Five years earlier. Saana II. The temple of The Twenty Tools sect, built in the canopy of a rainforest.
A night shower having broken, the tropical birds were tucked under the branches of the forest, and the moss-covered walkways between the sect’s buildings were slippery with the heavy evening rain.
In a library, a new disciple of The Twenty Tools sect, a solitary man—at least a player with the avatar of a grown-up man—was pretending to sweep. His broom raking back and forth on the same spot beside a study table, he was sifting through a stack of manuscripts and Memory Spheres of footage of duels. A floating quill jotted his rapid whisperings down into a notebook.
“…loose shale, no incline…1.4…melee-pairing onl—”
He stopped, his ear twitching at the splash of a footstep in a puddle outside. Immediately, his papers were sucked up by his Spatial Bracelet. The Memory Spheres shut down, the manuscripts closed, and these objects he shouldn’t have been touching flew off around the library to their rightful shelves.
He’d been assigned a punishment of sweeping for a week.
As the disciple resumed his penance, a wooden door slid open, allowing in the hush and dripping of the rain. An entering monk NPC cast a spell that siphoned up the moisture on his clothes and boots into a ball on one fingertip, which he tossed behind him.
“Hey, it’s my favourite monk!” the disciple greeted. “What’s up, dude? Couldn’t sleep? Pillow too hard?”
The disciple didn’t receive a reply as the monk NPC wordlessly passed by him, flung open a window, and assumed a seat at the study table wiped of evidence.
The disciple swept onwards. Behind him, he heard the sound of cutlery for a tea-set being pulled out and arranged, following by the rasp of a flame against the base of a kettle.
“Before this shit starts to boil, those notes better be in my motherfucking hands, you wet-diarrhoea-bottomed fucking weasel.”
“Notes?” The disciple feigned innocence.
“The notes in which you’ve been scribbling my fucking techniques while doing this mouse-shit excuse of a cleaning job. Spit ‘em out of that distended serpent belly.”
The disciple spent a second calculating whether he'd earned enough reputation with this NPC. Then, obediently, he produced a stack of notebooks with ‘The Strategy of The Tooled-Up Komodo’ written on their cover. Tossing aside his broom, he took a seat in front of the monk and waited for the latter to read through the designs of his new martial art. It was a genius modification of Twenty Tools that moved from the close-range to the mid-range, traded the Qi Master class for a poison-specialised Cutthroat, and abandoned the multi-weapon techniques for expensive consumables and rare artefacts with atypical effects.
The monk swore his way through the various mutilations of the style but nevertheless skimmed through every notebook to the last. When he was finished, he brewed another batch of tea to replace that which’d turned cold. Drinking a fresh cup, he spent a long while gazing through the open window at the channels of rain streaming in the grey-dark outside.
The disciple endured the delay as his punishment, retribution for his impatience.
“This is egotism,” the monk finally gave his judgement, “this is self-annihilation. Your fighting style—and this fucking abomination will never be associated with mine—defines its own demise. You and any other newt-brained fuck foolish enough to adopt this lavish 'solution' will be made paupers at best and thieves at worst. This is a tree that grows its leaves by devouring its own roots and those of others, a tree that perishes before distributing its seeds."
“And?" The disciple was unperturbed. "If it perishes, it perishes. It’s never been my goal to start a sect.”
“Then what is your fucking goal?”
“Nothing much. Just to become the greatest duellist ever, unrivalled under the heavens.” The disciple pursed his lips, as one might when deciding whether to exert the effort of ordering take-out. “I might try also going unrivalled in the heavens, too – depends how long that'd take.”
The monk gestured in frustration at the discarded broom. “You’ve grasped its handle but not its fucking point.”
“No, the point was understood: a practical lesson in the patience necessary to study kung-fu with a side-dish of humility. However, my new formulation renders patience unnecessary since I don’t have to master 20 weapons anymore. As for humility, dude, I’m 13. I have years to learn that.”
The monk was growing agitated by the constant talking back. “Listen up, you shit-chirping hatchling! Humility is not learned like some factoid deposited once into the brain of a schoolboy! Humility is the continual recognition, understanding, conviction, and enactment of one's true stature in the scale of this enormous cancer-fuck universe! Humility is the mindset by which we survive it! This fucking universe won’t wait for you to come-of-age! It is already upon you, the blood and the chaos! Your inhumility blinds you from its eternal presence!”
“Technically,” the disciple replied smarmily, “according to that definition, my humility’s maxed out. My true stature in the scale of this enormous cancer-fuck universe is not small, so this confidence is commensurate."
"Fucking ant’s cock.*
"You’ve seen the plan, my monky man.” The disciple tapped the cover of a notebook. “After cracking the code of this game world, I’m about to become the GOAT of duelling - with or without your guidance. Heavy-Fingers, I can spare, like, eleven more days. That’s your time to teach me whatever lessons in humility you want. After that, I've got tools to collect.”
