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**Ne Job — Chapter 197
"THE GOD WHO FAILED HIS OWN AUDIT"**
The sky over the Mortal Bureau's courtyard shimmered like a cracked mirror—thin spiderwebs of light spreading across the clouds, pulsing with the rhythm of an approaching calamity. The Fourth Vein's tremor hadn't settled. It had gone quiet. Too quiet.
Ne Job hated quiet.
Quiet meant paperwork.
And paperwork meant death.
Or worse: double filing.
He stood by the ruptured Audit Stone, rubbing the back of his neck as the shards of glowing script drifted gently to the ground like bureaucratic snow.
Assistant Yue crouched beside the stone, gently brushing a fragment with her fingertips. "This isn't a normal rupture," she said. "It's reacting to something from inside Heaven's central registry."
Ne Job leaned in. "You mean… the main database?"
"No," she said, eyes narrowing. "The root database. The place the gods pretend doesn't exist."
Great. Fantastic. Wonderful.
Ne Job always dreamed of spending his internship poking at cosmic OS vulnerabilities the gods didn't want anyone to know about. Truly magical.
"Yue!" a shout echoed from the courtyard gate.
Arden sprinted in, sword in hand, sweat streaking across her forehead. The paladin looked like she had run through three disasters and punched a fourth. "I found the source of the tremor!"
Ne Job perked up. "Is it paperwork-related?"
"What? No!"
His shoulders sagged. "Then why tell me?"
"Because," Arden growled, "the tremor was caused by a deity-level script override from inside the Bureau. Someone triggered an Internal Divine Audit Protocol."
Yue went pale.
Ne Job blinked. "That sounds… normal? Everything here has 'divine,' 'internal,' or 'audit' in the name."
"No," Yue whispered. "You don't understand."
She stood, the wind catching her hair as her voice dropped to a dark, terrible whisper:
"That protocol only activates when a god has violated their own cosmic performance appraisal."
Ne Job felt the cold clarity of office horror wash over him.
"A god failed… their own KPIs?"
Arden nodded grimly.
Ne Job swallowed. "Oh no. Oh NO. That's the highest level of shame. That's worse than death. That's worse than—"
"Being assigned to the Form Basement for a millennium," Yue finished.
Ne Job shuddered.
Even the Form Basement had standards.
Before anyone could continue, a sound erupted overhead.
A scream.
A thunderous, cosmic, echoing scream—like a deity being told they must attend a meeting and provide snacks.
The clouds tore open.
A figure plummeted from the sky, wrapped in broken seals, trailing chains of glowing blue ink.
He hit the courtyard floor so hard the ground cracked.
Dust exploded.
Ne Job and the others staggered back.
When the cloud settled, the figure lay face-down, wearing the tattered, half-burnt robes of a Celestial Auditor. Script-seals flickered across his body like corrupted code.
His Pulseband sparked weakly with red warning runes.
Yue's hands flew to her mouth.
Arden's eyes widened.
Ne Job pointed dramatically.
"HEAVENS ABOVE—HE'S GOT THE SAME INTERN BADGE AS ME!"
The figure groaned. Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself upright.
He looked young. Barely older than Ne Job. But his eyes were ancient—burdened with centuries of divine bureaucracy.
He coughed. "Is… is this the Mortal Bureau?"
"Yes," Yue said, crouching down. "Who are you?"
The figure opened his palm.
Light pooled inside it.
A Celestial Seal floated upward—cracked in three places, its edges flickering.
He spoke two words that froze the courtyard.
"I… failed."
The cracked seal shattered completely.
Yue jerked backward. "That was a Supreme Auditor's Seal! What did you fail?"
The god-intern swallowed hard.
Ne Job knelt beside him, matching his seriousness with the gravest tone he could muster. "Don't worry. Failing is normal. I fail every day. Sometimes twice before lunch."
The figure blinked. "…What."
Arden coughed politely. "What he means is—we need data. Tell us what happened."
The divine intern closed his eyes.
