Heaven Has No Limit Chapter 2 - Pro-Gamer Move

One had to marvel at the efficiency of slave labor.

Hundreds of men, and indeed, they were men, they were always men, disposable as they were, strong, hefty, burly, working together to construct a project. Chains on their necks, chains on their ankles, ropes in their hands, fraying their skin, flaying their flesh, whips repeating in the air, each crack a miniature breaking of the sound barrier that brought several collective flinches. Guards barked orders while Noah sat in a palanquin, sipping from a milk, banana, and coconut fruit smoothie. 

Noah had not understood what the hype was before now; he never got why people were so averse to losing their slaves, until now.

Seeing it in action, watching the slaves toil relentlessly, carrying the steel beams, the bricks, the heavy, giant chunks of seastone, deconstructing the entire left wing, without rest, without stopping, without asking for those pesky things such as wages, vacation time and bathroom breaks, without care for their bodies, safety or wellbeing, Noah came to appreciate the finer nuances of owning slaves.

“On your feet!” A guard whipped a collapsed man. “I said on your feet!”

“Sir— sir, he’s already… d-d-dead.”

“Tch. Get the next one! Saint Noah’s orders were to complete this in a month!”

If one slave collapsed, another was dragged forward to take their place. If one met a grisly accident, such as that skinny one, the one that allowed a ten-ton set of weights to collapse on his head and crush it into fine paste, Noah did not have to worry. There were two more slaves that could be stirred into action and forced to get to work. There was never a labor shortage, and there was never a lack of workers, because there was never a lack of slaves.

Bezos sure would love it here.

Noah sipped slowly from his drink. All around him, parched lips were licked, desiccated lips were smacked, and several gazes glanced towards the condensation gathering on the glass. Gazes which said they would kill for a sip, gazes which confessed raw and true that they would commit war crimes for a drop of that liquid, gazes which told Noah that they would abandon the last vestiges of their humanity, their conscience, their being, just to lick the condensation off his glass.

Now… we start the first real test.

“Gwards.”

“Yes, Saint?”

“The Bwell.”

A simple golden bell was handed over to him, one of the items on the list of things he’d needed procured. Noah slurped his smoothie with satisfaction and smacked his lips loudly, burping as he did so.

Then, he rang the bell.

Ding!

“Fwirst to eat the gwass…” Noah announced, tossing the empty glass into the air. “Gwets a meal and can be exempt fwom work for one day.”

The emptied glass shattered on the ground. His announcement brought complete silence. First, there was doubt, then there was disbelief, then, as always, there was hope. Hope. It was the same. People were always the same. Whether it was the struggling Starbucks chick working three jobs doubting whether he’d really give her the 2000 dollars cash just for pouring scalding milk down her bra, or the old, battered, stinky beggar outside Whole Foods doubting if he’d really be given that hundred dollar bill if he Naruto-ran into oncoming traffic.

People were willing to do anything for riches, but as slaves, riches had no appeal to them. What did have appeal was respite, rest, a warm meal, a bath, the ability to feel as if they were human beings, rather than pigs.

The first person who lunged for the glass shards was a skinny, frail slave with dusty hair. Another, a larger man, lunged for it afterwards. He raked in both sand and shattered glass particles, tossed them into his mouth, handfuls at a time. There was no hesitation, there was no doubt. The other man wrestled him to the ground, prying his mouth open as he tried to get the glass shards for himself, but the first man was already chewing them.

The sound of a man chewing glass brought construction to a pause. Blood pooled out of his mouth, blood pooled out of his nose, blood pooled and dribbled and dripped down his lips, down his neck. He chewed and swallowed, and slammed his head on the ground before him, his body shaking, trembling.

Noah grinned.

“Get this man a hot mweal!”

They brought him a serving of lobster and steak. The slave’s bleeding mouth watered. He stared, as if doubting it, as if uncertain. On his knees, he looked up to Noah, as if afraid to seek permission.

“Eat,” Noah said. “You entwertained me, slave.”

There, and then, in front of his fellows, disregarding decorum or shame, through his bleeding teeth, he tore down into the meal with his bare hands, eating and weeping, crying and eating.

“Compwete my challenges, and I’ll gwive rewards,” Noah announced. “Back to work!”

“You heard the Saint!”

“Back to work, the lotta you!”

As the construction continued, Noah departed.

He returned exactly seven days later, being carried in a palanquin. Noah finished a meal, eating with a golden fork and knife. Noah lifted the bell.

Ding!

He tossed the fork out towards the group.

