Chương 339: A Whole New World 8

"Can I get you anything before we get started?" Bob asked invitingly.

"Some tea? Juice? Fresh blood? Or maybe coffee? You've always struck me as a coffee person. Box. Whatever."

"Stop this!" Boxxy snapped.

"I demand you answer my questions!" The man smiled. It was a dry, lifeless, emotionless grin that a bank teller might give to a rude customer.

"Come now, old bean. Surely we can be a bit more civil about this."

"I'm not here for your petty entertainment!"

"Or are you?" he quizzically raised an eyebrow.

"No, I'm not!"

"Then I suppose you have this life thing figured out after all, have you?"

"I… What?"

"Last I checked, you had no idea what you were 'here for,'" he made exaggerated air quotes.

"If that's still the case, then how can you say with absolute certainty that the purpose of your existence isn't to provide me with a spot of fun?" Boxxy felt an odd sense of dread fill it as those words sank in.

"Is that it, then?" it asked warily.

"I exist just so that you have something to laugh at?"

"Of course not, don't be silly." The shapeshifter groaned. It should've known better than to take those words seriously. A good chunk of what the God of Chaos said was usually just his attempts to mess with people, but there were some harsh truths hidden between the bullshit. Boxxy had difficulty telling the difference between the two even after working with the guy for most of its life. That perpetually jovial tone of voice was partly to blame.

If nothing else, that dumb joke had at least somewhat curbed the monster's insolent attitude.

"Now, seriously, how about that drink?" Bob offered once more.

"It's very rare that I can play the part of the host, so I'd like to make the most of it."

"You know what? Fine," the monster relented.

"What did you have on offer, again?"

"Everything, really. I can conjure anything you can conceive, and a few things you can't."

"Yeah, yeah… Hm… What's this coffee thing you mention earlier?" The man beamed a wide-eyed smile that oozed with delight.

"Only the greatest beverage known to mankind!"

"If it's so great then how come I've never heard of it?"

"Oh, sorry. I meant mankind in general, not the ones on Terrania. Our version went extinct before it could be cultivated, sadly."

"Uh-huh. Is it tasty, though?"

"Uhm, in a way. It's more about the aroma than the flavor, you see."

"Then I'll pass. I'll just take some liquefied human liver."

"Ah. Well, there's no accounting for taste, I suppose." With a snap of his fingers, Bob conjured two white porcelain mugs - one for himself and one for Boxxy. The monster's was appropriately sized for its body, which was to say about as big as a barrel. It was filled with a viscous, sloshy liquid that had a reddish-brown hue to it. The deity's cup was more reasonable in its dimensions, though it also said '#1 GOD' in big, blocky letters. The smaller dish was holding a steamy near-black fluid.

Judging by the powerful yet unfamiliar aroma wafting from it, Boxxy assumed it was the 'coffee' Bob had boasted about just moments before. Both parties took a short, polite sip of their respective beverages.

"Mmm, that never gets old," the man said with a relieved sigh.

"Now, let's hear those complaints you had, hm?"

"You know why I'm here."

"Just humor me." Boxxy rolled all twenty five eyes, but played along regardless.

"Well, there's a few things I'd like you to address. The biggest one is that the thought of eternity scares me and it's making me feel terrible. I'm confident that if I knew what life was all about I could just accept it and focus on the tasty and shiny things instead. Issue is, it's really bloody difficult to figure out."

"I know, right? It's almost as if someone's trying to keep you from realizing the purpose of your existence."

"Is that someone you?"

"Oh, yes. Why do you think I created the awareness filter in the first place?"

"Is that what you call the thing where people don't seem to hear what I tell them sometimes?"

"Mhm. That's the one," he nodded and took another sip.

"It keeps the wrong ideas from spreading, you see."

"What sort of wrong ideas?"

"Like the ones those damned tourists bring with them. They're always trying to force their world's politics and ideologies and technologies into yours. If not for the filter, they'd leave their intellectual litter all over the place. Except coffee. I really wish they could bring that with them somehow. Unfortunately, it's a lost cause." There were so many things loaded into those few sentences that Boxxy found it difficult to restrain its curiosity, but it tried its best to keep the conversation on subject.

"So, I guess that means you won't tell me what I want to know."

"Not at all. I have every intention of giving you the answers you're after."

"Really? But you said you didn't want me to know."

"No. I said I was keeping you from finding out via the awareness filter. Not the same thing." In other words, Bob was obfuscating the big truth not because he wanted to, but because he had to.

"Then tell me, already. What is the ultimate purpose of my existence?"

"Entertainment." There was a brief, awkward silence as the God of Chaos sipped on his coffee with delight.

