The New Suchi Arena, a mob in one corner harassing an officiator.

“Once he hears that it is I, Destined To Rule The Stars, Knight of The Golden Lion Village, I do not believe that he will refuse.”

“You summoned me?” Henry pushed his way through the crowd with a cookie-zombified Abigail in tow.

The officiator, recognising him from a description sent by the clerk, gave a curt nod. “Welcome, Mr HF.”

Henry had added a note in his guild profile to use his initials because the ‘Flower' part of his username sounded more stupid the more he heard it.

“Mr HF!” greeted the pretentious Earthfriend, a spiteful twinge in his voice.

Destined To Rule, before attending the auction for the hiring of this exclusive 3x3 arena, had promised his fellow Golden Lions that he would claim it in their name. It would be an invaluable advertisement, displaying their awe-inspiring power and attracting the star talent practicing in the facilities. However, he’d been forced to become a liar when a silent bidder with even deeper pockets than himself had upstaged him.

This was an intolerable affront against the famous Golden Lion Village. Worse, it was an affront against him, Destined To Rule The Stars.

“Allow me to—“

“Destined to Rule, Golden Lions, King Leon’s Village, got it.” Henry signalled for the officiator to lift a rope cordon blocking the noobs, then ascended a flight of stairs onto the raised arena platform.

His and Abigail's every movement, their every feature was dissected by the crowd seeking to determine their identities, both being unrecognisable. Abigail’s past game experience had given her the skill to earn fame amongst Suchi’s Australasian playerbase but not beyond that – Slum-wide renowned was reserved for true geniuses.

Abigail, finishing the last cookie, broke from the trance and noticed the mob staring at her.

“Henry, why do we have a crowd of spectators?"

Her friend rotated his head in an exaggerated circle to stretch his neck. “The dude with the pretentious beret brought them over to complain because he’s butthurt about me outbidding him to rent this arena.”

Destined To Rule scowled. The two were barely three metres away.

“Oh? Was it expensive?” Abigail averted her gaze in embarrassment from her friend, who was stretching with the shameless vigour of old men in public parks whom age has stripped of self-consciousness.

“No clue; my PA did the bidding.”

“You have a personal assistant? Being rich wasn’t a lie?”

“Yeah, I'm filthy rich.” He shrugged his shoulders repeatedly. “I actually have a whole team of PAs, but they’re on holiday.”

Part of the bet with Alex.

“That’s good, I guess?” said Abigail.

She had no further comment. Her family was so wealthy that she lacked the tangible sense of money's value that would make his revelation exciting.

“Yeah, it’s liberating.” He did a set of standing torso twists. “Anyway, I’m going to train now. You’re welcome to use an arena for yourself. Bring up partners, spar me, whatever. When the spy appears, tell them to introduce themselves. I might give them an arena, too.”

Abigail coughed. “The newest Byzantine should be here.” As she swept her eyes over the crowd, a grandma in the back escaped the scan by ducking behind a Beast Tamer’s dwarf-mammoth. “If I tell them, can I have more cookies?”

Henry floated her one, which she ate in three bites.

“Another one.”

“You’ve got it.” Henry swung his left leg. “After you defeat ten unique opponents with sword and shield.”

Abigail paused a moment, her eyeballs flicking back and forth as they sorted through a series of odd thoughts.

She squinted with disgust. "Using laced foods to coerce your friends into doing your bidding is sick.”

“Coercion-smersion, it’s an incentive. Besides, they’re poison-free – you’re addicted to nothing but the taste.” He swung his right leg. “Want to warm up with me? I’ve got seven brand new martial arts to show you today. I mastered them overnight; no big deal.”

Sometimes the best lie is the truth.

"To hell with martial arts!”

Driven by an insatiable craving, she stormed over to a catering table being laid out by assistants and picked up a plate of éclairs.

She took one bite, then smashed the plate on the ground.

Having tasted heaven, how could she stomach the dirt?

