The Systemic Lands

Chapter 463: Day 903 – Kafkaesque

Chapter 463: Day 903 – Kafkaesque

The punishment for the Avatar was both simple and complex. It had taken a bit of time to set up, but Clarissa quickly got on board once I explained. I could even see the glint of joy in her eyes at the headache the Avatar had caused her.

Plates were made up that could be smeared with inked and stamped onto a piece of paper. A cheap printing press. There were over 10 plates made up in a variety of formats, with no clear label. A soldier or person being punished would be given a blank form in one room. While a filled out form was in another room.

For each filled out form a person completed, the Avatar got one bite of food, one sip of water, or 100 points for a restoration or stats. To give her a tiny bit of hope. The person was not told what empty form they had to fill out in their room. The various blank forms were all mixed together. If they needed a copy of a form, they had to fill out a separate form to get copies of the needed form.

The person ‘assisting’ the Avatar could only leave once they filled out a single form correctly, but had to submit in batches of five and only one of them would be reviewed at random. The Avatar’s form in the room would change once every hour with all other copies carefully locked away and their surfaces covered. The person in charge of inspecting the forms was told to be absolutely fair, but the slightest error would have the form rejected. They would roll a die to select a form from the five submitted. Rolling a six meant they could pick what form to inspect.

I had created a paperwork hell for the Avatar. To live she had to communicate and observe at a distance to have a person fill out a form correctly. She had to convince them to do it correctly. They might fail five of them, and let the punishment stretch out the day. Since everyone who was punished in this regard would be told of her crimes in advance. They wouldn’t get any food or water until a correct form was completed and reviewed, forcing them to eventually cooperate.

There was a list of soldiers volunteering for punishment duty. They were warned that if it took them over a day, they would be killed. Even then, that didn’t stop the volunteers. The hate for her was real, but I made sure the captain in charge explained that there would be no leniency in any way with how the Avatar’s punishment was set up, since we could not allow her to die. In a deeks time we would switch to arrivals. Each would take a turn in hell and get paid for it. I couldn’t afford the Avatar being difficult and trying to get my soldiers killed on purpose. Let the new arrivals die if she had a hissy fit, since they were less valuable.

As for the Avatar’s physical body, she was heavily chained up in the middle of the plaza, between all the store pillars. A large gray block behind her had her crimes carved into it and she was chained to it. She would be cleaned once every ten days before arrival. Gagged, so she could not drink and then tossed into a tub of water. Her hair was shorn, but she was given a bright orange smock to hide her nugget body.

So, all who came to the capital could see her and understand that my cruelty was endless. To barely live, I had created only a single path. A path of paperwork. The boxes were incredibly tiny. The writing even smaller. The fields that needed to be filled out required complex non-sensical answers from the master copies.

Once the initial forms ran out more had to be requested with another form. This one I personally worked on to make it hell. Fifty fields all with ten space answers, but with roman numerals, and math symbols instead of numbers and letters.

She would have to describe the symbols in detail to people over and over again. Since no one was allowed to go through this more than once every hundred days. Every so often we would switch out all the forms, so she didn’t get comfortable or memorize the forms.

It was the most soul sucking thing I could think of that would require her to focus and to use her abilities. Unrelenting, pointless, bureaucracy for all eternity. She had to do it, since she had to live. It was simple enough for her to get food and water, but she had to force herself and communicate to people who didn’t want to help her that much. Filling out complex forms, over and over.

The more I explained, the more she pleaded for mercy. It was hilarious. The power of endless pointless bureaucracy, Kafkaesque, could truly break the will of all people. The best part was, I wasn’t killing her. She could be imprisoned and had to force herself to live. I just combined those two pieces of knowledge to create the most hellish and unrelenting torture that could exist.

It was no joke, that the idea of such a punishment struck a chord of fear and terror even within me. Also, if the Avatar bothered me or Clarissa for anything except the end of the Systemic Lands, then she would not get any paperwork for the day. Bringing her closer to death by her own decision. No chanting doom, doom, doom, or being annoying singing Latin in my head.

She would have to spend every moment she had to have a random rotating cast of people fill out her paperwork correctly. It would be part of the new arrivals’ rotation requirement here in Purgatory. And they would get paid 1,000 points for doing so.

Once she started getting comfortable, we would change out all the paperwork and make it slightly different. To unleash another round of hell, so no one could learn it. Let her mind slowly be engulfed with endless sheets of paper with tiny pointless boxes, which needed to be filled out over and over. The best part was, she would be compelled to do all of this so she didn’t die. I had insisted on very clear rules and inspections, with anyone cheating the Avatar promised death. The person who inspected the forms would have their work heavily audited by a rotating cast of characters.

