GOD IS AN IDIOT

Chapter 14 – The Fumbler

"Why's he staring at the wall, Demiurge?"

"Our genius Lord Momonga is no doubt already calculating the optimal approach to best these doors, not walls, Aura."

"Wrong. He is surfing in the spy-net."

"All of you…" Momonga kindly interrupted his three Guardians: Aura, Demiurge, and Albedo – the latter was in her dark plate armour, including a fully-enclosed plate helmet. "Could you… Would you, just for a moment... Psssssst..."

He turned his attention back to the task before him, the hundreds of unique symbols plastered to the ellipsoid wall to the inner vault as faint glowing uprisings. "...just a few seconds... Almost... Neeeeeearly there... Any moment now…" 32 symbols lit up red in rapid succession, and he cheered in a brief burst. "And it's done!"

"Did something happen?" Aura scratched her temple when he turned around to them.

"Nothing happened yet, child," Albedo said. "Our Lord just finished his session. Now, he will register spoken words again."

"I was working, Albedo. I took the minutes till your arrival to try myself at the vaults entrance."

"And it is not open yet?"

'Don't get on my nerves, woman.' Momonga touched all the previously-lit symbols in one smooth motion. A faint bass broke like a wave from the door and a previously hidden seam in middle widened to two wings swinging open.

Albedo walked forward, almost passing him, but stopped. "What took you so long?" Her words were disrespectful and arrogant. Every petty lord would have been in his right to strike her, a servant, for such a question, yet the intention never crossed his mind. True, there was no denying she was repeatedly provoking him and dared to poke into his glitches with delight, but she was the only one doing so.

No other servant of Nazarick dared to do what she did, and he started to doubt they even could. Spelled by her perfect lips and masterfully controlled voice, the provocation unveiled into a trust-inspired surprise. It was a calculated humour which delighted in the stain of its origin. It was a ballet straddling the high-strung border between mockery and flattery, and she danced on it like a diva.

"I was in no hurry."

Demiurge stole the moment with a thin screech as he cut a large metal chipboard with a long-clawed finger from the door. "I see. That is why you did not simply cut through the adamantium."

Albedo also took interest, smearing a finger over the door, leaving trails in metal. "Tsk, this is the best these Six Great Gods thought of? Ridiculous."

"Hey, Lord Momonga," asked Aura, as he took them deeper in. "I don't wanna sound lazy, but why did ya summon us? You are perfectly fine handling this dungeon without us, don't ya?"

Demiurge stepped in before Momonga. "I keep forgetting you are still a child, Aura. If you cannot see it, I will happily lend your green sapling of a mind aid."

"I'm not stupid, Demiurge, just impressed. Lord Momonga solved in 10 minutes a puzzle the stupid fans above couldn't solve in half a millennium while waiting for our arrival."

"I am fully aware, but you forget this was only the first step. Only because Lord Momonga easily passed the first test does not exclude having use for us later."

"And we could serve as good meat shields," added Albedo.

'I point to my right to remain silent.'

"Absolutely right, honoured Guardian Overseer. Aura, go take point." Smirked the devil.

"Hey! No fair!" The elf girl protested, but received no aid from the other female.

"Hush hush, girl."

"Unbelievable... just unbelievable…" grumbled Aura as she stalked past Momonga. He was the first to acknowledge the point of the positioning. Aura had the best senses of them all, partially due to her being an elf, and also due to her classes as [Ranger], [Beast Tamer], and [Sniper]. The girl had the highest chance of noticing a danger before it could strike.

And he would only be the second one to be targeted.

"I still have to hand Aura a point, however, Lord Momonga. I also am almost shaken by how fast you solved that riddle. Is it too assuming to ask what inspired you to the solution, or by what logic you pried open its secrets?" Demiurge asked.

"I was really just lazy. You might be disappointed."

"You have never managed to do so, my Lord."

"Suit yourself; a simple permutation algorithm, and too many dead puppies."

"I see. You must refer to the zero-level spell [Summon Puppy]. That is hardly a price."

"I did not enjoy it, Demiurge, but I killed them. Almost ten to the power of 86."

"So it really is no price at-" Demiurge suddenly stopped and looked aghast to Momonga. "Te- T-Ten to the power of 86?"

"The runes were trapped. Touch a wrong one, and you'd get hit by an instant [Immolation] spell, as 'Abrahams' found out. I got frustrated when 'Julius' also turned into separate atoms..."

Demiurge's glasses almost slipped over his nose tip as he stayed behind. For a moment, he looked like a fish on dry land, before he caught himself and uttered in disbelief. "So you tried all possible combinations till luck fell into your lap?"

Momonga thought his solution was elegant. "The puppy costs me power to sustain only as long as it lives. But when summoned directly into the runes, they get immolated instantly. Even when I automated and accelerated the casting speed, the strength drain is barely above maintaining one permanent puppy."

'Why is he looking at me like I am a complete monster? It is by far nicer than what you did with the elves. I am not the one who came up with the admittedly inspired idea to drill handlebars to their heads. My puppies, by comparison, did not even feel a thing!'

'…except absolute adoration and loyalty for their creator.'

'Shit.'

"What comes first: cause or effect, Demiurge?"

"Is that really a question, Lord Momonga?" The Devil asked, disbelieving.

'Actually, it is a diversion.'

"Lord Momonga is making fun of you, Demiurge. It is a trick question. To our Lord, the effect comes first. He does not mind the cause. I believe it is his take on 'means to an end.' You should humour him before this situation gets uncomfortable for one of you," Albedo offered her opinion with a smirk, which ignited a relieved smile on the devil, too.

"Your wisdom is appreciated, Guardian Overseer. The simplicity really enhances the intelligent quality of the question, and should have been obvious after having worked under our Lord's genius. Lord Momonga does not worry about methods."

'Exactly. That is what you should concentrate on.'

"I must have been blinded by my complete awe for the unapproachable cruelty our Lord displays so casually. How can I ever hope to catch up to him?"

'I am not cruel! I just did not think of it!'

Albedo offered him a comforting one-armed hug, and spoke. "Do not grief. You may never reach Lord Momonga's kill count or callousness, but that is why you love your profession so much. Lord Momonga is destruction and suffering personified. You think rightly you will never equal him, but you were never meant to. If Lord Momonga is the unconquerable mountain, then you are the passionate artist who will immortalize his inspiring presence in every lovingly-made detail of his own art."