"Don't call that shit tools."
"Resources, then? The Strategy of The Resourceful Komodo."
The monk, having engaged enough with this childish argument, sat back and rebrowsed through the notebooks.
Outside, the sky roared with thunder, and the volume of the rain beating on the jungle canopy intensified. The monk’s attention was stolen by the noise. He stared through the window again and monitored the delay of the rain burst working through the foliage down to their level.
The disciple once again mistook this stalling as a punishment, a petty resistance by this NPC before acceding.
It would be many years before Henry realised the naivety of his assumption. Old Tael just had the habit of savouring trivial things that arose in those who’ve lived close enough to death to pass beyond the acceptance that they might be killed to the certainty that they will be killed. In the prolongation of this state of assumed demise, the initial thoughts of the past and future eventually ran out, and all that remained for the condemned was the moment, which, since they were convinced it would be the last, they greedily ransacked for every trace of beauty, the final tokens of sensation to carry off into the abyss.
“Go on then, you intransigent termite cunt." The monk conceded. "What do you need help with?”
The disciple, having won over the NPC, cast a spell to retrieve the Memory Spheres from the surrounding shelves. “First, due to the tempo loss after the transposition of the central combat locus, it becomes difficult to recreate the Elbow through to Nail phases of The Provocation. A potential fix is through amplification of environmental complexity, but—"
“The Gates Through Which Sleeping Cunt-Fuckers Pass From Hell To Heaven,” the monk reeled off the tongue-twister.
“TGTWSGPFHTH,” The disciple affirmed. “But it’s only a theory. Since The Provocation’s beyond my skill to perform for testing these factors myself, I wanted you and the others to—”
The monk patted the student’s hand to stop. “On second thought, I’ve changed my mind. These techniques of mine, you should return them in exchange for the unreturnable. You’ll be fine without them, my ungrateful disciple. You won't need The Provocation when you've already charmed that sister of the honey-eyed motherfucker who did this to me. Don’t hold back on this teacher’s account. You have my cold-hearted blessing. Fuck her on my tombstone, if you want. Fuck her hard enough, and maybe the moans will wake me from death.”
The disciple frowned. What’s happening, he tried to say, but his lips had been sewn shut by barbed wire and the words were mangled into a grotesque mumble.
The next moment, a hand wrapped around his throat and his face was wrenched into that of his teacher’s. The monk’s eyes, which’d earlier been admiring the rain, had been scooped out. From the two gaping holes streamed forth a hot, sticky torrent of red that flowed over the table and the notes, enveloping everything, consuming everything.
The disciple panicked as the flood, in an instant, rose to their waists, rising to wash this library in his memories away.
“SO WHAT?!” The monk taunted at the invading destruction. “NONE OF THIS WAS YOURS TO KEEP! YOU RO—"
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The present. Canberra, Australia, the tour-group being zipped via buggy across a campus thoroughfare flanked by a mix of imported pines and sequoias housing cockatoos, swallows, thornbills, robins, and lorikeets.
Henry dismissed his wandering reminiscence with a blink.
He turned to the beauty stuck in the buggy beside him and continued his adaptation of the dead monk’s Provocations. “Let’s ditch and go snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef.”
The young woman held out her hands in exasperation. “What Great Barrier Reef?”
It was the year 2050.
Henry dropped a candy-bar into one of the beauty's open palms. “Gift.”
The young woman motioned to biff this ‘gift’ away, but her throw was stopped by her elbow being caught.
“Littering laws,” Henry warned.
The young woman glared at him in annoyance. “I know that…I was…bah!”
Indeed, if she’d thrown it, their vehicle would have pulled over and blared a warning at her to pick it up. That would have been hum—
The young woman shoved the candy-bar at—
Henry, using a No'Are Vigilance counter-manoeuvre against poison-vial attacks, palm-slapped it back into her lap.
Next, he hoped she’d continue her attempts, embroiling her in a chain of bodily reciprocation or, failing that, deposit the gift in her bag, thereby partially accepting it and the attached burden of psychological reciprocation.
The young woman, obstructing both paths, unwrapped the candy-bar and offered it to the toddler. “Here you g—
Henry slapped it back. “What the heck, Candace? What the HECK?! The kid’s two years old. He can’t eat that sugary garbage.”
Little Liu glanced up in disbelief and grievous offence.
The young woman was similarly baffled. “You’ve been sneaking him snacks the whole day.”
“No, I haven’t. Who’s accusing me of this slander?”
“You have. Me.”
“Hmm…if it’s you, then I’ll have to defer to your judgement. Someone with that face could never lie.”
