"Last purchase." Wade said, looking at his five coins. "Buy me that extra boon lootbox for this round. I'm certain this time."
He'd taken a quick three minute pause to raid one of her sodas out of her mini-fridge, against her permission and over her very vocal objections, of course. Then, after taking his stress out by bullying Play, he sat on the couch and spent the rest of those minutes chronically second guessing himself.
"Mmm, good pick." Her earlier ranting halted at the drop of a dime. "Pairing that up with the challenge mode for extra coins so that you can buy the boon at the end of the round and be ahead of everyone by one. Good to see you're going to honor your deal with me."
He didn't have that many other options, this coming round was all about preparing to make it back to Hell and back to the few people he knew. This game absolutely had safety in numbers.
And that brought another problem: "Technically, assuming all the other gods are shit at this game, I'm probably one of the few that has this many boons on his roster."
The poor folks back in the Nathir shelter city were probably still at zero boons, and desperately saving up coins here and there from quests they were actually able to complete. All because their gods hadn't understood the game like Play had, and tried instead to work on the global scale problems like the missing sun.
"It's good for you as an individual for the main quest of being the ultimate winner." Play shrugged. "But if humanity is your team, then might be bad overall. You're going to have to hold a few hands."
"That part doesn't completely make sense to me." Wade said, "Why are there teams in this game, and yet the very first quest we've all got by default is to be the last one standing? Or at least the one everyone agrees is in control."
"Not enough information, we can only make a few guesses right now. Could be that there's multiple teams and they're much smaller size than you think. Like if Leon and Illy both agreed that you were the leader and submitted to you for that main quest, maybe you'd have an actual team recognized by the System?"
She had a point. That could also be another interpretation of the team theory. And it made more sense with the Nathir, from what Wade knew of those psychopaths. They had some kind of cultural society about strength. Hierarchy was so strict, there was an entire alternate dialect for leaders.
Eri had written in that dialect, in the last letter Wade had read. Words only a leader who knew they were recognized by others could write in. To try and speak that way without the iron knowledge others already bowed down was... almost as taboo as walking out into the street naked. Just unthinkable in a primal sense.
Wade pondered on the bits of knowledge that were filtering in through Market's blessing. It wasn't giving him enough context to work with, but it had given him some real clues on who the Nathir had been as a people.
Or currently were. They still had survivors out there.
"Only way to know for sure is to find a way to talk to the System directly," Play said, interrupting his thoughts. "And you just so happened to have an excellent quest for exactly that~"
But to get that working, he'd need to get real lucky on one of these lootbox rolls. Probably the silver chest from getting a mining expedition under his payroll. That was his best bet so far.
"All right, lock in the extra boon. Let's wrap this up."
Play held a hand out, and the last five coins he had vanished.
A mythic lootbox will be spawned at the start of the next round containing a randomized boon.
Nothing else appeared besides that notification and the loss of his coins. "Huh, it's usually a bit more bombastic than that about lootboxes."
And then he remembered something else. "WAIT - MY LOOTBOXES!"
Specifically his gold lootboxes. Hard earned last round. If they were fleeting items, he was going to scream something rude to the System when he finally did get to talk to it face to face.
His head calculated, jumping through hoops to figure out quick ways to know if they were there or not.
The brain cells bounced around in his skull and then hit the corner perfectly in one go: He had stuffed a golden lootbox compass into his pant pockets last time.
He drove his hands into his pocket and felt around. He had a lot of junk stuffed in there. his figures started dragging things out like he was pulling stuff out of a clown car.
And there, like a blessing from on high, he felt his fingers brush against something hard and metallic much deeper down.
Slowly he wrapped a hand around it, and removed it, revealing it into the world.
A golden compass.
And if that existed, then that meant the actual chest must equally exist. Although the needle wasn't pointing anywhere, just lazily moving with gravity.
A little worrying, but he wasn't in the realm where the gold chest had spawned, so it shouldn't be pointing anywhere. "Thank God, oh, I almost had a panic attack." Wade sighed, feeling himself lean back into the couch.
"You're welcome." Play said, nodding sagely. Then her eyes lit up. "Oh, I know! I'll bless this compass for good loot rolls."
"You can do that?"
