"Artemis!"
"Artemis!"
"Artemis!"
"Artemis!"
Hugo, ignoring the crowd's chants, ignoring The Tyrant's jest, released a small, pitiful sigh. "You're fond of ridiculous bets. You win, I'll clear up this misunderstanding. I win, you tell me how you've managed it. Deal?"
"Managed what? Tolerating morons? That's just a case of practice making perfect. Lucky for you, there's a whole zone of them here to train with." Henry gave a thumbs up to a section of costume-wearers in the audience holding 'Virtual is Real!' signs.
"How you go outside without a mask," replied Hugo.
All humour drained from Henry's face. "One second."
He entered his Mental Library and pretended to weigh the spy's words, both the bet and the mask allusion that brushed uncomfortably close to an internal struggle he didn't want exposed.
In actuality, he brought up the chart of his counter-scheme to Loki's schemes. Navigating to the 'Depressed Fraud' section, he ticked a sub-branch for 'Milk sympathy via Commonality of Personality Derealisation'.
So the spy had chosen this angle for ingratiating himself. It wasn't a bad tactic. Henry had indeed flirted with the theory that his constant adopting of alternative personas had been suppressing the development of his authentic self, those many years ago when he'd decided to stop wearing masks. The real Loki, the one playing this depressed persona, had deduced this conclusion from Henry's actions and planned on mirroring the same plight to form a common connection.
As an aside, Henry'd been wrong back then. In the digital decades since, he'd had hundreds of hours to introspect, to be taught the errors in his thinking. He'd been too young, too socially-impaired, too eager to accept any answers aside from the obvious truth. The real Loki, whose Social IQ and interpersonal skills dwarfed his own, was also aware of his mistake and was trying to exploit his very will to self-deceit.
Putting that dull drama aside to focus on this duel, Loki's scheming should make him neutral to the outcome since the main purpose of sowing the seeds of sympathy had been achieved. Thus, everything came down to Henry's choice and ability.
If he were training to complete a Legendary quest as the spy had erroneously concluded, then his priority should not be winning or losing but diffusing the attention concentrated on him. More attention meant more meddlers to foil the non-existent mission.
This false motive happened to coincide conveniently with Henry's genuine designs tonight in composing the epic saga of The Return of The Cripple. Some fan club members were ideal, a couple thousand perhaps, but too much public scrutiny increased the odds of him being identified by former fans or enemies. And if it prematurely leaked that history's greatest duellist was tryharding for a noob tournament, he would have to tolerate days or weeks of global mockery and assassinations by the armies of fanatics he'd pissed off - the revelation needed to hit at the climax, in the instant he retired for good.
To both these ends, the optimal play was to throw the match, to forfeit the limelight to 'Artemis'. Henry should become the inept starter villain who's defeated in the first arc and forgotten as the heroine progresses to greater heights. Then, on the final page, he would make a surprise return, beat her up, give an epic speech over her bruised corpse. 'It was me all along, The Cripple! Here's a supreme martial art I invented in two weeks. Smell ya later, noobs. P.S., if any golden-hearted ladies want to apply to be my girlfriend, enrolments for the tournament open tomorrow.' - something tear-jerking like that.
Henry snickered as he exited his Mental Library.
"You know what?" he replied. "After you cheaters went and unfairly changed the agreed-upon rules, I've been re-evaluating this 'Pain in The Plains' thing. It is a pain, and, for pain, shouldn't there be some gains? Artemis, enlighten me, what do I stand to gain? Slumpoints? Worthless. Gold? I'm already filthy rich. My reputation back? In Suchi - I don't care. No, there's LIT-er-ally nothing in this for me. I refuse your bet, and I refuse this sham of a duel. Smell ya later, noobs."
Turning a 180 on his heels, he sauntered away in the direction from which he'd come, leaving the spy motionless behind him.
"Are you having a LAUGH, mate?!" shouted an audience member.
The crowd, who'd overheard because Henry'd used Peopleworker voice projection to ensure they did, became indignant.
"Go on! Flee, you mutt! Go wagging your tail back to your master!"
"Coward!"
