The Losers entered the hidden temple cautiously. The main entrance led to a massive hall with an almost impossibly high ceiling, adorned with luxurious stained-glass windows depicting scenes from their earlier battles.

  The nearest window showed Jenna delivering a blow to Mutually Assured Destruction's nose with a newspaper. To its left, Billy soared through the air as a gryphon, heading towards Babylon while leaving behind the beheaded corpse of Paul and the grieving figure of Dignity.

  On the opposite side, Bob covered his mouth in horror with both hands after having offered Frank Corrigan to lick his feet.

  "They had to choose that one," Bob grumbled. "Of course, they had to choose that one."

  The whole scene was frankly disturbing, much like observing a cathedral dedicated to them. Three enormous statues stood against the walls, their hands joined together. Each of the three exits was framed by two of these statues. The statues represented each one of them. Their countenance was deadly serious, as if they were judging those below.

  Jenna ignored the environment as she carefully examined the exits. She did not need the distraction. "Okay, I think the statues are conveying some sort of message. We can choose the exit where Billy and I join hands, the one with Bob and me, or the one with Bob and Billy."

  They finally decided to take the nearest exit, which featured Bob and Jenna. The tunnel led to a brightly lit hall, dominated by a massive glass half-sphere that occupied the entire central space.

  The glass dome contained a miniature city, inhabited by humanoids no taller than 1 inch. The town looked sinister and perilous. In the center, a tall spire dominated the miniature village. A throne was placed on top of the spire.

  A single midget, wearing miniature armor and a sword, was standing alone in the path leading to the city. He was standing on a metal plaque engraved with the name 'the One'.

  There was an engraved message in English on the farthest wall: “Make Him King.”

  Jenna touched the glass sphere tentatively. It was warm to the touch, but there was something more to it. As soon as she made contact, she instantly realized that the material was conductive to her Transference power.

  “It seems Governance has done his homework. He knows us well,” she told Billy and Bob.

  “Of course he has. He has had all the time in the world,” Bob answered dourly. He was still smarting about his glass pane.

  Jenna sent her mind through the glass sphere and felt the midget come to life.

  “This is some sort of game. We only have to make that little fellow called the One sit on the throne in the middle of the city,” she announced. “It has been a long time since I played video games, but this should not be too hard.”

  She made the midget walk towards the city, his miniature armor making a delicate clicking sound as he moved. He had not walked the equivalent of ten feet when he stepped on a trap that caused a spiked wooden log to crash into him and nail him against a tree. The midget dissolved into a puff of smoke and reappeared at his starting position.

  The name had changed to the Two.

  “Well, this should not be too hard. He gets killed easily, but we only need to learn where the traps are and avoid them—piece of cake,” she confidently said.

  Three hours later, the One Hundred and Sixteen fell to a hidden pit filled with spikes that had not been there three tries before.

  “This bloody game is rigged,” screamed an angry Jenna. “The traps change location every time. I have tried to calculate a pattern or some way to avoid them, but it always fails.”

  “It seems this artifact was designed specifically to counter your cognitive abilities,” Bob suggested. “We are doing it wrong. I don’t think Governance wants us to fail. He wants us to prove we are the Losers.”

  Jenna thought for a moment. “The archway we went under was formed by Bob’s statue and mine joining hands. I think we are both supposed to work together to solve this. But how?”

  “If the whole thing is based on a game, wouldn't the idea be to make... umm... the Two Hundred and Seventeen more powerful?” asked Billy.

  “You could be on to something, Billy,” Jenna assented. “But how?” Then she remembered; one of the few things she had been able to use the Compendium for was to grant quests. She had done it twice, first granting a Regional Quest to fight the Tribulation and the second to make that poor member of the Bacon Brigade blow half of Paul’s face off as he swallowed him.

  The difference was that the Compendium wanted to grant quests against Tribulations; it was part of its very nature. She could also use the same principles to grant quests inside dungeons — it was something the Compendium also liked — but the Temple of Three was no dungeon.

  Jenna tried to reenact the exact steps she had performed when granting those quests, but it was like grasping water. There was nothing there she could use. The Compendium itself had provided the experience for those quests she had created, and it was not cooperating now.

  Then inspiration hit her. “Bob, aren’t we supposed to do this together? Don’t you have tonics that augment the experience received?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” Bob answered. “I think you are on the right track.”

  He gave Jenna one stoppered bottle filled with a glowing fluid. “Liquid experience, about nine hours worth of it. It is so pure that it increases normal XP gain by 50% until spent, or allows experience gains at half speed in an inactive system.”

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  “Let’s go slowly,” Jenna cautioned. “After all, the guy is a midget. I don’t think we should use too much for it to work.”

  She pulled the stopper and placed a single drop of tonic on her tongue. She could feel the tiny surge of energy it granted her moving inside her brain.

  She pushed it into the Compendium and tried to create a tiny quest inside the midget’s soul.

  It worked like a charm.

  Quest Granted: Avoid one trap. Reward: Gain +2 to the trap detection skill.

