"Murder, when done right, is the ultimate efficiency. Why toil in debate when a single, lazy stroke will do?" — The Te of Slacking, Book 3, Verse 22

I’d had an idle thought—one of those fleeting sparks of brilliance that usually lead me to either great fortune or, more realistically, absolute disaster.

After all, when your lawyer's key defence of you is that 'these were not the actions of someone much given to careful thought,' you probably need to read the runes on your powers of speculative genius.

Still, even with that context, I still quite liked my first plan about dealing with the Mayor. You see, I actually thought I could avoid killing this guy. Plan A was that I could talk him into giving up his Mayorship which would surely cheat-code my way through the quest by rendering it manifestly invalid. After all, if he’s no longer the Mayor, the Tower can’t exactly hold it against me, right?

Pretty sure there’s a meme I could be pasting right now.

But do you know what? Not so much.

Barnabas P. Fettle, Mayor of Dreary Depot, sat behind his desk with his hand forcibly jammed in the drawer, his furious attempts to free it causing the handle to emit a tortured creak.

His waistcoat was clearly designed for a man of slimmer ambitions and bulged under the strain, one of its buttons glitching in and out of existence like it couldn’t decide whether to participate in the farce.

His walrus moustache, meticulously animated to bristle with every flicker of his indignation, seemed to carry more vitality than the rest of him combined. Each quiver of the thick, meticulously groomed bristles felt almost sentient, as though it might detach at any moment to deliver a speech on civic duty. It didn’t just react to his emotions—it performed, an exaggerated flourish of life against the otherwise hollow automaton of a man. If the Tower had a sense of humour, it was hiding in that moustache, the only part of Barnabas that gave the impression it might rebel against the script.

"Barnabas," I began, keeping my hands firmly on the drawer to ensure his stayed trapped within it, "let’s talk this through. Full disclosure: the Tower has given me a quest to kill you. Not just me either—I’m guessing anyone sent to Floor 3 gets handed the same murderous errand? Now, I can’t imagine this is your first time having some random adventurer show up and try to end your career—violently. That’s got to be frustrating, right? Same scenario, same speeches, and eventually, some poor sap comes at you with a blade. Wouldn’t it be easier to just… step down? Retire to the countryside, grow some tomatoes, maybe even enter a regional moustache competition? I mean, that thing could take home a medal. Hell, you’ve probably been through this so many times you deserve a lifetime achievement award for 'Most Resilient NPC.'"

If I’d hoped my little speech would have an impact on the Mayor, I was to be disappointed.

"You think you can waltz in here and undermine the foundations of this town?" he thundered in response. "This is my town! My people depend on me!"

"Do they, though?" I countered. “Because from where I’m standing, it kind of looks like you’re an accident waiting to happen. Or, more pertinently, a murder. I mean, how many more times can you have someone stab you on their way to Floor 4 before it actually sticks? Wouldn’t it be better to take charge of your own existence for once? You know, shake things up? Make a bold decision? Maybe avoid yet another inevitable knife in the back? Have you seen the eel situation, by the way? I’m just saying, maybe let someone else take a crack at the role while you get a chance to avoid being murdered by sipping lemonade in the countryside."

The Mayor’s moustache visibly quivered. "Eels are a cornerstone of municipal stability!"

"Right," I said. “I mean, eels are... what now? Never mind. Okay, let’s try this on for size. Let's talk about your own well-being. Running a town is stressful, and you don’t exactly look like the picture of health. Why not let someone else shoulder the burden?"

"Nonsense!" he barked. "The pigeons have unionized under my leadership!"

“Sorry, what?”

"Dreary Depot: Where tomorrow shines brighter than today!"

Ah, there it was.

Now I understood the problem. No matter what I said to this guy, he wasn’t going to suddenly have a moment of blinding epiphany. Talking to him was like arguing with a bad video game NPC stuck in an infinite loop of stock phrases—only less fun, because at least NPCs usually hand out loot when you tolerate their nonsense.

Nevertheless, for the next few minutes, I gave it a real go. However, every attempt I made to engage him met with the same stubborn rhetoric, delivered with the fervour of a politician whose campaign slogan is “I’m always right.” The Mayor was all ‘duty,’ ‘leadership,’ and ‘stability’ However, everyone one of the words were lifeless, like echoes of someone else’s ideas rattling in an empty head.

I tried a different approach. "Barnabas, if you’re so committed to your people, wouldn’t the best thing you could do be ensuring a smooth transition to a capable successor? Someone who could carry on your legacy?"

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

He didn’t even hesitate. "I am the only one capable! Without me, this town would crumble! Dreary Depot: Where tomorrow shines brighter than today!"

"Just you and your script, eh?" I sighed.

And then, for the first time, a flicker of something crossed his face—hesitation, doubt, perhaps even the faintest spark of recognition. His magnificent moustache quivered, and his lips parted, as though he were teetering on the edge of breaking free from the script.