"We are here and we are real!" screeched a roleplayer wearing cat-ears. "We deserve justice! Atone by dying! Meow!"
Some spectators, emboldened by the earlier competitor who'd deleted his character, snuck towards the exit to kill this Company dog for this final insult. It would be an honour and a joy to add their names to the list of martyrs.
Henry swept a thankful gaze across the abuse-slingers as though they were applauding him. At the same time, he covertly studied the arena layout to formulate a winning strategy.
He absolutely refused to forfeit this match.
To hell with the optimal play, to hell with this manipulative spy, to hell with this braindead crowd, to hell with roleplayers, to hell with crazy Karnon possibly orchestrating this. Was Henry supposed to suffer another 130 years of being spat on before getting any satisfaction? A man needed the occasional W. He'd signed up for this random tournament to experience the catharsis of beating up noobs, and that included the noob known as Loki. Henry would NOT pull his trousers back up from around his ankles! He'd intended to lay a small, preliminary turd on these losers' plate, a turd hors d'oeuvre if you will, so by god that's what he would do-odoo. (AN: I apologise).
Of course, he would have to once again be sneaky in pulling this off to minimise suspicion. Thus far, he'd been hamming up the goofy Mutambi Death-Grappling exercises for this purpose. His doing so had misdirected the audience into attributing his victories to that art instead of the actual cause: his freak information processing skills allowing him to read routes through the monster maze like through a kindergarten jungle gym. To beat up Loki now, this same talent couldn't be held in reserve.
On either side of the arena's centre strip, the savannah beasts they'd been ordered to by-pass were tugging against their chains, the Sentient ones roaring invitations at him to enter their territory. Nestled amongst them were several pits and trenches that should be deep enough for him to execute the final sleight of hand.
A plan unfolding before him, Henry messaged the spy his terms.
-Henry Flower: One, I write the losing speech you'll give to clear up the misunderstanding. Two, if requested by the public, under NO circumstances will you leak any footage from your POV. If you fail to uphold either of these conditions, don't imagine you've got Asatru's protection to hide under anymore.
-Artemis8492: Fine.
-Henry Flower: Deal. By the way, what should I call you from now on? Are you still going by Loki?
To his question, the spy Hugo watching The Tyrant's back couldn't produce an adequate answer. What should he be called? Nothing sounded right. Even his birth name, 'Hugo', rang no more authentically to his ears than 'Loki' or the other hundreds of masks. What was—
-Henry Flower: So you haven't got a name. Then, taking a leaf from a fellow wordsmith, I'm forging you a new one in celebration of your recent life transition. Congratulations, Ex-Spy Bro.
-Artemis8492: I would prefer not to be referred to as that.
-Henry Flower: Don't lose too embarrassingly, Ex-Spy Bro, there are a few people watching.
Henry, after putting 14.52 metres between him and Ex-Spy Bro, froze and whispered an epiphany to himself. "Oh, right, the 'Queen'. My hot date with her is totally worth the pain."
A chorus of groans and murderous shouts erupted all around him. He'd 'accidentally' left his earlier voice projection enabled for the tens of thousands in the audience.
He signalled to the monarchess dressed like a savage overlooking the arena, her glee at his feinted forfeit fading. "My 'Queen', please announce the match start."
"Fight," she declared lifelessly.
And so the duel began.
Henry, become serious, shot a domineering glare of challenge at Ex-Spy Bro.
Stat-wise, this opponent was a more balanced version of himself, possessing a mental GQ of 184 and a Mechanical GQ of 147, weaker in the former, stronger in the latter - on paper, the advantage belonged to Ex-Spy Bro since dagger-wrestling was predominately won with muscle, but there were solutions to that. The style was where things got interesting. Over the previous matches, he'd seen Ex-Spy Bro, feigning his depersonalisation, alternate from one persona to the next, each practising a unique martial art. A profile compiled by Henry's guild's espionage division listed Ex-Spy Bro as having learned 31 martial arts in total. 8 of these could be employed in an effective capacity throughout their match.
Hugo, in the span of a couple seconds, underwent a subtle change, adjusting his posture and mood.