Momonga smelled salt water, and heard Demiurge, just short of snivelling, ask. "Do you really believe I am meant to do so?"

"I do not believe it; I know it, dear Combat Leader."

"Thank you, Albedo. I will make you proud, Lord Momonga!" Demiurge suddenly exploded and almost lost his glasses, before Albedo steadied him and he remembered his manners. "Ehem... What I meant to say is I will strive to excel in the name of your glory, Lord Momonga."

'I'll never wash of the stain of this shit nugget! I will be forever be remembered by the next day as their 'cruel Lord'. Damn it! I am not cruel! I have a great sense of humour, and can simply see it where others are blinded by the stick up their ass poking their eyes. I never laugh about the suffering! I just like irony! Is that hard to understand?!'

'I am not an unhinged maniac! I would never torture someone for the sake of torturing them! For information, sure – or for intimidation – but just so I can hurt someone? No interest!'

Momonga deigned not to say anything more on the matter, lest he dug his grave even deeper. Thankfully, Aura made them soon stop with a raised fist. They had reached a small hub, it seemed.

The way they came ended at the equator of a spherical room roughly 20 meters in diameter, in which six doors hung in the darkness from pairs of chains. They were arranged in the shape of an eight-sided double pyramid, with one point facing the entrance.

Though all doors appeared to have been made in a similarly massive style of iron and wood, they were not identical. The closest one looked burned and still glowed with embers, while the furthest one sizzled with little sparks erupting randomly on it. The one to the right dripped with water, overgrown with mollusk and tang, and the one to the left was. at closer inspection. entirely made of iron which had been masterfully hammered into a wood relief. The door hanging above all others promised a wonderful light behind it through the finest cracks between the planks, while the lowest one looked rusted and withered like it had endured the elements for ages.

The real eye-catcher in this sphere were the walls themselves. They were thickly sprinkled with stars and galaxies, which turned out to be billions of seemingly unique jewels of every conceivable colour.

The real let-down was the realization none of them were particularly valuable. In Yggdrasil, gems like them would have been regarded as equal to plunder like tankards, broomsticks or any other common household item a Player could easily take from the next-best NPC house. But, at least, they still looked nice.

"And this is where our work starts, little Aura," Demiurge said, friendly patting her shoulder when stopping next to her. "No one knows what lies behind those gates. Would you risk Lord Momonga facing it alone?"

She shook her golden locks. "Certainly not. I'm no wimp; I'll kill anything who tries to get at Lord Momonga."

"And that's why you will take charge again, Aura," Momonga clarified, and she did not take it well.

"But... really? Why don't ya pick Albedo to go first?"

Demiurge scratched his chin, grinning, and pointed out. "She has the thickest hide."

"Excuse me?"

"He said you are dense, Albedo."

"I heard what he said, expendable mine rat. You are better off watching where you will step than listening in on the adults."

"Yeah, yeah; send the little girl who isn't past her prime yet first. Figures Lord Momonga had to pick me. You'd be useless anyway. All ya can do is take shots to your face," taunted Aura, "And sooner or later, your saggy tits would get caught."

Momonga felt a dreadful clarity. It was no great universal truth or riddle he solved, but an epiphany of the moment. Absolute annihilation was possible. One had only to foolishly drive his lieutenant to show her true rage. When even Momonga hesitated out of respect for Albedo's anger, it was no wonder Aura and Demiurge were also paralysed, even as the angel slowly walked to the elf girl, and the

stone split with empathized fury.

"Do you know why so few elves are left?" She asked, leaning down on Aura, speaking with her well-known enticing voice and a choir of hate burning underneath. "Because they have no rights!"

Momonga barely saw how she grabbed Aura's hand, and used it to whirl her into the gate of fire she kicked open just in time.

Albedo watched the flames behind the door for a time – he did not even dare to guess why – before exhaling deeply and smiling softly at him. "Hoo-ray. We reached an understanding."

"Yo-You're a frigging psycho!" He could only stutter in disbelief, yet she playfully blinked, before jumping through the flames herself.

"Got you."

….

'So she was funny.'

'Aha.'

'Was she?'

'Did Demiurge get it...?'

Demiurge looked back at him, flabbergasted.

'Did you understand anything?' Momonga gestured with a slight tip of his skull.

Not one thing. Demiurge no doubt meant this, with his hopelessly raised hands and hanging mouth.

'We should probably also get going.' Momonga looked at the door.

Right behind you. Demiurge got moving as soon as Momonga had indicated.

The flames did not even tickle – although they were real enough. The other side resembled an impossibly long corridor, low but wide and covered entirely with polished dark metal plates. Only on a second glance it became apparent it was, in truth, an extremely long curvature hiding its end. It did not fit a fire theme at all.

"I feel just the same, Lord Momonga," Aura confided to him. She seemed none the worse despite her method of travel, but clearly kept a clear distance from Albedo, who was looking ahead with crossed arms.

"Have you picked anything up?"

"I didn't see more than you, Lord Momonga, but I can smell a faint burnt aroma. My bet is it's a fire trap we won't be able to evade."

"I see." Momonga pointed his finger ahead. '[Graviton Beam]' He carefully moderated the power to a thin red beam and aimed just for the visible inner edge of the wall, before carefully swinging it further and following the curve to cut into the walls like a hot wire through butter, spilling liquid metal on the floor. It was easy to predict a path from the steady angle change, and when he met an unexpected resistance, he took a briefest look through before gravity forced his path shut again.

'[Perfect Teleportation]'

His world changed in a flash of blinding light, and he stood in the room he barely saw before through his makeshift spy hole. Momonga was surprised.

The room of the God of Fire, founder of a nation and saviour of a race, was decorated like a luxurious, but otherwise quite normal open flat, one most people of the 22nd century could have only dreamed of. There was no glaring reference to fire, volcanos, lava, or any other heat-based theme, aside from the kitchen's large cooking field. Even the colours where limited to mostly white with some blue accents and dark marble for the floor.

'Was this guy really longing for his old life? In the day, a punch-clock god, and after 6, the world turns normal again? He did not even add some pretension of windows. He just wanted to shut out the world. How sad.'

He noticed there was furniture for only one person.

'And he never intended to share it with anyone. This was really his sanctuary.'

'[Gate]' Momonga cast without even raising his hands, and the Guardians entered.

"See? Told ya he can handle it fine just on his own," Aura snarked behind Demiurge, who carefully studied the room.

