(Heaven's Key, Celestial Realm, Battle against Alexia)

[https://i.imgur.com/BmOmmal.png]

In this divine space, the light of angels fell upon the felt. My opponent this time was a beautiful blonde woman. Given her attitude, no doubt she is an Episteme.

"Do you know what you are doing! If the city's authority crumbles it will be like the old times again!" She yelled at me.

"What was it like?" I had some interest in this.

"It was endless violence. In the old days, all the players would be constantly fighting each other for the possession of the rim. The players killed each other, and newcomers were claimed on sight. They were killed without mercy." She looked me in the eyes. "It was the ruler and his group who made this city what it is today."

I shrugged.

"So he turned a chaotic slaughterhouse into a neat and tidy slaughterhouse. Big deal."

"..."

"The newcomers are still nothing, but cattle in this city. When I came to this city, a guide was ready to part me from my chips. Is getting killed by a guide all that different from a random player. Do you think you are saints just because you replaced a battlefield with an amusement park? The kill count is still the same." I try to infer how it was before. I got an idea. "I think that even in the old times, it was the newcomers who were dying the most, not the players, am I right?"

"So what do you want to do? Let all the newcomers live? Is that why you are opposing us?"

"Oh no. The reason why I am opposing you is because you came after me first." She thought for a bit.

"Let's make a deal. I will negotiate to make you a high official of the city. We will give you 10 million chips if you pledge your fealty to the ruler. How does that sound to you, Euclid?"

Now they are finally negotiating. Violence sure will get you far.

[https://i.imgur.com/80TtO0U.png]

"I am not interested. Now that I know my power, rather than mere 10m, I will kill everyone in this city and take everything from everyone. I will reduce it to zero, and it will have a chance to start life anew." I pick the based option.

"Then there is no choice. Check." She started the game.

As I was about to make my move, she raised her hand.

"Hrk!" I lost control of my body and with a shivering arm, grabbed my two cards and tossed them away.

"Fold." I spoke out in monotone.

And...nothing happened. I was still in the game. The system behaves based on my true beliefs, not on actions at the table themselves. During the battle with Gray and mecha man, the explosions blew the cards away, but the round was still active. The system didn't interpret it as a fold despite the cards being away. It's the same thing as now.

"What?” My opponent exclaims in surprise.” Hrgh!" The woman focuses all of her power into this move, and I feel my heart stop beating. Ok, that is enough of whatever nonsense you are doing. Body Integrity Technique, full power! I message the controller to make use of the True Belief Modification and we counter her technique easily.

"Phew." I catch my breath. "Now it is my turn." I snap my fingers, and manifest a barrage of shotguns in the air around her.

"Hrk!" Her voice gets stuck in her throat. In the next moment, the barrage turns her into bloody swiss cheese.

I wait out the few hundred years needed for the match to end.

So far my behavioral programming has had no flaws. I am my own masterpiece.

(Mickey POV - Heaven's Key, Outside the Raven's Eye Casino)

[https://i.imgur.com/eqbeMIT.png]

After a few minutes, Euclid emerged where his tag was, triumphing over the Episteme Alexia. He stepped over the corpse pretenders and came down, locking gazes with the officers. Some of them were truly loyal, but none of them had the slightest hope of winning and they knew it. At this point Euclid had won.

The rifles and the guns were pointed at him.

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"Ssss!!!" He made a sudden jerky movement to scare them, and the officers instead of firing backed away, turning their barrels away. None had the will to face him in battle anymore.

Euclid cranked his head, thinking what to do. Usually he would just charge in, but the look on his face was uninterested. Having made a decision, he pointed one of his fingers in the air, and manifested a missile, the kind you'd see fired by military aircraft. It fired up and was launched into the middle of the group of officers before detonating. When the smoke cleared, what was left were only their white tags. Euclid himself was replaced by a tag where he stood.

A culmination tournament had started.

(Heaven's Key, Celestial Realm, Tournament Against the Officers)

[https://i.imgur.com/w48u1Vj.png]

Once again I was seated at the table, in that all too familiar golden white space. This time my opponent was an officer of the Enforcement Division's punitive force. Compared to the grunts, his uniform was decorated more lavishly. I do not focus too much on his features since he is going to suicide soon anyway, and look around.

