“Well Ben, it’s been fun,” Myriad told him dejectedly as the cube sat on the ground.

“Myriad? What’s the matter?”

Ben had only just gotten to the realm for the night, only to get those as his god’s first words to him. With neither Nare nor Helori there either, he had no clue what had led Myriad to what felt like was going to be a full-on breakdown.

“I mean, fair really is fair, isn’t it?” The god went on, acting as if he hadn’t heard his apostle as he struggled with his despair. “The gods fucked up the world’s odds when we didn’t notice the forbidden ones managed to bring the demons into the system, we can’t exactly be mad about mortals ending up killing the world before the next wave could even begin, can we? At least as a silver lining, the demons won’t get to enjoy this place either, they may even end up getting a headache or two when they actually open the gates. That’s probably the best we can hope for.”

“Myriad, buddy, you’re freaking me out here a little. Tell me what’s wrong.”

For just a moment, it seemed like the god wasn’t going to speak, content to stew in his sense of defeat, but as Ben waited the cube eventually spoke up.

“I assume you remember the one member of Iberu’s cohort we couldn’t track down, that high-elf Naloth.”

“I do,” Ben said, feeling his blood running cold. One of a group with all sorts of plans for how to save the world, no matter what the cost ended up being, with Iberu’s own designs leading Ben to spend the lives of hundreds, even if it closed the gates early for them. “I also remember what you said he was probably attempting. Are you telling me he succeeded? Did he actually manage to reach out and bind a god to his will?”

“No,” Myriad told him, granting the smallest bit of relief before squashing it. “Because we were wrong. He wasn’t looking up but down, with disastrous results.”

Not up but down? So a lower realm? Meaning…

“The infinite hells?”

The cube nodded. “A less likely choice but understandable enough I suppose, it’s been done once before in a known world’s history with disastrous results. Of course, he was probably hoping for that sort of disastrous instead of what we actually got.”

“Myriad, I’d like to remind you that trying to read your mind would kill me so you need to actually tell me what’s happening here.”

“It’s nothing shocking, even you’re aware of this to an extent. There’s power in souls, with higher tiers of them having more. It just so happens that gods across the universe toss the souls of the more powerful and evil in their worlds into the infinite hells instead of letting them pass peacefully, trapping them in that tortured plane of reality. What Naloth and those under him were attempting to do was bind them to him to give him a level of strength and power that could even be formidable against a god in their prime. Definitely more than any mortal could ever be expected to naturally gain. Not a bad idea I suppose if the goal was to become powerful enough to make a significant difference in the next two waves and with the benefits of the system bound to him it’s likely he’d get even more power from it than the last fool who attempted such a thing.”

“But given how you said attempt, I take it something went wrong so how bad are we talking? Did he fail to bind them and release a bunch of evil ghosts into the world or something?”

If it was just that then Ben was willing to give some hope that it wouldn’t actually be that bad. While Myriad might have said that the gods would toss the more evil in their worlds into the infinite hells, Ben had met far too many gods at that point to take it at face value. It seemed just as likely that there were plenty who were condemned to that plane for standing against them, even if their acts themselves weren’t evil, and that wasn’t mentioning any of the evil gods in the universe. Surely, across the whole of reality, there were just as great a number that had been condemned there unjustly as there were those who had truly deserved it, and if that was the case then who was to say they’d all be aiming to cause chaos and destruction? Perhaps plenty would be able to find the peace that had been stolen from them immediately and move on to whatever should have awaited them.

That was Ben’s hope at least, but it seemed there was more to it than that.

“There is that,” The god agreed. “But it doesn’t end there. By the time we realized this was happening, it wasn’t just souls flooding out, something with a physical body did too.”Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“And?”

“An outsider,” Myriad finally told him. “A big one, dangerous in its very nature too, it doesn’t even have to attack to cause harm to everything around it.”

An outsider? Shit.

While his information on them was deeply limited, it was enough for Ben to be aware of a few things. Helori had told him in the past that the few that had made their way into the universe before had been world killers, while Quilith had let him know his own people’s brief encounters viewing them in the chaos, with even just the constructs of them affecting their minds. Add in the mayhem that would come with flooding the world with ghosts and he couldn’t begin to guess as to what would happen.