"But… just now… you said…" Boxxy mumbled in confusion.

"I know what I said." Something clicked in the shapeshifter's mind.

"Whose entertainment, if not yours?"

"Now you're asking the right questions," Bob smirked knowingly.

"Go on, then. Follow that train of thought to the last station." The monster momentarily put away the nagging thought that it was being lied to or otherwise misled and tried to follow the deity's advice. At that moment, there was little doubt in its mind that Bob had a hand - or at least a finger - in an uncountable number of events throughout history.

In the past he'd mentioned that he hated intervening directly in mortal matters, yet he had done so at least eight times just during Boxxy's relatively brief tenure as Hero of Chaos. And those were just the ones the monster knew about. At first the shapeshifter had assumed that the deity was simply being a lying, hypocritical bastard-"Takes one to know one." -but now it seemed as if he had to do things he didn't want to.

Unrelated, Boxxy wished that Bob refrained from reading its mind just so he could interject with distracting comments.

"Sorry. I just like watching your gears turn. I'll be quiet." The bottom line was that Bob seemingly had responsibilities he didn't completely agree with, but was obligated to fulfill.

"So is this like a job for you?" Boxxy asked aloud.

"I like to think so."

"What kind of job?"

"Well, it has no breaks, no vacation days, no pay, and no chance for promotion. At least I get to make my own fun, but I can't slack off too much. I've got a strict deadline to meet."

"I meant to ask what you actually did."

"Hah! What don't I do!?" he exclaimed.

"You would not believe the monumental effort I go through every second just to ensure that this stupid project doesn't implode on itself. I'd never be able to manage it if I couldn't think about two hundred different things at once."

"Two hundred? Really?" Boxxy asked dubiously.

"Oh, yes," he nodded reassuringly.

"Granted, so far the most I've been tasked with was fifty six simultaneous issues, but the capacity is there in case I need it."

"Uh-huh. And what sort of grand project would require that much mental effort from a God?"

"I'll give you three guesses," he said evasively. The shapeshifter wasn't sure why the deity got coy all of a sudden, but at least this one was fairly obvious. Bob had a job, which meant he also had an employer that demanded some kind of service or product. It was up to the God of Chaos, as the acting manager, to ensure that it was delivered on time and up to quality. And considering how the deity had just claimed that life existed for the purpose of entertainment, there was only one logical conclusion.

"You're cultivating Terrania into a playground!" Boxxy shouted accusingly.

"Hey, you said it, not me," the man shrugged smugly.

"It all makes sense now! That's why you're so adamant about life prospering, and why you care so much about new races and species! Even the Shifts that throw the world into chaos are just you stirring the pot every few hundred years so that things don't get stale!" Boxxy wasn't an expert on history, but it had studied the past quite a bit as part of its Artifact hunting hobby.

During its studies, it had noticed that a Shift seemed to occur every time a single race, nation, or ideology was in a position to take over the world. Then, without fail, the dominant faction would be reduced to a broken husk within the span of a decade or so. It happened to the nosferatu-run Adams Theocracy, it happened to the old Elven Dominion, and it was in the process of happening to the Lodrak Empire. It wasn't just Boxxy that had noticed this trend, either.

Though nobody had really studied the matter in great depth - likely because of that awareness filter - every enlightened society had learned to fear these Shifts and the turmoil they brought with them. Of course, Bob's meddling must have gone beyond mere politics and war games. He had reshaped the entire pantheon at one point. He also didn't shy away from influencing mortal life on a large scale. For instance, Boxxy had always wondered why so many of Terrania's species had appearances that shared a certain…

human-centric appeal. It was a trend exemplified not only by enlightened races like elves, dwarves, and beastkin, but also monsters like harpies, dryads, alraunes, and succubi, to name the most obvious ones. The shapeshifter had always wondered how come so many things had large breasts and other feminine features that human males would find attractive.

Sure, there was always one explanation or another to justify those assets from an evolutionary standpoint, but such cases seemed far more numerous than they should have been. The idea that those things had boobs by design rather than by accident made so much sense that it seemed stupidly obvious in hindsight. Boxxy felt like it really should have seen that sooner. Then again, it was possible it had reached that conclusion many times, but Bob's awareness filter made sure the epiphany didn't stick.

"Wait…" the monster reigned in its excitement.

"How come your filter isn't affecting me now?"

"Oh, that? It was because you went outside of its effective range."

"You mean when I fell into space?"

"Precisely."

"That seems suspiciously convenient."

"I assure you, it's just the regular kind of convenient. See, I made it so that it would latch onto every single newly born lifeform capable of thought, like an invisible leash. I also made it stupidly long. 21, 474 kilometers, 836 meters, and 47 centimeters from the planet's center, to be exact. That still gives it about seventeen thousand kilometers of coverage going up into space. You just kinda went beyond that for a while there, and the leash snapped as a result."