"Aura, Demiurge, you will swipe these rooms for anything not nailed to the floor. If I find even a toothpick after you are done, you'll review all of Cocytus' poetry. Understood?" Momonga playfully barked, and both of the addressed answered crisply, "At once!" before setting to work at breakneck speed. With flashy but precise movements, they opened drawers, cupboards, and cans, letting everything they found vanish in their inventories. It was a time lapse of an eviction which lasted less than a minute, before they stood back where they started, hungrily looking at Momonga for more work.

"Have you found anything noteworthy?"

"My Lord, nearly all of the inventory we found was apparently worthless trash any talentless mortal could create with a little effort," Demiurge spoke, "This is, of course, only a first review. Further tests have to be made to exclude something valuable hiding among the plunder."

"But we found a dead dude. We thought it best to leave it to ya, Lord Momonga," added Aura, grinning.

Momonga still recalled how the dead gods were supposed to have been laid to rest in the vault, so this news came as no surprise.

Albedo asked. "Have you found anything which could be considered a personal item like mementos, trophies, or even a diary?"

"Surprisingly not." Demiurge shook his head. "No doubt Surshana picked it clean after placing his comrade here. Such personal belongings could one day prove the downfall of the Great Six's faith."

'That is actually a good idea.' Momonga almost blabbered, before considering how the inhabitants of Nazarick might react to just the implication of stuffing the personal relics of their creators into the dumpster. Once, the idea would never have crossed his mind. Had someone had suggested so in his first lonely months as the sole still-playing member of Ainz Ooal Gown, he would have, figuratively, exploded – but now, he could understand the merit of doing so. He had done so the first time he was alone in his own quarters in the New World, and destroyed anything which might have linked him to his former human existence. Finding out their master was once even more pitiful than the humans the Guardians looked down upon would, at least, not add to their loyalty.

He considered if he could maybe reveal the true nature of their creators to the Guardians to shake their loyalties without implicating his own history, but quickly abandoned the idea since he found no hard argument which made him really special compared to the other members of Ainz Ooal Gown. No, this information had to remain secret, and he would follow the God of Death's example and visit his comrades' quarters, although he would let those evidence vanish in his inventory instead of destroying them. If only to evade the NPCs reaction.

Aura led them into a separate room which was filled with nothing more than a large comfy bed – and on it rested a corpse. The red and gold robes it wore had lost not one pigment of their rich colour, and were as clean as anything Momonga wore, no doubt due to their magical nature. Fuji Salfer clasped a staff to his breast which seemingly had been carved from a single long block of coal, crowned by crystallized flames.

While his equipment, down to his two rings and boots, was untouched by time, the same did not apply to the dead Player. His flesh had completely dried up under his leathery brown skin, and most of his long hair had fallen out into a macabre halo around his head. It was a mummy staring through half-open lids at the ceiling.

A closer look revealed the numerous age spots and wrinkles dehydration did not manage to erase, but by now, it was impossible to determine the cause of death. He saw no wounds, but this did not necessary imply the man died in peace. There were too many ways to kill without leaving obvious marks: death spells, suffocation, poison, inner wounds, or insulin conjured on the fly. Momonga would likely never know.

'[Message] – "Neuronist Painkill, I am sending you a corpse for thorough dissection. Compare it to a human corpse, and note every differences and oddities you find, down to the chemicals and elements it's composed of. You have permission 778afnkw1q348plyx to obtain one unit of the item [Reality Brush] from Pandora's Actor once he returns to Nazarick. Use it to record your progress from the very first second. Acknowledge."'

The thoughts answering him bubbled with devotion and girlish excitement. '"Of course, most beautiful Lord Momonga. I'm already flying to the treasury. My dearest thanks for this gift, oh, most generous and wise Lord!"'

'"Next time try, 'Yes'."' ended Momonga the conversation before the creature on the other end could get into full swing and shower him with bouts of adoration. The Floor Guardians were already trying his patience with their utmost trust in his every decision, but at least they held onto some dignity when conversing with him. The lower inhabitants of the Great Tomb, on the other hand, tended to totally prostrate themselves before him whenever he interacted with them. Momonga was not opposed to due respect, so long as it did not hinder his work, but talking to the staff of Nazarick involved floods of praise and assurances of submission most of the time whole, even when asking simple yes/no-questions. Thankfully, Albedo and Demiurge took care of most of the administrative duties, and thus kept those trying conversations to a tolerable minimum.

'[Gate]' Momonga cast, and a wide wormhole opened behind the bed, revealing a poorly-illuminated dungeon stuffed with blades, meat hooks, and unfathomable yet undeniably cruel-looking devices whose only purpose was the infliction of pain. The smell of pungent chemicals and old blood waving from the space-time tunnel made Aura retch and cover her nose, but Momonga had more pressing problems.

The master of this chamber of suffering, an obese bloated corpse with slick skin and a mutated squid for a head, spied him with its large milky eyes. Momonga knew he had no time to spare when it inhaled deeply – no doubt to continue its adulation – and shoved the whole bed with one kick through the portal and closed it at once, cutting off a fine sheet of paper-thin wood from the bed's base to glide slowly to the floor.

'Dodged a bullet there.'

He opened another [Gate] back to the hub, and gently shoved the retching elf girl first towards it, seeing how her excellent senses suffered under the olfactory onslaught, assuring her, "It'll get better in a moment. Concentrate on taking deep breaths, and try focusing on your other senses. We'll be right with you in a moment."

The sickly-looking girl nodded and quickly hushed through, and Momonga turned to the remaining Guardians. "I doubt we'll find more in the chambers of the gods of water, earth or wind. Surshana would have them picked clean just as well, but maybe we'll find something useful in the god of death's recluse. If we are lucky, he did not prepare for his own death, and we'll discover something useful."

'Although I have no idea if that is realistic. I have no knowledge what the relationship between the Six Gods was really like. Maybe they got thrown together in this world by pure chance, and there was no sympathy to begin with, or they had a personal falling out later and only kept an appearance of unity for the masses. Would he still keep their personal items, or would he get rid of them for good to stay safe?' Momonga thought as they joined Aura and headed for the lowest hanging door.

The darkened wood looked rotten and worm-eaten, and the metal hinges and handle were completely rusted. Even the frame was broken in several places and missing chunks of itself. The door looked like it was about to collapse at the slightest touch, but when Momonga's hand felt its surface, it was as hard to his claws as steel to a human's fingers. It could have stood for aeons on a storm-wracked peak or in the middle of a violent river, and endured without ever caring. The unholy energy it was suffused with, while nothing compared to the entropy Momonga breathed, would have easily protected it from any natural decline its existence was inescapably bound to. He pushed, and despite the corrosion, it moved like freshly-oiled without the slightest sound.