Henry, another round of The Provocation complete, retreated by accepting the snack back. He split it in two, half for the toddler, half for himself to sweeten this little victory.
The beauty was fuming beautifully.
All was going according to plan. Having lured his target this far into open communication through anger, he’d placed her in an ideal state of susceptibility for the next meeting with his mightiest puppet.
They and the other members of the tour-group were dropped off by the buggies outside a lecture theatre. They’d been scheduled to sit-in on a guest presentation from a visiting Brazillian linguist specialising in reconstructed Native American protolanguages.
“Young-Jae? Young-Jae!”
When Henry was entering the lecture theatre's lobby, a young lady holding a paperback rudely shoved past him.
This woman rushed over to a dozen-strong flock of harpies, some of whom were clutching their own books, begging for them to be signed, others who’d brought sweets and handwritten letters.
“Where are you playing now?!” shrieked one. “Are you still in Bes?! Let’s group!”
“Ignore her, Young-Jae, she started following you after the movie announcement! Play with me! I’m your Princess Kuunvalo!”
“As if KV would wear a size 12, you stumpy bitch!”
At the centre of this attention was a bewildered Korean fellow. He had an attractive form - long-legs, a gracile, slightly-effeminate profile, and a kindly gaze. However, this form was hidden within a nerdy attire, a tartan shirt whose buttons had been fixed to the collar and a pair of over-sized jeans bottomed by old-man loafers. The contradiction made him look like a boy-band member cast to portray a nerd in a rom-com.
Amongst the tour-group, a philosophy student who'd joined them expressed her fluttering feelings. “When superman adorns the spectacles of Clark Kent, the disguise through its inadequacy in covering-up the Kryptonian physique truly functions to proclaim his alien nature with more volume. ‘It was never the tights that made me the superman.’"
"What brings Young-Jae here?” asked another student.
“The lecture's about ancient South America? Research for his next piece?"
This kid inundated by harpies was a well-known doctoral candidate in the history department. Recently, he’d acquired fame for a best-selling historical-fantasy based on a certain videogame. Its events were a dramatisation of a past war in Yamalai between the remnants of The All-Mother’s worshippers and the Neeshifites. Fusing a superb blend of research and sentiment, this story had been adapted into a big-budget film, set for release soon. The success of his novel and his boyish looks had made him a campus idol.
This celebrated history nerd, glancing up from his e-assistant, spotted someone, his nerves breaking in relief. “Sunbaenim? Sunbaenim! I’m over here!”
Henry—several members of tour-group and the harpies switching their sights to him—swept a surprised glance between the beauty and the others. “Oh, is that little Young-Jae? I had no idea this industry hoobae had enrolled in this institution.”
Ray, the minimalist professor, was amongst the astonished. “By what nefarious mechanism did you arrange this acquaintance, boy?”
Henry flashed a smile at the geriatric minimalist. “I do believe I mentioned experimenting with alternative literary forms during my hiatus. That's one of them.”
The Hype-Man Play (Supreme Edition)
This history nerd was Henry’s mighty puppet. He wasn’t from Flaming Sun, but instead a member of his writing circle, one of the promising talents and Silver Wolf that’d been collected around Henry for the literature climb.
Today, this nerd would be his hype-man. If Henry’s tune was sung by a successful author, then, logically, he had to be of at least a similar standing, the type of cool cat who, even if he doesn’t write popular literature, at least chills with the trendy kids. No big deal. This play, more than any other, would prove his hidden value to the beauty. It would also establish a staging ground for the final arc of his redemptive romance.
This campaign had begun with the arrogant introduction around his elitist novel Infinite Leaves. Now, through exhibiting his affiliation with the writing circle, he would show that, in an act of supreme humbleness and personal growth, he was willing to suppress his power level and consort with authors of lesser quality fiction.
And that would segue into The Silver Wolf Finisher (Ultimate Variation), his improved and much deadlier version of the previous offer to edit the beauty's writing in exchange for love.
Such had been the plan. Henry, now, though, gave the nerd approaching with the flock of trailing ladies a wary inspection. He’d assumed, as with most players, the kid's appearance in-game had been the result of a fake avatar or beautification; only a minority bucked this trend, like Alex, Silver, or Henry himself. However, it appeared that this history nerd was in the Handsome Dan-category, a false fake, a genetic freak blessed with a monstrous VQ (Visual Quotient).
Talent, wealth, and appearances, this may have been a mortal blunder by Henry. Misbelieving he’d summoned a hype-man to boost his image, he may have just done the opposite, inviting a mirror to expose his trash aesthetics, a rival to snatch the beauty from his misshapen claws. Henry having pissed her off so much would only exacerbate the danger of this self-defeat.
