. He’s still butthurt over the Game.

[If what I heard is true, he holds great animosity against the other archangels for backing up Samael and is only on friendly terms with Azrael still. It’s strange he’d take notice of a participant. What happened after the shrine lit up?]

Dan touched it and received a mark. Not in the usual way. I have access to all his vitals, so I would’ve noticed if he had a real mark. The terms of marks are always private and only the results show in the status. I know techs that have had participants with patrons before. Both told me the same thing.

This…whatever it was, appeared as a new Trait. I never heard of that before outside of bargain Traits, and this wasn’t one of those.

I’ll show you the Trait he received. One second. Here it is.

(6) Reckoner: Execute great vengeance upon all those enemies and defiers of God and His will.

[That’s it?]

Yes. It doesn’t seem to do anything. Nothing changed in the status besides this Trait being added to it.

[What else happened?]

Nothing.

[How would this make his redemption status questionable?]

Because…the only archangel that didn’t piss off their God gave Dan a Trait. I saw the shrine glow.

[Dan said he did something so terrible that he couldn’t make amends for it. That indicates to me his status is clear. He’s irredeemable.]

Maybe. Maybe not. Actually, we’re coming up to a big part that gives more weight to your argument. But it isn’t so cut and dry.

I just want to note that Dan hadn’t entered the Exhibit: History of the Game yet, so he couldn’t know what information it gave.

The operating theory everyone agreed upon was that Dan had found secret Game information in this Carnegie Hall. Since pushing time travel makes me look stupid, I don’t bring it up often, but I haven’t ruled it out.

[Hypothesis. Not theory.]

Huh?

[You were operating under a hypothesis, not a theory.]

Sorry, I forgot you were a pedant.

[Just…continue.]

You got it, Boss. It was deep into the night. Dan entered the tutorial and ran down to the Core Trial to set his summons on guard before heading south. He steered clear of the Agility Trial, drank from the stream, and refilled his water bottle. He walked about a kilometer back to the camp to catch his breath.

Ace was on guard with Carlos. Carlos and Luke always did guard together. Since Luke’s face was extra crispy, he was exempt from guard duty.

For some reason, Ace kept telling people he could speak some Spanish, but if he could, it wasn’t the kind that Carlos spoke. Keep in mind, Carlos could understand Luke, and hardly anyone could understand Luke.

Dan and Nick both spoke a little Spanish since there were a lot of seasonal workers where they grew up. Carlos had no problem understanding the little Spanish the brothers spoke, so I think Ace had an inflated sense of his own ability.

Dan quietly called out, “It’s Dan,” before approaching. Since Ashen Ruin had guard duty covered, he told Carlos he could go to sleep.

Dan asked Ace if he wouldn’t mind staying up a couple more minutes to do him a favor. Ace agreed and Dan woke Nick and Chet up.

At the Trial’s Profile Reader, Dan had Ace, Nick, and Chet each punch in a code and order three Legendary Orbments.

That was all four codes gone. Now you know what he was doing in those puzzle Trials. So, he just needed to see the first false clue in a Trial to know the active code it belonged to.

[Did he slot two of them?]

No.

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

[If he was clear to level to peak Fiend, level 260, that makes sense. At Fiend, he could slot two Crown Orbments, and most Legendary Orbments can’t be used to make them.]

True. One quick clarification – he didn’t have the Stat-grades to level to 260 at the time.

With three people near him, his anxiety line was almost hitting orange. It was kind of darkish out, so maybe that helped with his anxiety too. They kept their voices down since everyone else was sleeping.

There was some bleating about his big fight from earlier and the Sortilege battle my other team members had fought. Also, his new hide armor, belt, and other unimportant jibber jabber I’ll skip.

Dan asked, “Chet, can you see good enough in this light to take notes?”

“I guess so. But I’m very injured, you know? From battle,” replied Chet.

Smiling, Ace told him, “You’re doing fine.”

Before Chet could reply, Dan asked, “Can you go get your notebook, please?”

“How do you know I have a notebook?”

“Because you’re a kid and you got a schoolbag.”

Chet scoffed. “My school is paperless. Most students don’t have notebooks. I do have one, but I’m the exception, not the rule. And the contents of my notebook are to be kept as a closely guarded secret. Nonnegotiable. My back is throbbing, and my left arm barely works. I have a major combat injury. Writing isn’t going to be easy.”

Nick laughed and said, “I bet I know what that notebook’s full of.”

“You’d only win half that bet,” replied Chet as he got up, dramatically wincing in pain.

Once Chet returned with a notebook and writing utensil, Dan said, “I told my brother I’d tell him what’s going on with me. I wish I could. I can’t. Not because I don’t want to. I would if I could. I just got to ask y’all to trust me.”

Nick and Ace tried to reply at the same time. Nick halted to let Ace go. “We all see how hard you’re working. We trust you. You can believe that.”

“Yeah,” said Nick. “Whatever’s going on with you, I’m real glad you’re so improved from…from how you was before this contest. Game. Whatever it is.”

Dan looked at his brother for a couple seconds. “I hope you ain’t told no one my business, Nick.”

“Come on, Danny. I ain’t said nothing. No details or specifics. You know I didn’t.”

Before Dan could speak again, Chet chimed in with, “May I ask an unrelated question?”

“Yeah,” answered Dan.

“Is this all real? Is this truly a contest between Heaven and Hell? Does that mean there really is a God? It all seems so far-fetched. I never believed in God or Buddha or enlightenment. I’ve always seen religion as comfort food for the plebians.”

Dan said, “Yeah. Seems like it’s all true.”

