Chapter 3 - Grandpa's Journal
“What a stinky room and that old filthy mattress on the floor. Seriously, Dante, what exactly do you want me to help you with?" Arthur asked, looking around and almost internally begging it wasn’t about cleaning the room.
"I need your help setting up some equipment for an RPG session." Dante replied, grabbing a few cables connected to a homemade server in the corner of the room.
Cables stretched across the entire hallway, some running down to the basement and others connected to his mom's equipment.
"But we don’t need all this stuff," Arthur said, pulling his bag from his back. "We just need a table and the books, which I have all right here in my bag. We don’t even need to play online this time. I just think they might be too scared to come here."
"Everyone’s scared of this place, Arthur, but I’ve already got the whole setup ready. If everything goes as planned, they’ll be fine when they get here," Dante whispered, then added, "Plus, there’s a surprise."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing," Dante replied, tugging on some cables.
The two of them continued dragging cables and connecting wires. Dante pointed out some cables that needed to be taken to the basement and said:
"Take these downstairs. I’ll be down in a bit. Be careful with the stairs, and don’t plug anything in yet. I still need to figure out what goes where down there." He turned back to the server next to the mattress.
Arthur carried the cables downstairs, holding his bag and making sure to keep the wires neatly in line with the others that snaked along the staircase.
"If he just used the money Diomedes gives him to take care of my aunt, I think he could’ve taken her far away from here by now, just like my dad wanted," Arthur thought, noticing that none of the equipment looked cheap. "But judging by the state of this stuff, it doesn’t seem new. I just hope he’s not stealing too."
Arthur ducked under the staircase and followed the passage down to the hidden basement. He finally noticed piles of schematics and equipment manuals stacked on one of the tables to the left of the stairs. The basement was divided into two parts: the upper-left corner was cluttered with a heap of equipment. Arthur finished pulling the cables down the stairs and shouted back to Dante.
"I’m down here!"
"Alright, wait for me. I’m coming down!" Dante called back from afar.
"Coming down… yeah, right. This guy’s slow with everything. Unbelievable. Still, if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t even have a chance of getting everyone together," Arthur muttered, finding some consolation in the thought of finally meeting his friends for the first time.
In the center of the first section of the basement, to the left of the entrance stairs, there was a round table with a stack of books, scattered notes, RPG character sheets, and various spare electronics. Arthur walked to the table, pushed some books aside, and placed his bag on the floor. He opened it and pulled out the journal Dante had handed him when he arrived. Before putting it on the table, he blew on it to clear off the dust.
Big mistake. The puff of air sent years of accumulated dust flying, making him cough as his face was covered in the fine, dirty particles. He leaned over the slightly dusty table, propping his elbows on it, and began to read the journal.
~~ Journal of José ~~
23/09/1926
Dulce convinced me to write in this, so I’ll stick to recording only the important events of my day. She said it would help. She seemed worried about me, and I’m glad someone feels that way about me.
~~
24/09/1926
Today, Dulce came to visit me, but she had to sneak over. She had a fight with her brother—he doesn’t seem to like me very much. I’m not sure why, but honestly, I’d prefer to have his life instead of living alone in this house.
~~
25/09/1926
I decided to add a section about what happened over the past year since the Doctor’s death. He brought me here to work on a project about last year’s storm. Everything changed when he wanted to go back to retrieve his equipment and had an accident. The newspaper said he lost control of his car, but I couldn’t bring myself to find out more. I couldn’t handle the idea of losing the only person I had left after my parents’ deaths. “There are two stains right over this part… He must have suffered a lot,” Arthur noted.
~~
26/09/1926
Today is Sunday. Dulce came to visit me again, and we spent the afternoon talking about her fight with her brother. I took the opportunity to tell her I’ve been writing in this journal, and she smiled and hugged me. Today was the best day of my life.
~~
~~
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"So that's how they met" Arthur said, smiling.
"Hey!" Dante shouted from the top of the stairs. "Let’s get started already, come up here, and let’s talk in the kitchen."
Arthur closed the journal and went up to the main part of the house, immediately finding Dante holding a hand-drawn map of the lower part of the favela.
"Let’s do this right," Dante said, "or my brother’s going to ruin everything."
"What do you mean?" Arthur asked.