The persona that arrived was easy to miss because it was also mute and expressionless. However, the vacuum beneath the surface was filled in with the attentiveness of a plotting mind, his reasons for silence being different. He assumed a relaxed stance, angling his profile to keep the dagger behind his back hidden until the moment of the kill. He strolled towards the target.
Henry recognised the stance from Challarudi Dagger From The Hearth or Hearth Dagger. The art had been practised by an assassin sect in Hembami. Ex-Spy bro had infiltrated them when a branch of Asatru had been competing with the sect for regional assassination contracts. Under the pseudonym Jens Hivju, a Neutral Evil loner thief roleplayer, he'd been recruited by the sect's elders who'd been impressed by him murdering one of their initiates. Once he'd climbed the ranks high enough to identify those elders, Asatru hunted them down, killing them like stray dogs in the night.
Henry sought to counter the style by adopting a mid-defense Death-Grappling form, Mistaken for Foe. He slid his own weapon into a sheath tied to his loin-cloth, crouched low, and extended both arms to block any stabs and hopefully apprehend one of Ex-Spy Bro's limbs.
Jens Hivju, the assassin, paused.
Henry received a message directly from the British accented Ex-Spy Bro.
-Artemis8492: I'm aware of your duelling persona now, 'The Cripple'. I won't be passing through The Gates.
-Henry Flower: Oh?
The Gates were a core concept in The Strategy of The Resourceful Komodo. The underlying theory was that one could analyse sections of the duelling environment according to the degree to which they favoured brawns or brains. Additional variables altered this balance. For example, fighting in the jungle canopy versus flat ground increased the mental component by extending spatial skill demands. Fighting in the jungle canopy during a hailstorm furthered this, forcing one to additionally monitor which branches to shield under and which were slippery. And so on. The Gates Through Which Sleeping Gods Pass From Hell To Heaven were any spots where the overall favourability tipped to the mental side, where a strategically-minded Komodo would do their best to maintain the duel.
Henry'd thought TGTWSGPFHTH a rather snazzy title for a rather snazzy duelling concept. However, it'd never taken off back then for inexplicable reasons. It'd since been re-invented independently by Saana League analysts as 'Zone Complexity'.
The recruitment tournament arena was too simple to contain any true Gates, but Henry's current setting was different. Outside this empty centre strip, this little island of safety, the two of them were surrounded by terrain traps for tricks and beasts with myriad abilities to track. Gates abounded, forming and breaking as the patrolling monsters altered their positions. In fact, there was a potential 56-44 split Gate five paces behind Henry, at the intersecting ranges between a Baboon Clubber, a Lightning-variant Many-Toothed Lion, and a Corpse Cobra.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The plan was to transition the match there after grappling Ex-Spy Bro.
-Henry Flower: I've already thrown you a five-pace bone. That's the limits of my charity. If you want a match, this is where it begins.
"I'm a Scholar, Artemis, a master of waiting." He simultaneously taunted out loud. Entering his Mental Library, he pulled a copy of Doctor Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham and began to narrate. "'I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam I am.' 'That Sam-I-Am! That Sam-I-Am! I do not—" He interrupted himself upon hearing approaching footsteps. "Wait! Not so quick!"
Nerves that Henry'd been faking to exist beneath his false bravado slipped through. He glanced erratically around himself, at the disgruntled huntress about to beat him up, at the jeering spectators, at any hope for salvation from this humiliating predicament, at The Gates - openly reading the battlefield in his normal rapid fashion without igniting suspicion.
The crowd, with the mini-drama of his expressions magnified and blown-up by the arena's projectors, exploded in laughter at his sudden loss of confidence.
Amidst the rising racket, Jens Hivju silently closed in. He raised his free-hand, presenting it first for creating openings for a stab.
Henry flinched and thereby adjusted his stance. His trembling left-hand swayed as it defensively tracked the assassin's free-hand.
Jens burst forward with unexpected speed, fired a jab past The Cripple's guard to his jaw.
Henry saw no
Jens Hijvu retreated back three paces and gave a curt, monosyllabic smile: trash.
Indeed, thought the assassin, as the case files had indicated, The Cripple's reaction speed was trash.