“Dick!” She thrust a finger at a spectating Miracleworker with an axe. “You. Jungle Gym, now!”

Watching her go, Henry snickered.

Today, he'd gotten her hooked on the cookies; tomorrow, he would get her hooked on a more addictive drug: steady self-improvement earned through deliberative practice.

Below, an ugly grimace flashed across Destined To Rule's face as the Miracleworker brushed past him, going onto what should have been his arena first.

“Excuse me, Mr HR. Allow me to in—“

“What's up, kids?” Henry projected his voice throughout the stadium. “I’m the dude who rented the spot in the corner. If you can beat me once in three-rounds of official-format 1v1, you have permission to use my arena for the day – some restrictions apply. Team Leader Guacumao will be assigning queue numbers for challengers. There’ll be a maximum of 1 active duelling pair per arena, so the slots are currently limited to 7. Don’t miss out!”

At once, duellists from all around stadium sprinted over to queue in front of the officiator, some wanting the practice space, others the satisfaction of beating up a moneybag. While they did rush, this was not due to any great anticipation, the announcement being unexceptional in a world with psychic demons and ocean leviathans; rather, sprinting was a habit learned by necessity in the overpopulated Slums, where the slowpokes starved.

But from Destined To Rule’s perspective, the roaring flood of movement was all fame being unjustly snatched from him.

He snapped at a Shaman at the front of the queue. “Your position or I’ll—”

“No need to be a bully,” interjected Henry. “The privilege is already yours of being the first brat to receive the lessons of my fists. Come, accept your beating.”

Destined To Rule scowled again. This nobody was delusional if he thought winning a single auction came with the right to speak down to him. He was mistaking for a house cat's the lion’s paw about to sever him in half.

Puffing out his chest, he replaced his pretentious beret and the rest of his equally pretentious attire with a set of flawless, custom-designed Mithril armour engraved with a myriad of celestial constellations. “Brat, who are you calling brat? I’m at least ten years your seni—“

“Arena-, split-, and half-choice, you have all three.”

“Save the charity. Also, stop interrupting—“

“The queue is long; you’re getting the boot if you don’t decide in 5...4...3...”

“Graveyard of The Gods, Southwest-Northeast, Top.”

“Excellent decisions. Let’s go!”

With a crowd following along, the two of them relocated to the chosen arena.

It consisted of a flat area carpeted with overgrown weeds and hundreds of imitation God Statues similar to the one of the Elf that Donkey Bro’d swallowed. The layout was replicated from a segment of a game-world wonder in the region of Sokygemant, where tens of thousands of God Statues were housed for deities who’d become incommunicado after ascending to The Cosmic Plane. They were presumed dead.

The real Graveyard of The Gods was actually the location where The Great Black One had informed Henry he’d find the secret to eradicating its brainless descendants and acquire the next Syncretist piece. He would travel there alone after finishing this martial arts business.

Arriving at the arena, Henry unsummoned the cookie bag, eating one last treat before it vanished.

This one had been infused with two drops of the Poison of Mercurial Debilitation - more than enough to impair a low-levelled Tier-0 character.

Superficially, no sign of change was apparent.

Internally, he was tripping balls.

The walls of the arena and everything inside, including the people, stretched to triple their height. As they loomed above, he had the unsettling sensation of being a child again.

12 seconds later, they shrank back to their normal size, and, immediately afterwards, half the tension in the muscles of his left leg disappeared, causing him to tip sideways before he adjusted his body weight.

8 seconds after that, regaining his leg function, he felt a warmth vibrating in his chest that gave him the confidence to wrestle a tsunami or headbutt the sun.

For the duration of the poison’s effect, he would vacillate between random states of debilitation.

This was, in fact, only one component of the poison, one which was really designed to spice up the fights against these noobs by keeping him on his toes.

The core debilitation was a constantly-acting petrifying pseudo-arcanobacterium brain infestation derived from 182 ingredients, including the Tigerlisk venom. Through selectively-targetted petrification of certain motor-control neuronal networks, these would introduce minor mechanical mistakes to his actions.