It would be incredibly strict, but that was the point. I explained the process over and over to her along with the initial soldiers in charge of her punishment, insisting that everything be handled fairly and with great attention to detail. She would not be cheated, but the very fact she would not be cheated, would be what would hopefully compel her to fill out paperwork to live.

“You are grinning evilly again,” Clarissa said while we enjoyed breakfast together.

“Just thinking about the Avatar and the eternal hell she is forced to endure,” I replied gleefully.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side. What made you think of it?” Clarissa asked me.

“The trick was to think what does any self-centered important person hate? Pointless paperwork. Endless pointless paperwork. After that, it all came together.” I knew I would hate it more than anything. Having to depend on random people to live. Filling out pointless paperwork. Being humiliated publicly. Death would be a kindness. She should have died, but the fact that I couldn’t kill her and she couldn’t kill herself was something I planned to exploit.

“I would have just tossed her into a hole,” Clarissa said.

“The sheer hate I have for that woman, cannot be put into words. But with endless paperwork, I think my message will eventually sink in. Also, she might have something useful to say one day and I didn’t want her making trouble,” I kept grinning as I had some melon. Clarissa just shook her head, but she didn’t argue with me. It was an expenditure, but a necessary expenditure.

The truly inspired bit. Was that on the stone she was chained to listing her crimes. It also listed that if 1,000 people slit their throats in front of her, begging for her to be forgiven she would be released. All other pleas of mercy would be considered treason and the person taken into custody to be tortured for a day and night and then executed immediately afterwards.

It would be amusing to see if she could manage to convince anyone to kill themselves. And even if they did, it was such a large number, I would just readjust it lower if it ever go too high. Better to get rid of the stupid idiots with the bleeding hearts right away before they caused issues. It would enrage her and probably break her once she realized there truly was no escape from paperwork hell. It would be hilarious when she realized there was no escape and her very soul broke.

The chains holding her were massive. One each, clamping around her limbs. Another around her neck. Then a sixth around her torso. There was no lock, and they were the thick kind of chains, that were about as thick as my finger and tightly bound.

Two of the chains went through the gray stone with her crimes and into the plaza itself. It had taken a bit of work to set this all up, but everyone was motivated, and she was an easy target to blame. Since anyone could target her and feel the sense of doom she unleashed.

“On a slightly related note. Her cities. Her people fled in that direction. We will need you to break them,” Clarissa explained.

“The level 4 zones in the way?” I asked.

“That is why we will have to upgrade one of the nearby cities. Using the information we have, Qingdao would be the best option.” It was just North of the Forbidden City. “We would connect through the level 4 zone to the East. There is a jungle zone in the way.”

“How are they getting to First Seoul in the North?” I asked.

“They moved people with their airship and then were using the new arrivals. They should be fully purged soon, and a new governor installed. So, you would need to clear that out, then upgrade Qingdao. Then clear out the last two of her cities. We will hold the road and the plazas, for about hundred days, starving everyone in those zones to death who might be loyal to the Avatar,” Clarissa explained.

That was why I liked Clarissa. She had much better organizational ideas than me. “Alright, I am guessing this needs to be done, sooner rather than later?” I asked.

“Yes. That way they don’t get any more airships. Each governor that is settled is being ordered to send ten soldiers. We will send seventy soldiers and General Abdullah. All at level 3 combat. That will put the force around two hundred. More than enough to hold two cities if you clear them out beforehand.”

“Purge the arrivals?” I asked.

“Yes. The goal is to completely depopulate those areas and any chances of rebellion. She is clearly someone who inspires fanaticism. Calling her nation, the Fifth Caliphate and herself High Priestess isn’t a good sign either,” Clarissa explained.

That was very true. A Caliphate carried the connotations of a theocratic nation. With her as the head of both the religion and government, it was better to purge any chance of her people causing trouble. We just needed to hold the road and the two plazas to completely purge the area around the two cities.

Its isolation had protected it from the Dragon Empire, but now it would its undoing, since it could be completely wiped out by control of the city and no way for regular people to cross a level 4 zone. It was funny to think I had climbed up a tower, fought level 4 monsters the whole way up, killed the Divine Empress, but I had still not crossed a level 4 zone.

Running away from the Divine Empress and running into that tower in that one zone had been the closest I had come and that was just the darklands. Not even the mushrooms or the jungle.