"And once it's broken, it can't be reattached?"

"Very good!" Bob acknowledged.

"Don't patronize me," the monster grumbled.

"It's blatantly obvious considering I'm not under the filter's influence." Incidentally, the shapeshifter wanted to tell the God of Chaos off for messing with its thoughts without its knowledge or consent, but that was an argument for another time.

"You'd be surprised how often people fail to notice what's right in front of them." Bob whimsically raised an eyebrow while sipping on his coffee.

"But why does the filter work like that?" the shapeshifter pressed.

"Surely you can make it reconnect somehow. Make a new leash?"

"I could, but that's a lot of upkeep. The filter is an automated process, you see. The less work it has to do, the more resources I have to play with. It could, theoretically, scan the entire planet for every soul not being filtered. However, that takes an immense amount of effort, especially if it has to be done with any sort of regularity. It's way more efficient to just have it do the leashing once and give it a very long tether."

"I don't know all the specifics, but that sounds like it was designed to fail. Like, why does it need to have a limited range in the first place?"

"My good fellow, are you implying I intentionally sabotaged my own creation?!" Bob feigned ignorance.

"I assure you the filter was made in such a way as to operate at optimum efficiency with an effectively perfect track record!"

"Uh-huh," the monster said flatly.

"Define 'effectively perfect.'" It was a dubious choice of words eerily reminiscent of Bob's favorite and equally nebulous phrase, 'a non-zero chance.'

"Well, let me put it like this. If I had to enumerate its failure rate as a percentile, it would be a zero with so many other zeroes past the decimal point that it is practically indistinguishable from a perfect track record."

"That's… How are you measuring that, exactly?"

"Well, I divide the number of times the filter connection broke by the total number of times it has attempted a connection." Considering that thing supposedly latched onto every single thing that had ever lived, it was safe to say that the divisor was an inconceivably large number. But what of the dividend?

"Oh, that's just one."

"Seriously? Just me?" Boxxy asked, somewhat surprised.

"Yup. Just you."

"Surely other people have fallen into those anomalies before."

"Absolutely. However, none of them have ever made it back. Not alive, anyway. I honestly didn't think it was possible to survive the trip all the way from the edge of the universe."

"… What?"

"Okay, I admit, I figured it was possible in theory, but the odds of someone actually doing it were-""No, no, no, hold up. What do you mean the edge of the universe?" Bob paused, blinked, and looked around in confusion.

"Why, exactly what I said. Where you wound up was quite literally the end of this reality. You could have turned around and touched it, even. Probably best that you didn't though. Things kind of just blip out of existence when they go that far."

"But… but what about all the stars and the sun and-""Just an elaborate illusion to keep the masses from figuring out that they are, in fact, the center of this universe. It's very important that people never have reason to question the nature of their reality." That was precisely what would have happened if Fizzy had been allowed to finish her calculations.

She might have deduced that Terrania wasn't hurtling through space in an orbit around the sun, but rather sat perfectly still while the tapestry of stars spun around it. Boxxy would have noticed it as well if it had paid any attention to the sun's trajectory during its voyage through the void. For better or for worse, it had been far too focused on its survival and reaching its destination to even think about the ball of light making impossible circles through the cosmos.

In any event, this revelation filled the monster with an all new kind of dread. Earlier it had figured that either Bob or his bosses had scanned the infinite void of space until they found a planet suitable for their elaborate entertainment endeavor. If that were the case, then they would have chosen Terrania because it was the best candidate for the project. However, if the deity's claim was true, then he didn't just stumble upon the world.

Rather, the mini-universe was created with the sole purpose of becoming a playground. This threw Boxxy's thoughts into a chaotic mess just when it thought it was starting to figure it all out. It had been so sure that Bob's employers were highly advanced humans from another world. After all, he looked human, the aforementioned titty-paradox was aimed towards humans, and all of the otherworlders in history have been human. Predominantly male humans, at that.

However, no matter how ahead they might have been in terms of technology or magic, it seemed inconceivable that mere humans could create a pocket-universe.

"Is it, though?" Bob responded to the monster's thoughts.

"You've already experienced what my Divine item can do. How is that any different from creating an entire universe?"

"… You mean other than the ridiculously larger scale and extended time period?" it countered.

"The mana requirements alone seem practically impossible." Bob paused to take another noisy sip of his coffee.

"You'd be surprised how little energy is required to make a world out of nothing. All it takes is imagination, creativity, and a medium. Artists have their paintings, musicians have their melodies, and authors have their stories. Even a child's imagination arguably qualifies. However, no matter how much effort a person puts into their artwork, they are incapable of making their creations self-aware."