"I am the goddess of games, I'm offended you think I can't."
"... Why haven't you before?" Wade narrowed his eyes. Play was up to something. He just didn't know what.
"You never had a compass here to bless, duh." She jumped off the chair and raced right up to Wade, then extended a hand out, "Compass please."
He cautiously lifted it up to her.
She brought both hands together right over the gold thing, and formed a small heart with her fingers and thumbs.
Sparkles of red came out of the heart as she bounced her hands to the right of the compass. Then bounced the heart over to the left side and green sparkles came out, before doing the same to the dead center where a dazzling display of blue sparkles went flying out.
And while she did all that, she spoke out the most cursed incantation Wade had ever heard spoken out loud: "Moe! Moe! Kyun~!"
She jumped back, gave a twirl, and struck a pose on one feet, a peace hand sign right in front of her face. She finished it with a wink that, once again, had a fading multicolored glowing star and sparkle fade off into the air. "There! Now your loot has been blessed by the greatest goddess in the world, me! May RNG ever be in your favor mortal~"
Wade realized all in one horrifying moment where she was getting all her mannerisms from: "....Anime was a mistake."
"What?!" She stumbled down from her pose, then gave him a horrified expression. "When did you become such a normie?!"
"Why do you even want to act this?" He couldn't tell what her end goal was here.
"Because I'm still a goddess," She said as if it were obvious, tapping her chest regally. "We need attention and worshipers. Specifically, I need worshipers like you need soda."
"I don't." Wade deadpanned. "I already pay for utilities which include tap water; I'm going to use every cent I paid for that tap water."
Of course he drank only water. If he wasn't drinking from the faucet, he was wasting money. Plus it was extremely healthy, and his local tap passed all the minimum quality checks the city ran.
She stared at him. "Then why take my soda?!"
"Because it's free and it'll annoy you. Which are the two best things in this world right now."
"I will smite you one of these days." She hissed, "Blessing you with RNG was too good for you, you ungrateful soda-stealing normie!"
"If I was actually blessed, it would pop up on my buffs sheet." Wade said, feeling mildly offended. "A normie wouldn't have thought of that."
"Oh. Oh yeah." She looked down. "Wait, why didn't it work then?! Did the System ignore me completely?!"
…Had she been trying to bait the System into being able to bestow a blessing on things? Why? "Can't you just give a real blessing instead of this? Aren't you like, stupidly powerful now? Actually, why haven't you given me any kind of blessing so far?"
She waved him off. "I'm too far down the divinity tree from the source to grant blessings. Maybe my great-grandmother could have given smaller blessings, but once she died and split off into my family, none of us are capable of doing blessings anymore. Games and Stories isn't a large enough domain to do that."
"You're like, level 302. And strong enough to yank Zin out of Azdrial wholesale. Who was stuck in an entire different dimension."
"Blessings have nothing to do with a god's power. My domains are simply too fragmented." She looked at her hands. "Really thought the System would give me a pass here, I gave you such a star performance and didn't even ask for a donation or even a sub!"
"None of that's the point." He sighed, shaking his head. "How is acting like this going to get you worshi- oh."
Donation. Subscriber. Performance. The need for worshipers.
He looked at her.
And then to her PC setup.
And to the webcam and high quality microphone.
"Oh, no."
"Oh, yes you mean." She looked once more extremely smug, and kick-able. "I'll have a legion of simps licking my feet and dedicating games and stories in my name in no time." She once more struck a pose in place. "I'm going to be a magical girl streamer! All the weebs of the world will flock to kiss my feet. Plus, I'll have the best production value, no mortals could possibly compete with my charm."
The cursed wink came out, along with a stuck out tongue and all the matching sparkles.
"Where's Zin?" Wade asked, "I need to warn him."
"Who do you think got me my webcam and mic setup? Zinny is my most loyal minion! Also-he-had-no-choice-in-the-matter, but I digress! Still my most loyal and trustworthy minion!" She coughed, cleared her throat and then waggled a finger at him. "You should learn a little from him."
"But where exactly is he? I thought he'd be here. Excited about the mana crystal trove we've got available, that's been his main objective this entire time."