"When you enter the Supreme Auditor rank," he said, voice trembling, "you receive an unalterable cosmic KPI: Ensure the continuity of your assigned thread of fate. If that thread collapses… you fail."
Yue's face drained of color.
"Which thread were you assigned?"
The god-intern lifted a shaking finger.
Pointing directly…
…at Ne Job.
A breeze drifted through the courtyard. Somewhere in the distance, a pigeon fainted.
Ne Job froze mid-blink. "Sorry—what?"
"You… you're Ne Job, right?" the god-intern asked.
"Last time I checked."
"Then—then—oh gods—" The intern doubled over, gripping his head. "This is catastrophic. You weren't supposed to be here. You weren't supposed to survive Form 31-B. You weren't supposed to interact with—ANY of this!"
He gestured frantically at everything around them.
Yue frowned. "You're saying Ne Job wasn't meant to exist in his current role?"
"Not even CLOSE!" the god-intern cried. "Your fate thread mutated. It branched. Then it looped. Then it merged with an invalid story index—WHO EVEN USES STORY INDEXES ANYMORE?!"
Ne Job felt personally attacked.
Arden put a calming hand on the god-intern's shoulder. "Focus. What happened to you?"
The divine intern inhaled sharply.
"My appraisal triggered a recursive audit. The system traced the failure to me. Standard punishment: forced ejection to the nearest bureau branch."
Ne Job raised a hand. "By ejection, you mean—"
"I was thrown out of Heaven."
"Through the sky?"
"Yes."
"Headfirst?"
"Yes."
Ne Job nodded sympathetically. "Welcome to my life."
Yue scanned the courtyard. The Audit Stone's fragments had stopped drifting—they were now orbiting the fallen god like a constellation of shattered glyphs.
"Your seal broke on impact," she said softly. "If Heaven detects that, they'll send enforcement."
The divine intern winced. "I know."
"Who?" Arden asked.
He whispered:
"Shard Court."
Everyone stiffened.
Shard Court Judges did not "visit."
They "arrived," in the same sense that an extinction event "arrived."
Ne Job squinted. "So… you failed your cosmic KPI… because of me?"
The god-intern nodded miserably.
"Your fate is anomalous. The thread I was assigned to safeguard—your thread—has broken every rule. Every prediction. Every projection."
He swallowed.
"It sings."
"Excuse me?" Ne Job asked.
"Your fate thread sings, Ne Job! It hums like a broken violin inside a hurricane! No mortal fate is supposed to produce waveform anomalies!"
Arden muttered, "This explains so much."
Yue sighed. "This explains everything."
Ne Job folded his arms. "Well, maybe my fate sings because I'm special."
The god-intern stared at him. "…It sings because it's on fire."
"Oh."
A moment of silence.
Then the divine intern gripped Ne Job by the collar, desperation in his eyes.
"Listen! If I don't fix your fate thread before Shard Court arrives, they won't just punish me—they'll erase the entire branch of reality associated with your anomaly!"
Ne Job frowned. "Erase? Like… delete?"
"Yes! Delete! Remove! Uninstall your existence!"
"Like… permanently?"
"Yes!"
Ne Job gasped.
"No more internship?"
"NO MORE ANYTHING!"
"Oh. That's worse."
The divine intern collapsed again, clutching his head.
"I need access to your thread. I need data. I need context. I need—"
Footsteps echoed at the courtyard's entrance.
A cold wind swept through.
Yue's breath hitched.
Arden raised her sword slowly.
Ne Job turned.
A tall figure in obsidian judicial robes stepped into the courtyard, her shadow falling like a blade.
Behind her floated a halo of razor-thin crystal fragments—each shard etched with unyielding law.
Her voice rang like a gavel striking the heart of a star.
"By order of Shard Court, this anomaly is now under review."
Her gaze stabbed toward Ne Job.
"And the intern responsible will be judged."
The divine intern screamed.
Ne Job screamed louder.
And the chapter ended, because fate hated him.