"Is that what I am, then? Just a sentient piece of fiction in some made up world?" Boxxy's tone was heavy.

"In a way. The truth is far more complicated than I'm at liberty to say, but 'sentient fiction' is a good summary." The shapeshifter didn't have anything to respond with. No witty remarks, bad puns, curious questions, or insightful observations sprang up in its mind. It had just been told that its collection, its flesh, its memories, and even its very ego were all just figments of someone's imagination.

Its first instinct was to immediately dismiss the notion that it wasn't real as ridiculous, preposterous, and downright silly. Boxxy still had that voice in the back of its mind that kept warning it that Bob could have been lying, but it was drowned out by a new flavor of existential dread. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"What happens when the 'play' ends?" it asked weakly.

"Why, this universe goes poof, of course. All of it will just disappear as if it were never even here. Well, except for me. Once I'm done I'll probably get transferred to another world to do the whole thing over. This is actually my second try at this, you know. If it doesn't go too well, then I guess the third time'll be the charm," he chuckled. Surprisingly enough, Boxxy found a bit of solace in that. Every universe had to end eventually, it imagined.

At least the shapeshifter had some insight into how its own reality would disappear. That thought also allowed it to reassure itself that everything it had experienced and would continue to experience in the future was, in fact, reality from the monster's point of view. And, ultimately, that was the only perspective that mattered to the shapeshifter. Was it really all that important that the world wasn't actually real if the illusion was so damn convincing?

Boxxy would need a lot of time and thinking to properly tackle the question, but for the moment its answer was a firm 'probably not.' That aside, there was one factor that required immediate elaboration.

"So how long do we have?" Boxxy hoped that it would be a very long time before things went 'poof.' If that were the case, then it wouldn't have to worry about the end of the universe since it would most likely be dead anyway.

"Ah, hm. That's a bit of a tricky question to answer," Bob frowned.

"Let's just say that, once this phase of the project is complete, there will be a sudden influx of tourists. They probably won't have the filter on at that stage, so I expect them to trash the place in no time flat. Once they've sucked the fun out of the world they'll forget about it and move onto the next thing, as humans often do." The man made no effort to hide his displeasure at the thought that millenia of his hard work would be reduced to rubble by a bunch of plebeians.

"The beginning of the end, huh?" Boxxy mused aloud.

"Pretty much, yeah," he shrugged.

"When's that phase scheduled for?"

"Been awhile since I checked, actually. Let me see," Bob stared off to the side for a moment.

"Twenty-two days and three hours. Roughly."

"Seriously?! That soon?!"

"Oh, no, that's from the outside. Time flows a bit quicker here than it does out there."

"How much quicker?!"

"By a factor of fifty thousand." Boxxy took a few moments to make a few calculations.

"That means it'll be another three thousand years, you asshole!" It tossed the nearly-forgotten barrel-jug of liver-juice at Bob, prompting the man to duck out of the way.

"Hah-ha!" he laughed merrily.

"You should've seen the look on your face-analogue! It was priceless!"

"Go jump up your own ass and die!" Without really thinking, Boxxy ripped open its Storage and started throwing everything its tentacles could grasp at the mischievous deity.

"I've had it with you constantly trying to pull one over on me!" it chucked a spear at him. That dumb prank had uncorked a lifetime's worth of resentment and frustration at the deity's antics, and the shapeshifter was letting it all boil to the surface.

"How's about you chew on my bullshit for a change?!" it tossed several grenades while Bob ran down the hallway. It wasn't actually trying to kill him, of course. It knew full well that this wasn't the way one destroyed a deity. Even then Bob's position as overseer likely made it so he could just ignore the world's rules if he so wished. However, it felt good to let it all out, so the monster didn't hold back and just kept at it while Bob played along.

"Some God of Chaos you are! More like a God of Accounting!" it threw a satchel of coins next.

"What kind of dumb name is Bob anyway?! It totally doesn't fit!" The next improvised projectile was an Artifact-grade fishing rod that the man caught in his free hand.

"Oh, hey!" he exclaimed.

"That's the Pillar of the Caged Cod! Since when did you have this?" Bob's momentary distraction led to him finally getting nailed by something. It was, fittingly enough, an enormous fish that Boxxy had acquired during its recent drunken bender. In fact, it had used that very same pointlessly magical rod to catch it. It had the Artifact with it because it was a curious treasure that might have appealed to the collector's spirit of an elder dragon.