"Well, he's a tiny bit conflicted," Play said, dismissing the question with a flick of her hand. "On one side, there are mana crystals with plenty of opportunities to mine them to his heart's content. Assuming he can convince you to drag it all back home in a giant drum barrel with a nice little ribbon."
"And the other hand?"
"He came here thinking he'd be the only demon ever to step foot on the Earth, and so bragged about being an Archdemon to anyone he'd ever met. Like everyone, you wouldn't believe how much he kept demanding everyone to call him an Archdemon again. He was making up for a few centuries of not being able to, so there was a lot of ground to cover you know? For all he complains, he's been having the time of his life on Earth."
Wade suddenly realized why being called Zinny annoyed that (Arch)demon butler so much. If Zin wasn't an actual name, but instead the title of The Archdemon Zin, a title passed down from Archdemon to Archdemon…
It'd be like being called Chiefy instead of Chief Executive Officer. After having spent decades scaling the corporate ladder one rival at a time.
He narrowed his eyes at Play and decided he had no regrets for taking her soda earlier. In fact, he should have taken two.
"He still put me under a contract first thing." Wade said. "I know I'm the one he expected to be most in contact with the other demons out there, but I can't see him not doing the same thing with everyone else he met, just to be safe. He's the paranoid kind."
"And how long did it take you to figure out how to leak some info to Illy about it, despite the contract?"
Two days.
"Ah."
"Exactly. Soul-binding contracts aren't quite as binding as you think, there's always ways to wiggle out of them. That's why they're only used on very specific occasions. But they are real dramatic though. Silly Zinny, he's probably running around trying to phone and talk to every last person that knows who he is and bribe or threaten them to keep his secret. And now there's two demons coming into the picture. One of which already knows him and will probably blabbermouth his name eventually. Or at least, there will be two more demons, once you get zapped back into your room with them. Your room's empty right now as we speak, no need to worry."
Wade looked over to Play.
She looked back with an innocent expression.
"Play."
"Michael."
"Are you fucking wiretapping my home?"
"What?" She looked extremely offended. "Don't be silly. I'd need to go outside in order to wiretap it in the first place. No thank you."
That was true.
What basement dweller would willingly go outside into the sunlight if she had another option?
And she did.
"Did you send your goon to wiretap my place?"
"Michael! He's not a goon! He's a very proud and ancient Archdemon who's currently happily employed as my butler. And second of all, I don't need to, I'm your sponsor. Everything that happens around you, I get to see it in my mind. And if I can't see in your room right now, that means you're not in there, and if you're not there, then the demons aren't there either."
Wade felt his head stall, engine offline.
"So… the moment I walk out that doorway, you'll see everything in my room until I wake up? Everything that happens on Earth?"
"Naw." She waved him off.
Wade felt relief for a moment.
"You vanish from sight for a few hours until I get a notification the round's over, and then I get to keep watching. I'm guessing time is frozen for you and probably the demons you brought with you until the round is complete. You did leave early this time, so there's still some time in the round left as we speak."
Wade was once more very concerned. "So you can see everything on Earth?"
Does that mean even while he was talking to Zin in the coffee shop, she was watching the entire time?
"Which part's got you confused? The time freezing? Well you see, when you're a universe-eating entity that can bend the rules of rea-"
"I mean the seeing me on Earth part. Goddamnit Play."
"Oh, don't worry. I stream it to the TV for Zinny to watch with me when he's here too. It's great entertainment. Best show off, and on, Earth."
"That breaks so many basic privacy rules, I don't even know where to start."
And Wade was pretty sure now that not even Zin knew about this, otherwise he would have been far more circumspect about his dealings. And maybe not mentioned he wanted to see Play killed and tossed into a ditch.
Maye he'd only ever seen Play share the screen while Wade was in Azdrial and that made him think it would stay that way.
"Mm? Feeling shy are we? Would you want to just quit the game then?" She smiled, "After all this?"
Wade opened his mouth. And then slowly closed it. "No."
She nodded happily to that, getting back on her chair to focus on the game. Now running around gathering herbs and materials, likely for that raid she was talking about.
So.
How could he deal with the NEETess here?
Obviously having someone constantly watching everything he was doing was not something he'd feel great comfort with.
