More visitors were due to arrive at Liam’s home sometime that day. He decided to unwind a bit after all the crazy things that had happened, at least until they arrived. What better way than to play a game?

Being careful not to overwrite Lilith or Sylara’s save files, Liam loaded the same game and played some pick-up team matches. His favorite variety was race wars, where eight players would get assigned one of three races (humans being one), pair up with other players of the same race, and try to eliminate the other two teams. Just as his scouting unit discovered a fellow human, he flagged them as allied and shared vision with them.

A thought suddenly occurred to him. Weren’t the optics of him playing a game under these rules absolutely terrible when considering that he was trying to broker peace between different races of people? Perhaps he should… lay off the race wars for the time being. Well, it would be a bit rude to drop out of the game right in the middle, so he decided to at least finish this one. His scouting unit soon encountered yet another human player.

“Ah, good, I’m on one of the teams of three…” he mumbled to himself.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s race wars. You all select random for your race and then—huh!?” Liam turned his head and saw Sylara staring at the screen over his left shoulder. “You’re back?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t hear you come through the—oh crap!” Three players’ worth of alien enemies penetrated his base. “Help” he typed into text chat, summoning his allies. “That was sloppy of me, letting them get so close…”

“Yeah.”

Liam struggled to stall the enemy from attacking his worker units and production facilities as his allies filed into the battle. “It’s too damn hard to wall in on this map!”

“Wall?”

“I’ll explain later!” Just as his enemies turned to face his two allies, two more enemies of the third faction attacked Liam’s allies from behind. “Jesus!”

“Who?”

Liam’s allies were cut to ribbons. Then, the two remaining armies attacked each other, disregarding Liam’s base and few remaining defenders. “There!” Just as one army showed signs of overwhelming the other, Liam attacked the stronger force. As a result, the armies were all reduced to just a few lingering units, all of which attempted to retreat towards the middle of the map, leaving Liam’s base mostly undamaged. “We’re still in this!”

The players all expanded their bases while amassing armies again and upgrading their technology. After several hard-fought battles, Liam’s faction, the humans, prevailed.

“Congrats.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s a wall?”

“Oh, right.” Liam loaded up a single-player map to demonstrate walling. “On most maps, you can place buildings here to block the entrance to your base like this.”

“Oh.”

“There are like eight rules you need to remember or the wall won’t be tight.” Liam spent the next several minutes walking Sylara through all the combinations and demonstrating them.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“How did you do that?”

“What?” Liam glanced at his inventory of resources. “Oh, I used a cheat code so I could quickly construct all these buildings to show you. Obviously, it only works in single-player mode.”

“Are there more cheat codes?”

“Uh, yeah. Let me see if I can remember them all…” Liam typed the various phrases into the text chat, activating the cheat codes. Some provided extra resources, one made his units invincible, another even greatly sped up the rate of construction and research. “You and Lilith are almost done with the single-player campaign so these cheat codes probably wouldn’t be that useful for you, right?”

“It’s not that.”

“Hm?”

Sylara’s eyes moved around the screen as she observed all the strange things Liam had accomplished as a result of cheating. “What if you could bring one of these cheat codes over to our world?”

“…Bring the cheat codes? How?”

“If you come to our world, you gain powers, right?”

Liam suspected the answer was yes, but he had no way to be sure. “Maybe?”

“Maybe you have control over what powers you get? You could get a cheat code that lets you see units through fog of war, or invincibility for your army, or the ability to grow an army without increasing your supply production, right?”

“I may as well skip right to the ‘you win the game right now’ cheat code then.”

“I guess.”

“Anyway, why would I need these, Sylara? You of all people know my goal isn’t to just defeat your enemies, right? I want to broker peace somehow. I told the Spymaster that.”

Sylara’s eyes widened as she turned her head to face Liam’s, her eyes eerily unmoving in their sockets. “The Spymaster?”

“Lilith’s dad. He snuck through the invisible door earlier and talked to me for a bit before going back.”

Sylara just stared at Liam, unblinking.

“What? That’s creepy.”

“Liam, isn’t he the demons’ number two?”

“I don’t know? He didn’t say…”

“What’s for lunch?”

Liam couldn’t tell if Sylara was astounded or just being weird or what.

----------------------------------------

By the time the kingdom’s next round of ambassadors rose up through the toilet, Liam and Sylara had already finished eating and were playing one versus one matches. Liam had suggested Sylara finish the single-player campaign, but she didn’t want to get too far ahead of Lilith. Apparently, Lilith would sneak back over within the next day or so.

Liam was having no trouble crushing Sylara, which was actually kind of comforting. After the way she and Lilith took so well to those other games, he was worried he’d get his ass handed to him. Perhaps Sylara would become a better player than him, but that wouldn’t happen today. She was skilled with the mouse but otherwise playing like a noob, or at best an advanced beginner. She’s was trying really hard, though. Really hard…

This time, Liam had no trouble detecting the arrivals. The bell rung as expected and his app also alerted him. He paused the game and walked over to the bathroom, where a knight-cum-adventurer greeted him.

“Liam! It’s good to see you again!”

“Alaric, right? Welcome back. Is it just you?”

“Wait just a moment.”

An old man emerged from the toilet, helped to his feet by Alaric. His robe reminded Liam of Elizabeth’s, except it was a fair bit fancier.

“Liam, allow me the honor of introducing the Grand Magus.”

“Uh, Grand Magus, it’s a pleasure.”

“I’m sure,” the Grand Magus responded. “This room is quite fascinating. Tell me more about it; omit no details.”

Alaric raised his hands, palms forward. “Grand Magus, we’ve only just arrived. Why don’t we sit and talk?”

“Hmph. Fine. But only after the Hero tells me what that is.” He pointed at the plunger leaning against the wall in the corner behind the toilet.

“A… plunger,” Liam answered. “It…” he pulled out his phone. “It’s a device consisting of a handle with a rubber suction cup at one end, used as a force pump to free clogged drains and toilet traps.”

“Fascinating. Could you demonstrate?”

“Grand Magus…”

“Oh, give it a rest, Alaric.”

Liam found the situation odd, but demonstrating using a plunger for a few seconds wasn’t that big of a deal. If that was the strangest thing to happen during this visit, he’d consider himself lucky. He grabbed the plunger and then moved it into position over the toilet with a dramatic gesture.

He lowered the plunger towards the bowl at a glacial pace, theatrically dragging out the demonstration. Just as the rubber cup was about to penetrate the top of the bowl, a new head rose up from the portal, inadvertently taking on the plunger like a crown, his pointed ears narrowly evading capture.

“Y–Your Majesty!?” Sylara shouted from the background.