This was a necessity because, after the decades of training, he was slowly reaching the point where all his combos were obtaining an error-free, hyper-fast automation, like a person playing the knife game - where one alternates stabs between their fingers. With simple, repetitive motor tasks, this was normal. With complex ones, it was blatantly inhuman.

In creating this wonderfully convoluted poison, Henry was most proud of the calibrations he'd made to the pseudo-arcanobacteria that caused them to increase the pace of their activity in response to greater electrical stimulation from the surrounding neurons. The end effect of this was that the faster he acted, the more he worked his noggin, the more errors were introduced – much as what happens to ordinary plebs who could never amount to a thousandth of his immortal glory.

Still under the effect of the hubris-inducing agent, he smirked. “I will be the best at everything in the world ever.”

Style: Wingless Dragon

Equipping a Mithril helmet with a faceplate and a basket-hilted broadsword, he began a warm-up drill, soft steps floating him between the God Statues. His blade attacked with the deliberation, poise, and force of the dragon, while his free palm struck out with the beautiful instability of the dragon’s mate, sometimes complementing the sword’s actions, sometimes disrupting them.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

He abruptly stopped.

Then he resumed the drill.

Stopped again.

Back to it - stopped.

Destined to Rule scoffed. If this rude brat was going show off by swinging a sword—pointless for Earthfriends who had no Basic Attacks in human form aside from —he should have memorised the kata well enough that he didn’t have to keep pausing to recall the next moves.

DTR messaged the actors he'd been paying to complain to the officiator.

A mocking voice curled out from the crowd. “This guy thinks he’s a Qi Master!”

“Are we supposed to be impressed by this ‘swordplay’?” a different actor recited his private message word for word. “If he can’t remember his choreography, how can he hope in the heat of battle to defeat Destined to Rule The Stars, Knight of The Golden Lion Village? Throw in the towel already, rude brat!”

When a few more paid actors, functioning like the laugh track of a sitcom, howled with laughter, the crowd joined in.

Dotted amongst the amused spectators were a couple sober faces studying the drills intensely, envisioning themselves trying to parry and dodge the flurry of sword and palm.

One such person was a short, wiry Arcanist, username The Indigo Guru, an Indian player from the state of Uttar Pradesh. Ranked 32nd in Suchi, he also had a basket-hilted broadsword dangling from his waist.

“Indigo, that’s Wingless Dragon, right.”

The question-asker was a Fighter with the muscled-body of an Olympic wrestler and two bushy-red eyebrows that resembled burning twigs. Danielpickens25, a Californian-native who was ranked 19th.

“It is,” The Indigo Guru replied, his gaze never separating from the mysterious newcomer.

“How’s he doing?”

“Technique...brilliant. Mechanics, poor.”

“Is that why he keeps screwing up?” A knitted handbag suddenly smacked the back of the Fighter’s head. “HEY!”

Spinning around, he was stabbed with the dagger-gaze of a hump-backed, curly-grey-haired grandma.

“You young whippersnappers!” grumbled the elderly assailant. “’Screwing up?’ Your brain is just too screwed to comprehend his genius technique modifications!”

From afar, the grandma disguise may have been convincing. As close as the Fighter was, though, he could see that the wrinkles had been pencilled in on youthful skin and the ‘hump’ was a cushion stuffed under her shirt.

“Umm...why are you being so defensive? Do you know him?”

The fake grandma blinked twice. “My apologies, I'm hard of hearing. What did you say? Ho, ho, ho. Let’s return to the duel, dear.”

Back up on the arena, a grinning Destined to Rule gave a disingenuous sigh of sympathy. “Ignore the jests of the mob. From so far below us, they cannot understand our—“

His expression went blank as the sword flew from Henry’s grip, the pommel punching the face of a statue.

Had that been intentional?

“Whoops.” Henry desummoned and resummoned the weapon rather than walking over to fetch it. “Pushed too hard. Let’s begin, then.”

