Interlude 2

  Does This Runs?

  Faun strained as his bowels churned. He hated Squidulous!

  For a brief time, he had felt bad for Squidulous’ fate, but when he discovered just how cruel that demon had been, any sympathy he may have had evaporated.

  The manager who had run Universal System department 2.7.1. before Faun had spiked the f?ling’s morning brew with something that had caused him to rush to the toilet all day, just for questioning his work, work that was so shoddy, it had resulted in his termination.

  Had that been an end to it, Faun may have forgotten the incident, chalking it up to one last act of petty bullying, but no, simply one day of the squits was not enough for that vindictive, tentacled bastard.

  More than a month had passed by Torus time, and still, Faun was forced to spend half his workday stinking up a bathroom stall. It had gotten so bad that the rest of the office had stopped using the male humanoid toilets altogether.

  It wasn’t all bad, however; the ample time the half-goat, half-man got to himself allowed him to find the source of the tide of errors that had led to the death of his predecessor.

  There was a person, a human by appearance though the System said otherwise, who had somehow managed to get into the Trials of Evolution, a series of Trials created to allow monsters to choose their Evolutions.

  Since there wasn’t supposed to be any way an inhabitant of Terra Torus could do that, the System simply assumed he was supposed to be there and allowed him to undergo the Trials. The problem came whenever he completed a Trial.

  An error loop would occur when an Evolution was forced onto a non-monster, eventually breaking something and forcing it through as a Class, which was something completely different.

  Faun had no idea what in the spaghetti code of the System allowed that to happen, but when he identified what was going on, he simply redefined the nearly human’s unique Race, Elijah, as a monster, stopping those repeated errors from being sent up the chain of command and hopefully making it look like he had solved whatever issues there were.

  That should buy the trumpeting faun some time before his head would roll.

  What time wasn’t spent overseeing this section of System maintenance and correcting the bevy of mistakes this newest batch of demon hatchlings inevitably made, Faun used his stinky haven to secretly learn more about this anomaly.

  If he had any free time, he wouldn’t risk doing this while in the office at all, but Hell was hell; there was no time off. You worked until you dropped, and then you were thrown into the pit, digging for the rest of eternity if you weren’t killed first.

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  Every second Faun spent analysing this Elijah increased the risk that his department wouldn’t meet the quotas set for them and he would be axed, or sworded, or burned alive, whatever his superiors fancied.

  The risk was calculated, however; sooner or later, he would be killed anyway.

  Someone in Elijah’s position could definitely be useful in Faun’s plan to escape from Hell. At least that’s what he had thought at first, then he got a look at the Elijah’s stats. They were dreadful!

  Granted, he didn’t really know what sort of Attributes a mortal was supposed to have, but when compared to a demon of f?y creature, it was appalling. This anomalous thing was so weak that it wouldn’t be useful for anything; even if he could engineer a situation to aid in his escape, the guardians of hell would be able to swat Elijah down with the bat of an eye.

  Faun had hoped that whatever creature had broken into a System Trial would be strong; perhaps he had just fallen into some powerful wizard's spell, or was caught in a convergence, or was inside a monster just as it reached level 25. It didn’t really matter; the point was, Elijah was weak.

  At least for now.

  Faun was used to being dealt a crap hand, and, once he learnt of the Elijah’s weakness, he began looking for upsides. One notable benefit was in having so many Classes. Mortals were only supposed to have one Class. If they reached level 100, they could get a second, but as Faun understood it, that was uncommon.

  Because this Elijah had a number of Evolutions that were turned into Classes, all starting at level 0, he would be able to get all the early stat points, where the Xp cost for levels was still low. Once past level 13, the amount of Xp required for each subsequent level became astronomical.

  Unfortunately, he had already levelled up one of his Classes to level 9, and this was being read as his overall level by his character sheet. That significantly reduced the underlevelled bonus he got from defeating monsters, all of which were newly evolved monsters at level 26 that had been handpicked to administer these Trials.

  Despite the backlash it would no doubt bring, Faun composed a message for the Elijah, ensuring he knew the importance of growing stronger and that, if he did, there would be a chance to escape.

  Before he could finish the heavily encrypted file, the door to the bathroom banged open.

  Faun rushed to finish.

  Disciplined footsteps marched along the tile floor.

  The f?ling waited as the sending bar moved across his personal HUD.

  The door to his stall was kicked open by a booted foot.

  Staring down at him with disdainful blue eyes, piercing through golden locks topped with a military cap, was Tanya the Administrator.

  Normally, no one could see what was displayed on someone’s HUD; it would appear as a window in front of you. Administrators were the exception; they could look at the multicoloured windows of everyone as if they were truly there.

  Faun was thankful, therefore, that he had the presence of mind to switch away from the message he had been writing.

  As he tried his best to cover his modesty, cheeks above and below flushing pink, he regretted the choice of image he had randomly selected from his ‘work’ folder. When Tanya saw the picture displayed in a holographic manner in front of the manager’s half-naked form, her fury exploded.

  “So this is why you’re always in here!?” She shouted. Causing Faun to pale in fear and embarrassment.

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