It had mentioned it to Arisha at some point, which inevitably led to the titanic trout winding up in the shapeshifter's pocket dimension. And now that expired fish was behind the curtain of the personal domain of the God of Chaos, where endless hallways lined with infinite doors traded motes of light with each other. Fwump One of those balls of energy drifted away from the nearest gateway and sank into the fish as if drawn in by it.

What should have been a suffocated carcass then started shaking and flopping right on top of Bob while Boxxy looked on with curious amusement.

"Ah, shit," the deity cursed.

"That wasn't supposed to happen. Hold on while I fix this." The resurrected fish floated off of him and then exploded into a fine red mist. The ball of light from earlier drifted out of it and hovered in place for a bit. Bob stood up and shoo-ed into the nearest opening, then started straightening out his outfit. It was also worth noting that throughout all of that, he hadn't spilled a single drop of his coffee.

"In retrospect, this probably wasn't the best place to start roughhousing," he mused.

"Where are we anyway?" Boxxy asked, its petty revenge fulfilled.

"Like I said, some people fail to notice what's right in front of them. This is the Well of Souls."

"Huh. Neat."

"… Well, that's disappointing. Was hoping for a more fun reaction."

"I really can't give a damn about it at this point." The shapeshifter was pretty sure there was some intricate and ingenious mechanism through which those doorways somehow led to reincarnation. However, it was already tapped out. Its mind had been forced to struggle with a number of rather devastating truths, and it needed time to process it all. There was only one thing it cared to ask about the Well of Souls, and it was rather superficial.

"Why does it look like that, though? With the hallways and portals and everything?"

"Life has many doors, box-boy. Death is no different."

"So… you think it looks cool like that?"

"Basically, yeah," he bobbed his head affirmatively.

"I find it rather relaxing to watch them drift frantically around. Usually it's much, much faster than this, but I slowed things down for your benefit."

"You can do that?"

"Sure. I can do many things. I'm technically omnipotent, you know. I just don't exercise that privilege in any noticeable way."

"Because it'd be boring?"

"That, and overt displays of power are counter-productive. People grow dependent on higher powers that solve all their problems for them. At the same time, there's things that require a spot of divine intervention. So, I apply a light touch. As an old friend of mine once said, if I do things right, people won't know I've done anything at all."

"So that's why you wrangled the Boneshaper into doing your dirty work," Boxxy concluded.

"Speaking of, what's the deal with those voidlings? If the universe is really that small, where'd they come from?"

"Ugh, those things," the man rolled his mismatched eyes.

"They're one of the idiotic surprises my bosses seeded the world with. I told them it was a lame and overdone idea, but no! They just had to have the brain-sucking aliens from Ulk'Narob looming over Terrania. To make matters worse, they were really sloppy when putting them in. If they had been more thorough, then the Percepians wouldn't have triggered their invasion ahead of schedule by accident." Bob sighed angrily, but calmed down after another sip of his mug.

"I was going to use the Boneshaper as a big bad evil guy, you know," he continued with a more somber tone.

"He was supposed to be a big threat with all kinds of hidden lore that the tourists could have fun dealing with. But now he'll be just a footnote in history by the time I'm done. Six hundred and fifteen years of planning down the toilet. Such a waste." Boxxy quietly and peacefully listened to Bob's rant. The shapeshifter felt strangely refreshed after that pointless tantrum. It finally knew its purpose and the meaning of life, at least as far as its home universe was concerned.

It also had confirmation that it could enjoy life to the fullest before everything was shut down. That knowledge put its mind at ease for the first time since the Dragon Festival. It wasn't magically cured of its depression, though. The thought of death wiping out all that it had ever been still loomed on the fringes of the monster's consciousness, but it was finally able to somewhat ignore the dreadful thought. With enough time, it felt like it could either accept or forget the matter entirely.

This newfound clarity of mind allowed it to casually ask some of the questions it wasn't sure that it wanted to know the answers to.

"What about me? How much planning did I take?" The God of Chaos looked at Boxxy with a bemused smile.

"Bold of you to assume I actually planned for you."

"Come off it. You really think I'll believe you had nothing to do with the way my life turned out?" The fact that the once-mimic was born in Bob's dungeon alone was a massive give away, let alone the insane sequence of events that led to it becoming Hero of Chaos.

"Oh, I was certainly involved. I stacked a few decks, loaded some dice, and prepared a few prizes that an individual of a particular disposition would absolutely take advantage of."

"How is that not planning?"

"Because I could not guarantee that anything would take the trail of breadcrumbs I left out. I merely maximized the chances for a specific outcome to occur without expressly arranging anything. I do that a lot, in case you haven't noticed." The questionable 'leash' design of the awareness filter was the best example of Bob's way of doing things.

"Anyway," he continued, "my point is that I prepared for someone like you, but not you, specifically. You feel me?"

