Chapter 28 – Divine Surveillance

My promotion felt like a prison sentence.

Zeus had teleported me directly from the High Council chamber to my new office. It was twice as big as my old one. The void outside my window now swirled with vibrant, beautiful nebulae instead of just boring old stardust. There was even a new chair, woven from pure moonlight and ridiculously comfortable.

I hated every single inch of it.

A potted plant sat on my new desk. It was a gift from Zeus. A tag attached to one of its perpetually blooming flowers read, “Congrats on the promotion! So proud of you!” The plant seemed to radiate pure, unfiltered joy.

I wanted to set it on fire.

How the hell did this happen? My plan had been flawless. It was a masterclass in incompetence. I had broken cosmic laws. I had risked a timeline collapse. I had done everything short of personally handing a reality-ending weapon to a mortal. And for what? For this. A bigger cage.

My travel brochures for Italy were probably being shredded by some celestial clean-up crew right now. My dream of sipping a margarita on a beach in Cancún was officially dead. All because of one impossibly pure-hearted, chaos-derailing Japanese teenager.

It was all his fault.

I slumped into my stupidly comfortable new chair and stared at the wall. A shimmering, wall-sized screen flickered to life. It was a divine monitor. My personal window into the world I was now stuck managing for the foreseeable future. My own personal hell.

If I was going to be trapped here, I at least deserved to know why.

I focused the monitor on Olvido. I zoomed in on the town square. It took only a moment to find him. Ryuuji Sato. The walking, talking source of all my problems. I rewound the celestial recording, determined to pinpoint the exact moment my perfect plan went so completely wrong.

The screen showed the party arriving in the town. They looked tired. Dirty. They met the mayor, a man named Pedro. My own divine records on the man were clear. He had the face of a textbook villain. Oily smile. Shifty eyes. The perfect candidate to bribe the heroes and betray the “weak” one.

This was it. The first real test.

I watched, leaning forward in my chair. I expected Ryuuji, my designated loner, to be suspicious. I expected him to be standoffish. Instead, the boy’s soul practically radiated… trust. He treated the obviously corrupt mayor with a quiet respect. He saw past the sketchy exterior to the man’s genuinely good heart.

My jaw went slack.

How? How did he know? There were no skills listed in his file for ‘Detect True Nature’ or ‘Supernatural Empathy.’ He was just supposed to be a socially awkward kid who read too many edgy web novels. Yet he had instantly and correctly assessed a man that even I would have been suspicious of.

It had to be a fluke. A lucky guess.

I fast-forwarded the recording. Another scene snapped into focus. A new character had appeared. Siegfried. He was a hero archetype ripped straight from a storybook. Golden hair. Shining armor. A smile so perfect it looked like it was professionally polished. His file screamed ‘protagonist material.’

He was also a complete fraud. A greedy, manipulative scumbag looking for a magical artifact. The perfect person to fool a group of naive teenagers.

This was my real chance. Ryuuji would see Siegfried as a true hero. He would trust him. Siegfried would then betray them all, creating the chaos I needed. My plan was still salvageable.

I watched as Siegfried approached the party. He gave them his hero speech. He was charismatic. He was convincing. Kenji and the others looked completely star-struck. It was working.

But then I saw Ryuuji’s face.

There was no admiration in his eyes. No respect. There was only a flat, instant, unfiltered dislike. He looked at this perfect, shining hero the way a normal person looks at a piece of moldy bread. His soul, visible only to me, recoiled as if Siegfried were physically repulsive.

I literally fell out of my chair.

The moonlight fabric did little to cushion the blow. I lay on the floor of my new office, staring up at the swirling galaxies on the ceiling, my mind a complete blank.

It wasn’t a fluke.

He did it again. He had seen through the perfect hero’s disguise as easily as he had seen through the villain’s. It made no sense. This wasn’t logic. It wasn’t analysis. It was some kind of bizarre, innate purity. A goodness so profound that it acted like a moral compass, instantly pointing out good and evil regardless of the packaging.

Zeus wasn’t just intrigued by his potential. He had seen this. He had seen a mortal who was more divinely perceptive than most gods.

My anger turned to ice in my veins.

This kid. This impossibly good, trope-defying, plan-wrecking kid was the reason I was stuck here. His saintliness was my curse. His heroic nature was my prison. Zeus was never going to let me go as long as a soul like Ryuuji’s was under my jurisdiction.

A slow, bitter smile spread across my face.

If his goodness was the problem, then the solution was simple. I couldn’t get fired for my own failures. But I could certainly get demoted for his. The gods valued success above all else. A goddess who chose a hero that ultimately failed? That was a mark of shame. A career-killer.

I had to sabotage him.

I stood up, brushing the stardust off my celestial robes. My gaze fell upon the joyful little plant on my desk. I imagined it wilting. I imagined it turning to ash. A new sense of purpose filled me. A dark, delicious, liberating purpose.

I was going to make Ryuuji Sato fail.

I strode back to the divine monitor, my mind racing. A simple goblin attack wouldn’t be enough. A corrupt official was clearly useless. I needed something bigger. Something overwhelming. Something that no hero, no matter how pure of heart, could possibly overcome.

I would send a horde of monsters to descend upon Olvido. An army of beasts from the darkest corners of the realm.

Let’s see how your perfect soul handles an apocalypse, Ryuuji.