For the first time, instead of being alone, I see other tables in this space. Arrayed in a line were almost a dozen tables, each of which had two players seated at them. Those were the officers my explosion had swallowed. So far, I've been fighting one-on-one battles, but now that I've attacked multiple people, they were all brought into this space. They were all looking at me with tense expressions. I gave them a little wave.

On a whim, I looked upwards and saw rows of tables. I realized what I was looking at once. All the tables here were distributed on a plane. If somebody looked at it some distance perpendicular to them, the order would resemble a tree graph drawn on a piece of paper.

In other words, this is a hint that the game is structured like a tournament. As soon as I beat my opponent here I will move up a bracket to face the next opponent.

Oh wow...

I think about the implications of this. I had honestly thought that when I blasted those officers away that I'd have to face them one by one, but instead they will do most of the work of eliminating themselves!

Imagine I dropped a nuke on this city. Would that result in a huge tournament with the same rules as this one?

I could empty a city of a population of million in just 20 tournament rounds! A billion would take only 30!

I didn't think the game would allow this. This is insanely busted.

"What will we do..." I can hear some at the other table start to whine. I do not care too much about their moaning and focus on the opponent in front of me.

"Will you suicide, or do you want to go a few rounds with me?" I ask my opponent.

"I..." Decisive, he crunches down on something, and soon enough, he collapses on the table.

"He killed himself!" The officer on the table next to ours starts sobbing. Pussy.

I've come to a decision, this is the last time I will be doing this. I mean, playing like this by just waiting out their deaths.

I do not need to play like this. With my power, it would be easy to prevent them from swallowing poison, and mind control them into giving me their chips. I could for example, remove their poison tooth, remove the poison itself, or manifest a block in their mouth so they are prevented from chewing down.

I've already spent 10,000 years just waiting out the matches up to now. I think this is enough to prove that the mental modifications I've made have given me a godlike level of patience. As long as it is for a goal I believe in, I can endure anything.

I begin waiting.

The other officers last a while, but after a few months...

"I can't take it anymore!" Dragging his face, the guy on the table next to ours screams out and cracks the poison pill. He drops dead, sprawled on the table.

"Ahhhh...." This causes a wave of unrest that subsides after a few hours, and they go back to being bored out of their skull. It is a slow torture. After a while even pain becomes preferable.

The officers continue persevering, but at some point jettison their dignity. Some of them start knocking their heads against the table, some of them biting their nails and fingers. They try to find anything to take their mind off the boredom. But there just isn't much one can do glued to the seat here.

After a few days, the other guy at the table next to us suicides, leaving two corpses.

Right now, unless there are hidden rules for when both players at the table are dead, what is going to happen is that the autofolds will keep happening until the blinds grow over their stack size. At that point they will autocall until one side wins. Still, that would take 7 doublings given their usual stack size. A single blinds increase is 18 years here, so a single bracket of a tournament would take 126 years. 3 such brackets of 126 would be needed before a final one with me. I’ll assume it would take 432 years in total.

Divided by 54, It will take 8 minutes in the outside world. Those extra corpses are just there to clog up the tables. I am tired of this.

This is the worst game ever! God damn!

I think of what I can do to speed it up, and bring out my personal domain. I try to influence the two corpses on the table next to me with the intent of resurrecting them and then mind controlling them so one of them wins, but it does not work. The other tables are purely illusionary and for show. Any force I apply to it just passes through. I suppose it makes sense it is designed like this. If I could influence the other tables, I could just nuke the city, and then nuke it again in this duel space to clear out the players. I guess the designer was worried about somebody doing something like that.

There is nothing I can do directly anymore.

At this point you can't accuse me of cheating if I bring up the admin interface and change the rules a little. I'll make it so that 12 autofolds in a row on the table junks it.

I am going to learn from this experience. The next time I pick a game, I'll consider more carefully what aspect of myself I am trying to cultivate. I was new to this when I started Heaven's Key so I won't blame myself too much, but picking the right game is my responsibility as a gamer. I do not have to keep playing it once I realize I've made a mistake.

With those thoughts in mind, I have the game admin change the rules and then resume waiting.

None of the players managed to last more than six months, and then there was just me in that space accompanied by corpses.

After over a decade, the rest of the tables accrue enough autofolds to be junked, after which it was just me and my inactive opponent, sprawled out on the table opposite side of mine. A small mercy is that he was just as pristine as when we had started rather than a rotting corpse. I persevere in my waiting and after 40 years manage to fold him out of the game.