Under a blue sky and a shining midday's sun, they walked into a devastated city. Glass shards and ash covered its streets, while no window remained intact in the few baked concrete ruins standing among long-cold coal remains of the wooden houses, which must have dominated the urban landscape before the catastrophe.

The utter peace of this broken world was unnerving. No cricket chirped, stray dog barked, or even a single bird crossed the sky. It was the perfect quiet of a lasting peace, which left no one to enjoy it.

They had entered from the front door of a lonely remaining wall, and everywhere they looked, they found only devastation.

"Did someone wreck this place before us? This is a dump," Aura asked, unsure as they walked with crunching steps into the realm of death.

Momonga noticed a charred handle poking from the rubble and leaned down, while Demiurge answered, "Unlikely. We are supposedly the first guests to enter the chambers of the Six Gods since their demise 5 centuries ago, and Fuji Salfer's place was well-preserved. I believe the apparent chaos of the place was Surshana's own design. Probably to hide his secrets."

"I guess that makes sense," admitted Aura, scratching her head. "But isn't that quite an unreliable way to protect your stuff? If that's all the death god thought of, I'm mightily disappointed."

Momonga pulled the handle out of the remains, and held a destroyed yet still easily-recognizable bolt action rifle in his hands. The wood was not only charred, but splintered and broken by the partly-melted metal parts of the rifle, like they were rapidly transformed under an extreme heat. Listening to his intuition, Momonga looked more carefully at the rare still-standing walls.

What at first glance had looked like uneven smears of soot revealed themselves to be spectres – negative shadows cast on the walls by the people who used to live here. 'Just how could I protect us from that…' contemplated Momonga, while Demiurge mused.

"We are barely here a few minutes, and haven't found anything yet. Do not mistake your boredom with a lack of challenge. The lost time is already a win for our opponent, however small it may be. Time it may already be using to optimize its chance of success, however small that also may be. It is nearly superfluous to mention traps."

"Nothing caught ma eye on that front," mentioned Aura, bored, despite the fiend's reprimand.

"And do you smell anything?"

She made an obvious show of taking a deep sniff and exhaled, still bored. "Ash, coal, rabble… and that's basically... No, that's really it."

Albedo intermingled, "There quite certainly is nothing to be troubled about."

Aura's interest finally spiked, and she drilled. "And how can you be so sure of that? As Demiurge soooo kindly pointed out, we are just a short snap 'ere, and this is a big place. Ya noticed, right?"

'When I break the problem down to the core, the fancy light, at least, should be no problem, leaving an onslaught of little what-ifs...'

"Because our Lord has yet to warn us of anything."

'What is she talking about?'– "Eh?"

"Do you detect any magic, my Lord? Besides the portal…" asked Albedo.

He looked around, and she was right. Apart from their entrance, he found no magic whatsoever. Every pebble, every ruin, every tiny bit of scrap was perfectly mundane, just as base reality was supposed to be.

His interest piqued, he rose into the air till he floated a good two hundred meters above ground. The silent ruins spread for kilometres around them, but up here, he could identify the centre of the blast which levelled the city: A relatively smooth patch of rock sprinkled with glass sparkling like emeralds. The cities ground was mostly flat, with only some odd bald hills raising in-between and surrounded by a sheer endless rock desert, while its southern edge steadily fell off into incalculable large basin dotted with rusting ship wrecks. Only at the edge of the ruins did he sense arcane codes carving out this pocket dimension they found themselves in, just like some of Nazarick's seemingly infinite floors were, in truth, contained by invisible walls – but the ruins were truly just stone, slag, and ash. Even the most primitive bit of code would have stood out in this desert of magic… but Momonga found nothing.

'Now what? I don't really want to turn over every stone in this dump on the off chance I still might discover something worthwhile.'

Albedo and Demiurge, holding Aura, joined him on wings of dark feathers and newly-grown flesh respectively, and contemplated with him what they saw. From up here, he could identify the old main streets and the chaotic spiderweb of alleys between them. What few buildings still remained were only burned out shells guarding a grey world, for wherever his gaze swept, he found no speck of green reaching for the light, no flake of colour which had not been burned to crisp, no life stirring up the stale air. If not for their bright blue of the sky, he would have believed he had just stepped into an old black-and-white movie. Surshana's rest was clearly a throwback to the primeval sins of man, a fitting abode for the proclaimed 'lord of death'.

Momonga was about to count this expedition as yet another victim of the great god, when he noticed wide trenches snaking their way to the dried-out ocean among all the rubble, like a misshapen titanic handprint.

'The old river beds...'

He followed the paths they had carved into the rock and soil long before men ever dreamed about erecting cities at their banks, and at last, he recognized something and glided down with his entourage close behind.

They landed before the ruins of a once-impressive four-story building, not far from the ground zero which supposedly consumed the city. Even without the skeletal metal-remains of a crowning dome, it was one of the tallest structures still standing. Most of the building had collapsed, except for the impressive main hall under the doom and some adjacent rooms. It made no sense to find it here. The weapon which flattened this place was far more powerful than "Big Boy", for the city itself was several times larger than its inspiration – and it had been detonated on ground level – but the spread of its ripped-apart stones did not match the direction of the blast. The only sensible explanation was it had been added afterwards.

Dust stirring and bone splinters crushing, Momonga strode forward with new energy to the wide-open entrance. Joy filled his missing heart when he saw no debris filling the hall, but found just dusty but intact tiles covering the hall. Several podiums filled it, and although he had no idea what the last real exhibition was presented, he was sure it was not what he spotted when he stopped at the door frame. That they were six, arranged in a hexagram, made it clear enough they were connected to the six great gods; that each of them was so very simple in their own way made their emotional value obvious.

Close by was a bowl crudely carved from driftwood, filled to the brim with stones the size and form of rice. Two metal chopsticks were stuck in it, while an inscription carved into the wood read: '2131 – 2131'. It held not the tiniest bit of power, and yet Momonga was sure it would have broken Alah Alaf if it would have been used against the god of life.

He moved on clockwise to the next piece: a firefighter's helmet with an integrated gas mask. Its edges were singed and the glass of the googles splintered and broken, but Momonga doubted it was Surshana's doing. Could it have been a memento of the God of Fire, or instead of the God of Water? Momonga doubted he would ever know for sure.