He waved to a female officiator sitting in a high-chair overlooking the arena. There were other officiators set up similarly all around the arena.

As the woman’s irises began to stir with balance scale Peopleworker energy, an identification emblem pinned onto each of the duellist’s belts glowed. With a connection formed through this, she was able to monitor their HP when they were out of sight and check their gear and character statuses for any signs of cheating.

This monitoring was essential in official-format matches. Because classes weren’t balanced for 1v1 combat, Henry’s guild adjusted the health-points at which a player would be eliminated depending on their and their opponent’s class. The numbers were recalibrated every month to maintain a 50% win-rate amongst the top 1% of players.

Since Destined To Rule and Henry were both Earthfriends, though, the elimination for both was set at a default of 20%.

“Destined to Rule, 1570, clear,” the officiator announced. “HF, 1440, clear. Assume starting positions.”

Her level was too low to detect the poison.

The announcement of the ratings caused the crowd to erupt into laughter again, this time without the prompting of the paid actors.

“1440!? His rating is 1440?!”

“Garbage, stop littering the arena!”

“Guess it’s true what they say, you can buy everything but talent!”

“Shit! The spots are going to be claimed before our turns!”

A rating of 1440 put Henry amongst the worst-ranked players in The New Suchi Arena, barely eligible for entry. Not one spectator was lower.

Of course, his rating was terrible because he'd only bothered to farm it up to enter this arena an hour ago and had therefore yet to reach his true rating. With the current poison potency, it should be around 1700, which meant that his chance of losing to the pretentious Earthfriend was below 1%.

Henry, seeming to not hear any of the insults, jogged calmly into a position close to the arena division line, from which he could reach the pretentious Earthfriend quickly when the duel started. To signal that he was ready to the officiator, he double-tapped his identification emblem.

To his mild surprise, the pretentious Earthfriend positioned barely fifteen paces adjacent, leaving a clear, statue-free path between them.

“Why don’t we liven up the contest with a small wager?" said Destined To Rule. "If victory is yours, I’ll rent you the arena tomorrow. If it is mine, today's ownership is transferred to The Golden Lions.”

A pause followed during which Henry didn’t respond.

DTR chuckled. No doubt, this fool was weighing the hit to his pride from refusing versus the assured loss due to his trash rating.

“Sorry," Henry finally replied. "If you gave a reason for delaying, I missed it. Someone messaged me.”

The poison had disabled his hearing.

Destined To Rule sneered at the childish mind-game tactic. “Too cowardly to accept the bet? All you have to do is refuse!”

Henry turned to the officiator. “Seriously, what’s the wager?”

After she relayed it, he stroked the chin of his helmet’s faceplate. “Well, teachers are criminally underpaid. I suppose, for the good of society, I shouldn’t contribute to the problem by refusing under-the-table lesson fees. Deal. Tap it!”

A glaring Destined To Rule double-tapped his emblem.

“Earthfriends,” yelled the officiator, “pre-Charges!”

Facing away from each other, they collected five Charges each. Destined To Rule, his fingers moving with a pretentious flourish, chose 4 Fauna and 1 Flora. Henry, temporarily shifting his weapon to his off-hand, almost dropping it, collected with his sword-hand 3 Fauna and 2 Flora.

“10...9...” The officiator began the countdown.

When Henry swung back, he saw three blurry copies of the pretentious Earthfriend, having to squint at the centre one to determine its Charge selection. “Interesting. Based on your username and the star-design of your armour, I’d assumed you played a Celestial style.”

Destined To Rule snorted with derision. “That might work at your level; it does not work at mine.”

This reply had a strange flavour of hurt.

DTR had indeed tried to play Celestial, but its weakness relative to Fauna had made him run into a wall with his 1v1 Rating. For the sake of rising further up the ranks, for a shot at placing in the tournament and being recruited by The Company, he’d been forced to switch.

