"Lock down the exits to the Pit of the Damned! Send in reinforcements to the Circles from the reserves!" I yelled.

  "Yes, sir!" The Steves yelled.

  "Where are the humanoid heat signatures now?" I asked.

  "Still in the Obsidian Crags, sir. They're kind of just standing around," Steve Four said.

  "It could be a trap, sir!" Steve Two said.

  "You're probably right, Steve," I said.

  "We're noticing a lot of movement from the shadows in Shadow Canyon," Steve Three said.

  "Has anyone made it to Shadow Canyon yet?" I asked.

  "Not that I can see. There is an anomaly, but it's not humans. It's obsidian slimes. A huge group of them has wandered into Shadow Canyon," Steve One said.

  "Hmm. Maybe the humanoids in the Obsidian Crags drove them in there. Keep an eye on them and update me if anything changes. I'm going to confront the humans in the Obsidian Crags," I said.

  "But sir, we'll lose contact with you after you enter Shadow Canyon," Steve Three said.

  "That's right," I said scratching my chin. "Just keep me updated while I'm in the Obsidian Crags then. I'll have to rely on myself after that."

  "Hey, honey, before you go," Nimby said, walking up to me. "Let me tweak your nipples and give you a kiss. I know how you like getting your nipples tweaked before you go on a mission."

  "What?" I asked.

  Nimby twisted my nipples and kissed me on the cheek while I probably stared at her in shock.

  I leaned in and whispered, "You're really going to make me pay for not following the handbook, aren't you?"

  "Yes," she whispered back with a devious smile on her face. She was a lot more hurt by my rejection than I expected her to be. She was probably going to take this out on me for a while.

  "Fine," I whispered back and rolled my eyes. Then loudly I said, "Thank you, babe."

  "You're welcome," she said, pulling my pants up uncomfortably high and tightening my tie until it was mildly choking me. She winked at me and walked away. Her playful side was malicious. I'd have to find a way to get her back when I wasn't on a mission.

  "Hey, why don't you wear something that makes you look attractive next time? That uniform makes you look frumpy," I said.

  "Yes, sir," Nimby said through gritted teeth and a fake smile. She loved her uniform.

  I teleported to the Obsidian Crags before things could escalate any further. When I arrived, I found a peculiar sight. There was a group of humans with their feet and hands tied, but standing up. They had gags over their mouths so they couldn't speak.

  Why would Judas tie up the humans following him? Unless he was using them as a distraction. But if they were a distraction, where was Judas? He couldn't be hiding among the tied-up people, could he? What would be the point of that?

  That couldn't be it. There had to be more to this situation that I wasn't seeing. The Obsidian Crags were named for their obsidian cliff faces, but that wasn't the only obsidian thing in the crags.

  There were also huge multiple stories tall obsidian spikes that jutted out of the ground. There were so many of them that they created a maze of spikes to navigate through. Slimes with pieces of razor-sharp obsidian stuck in them wandered the spikes. That was why this place was so dangerous.

  Slimes lurked around every corner and the reflective surfaces of the spikes created confusing images that made it hard to tell where you were in relation to the slimes.

  I ungagged one of the tied-up humans and they immediately said, "We're not humans. We're demons."

  "Oh. Thanks, but where are the human souls that escaped then?" I asked.

  They must have set every demon's illusion tech to human form. Every demon that had an Earth passport was given a device that could create the illusion they were a human.

  "I'm not sure. Probably in the hell cars," he said.

  "Hell cars? They stole hell cars? Why didn't they show up on thermal imaging?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  "Yeah. They were just pushing them in neutral," he said.

  "Oh," I said.

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  The hell cars weren't running, so they didn't show up on thermal imaging. Clever. I would expect nothing less from Judas. I cut all the demons free and let them go back to Red Valley once they turned off their illusion tech and proved they were demons.

  After that, I looked for tracks from the cars. It was subtle. Since the ground was obsidian, the tracks the cars left were just cracks in the obsidian from the weight. Several parallel lines of cracks were traveling in the same direction toward Shadow Canyon.

  The Steves hadn't detected any humanoids in Shadow Canyon though when I left. They only detected slimes. Maybe the human souls were using the slimes as camouflage. That had to be it. I couldn't think of any other possibility.

  But then what did they need the cars for? Maybe they were in case I caught up to them. They could use them to get away.

  You may be wondering why I didn't just teleport to the portal to Purgatory and wait. That would be because I didn't know where it was or even what it looked like. I had never been to the Breach, where it resided.

  Also, I didn't know where they were and the wilds of Hell were vast. Following their trail was a far better option than teleporting to random places. I followed the cracks in the obsidian ground until it led to a wall of black smoky darkness.

  The Shadow Canyon. It was a place of nearly complete darkness. The only things that emitted light in there were trying to kill you and were best to be avoided. However, I needed to light in there to follow the trail, so I would seek out one of those light sources and make it work for me.