"I think I do. You can't willingly and knowingly create a monster like me, so you did your best to make it happen 'accidentally.'"" That's certainly one way to put it," he seemed pleased with himself. The next obvious question was regarding Bob's motives for going through all that effort, and Boxxy had a certain idea about that. As best as it could tell, the entity acting as the God of Chaos was clearly bound, obligated, or otherwise forced to follow certain rules and directives.

It was also why he seemed so evasive and kept dropping hints instead of giving straight answers - he was forbidden from outright stating certain things. The deity's behavior was reminiscent of a demonic familiar exploiting loopholes in their summoner's orders in order to circumvent their contract. In other words, Bob was trying to rebel against his masters, and Boxxy was the means through which he could accomplish his goal.

At least that was how the shapeshifter understood the situation, which led it to take a stab as to what, exactly, the God of Chaos was trying to accomplish.

"So am I here to break you out of this mini-universe?" Bob made it sound as if those otherworlder 'tourists' had come to Terrania willingly, and he seemed to have some way of communicating with the world's creators. If those were true, then it was reasonable to expect that there was a way for those on the inside to escape into the world above. If he was anything like the demons he had created, then he would likely want nothing more than to freely roam the 'real' world.

"Hah. Nice try, but no," he chuckled.

"Despite everything that you might think, I actually quite like this gig. Gives me purpose, fulfillment, and enjoyment. It's my superiors' lackadaisical attitude I take issue with. Why'd they put me in charge of developing Terrania if they insist on me integrating their dumb ideas without listening to my opinion? Bunch of morons, if you ask me." Boxxy tended to agree with that. Even at three years old it knew better than to ignore feedback from its much older and more knowledgeable 'employees.'

It wouldn't have survived for as long as it had without the demonic trio's input. Admittedly not all of what they had to say was useful, factual, or even relevant, but there was merit in at least hearing them out. After all, just because it was the one in charge didn't mean it had all the answers. The monster began to question just how advanced Bob's employers were if they failed to grasp something so basic.

"Is the boobs thing their idea too?" it inquired expectantly.

"Uh, no. That was actually my doing."

"But why, though?"

"Because, even though my bosses would disagree on principle, everyone loves large chests. Well, everyone the project is aimed towards, at least. You lure tourists in with the cleavage, then you grab onto them with the world's rich lore, fantastical scenery, challenging combat, and the hard-hitting stories of its residents."

"Don't forget the tasty tastes and shiny shinies," Boxxy chimed in.

"That… actually is a good point. I'll see if I can work it into the sales pitch. Anyway, I'm really not in any hurry to leave my post."

"Are you actually capable of leaving, though?"

"Not really, no," he frowned ever-so-slightly.

"I suppose I could find a way out if I ever wanted to. Not to toot my own horn here, but I am awfully clever. It's how I got the job in the first place."

"So why don't you go?" Even if Bob liked his job, there were surely times when he wished for a break or vacation.

"Because I… don't want to?" he looked puzzled for a moment.

"Hm, no, that's not quite right." He paused for a few seconds, stared off into the distance, and took a particularly long sip of his coffee. It was at this point Boxxy noticed that the cup never seemed to get any emptier, though it was hardly worth discussing. If anything it slightly regretted tossing its own beverage aside. That one sip of liver-juice had been quite good.

"I guess the best way to put it is that I cannot want to leave." That was a bizarre way of putting it, Boxxy thought. Then again, Bob was an utterly bizarre being that was well beyond the shapeshifter's comprehension, so it was as fitting an explanation as any.

"Yet you still laid out a path that would eventually create me - a monster free of your all-encompassing filter," it pointed out.

"To what end?" Bob's expression defaulted to that same neutral business smile he had shown at the start of the conversation.

"I'm not really sure, myself. I guess I wanted to see if I could actually do it. A sort of self-imposed challenge to liven up the monotony of my job."

"I thought you said I didn't exist just for your petty entertainment."

"That's because it wasn't about you, personally. Just the role you ended up taking in this silly little play of mine."

"Right, whatever," the monster gave up.

"So, what happens now? Do you blip me out of existence like you do the triple-rankers?"

"Oh, heavens, no. Just look at you! Not your outward appearance, but who you are as an individual. Cunning, conniving, curious, yet amazingly simple-minded and pure in your purpose. Why, you're a work of art onto yourself. It would be an absolute crime - a sin, even - to just have you fade into obscurity. So, I've been thinking that I might want to show you off to my bosses. What do you say?" It was an offer Boxxy truly was not expecting.