But convincing this troglodyte wanna-be streamer to do anything was going to take some fineness.
He considered, and then came up with a plan.
"You know, there's a comic I read once." Wade started, shrugging causally. "The hero got a sword with all the power of a demon king, but it's cursed. The demon king's eye was magically affixed to the hilt, and so he would watch through the blade at all times. He'll see everything the hero does. Know how the hero handled it?"
She vanished off the gaming chair, and reappeared on the couch next to him, facing him like an excited kid for story-time. "Oh, this should be fun. I love stories! How'd he handle that curse?"
"Tied the demon king's sword to his wagon wheel and left it there, so it would spin and spin for hours and the demon would be forced to watch it as if he'd been stuffed in a washing machine. He started questioning real quick why the hell he thought making a sword like that was a good idea."
Play stared at Wade, growing suspicious. "What are you insinuating here, mortal?"
"When I want privacy, I'm going to expect that it's given. Or else I'm going to make you see things you'll wish you never had."
"Hah! What could you possibly show me that would terrorize me in the first place? Oh nooo, mortals doing mortal things with their mortal bits that all mortals have." She stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm a goddess, Michael. What you think is disgusting or revolting doesn't mean a single thing to me. I'm not human. Don't forget."
Wade smiled. "Oh I didn't forget. And you're right. You're not human. You don't get disgusted at the same thing we do. But that cuts both ways." He leaned forward, an evil grin spread over his features. "I'm going to sit down and play board games with Jason… And then I'm going to cheat."
Play flinched in place.
"I'm not done. I'm going to rip the playing cards up and then add cards that shouldn't even be there. I'll mess up the creator's original vision, and then I'm going to quit playing halfway through."
He saw actual beads of sweat start to form on Play. She looked horrified.
"I'm going to write a story and intentionally ruin the storyline at the last paragraph, and not for artistic reasons. I'll ruin it just ruin it."
She fell down on the couch, then started scooting backwards, away from him.
Wade had no mercy. "I'll pick up new stories and read only the last chapter. And I'll force you to watch me. I'll convince children how to play games with the wrong rules and make the game so bad they never want to play that again."
Time for the final K.O.
"I'm going to tell everyone I know that games are just a waste of time and stories are just escapism for people who can't handle reality. And that nobody needs them."
He stopped, staring her down at the corner she'd tried to scrabble backwards into.
She looked as if she was about to faint. "You wouldn't."
"Oh, I would." Wade gave her the most unhinged smile he could. "And I'll do it again, and again, and aga-"
"OKAY STOP." Play held both hands out, head looking away. "STOP-STOP, I'LL DO IT! Just stop, mortal, by all that is fun and good in this world, just. No more blasphemy."
"So… when I ask for privacy, you'll give it no questions asked?"
"So long as it's nine hours max on each call for privacy."
"So long as I can call for privacy again anytime during and reset those nine hours back to full, in case nine isn't enough."
"So long as you don't aim to abuse this to shut me out of watching what's actually happening on Azdrial for the game reasons. If you end up wanting privacy there, it has to be for true reasons, not just to specifically spite me."
"Fine."
"Fine!" She hissed back, volume higher.
"Good!"
"Yeah. Good!"
"Glad we see eye to eye on this."
"Yeah! Glad we're settled with your arbitrary morality mortal!"
There was a moment of silence between them.
Wade stared down at the pint-sized menace. "So… how do I know you'll hold your end of the bargain here?"
As if he'd asked for the magic word, Wade felt something wrap around himself. A free magic spell. A strong enough one, he could feel his skin break out in goosebumps all over his arms. Play stood, and spoke. "I solemnly swear upon my domains, I shall not look into anything you do when you call for privacy, until such a time you speak words to allow me sight once more, or nine hours have passed." The power faded. "There, happy? You evil demonic petty man. But just know, if I can't see what you're doing, I can't give you any advice at all. So if you end up killing yourself all because you're being shy about whatever you mortals think is so important, that's on you."
Wade gave a nod. "Wouldn't have it any other way. Now, if you don't mind, I need to get my hands on Zin. There's a lot of business and gear I want from him as soon as I can get it.
And I still need to warn him about your plans with the mic and camera."