Chapter 20: The final task

"Evil isn't cosmological human riddle, only selfish human behavior." -Joyce Carol Oates

"Evil begins when you start to treat people like things." -Terry Pratchett

I still had my face cupped in my hands. I was breaking down. Tears were streaking down my cheeks. I didn't know why. I just wanted to stop feeling pathetic and helpless. _It is just a game and Jorge didn't die!_ It was my inner voice speaking to me. But why did I feel like a murderer? And why the hell was I remembering quotes from my English literature class huh?

Finally, I told myself that I had to win, for my sake and my team's. I stood up, although that took more effort than I had expected. A door stood ajar where a few seconds ago was just the rocky inner wall. I braced myself and stepped inside.

It took a lot of time for the game to start loading. I was expecting another challenge to overcome, but the flame-colored topaz simply lay on a table, carved from marble, and, with what seemed like demons, were engraved on it.

"Wait- topazes aren't blue?" I said embarrassingly. I picked it up. My nerves went on high alert. I was still expecting the whole place to collapse or some evil monster emerging out of nowhere ready to demolish me. But, none of that happened. What 'actually' happened was this:

Everything went blurry. I found myself floating into nothingness. I had more than a reason to be scared of it; this floaty thing and I had an encounter before.

Nevertheless, it was making me feel dizzy. So, I closed my eyes. I opened them after I made sure that my feet were intact with the ground. When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing amongst a large crowd. The moment they became aware of my presence, eyes turned to look at me. Then a deafening cheer broke out. I had long before realized these were people from my gangs. I was having my hands shaken and moved from arms to arms to be taken into an embrace. After what seemed like an eternity, everyone was done congratulating me. I found myself moved from the entrance of the room to its end, where to my immense relief, I found Jorge grinning at me.

"You did it," he said. Not knowing what to say, I simply smiled at him. I caught sight of Ivy in the corner of my eye. She looked happy too, another big relief.

Things couldn't be better than this. I had just won, and now the food was being served and the next moment we were partying.

One of the best parts, even Ivy came up to me and indirectly apologized for behaving as if she was against me. Someone thrust juice in my hands, which I drank with relish. Jorge showed me that the topaz I had earned went into my winnings list. Currently, I had one, which they all assumed was because the programmer messed up with my code. To that, I had no reply except nodding my head and saying things like "TOTALLY! VERY TRUE! YEAH! THOSE BASTARDS!" and the list goes so on.