It was tempting to accept just to see what sort of beings were capable of creating a fictional reality. However, that prospect posed a certain danger. After all, the shapeshifter had been preying on humanity ever since it was born. It had done so frequently, relentlessly, and remorselessly. Bob's handlers could take issue with that. Sure, they weren't exactly the same type of human as the majority of the shapeshifter's victims, but they were human nonetheless.

So far Boxxy had been beneath the boss-men's notice since they were rather hands-off on the whole planetary playground project. A meeting would change that, which could lead to them deciding to snuff the shapeshifter out of existence for all of the atrocities it had committed. Or, alternatively, they might commend it for its creative applications of violence against people that, from their point of view, didn't really exist. It was a coin that Boxxy wasn't quite sure if it wanted to flip.

"I should add, by the way," Bob piped up, "it'll take an immense amount of effort on your part to actually make it happen even if you accept."

"… So I have to put in work?"

"Oh, yes. Decades, maybe even centuries' worth. You could easily expire before you manage to get it all done."

"Why in Goroth's rocky asshole would I ever do that?"

"Because you get to meet my bosses face-to-face." In other words, the God of Chaos was offering Boxxy wasn't just a meeting, but a way out of the fabricated universe and into the reality beyond it.

"Okay. Tell me what I need to do." The monster's reply was immediate. It honestly couldn't care less about some mega-humans running everything. It just hated being controlled, monitored, or otherwise caged. Bob was giving it the chance to earn freedom it never even knew it was missing. True to its nature, the violent box would latch onto that chance with all of its might.

"You need to get your Status to a very specific state. I'm only going to say this once, so make sure you pay attention." Bob snapped his fingers, causing a very familiar box to appear in front of Boxxy's face-region.

General Information Attributes Job Information Name Name Value Name Value Name Level Progress Species STR 2217 LCK 7529 Sex DEX 4808 MNT 8906 Age AGI 2289 CHR 3004 Guild END 3081 PER 7317 HP INT 360 FTH 466 MP WIS 5057 AFF 6593 Well, the upside was that the monster had a reasonable shot at getting those exact numbers. It had Cadaver Absorption, Essence Shift, and knew a number of Attribute-sapping demonic rituals.

Furthermore it had access to both an Artifact that could give it any Job it wanted and a high-Level Scribe that could remove Jobs at will. It was far better prepared to accomplish this task than anyone else on Terrania. The only real issue was the sheer volume required. Not only would it take an immense amount of time to hoard that many Attribute Points, but it was doubtful whether the monster's body could hold them all without succumbing to lethal levels of power creep.

Just like Bob had pointed out, there was a very real chance the monster would simply perish before it could reach its goal. Then again, the threat of death had done little to dissuade Boxxy from chasing after the things it wanted in the past, and that wasn't about to change.

"There's no time limit on this, right?"

"Nope. Well, actually, about three thousand years, I guess."

"If I do manage to qualify for this meeting, can I bring anything with me?"

"Not really. Just your memories and killer personality."

"So, no items?"

"Nope. No items. No Jobs. No Skills. No body at all, actually. Material things in here can't exist out there, kind of like the Beyond."

"Ugh… There goes my collection…" Boxxy could always rebuild its hoard once it was free, but there were several pieces it really wished it could bring with it.

"What about Fizzy?" it asked about the most important one.

"Can she come along?"

"If she manages to hit those numbers, sure. If not, you'll have to figure something out on your own afterwards. Just try to keep the time dilation in mind."

"Right…" The shapeshifter then realized that, if Bob was telling the truth, then the golem wouldn't be a golem if she were to leave. That was a bit of an issue, as ninety-two percent of Fizzy's shininess was contained within her blindingly dazzling frame. Boxxy wasn't sure if it wanted to drag the ex-gnome along if she couldn't bring her most defining asset. It had no idea whether it could convince her to abandon it in the first place.

However, both of those issues would be resolved if it could secure a suitably shiny shell for her to inhabit on the other side.

"Come to think of it, can I even get a physical body once I get there? Like, through possession or something?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah… Probably," Bob said evasively.

"Potentially. There's a chance. You'll- you'll work it out, I'm sure." That response was hardly reassuring, but it would have to do. Boxxy wasn't exactly dead-set on bringing Fizzy along anyway, and there were other candidates to consider. The demons, for instance, would probably agree readily to accompany it. They were used to being incorporeal existences, and it seemed doubtful they would pass up the chance to explore a whole new reality. Not to mention they might not want to hang around for the 'big poof.'

Three millenia seemed like a lot to Boxxy, but it imagined it wasn't all that long from the perspective of an immortal demon. The fact that they were demons also presented a certain issue, however. The shapeshifter had no way to be certain, but it imagined the summoning contract wouldn't survive the transfer, which meant it couldn't control them on the other side. Still, it had a pretty solid grasp on their personalities, so it felt confident it could handle them. Jen, on the other hand, was a hard no.