“Fwirst person to stwab their hand ten times with the fwork gets a week off work,” Noah said. “And a meal every three days.”

The fork clattered to the ground.

There was silence.

Time froze.

Then, there was chaos.

Scrambles. Mad dashes towards the golden object. Men, women, old, young, pushing each other aside in mad desperation, each one rushing to get the fork first. It landed in the hands of a boy who looked no older than twelve or thirteen. He only managed to stab himself twice before an old man smacked the boy to the ground, grabbed the fork, and stabbed the fork into his hand three times before another man, stronger, bigger, bashed the old man over the head with a rock. The bigger man grabbed the fork for himself and stabbed, four times, before a middle-aged man bit his ankle, destabilizing him, as others dogpiled him, desperate to grab the fork first.

Noah’s attention was on the fork, as it was on the number of times each person stabbed. He was locked in, watching the scramble, the chaos, as he sipped from a milk cocktail. 

The victor ended up being that young boy. He’d swiped the fork whilst others were distracted, and managed to stab himself again, another two times, immediately running forward, and bowing his head.

“S-S-Saint… I— I did it.”

Noah grinned.

“Gwet him a hot meal! Exwude him fwom work!”

The boy’s eyes widened; they watered. He bowed his head again and again, spluttering his thanks. Noah said nothing; rather, he looked at the other slaves, the ones who had tried but failed to be the victor, and his gaze went to the slaves who hadn’t participated, and Noah’s lips upturned.

“Gwards.”

“Yes, Saint?”

“Be harsher on the others. No mwercy. No rest. Bweat them more. But those who compwete in my games… be lwess mean. You understand?”

“As you command, Saint.”

Exactly one week later, Noah returned, carried on his palanquin once again. The slaves, all as one, perked up, turning their attention to him. The previous competitors had more color in their cheeks, more life in their eyes, more robustness in their spirits. The others, however, looked even worse, even more terrible, even more wretched.

However, there was now a clear divide.

The Competitor Slaves. 

Those who participated in the last two of his games.

Those who had clearly been given preferential treatment.

The Non-Competitor Slaves.

Those who had not participated.

Those who had been treated worse than their fellow slaves.

Noah grinned.

Same shit, different toilet.

As he sat in his palanquin, this time around, he did not even bother bringing something like a tool. He only had his bell. The bell he rang.

Ding.

The slaves all turned to him.

“Fwirst person to bwing me one eyeball from another slave…” Noah said. “Gwets one month off work, and a hot meal every day.”

Silence.

Competitors looked to Non-Competitors.

Slaves looked to slaves.

Sufferers looked to sufferers.

Brothers looked to brothers.

Fathers to sons.

Brethren to brethren.

And all of that— 

Became meaningless.

To compare the current chaos to the previous scramble was to compare a schoolyard skirmish to the Battle of Waterloo. Everyone was out for blood. Everyone. There were no friendships too sacred, no relationships too revered, no bonds too hallowed. Hands went wild into the air, people clawed and grabbed at each other’s faces, and clawed and grabbed at each other’s throats.

After all, he had never said the eyeball had to come from a living slave.

The Competitors and Non-Competitors were the ones who attacked each other the most. The Non-Competitors cornered the previous Competitors, and it was as though God himself had given them a divine commandment to unleash their wrath, their fury, their resentment, against their enemies.

Watching it all, Noah became certain that this world, the One Piece world, was no different from Earth. This little experiment of his had confirmed it.

In one of his earlier philanthropy series, he gathered up a bunch of gooners from a Discord group and split them up into teams to perform a series of Takeshi Castle and Ninja Warrior challenges. He divided them into Team Ass versus Team Breasts according to their reported preferences. One of the things that blew Noah away was how quickly the two Teams went to fucking war. There was day one betrayals, day one sabotage, day one shit talking, one loser going as far as to calling Team Breasts a bunch of Oedipus-Complex babies who never got weaned off their mother’s tits properly, to counter insults, claims that Team Ass were secretly a group of homosexual losers still hiding in the closet.

F-words were dropped, N-words were fired, and the two teams had almost come to blows. There’d been so much chaos and drama that Noah got accused of scripting it when the videos came out. It wasn’t scripted. It wasn’t. Noah hadn’t scripted any of it. The people who had no beef, no history, and had collectively been chill gooners sharing in their love of porn, had instantly gone ‘screw those guys, I’m with MY squad’ the moment he divided them into Teams.