"What do you mean!? Do you even know what’s going on in this favela?" Dante threw the maps onto the kitchen table, where they were already sitting down.
"The situation is this, Arthur: this place is a mess. Nobody leaves their house after 8 PM, and everyone coming home from work after that is frisked. Most people get home late because they work far away. But that’s not all. The 'Great Diomedes'—" Dante said with disdain, "just picked a fight with the PCC. You don’t pick fights with the PCC. They run the whole damn state, and it’s gotten dangerous for outsiders to even come here. The people in the chat can’t know about this, or no one’s going to show up..."
"I already think no one’s coming anyway," Arthur interrupted, turning his face away.
"Yeah, Arthur, I know you think that. The thing is, they’re the only people who think like us. There’s no one else around who likes the same games, books, and RPGs that we do, other than some forty-year-old Russian guy holed up in his parents’ basement."
"But you’re dragging this out too much. I already invited them. If they do come, what are you planning to do?" Arthur asked, irritated. "How are you going to bring them all here?"
"That’s where part of what I’ve done here at home comes in. I managed to set up a sub-control system for the favela’s power grid, and I’m going to cut all the power for ten minutes. That’ll be enough time for you to bring everyone here through the only entrance without being seen."
"What the hell, Dante, do you realize how dangerous that is?"
"OF COURSE I DO. I live here, remember?" Dante shot back. "I can pull it off because Diomedes is an idiot. He rigged all these illegal power lines and didn’t realize that the main control point for the electrical grid is right there, in front of us. All I had to do, besides convincing him to set this up for the favela, was program a sub-station diffuser for ENEL. They have no idea who controls this part of the neighborhood now. It’s me."
"For the community," Arthur corrected him.
"Yeah, yeah... but that doesn’t matter. I have control."
Arthur stared at Dante for a moment. Dante’s fingers dug into the table as he continued, sitting beside him.
"Arthur, now we can be together. This is going to be the best RPG session of our lives—not alone or through text anymore."
Arthur stayed silent, looking at the maps, and then turned to Dante.
"Okay, let’s give it a shot."
Dante jumped up, excited, and hugged Arthur.
"That’s my guy. Let me explain everything."
Dante laid out all the details about how to get from the station without drawing attention to the surrounding community. Considering how many people might come, it could be tricky to outsmart the "gatekeepers," as they called Diomedes' guards. They finished planning how they’d communicate during the journey. Dante handed Arthur a radio and taught him how to use it. Then they went back up to Dante’s room to access the chat and finalize the meeting.
"Come on, log into my account," Dante said, already taking over the keyboard to type.
"You’re really hyped, huh," Arthur noticed.
Dante didn’t respond.
Loading, please wait...
Starting://YGGBRASIL_NM Kurumin
root@YGGBRASIL_NM:~#
START_SERVER
root@YGGBRASIL_NM:~# host:UNKNOWN
After booting up, he started typing his login and password.
- Enter your username: D4nt3
- Enter your password: *********************
"What a long password." Arthur said, laughing.
"I care about the security of my accounts." Dante replied, not looking up at him.
Authenticating User...
...
User Authorized: Generating Visiting Card...
############ INFO #############|
#Autor: D4nt3 ################|
#Email:
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###############################|
###############################|
#Warning: If you were not invited and, therefore, added to the YggBrasil safe list,
this server will automatically download a Ransomware.
This is your only warning!
###############################|
### Farewell!
############################|
root@ANGRA_NM:~# //DO YOU REALLY WANT TO CONTINUE??
1 - YES
2 - NO
root@ANGRA_NM:~# 1
ACCESSING...
...
You are Online...
...
Server - on
▓██***██▓**▄████***▄████**▄▄▄▄****██?███***▄▄▄********██████**██▓*██▓****
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*▓██*???***?***?***?***?*???***?***??*?*??**?***??*??*??**?*?*?*??*?*?**?
*?*?*??**?*?***?*?*?***?**?****?***??***?***?***?***?**?**?***?*?**?*?***
Welcome! ______ Menu [Esc] = Exit
Type __________ Menu [C] = Chat
the option ____ Menu [M] = Music
you wish> _____ Menu [I] = Information
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//C
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_CHAT YGGBRASIL- ON_
_You are logged in... - said the monitor.
_Server date - JUN-29-2025, 21:23:07_
D4nt3 has entered!