“Works at my level but not yours?” Henry mulled over the pretentious words. “True.”

“1...Fight!”

Neither moved, both opting to complete their Charge-builds.

Destined To Rule planned on 4 Fauna, 6 Flora, which would give him enough Flora Charges to combo a and a max-burst in emergencies. Most Fauna Earthfriends used the same build in mirror matches, although some substituted in Fauna Charges for flexibility.

He didn’t get to finish because Henry, gathering Celestial Charges in his off-hand, chucked a at him.

As DTR dived behind a God Statue, a swift-moving struck him, fusing with his body and inflicting minor slow-burn damage, while a follow-up 1-Charge zipped through his groin, chunking off about 4% of his health.

“Insolent brat!” he screamed from behind cover, back to 100%.

Poking his head out, he saw that the Henry had repositioned further away to a tight cluster of statues, where he was gathering more Celestial charges.

“What’s the point? I can easily heal these chicken scratches!” He ducked a . “You dare to insult The Golden Lions?! You dare to insult me?!”

“Teik. This is a hybrid-style. Ma. Can’t expect me. Kov. To fight a Fauna Earthfriend directly with a sword.”

Not now. The size of Henry’s heart had shrunk by two-thirds, slowing his blood flow and inhibiting any rigorous movements.

“A likely story!”

When DTR broke from his cover to sprint to a statue closer to Henry, a missed him by 10 centimetres, the palm that’d fired it having trembled off target.

To the crowd’s amusement, the two engaged in an odd game with Destined To Rule running from statue to statue while being pelted with spears, then pausing to replenish his health. While he could have closed the distance faster with the of the Savannah Cheetah form, this would waste Stamina - a considerable loss in a mirror match.

When DTR was nearing melee range, it seemed to him that his rude opponent was finally starting to take the fight seriously. Giving up harassment, they activated for more Strength at the expense of their Magic Power.

DTR beat them to the punch by shapeshifting first, swelling to double his mass, and lashing out with a muscled Silverback fist.

The expected transformation from Henry never came, though.

Human Henry, having deduced the pretentious Earthfriend’s motor skills via the previous volleys, side-stepped the fist, the force imbued into it being wasted on a statue to his back that it struck with a thud. His sword-arm cocked, he readied to deliver a devastating thrust through the pit of the gorilla arm he’d dodged.

Before he could strike, however, his arm became weaker than an arthritic toddler’s, the broadsword almost slipping out of his grip.

Fiddlesticks.

Dashing forward three more paces, he fired a behind him that scorched a hole on the back of the pretentious Earthfriend’s gorilla skull. Continuing to slip behind a statue, he cancelled and went back to peppering them with more magical attacks.

The resurgence of these cowardly tactics caused Destined To Rule to roar with rage. Refusing to give up the chase by dropping form to heal, he activated for the 115% bonus HP to buffer against the harassment and stayed tight on the rude brat's heel, trying to catch him in his gorilla grip.

The crowd cackled, some of them changing their support to the newcommer for his hijinks.

Surrounded by laughter, the Fighter Danielpickens25 was confused.

“The newcomer has a superior grasp of the map. He could create more distance, but he skirts around the border of melee range. Why play so dangerously? To enrage the other into making mistakes?”

“No, the pretentious one is being kept in his melee range,” replied The Indigo Guru. “Dragon Husks The Talmari Nut...he’s chipping through the bonus HP of to bring the opponent low enough for a lethal melee combo. If he allows too much of gap, the opponent might recognise this and Cheetah-form to safety.”

“Can that be done? He’d have to land, what, 20 shots in a minute?"

Before cooldown refreshed.

“Hohohoho!” The fake grandma behind them chortled condescendingly. “As if this smart young man needs 20 shots against such trash!”

The Fighter looked at her, then back at Indigo. “Huh?”

“The opponent is being out-played,” answered the Arcanist. “Almost every is finding a critical target, so the zone of lethality should be reached in 11 or...” His voice trailed off when the Earthfriend reactivated after the 5th.