Though she was surprisingly easy to manipulate, she would be a musclehead without the muscle or the head, and it didn't seem as if she'd like the idea of starting over from scratch. Ambrosia would never leave her tree, and Arisha was far too afraid of the unknown to take a chance like that. As for why Boxxy was considering bringing some companions along, it was because it really didn't want to venture into the unknown alone.

Ever since it was three months old, it had learned just how dangerous an unfamiliar world could be to a lone creature. At least one capable ally would tremendously boost its odds of survival. Not only that, but it really, really, really wanted to avoid having to suffer that crushing loneliness again. It was perhaps an odd thought for a monster, but Boxxy was as odd as a monster could get. The most difficult part would be sharing what it had learned with its followers.

They were all under the influence of that awareness filter, after all. Actually, there was a chance Snack might have broken away from it like Boxxy had, but that was just her. Regardless, the shapeshifter felt confident it could manage to get through to all of them if given enough time. It had plenty of that, at least. Right at that moment, however, it felt it was best to decompress and let some of the shock fade before it made any decisions one way or the other.

It also reassured itself that it always had the option of simply enjoying life instead of trying to escape it. Though, looking at Bob's knowing smile, it was rather clear which choice was the more likely one.

"Well, this has been fun," the deity broke the silence, "but I suppose I ought to get back to work now. We really should do this again sometime."

"If we do, can we please talk about something that's easier to digest?"

"No promises," he said with a grin.

"Have I mentioned I hate you?"

"Quite a few times, yes. Off you go, then." He raised a hand, his fingers at the ready.

"And, as per usual, mind that first step." Snap"-now that you're no longer the Hero of Chaos?" The next thing Boxxy knew, it was back in its dungeon, with Fizzy looking concerned right next to it and a certain devil's voice in its head.

"… Carl?"

"What?"

"You're still there?"

"Well, duh. Did you think I'd just say 'no' and hang up on you?"

"Yes. No. Hold on." On a hunch, the shapeshifter checked its internal clock via the Tick Counter Skill. Its soul might have been yoinked to Bob's side, but it knew from past experiences that its body stayed behind whenever that happened. And, since that's where Skills resided, the ability in question would record how much time had passed outside of Bob's secret hideout. Thanks to that, Boxxy was able to understand exactly what the deity had meant by 'slowing things down.'

For all intents and purposes, he had stopped time for the rest of the world just so they could have their little chat in peace. It seemed a bit irresponsible at first glance, but Boxxy no longer dared to presume it could tell Bob how to do his job. After all, it wasn't the all-powerful overseer of an entire universe.

"Right, nevermind. I'll talk to you later, Carl."

"I'll be here. Later." Click"So are you going to tell me what you're going on about?" Fizzy insisted.

"Wait, do I even want to know?"

"Nah, forget it. It's not that big a deal," it said evasively.

"Besides, there are things I need to do urgently."

"What things?"

"Taking a nap, for starters." The golem crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow accusingly.

"A nap. Really."

"What?" the monster shrugged.

"Naps are important." Fizzy wasn't buying it. Mere moments ago Boxxy had some kind of bone to pick with the Goddess of Probability, and then it just dropped the subject out of nowhere. She could tell something had happened, and she had a pretty good idea as to what it was. The Paladin knew all about Roberto's split-second meetings. She had been subjected to one during her subterranean adventure a couple of years ago, and she was ready to wager her left butt-plate that Daisy had done the same to Boxxy.

There were no rear bumper dealers nearby to take her bet, unfortunately.

"Well, if you need me, I'll be right here. Trying to pound dragon bones into submission." In the end Fizzy decided to leave the matter alone. She knew the shapeshifter wouldn't bother keeping secrets from her without a good reason. Whatever world-shattering revelations it had gleaned from the God of Chance would be revealed whenever it felt the time was right. More importantly, the golem couldn't help but notice how much livelier Boxxy seemed all of a sudden.

Fizzy hadn't called attention to it, but she had observed that the abomination's subconscious shifting was a lot more animated whenever it was happy or excited. It seemed to be an involuntary reaction, not unlike a person smiling or a dog wagging its tail. And, at that moment in time, the monster's tentacles were undulating so much that they left a trail of eyeballs and teeth behind it. This was both good and bad, in Fizzy's opinion.

Good because it seemed as though Boxxy was back to its old self, and bad because things got rather… intense whenever that thing was happy. Though she knew not what scheme it would hatch after its power-nap, she could guarantee with unfounded certainty that the world's enlightened population would take a sharp dip as a result.