Next followed a set of items the End could not make sense of. Try as he might, he could not figure out how a small mirror plate, a hole-less salt shaker, a tiny tube, and a razor blade fit together, but maybe Albedo or Demiurge would come up with an explanation.

He passed the huge grandfather clock towering even over him. Stuck a few minutes past eight, it obviously represented Surshana himself, although he was not sure if its tremendous size compared to the rest of the pieces was due to the god's ego, or pure coincidence.

The Guardians also began examining the sentimental leftovers, while he wondered what the small pile of collapsed rust on the 5th podium once might have displayed. Over half a millennium of suffering, the elements had grounded it down to waste, wiped away any trace of its former essence. Had this been its intent all along?

Not expecting much, he picked up the last leftover of the gods from the 6th display: a humble book with pale impressions of an originally brightly-coloured toucan on its cover. The dry air had preserved it well in comparison to the abuse the former exhibit suffered by the hands of time, but he still moved its brittle pages with the utmost care. He found no words in it, only one surreal lead pencil sketches after another – mark of a talented artist. A stylized artist painting himself into existence with an overly large brush. A wanderer pushing through the dome containing the universe into an even larger world filled with cartoon creatures. A tree with hundreds of madly interwoven branches sprouting from a thick trunk, whose bark formed the impression of a sleeping face.

Believing to have finally found a clue – although he did not understand it yet – he kept browsing the pages… till a delicate hand reached for it and pulled it a little bit down, so its owner could read it alongside Momonga. He did not mind and returned to the first page for Albedo's sake, before slowly turning the pages once more. How easy was it to ignore the verbal sparring between Demiurge and Aura for touching the relics, while they immersed themselves in the simple pleasure of experiencing the art. They took their time soaking in every detail of each page before Momonga would turn. Sometimes, she would stop his hand with a light touch when she found a particularly captivating piece, and every so often, they would point out the same hilarious detail. The naked king in a nutshell, the thirteen pigs holding a banquet on a long table in the stables, the prisoner who masoned his own cell… There were so many hilarious, and at the same time melancholic, ideas bound in the book, for which Momonga truly felt sad when he turned to the last blank page.

"Is it crazy to thank a dead god for this little gem?" Momonga wondered, affectionately cradling the book with his thump, looking so small among his large pranks.

"I would not mind being called so, even if it was just a mere human who drew it," admitted Albedo softly. "It is a remarkable piece, with its own kind of insidious power over the soul, is it not?"

As far as Momonga was aware, he was the most powerful entity in the world, beholden to none and free to do as he pleased… yet still, he felt relief at hearing her admission. He began to wonder how it came to be it felt so natural to share with her such thoughts, unbecoming of the absolute tyrant of Nazarick. Was it because she alone dared to cross the distance between lord and slave, while all others trembled at the thought of displeasing him? He was perfectly aware Albedo was a beautiful being, a breathing and thinking perfection by any human and superhuman measure, but he only ever considered this aspect of hers in the capacity of an enthusiast of the aesthetic. As an undead, he lacked any kind of libido, yet still he had started to admit he always felt a stab in his metaphoric heart when those brief private moments ended.

"Then you should have it," he decided.

"My lord, how could I accept your rightful bounty?" Albedo started to protest, but he would have none of it and pressed it into her hands.

"Albedo," he said sharply, before adding with a softer tone, "just take it. Please." He placed it in her hand and closed her other around his gift. She stared at it, and then at him, at loss for words. He never before saw what was happening to her, and felt a warm satisfaction spread in him. He leaned down and teased. "What's the matter? No bark or snark this time?"

"Words can only communicate so much," she answered, studying his skull's angles as he did to perfect symmetry.

"And what would that message be?"

"I could not tell," she responded, leaning closer. "but I could show-"

"Get your hands of the relic, Aura! I told you before!" Demiurge's annoyed rant crashed into their moment and broke the spell. Righting himself and turning around, he found the equally-annoyed looking girl taking off the firefighter helm while throwing a rude gesture towards the devil.

"Don't pop a vein. See, I'm putting it down. Not like I could break da trash, anyway," Aura said, but Demiurge impatiently grabbed it from her hands like she had been carelessly joggling a Fabergé egg.

"You do not know that. Without further studies, we cannot exclude the possibility of some hidden power. How can you be so careless with Lord Momonga's find?" He berated her while setting it down on its intended place. "We are here to support our Lord's excavation to the best of our abilities, and you have nothing better to do than play with a possibly priceless source of knowledge. You are forgetting yourself, Guardian!"

She huffed, unimpressed. "If you so say so. You know, I think I saw a rusty screw laying outside. Ya think that could be a relic too? Maybe it's da key to universal domination. It looked old and broken, but ya neva know. Whatcha think?"

"If you would really respect your duties, Aura, you would account even for that minuscule chance."

"Oh, get dat stick out your arse!" Aura lamented, annoyed. "It's just a broken, non-magical helm. It's nothing more than trash, like everything in this place!"

"As I said, this relic-"

"It. Is. Trash, Demiurge. Don't ya get it? It's just here to eat up our time and lead us astray," Aura interrupted.

"No, it is a relic of the first immigrants from Yggdrasil, a connection to the past which significance we cannot even grasp, yet."

"It's trash!"

"No, it is a relic!"

"Naha, it's trash!"

"It is a relic!"

"It's trash!"

"A relic!"

"Trash!"

"A relic!"

"Trash!"

"A RELIC!"

"IT'S TRASH, TRASH, TRASH!" Aura shouted and kicked the ground angrily, causing splintered tiles to fly all around. Albedo started moving to intervene, but Momonga stopped her with a gesture, finding the clash highly amusing.

One of the splinters crashed into the pile of rust, and Demiurge dived to the ground in the futile attempt to catch at least some of the stirred-up red dust and crumbles. "Look what you have done, you infantile imbecile!" He fumed with the expression of a snarling dog, letting his meagre savings slip from his hands, and rose. Aura changed from chalk to ebony-white when he promised, "Keep on fooling around, and you might leave the Guardians!"

"Are you threatening me, Demiurge?"

Momonga could have sworn the girl turned almost transparent when Demiurge developed a wolfish grin full of schadenfreude, and simply pointed at him with the laziest of movement. "He is."

She looked also with pleading, wondering eyes to Momonga, and he simply returned it silently. He had no objection to call.

