The Infernal Bureau of Multiversal Integration was having a remarkably ordinary morning. On Floor 66—home of the Orientation Department—demons in crisp suits typed on rune-machines, stamped forms with glowing sigils, and sipped infernal coffee strong enough to make a mortal see their past lives. The atmosphere was the calm, tired, resigned kind common in administrative workplaces everywhere.
That tranquility shattered the moment the emergency horns blared.
A blinding red glow pulsed through the ceiling. The thunderous siren made every demon jump out of their seat—including a junior archivist who dropped his steaming mug, which immediately burned through his desk, the floor, and probably another department below.
Demons looked at each other in confusion, dread, and suspicion. Someone shouted that the alarm button was too high for anyone to have hit it. Another insisted they weren’t even close to it. A supervisor stormed into the main hall, demanding to know who triggered the emergency alert.
All fingers pointed toward a trembling imp trying to hide inside a filing cabinet.
“It wasn’t me!” the imp squeaked. “It wasn’t anyone! The System triggered it!”
A hush fell. Even the sprinklers paused in confusion.
The System had triggered the alert.
Not a demon.
Not an accident.
Not a prank by the interns.
A System-generated alert.
Every demon froze, then erupted into absolute pandemonium.
Desks overturned. Rune-machines shot sparks. Interns ran in circles. Someone started chanting a prayer to the Department of Proper Formatting.
In the chaos, the supervisor—Grathok—slammed his lava-flecked hands against a desk and roared for silence. It barely helped.
Demons swarmed to the center of the room, babbling rumors.
Some insisted the last System-triggered Integration Event happened three hundred years ago. Others claimed it was eight hundred. One demon insisted he remembered one personally, but he was only seventy-two, so everyone ignored him.
The gossip grew more intense by the second.
“An Integration Event? Already?”
“We haven’t had one in decades!”
“I heard one universe had talking birds the last time. They tried unionizing.”
“They always unionize.”
Someone finally retrieved the official notice—a glowing scroll bearing the unmistakable imprint of the System. Demons huddled around it like it was a sacred artifact.
One read aloud, voice cracking:
“Orientation Department: Prepare for new-universe intake. Immediate action required.”
Demons screamed again.
Panic was understandable. Integration Events were rare, delicate procedures. Only a handful occurred every century. And the Orientation Department was normally responsible only for routine, everyday soul-integrations—not for handling first-contact with an entire universe.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
There was a scuffle around the shelves as demons tried to locate the Orientation Manual. When someone finally pulled it out—an extremely thick book bound in demonhide—the first page simply said, in large, condescending letters:
“If you are reading this, do not panic.”
Everyone panicked anyway.
Grathok struggled to regain control, climbing onto a desk to address his department. The floor trembled slightly under his weight—not because he was heavy, but because the desk feared paperwork-related collapse.
“We are professionals!” he barked. “This is what we trained for!”
A low voice from the crowd muttered, “We trained for five minutes. Two hundred years ago.”
“That slideshow gave me migraines.”
“Why were there so many graphs…?”
Grathok ignored all of them. “We only have to handle one mortal. One! This is basic Orientation: ask questions, record answers, guide them through preliminary integration. There is nothing dangerous about it.”
Silence.
Then someone said exactly what everyone was thinking.
“That’s what they said last time.”
Another demon whispered, “Didn’t the last Orientation Officer get temporarily smote?”
“That was ruled an accident!”
“It was not an accident! His horns exploded!”
Grathok’s eye twitched violently.
“Assigned Orientation Officer,” he growled, “step forward.”
Slowly—very slowly—every demon turned their gaze toward a small desk tucked in the corner.
Wigglrox.
A mid-level demon, around one hundred years old, with slightly crooked horns, a clipboard he polished out of nervous habit, and a tie perpetually one inch too short. He had joined the department thirty years ago with bright eyes and hope. That hope had long since wilted under the weight of paperwork.
Now, he sat frozen in terror as his colleagues stared at him like witnesses at a funeral.
“…Me?” he squeaked.
“You,” Grathok confirmed. “The System assigned orientation to you.”
The room collectively inhaled.
“That’s bad.”
“Very bad.”
“He’s not qualified!”
“He’s the MOST qualified,” Grathok snapped. “He completed the last three orientation cycles without losing the mortal!”
“That’s not an achievement, that’s the minimum requirement!”
“We lost twenty-seven percent of our mortals last fiscal decade!”
“Stop saying that out loud!”
Wigglrox’s horns drooped.
“I— I’ll try,” he said, voice shaking. “I won’t let the department down.”
“You will,” someone whispered.
But he steeled himself, stood, adjusted his crooked tie, and grabbed his clipboard. Everyone watched with a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity.
He was seconds away from teleporting to the White Room when the temperature dropped sharply.
The lights dimmed to a faint glow.
Desks rattled.
A heavy, oppressive presence filled the hall.
A teleportation burst cracked through the air.
A figure materialized at the center of the department.
A high-ranking demon.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Horns veined with obsidian and mana. Aura powerful enough to make lesser demons instinctively bow. Unlike the bureaucrats around him—who had a lifespan of around 250 to 300 years—this one was easily over four hundred years old. A dangerous rarity.
Whispers rippled through the office as demons bowed deeply.
“Why is he here?”
“He hasn’t visited our floor in decades!”
“He must want the integration.”
“He definitely wants the integration.”
Grathok tried to approach cautiously, but the senior demon barely acknowledged him. His eyes instead focused on Wigglrox, the low-ranking Orientation Officer who suddenly felt very, very mortal.
“You,” the senior demon said.
Wigglrox nearly dropped his clipboard.
“Y-yes?”
“You will step aside.”
“But— the System assigned—”
The demon’s aura flared slightly. Wigglrox’s words died instantly.
Assignments from the System were supposed to be absolute, but demons were still demons—ambitious, opportunistic, and unwilling to let a once-in-a-century chance slip through their claws.
The senior demon gave a cruel, thin smile.
“An Integration Event is far too valuable to leave in the hands of an underling.”
He vanished in a burst of flame, leaving scorch marks on the carpet.
The entire department stared at the empty air.
No one spoke for a long moment.
Then, finally, someone muttered:
“He just interfered with a System assignment.”
Another murmured, “He’s going to regret that.”
A third added, “We are all going to end up filling incident paperwork for months…”
Wigglrox slowly sank onto his chair, trembling. Grathok approached him and put a heavy clawed hand on his shoulder.
“There was nothing you could have done.”
Wigglrox looked hopeless. “Do… do you think the System cares that it chose me?”
A coworker set a steaming cup of bitter infernal coffee gently on his desk.
In a soft voice, they said, “In the multiverse? The System always cares.”
Wigglrox stared down at the cup, then up at the ceiling, where the faint blue glow of the System’s symbol flickered.
He whispered, “Please don’t punish me. I didn’t do anything wrong…”
No one answered.
But everyone in the department knew:
Something had just gone terribly off-script.
And the System never ignored deviations.
Thank you for reading!
Patreon:
Read 10 chapters ahead for 3 bucks! 20 chapters for 5 bucks! 50 chapters for 10!
Join the Discord:
