"Destiny has a way of showing up uninvited, like an obnoxious neighbour demanding sugar at midnight. The true art of slacking is knowing when to roll your eyes, grab your boots, and go deal with it anyway—preferably while grumbling the whole way." The Te of Slacking, Book 9, Verse 3:

You know what?

It kind of feels that Lia – entirely coincidentally – being the ‘sacrifice’ required for the Maker to achieve their goals – goals I have been explicitly directed to thwart – is a touch of a stretch.

I mean, of the presumably millions of people who exist within this realm, what really are the chances that the key piece of the Maker’s dastardly puzzle just happens to my big-time – albeit wholly unrequited – squeeze?

And that the truth of her status as a ‘sacrifice’ comes to my ears via the conduit of her father, a man who has barely said two words to me until I suddenly acquired a snazzy new Ability that makes people spill their secrets . . .

Don’t get me wrong, I love me a MacGuffin.

Show me a gun in Act One, and I’m as happy as a pig in muck knowing that little beauty’s going off in Act Three.

However, while I enjoy that sort of thing in theory, when the somewhat lazy plotting is hitting you in the face in practice and in a world where an actual god has his hand on the tiller of Fate, I feel honour bound to call time out.

This is all a bit, “Oh, you didn’t notice the laser cannon hanging on the wall for two hours? Too bad, it’s saving the day now!” Sure, the idea of it is elegant if it were done well. But when it’s as slapdash as this?

Nah. Jorgen’s unburdening is basically a flashing neon sign for plot convenience, screaming, “Don’t worry about the hows or whys, just clap when it goes boom!”

The Maker’s crafting of all this is certainly not subtle.

Three days until the apocalypse. Couldn’t be higher stakes. I’m somewhat at a loss and suddenly—bam!—this bombshell gets dropped into my lap like an IKEA flat-pack disaster, all jagged edges and missing instructions.

What bothers me most is that his little plot twist kind of feels like the Maker is leaning heavily into one of their pre-scripted tropes. And if there’s one thing I want to make sure I don’t accidentally lean into, it’s following any story he’s laying out for me.

Because this is feeling very Harry Potter’s mum’s love magic turned him into an unkillable infant. Or Aragorn’s long-lost sword just happening to turn up when they needed it most. Hell, it’s even got a whiff of John McClane always managing to find exactly enough duct tape and snark to survive whatever explosive nightmare he’s currently foot-loosing through.

And you know the key difference between them and me? No, don’t answer that. My ego couldn’t take it. Let me tell you. Those guys have something (stop picking at that thread) I don’t.

Consistency.

Sure, their plot armour’s thicker than a Black Friday mattress sale, but at least it’s predictable. Hand on heart, I can’t tell you which way my life’s going to throw out from one moment to the next. And that makes me a pretty ropey ‘chosen one’ for the Great Slacker to hang his, half-knitted, hat on.

Yeah, Lia being thr cosmo’s crucial sacrifice feels a bit too on the nose, here. And the fact that it’s arriving now, with the clock ticking down quite dramatically, doesn’t feel like destiny or divine intervention.

It feels like a setup.

I stole a glance at Jorgen, who was busy pretending the forge fire was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. Which, now I think on it, it a whole other problem entirely.

Lia’s dad has stepped out of a Government PSA on what not to do with your life. He’s made every wrong decision imaginable and somehow lived to regret all of them at once. And yet, despite all that, he’s still the one with the kernel of crucial knowledge that might—might—end up saving us all.

Bullshit.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned since waking up in this world, it’s that if it looks to good to be true, then there’s a massive twat waiting with an axe around the next corner.

The System, the Maker, the whatever cosmic force is puppeteering all of this—it appears to thrive on complexity. On set rules. On ensuring that no one gets a win without paying the price. Which is obviously why my existence pisses them off so much.

So, the fact I’ve suddenly been presented with this entirely personal side-quest: a sacrificial prophecy, a countdown to the apocalypse, and a damsel in distress I would like, very much, to get out of her dress, is a gift horse whose teeth I’m going to be counting.

I needed to clear my head. Somewhere I’m not forcing deeply painful, buried truths out of people via an OP interrogation skill. Maybe stepping outside would help.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I resumed my stroll through Lazytown’s newly laid streets and, before I knew it, I was standing at the edge of the Well of Ascension, staring down into its dark, yawning abyss.

I actually haven’t stood here much since that whole falling-in-and-surviving-a-Dungeon ordeal. On the one hand, that makes sense. I can’t say I’m brimming with nostalgia for the place. On the other, considering this thing is an Accumulation Pool and is obviously a major reason why the Rebels and the Empire want to kick my arse, I probably could have given more time over to exploring what it can do.

Pulling the Well’s interface open now, I was a bit disappointed by how similar it was to that first time I nearly – accidentally – wiped myself, boosting my Pixel Worker’s productivity.