The Indigo Guru had been incorrect about one conclusion: Destined To Rule was always in the lethal zone.

When the strength returned to Henry’s arm, he felt every inch of his skin begin to tingle, marking the transition to a hyper-sensitive neuralgic state in which injuries more severe than a pinch would overload his neural pathways with debilitating pain signals.

So long as he avoided all damage, this was essentially an unimpaired phase.

Dodging a swing and coating his broadsword with a thin-layer of , he delivered a thrust at the pretentious Earthfriend’s chest with the sword angled flat to pass through the rib-cage. A hand tremor caused the tip to veer and strike bone, so he scraped the blade down to open up a thin flesh wound.

The next instant, a second stab delivered closer towards their back managed slip through the ribs, piercing the gorilla lungs and heart. When the sword was retracted, Henry pressed the palm of his free hand against the wound as though to staunch the blood. With his feet having stuttered for half-a-second, a was injected through the opening, bypassing the Silverback's protective and scorching havoc upon the soft, fleshy interior.

A moment later, he sent a 2-Charge through the gorilla’s ear. Then half a second after that, with the pretentious Earthfriend struggling to track his swift movements, he stabbed through the kidneys into the heart again, creating a passage for a third .

Henry, pausing behind the gorilla, still well within strike range, hand-gestured the constellation of Zeyma to initiate the Energy Gathering ritual.

“Pak.”

The air around the two suddenly filled with glittering-white motes, which were vacuumed into a starlight constellation that he grabbed, refreshing one of his expended Celestial Charges.

"Vieg.”

He greedily snatched one more.

“Zvaig.”

Destined To Rule, having no time to generate a single thought, swivelled around and received the tip of the sword through his bellybutton. Panicking, he jabbed.

Henry ducked under the arm, dashed two steps forward-right bringing him up close to the gorilla’s abdomen, through which he administered another heart-stab combo, then retreated back to his original position, his gathering-hand snatching up another constellation.

“Nas.”

The eyes of the spectating experts had ignited with the buttercup-yellow glow of bullet-time.

“Endlessly Devours The Flesh...” whispered the Arcanist in shock.

This was one of the most advanced techniques in the Wingless Dragon repertoire, where the practitioner used a spread of weak pulses to assist and amplify a quick succession of spells. The challenge lay in the combination of aiming both spells and attacks, dodging the enemy’s retaliation, and continuously readjusting to ensure the correct timing of the pre-planned attacks. Together, these feats were so demanding that most players were incapable of executing the technique effectively even with bullet-time.

As for performing Endlessly Devours The Flesh without bullet-time, as the newcommer was, this could be done by fewer than a hundred players in the entire world. Analysts had concluded that one needed not only the physical talent but a minimum mental GQ of 170 to process the information load on the fly.

What's more, those pros used hybrid class-specialisations with instant-cast spells, while this newcomer was a Tier-0 Earthfriend. The modifications to the technique necessary to execute it with this class, collecting Charges and continuously grounding his footwork to avoid the cancellation of his , added a whole nother layer of complexity.

The buttercup-yellow eye glow quickly spread throughout the rest of the spectators. Although they could not comprehend the true extent of what they were witnessing, they didn't want to miss a moment of the mesmerising scene.

Expertise aside, it had a strange beauty. With a backdrop of glittering motes, the swordsman's one hand collecting stars and zapping out spears of light, the other flicking and poking its weapon, the swordsman danced around the enraged gorilla like a ballerina taunting a sumo wrestler.

“Priesh.”

“Viesh.”

Although the first cycle ended, although the glow imbuing the crowd’s eyes began to dissipate with the expiration of their Boost, the swordsman didn’t stop, carrying the majestic death ballet into a second cycle.

In the silence that was enforced upon the observers by the ruthlessly perfect beating, one could now hear between the spell syllables the jerky sweep, halt, sweep, sweep, halt rhythm of his feet trampling the arena’s overgrown weeds.