Noah had always suspected it, but he grasped it then that humans didn’t need a fucking reason to form cliques. They’d form squads and cliques and gangs over nothing. Android versus iPhone, thigh highs versus socks, leggings versus spats, big tittied goth girls versus small tittied manic pixie girls, it didn’t fucking matter. Once they formed a group and identified with a group, the next step was to start talking smack about the out-group. It was an OG human glitch from the era of tribal warfare that still hadn’t been patched.

Noah was worried it might be different in this world because the One Piece World was anachronistic to a fault. They had robots, cyborgs, advanced cloning technology, and lasers, yet still used flintlock pistols and sailed seas on museum antiques. For all he knew, humans in this world had not evolved but had been created by a god or something.

However, seeing the mad scramble for the eyes of their fellow slaves, Noah was certain the humans here were still just as tribal-minded. He suspected it was because they all came from varying isolated islands, and growing up literally, on an island, disparate from the world, separated from other cultures, other traditions, would invariably lead to the same form of inclination to form groups and cliques.

They might even be more tribalistic than people on Earth.

The sound of flesh being ripped through the air had gotten Noah’s attention, as one of the men, a strong, burly, built man, presented an eye before him. The eye of an old man, who was now wailing on the ground.

Noah grinned.

“Well done.”

It was soon time for the big leagues.

“Spwead the word! Noah likes to pway! Pway with Noah!”

Noah announced to all the slaves.

“Rewards are pwenty!”

The next week after that, Noah returned to the slaves with a new challenge and a new reward. Three months as a ‘free’ man, three months away from work, from starvation, from cruel treatments, punishments, and beatings. Three months with a hot meal served a day, and three months for the chance to feel once more like a human. The week after, a different reward. Three months of freedom and a ‘wife’ of one’s choosing. Any female slave that caught one’s eye could be theirs. It did not matter if they were someone else’s wife, if they objected to the holy matrimony, or if the age was off the clock. They would be wed, as a reward.

In the five weeks it took for the slaves to finish the construction project, word of his games, word of a Celestial Dragon child giving slaves rewards for entertaining him, rewards for amusing him, began to spread amongst the slaves in Mariejois.

The adult Celestial Dragons did not and would never notice this, nor pay heed to the business of slaves, and even if they did, few would care. They would see it only as a child playing childish games for childish entertainment, because in the end, the lives of the slaves existed purely for their entertainment.

However, they were unaware that this was more than just entertainment.

Hope was the most dreaded of things, especially given to men who had drunk heavily of despair.

Before Noah, no slaves, none, had any hope of eating good meals, being spared from torture and exhaustion, and living, once more, as a human being. If all it took was to play the games of a child, if all that was needed was to acquiesce to the whims of a child, to ‘win’ his little challenges in exchange for a taste of freedom, of a good life, however temporary, however little…

Thousands and tens of thousands would desperately lunge for that opportunity.

Even madder, even more zealous, were those who had ‘won’ those little challenges. They were more desperate than others to win again and again, because there was nothing more odious, more unspeakable, than returning to the bitter pits of hell, that wretched place of suffering, after tasting the honeyed nectar of heaven. The previous winners would do anything, anything, at all, to ensure they kept winning, anything, to be able to eat good meals and sleep soundly and be spared the whip.

Anything.

Other slaves, who saw this, came to understand that Saint Noah was their road to salvation. There was risk, yes, there was a threat of death and danger in Noah’s challenges, but there was a threat of death and danger in their lives nonetheless. Dying competing for freedom, or dying as a dog underneath a heel, there was little doubt as to which fate was preferable. 

Word had come, even, that Noah did not punish his slaves; he did not have them shot, tortured, or executed if they offended him, but would have them ‘compete’ in various challenges amongst each other, with their lives as the prize. The mere thought stirred hope; it stirred ambitions.

Yet, there was fear. Word was, all of this was because Saint Noah was a child; as he grew older, things may change. Things may become different. Thus, if one did not capitalize on it now, they may never get another chance.

After all, no slave had ever escaped from this hell, and none believed any slave ever would.

Yet, with this child, with Noah, they could live, for a time, as if they were free.

Thus it was that within three years…

Noah’s Games became the dream of every slave.

And within three years, having gathered a large following of slaves eager to do his every bidding, his will, his whim, in the name of playing games…

Noah, now five years old, standing at a surprising four-feet tall, his arms gradually putting on muscle, his babyish features slowly becoming more refined, his teeth more grown, had let out a new challenge.

“I will grant ten years of respite to whoever brings me a slave named—”

Noah grinned.

“Fisher Tiger.”