Since Lazytown had started blooming into a proper settlement—albeit one held together by Scar, my perennially open wallet of gold, and the occasional slaughter of invading armies— I kind of expected lots of new goodies.

That’s how this all worked, wasn’t it? But no.

Accumulation Pool Abilities. Spend Resources to access

Well of Power: Tap into the Well’s energy to boost production for a limited time.

Resource Surge: Double all resource gains for 30 minutes.

Worker Surge: Generate additional workers temporarily from existing structures.

Travel to the Shardspire Vale

Since learning that ‘spend resources to access’ meant causing myself epic pain by drawing on my Health, I obviously hadn’t been too free with calling on this.

I frowned at the last option. Shardspire Vale? That wasn’t here last time, was it? And, call me a nominal determinationist, but it didn’t sound particularly welcoming.

In fact, it sounded suspiciously like the sort of place where adventurers go to try to thwart three-days hence apocalyptic events. And probably die gruesome, plot-relevant deaths while they were at it.

“Anyone tell me what the Shardspire Vale is please?” I asked aloud.

In my ‘old’ life, I’d have rather cheesgrated my own foreskin off before ever stooping to ask a question out loud in a crowded street. I mean, what do you expect? I’m English. We built an entire Empire around our inability to ask directions. “Where are we? Is this York? Don’t think so, mate. There’s a bunch of uppity savages firing arrows at us, though. What do you reckon, slaughter them and just call it New York? Sure. Much better than the embarrassment of speaking to a stranger.”

However, that was the James 1.0. This new, improved version had learned the value of accessing the wealth of information the system was just waiting to impart on me. So before I’d even finished asking the question, I heard a familiar voice behind me. “Why would anyone want to go there?”

I turned to see Dema approaching, wiping her hands on her pants. She looked about as unimpressed with me as always, which – in an increasingly uncertain world –was oddly comforting.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just have a sneaky feeling I’m being railroaded into undertaking a quest there.”

“Rather you than me, Rogue. Shardspire is where the Tower of Perdition is located,” she said. Something about her voice made it sound like this was a place I should have heard of. And left off my ‘Thirty to do before I’m Thirty’ list.

“Tower of Perdition?” I repeated. “That sounds...friendly.”

“It’s not,” she said. “It’s where sacrifices are made to appease the Maker. Big ones. Epoch altering one. It’s not somewhere most normal people want to talk about.”

I looked back at the Well’s menu, the words Shardspire Vale glowing invitingly.

For fuck’s sake . . .

Dema was watching me carefully. As if I was about to grow a second head. “I really don’t think you want to be going there. How have you even heard of it?”

“It’s a new option for me in the Well’s menu. Maybe it’s doing holiday recommendations these days.”

“You don’t get recommended a trip to the Tower of Perdition. You get summoned. Or more often than not, dragged. And if that happens, you’re not coming back. You know, on account of being sacrificed.”

Awesome.

Sacrifice. My conversations today kept coming back to sacrifice. Taking something precious and turning it into currency. In the Maker’s world, such a thing seemed like it was the ultimate transaction. A life traded for progress, for power, for control.

Or, actually, considering the plan the Slacker had unveiled, the exact opposite

I stood there for a long moment, staring into the Well’s shimmering menu, trying to ignore the nagging, creeping certainty that something had just shifted in the air—like the world itself had taken a breath and was holding it.

Then I heard the footsteps. Dozens of them. Loud, hurried, chaotic, and coming straight for me.

“Rogue!” someone shouted, their voice cracking with panic. “It’s Lia—something’s—something took her!”

More voices piled on, a wall of half-heard terror and disjointed explanations crashing over me:

“She just vanished—right in the middle of the square!”

“Darkness, like actual darkness, swallowed her whole!”

“There’s this… this thing where she was standing—”

“It’s unnatural, I’m telling you—”

I didn’t need to hear the rest. I already knew. The Tower of Perdition. It was calling her, pulling her into whatever destiny the Maker had already decided for her.

What’s that Skippy? The other shoe has just dropped?

I turned slowly, my eyes drifting back toward the Forge. There he was—Jorgen—standing behind the window, his face pale and stricken, his hands gripping the edge of the frame so tightly it looked like he might snap the wood.

He knew too.

Of course he did.

My vision exploded with notifications, a dazzling cascade of quest updates and alerts sparking like fireworks. The words blurred together—something about Urgent Rescue, Lia’s Fate, and Impending Apocalypse.

But I didn’t bother opening them.

I already knew what they were going to want me to do.

As someone with a Class that embodied free will and taking things easy, I seemed to be spending an awful lot of time actually doing things.

With a long, weary sigh, I turned back toward the Well of Ascension.

“Guess who’s off to the Tower of Perdition, then.”