Chapter 121: Welcome to Hell. You’ve Been Terminated.

Chapter 121: Welcome to Hell. You’ve Been Terminated.

A Devil sat at a desk in a damp, dark room. He was, in a turn of character, actually doing the copying work he’d been neglecting for so long now. Though it wasn’t because he suddenly felt remorseful about forcing his co-workers to pick up his slack, or anything along those lines.

No, it was because he was terrified.

He’d just gotten word back. Arlan Nota was confirmed alive. And the wall was destroyed. The soldiers were all either dead, retreating, or deserted, leaving the Devil with absolutely nobody left to kill the fugitive.

He’d lost, plain and simple.

The war against Arlan Nota wasn’t over—far from it—but the Devil knew that his superiors wouldn’t be looking at this with a charitable view. They wouldn’t be considering it as a simple temporary setback that the Devil could still save if he got some more time.

He’d proven himself, time after time, to simply not be good enough for the job.

And so he had no doubt he’d lose that job.

Some may think he’d have been ecstatic about that. The Arlan Nota case was what caused him so many problems in the first place—wouldn’t it be great if he didn’t have to worry about that anymore? But he knew what it’d mean if he proved himself useless to the Demons.

In the massive common room he worked in—hundreds of paces long and wide, filled wall-to-wall with desks—the walls were lined with doors. Most of those doors led to hallways, where one would be taken through a series of rooms with Hall Monitors in them to guide Demons to their destinations. The life of a Hall Monitor was seen as the lowest of the low—sitting around, doing absolutely nothing for hours upon hours upon hours on end except for maybe giving one or two Demons directions on where the nearest office complex was, or something.

The life of a Hall Monitor was effectively being condemned to a death of boredom. A mind-numbing existence of nothingness.

But there were some doors that didn’t lead to hallways. Some led to private offices, like the Devil’s old office, located through door 214.6b, that was now occupied by his replacement, Plindakin’porbindoplandimoni’aasiindorkaanpondindindodondi’papossin. All of the 214 doors led to offices.

But some of the doors led to other things. Door 999, for example.

That door led to the execution room.

When an underling misbehaved, refused to follow orders, or underperformed to such an extreme degree that they proved themselves useless in all circumstances, the Seventh Circle of the Underworld decided that they had no more use for that Demon. And they were dealt with thusly.

The Devil had, in effect, done all three of those things. He’d acted in an extraordinarily impolite fashion toward his superiors, he’d failed to uphold his copying work deadlines several times, and now he’d failed to uphold his most important duty: kill Arlan Nota.

So he was working as hard as he could to try and prove his worth in some other fashion. Namely, his ability to copy. It was low, tedious, boring, humiliating work, but at this point, it didn’t matter. He didn’t want to die, and if this was what it’d take, he’d do it.

So he worked as quickly as he could, writing down the same documents over and over. This eleven page document needed nine copies so it could go out to the nine general officer second class secretaries in order to get confirmation on an order for new materials being used in the pins some army colonels wore on their shirts. This fifteen page document needed twenty-one copies so it could go out to all newly-assigned employees at a manufacturing plant to show them the exact guidelines and regulations for assembling said pins.

“With me. Now.”

The Devil’s face paled.

“Nefarior number four. Grab him and take him with me.”

One of the Nefariors stepped forward and wrapped its massive hand around the Devil’s shoulder, dragging him along as the superior turned and walked away. The Nefarior followed, pulling the Devil along with them.

“L-listen,” the Devil begged as they walked, “I offer my sincerest, most formal expression of apology for my failure with the Arlan Nota project. But please, I can offer my uses in some other way. You—you saw how I was copying back there, right? I could be one of them! Please! Just let me—”

His superior stopped and looked back, up at the Nefarior that had him detained. “Take him through Door 999.”

The Devil’s eyes widened. “No, no, please, you can’t do that. I’m not some Gargoyle, you can’t just execute me! I’m a Devil! A fucking Devil! You can’t just execute someone of your own kind! Do you understand me?!”

She stayed turned away from the screaming Devil as he was dragged toward the door. He pushed and clawed at the Nefarior’s hands and arms, trying his damndest to pry himself from the thing’s invulnerable grip. He used his magic, despite knowing fully well that they had resistance to it. He tried screaming, punching, biting, anything, to get away from that door.

But despite it all, he was dragged, pace after pace, to his death. Nothing he did even slowed the Nefarior down.

“Please,” the Devil cried, tears falling down his face, “don’t. Have mercy. I know I messed up. I know I did. But I’ll do better. I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t ever—”

He was cut off by the Nefarior putting its hand over his mouth and opening Door 999. He had his head forcibly turned toward the door as the Nefarior reached its other hand forward to turn the knob and open the stone slab.

The funny thing about Door 999 was that nobody knew what was through it. Because if you went through, you died. And you couldn’t see through it, either. It wasn’t really a “door” at all. Well, there was a physical door there, but through the door was actually a teleporter that took you someplace else. A rectangle of space that linked up to some mystery location.

The Devil had heard what felt like an infinite number of theories about what was through that door. Some said it took you to the bottom of a lake of lava, where you’d either burn to death, or if you had the heat resistance to survive it, suffocate. Some said it took you to the top of some massive cliff, where you’d fall straight down for a full year before reaching the bottom of the pit and dying on impact. Some said it was actually a grid of tiny teleporters, and each little square of your body would be teleported someplace else, neatly dividing your entire body into chunks of meat.

He’d never taken part in that theorycrafting, instead wanting to focus on his work. But now, he regretted it. It wouldn’t have done anything to save him, but at the very least, all he wanted was some sort of certainty. Some sort of knowledge of what kind of fate he’d meet.

The Nefarior opened the door, and the Devil saw the familiar black void of a teleporter. It was what all of the Seventh Circle’s teleporters looked like—void-black squares in space that connected to some other teleporter, somewhere else in the Underworld.

He’d gone through teleporters thousands—or maybe even millions—of times in his life, but this time it felt completely different. It was like he could feel a cosmic coldness of death radiating off of this one, the air being sucked out of his lungs in real time as he was pushed toward it.

“Please!” he shouted one last time, voice muffled by the Nefarior’s hand. “I don’t want to die—”

The Nefarior gave him one last shove, he flew straight through the teleporter of Door 999, and—