For a breathless moment, I thought I’d reached him, that he might actually say something unscripted. Something real. But it passed like a shadow across a wall, fleeting and insubstantial. His expression snapped back to the same stoic mask as before.

"The people need me. The town needs me," he intoned, then he added, "Together, we’ll build a stronger tomorrow."

It was like arguing with a brick wall—one that could occasionally yell back. Of course it wasn’t stubbornness; I already knew that. This wasn’t about Barnabas being difficult. It was his programming.

Barnabas wasn’t real. Not in the way Lia or even the Slacker felt real. He was a construct, a puppet of the Tower, stuck on rails and incapable of deviation. Every response was preordained. His every line predetermined.

And that was the point, wasn’t it? This was a blueprint for the world the Maker envisioned.

Predictable, orderly constructs marching to the beat of a script they didn’t write. No free will, no chaos, no friction of thought or unpredictability—just a monotonous machine where everyone played their part and nothing ever changed.

The terrifying thing wasn’t the rigidity; it was the emptiness behind it. No passion, no rebellion, no dreams—just the Tower’s vision of perfection: a world without mistakes because no one had the agency to make them.

It was control masquerading as utopia, and it made my skin crawl.

I looked at Barnabas, really looked at him, and felt a pang of something I couldn’t quite name. Pity, maybe? Anger? Whatever it was, it cut deeper than I expected.

"Barnabas," I said softly, "don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to make a choice? A real one? Not something the Tower handed to you?"

He blinked, his moustache twitching as if he’d heard something foreign. But then his face hardened again, and he returned to his script. "The people need me. The town needs me."

And that’s all he would ever say. Because that’s all he was.

I stepped back, my chest tight. This wasn’t a man I could reason with. He wasn’t even a man. Barnabas was a placeholder, a rigid constant in a world where anything dynamic or unpredictable had been excised for the sake of sterile precision. He wasn’t alive in any sense that mattered; he was the digital equivalent of a locked file, endlessly repeating its one broken function.

Barnabas wasn’t just an NPC. He was the embodiment of the Maker’s dream: order without freedom, stability without choice, and purpose stripped of desire. It wasn’t enough to follow the rules; he was the rules. Obedience so complete it had extinguished any spark of individuality.

There was no room for creativity or rebellion here, no place for the wild, untamed brilliance of human error. Just a machine running an endless loop, grinding out perfection by suffocating the very possibility of change.

Actually killing this guy wouldn’t be murder; it would be a mercy, like shutting down a malfunctioning program with Task Manager. The world of the third floor wouldn’t mourn him, because there was no one here to mourn. Even his own responses were dead on arrival, nothing but hollow phrases echoing endlessly in a dead system.

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. Almost. Here I was trying to find a spark of humanity in code written to snuff it out. And for what? A moral victory?

My hand tightened on the drawer as I stared at him. Barnabas didn’t even blink, didn’t flinch, didn’t react. It was like trying to negotiate with a help menu. The Tower didn’t care, Barnabas didn’t care, and—if I were being honest—I wasn’t sure I cared anymore, either. The thought of ending this pointless, scripted charade started to feel less like a burden and more like relief.

Kill this dude and get one step closer to Lia.

I took a breath and released my grip on the drawer. It wasn’t resignation. It was practicality. If the Tower wanted me to delete Barnabas from its roster, who was I to argue?

But then, just as I let the thought settle, a new feeling bloomed inside me.

Was this really who I was now? Someone who treated lives—fake or not—as disposable hurdles to clear on the way to something I wanted?

I stared at Barnabas, his face frozen in its determined mask, and the idea of killing him stopped feeling like relief and started feeling like defeat. Not because he didn’t deserve it or because the Tower wouldn’t reward me, but because it meant I’d let this place change me into something I wasn’t sure I wanted to become.

And, anyway, how could I murder a man with a moustache so magnificent it could probably win a duel on its own?

It would be sacrilegious to snuff out something that majestic, even if the face beneath it was about as soulful as a broken clock. Sure, he wasn’t real. Sure, he wasn’t alive. But that didn’t make it right. I’d always been the slacker, the guy who let the world pass by rather than trying to bend it to my will.

But this?

This wasn’t slacking. This was surrendering—to the Tower, to the system, to everything that had dragged me here in the first place.

I clenched my jaw and exhaled slowly. “No,” I said aloud, more to myself than to Barnabas. “I’m not playing your game. Not like this.”

Quest Update: Non-lethal resolution impossible. Proceed with primary objective.

My fists clenched at my sides as I turned toward the door.

For a moment, I hesitated, looking back at Barnabas one last time. His hand remained wedged in the drawer, yet he made no attempt to free it. Instead, he continued to speak as if nothing had happened, his words flowing in their loop like water over a stone. It wasn’t even defiance—just a routine. The absurdity of the scene twisted something in my chest.

"I’m sorry," I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was apologizing to. Him? Myself? The world the Maker sought to create?

Then I walked out, the weight of the Tower’s expectations pressing heavily on my shoulders.