Chapter 28: The Grim Judge

  "Have you heard that the demonic man has challenged the judgment of the lord of the mountain?!"

  "How could I not have heard? All my colleagues are gathering to cheer against him!"

  Similar comments were rolling through dozens of places on the Mountain of Research and Development.

  The whole affair had become very famous, and to Eusebius's delight, the excitement in the air had become palpable.

  As the lord of the mountain rubbed his hands together, his subordinates reported to him a dramatic increase in interest in his mountain, and even... profits from the sale of themed gadgets.

  Everyone wanted to see the vile man, who had been stirring up trouble in the 66th hell for some time, finally be humiliated.

  'What's wrong with these morons?!' Aldona worried as she saw the excitement.

  She was thinking about Justinian, who hadn't left his hotel at all for the past few days. In a weak voice, he had told her earlier that he needed to develop increased penalties for actual criminals, as he had promised Eusebius.

  This was the last element he needed before the event began.

  'I am convinced they will all turn out to be innocent, but Eusebius requires me to deliver the list now.'

  In his mind, saturated with faith in justice and the Great Order, people were good by nature. After all, they were the ones who spread the wonderful religion and surely didn't deserve such horrible tortures in hell.

  'Hmm... this classification looks rather familiar,' he noted as he looked at the list of prisoners and their assigned sufferings, provided by Eusebius.

  Currently, the list began as follows:

  "Level -1: Criminals who break the law without knowing it. The suffering of feeling an empty stomach amidst the wonderful smell of fresh bread."

  "Hmm... this is just a mere formality," he thought aloud.

  From what he had heard, this floor was mainly occupied by human migrants who, upon committing a crime, excused themselves by claiming ignorance of hellish customs.

  "The punishment is essentially symbolic," he reasoned.

  After all, no physical harm was done, and from what he knew, punishments in hell were usually quite short.

  Not wanting to dwell on this particular item, he made a decision:

  "Perhaps it's worth adding the feeling of thirst to the hunger? It won't change the situation, and I doubt there are actually that many guilty people."

  His line of thinking was simple – when migrating, people surely checked the laws of the place they were moving to.

  Thus, he moved on to the next punishment.

  "Level -2: Rapists, punishment: imprisonment in an airy storm cloud."

  Here, he had to frown angrily.

  As far as he remembered from the teachings of the church of justice, rape was a very serious matter, and the holy books even recommended killing the scoundrel who committed it.

  Realizing that such an amendment would probably be rejected, he added a few complications to the existing punishment.

  "The storm should strike with lightning, and the rapist should be chemically castrated so that he may never commit such an act again," he concluded.

  At the same time, a shiver ran down his spine, and he was glad that he was only dealing with a theoretical interpretation.

  "After all, how many people can be evil enough to commit such an act?"

  Working diligently on his notes, he spent the next few days on his studies.

  He tried to approach everything fairly, and where his memory failed him, he was guided by rational logic regarding the acts in question and how he imagined a good world.

  When he finished his work, the item dedicated to heresy provoked his particular outrage.

  "The worst of the worst!" he snarled with a scowl.

  After all, like any pious man, he rightly considered this crime the absolute worst and even added in small letters that the lord of the mountain could consider the death penalty in such cases.

  Overall, however, he found with some surprise that the very concept of punishments on the individual levels was already surprisingly logical and not a bad reflection of the advice from the holy books.

  'If only the devils actually caught the guilty, this would be a pretty decent system,' he thought, shaking his head.

  When his amendments were ready, he placed his signature on the paper and handed it over to Eusebius as quickly as possible.

  As the devil read Justinian's proposal, his eyebrows shot up at first.

  'Is this man mocking me?' he thought.

  He knew a thing or two about humans and was sure that this would be an attempt to free his human brethren.

  'After all, any virtuous devil would do the same for his own kind.'

  Taking this into account, the lord of the mountain had been preparing for a battle of wits for several days. Legal loopholes, ambiguous words, and hidden meanings were supposed to play a key role here.

  'Besides, the very fact that I had to wait so long was probably a form of warfare,' he concluded.