  A cunningly hidden guillotine beheaded The Two Hundred and Seventeen, but The Two Hundred and Eighteen made it, getting a quest completion notification and the bonus to skill. Jenna put another drop on her tongue and granted him an exact copy of the same quest. This time, he managed to avoid a hidden pitfall: another +2 and a new quest.

  The midget was not so lucky next time and triggered a hidden landmine that blew him into oblivion.

  He materialized again in the starting place, but something had changed.

  The plaque said: The Two Hundred and Nineteen. + 4 to trap detection. Yes! Skills were kept even when the tiny warrior respawned. This was the way to do it.

  Nineteen deaths later, they had brought the Trap Detection skill of their warrior to a respectable +12, and he began avoiding the traps with ease. He jumped at the last instant to avoid getting hit or directly refused to follow the path Jenna set for him, looking for an alternate route.

  They finally had gotten the hang of it.

  Piece of cake.

  As the midget approached the city, he was waylaid by three goblins who efficiently dispatched him in less than three seconds. Jenna swore.

  Quest Granted: Hit at least one Goblin before you die. Reward: Gain +2 to the Close Combat skill.

  Even with such lax requirements, the guy needed 15 respawns to complete the quest, and it was mainly luck.

  Same routine, same quest, same skill gain. Forty deaths later, the midget’s close combat skill was high enough to beat the three goblins at the same time.

  Finally!

  The midget went through the main gate, only for a mini-witch to blast him into ashes with a fireball the size of a tiny spark.

  Jenna howled in rage.

  Long days passed. Jenna needed no sustenance at all; her body could go indefinitely with the correct use of stats. Bob had to drink from his cup now and then to ward off hunger and thirst, and spent most of his time rotating his cultivation base, whatever that meant.

  He was ecstatic, as it proved a sure and reliable way of exerting his Fatigue Resistance skill without tiring himself too much.

  He managed to upgrade Rotate Your Base to his first rank four Perk, allowing him to withstand the effects of aging passively, without the need to meditate.

  Billy respawned in his undead firemaster form. Undead were not pretty, but at least they were low-maintenance; they were immune to fatigue, thirst, hunger, and thankfully, also to boredom.

  Only sheer willpower kept Jenna on the task. They had already gone through one experience tonic bottle and half of another. There was a very real chance they could run out of it before the bloody midget crowned himself.

  Jenna patiently read the plaque:

  The Three Thousand Four Hundred and Fifty-Three.

  +12 to Trap Detection

  +16 to Close Combat

  +12 to Ranged Combat

  +16 to Magic Resistance

  +8 to Danger Sense

  +14 to Physical Resilience

  +18 to Spiritual Resilience

  +12 to Poison Resistance

  +8 to Explosive Pangolin Detection…

  The list went on and on. This was pointless. The city provided countless ways to die.

  They were doing something wrong. They even thought of using corpse-camping charges on the midget, but they could not touch it.

  Jenna shifted focus and started granting offensive power to the little warrior.

  A few hundred deaths later, it was not a warrior: it was a multiclassed hybrid warrior-spellcaster with rogue abilities, the power to consume and mimic the abilities of the enemies he devoured, eight different summonable pets with magical powers, a whole plethora of mystic martial arts and an intelligent AI companion that gave him infallible battle advice and was secretly in love with him.

  He kept dying. There was only half a quarter of experience tonic left.

  Jenna decided to go all eastern: she gave the midget a dantian, evolved it into an established foundation, then into a golden core, enhanced his meridians, empowered his spiritual roots, and taught him ultrapowerful divine techniques before sending him into the city, only to be slain by a common thug armed with the Bullet that Slays People with Killing Intent and Makes them Lose Face.

  Whatever she could think of, the dome could counter.

  Bob snored softly in one corner of the hall. Billy did not need to sleep and amused himself by incinerating flies as they passed near him.

  There were only a few drops of tonic left.

  The Sixteen Thousand Seven Hundred and Ten waited for his instructions. His list of abilities was so great that it reached almost all the way to the end of the dome.

  And then Jenna had an idea, but before putting it into practice, she made sure Bob and Billy weren't paying attention.

  Then she put a single drop of tonic on her tongue and created a new quest.

  Quest Granted: Kick a tree. Reward: Become King.

  The midget approached a nearby elm and gently kicked it. Suddenly, the whole glass dome ignited, and Governance’s voice sounded from above. “Congratulations, you have passed the first test!”

  Make Him King. Those were the only instructions. She had assumed she had to sit him on the throne, but the answer was much more straightforward.

  Bobby and Billy approached smiling, if Billy’s cadaveric and flaming rictus could be described as a smile.

  “Congratulations, Jenna, you made it!” Billy told her. “How did you do it?”

  “Oh, I just turned him into a girl and made her go through a magical evolution. It’s statistically unbeatable,” Jenna lied.

  “Ok, let’s go for the other ones,” Bob said. “That took a lot of time, but that is the one thing we have in spades. Or not.”

  As they left the hall, Jenna spared one last glance at the most powerful midget in the world. She hoped the glass could contain him; otherwise, the universe would tremble.

  She briefly wondered if she would ever tell Billy the truth, but then she decided against it.

  She would take this secret with her to the tomb.

  Magical Girl Evolution it was.