“Achievement Unlocked: Out Of Sight, Out Of My Mind! Reward, you get to be in the same room as me!”

The mad god cackled as Sam jerked in surprise. The voice was different, but the tone was almost exactly the same as the Achievement Unlocked notifications.

“Oh, that was a good one,” the creature in the magic circle chortled almost to himself. “I’ve been waiting twenty thousand years to use that! I was always the best at coming up with those achievements, you know. Of course the System extrapolated from the data I fed it and came up with its own, but you just can’t beat the good old human touch, now can you? Not that I’m strictly speaking completely human anymore. But that’s okay, because no one is strictly speaking human anymore, no matter what those old fuddies running the place think.”

“We need to leave,” Sam said, taking a step backwards towards the portal, never taking his eyes off the mad creature.

“Sam?” Pearl’s voice sounded as she flitted above him. “What’s going on? Who’s the funny guy with the glowing tattoos? Hi Rakky! How are ya?”

“Annoyed and impatient, little one,” Araxes said in a decidedly huffy tone. “Can we please get past these next few moments and actually get to matters of import?”

“No,” Sam said, taking another step back. “No, we need to get out of here. Araxes, good to see you. Get through the portal. Everyone else, leave, now. I’m right behind you.”

“Oh man, you should see the look on your faces!” the god was cackling again. “So priceless! Oh, wait, I could arrange that. Did it myself a couple times. Only got a headache the first five. After that it was just kind of a numb tingling sensation!”

“Sam,” Pop said, stepping up next to his son, “what’s going on here?”

“Sam.” The voice that came from the madman was no longer light and airy. It dropped two octaves, hissed between his teeth, and sounded like a snake savoring its first taste of rabbit. “We were never properly introduced the last time we met. Sam.”

If the god had expected the others in the room to cower, if he had expected Sam to recoil or tremble at the idea that now this strange insane entity knew his name, he was likely sorely disappointed. The only reaction his words garnered was the sudden training of about a dozen different types of ranged weapons on him. Sam pulled his bolt-thrower out of his inventory. Pop yanked two gnomish hand-cannons from somewhere. Tilly and Bugruk both pulled out Goblin Blade-Slingers, their circular blades spinning in the barrel. Even Pearl came out with a tiny crossbow.

“Ah,” the madman said in a much less threatening voice. “Well, at least you have spine. That’ll get you farther than a kind word and twenty bucks.”

“I’m starting to think you’re right, Sam,” Pop said, the weapons still trained on the god. “Let’s head back. We can figure this out later.”

“Wait.” The god didn’t move so much as a muscle, but somehow it still gave the impression of stretching out its hand in supplication. “Your lich—“

“His lich? Now see here,” Araxes started to interrupt, but was himself overridden.

“—Has told me some of what has been happening in the outside world.”

Sam shot the lich the blackest glare he could muster up. Araxes, for his part, suddenly became intensely interested in the back of his hand an attempts to whistle through his teeth.

“But what he has not told me has spoken volumes,” the god added, his lips cracking into a smile. “You seek an Admin Room. A place,” his crazed eyes shifted like lightning from Sam to Pop to Pearl to the others who were starting to crowd through the portal, “where you can speak freely. Away from the system’s prying eyes and ears and nose. Where you can tell your friends and family all the naughty secrets you’ve learned that you don’t want the system finding out you know. Am I right or am I right?”

“And this is the place I’m supposed to do that?” Sam shot back, glaring. “Last time I was here, you told me to run away before whoever did this to you did it to me too. What’s changed?”

“Oh, when you left, they showed up. And fixed the smudged rune on my flesh. That’s really all it took. They won’t be back again. Won’t even notice you’re here. Unless a rune gets smudged again. But the last one took seventy thousand years, so you’ll probably be fine. Probably be fine and dandy and kill you all and your dog and your familyandyourfriendsandeveryoneyoulove!!”

“Wait, what?” Araxes spun on his heel and stared at the madman. “What the devil was that last bit?”

“I do beg your pardon,” the madman said in the same voice as Araxes—Not the same tones, but the exact same voice as if it had come from the lich’s own throat. “We do try not to let him out to greet our guests unless absolutely necessary. Or unless it’s good for a laugh. Or we’re feeling peckish. Or for the hell of it.”

“Yeah, anyone else starting to think that Sammy was right and we should just leave?” Tilly asked, still staring down the barrel at the madman. “This guy’s giving me the creeps.”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “Yeah, good plan. Araxes, come on. Now that you’re out, we can use your link to Sephie to—“

“IT WON’T WORK!”

The god’s voice roared up from his throat and reverberated through the entire space. Sam staggered back a step under the weight of the words. Pearl was knocked out of the air, and he barely caught her before she hit the floor. Even Pop swayed backwards.

“Admin rooms take years to create. It took us almost three years to get the first versions up and running. Takes thousands of essence exchanges, hundreds of hours of labor, and reports. So. Many. Reports. And we knew what we were doing. You don’t. Oh, you have the Last. And she probably knows what she’s doing. But you are monkeys with sticks playing with a hyperlight velocity circuit with inlaid creation nodules and a Mark Six capacitor matrix.”

“A what?” Pearl asked, sitting up and looking slightly woozy in Sam’s hand.

“Exactly. You’re scrappy little folk, we’ll give you that, with all that delicious blood in you and the Tinker. But you’re not cut out for the big leagues yet. Look at you. You barely managed to cobble together a Class 3 Portal Table, and even then it’s held together with wishes and bubble tape. Miracle it hasn’t blown up and killedyouallandyourdogsandyoursweetlittlegrandmainhertrailerpark! Sorry sometimes that happens and we really don’t have control over it.”

“Who are you?” The question came from Pop, who had moved further into the gray room and was staring intently at the madman in his binding circle.

“So glad you asked!” The mad god smiled that cracked-tooth smile and his fever-bright eyes went wide. “Nobody’s asked me that in… Well, more than eighty thousand years.”

“Pop, maybe we shouldn’t be—“ Sam started.

“The name’s Bob,” said the mad god. “My friends and I created the world.”

Sam blinked. “Bob.”

“What, you were expecting some long random convoluted assembly of consonants and vowels? Please. We reserved those for the beings we created. There were only five of us, after all. We needed no flash names amongst ourselves. Of course,” he added derisively, “didn’t keep that jackass Herman from trying to give himself one. Lord High Master Of Reality and Realms. Pompous ass. I’m glad they killed him and his dog and his family.”

“Okay,” Tilly said, wheeling Bugruk further in. “I gotta hear this story.”

“Close the door, young gobbess,” Bob said with a laugh. “And I will tell you all about it!”