A moonlit scene down by the shores of Suchi's harbour, a table with the devoured remnants of butter-fried angelfish, and a romantic song in the background.
A young Ibanmothe was burying ornaments in the sand to form a circle around his girlfriend. As he placed the last offering—a miniature sculpture of the Woodworker patron God Fagarago, carved into immaculate realism by the young man's own fingers—he walked nervously around the circle to face her.
She was weeping, and the tears streaming down her cheeks...shutting his eyes tight, he extended his hands half the distance towards her.
"I am without home, without family," he intoned. "Would you have me still?"
His unprepared heart almost stopped when her slender fingers slid through the gaps between his.
"I will be your home, I will be your family, in this cycle and the next."
When the young man crossed the encirclement to embrace his new fiancée, the music came to a jarring halt. Both of them looked at the Offworlder band.
Its pianist was lifting his instrument up onto a wagon.
Szeretu's Proposal complete.
Visit any representative of The Empire to collect your reward of 102 Slum Points.
-Henry Flower: That's lovely, but breaks over. After we return these to Zongora's Music Shack, we've got a Short-Necked Giraffe to delouse in The County of Chengdu.
-Brain Flea: By golly, Big Bro! Zongora's Music Shack and The County of Chengdu are on the opposite sides of The Slums! The distance separating them is going to make for yet another inconvenient trek!
-Henry Flower: Shh.
-cathysong31: Henry, this is one of the rudest things—
-Henry Flower: Cathy, the real rudeness is your continual ignoring of the plight of that mutant giraffe whom evolution has deprived of the ability to self-groom. Hurry up and load your drum kit onto the wagon. While we linger, our short-necked friend itches.
The next in-game morning, the garden of a retirement shack, goats nibbling on a pile of weeds and onion peels, old people grunting in pain.
"Ouch, please, you're hurting me!"
"Have mercy, my spine's about to snap."
"By Nerin, child, you picked the right class, you are indeed a miracle worker. My left calf now."
The old folk were being massaged by a group of players in gold and purple.
The members of Justinian's Team Blue shared exasperated sighs. While the rest of the Byzantines achieved glory and growth, they, under their leader's lobotomised rule, were stuck rubbing oil into the dry, wrinkled meat of these geriatric troublemakers.
"Sir Justinian!" cried a mini-Crusader, walking along the back of a grandma. "While we are held up assisting these oldies, His malevolent grip tightens!"
Justinian, who'd stripped out of his golden armour down to his knight's underclothes, dug his elbow into a knot in the old man's shoulder. "Exorcise this vain demon, Lady Kittykat. A knight does not discriminate deeds by size, glory, or any other means."
"But—"
"Tell me, on what page of The Holy Book does God calculate the weight of good and evil with his abacus? There is no such page, for only He has the conceit to tally the Goodfolk's suffering."
"But these prunes are toying with us!"
The woman under Lady Kittykat gasped. "Us? We'd NEH-ver!"
The rest of Team Blue rolled their eyes.
Justinian felt similarly but suppressed the external signs.
This gang of geriatrics was always messing with him. Three real-life months ago, they'd figured out that the Crusader's stubborn persona obliged him to offer help regardless of the circumstances. Since then, they'd been exploiting this to trick him into performing odd jobs.
Telling them to stop? Alas, Justinian, modelled after the knights from medieval stories, was afflicted with a black-and-white mindset incapable of detecting subtle manipulations.
The workaround he'd developed was to pretend their usual hang-out spots were cursed places that couldn't be approached. Today, though, his tactic had been thwarted by a kid the geriatric gang had hired to beg him for help de-weeding their grandma's garden – this garden. From there, the geriatric gang had rolled out one minor trouble after the next.
The sole salvation from this predicament, this quagmire in which he could not practice his roleplay congruent calls, would be Team Blue growing frustrated enough to cast a vote to override his orders. He didn't have much hope in that outcome, however. Most of the newbies Justinian trained each month didn't figure out the vote-override trick until week 3, assuming they didn't rage-quit before then.
Teach them the trick himself? Alas, Justinian, having been transported to this world from the feudal era, was an extremist Christian monarchist with apprehensions about democracy, a concept he associated with the boy-loving Ancient Greeks.
The old guy he'd been massaging rotated, careful not to disturb his new haircut, and flashed Justinian an innocent smile. "A bit more force, son. The trials of life have made this worn man's knots tough."
The Usurpation of Prince Ulaaradajing, a 5000-man Tier-0 dungeon set in Suchi's distant past, when the Neeshifites had outed the Rangbitans, when the night sky'd housed three moons.
The whole zone rang with the din of this historic battle. From The Slums, the Ibanmothe were fleeing into the savannah, their possessions burning behind them. Rivers of blood flowed through the streets of Central City, where invaders and rebels clashed with demons, the undead, and loyalists.