"Understood, Defence Commander," Aura bowed down, a hand to her heart.

"That won't be enough. You need understand the nature of your mistake, and how it's expressed in your deeds." Demiurge paused. "A servant should owe his master as much as he is given. This just understanding should form the basis of every member of Nazarick's thought. Given life by the Supreme Ones, we owe them that until repaid."

"Believe me, ain't no one who embraces it more than me."

"I was not finished!" Demiurge exploded in four words, and continued with dignity. "As such, we should be thankful for each day that debt is not demanded back, and in turn, our deeds must be motivated by this thankfulness. It is the first conclusion every serf of the Great Supreme has made in their existence, a single pure thought spun between acknowledging its own being and the creator's existence, from which its being split."

'Does he wonder if he was made to make this conclusion, or has he already embraced it as his nature? He must be smart enough to consider it for his own creations…'

"When you place your own emotions above the desires of Lord Momonga's, you deny your own nature. Now... you will hopefully have understood. I suggest you consider my words while securing the remaining relics."

"Yes, Demiurge." Aura bowed solemnly and went to work, while Demiurge kept watch with crossed arms.

"What comes first…" whispered Momonga to Albedo, and she finished "...the stick or the carrot?" – "Exactly."

Aura, carefully and without any undue haste, secured the rice bowl and the firefighter helm, accounting for every piece of the set with an acknowledging nod of Demiurge's stern face. She expressed her joy with all her body at the prospect of somehow having to collect all the rust dust, when Demiurge answered her wondering glance with an especially slow nod.

Procrastinating, she walked limply to the towering grandfather clock. About to dump it into her inventory, she stopped.

"Is something the matter, Guardian?" Demiurge asked.

She wondered. "Demiurge… Ya surly member how decrepit and old the door to da vault looked, right? But it worked fine, no? Didn't squeak one bit."

Aura reached out and gave the clock's pendulum a light push, and it proved perfectly serviceable. Its mass swung back, and a faint first "Tock" sounded from above its axis. Aura turned around to them with a glowing face when the clock continued to sound in assuring norm. "It's na trash, Demiurge! It's really a relic!"

"The mad spirals of fate," snickered Demiurge, not having seen this coming, and Aura sang happily along.

"Tik Tok Tik Tok Tik Tok…" sang Aura happily, conducting for her one clock orchestra. The delight in her voice made the simple tune catchy, and not just Demiurge joined in good spirit, but also Albedo, as he heard and saw with a glance.

'Not like it's gonna hurt me.'

He joined in and they all sung. "Tik Tok Tik Tok Tik Tok…"

The dust particles in the air suddenly earned eons to reach the ground. While Aura and Demiurge dropped to an almost imperceptible bass, he felt the centre of the clock behind the huge time circle exponentially heat up. He had barely registered it when Albedo ran past him, already donning her helmet. She gave him no time to react and kicked him in the centre of his chest. The force broke his sternum and catapulted him with the speed of sound-ridiculing velocity away.

The next glance he got was Aura and Demiurge hurling close after him over the city, while Albedo crushed something scalding with all her body, limbs, and wings in the distance. Then, there was light. BRIGHT. SCORCHING. EVERYWHERE.

He felt flakes of ash trail from his baked bones while he raced to recall the code of [Maximized – Holy Immunity] in his mind while he memorized the signatures of Aura and Mare. As he released the spell, he glanced back to Albedo.

She was a distant, small shadow in a perfect white world. She was so far away he could have plucked her like a fruit fly from the emptiness, but she was swallowed by a clogging fog as the air itself ignited in a sheer endless pseudo-moment for a second flash.

Far later – perhaps one eternity or two – he touched the dry sea bed. Coming to grips with his sensations, he cast [Fly] even as his heels ploughed long twin scars into the rock. Demiurge and Aura were still preparing for their landing – they would be fine – so he protected himself with [Body of effulgent Beryl] - just fast enough to shatter right after as he broke through the incoming pressure front. The twice-cooked rocks and sterilized earth beneath him melted and distorted like bludgeoned metal mirrors because of the light distortion.

As he plunged through the dying blast, he did not trust his eyes, but followed his real sixth sense to her inherent magic. He headed straight for the jet-black crumble in the centre of the holocaust, sparing no glance for the madly interacting shock waves he left in the burning air.

He landed and stopped with a few last stumbling steps at the centre of the explosion on the edge of a small magma sea, where, at millions of Kelvins, solid stone had turned to liquid. "[Albedo!]" He called and [Message]'d, stepping into the shallow edge. "Albedo, answer me! What's your status?"

'"I am alright, Lord Momonga,"' he heard her reply, and stopped when he was already thigh-deep into the molten sea.

What he first mistook as a cooling bubble a few meters ahead of him rose up, along with two sizzling horns and an entire skull with flames licking at the rare spots of coaled flesh. The entire upper body of a magma-dripping skeleton rose out of the hellish sea, with only half the remains of her red-hot glowing battle armour still holding on. Her burning wings broke the surface triumphantly, just as she reached with one hand for his face which had rushed forward to meet it. He pulled her close before even thinking about the complications, and pressed his forehead down on her head, simply glad she was alive.

He didn't mind the tickle as she lit up like she was coated in tar for a few seconds, as her re-growing flesh fought with the fire's destructive attribute, before finally winning and reforming her body. He eased his hold when he felt the first hair poke through his lower jaw, and instead watched. From a bed of glistening bone, bloody muscle tissue, and blubbering half-formed eyeballs, her beautiful face emerged.

"I… I-!"

The first expression on her new face was a soft smirk, and she saved him the trouble of speaking. "…will be always first, of course, my lord."

"I thought I had lost you," Momonga breathed, and spilled with it the most terrible fear he had never suspected of hiding in him. In that frightening moment of uncertainty, Momonga felt, for the first time since arriving in this world, such a need to protect, such a dread of loss, such fear of loneliness that he didn't hesitate one moment to evaluate the risk for his own safety when racing for her. All filling his soul was the need to see her, that she hadn't left him behind.

She gently moved his skull so she could look at him. Instead of laughing and sending a quip at him for overreacting, her smirk turned into a soft but warm smile, and she shook her head. "No one could ever make me abandon my duty to you, my lord. Have no fear."