Confident he could finish the job, he took his time summoning a tie to bind back the impractically long hair of this avatar. He also shook out his limbs to feel them better, their weight lighter than his normal body.
Again!
Juggling the dagger, he advanced.
Henry's eyes popped at the speed and dexterity of the weapon shifting from hand to hand. Superficially, he tucked his arms back, as if shrinking away from a blender. Truly, he compensated for his delayed ability to react to which hand the dagger was thrust from. Retracted arms could be pivoted slightly quicker.
Jens, on the cusp of engaging, stopped abruptly. He eyed his prey and allowed the dagger to skip back and forth and stretched out the pause until The Cripple's vigilance would deteriorate from neural habituation.
Henry read the hidden message behind the action. Ex-Spy Bro's toes had been planted a centimetre out of his effective grab range. This was a firm declaration. He was against someone who would not lose in reading the field. Ex-Spy Bro, too, was—a right-jab slapped against Henry's forearm, his own right hand pushed the wrist of Ex-Spy Bro's thrusting dagger hand away, he failed a grab, he ducked, a right-hook swept through the top of his hair.
Jens Hijvu, his weapon flying up from his left hand, caught it in his right and stabbed.
Henry received the dagger point through the centre of his palm, he curled his fingers around the blade to disable it and lurched forward for a clinch.
Jens Hijvu escaped out of range.
Henry's fingers clutching the stolen weapon compressed on nothing, the dagger having disintegrated into motes that channelled back into Ex-Spy Bro's Spatial Bracelet.
A few drops of blood dribbled down his palm from a self-healing wound.
The stab had been unempowered, so his healthpool fell a mere percentage point.
Henry half-hid a sigh of relief. "I almost had you. Come, child. Test my fists again!"
That could have gone better for him. He'd been hoping that Ex-Spy Bro would have wasted an
Presently, there was an opening for Henry to attack since Ex-Spy Bro's weapon would take three seconds to desummon plus another three to resummon. But Henry knew he couldn't catch him at their current distance, that chasing would lead him deeper into the centre strip and away from the chosen Gate. Thus, he resumed his initial defensive position.
His refusal to budge incited another round of insults from the crowd. Clenching his jaw, he glanced at them in embarrassment and scanned the field again to refresh the monsters' placement.
Jens tried again with the juggling, pausing once more on the edge, he lunged.
Henry slipped his dagger out of his sheathe and aimed at Ex-Spy Bro's wrist.
Jens, catching his own dagger in the last instant, parried the stab and right-jabbed at The Cripple's face.
Henry blocked the strike, desummoned his weapon to free his fingers, seized Ex-Spy Bro's left elbow.
Jens slipped the attempt, right-jabbed The Cripple in the face again, and, before the hit landed, stabbed him in the chest with his dagger's glowing point.
Henry intercepted the stab with his forearm, a hole being punched through the muscle down to the ulnar bone.
Jens activated
Henry, blind, jerked his head back to avoid being stabbed in the head, his right hand spread to shield his heart, the forearm of the same limb blocked his liver.
Jens gave three surgical thrusts to The Cripple's exposed stomach.
Henry lost 18% of his HP from the first stab penetrating his intestines. The subsequent two without
Jens broke the hold to disengage by jerking his head downwar—a knee smashed into his face.
Henry, his own Bullet-Time active, followed up the knee-strike with a palm-strike to the chin. The attack was imbued with enough force to knock Ex-Spy Bro upright and lift him off his feet but not to push him beyond the reach of a subsequent left-hook. Henry chained further into a kick to the ankle of a leg that was about to land, he blocked a retaliatory punch, he palm-striked again.
Throughout the venue, thousands of mouths stretching wide in celebration of the triple stab were stoppered by dismay as their champion, falling backwards in a perpetual state of stumbling, being punched and kicked and knee and elbowed in a vigorous beating, was manhandled like a baby deer being manipulated by a dodgy veterinary chiropractor who'd faked his fake degree.
Yamalai, Abhaya, an oasis in a desert of rolling white sand dunes.