  There was a legend that Shadow Canyon was created by a demon shadow sorcerer that wanted to cover all of Hell in darkness but he only got as far as the canyon before dying from overextending his power. To me it didn't really matter what created Shadow Canyon. It was here and I needed to navigate it to prevent Judas and his disciples from making it to Purgatory and eventually Heaven.

  Taking a deep breath, I walked into the wall of darkness. I didn't need to do that. I was just bracing myself for the nightmare of jump scares and creepy crap inside Shadow Canyon.

  For a while I just walked forward. I was looking for a light source, but there weren't any right near the entrance. So I walked quickly forward until I finally came to one. It was off to my left.

  I chased after it until it revealed itself to be a puddle of bioluminescent blood oozing from a decaying corpse dressed in mages clothes. When I got close, the corpse grabbed my ankle and said, "Help me! I need your life force!"

  Necromancer. Hell was riddled with them. They all thought they were hot shit and were going to revolutionize and reorganize Hell under their dominion. Aspiring demon kings the lot of them. Harvey could be counted among the long list of aspiring demon kings.

  Harvey was an imp whose ego got a little too big for his britches. He planned to start the apocalypse and overthrow Lucifer's dominion of Hell through a series of contingency plans that were far too confusing for me to be able to explain.

  His plans ended up like so many who had come before him. In the garbage dump. And he ended up imprisoned in the molten core of the Earth for 10,000 years alongside one of his contingency plans.

  The necromancer tried to drain my life force, but then he looked up at me and his empty eye sockets seemed to widen. He couldn't drain my life force. That was one of the perks of being the administrator of Hell. A lot of things that worked on humans and demons, didn't work on me.

  "You're not normal! What are you?" he said.

  "Thanks for the ego boost," I said, kicking his head off his shoulders. "I'm the administrator!"

  "Oh, sorry!" he said. His skeletal glowing blood bleeding body got up and walked over to his head, picked it up, and put it back on.

  "No, problem," I said. "I'm sure it was an honest mistake. I'll let you go. Besides, the ritual to dismantle you would take too long. I'm in a hurry."

  "Oh, are you chasing those weird humans wearing slimes as clothes?" he asked.

  "Yeah, I am. Do you know which way they went?" I said.

  "Yeah. That way," he said, pointing his partially glowing arm in a direction slightly off from where I was heading.

  "Thanks!" I said.

  "No problem, Administrator," he said. "The name's Gilbert!"

  "Nice to meet you Gilbert! I'm Dave! I hope we meet again sometime, but right now I have to rush!" I said.

  Gilbert the necromancer. What a name and title combination. I thought mine was weird—Dave the Devil—but his took the cake. I didn't pick up any of his bioluminescent blood. It wouldn't work as a reliable light source.

  Imagine trying to cup that stuff in your hands and trying to light up the ground. It wouldn't work. Aside from that, it was just gross. I'd have to keep looking for another light source.

  I jogged in the direction that Gilbert had indicated. After about ten minutes, I came across another light source. This one floated and bobbed in the air. It was a bright yellow light.

  I jumped up and grabbed it. A massive angler fish emerged from the darkness and opened its mouth to chomp down on me. I didn't do anything. It wasn't that I was stunned. I was just so underwhelmed by this development that I couldn't be bothered to react.

  Its giant sharp teeth chomped down on my body and immediately shattered. It let out a weird shriek and tried to turn and run away. I didn't let go of the bioluminescent light attached to its head so it couldn't escape.

  I punched it in the face and it collapsed to the ground. It wasn't dead. Just unconscious. Then I pulled the light so it shined on the ground. Nothing. I dragged the angler fish and its light around so I could use it to look for the tracks of the cars that the escaped souls had been pushing.

  Eventually, after a lot of circling and turning and looking everywhere, I found a trail. Tire tracks in the black dirt. I followed the trail as it traveled through Shadow Canyon.

  I began to run, dragging the angler fish behind me. I needed to get out of this canyon as soon as possible. I was getting claustrophobic in this quiet smoky darkness. After two hours of following the tracks, I finally got to the other side of the canyon.

  I came out into a forest of black trees with black leaves and black grass on the ground. The areas of bare ground were red as most ground is in Hell. This was the Dire Wilds. The area of Hell that the dire unicorns had made their home, as well as several other species of animals and monsters.

  The line between animal and monster was so thin that I honestly didn't know if there really was a difference. Monsters were just animals that were dangerous enough to be classified as such.

  Normal unicorns were classified as animals. Mythological animals, but animals all the same. Whereas dire unicorns were classified as monsters. They were technically the same species. They could even reproduce, I think. Dire unicorns were just evolved and twisted by Hell into stronger tougher animals.

  There was a herd of dire unicorns a few hundred feet away from me in a clearing when I exited the shadows. I threw the angler fish back into the wall of shadows, then I began to walk towards the unicorns. I needed a ride.

  As soon as they saw me they charged with their horns aimed at me, looking to gore me, but they would find I wasn't so easily beaten.