Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 82: Welcome to Hell. This is Your Last Shot.

A Devil sat at a desk in a damp, dark room. This room was not his office, however. Well, he didn’t have an office at all, anymore. After his demotion, he was forced out and into the large common room where the rest of the office grunts worked. To his sides were Gargoyles and Ember Mites – the same ones that used to work for him.

“Hey, Xhag’duulinithar’obaba’iidook, you mind handing me a new ink bottle? Mine’s out,” said one of them – a tiny Ember Mite named Inn’innmannuupan’tin’tin’tan’tan’tan.

The Devil just nodded with a barely-hidden scowl on his face and handed one of his bottles. He shouldn’t have been here. Sitting with the grunts and doing fucking copying. Looking at one document, and writing down exactly what it said on another. Nothing else. It was somehow both the most mind-numbing thing in the world, and the most stressful thing to have to do a lot of.

A Gargoyle walked up to the Devil as he scribbled on a paper. “Are you doing well, Xhag?”

“...Formal expression of greeting, Plindakin’porbindoplandimoni’aasiindorkaanpondindindodondi’papossin,” the Devil said. This was who took over his job. This stupid fucking Gargoyle. Its race didn’t even work in management! Fucking doomed to be incompetent. “What can I help you with?”

“Well, er, just wanted to see how the copying work was going,” the Gargoyle said to him. The Devil could feel the discomfort coming from it, so unnatural in this its new position. It wasn’t meant to work in management, and it knew it. “I know you’re new to all this, but you’re behind on your quota. I know I allowed you a 3.5% decrease, but you’re, uh, still pretty far behind on it.”

The Devil gritted his teeth. “Got it.”

“Like, thousands of documents behind.”

“Mmhmm.”

“So, you know, if you could get on that.”

“Right.”

“Also, I was wondering, how many verification levels do my proposals have to go through before they’re instated? I feel like it’s been forever since I sent in that request to expand the size of my office,” it laughed.

The Devil took a shaky breath, trying his best to contain his rage. “Your requests need to go through thirteen levels of verification. All requests do. And I highly doubt you will get your office’s size expanded, as it is entirely dependent on your personal rank. As all office sizes are. Now, I believe your job has nothing to do with talking to copiers, nor does it have anything to do with asking to get your office expanded. As does mine have nothing to do with informing you of those facts. So, I feel it would be beneficial for the both of us if you went back to your office and allowed me to continue with my work.”

“Oh, okay,” the Gargoyle said, apparently detecting none of the hostility in the Devil’s voice. Then it looked down at the paper the Devil was writing on. “Uh, I don’t think you’re actually doing your copying, though. Looks like you’re writing your own document. Not sure if that’s part of your job, either.”

“Yes,” the Devil said through gritted teeth, “it is not part of my copying job. As it turns out, I actually have multiple things I need to be working on right now. So, y’know, if you could leave me to get busy with that–”

“What are you working on? Do the higher-ups have you doing stuff on top of your copying job? I haven’t–”

The Devil leapt up from his desk and shouted at the Gargoyle, “Leave! Lord below, are you a fucking moron or something?! I have shit to do! Go do your fucking job, which, you seem to intent on reminding me, you took from me. I am fucking busy, Gargoyle. Get out.”

The entire office stared at him, and the Gargoyle looked at him with a mix of fear and anger. Eventually, it swallowed. “You will address me with my name. I don’t care if you’re upset, you will address me with my name.”

The Devil stared into its eyes.

“Say it.”

“...Expression of apology, Plindakin’porbindoplandimoni’aasiindorkaanpondindindodondi’papossin.”

“Good,” it turned and walked back to its office. Before it closed the door behind itself, it turned back and looked back at the Devil. “Work hard for me, Xhag.”

The office got back to work, though most of the copiers near the Devil glanced sideways at him before they got back to scratching their pens on paper.

The Devil just stared down at his document. He was severely behind on his quota, sure, but not because he was incompetent, or anything. It was taking a bit of time for him to learn the ropes because he was too busy to put his full attention to this stupid task. Even now, he wasn’t doing his copying work. He wasn’t really working on killing Arlan Nota, either. No, sitting on his desk was a half-done agricultural trade law for the Koinkar Kingdom.

When he killed Koinkar out of rage and realized his mistake, he quickly moved to remedy the error. Luckily, due to his continued management of the Arlan Nota case, he could still pull a few strings and conscript some additional forces to help patch it up. He couldn’t get access to any more military personnel to do what he’d wanted to do and annex the country and establish martial law, but he could still do the next best thing. He got access to a Succubus that could change its form, had it impersonate Koinkar, and put it in power as a puppet leader of the kingdom.

