Hewey had managed to drag the body behind a desk within the room before he situated himself onto a desk chair. It had wheels, which was very helpful. After using the walls to push himself into a few rooms, Hewey managed to find a long pipe. And that's how he found a new mode of transportation.

The boy would dig the pipe into the ground before pushing with it in his hands, propelling himself forward before he would adjust the pipe again and repeat. It was slower than his wheelchair, unfortunately, but it still worked. It was faster than walking on his hands, or dragging his body across the floor.

Hewey wasn't sure how much time had passed during this, but he knew he had stolen several pieces of food. Maybe a day or two? He was aware that the machine with the souls and runes would take a bit to power up to distort and destroy the dimensional layers, which meant he still had time.

Speaking of which, Hewey found the machine.

It didn't look much like a machine, instead like a large flat surface, like the bottom of an UFO from typical alien movies. It was large and round, flat with glowing spheres surrounding the edges. Runes were scattered around the entire object, with a purple looking gem in the center of the machine. It looked to be entirely dependent on the runes, which was unfortunate, because Hewey had no idea how to read runes.

So, basically, he had no idea how to stop it. At all.

And it didn't help that the machine was always being worked on and guarded by other demons. Hewey could take one or two on his own, and now he had a gun from that one demon he killed with a door, but there was at least twenty demons at the machine every hour. His gun did have runes scattered upon it, too, but it was a simple pistol, and they had shotguns.

He watched for a few hours, and got a bit of information from the demons. They were planning on using the soul power of the undead souls with Zalgo's demonic powers to carry out the plan, and the runes would help channel this power and practically destroy the world. The demons didn't seem very sure of the plan, either, but were so excited to see the surface none of them really cared.

It did bring up some thoughts for Hewey to ponder, though. Was this how the monsters felt trapped underground? Hewey knew that his Dad was stuck under there with his old friends and brother, but he never really considered how that would come into play. Hewey knew his Dad sometimes had nightmares of being trapped underground, but that mostly came from the fear of the resets, not of the underground. If it had been based from being trapped, his Dad probably wouldn't have ever returned to the underground without having nightmares every night.

But could he blame the demons? It wasn't like they had a choice, they were forced to follow whatever orders Zalgo gave them. And they just wanted to see the surface, even though the solution they found was going to destroy everything.

However, the demons didn't really have a right to the surface, did they? They weren't entitled to it, nor were the humans and the monsters. That's what Sans made sure to remind his children. No one was ever guaranteed for anything inside life, they would never be given it. They had to work to earn and to keep what they wanted and had. Monsters had to fight for the surface, and the humans had to fight to keep the surface in peace with the monsters. Neither was born with the right to the surface, humans only took over when they proved themselves stronger than the monsters. And to break down the way of the world and the layers of their dimension itself just to be on the surface? It'd end up just destroying everything, it wouldn't be worth it.

That was how Hewey found Chara.

"I have to report you to Zalgo," Chara has whispered to him, "You know demons can't reject his orders. He never specified when, so I can give you time to get away, but still. You can't trust me, I have to follow what he says."

"But I thought you weren't a demon," Hewey said, "You were originally sent to purgatory."

"I was, yes," Chara explained, "But I was brought here by Zalgo after the monsters were freed to help him, so my soul is identified as a demon. I can't disobey his orders. I'm sorry, Hewey, I really want to help you, but I can't."

"So you can't fight back against his orders?" Hewey had asked her.

"I was put into purgatory because of my actions, and when I was brought here, I became a demon because my soul wasn't bad enough to be tortured," Chara spoke gently, brushing some hair out of her face. "But because he brought me here, my soul became a soul of a demon after removing me from purgatory."

Hewey bound his fingers together on his lap. "But your soul is still technically at a base level of sins, right? You're not leaning fully into one direction or the other?"

"Because I was borrowed by Zalgo, everything cancels out," Chara said, "I've been making sins by helping Zalgo, but my good intentions have balanced me out. I'm still technically in purgatory, but since Zalgo took me out I can't disobey his orders."

Hewey grinned at her, stretching his sore muscles on is arms out as his head started to think rapidly. "I got a few ideas, then."

《》《》《》

Okay, so update on the updates of this book. My lovely parents decided to force upon me a time restriction on electronics, so this may be a problem when writing stories. I'm not sure if this will have a major effect on future updates of chapters, but I'm sure it will. I'm just going to warn you guys now so you're aware in case I don't update or my chapters are shorter!

Rip me tho