Had her choice of words been just a coincidence, or had she read him? He didn't get to wonder as she let go of him with a final rub down his cheekbone, and stared past him to the sky. Albedo's gaze was following Demiurge with Aura in his arms as he flew towards them and then hovered over the scorching ground – no doubt for Aura's benefit, for the fiend was immune to fire. "Lord Momonga, Albedo, are you hurt?"

"We are fine, Demiurge: Calm down, it is over," Momonga said, stepping away from Albedo. With barely a conscious thought, he cast '[Creation]' to turn the slag and scalding ground of the city in a blink of an eye once more to cold ash under the awestruck eyes of the late arrivals, while Albedo gave of no sign of being surprised by his power.

The devil sat the elf girl down, mustering Albedo's broken armour and the fresh devastation surrounding them. "What kind of weapon or attack was that, my Lord? It felt like a [Nuclear Blast], but I thought there was no magic which could escape your attention."

"It wasn't magic, or Lord Momonga would have seen it long coming," said Aura.

"It was a fission bomb," explained Momonga, looking at the green glassed centre of the blast. "A kind of weapon which utilizes not magic, but properties of normal base matter to release enormous amounts of energy – which is why I didn't sense it."

"Lord Momonga, I'm terribly sorrah. Finding hidden traps was my job, and instead it was me who set it up!" Aura chewed through angry lips. She bowed her head, avoiding his gaze, but he could see the small droplets splattering on the ash and glass below her. "I am a failure! I screwed up the one simple task you set me in the most spectacular way! It's me who should have been dead for setting it off, and instead I almost killed you!"

'No, you almost killed her.' it shot unbidden through his mind, but the girl was confusing the catalyst and the cause.

"You had no way of knowing such a weapon could exist, and if I and Demiurge didn't think of it, how were you supposed to?" He knelt down and lifted her small face with a finger. "I am not angry about that blunder, for everyone could have made that mistake."

"You should also consider the damage you might have mitigated that way," commented Albedo, causing the girl to look confused up to her?

"Huh?"

"While endangering Lord Momonga's life is, of course, a Guardian's greatest crime and should and would be harshly punished, Albedo is right. In light of Lord Momonga's and our survival, we must not forget what damage this weapon could have caused should we have brought it to Nazarick. It is most likely there would have been no one ready to mitigate the blast, leading to the possible destruction of whole floors, and the endangerment of our wise Lord's grand design," spoke Demiurge while contemplating the flattened wasteland which could just as well never have been a city in the first place. "But I wonder how we will return. Do you think a [Gate] will work here, Lord Momonga?"

"Not to create an exit, but it should be easy enough to use a modified version of it to flatten the local space curvature, till the imaginary time spheroid containing this pocket universe breaks open and realigns with the greater continuum."

"Duh?"

"Just follow my lead," spoke Momonga, when the three Guardians looked at him like he told them to lick their elbows. He rose into the air with them following him, till they hovered several dozen kilometres above ground, and his arcane senses could see the complete edge of the dimension, and explained, "First, we do some clean-up so as not to destroy the city of Humanitas with several billion tons of toxic rock."

He pointed down and cast '[Triple Maximized Black Hole].'

At first, nothing seemed to happen, but then it looked like a sink hole had formed below the surface, growing exponentially faster with each moment, till they saw the first scalding shimmer between the breaking crust.

"Unbelievable..." He saw Aura mutter from the corner of his eyes, with the blood draining from her face, as at last, a burning sphere the size of a mountain could be seen festering in the earth falling from all sides into it and going by their disbelieving blinking eyes, Demiurge and Albedo felt similarly. He slightly flicked his finger, and the unstable monster below him moved like it was slaved onto an invisible and impossibly stiff stick to his finger, annihilating everything it touched like he was drawing with a giant eraser brush across a finished digital panting. The wind started to tear at their clothes, as not only the earth, but also the atmosphere around them was sucked into it. Thankfully, the heteromorphs had no need for air to survive, and Aura had her [Amulette of Sustenance].

Aura and Demiurge moved their lips, but in the vacuum, no sound could be heard as they looked down on the rapidly cooling and shrinking sphere, till they were cast into absolute darkness and silence.

Momonga confirmed with his only remaining sense – his sixth – they were still floating close to him in the void, and then began to cast [Gate], but instead of forming a tunnel within the space-time of this tiny universe, he tore into the very borders of the secluded existence with the tip of snaking tunnel, like a worm digging into sand.

The original spell's magic, while mighty in its own right, yielded almost instantly to Momonga sheer power and superiority. A faint point of light appeared in an indescribable far distance which seemed to accelerate toward them, till they all suddenly stumbled again into the hub, like having left a pitch-black train tunnel.

"Urrgh!" Aura grimaced with her hands, holding her belly. "I think I'm gonna puke."

"Indeed, quite the novel experience," Demiurge agreed, who looked a little dishevelled by the trip himself, and fixed his glasses. "But what else is to be expected of Lord Momonga?"

"Perhaps a little more comfort. Tsk!" Albedo suggested, as she combed her messed-up hair sourly with her hand.

"Do you feel it appropriate to criticize our Lord after he saved us from a possible eternal imprisonment, Guardian Overseer?" Demiurge frowned at her. "We should rather consider ways to prevent such a risk. Perhaps we should leave one of us behind when entering the next vault to get help, should the search party get trapped again. Perhaps a [Gate] could be formed between the hub and a vault's inside, as long as the door is still open, to create an alternative access point."

"Ya mean like keeping a foot between the door and the frame to keep it from falling shut?"

"Perhaps a bit oversimplified… but in essence, yes. I also suggest sending in expendable scouts first-"

"If ya are suggesting I'm playing lab rat again…" Aura warned.

"Although you are of the least importance to the Tomb of Nazarick, among the present company you are far too valuable an asset to be squandered in such a way, girl. I am talking about summoned servants to take the actual risk of manipulating the contents of the vaults. If they trigger yet another trap, nothing permanent of Nazarick's strength will be lost, although we have to consider the possibility such defensive mechanisms are sophisticated enough to detect worthwhile targets, or even actually intelligent and self-conscious."

"A myriad number of creatures could survive for an eternity within the vaults," concurred Albedo. "Undead, demons, angels, golems, and many more have no need for air, food, or company to sustain their existence and wait patiently for an eternity to protect their masters' holds. We should also not forget possible danger of an undiscovered World Item, since we have already confirmed [Downfall of Castle and Country] being handed down from the Six to the Theocracy."