The history nerd beamed with a goofy, puppy-like smile that, in the older ladies around, ignited a spark of maternal affection. “It’s me, sunbaenim! What is a writer of your class doing in this shabby establishment?”
The acting on the scripted line sucked.
“I’m casing the joint.” Henry, moving forward for now, twirled his finger to indicate the small crowd of people around them. “This is a private exhibition of the facilities. I’d boast that it was mine, but, actually, the original arrangement was for—”
The young woman suddenly bolted. Splitting the harpies, she speed-walked away.
Henry watched the beauty's flight with confusion, followed by despair as she ducked into the unpursuable realm of a nearby restroom. In that instant, his pain-staking nurturing of her anger-levels to set-up this meeting was foiled. The Provocation collapsed, its tempo broken.
Crap, he thought.
The need to go to the toilet, real or faked…he should have anticipated this simple counter-tactic. However, unlike in this new battle of love, bathroom breaks had not been a regular occurrence in his battle battles. (Humanoids in Saana didn’t expel bodily waste, the lore explaining the exclusion of this feature from the game, which would have been gross and unnecessary, as digestive systems having evolved for total nutrient absorption. Yet the devs had still given humans vestigial buttholes - trash game.)
Henry jotted down a note in his romantic research material about the vital importance of monitoring women’s liquid and food intake. “Young-Jae, are you straight or are you gay?”
“Pardon me?"
"Answer the question: do you like women?"
"I guess..."
The harpies flanking the history nerd entered a frenzy at this unspectacular admission.
Henry studied their over-reaction, the terrifying efficacy of The Looks Play. “Far too dangerous. OK, Young-Jae, I’ve seen the wares. I don't want them. This hype-man play's cancelled. Skedaddle.” He made a shooing gesture, which Little Liu sitting on his shoulders imitated.
Some harpies cawed.
The history nerd was unsurprised by this rudeness. “Uh…what about the editing?”
The agreed-upon payment for being his hype-man: free editing in exchange for an afternoon of false flattery.
“Fine.” Henry immediately caved to the mounting pressure. “But only if you’re gone in 18 seconds. Wait three weeks; my schedule’s packed, and the alpha-pleb gave me her latest last night.”
“Deal.” The history nerd sprinted away.
The kid's departure disappointed most of the women except one, who, upon her return from the restroom, was relieved at the unexpected removal of that extra source of pressure.
A university library, one of those repositories for the ageing Gen-Xers and Millennials of 2050 who couldn’t grasp the worth of a sentence until it’d been inscribed on the dried pulp of a murdered tree.
“Harappan geopolitics? Unusual choice, Little Larry, but if that’s what’s tickling your intellectual fancy, uncle will oblige.” Henry was carrying Little Liu down an aisle. The toddler didn’t answer - not due to muteness but sleep, a fact disguised by the sunglasses.
Tour VI - Allegro
Utilising the toddler to generate another serendipitous meeting, he continued to browse the titles until their backs crossed paths with that of the beauty in front of the opposite shelf, her shapely nose buried in a book.
After the aborted Hype-Man Play, Henry’s love scheming had been derailed further by him getting ejected from the guest lecture for refusing to shut up. He’d needed desperately, therefore, to both reignite The Provocation and recover lost ground now in Tour VI – Allegro, the fastest, liveliest movement of the campaign. Alas, in this crucial hour—when he should have had the open space of the university sporting grounds for the full, unfiltered expression of his romantic machinations, when he should have been weaving together hundreds of plays into an orgiastic festival of love whose magnitude dwarfed those of the previous phases—he’d been thwarted by a simple request by the beauty to check out the library instead. Here, where his sounds levels were monitored by sensitive surveillance systems, where his mariachi band and performance artists and props and stage-scenery were blockaded at the entrance, here was to be the tomb for his grand campaign.
Nevertheless, Henry, the battered but tireless warrior of love, limped onwards alone, with just enough strength left in his arm for a final, desperate thrust.
Set up for The Silver Wolf Finisher (Ultimate Variation)
Leaving his back turned to avoid raising her resistance, he grabbed a book high up on the shelf and one-handedly thumbed through its pages. “Us Post-Maximalists dismiss this cumbersome medium for being antiquated and impractical, an expensive, pretentious habit for those who interface with literature merely as a collectables hobby. Used to be of the same opinion, myself. Lately, though, after reading a couple ‘physical’ books in a virtual videogame, I’m beginning to understand the appeal. The medium, the context in which the symbols are spoken, does confer a bit of extra weight beyond the physical. It primes the reader towards certain modes of receptivity. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but does Shakespeare retain his charms on the back of a cereal box? No. Something is lost."
“Mhm.”
Henry cut to the chase. “You’ve heard of Saana?”
The young woman spent a tense breath weighing potential answers. “Yeah. Everyone has...”
“Do you play?”