This week, the city around the oasis had been hastily expanded and fortified to accommodate an influx of players wearing ash-grey uniforms. Tens of thousands of them, representing several of The Company's elite 5000-man raid teams, had been shipped in to conquer nearby ruins. The reason for the rush was the guild-leader of Flaming Sun, Mayonnaise—presumed to also be the head of The Company, Crusadingintheshadows—boasting on live television that he would be the first player to reach Tier 5-3. How tyrannical.
In the midst of this city, in a sand-stone command bunker, two people were huddled together before a projection of the actual Tyrant duelling in a faraway, irrelevant zone.
"That's Nine Fists." One of the two, a middle-aged fellow, frowned. "And that's Knife-Boxing. When did the kid learn new martial arts?"
"What did I say, mate? There's no such thing as retirement for guys like us." Alex leaned back in an arrogant, all-knowing pose of victory. "Our Henry's just a big fat fraud."
And the Suchi scheme to expose this fraud was progressing excellently.
Back in Suchi.
Henry weaved in an unnecessary cheek-slap into the chain combo. "Tell me, what are you learning from my fists?"
Just when Ex-Spy Bro grew accustomed to the tempo of Death-Grappling and expected to escape a defensive clinch, Henry caught him off guard with a switch to The School of Nine Fists. This combo was Eight-Fists, 15th form or, as he preferred to call it, Quadriplegic Noob Weeps For Relief But Gets None.
Within half a breath, his blurring form had threaded together over a dozen strikes, each imbued with the most minimal proportion of
Executed perfectly, Quadriplegic Noob Weeps For Relief But Gets None would lock up the unfortunate enemy's limbs for the full 6-seconds of an
To really decrease an opponent's HP, you needed to maim them.
Hugo, the assassin persona slapped out of him, was lost in contemplation.
He supposed he should have expected this. While spying at the arena, he'd witnessed The Tyrant occasionally pretend to experiment with synthesising his martial arts into their final, mixed form. According to Hugo's research into The Cripple persona, the art would be an evolution of Twenty Tools expanded with more techniques. The original style had been peculiar with its jack-of-all-trades ethos, based on drowning the opponents in a myriad of weapon options and targeted counters. In theory, it worked. In practice, few players could learn to handle so many weapons, so many 'tools' to a proficient level. You had to be a freak.
However, Hugo thought as his leg was swept, wasn't he also such a freak? Throughout his many missions, he'd studied a variety of styles to complement the masks. Maybe he had counters to the counters.
That little German girl from his theft of the Water Tiger Sect's manuals, she might be able to break this combo.
"Gut gemacht!" SophieRTR praised The Cripple's expert display.
These Nine Fist savants were truly impressive! The speed, the complexity, she felt as though she'd been bound in invisible chains and tossed into the rapids of a roaring river!
But her opponent didn't know her secret: she was a creature of the water.
SophieRTR snapped her head forward and stared at the blur of strikes, The Cripple's limbs lit up by a fluctuating constellation of white lights, each forewarning of the next attack.
She may never have fought a practitioner of this style. However, while participating in The God-Emperor's promotion challenges, she'd beaten martial artists employing similar chain combos. All had a weakness in the fact that the
The code blinking before her was impossible for her to break consciously. Burning her Boost on another Bullet-Time activation would save her, but that would leave her one down against him. She trusted herself to her instincts, she immersed her heart and soul in the rhythm.
Palm-strike…to her shoulder. Knee-strike…to her thigh. Palm-strike…to her chin, knocking her head back. Shoulder. Blocked her shove. Calf. She regained vision of an elbow-strike…to her chest. A kick to her calf.
Rather than resist this last blow, she, with the slippery ease of a stream passing through the fingers of a chokehold, went with it, swinging her hips to extend the movement.
The flung foot dug into the dirt behind her, lifted again.
Henry stepped back. Ex-Spy Bro's toe brushed past the tip of his nose as he narrowly dodged a flying spinning kick that would have walloped him in the temple.
SophieRTR giggled as she landed gracefully at a safe distance. "Go me!"