While the Guardians spoke, Momonga kept his thought to himself and looked to the remaining doors hanging above them. Although his perfectionist side wanted, despite the risk, to explore the other vault's just to make sure they wouldn't miss on anything, his instincts doubted it would be worthwhile. If presumably Surshana picked the God of Fire's clean vault for any noteworthy hints, it stood to reason he did the same to the others, for although compared to the magical skill Momonga had witnessed in his life, the God of Death's vault was primitive, he had about a century to work through the defences of his siblings.

His gaze wandered back to the decayed door behind him, which had almost become their grave. It was still swinging lightly from the moment they had opened it, and as he looked up the similarly-rusted chain, he noticed it didn't hang from a ring fastened to the ceiling, but a swivel, and on a whim, he gave the door frame a push, causing it to slowly spin.

It turned a full 180 degrees, showing him it's just-as-decrepit backside, before it presented him the front with the handle after a full turn again, and slowly spinning further, showing again its back, then its front, then its back, then its front, then its back, then its front, then its back, and again its front again… and suddenly, he saw a change in the arcane rune tapestry covering it. Piqued, he kept watching as it showed its also-changed back, but when it completed its 12th turn, the changes were gone again,

'I have seen something similar before in a physics book. Could it be...'

He pushed again, and sure enough after another six full turns, the altered runes appeared again, and vanished once the 13th turn began.

"Eh, Lord Momonga? What are ya doing?" Aura wondered, as he floated up to the God of Fire's door and pushed it also. "My Lord?" He ignored her as he impatiently waited for its sixth turn, and finally saw a similar change appear on it.

"Ha ha ha ha ha he heeee… you sly bastards!" Momonga couldn't help himself but chuckle.

'Of course no one not born on Earth would think of it. It should have known the vaults were a Red Herring!'

"Have you discovered something, Lord Momonga?" Demiurge asked, as he and the females watched him float quickly to the other doors and spinning them also, till he stopped all movement with one gesture and addressed his confused servant at last.

"Indeed. The true vault."

Aura raised a doubting brow, while Albedo and Demiurge studied the doors inconclusively, but they couldn't see what he could now: an altogether new magical matrix of tremendous power. Momonga was sure if the gods had hidden anything truly valuable in their tomb, it had to be hidden here, and with the greatest anticipation, he unravelled the magic.

The glass stone stars around them started to turn ever faster in the same pace as the doors, and the chains holding them started to rapidly heat up to scalding light, till they suddenly blew out of existence and the 'stars' abruptly stopped spinning.

Where once the room had been a perfect sphere, now, a thin spike rose up from its ground to almost its centre, and above its tip floated a tiny object. It looked like a marble barely the size of a tangerine and the colour of poo, with fine smears lazily moving around.

"What is that?" Albedo asked as they all moved closer to inspect it.

Momonga had no idea. It resembled no item he had ever seen in Yggdrasil, and he could see no magic infusing it. Why had the founders of the Theocracy gone to such lengths to hide this small thing? What power could it possibly hold, or had it perhaps lost it in the centuries it had been buried here?

"DON'T!" Aura called suddenly as he was about to reach for it, and as the three adults looked to her, she blushed abashed. "What if it's another trap?"

"It is totally inert, Aura."

"And if it's another bomb?"

"Without going into unnecessary details: It's simply too small to be a bomb. Such weapons simply can't be made of that size," Momonga explained to the fearful-looking elf.

"But if it's not-"

"Hush, Aura," Albedo said, "Do you intend to lecture our Lord on a field clearly outside your expertise?"

"No, Albedo, but-"

"Then no 'buts'. Has Lord Momonga ever failed us?"

"...no…" relented Aura meekly.

"Then you should continue to trust in Lord Momonga's judgment. Now, be quiet, and let him claim his prize."

Momonga wasn't even sure he had found a prize, but perhaps a closer inspection would yield its secrets. As he plucked it between two claws, he noticed it was just slightly warmer than the cool room. Unlike a real marble, its surface wasn't hard, but felt rather soft, and as he rubbed his thumb over it, it turned out the ugly brown shell was just a paper-thin crust of dirt and dust, covering a glowing hot ball with the consistency of an overripe peach. He didn't know how such a thin crust could contain its heat without magical assistance, but try as he might, he couldn't find the slightest trace of magic on it. It was just a hot ball, nothing more.

"Your verdict, Lord Momonga?" Demiurge asked.

"I am not sure." – 'I haven't the slightest idea' Momonga admitted. "But it must have once been of great importance to the Six. All I can say for sure is it holds no power, but it is hard to say if it ever did. I'm starting to fear this expedition was fated to fail from the very beginning."

"Now that's a let-down." Sighed Aura. "All that effort for a worthless ball?"

"Don't be so hasty, Aura," Demiurge objected. "Although the purpose of this item is still in the dark, it doesn't mean it couldn't prove valuable. Who's to say it couldn't be a powerful ingredient or catalyst like the [Caloric Stone] used in the creation of Gargantua, or it has great significance to another party? It could turn out an important artefact, if only on a sentimental level, to a culture of this world… or perhaps a deadly poison to a feared foe of the Six Gods. If Lord Momonga decides it is not dangerous, I suggest holding on to it and handing it Pandora's Actor for further studies. Perhaps he can discover it purpose when comparing it to other items from the treasury. We should also have the library's lichs look up for clues or hints."

Momonga doubted the library's caretakers would find anything in the collected texts and books of Nazarick, but Demiurge was of course right. Despite the obvious signs, it was too soon to rule out the possibility of the hot peach being of any significance, and so he let it vanish into his inventory and concluded with no small amount of frustration. "I believe we are done here. Let's go out, seal the chambers again, and head home. I've had enough of this place."

"Aye aye, Sir!" Aura saluted with a grin as he moved past her toward the exit, with Albedo joining his side.

"What is this?" He heard Demiurge wonder as they were just passing the entrance to the sphere. As he turned around, he saw him catching something tiny from the air. Intrigued, Momonga turned around again, and Demiurge placed his find unbidden in his open palm.

It was another 'marble', but even smaller than the one they had found in the centre, barely the size of pea and the colour of dark concrete. Moving it closer to his eyes, he saw its surface wasn't smooth, but pockmarked with tiny pores of uneven size and spread. He had terrible feeling of déjà vu as he carefully inspected it from all sides… till the moment he beheld its slightly lighter backside with its relatively large soot-coloured smears – which could have been interpreted as a rabbit – and a horrifying epiphany hit him like train.

'OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!'