“Since some here at the table may not be familiar with it, I will do my best to summarise the revelation that arrived with the new challengers this attempt,” Bach says. Somehow, her words, although light, bring a weight to the room. It feels like everyone is holding their breath. “Namely, the fact that there has been an alien invasion of Earth. I hesitate to call it this, but there isn’t exactly any better word for it. Normally, this kind of rumour wouldn’t even faze us, but the fact of the matter is that a number of challengers have expressed similar accounts.” She turns towards me, but she’s actually looking at Moleman. “Mole, will you call for our witnesses?”
Moleman nods at her and types something into his PMs. I didn’t mean to pry, but seeing an inbox that wasn’t overflooded with hate mail felt somehow off.
Still, uh… Alien invasion? Wh—what?
What’s that even supposed to mean?
After a minute or so at most, the supposed witnesses arrive. I’m unhappy to see a certain familiar face. To make matters worse, Arun is not only among the three or so witnesses, but actually at the very front of them. As they close the door behind them, Arun steps to the very forefront, greeting the collected group with a slight bow. “Greetings, esteemed leaders. I am MagusDownBelow of the Hell difficulty.”
“Thank you for coming to give your testimony, and to represent the rest of the witnesses in their stead. I understand that your presence was decided on a very brief note, and that you must find this whole situation very confusing, being from the first floor,” Bach says mildly. How come she’s never that polite with me? I call humbug!
Arun softly shakes his head. “Not at all, Leader.” He glances at me. I don’t like that unfamiliar look in his eye. Why is he smiling at me like that? “Upon arriving at this conference, I had a very helpful guide.” Yeah, Virgil’s a nice gal, what else is new?
She nods at him. “In that case, please recount to us, as you told it to your fellow witnesses, the manner of your invitation.”
His smile twitches, but nonetheless, he speaks openly. “Of course. I was in my dorm room when it happened, trying to sleep, when all of a sudden the whole building started to shake, and then I heard the explosion. I didn’t know what was happening, so I looked out the window, and from there I saw just the strangest sight. The whole sky was full of lights, and I could hear fighter planes screech by, and every two seconds there would be a massive bang, enough to make my ears ring. I wouldn’t have thought anything else of it if I hadn’t seen the birds. I… I think it was birds, at least.”
He takes a deep breath before resuming. “One of them crashed down close to my dorm. It was pitch black and midnight, so I could barely see what it was, apart from that it was dead. It almost looked like a bird. I don’t know. It was like if you’d tried to taxidermy a pigeon, but you’d filled it up too much. It looked bloated and cracked, and the cracks were all purple and glowy. I don’t know if I’d personally call it an alien, but it didn’t look like it came from anywhere on Earth.” He pauses again, eyebrows knitting together for a second or two. “And—and while I looked at it, in the distance, I suddenly saw one of those fighter jets going down, being accosted by a swarm of the things. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen.” He cracks into a sudden smile. “Before, heh… before all this, of course,” he says, gesturing at our perfectly normal gathering.
“And this didn’t happen to you alone?” Bach asks, cutting through his personable humour.
He softly shakes his head. “I was actually talking to Porcupine here about the whole thing, and he had something similar. That’s why I got roped into this whole, uh, witnessing thing, but, um…” He nods. “They both saw similar things. Porcupine was just taking a midnight walk when he came across some sort of person who looked like that pigeon did—bloated and cracked—and Ledge was watching the news when he saw an urgent report about a recent hoax of aliens being seen here and there.” He scoffs. “I don’t know if I’d personally call them aliens, but…”
Bach seems thoughtful. “Thank you for the testimony. Dismissed.”
Arun seems surprised by how brief the whole thing was, but since he can’t bring himself to say anything against her, he just gives another small bow and leaves. For some reason, he gave me a weird look that I have no idea how to interpret.
Once the door is closed once more, the leadership turns back to Bach, who weaves her hands across the table. “Combined with the various other posts you’ve doubtlessly seen on the message boards regarding this, the fact that something strange is happening back on Earth is not in discussion. Instead, the problem is that we don’t actually know what is happening. These aliens—if that is what they are—don’t seem to be from Purgatory, nor do they seem to be fully synonymous with the aliens you would imagine upon hearing the word. We do not know what they are, and we do not fully know what the situation on Earth following these attacks is.”
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
She continues. “As you are doubtlessly familiar with at this point, for every attempt that passes here, only a single day passes on Earth. Until the next attempt, when the next challengers arrive, we cannot in complete certainty ensure that the information we gather is pertinent. It may be true, but if we go and make some sort of statement regarding this all and the next challengers explain that it was only a worldwide robotics test and nothing more, our credibility as a governing body will sink. They are trusting us to make a suitable statement. It is better for us that what we say is correct, rather than it being soon.”
“For the moment being, we will neither confirm nor deny what the new challengers say. Is this admissible according to the meeting?”
