The angel’s blue eyes burn like an icy fire. They lock onto my own crimson ones. “Please, show some mercy.”

I laugh. I laugh so hard I almost drop my sword.

“Mercy? Where do you think you are?” I snarl. “There’s no mercy in Hell.”

My sword whistles as it cuts through the air. It passes through the angel’s neck just as easily. Before either his body or head hit the ground, they shatter into specks of light that hang in the air, twinkling for a moment, before dissipating like smoke.

“Did you get anything good?” my partner in this little excursion asks.

He stands on two muscular legs--comically small in comparison to his torso that is double human proportions. Coarse, stone-like flesh, creaks and groans with every movement.

His giant jaw grinds into what I figure passes as a smile. We’ve teamed up on some large group quests, but this was our first time with just the two of us. I admit, he’s good, but his character name makes it almost impossible to take him seriously--FuknDemon1.

I snap my fingers, bringing up my display and swipe through the menu options until I come to the tab Latest Spoils. Nothing.

“Nah. He was only a level five cherubim. I bet they just allowed him out of Heaven and he thought he’d be all badass and stir some shit in Hell.” I look at my feet where he’d been just a moment ago. An hour tracking some know-nothing noob. “What a waste of time.”

“Still,” FuknDemon1 says with a punch to my arm, “that was awesome. There’s no mercy in Hell! Dude, you were all like Spaaartaaa! and crap.”

I shrug it off. No sense being a douche about it. Still, I bet it did look kind of cool. Only problem with this game being first person, you don't get to see your character’s awesome moves.

"Do you have time to do another mission?" FuknDemon1 asks. "I've got a fourth tier Influence.”

"What's the map reference?"

“17-14-630084-4833438”

As he recites the numbers, I type them into my mapping system.

I shake my head. “Sorry, I can't."

"Too late?"

I check my clock--it's just after midnight. Which, yeah, is late for a school night. Not that anyone will care.

"No, I still have time, but it's in my no-go zone."

There are missions in Hell, but the biggest points are for manipulating mortals. Only thing is, on Earth, every player has a restricted zone where they’re not able to go. Chatter on the boards figures those areas correspond to where we live.

Revelations uses geo data from multiple sources to create realistic representations of the world’s neighborhoods. It might be creepy to mess with people in our own, so I suppose the restriction makes sense. Though seeing how realistically the game renders my own neighborhood might be kind of cool.

The cracked slant that passes for a smile crosses FuknDemon1’s face.

"I've got a patch that'll fix that,” he says.

We’re standing in the middle of the Eternal Plane, a field with calf-high grass that spans hundreds of miles. There’s been no sign of another player the entire time we chased the newbie angel. The mention of a forbidden mod still makes me drop my voice to a whisper.

"You mean the geo-hack? I thought that was just a rumor."

He shakes his head.

"Nope. I got it from my cousin. I did a minor manipulation on the fringe of my no-go zone the other night. It worked fine. Give me your email and I'll send you the file."

"You better not be sending me a virus."

He holds up his clawed hand.

"Scout's honor."

"Yeah, cause you're such a Boy Scout."

His mangled face, with elongated snout and red slits for eyes, manages to look hurt.

"Am too."

I do my best not to crack up--there's no mistaking the expressions of my avatar's humanoid face. Maybe I should've made him look more monstrous, like FuknDemon1's.

"Ok, fine, you're a real Boy Scout." Am I smirking? I concentrate on keeping my expression nonchalant. "Go ahead and send me the file. My email is shamshiel@revelations-mmorpg.com."

"Cool. Give me a second."

His avatar goes slack, all light extinguishing from its eyes. A field of energy surrounds him, preventing any damage--a character during pause.

Revelations works in real-time. While you can pause your character and receive no injury, the rest of the world still continues on without you. It's a pain in the ass if you're in the middle of a long campaign and need to piss real bad, but it adds to the realism.

The field fizzles out and his eyes glow again.

“Ok, I sent it. It’s just a small exec file. Drop it in the top level of the game folder and execute it. You’ll need to reboot after it installs. I’ll wait here.”

“Ok. I’ll be back in a few.”

A snap brings up my menu and I swipe it over to the Logoff option. From FuknDemon1’s perspective, the grey-skinned, humanoid demon in black armor blinks out of existence.