Mira and Yu decide to change once more into attire better suited for the battles ahead. Yu opts for a loose white shirt featuring a print of a cat with big, sad eyes and the words “Do Not The Cat” below, paired with beige pants and white-and-red shoes. Mira, on the other hand, slips into a fitted navy tee, black skinny jeans, and denim sneakers.

  “I haven’t seen you change even once, Landon,” Wyn remarks.

  “You won’t believe this, but all my other outfits are exactly the same as what I’m wearing right now…I love pink polos,” James responds.

  “Sis, you were with Wyn and Yu the whole time? What use is Steve’s technique to someone with your elemental abilities?” Mira asks.

  “It was a great way for me to gather ideas on how to make the most of their new moves as a team,” Lisa replies.

  The team’s chatter fades into silence as Wei steps out of his tent, determination evident in his posture, ready to lead them to the next level. Activating the megaphone feature, he instructs the army to assume formation, with he and Steve standing at the front this time. With precision and focus, they begin their slow march toward the towering, open gate.

  “Last time we didn’t have enough time to react, so this time, make sure you all use the barriers, okay?” David reminds everyone firmly.

  “I wonder…if a barrier is supposed to protect us from external danger, why can we share it with others?” Violet asks.

  “Gotta ask the nerds when…if we get the chance,” Eugene replies.

  “It’s ‘when’, not ‘if’! We’ll make it all the way to the end, Eugene!” Charlotte says.

  Pausing their advance just before the giant gate, Steve instructs his puppeteers to search for any information regarding the first level of Heaven. After a brief moment, the puppeteers find something valuable.

  The first level of Heaven is the only one where Light Force punishes evildoers, despite their loyalty to him, to keep them far from the seventh level and protect his reputation as a revered deity. In all past Hell invasions, this level has never been reshuffled, so a ruthless, unforgiving ruler is expected to guard it.

  “Punishment in Heaven? Now, that’s something new,” James says.

  Following Steve and Wei through the gate, David’s and Wyn’s teams find themselves floating in space.

  “NOT SPACE!” Wyn exclaims.

  “I can hear you fine, Oppa. Actually, it’s not that hard to move around. It’s like swimming. Look!” Mira says, demonstrating by maneuvering with her arms and legs.

  “Seriously, MOVE! Others are coming through!” Charlotte demands.

  What intrigues Wyn the most is the absence of a wall where they’re emerging from. Unlike Hell, the portal simply opens in the air.

  “From what I understand, Heaven loops,” David explains. “You can move in any direction forever, only to return to the same starting point.”

  “So, how do we find the moderator – uh, guardian?” Wyn wonders, to which David shrugs.

  The first level of Heaven is a vast, dark space, illuminated by an unknown source. Scattered across the empty expanse are round meatballs.

  “Them meatballs look so tasty. Lemme eat ‘em,” a soul from the army says.

  However, as soon as he touches one, he plummets. The sudden drop leaves no time for anyone to react, though a wind soul quickly follows. Both disappear from sight.

  “Don’t touch the meatbarls!” Wei warns.

  As more souls emerge from the portal, they begin to push toward the meatballs. At the front with David’s team, Yu is shoved into one and immediately plummets downward. Violet quickly follows, telling the others to stay put and wait for her return. Soon enough, one by one, Hell’s souls begin to fall.

  While the souls hovering in space are in disarray, Wei points to the incoming enemies – pizza creatures shaped like actual pizza slices with various toppings, their pointy fronts as sharp as knives.

  “You’re a disgrace!” Steve shouts, shooting a slice topped with pineapples.

  The slices fly in formation upward, positioning themselves above the souls, then suddenly descend, coming down on them like rain. Despite the space setting, the souls can use their elemental abilities just as they would anywhere else. While many opt for the barriers, Wyn decides to try the new move he learned from Steve. He, along with Lisa, moves upward. With Lisa protecting him, Wyn fires two cyclones from his hands, sending them horizontally and overlapping each other – one pushing away and the other pulling in. The enemies caught in the pulling cyclone are torn apart like a human devours a delicious pizza.

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  Meanwhile, Yu plummets faster than Violet can reach him, diving into a stream of what appears to be spaghetti sauce, filled with floating meatballs and al dente spaghetti strings. Sensing that this is similar to an ocean, he dives deeper into the sauce, only to encounter a horrifying sight – souls tethered to spaghetti strings, anchored by large meatballs, gasping for air and waving at him as if pleading for release. Ignoring them, Yu dives further. However, he soon feels a force pulling him upward – it's Violet, using a gust of wind to pull him up while she remains submerged in the sauce herself.

  “What were you thinking?” Violet asks, gasping for air the moment they resurface.

  “I’m sorry. I was just curious to see what’s down there, and oh boy, there’s a lot down there!”

  “Really? Should we check it out?”

  “You’ll suffer underwater.”

  “I’ll tough it out. We need to provide any info we find to the army!”

