August 11th. 1:02 AM.
In Magnus's new mental state, he made intricate plans to account for any and all possibilities, whether possible within the game or not.
Before even starting, he muted the game's music. It never added anything but an eerie feeling to it anyway. And he played his favourite music playlist.
Songs about breaking the system, nor following social norms, and doing what you wanted regardless of the consequences.
Things Magnus would never do, but the raw idea of them sent adrenaline running through his veins.
From there, he got to work.
He created a front. A brand called Eclipse Wellness.
A sketchy wellness centre designed to help people get back onto their feet from drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, domestic violence, and more.
Empty motivational quotes, clean branding, cult-coded hashtags like #InnerFire and #WeAreTheVoice. He rolled out a website overnight using drag-and-drop templates, used tools to fake testimonials, and launched a donation drive.
It all felt oddly intricate.
The game allowed him to do almost anything he wanted.
The money poured in. Even before Eclipse Wellness had a single member.
When he recruited his second cult member on that playthrough and unlocked the warehouse, the screen blacked out again.
Red words, colder this time:
"YOU'RE EXACTLY WHERE WE NEED YOU TO BE."
He paused. A chill spidered down his spine. His mouse hand felt… numb.
"…Okay," he whispered. "That one felt a little personal."
He bought the newly unlocked and condemned warehouse through shell companies owned by Eclipse Wellness. Then a laundromat. Then that damned bowling alley. Underneath all three, he built his shrines.
And, of course, he paid the zoning official.
Six levels deep.
Three shrines.
Six-six-six.
He couldn't resist the symbolism.
He imagined the shrines smelled of rust and wet stone. Wet not from water, but from the sacrifices.
Polygonal candles flickered with physics too good for a decade-old game. Statues of unnamed gods lined the walls, their eyes tracking his cursor movements. Sometimes, he could swear they twitched every so often.
The first ritual he hosted was disguised as a performance art piece at a local theatre. He dedicated it to a Wimmin, the God of Theatre he found in an ancient text. Many influencers attended. He converted four of them before the night ended.
---
By hour six, Magnus was running seven sects.
Seven sects. Seven worshipped deities.
Each with their own doctrines, divine demands, and internal drama. He juggled their desires like spinning knives. Each coming with the risk of getting hurt. But the more knives he spun, the quicker he reached his goal of world domination.
He bound eldritch horrors into the bodies of influencers. Forged pacts through fake non-profits. Held debates with rival cult leaders in underground forums that required sacrifice codes for access.
He sacrificed exactly the right number of chickens.
It was forty-two, by the way.
That's when the game whispered again.
Black screen. Red glyphs.
"EVERY STEP YOU TAKE FEEDS IT."
Magnus leaned forward.
"…Feeds what?"
The whispers returned, overlapping in more than a dozen languages.
No subtitles.
No clues.
---
By hour eight, he had three wives, two proxies in the global senate, and a blessing from a fifth-dimensional god named Y'torah-Venn: a passive buff that converted civilians into cult members just by having them walk near his HQ.
All they asked for?
A statue in the entrance with a small wishing well in front of it. Of course he obliged.
A small price to pay to win a game.
He still had not broken plausible deniability.
No one could trace the source of the occult activities back to him. He never directly sacrificed anyone, converted anyone, and his name appeared only on the documents of Eclipse Wellness.
The gameworld systems adapted, countered, evolved.
AI detectives started planting spies in his sects. His own followers developed ambitions and delusions of grandeur. Some turned traitor. One tried to assassinate him in the middle of a midnight sermon.
He had her burned alive as a sacrifice to the gods and a warning to the other members of his cult.
As the game spiralled deeper into madness, so did the world inside it. The buildings distorted. Streets led nowhere. Results didn't match his character's actions.
He could no longer tell if the game was glitching...or trying to learn.
'An unreliable narrator, perhaps? In a game?'
"EVERY SHADOW YOU SEE IS ONE OF US."
That was the message at the eight-hour mark.
He imagined that the music would be more intense the further he went through it, but he just blasted the indie rock through his headset.
"Yeah, yeah."
The screen dimmed slightly for the rest of the session. As if something were watching him from the edges.
Magnus had gotten used to the sudden image prompts, and didn't stop.
He coordinated a digital apocalypse with such precision that the simulation couldn't keep up.
Governments crumbled.
Rival cults fell in line. Resistance was stomped out.
Reality bent to his will, action by action, until the world fell silent.
All who did not fall in line and declare themselves part of Magnus's cult were culled.
All done, in the form of a man. One man who spoke to gods, and controlled the world from the shadows.
And then, the final message appeared.
"TOTAL SUBJUGATION ACHIEVED."
The text pulsed once and vanished.
Magnus sighed and let go of his mouse.
He leaned back, blinking. His spine cracked audibly as he stretched.
"Finally..." He sighed with relief.
He looked at the clock in the corner of the screen.
Thirteen hours. Daylight. Not even just daylight, but passed midday.
"…Thirteen hours to complete everything. I'm done with cults. I won't be replaying that game. That was too stressful. One hundred percent completion in one sitting."
His stomach growled. His hands trembled slightly.
The blinds were closed, but a thin line of light split through the crack.
He stood slowly, legs stiff, brain buzzing with static. Every sound in his apartment felt muffled, like the game had pressed cotton into the corners of his perception.
He yawned deeply and rubbed his eyes.
'I'll rest and eat tomorrow... Well, today,' he thought.
He turned off the monitor.
But he could still see the red words burned into his memory. The last prompt that it showed at the end of the game.
Only for a half second.
Long enough that if Magnus blinked at the wrong time, he would've missed it.
"SLEEP IS THE ONLY PLACE IT COULDN'T REACH YOU. YET."
Magnus wandered to his bed and plomped down. Lazlo, somehow instinctively, woke up and left his bed to accompany Magnus. He nestled inside the crook of Magnus's arm.
"That game was pretty tough. I haven't had to lock in like that for a while." Magnus said, lightly scratching under Lazlo's chin.
He thought about how crazy it would be to actually run a cult until he fell asleep.