  However, the proposal for changes to the punishments he received was, to say the least... surprising.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  You see, no matter how many times he read it, it seemed quite unambiguous and, contrary to all expectations... it actually made the punishments for the prisoners harsher.

  'Moreover, it toughens them in a way that gives even me the shivers...'

  For example, on level -8, Justinian proposed additionally burdening those sentenced to drown in excrement with lead vests, and sometimes turning them upside down and setting their feet on fire...

  'Boruta would have my head if he found out about this!' the terrified devil thought about what he had read.

  Eusebius completely failed to understand the game this young man had invited him to play. Despite concentrating to the point of a headache, he couldn't find any loophole or trick.

  'Or maybe it's a game of chicken? He sent me absurdities, certain that I would reject them!' he theorized, sweating from the immense intellectual effort.

  He hesitated a bit, but finally grit his teeth and decided to call his opponent's bluff. Unfortunately, he little knew that Justinian had written these ideas in all seriousness.

  At last, the day of judgment arrived.

  Justinian, upon whom a spell had been cast to disguise him as a devil, was preparing in the courtroom for the first trial. To his right was his assistant, Aldona, and to his left, a lamp with a spell that checked the truthfulness of spoken words.

  It was filled with a special substance that reacted to lies.

  "I like Aldona's hair ribbon," he blurted out without any warning.

  The noblewoman, of course, immediately blushed.

  She glanced at him with a questioning look, only to notice that he was staring intently at the glass lamp.

  'How could he do such a cruel thing to me?!' she immediately fumed inwardly.

  She was about to tell him what she thought of it when, opening her eyes wide, she noticed that... the button hadn't lit up at all!

  The she-devil was overjoyed, but the young man didn't even notice.

  "I don't miss the human world," he said, focused on his test.

  Not a second passed before the button... filled with a bright red color.

  Seeing this, he nodded in satisfaction. This was exactly the functionality he expected!

  "Now we just wait for the coming storm," he said, sitting up straight behind his judge's bench.

  The hall was arranged in a manner similar to old human amphitheaters. The stands surrounded it from several sides, while the judge's office was on a distinct elevation to emphasize the weight of devilish majesty.

  Soon, the stands filled with curious onlookers who had come to see the terrible human try to save his kinsmen.

  "Apparently, he wanted to free them by force before, and only Feliks Szcz?sny stopped him!"

  "Ha, that's nothing. While preparing for the pilgrimage, he terrorized our wonderful nobility in his spare time!"

  Justinian had a sour expression listening to such slander.

  'Don't they know this is about justice?!' he fumed inwardly.

  He had to admit, however, that the desire to help innocent people had indeed led him to this idea, so ultimately, he did not comment on the crowd's behavior.

  Soon, the stands were filled to the last seat—they couldn't even accommodate everyone who wanted to attend—and the start of the great event was announced.

  The first prisoner was brought into the arena.

  He was a short-haired man of about thirty, broad in the shoulders with a suspicious gaze. Two burly devils with large horns, red skin, and wings protruding from their backs guarded him with serious expressions, leading him before the bench.

  Justinian quickly read the summary of his case:

  'Accused of brutally beating four humans and five devils in this dimension. Sentenced to two months of suffering from the feeling of hunger...'

  The young man immediately frowned. It was already clear how flawed the devil's system was.

  'First of all, where would he get the strength for that?' he concluded, knowing that devils themselves possessed considerable might. 'On top of that, only two months for something like that?! They could be more realistic in their arguments!'

  He quickly directed his gaze to the convict.

  He remembered that he now looked like a devil, so he smiled to avoid accidentally frightening the prisoner before his testimony.

  "Nine people beaten... how could you do something like that... you're only... one man..." he had to pause his speech to maintain what he considered a friendly expression.

  He didn't notice, however, that the man visibly flinched upon seeing this:

  'This devil is looking at me like an absolute psychopath... I bet he's some sick degenerate...'

  After the strange question, he was sure that something was wrong with this judge.