Much to her amusement, this geriatric Cripple guy was unable to follow-up and stood motionless while the remaining pulses of the Nine Fists sequence flashed about him unspent, making him resemble a Christmas tree draped in broken lig—
Henry, activating Bullet-Time once more and switching to Knife-Boxing, lunged forward. In the same motion, he unsheathed his dagger, which'd been resummoned during the combo and which glowed for a surprise thrust at Ex-Spy Bro's heart.
SophieRTR, responding with her own Bullet-Time, received the stab through the meat of her forearm. She tried to retreat, but The Crippled moved in a step. A second stab, a third stab, and a fourth stab followed, The Cripple jack-hammering at her without any concern for technique, a wild flurry of—
When Ex-Spy Bro fell into his rhythm, Henry used his free hand to wrench an arm down while delivering the main stab at an eyeball.
SophieRTR tipped her upper body away, planted her heel against his thigh swinging into the stab, and kicked off to launch herself backwards.
Floating, she watched the pulsing dagger sink into her chest. The Cripple's reaction speed wasn't quick enough to make proper adjustment, and the lion fang biting into her flesh stopped after a centimetre, the blade obstructed from entering deeper by her ribs. Minimal damage.
Two
Even though her Bullet-Time was still active, with her body airborne and no points of contact with the ground, there were few actions she could perform. The Cripple receded as she floated away in slow-motion. Above, the sky was lighting up with the first rays of dawn, this tournament having spanned the entire in-game night. Spectators who'd coordinated their Bullet-Time to track the action were cheering at her successful evasi—her ear twitched at a chain rattling behind her. She glanced at The Cripple, whose face was morphing into a fake astonishment played up for the audience.
Right, thought Hugo.
While maintaining those two personas, he'd been constantly avoiding being drawn into The Gate to The Tyrant's rear. Throughout their struggle, he'd continued retreating, pulling the fight back into the arena's safe centre strip. He'd focused too much on that task. After being flustered by The Tyrant's Knife-Boxing follow-up, he'd ended up making the blunder of this kick-off escape. It'd pushed him too far back, to the monsters on the other side, to a Gate behind himself that had been The Tyrant's target all along.
What a terrifying adversary. Even in duelling, The Tyrant managed to stitch together his layered lies. How many had there been to bait Hugo here?
And how many more were left?
He twisted his body. His left ear was torn off by the claws of a Shadow Panther lunging out of stealth behind. The base of his neck collapsed in as the claws raked deeper. His collar bone snapped, and his pectoral muscle and the upper third of his lung and the top of his shoulder blade were pulled from the rest of his torso like slow-cooked beef from the bone.
Henry, when Ex-Spy Bro began to roll about in the dirt to escape the Shadow Panther and a Golden-Horned Wildebeest that soon joined the fray, thrust a declarative finger forward to begin a victory speech tailored-made to deceive.
"Th-that's all me! I glimpsed twenty billion steps into the future and used my kung-fu to manipulate my foe into getting mauled. Haha! You simpletons assumed those two
From the crowd's perspective, after all this rude Scholar's nervous fumbling about, Artemis being caught by the panther had looked like a total fluke. Now, based on a combination of his over-insistence, their raw dislike for him, and the fact he'd been walking backwards during his boast, it was difficult for them to believe a word of his claims. Their doubts doubled when, Artemis managing to recover, the Scholar booked it, sprinting away into the monster maze while shamelessly accusing his pursuer of fleeing from him. Then—when he refused to re-engage, when the spectators recognised his plan to run out the clock for a win via greater remaining health—they began to dread. This cocky, cheating braggart from The Company was about to steal first place in their tournament without having once dealt any significant direct damage. Hope returned when Artemis, the quicker of the two, almost managed to apprehend him; this was dashed when he zoom-zoomed away. After two repetitions of these near misses, the crowd's tossed-about-and-abused emotions made them cry out for this travesty of a match to be cancelled, for a saviour to rescue their Greek goddess and their fragile Slum pride.
But while the plebs were revolting, Henry, having successfully dragged Ex-Spy Bro from the centre strip, had transitioned to an ultra-complex, multi-layered, multi-style duel, where, for however briefly, he could finally emerge from his slumber.