The members of the leadership share glances for a few seconds.
“...Aye.”
“Aye.”
“Aye.”
And after everyone has verbally agreed, she bangs the gavel again. “Glad we could all agree. To speak informally, I’m not sure if we will be able to hold off on making a statement until the next Grand Conference. Hopefully, we will be able to say something earlier than that, but as is, we will hold our tongues, even when speaking privately.”
The leaders don’t seem too keen on that last part, but nonetheless, she continues, taking a quick glance at the meeting guide first. “Now, then. We are drawing close to our final point of discussion, which gives me the honour of congratulating SuperMoleman on being the first to beat the first part of the tutorial!”
…On what? Huh?
I can’t even really process all of that before the people around the table start clapping. I raise my hands to clap as well, but they’re still covered in blood from when I made my legs into skeleton legs, so I quickly lick them off before clapping as well. Moleman seems both embarrassed by the applause as well as silently numb at whatever it is I’m doing wrong now.
Once the applause dies down, everyone’s left looking at him expectantly, so even though he seems much more excited to write down what everyone else is saying, he smiles and speaks anyways. “Well, I, erm… I’m very honoured, of course, but the achievement is equal between me and my party members. Not to even mention that none of this would have been possible without your gracious assistance, Leader Bach.”
“Nonsense,” Bach says firmly. “You were able to construct a working guide for the final floors of Inferno, and now you’re allowed to reap the rewards. Without your excellent guidance, your party would surely have perished long ago.”
“Haha, um, I really hope not…” Moleman mumbles.
Bach’s eyes sharpen. “That said, we are much more interested in your report regarding Purgatory, no offence.”
“None taken,” Moleman replies cooly. For a second or so, he gathers himself up until he’s sitting straight and serious. “As I explained in my posts, Purgatory, the second part of this tutorial, is completely unlike the first part. Instead of us simply acting in small, closed scenarios called floors, we are instead placed wholesale into this world that we have been acting parallel to. Since we were only able to act within Purgatory for a few days before the Grand Conference there isn’t much I can say regarding it, but I can with full confidence say that it is mainly governed by a race of sentient humanoids known as goblins.”
For some reason, he gives me a weird glance before looking back at Bach. “The world of Purgatory, compared to that of Earth, seems to be in the middle-ages or so. I can’t say exactly what time frame this is, but their technology is sorely lacking and their main form of government is monarchy. They speak a language different than ours, and I have good reason to believe that they have never seen humans before.”
Bach trains her eyes onto him like a hawk. “And you are still of the belief that goblins should be counted as fully sentient beings?”
Moleman nods resolutely. “There isn’t a single doubt in my mind of that fact. That they look different from us and speak a different language has no bearing on their sentience.”
Silently, Bach rubs her chin. “I see. In that case, I believe we should do an anonymous vote on the sentience of goblins and whether we should recognise them as such. It is a bit kindergarten-like, but if everyone would just close their eyes, and those that are in favour of considering goblins as sentient, please raise your hands…”
Since I’m not a part of the vote because I’m not a real human being, I’m able to see pretty clearly how seven of the twelve present raise their hands, Moleman being one of them. Bach counts them quickly, using her fingers to help, and then she says, “You may open your eyes again.” They follow along. “Since seven-to-four, not counting myself, were in favour of regarding goblins as properly sentient beings, the meeting will hereby recognise goblins are such.” She bonks her gavel. “Specific rules regarding the treatment of goblins and what circumstances allow for some to be broken will be discussed at a later date. For now, though, I nominate that, in general, the same rules that apply to our fellow challengers will likewise apply to goblins, not counting the case in which specific goblins must be defeated in accordance to the floor clear requirements. Is the meeting in agreement to accept this nomination?”
“””Aye.”””
Slam. “Motion accepted. Now, Moleman, when you explained this to me, you mentioned that you met a Frenchman?” Silence descends upon the table, suffocating us all.
A—a Frenchman?
Moleman just nods as if that isn’t anything weird at all. “Yes. More specifically, a Frenchman and his party of other Europeans. Only the Frenchman spoke proper English, the others were near incomprehensible, but it was enough. We spoke to them, and we exchanged words. As we thought, our server isn’t the only one. They were from the Europe Server, which had less than a thousand current challengers, according to him.” He passes me a quick look. “I asked what the state of their Hell lobby was, and he said that they had never had anyone pass the first floor.”
Unlike the rest of what he just said, that final part isn’t especially surprising.
“How many other servers are there? Did he know?” Bach asks.
“From what he said, he had previously met a party of challengers from the Africa server, who also don’t have more than a thousand challengers. Personally, I think it would be rational to assume that there is an America server, but I’m not sure whether there’s an Oceania one or not. Either way, it seems that not many have reached Purgatory in total. Though, with the speed many challengers have gained now, within not long, there may be several hundred challengers within Purgatory. At that point, we may need to make some sort of contact with the governments that exist there.”