“Then why? If God is omnipotent, why would He allow all this? It makes no sense. He could just stop this and make everything better. Perfect. So, if He is real, why doesn’t He?”

There was a long pause before Dan answered. “I don’t much like talking, and I ain’t never been good at explaining. I don’t know all the answers neither. In the next area, there’s a building that goes over all this.

“In that building, you select a religion, and it explains some stuff on how it relates to a fable in that religion. From how I understand it, there’s a hierarchy to Godly beings. It’s split into something called Orders and Choirs, and the lowest Choirs have angels and archangels made to interact with people. Satan was an archangel once, all that. Y’all remember Job? From the Bible?”

All three did. Chet added, “The Book of Job is a great reason the Abrahamic religions shouldn’t be taken seriously. If God is so good and loving, why would He make a deal with Satan to terrorize Job? It’s senseless and hypocritical. The Book of Job itself disproves God. That isn’t how an omniscient or omnipotent being would behave if He loved His creations.”

“From what that Trial says,” replied Dan, “God ain’t had nothing to do with it. It was an archangel named Samael. And this happened a really long time ago. Before Earth’s first Game on a whole different world. It’s the duty of archangels to get people information without interfering too much but whatever they tell whoever they tell don’t always get told correctly to the rest of us.

“Satan was trying to get Samael to rebel against God along with him. Some guy, the guy we know as Job, got caught up in the mix. They made him suffer something fierce. Samael won that bet since Job ended up staying faithful to God. Satan said that was only because Job was a wealthy man living an easy life before they tested him.

“To make a long story short, the stakes kept being upped until Samael lost a whole world of souls to Satan. Samael went to Michael and Gabriel to tell them what he done. Those two went to plead with Satan to let Samael off the hook. Didn’t work out good as they somehow got roped into doubling down to save that world. They lost. And kept losing.

“By the time it was kicked up the chain of command, it was too late. God turned his back on them. The archangels. Satan had negotiated circles around them, and they were stuck with an early form of this Game.

“They kept renegotiating and Satan and Hell kept getting the best of them. And here we are today. Since the rules are so lopsided, the angels keep losing and Satan and Hell keep winning. This whole thing ain’t but the first part of the Game. The second part is supposed to test character.”

The group was silent until Nick said, “Well, I’ll be damned. Sucks for us if it’s true, don’t it? You believe all that, Danny?”

“I do,” replied Dan. “Being here makes it hard to deny. And this ain’t all of it neither. There’s a big war between Heaven and Hell going on, and the angels are trying to force Hell to end the Games.”

Nick clicked his tongue and said, “Maybe this is Hell and they just toying with us. Giving us false hope. Like in that show ‘The Good Place,’ with those two hot ladies and the guy from ‘Cheers.’ You really think everyone on Earth dies if we don’t win?”

“Yeah,” said Dan. “There’s a Trial about that in the next area too. Like it says in the Profile Readers, not everyone dies though. Just most everyone. But we got important things to discuss and I ain’t slept since the night before last. I’m dead tired and there ain’t many hours till morning and we got to get up and exercise.”

“Then sleep in,” said Nick.

Dan looked at his brother for a moment before saying, “You saw the next area. Things are fixing to get worse and worse. You don’t sleep in. Just like on a farm, you get up and do what needs doing for the day, every day, no matter how much you want to stop or quit or rest. No matter if you’re injured or what. You got to start understanding this, Nicky. If you don’t, you ain’t going to remain long enough to learn.”

Dan rubbed his eyes and said, “Chet, I need you to write out something. Make it sound professional. Make it in your words, not mine. Oh, how’re you at retaining information?”

Chet said, “Exceptional if I find the information intriguing. And you never answered why God allows this.”

“I can’t answer what I don’t know,” replied Dan. “Does living sound intriguing? Is information your life depends on sound intriguing? You want to be OP, right?”

“Yes, yes, and yes.”

“Good.” Dan pulled out ‘The Secrets of Self-Cultivation’ from his backpack and threw it to Chet.

“That book explains things better than I ever could. This is how you get overpowered. Tomorrow, after you do morning exercise, read that from cover to cover. Make any important notes you need to. I’m fixing to let a couple people borrow it at…not this noon coming up, the noon after.”

Chet didn’t reply as he was already reading the book. “Chet! Come on, boy. Pay attention. Read that later. You got to write that letter for me now. I want this all settled so I ain’t got to do more talking after I get up today.

“And I need you to put in a grievance ticket through the reader. I’ll show you how it’s done. There ain’t supposed to be more than one demon tech for every five participants. There ain’t only but nine of us and they got at least three techs assigned. That’s illegal.”

Dan was right but it didn’t matter. For this type of complaint, we only need a little wiggle room, and we had that in spades. All Gabrodyl had to say was there were 15 participants alive at the time and she made the decision in good faith within the rules. Our lawyers take it from there.

Let me tell you, this book is an absolute goldmine. So much is explained in it we were ignorant of. I know so much more now. We were wrong about so much too. If I had known all this when I was younger, I’d be in such a better place now.

Since Gabrodyl told everyone to give us whatever support they could, once we finished with the book, we put in a ticket to have it obscured as forbidden knowledge. If the book was loaned out to other participants, no other techs would be able to read it.

We read along with Chet and captured an image of every page. Bob, Az’ga, and I are keeping it a secret. We’re not telling anyone. When this Game wraps up, we’ll start selling this info and just rake in wealth.

I’ll show the book to you, but if I do, you must factor the value of what you learn into my reward. This knowledge is worth a fortune.