  He would have preferred to withdraw his testimony, but he was starting to fear that since he was the first to be judged, this psycho would remember it and seek revenge.

  'I must remember to present everything truthfully, but also taking into account the local virtue...' the prisoner finally grit his teeth, making a difficult decision.

  He finally told his story, in which he had beaten several people, but each one separately, attacking them cunningly, for instance when they were drunk.

  To his relief, he noticed that the devil was no longer smiling so terrifyingly. What's more, he heard... some slight cheering from the stands in his direction!

  "Bravo!"

  "Truly devilish!"

  A few devils, impressed by the story, cheered.

  They loved motifs of achieving one's goals at all costs, and this man fit the bill perfectly. Some of the fiends were even surprised that a mere toilet cleaner could have such a wonderful character.

  But the trial was still ongoing.

  "You testified earlier that you did not know the hellish customs precisely," the judge's low voice spoke.

  The prisoner, slightly sobered, nodded.

  Of course, it was the truth. His friends from the migration had told him one thing:

  "As long as you don't know the local customs, no punishment awaits you!" he recalled the wonderful loophole in the local system.

  It worked at least once – after all, the starving prisoners on level -1 were constantly read the local collection of customs.

  Justinian looked at the button on his left. The color did not light up. The young man thought for a moment and made a decision.

  He was about to announce the verdict when he was interrupted by shouts from the stands:

  "Free him!"

  "He's one of us!"

  "We need people like him here!"

  The devils who had previously been won over by the convict's "wonderful character" cheered.

  The absurd scene made Justinian unable to believe his own ears.

  Finally, however, he sighed and issued what he considered a just verdict:

  "The rest of the sentence to be spent on level -8, with additional whipping by demons before being thrown into the pit of excrement. Additionally, setting his feet on fire when he is thrown into that pit head down," he said with all the majesty of his newly acquired institution.

  The audience and the convict seemed not to understand what he had just said.

  Everyone processed his words for a few seconds. But finally... true pandemonium broke out!

  "THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CASE!"

  "HE'S A GOOD LAD, HE FITS IN WITH THE DEVILISH COMMUNITY!"

  "INNOCENT!!!"

  The stands shouted, outraged by the verdict. They simply could not comprehend how someone who, after all, did not know he had broken any laws was to be judged as a criminal.

  "Silence!" Justinian snapped back, indignant that someone dared to question a verdict consistent with the teachings of the church of justice. "In any human country, you get judged for assault, so talk of not knowing the law is just a total sham!" he stated the obvious.

  The crowd, however, which had already made up its mind, became even more incensed at these words. A great commotion arose in the stands, and only the guards could calm down the overly enthusiastic spectators.

  Soon, the terrified prisoner was led away by the guards.

  All of this, however... was just the beginning!

  Justinian interrogated convicts all day long and to his horror, almost every case ended with him harshening the sentences! He could count on the fingers of one hand the cases where someone actually turned out to be innocent and could be released from prison. That's how good Eusebius was at vetting the guilty when he bought them for his research!

  What was worse... a considerable number of the prisoners ended up on even worse levels than their previous sentences dictated.

  "This calls for a revolution!"

  "Who let this horrible man in here?!"

  "How can one be such a villain?!"

  The audience was terribly outraged by this and was now openly cheering for the convicts.

  This was all the more absurd because not long ago they had sincerely despised them as "toilet cleaners" and a lesser sort of being.

  Now, however, there was one enemy, and his name was Justinian the Just.

  'What is actually happening here?' Eusebius wrung his hands in his box.

  He wasn't sure if he should be excited about this unexpected turn of events, or rather... worry about getting chewed out by his superior.

  Soon, Justinian and his verdicts became a great sensation throughout the dimension, and huge crowds of increasingly important devils flocked to the Mountain of Research and Development.

  Among others, the Orange Prince, who had not been seen since his fall in Ukuun, appeared, as did Voivode Boruta, and even... Maleficius!

  In fact, the only devil who did not appear was the empty-headed Ignatius, who had been behaving very strangely for a long time and did not leave his mountain.