  With Violet holding onto Yu’s back, the two dive into the sauce together. Despite it being some sort of tomato sauce, neither Yu nor Violet has any trouble seeing what’s beneath. Passing a large group of tethered souls, they eventually reach an empty depth. Violet taps Yu on the shoulder and points upward, but Yu insists they keep going. Finally, they reach the bottom of the sauce, and the sight below is even more troubling than the one above – souls with spaghetti strings attached deep into the back of their heads, just above the neck, twitching in pain, their eyes rolling and mouths agape.

  The two notice different types of creatures, seemingly inspired by pastas. The reginette-shaped creatures use their flat, ruffled bodies, resembling amoebas, to move through the sauce by contracting and expanding their form, creating ripples that allow them to shift and glide through the thick liquid. Their movements are fluid yet unpredictable, making them difficult to catch or avoid. Then there are the shell and jumbo shell pasta creatures, which rest at the bottom of the sauce with their smooth, curved exteriors. When souls attempt to escape, they use their large, hollow bodies to encase them, dragging them back down to the depths of the sauce. Finally, the fusilli creatures spin through the sauce with their twisty, corkscrew-like bodies. When they encounter souls, they create mini cyclones by rotating rapidly, pulling their prey into the vortex.

  Violet rapidly taps on Yu’s shoulder, signaling him to leave as the pasta creatures begin swimming toward them. Yu dashes upward, boosted by Violet’s wind for a faster ascent. The reginette and fusilli creatures are quick and gaining on them. Yu pauses and turns to unleash streams of water, sending some of the creatures spiraling downward. Meanwhile, the fusilli creatures begin spinning, their weak vortexes slowing Yu’s ascent. Violet quickly repositions herself, wrapping her arm across Yu’s chest, and activates a barrier that frees them from the pull. As they continue their climb, they feel the impact of the reginette creatures hitting the barrier.

  Just as they reach the tethered souls, Violet deactivates the barrier, slices through the spaghetti strings with her dagger, and pulls the souls toward them with gusts of wind, only to send them plunging into the pasta swarm below. The swarm quickly converges around the souls, prompting Violet to repeat the process until they’re finally free from the chase. However, as soon as they resurface, Violet, desperately gasping for air, grabs onto a floating meatball. In an instant, she’s blown back up into space.

  “Oh? That’s how we get back to space!” Yu says, touching the same meatball and being shot back up as well.

  Meanwhile, the souls floating in space are being bombarded by space invader creatures shaped like sliced mushrooms, shooting balls of mud from above the Hell army. While Steve is having a blast shooting them down, David unleashes an onslaught of thunder strikes from above, burning the creatures to a crisp, the smell reminding him of sautéed mushrooms.

  “Boss! Focus!” Charlotte shouts.

  “Sorry, I’m getting hungry with all these food creatures,” David says.

  Realizing they’re no match, the creatures retreat, all flying away in the same direction. Yu and Violet rejoin the army just in time for them to follow the retreating enemies.

  “You won’t believe what we saw down there!” Yu boasts.

  “More meatballs?” Wyn responds.

  “Almost! There were sauce and pasta creatures too! Oh! And souls being tortured!”

  “Shouldn’t we be telling them more about the meatballs, Yu?” Violet interrupts with a sigh.

  As Violet shares what she and Yu discovered, Wei assigns some souls to retrieve the fallen ones from earlier, while the rest of the army pushes forward.

  “You’re drenched in sauce, Yu,” Mira remarks.

  “It’s fine. I’ll change later. The sauce is actually quite delicious! Wanna try?” Yu suggests, looking toward his team. The team hesitates for a moment before giving in, dipping their fingers into the sauce. The rich, savory flavor immediately surprises them, and they exchange looks of astonishment. It’s unlike anything they've ever tasted – an unexpected delight amidst the chaos.

  As the team recovers from the surprise flavor, their attention shifts back to the mission. Having been following the creatures for quite some time, with the help of the wind souls, the army manages to keep up. But their flight comes to an abrupt halt as a massive figure appears ahead. The creatures continue toward it, attaching themselves to its enormous form.

  “Mamma mia! Itsa bigg spaghetti!” exclaims a soul with an odd accent, performing the iconic "che vuoi" finger gesture.

  The towering creature’s body consists of a tangled mess of spaghetti noodles that curl and twist in chaotic patterns. Two large meatballs are positioned at either side of its "cheeks," while two spaghetti tendrils extend upward from the center of its mass, each topped with a large eye, embedded at the end of the noodle. Inside its spherical shape, a much larger meatball is hidden, fully covered by the spaghetti strands, leaving it concealed for the moment. The entire creature is dripping tomato sauce, which somehow cascades down its form.

  “Sooo…the sauce is from that thing?” Wyn says, his face scrunching in disgust, a sentiment quickly echoed by everyone on his team.

  “YUCK!” they all shout in unison, clearly regretting their taste test.

  The creature’s presence is overwhelming, exuding a strange blend of whimsy and divine absurdity, as though the very essence of pasta and sauce had been elevated to godhood. The air is thick with the scent of tomato and garlic, their aromas blending to fill the space. As it turns out, the creature guarding the first level of Heaven is none other than Spaghetti Monster.