That said, the Succubus’s job wasn’t to actually manage the kingdom; it wasn’t nearly educated enough for that. Instead, that additional job had, of course, fallen to the Devil. So, for the past while, he’d been reading reports of meetings that the ‘king’ had attended with the nobles of the kingdom.

Apparently there had been protests going on. People were mad about the forest-burning, and their family members dying in the military, and the fact that the Demons were still occupying the kingdom, and it was all being fed directly to the Devil. He was supposed to fix all of that.

So he’d gotten to work on it. Famines due to farmland being burnt? Strike a trade deal with a neighboring country. People dying because the burning pushed a bunch of wild monsters out of their territories, and into villages? Conscript more soldiers. People refusing to sign up into the military because of the mortality rates? Institute a draft. People protesting the draft? Institute an even stricter draft, and have the newly-drafted soldiers fight the protests.

There were trade bans from other countries, a mass exodus of citizens fleeing to adjacent lands, and even an attempted fucking assassination. Somehow, not only had Koinkar ruined the Demons’ plans while he was alive, but he’d also managed to completely ruin his own kingdom, while he was at it.

It was problem after problem after problem after problem after problem. And, of course, it was entirely the Devil’s responsibility to solve every one of them, otherwise there would be a revolt, the people would fight against the Demons, they’d refuse to help find Arlan, and the Devil would not only lose out on their manpower, but he’d have to assign some of his own to fight the revolt and keep them from harming the Demon army.

He’d been trying to get so much done that he’d even learned how to write two separate things at the same time using both of his hands. He’d work on reading and copying for his office job with one hand, and with the other, write out a script for the fake king to give out as a royal decree for the management of the kingdom. It may have only been about a day in the Overworld, but it’d been many in the Underworld, and he’d had time to practice.

What he didn’t have time for was actually doing anything relating to Arlan Nota. How could he, when he was fighting a kingdom’s populace trying to kick his forces out, and being threatened with yet another demotion if he couldn’t keep up with his copying work? But he knew he’d left this issue alone for far too long. Every second he gave to the fugitive without putting pressure on him was another second he could use to get stronger. Not to mention get closer to his destination.

The Devil had finally figured out where it was Arlan Nota had been heading all this time. Back when he’d had his confrontation with the Faerie Queene, she’d told him. Kingdom’s Edge. If the man could get through that mountain range, he’d escape to another fucking country, and completely out of the Devil’s grasp. He could barely convince the higher-ups to give him this many forces, much less double it for another army to stage another invasion. Plus, at this point, the countries of the Overworld must have heard of this Demon invasion, and had no doubt set up preparations for if the Underworld looked their way, next.

If Arlan Nota escaped to the Barinruth Empire, the Devil would have to stage an old-fashioned war between Koinkar and Barinruth, which would extend this conflict out even further, giving Arlan Nota even more time. It would essentially mean failure, as far as the higher-ups were concerned. And the Devil knew very well that they would not tolerate failure from him.

So he took a break from his two-handed-writing technique and just wrote a single proposal while pondering this problem. Part of him just wanted to forget about it and hoped Arlan Nota would kill himself in the mountains. They were full of Dragons and other monsters way above the power level he knew that fugitive to be at, so it was likely he’d just die there without the Devil having to do anything. Though, he didn’t know how powerful the man was after blowing up the barricade. Fucking Humans. They just had to have that stupid capability of getting stronger with time. The more the Devil hit Arlan Nota down, the easier it seemed for him to get back up.

He needed to do something. Hit that kid down and keep him down. Maybe he could use the danger of Kingdom’s Edge to his favor, though. This wasn’t some forest. Every second Arlan Nota spent in the area, he’d get beaten down more and more. So, really, all the Devil had to do was delay him.

Sure, there wasn’t a fire to that fugitive’s back anymore, but with the monsters infesting that area, a barricade could work. Not a shitty, rushed one, though. That glorified line of tents and half-baked explosives was obviously not good enough. No, with full control over the entire kingdom, he could make something much better. And with the tight mountain range focusing the fugitive into a single choke point, he could focus those efforts into a smaller, more effective wall.

He looked down at the agriculture document he was writing, and crumpled it into a ball. The people could starve. They were going to kill this man, if it was the last thing they did. He began drawing up the plans. Conscript the Earth-focused Spellcasters and have them do construction. Have Hellions patrol the ground. Melee Classers man the fort. Ranged Classers in the towers. It would be impassable.

He looked over at the neglected stacks of paper on his desk. Copy work waiting to be done. Yeah, fuck it. He wasn’t doing that shit. If he killed Arlan Nota, he could get his old job back. His old life back. He wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit. Fuck that fucking Gargoyle and its stupid twenty-four syllable name.

This was the Devil’s last chance at killing Arlan Nota. And he would make it count.