Every now and then, soldiers from both sides were evaporated in an instant, as their unfortunate location became that second's spot for an ongoing clash between two Gods. One was a Crusader with tapeworms squirming in his pale, undead flesh - the prince destined to lose his throne. His opponent was a female Cutthroat with a muscular build, whose sunflower-embroidered panties Henry would steal centuries later. While the Cutthroat kept the Crusader occupied, her mages marched around the city making bunkers of reinforced-clay shriek by injecting them with life-seeking, life-devouring flame.
Away from the main battle, down by the Suchi river, there was a plantation of giant mango trees. The undergrowth that grew between them, grasses as tall as a man, rustled with the movements of Team Friendship Forever sneaking in their midst.
Andy, squatting behind a grass stalk, was holding his breath, his ear tuned to the sound of dirt being trodden by boots.
As the footsteps began to curve away from him, he peeked out behind a leaf and saw the flank of a patrolling party. The rearmost soldier, her tabard inscribed with God names, similar to the raiments of the Ibanmothe church, vanished behind a tree trunk.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
-cathysong31: What if it smells me?!
-Henry Flower: Relax, you're outside of its smell detection range.
-cathysong31: I can't relax with a fire-breathing demon in...
Andy, filtering out C.'s panic attack, darted forward. With steps he would have previously assumed to be too noisy before H.'s correction, he crossed the path that the patrol had taken. Continuing through the undergrowth on the other side, he swivelled his head up, down, and around, bringing it to a jerky halt when a sparkle of gold twinkled in his peripheral vision.
Excellent.
Far up in the foliage of a nearby tree, a single mango was shining soft and sweet. The visual effect indicated that the fruit, unlike the others around them, could be plucked out of this dungeon.
-august rode in: H., here.
-Henry Flower: I've lost track of you.
-Danontherightwing: Another one, Fashionable Bro? Nice!
-Donkey Bro: If I were there, I'd have found them all.
Where was he, where was he, wondered Andy. While focusing on dodging the patrol, he'd messed up his sense of direction.
Whoops.
-august rode in: I'm 20 metres or so from a 12-man.
-Henry Flower: More.
-august rode in: They had a female Crusader with a one-handed axe and a poorly-fitting tabard.
-Henry Flower: More.
-august rode in: Size 4, 5'8, ugly boots.
-Henry Flower: Other than the Crusader.
-Battered Daisy: ...
-august rode in: Other than the Crusader...hmm...
-Henry Flower: Landmarks.
Andy peeked his head briefly over the tall grass to search for distinguishing features. It all looked the same to him, though, most of the undergrowth being darkened by the shade of the mango trees. His position relative to the moons couldn't be determined either due to the dense canopy obstructing them.
The tree.
-august rode in: A suggestion, I'll climb to the top of it. Go up and await my signal.
-Henry Flower: In how many combat cycles?
A 'combat cycle' was three seconds, the cooldown of most Basic Attacks. H. had been encouraging them to employ this as a unit of time.
Andy studied the tree's length, comparing it with the previous ones he'd climbed, trying to estimate its height, the number of jumps, etcetera.
-august rode in: 15 using Boost?
-Henry Flower: Andy, wait 12 cycles. Everyone except Cathy, begin returning to the pond. Cathy, remain as you are.
-cathysong31: It's going to eat me!
-Henry Flower: Only if you breathe too loudly. 10...9...8...
Andy snuck over to the tree's base. When H.'s countdown finished, he grabbed the lowest branch and heaved himself up. Conditioned by previous drills, he glanced around the moment his feet left the ground, spotting the back of another patrol that would have seen him if he'd started sooner.
H. hadn't lost track of him.
Although their little schoolfriend described his occupation with the vague term of 'investing', it was apparent from their training sessions that he'd omitted segments of the truth. Last night, over pillow talk, A. had filled in the gaps while she vented about some cookie.
Andy didn't feel one way or the other. The sneaky, circuitous habits of their friend had always been delightfully weird to him.
For the trickier pulls of the climb, he utilised his
Three-quarters of a minute later, he reached the top. Summoning his purple-gold Byzantine bandana and a spear, he tied the former into a makeshift flag around the head of the latter.
-august rode in: Signalling.
He gave a tired stab at one of the moons.
-Henry Flower: On my way.
Having done his part, Andy dropped down to a branch beneath the glowing mango.
Visually, the fruit was unspectacular, a plain mango aside from the glow - if anything, the husk was rather desiccated, likely due to the dryness of the local clime. However, after he'd expended so much energy to locate it, it had taken on an extra, delicious lustre. He felt the temptation that'd driven Eve to ruination.
Distracting himself, he scanned his surroundings, trying to pick up any subtle shifts in the nearby foliage.
A silhouette emerged from the leaves of an adjacent tree, bounding towards him branch by branch, its leaps acrobatic as a fox playing in the snow, graceful as the brushstrokes of a Song Dynasty ink.
When H. alighted on the branch beside him, Andy watched him harvest the mango with fascination. The movement of H.'s clippers reminded him of a geisha who'd once poured him tea in Ginza.
Sugoi.
Your group has collected 140 out of 140 Qadhaadh Mangos. Bring them back to Chef Gyumolcs to complete A Peerless Dessert.