“So how bad is it?”

“Cataclysmic,” Myriad sighed, defeat clear in his voice. “We’re doing the best we can but this thing is blotting out a large portion of the sky where it appeared. Many of the other gods are telling any mortal in viewing area to get indoors and shield their eyes, ears, and whatever other sensory organs they perceive the world with while others are trying to come up with any plan they can for as little good as it would do. It’s the end of the world, as simple as that, even if we kill it it likely won’t be its true end.”

Ben felt his heart pounding. He’d never even heard Myriad sound so pessimistic about the war with the demons, something no known world had won, but here he was already giving up from the presence of a single outsider.

The end of the world, huh? Guess I’m glad I got a bit of a vacation before this. Would have been a shame to have worked myself to death for a completely different world-ending threat. So now what then? Nothing to do but wait out the end of the world as I know it?

Even as he was thinking that though, his actions were taking a different course as his mind went down below, back to his body in the mortal realm as he jumped out of bed and started getting dressed, waking Thera in the process.

“Mmh, Ben?” She asked him, her voice groggy. “What’s going on?”

<What are you even doing Ben?> His god asked as well. <I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, but there’s really no running from this. It’s just a matter of time.>

Ignoring his god, he instead focused on his girlfriend.

“The world’s ending. We’re all probably going to die, this really has been a hell of a vacation, hasn’t it?”

He tried to smile as he said it but it felt forced on his face. That didn’t matter though, the statement was enough to wake her up.

“Wait, Ben, what are you talking about? What happened?”

“Okay, to make a long story I don’t know the full details of short, a portal to hell was opened and a bunch of ghosts are flooding out, plus an outsider which is the big danger since just seeing it is going to break people's minds or drive them insane.”

She took a second to process it before nodding and jumping out of bed to quickly get dressed as well.

“Okay, what’s the plan?”

“Not so much a plan as a sorta general feeling that I might be in a unique position to help fix things,” He said as he took her hand, quickly stealing massive volumes of her mana to materialize an entire knife or rainbow mana crystal. “Ghosts everywhere? Look at who knows how to seal them away. An outsider that destroys the minds of every mortal who sees it? Bet this thing never expected a mortal to have a mind like me. I’m giving myself fifty-fifty odds I’ll be fine.”

“Those aren’t great odds.”

“Better than anyone else's.”

“You also have no possible way to be sure they’re actually that good.”

“Sure I do, either I’ll be fine or I won’t, that sounds pretty fifty-fifty to me.”

“Fine, where are we going?”

A part of him wanted to say that they weren’t going anywhere. He was the one with an unusual mental structure so he was the one with the decent shot of actually surviving whatever had crawled out of hell, but he bit his tongue. Thera was powerful, they’d make it work, and just as importantly, they were a team. They’d get there infinitely faster with her help and her presence would create options he didn’t have alone, so he took her hand and started to run to the gate as he both answered her and spoke up to the sky.

“Don’t know. Myriad, tell me where we’re going!”

<You really intend to do this?>

“I’d really prefer not to, but seeing as how the alternative is sitting around and waiting to die, the worst thing that might come from doing this is speeding that up a bit. Now, if you’d please?”

<...Go through to the wolren gate and I’ll guide you both from there.>

“Sounds like a plan!”

Even as Ben said it though, he waited for more. He could still feel Myriad in the back of his mind, almost fidgeting and knew that wasn’t all the cube was going to say.

<Ben, should you survive this and save the world, I will grant you enough experience to finish your current job.>

Those words almost made him stumble. Even without coming out and saying it, his god was offering him a quest, something Ben hadn’t gotten in ages, and most shocking of all, it didn’t seem to be from some premade list. Myriad had just come up with a quest for him on the spot, something he’d been led to believe his god didn’t have the strength to do.

“...I accept.”

<RECEIVED QUEST- SAVE AND SURVIVE>

“Just so you know, if I manage to survive this then we are one hundred percent having a conversation about this later.”

<There’s more motivation for you to live then. For now though, focus on everything else at hand.>