A worksite for the Builders Union of Australasia, teams of Constructionists and Woodworkers hammering out creations for the community.
The largest project was a two-tiered carriage that would need six Rhinophants to pull. A mobile fortress of sorts, its walls had been reinforced to protect the Merchant who'd commissioned it against bandit raids.
On the roof of this structure, Walker was taking a break with Citizen Higgs, their dungeon and crafting Byzantines having dispersed for the community-service event. The pair had met here because Higgs had a second role as the head of Australasia's Builders Union.
"5th," replied Walker, checking Artemis's ranking on their Kingdom's leaderboard for individual squads. "She's beating two teams being boosted by their Duchies."
"Yeah, but on the back of whose effort?" Higgs, who'd been smoking a blunt, exhaled a black cloud in disgust. "I'd call these Roboboomers nuts, but they don't have any. What a bunch of cucks."
"Artemis and her supporters are an invaluable addition to Byzantium. Without her assistance, we'd be at the bottom of the heap again."
"Fuck that stuck-up bitch, fuck this community farce. Bro, I just want to build in peace without my men being distracted by these crafty whores." Higgs inhaled deeply. "Bring back the days when women were too afraid to roll here, I say."
Walker frowned at the Constructionist's misogyny, but he didn't admonish him. They were both zoomers. Both had been dealt a hapless hand in love, and the youngest of their cohort, like Higgs, had received the worst of it, also having to bear the brunt of The A.I. Revolution. Plus, he was high.
A toxin in the blunt caused the veins of Higgs's eyeballs to turn black temporarily. "What about the new kid?"
"94th," Walker answered without needing to check.
"Trash. Aren't these Company goons supposed to be the crème de la crème? I guess you were right, mate. His Royal Saviour's wasting his spit."
Today, Walker'd been personally contacted by Ramiro with a request to monitor the teen. It'd been an odd ask. Although this 'Henry Flower' might be a member of Flaming Sun/The Company, there were plenty of others in the zone stationed around their deceptively-named 'Trading Posts'. And, from Walker's observations, the teen seemed to have visited just to hang out with his school buddies. Innocent fun.
"Maybe," he replied.
"Oh?"
He wasn't certain anymore.
Although Team Friendship Forever's ranking was mediocre, amongst the quests they'd handed in were resource collections from The Usurpation. This happened to be the most challenging raid in the zone. Walker, who'd been in Suchi from the start and participated in all its uncovered dungeons, couldn't imagine how to accomplish these feats with such a tiny group, even armed with Tier-5 Spelltomes. His initial impulse had been to assume that the teen had bought the items from The Company. However, Team Friendship Forever's other members hadn't disabled their location broadcasting, making their presence in the dungeon visible in Byzantium's guild interface.
A PVE-expert, most likely.
"That's spooky." Higgs had summoned a pair of binoculars. "We spoke of the devil, and he has arrived."
In the distance, a dense swarm of lumber was flying low over the shacks. Walker, borrowing the binoculars, zoomed in on the teen jogging beneath the swarm, directing it towards them. On the look-out for bandits, his friends were patrolling the side-streets in pairs. They moved in a bounding overwatch, where one or two pairs prepared a nuke spell to light up potential ambush points while the others advanced.
"What's up with the wood?" asked Higgs.
Directing the binoculars at the swarm, Walker saw that it was in constant flux, blocks of lumber forming then splitting apart.
"No idea," he lied.
The readjustments were designed to create blockades that could be dropped in any of the alleyways the teen passed - the actual defence.
Not an expert in PVE.
When Team Friendship Forever reached the construction site, the lumber floated down to settle in stacks, churning up a cloud of red dust.
Australasia Builders Union Drive #10 has been completed by Team Turbonoobs.
Australasia Builders Union Drive #27 has been completed by Team Turbonoobs.
Australasia Builders Union Drive #37 has been completed by Team Turbonoobs.
...
Higgs passed Walker the blunt, then leapt down from his perch and went to greet the team. Thanking them and pointing out Walker above them, he began shouting orders at his craftsmen.
Walker exchanged a salute with the youngins but didn't otherwise budge.
Team Friendship Forever hovered around for a minute to recuperate. Most of their members were haggard, having been performing these quests for almost 18 in-game hours straight. The teen, though, was in the same state as always, kind of flat, maintaining the moderate, reserved tempo of one well-habituated to the game's gruellingly-long sessions - a veteran.
After their departure, Walker stayed a while, gazing at the stars shining down on this zone he called home and wondering how he would relay this information to Ramiro.
He took a hit of the blunt, and his eyes lit up with a vision of fire, his ears with the rhythmic marching of boots, his lips with a poem.
"God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town."
Fuck The Company and every one of their dogs.
As if cosmically linked by the smoking spirit of rebellion, Walker heard the voice of the boss.
-Ramiro: This message is for all Village Heads. You are to summon everyone in your Village to your Kingdom's headquarters. We've got a special event in store for the community.