A duel in an amateur tournament, a watershed shift, the dull paradigm unravelling, new heroes taking the stage and ancient, unmasked villains returning to flaunt their complex tricks.

The cries for The Saviour petered out as the crowd’s attention drew upon the screens distributed among them, projecting an eye-catching scene up on the blood-strewn arena.

HF, the insolent teen—the self-stylised oracle, insulter of their sweetest Queen, the challenger now of their humble liege—this Company dog, exploiter of bribes, gimmicks, and cons, had summoned for his latest fraud a strange tornado of wood.

Around him floated a swarm of timber: ladders, boxes, stakes, fences, planks, and poles. While some of these objects circled round him—marching like well-drilled soldiers patrolling for enemy raids, ready to sacrifice themselves in defence of land and king—others were held in reserve. Floating aside, they waited their turn, the bugle’s call to charge, the stratagems for which they’d been trained and shaped. This swarm was bound by chains of Constructionist and Landworker motes, which flowed towards the teen’s chest, to chips of like material stitched under his shirt to form a sympathetic link.

Alongside the marching swarm of wood, a diverse array of arms appeared: shields and halberds, swords and spears. These tools of war emerged from out of the teen’s Spatial Bracelet, forming for less than a breath, before retreating back inside. In pairs and triplets, the fluxing weapons drew constellations of sly, opaque design.

Within this deadly whirlwind, HF was warming up. All jest erased from his gaze, he bobbed and weaved and dodged and punched. Like a snake at home, he writhed around his familiar burrow of tools, he blocked with planks, he shoulder-, stomach-, and elbow-thrusted beams, controlling his timber troops to create a mobile, malleable shield.

Abruptly revolting, several poles broke formation to whack the teen, who, catching a rapier, parried five and two strikes. His soldiers playing dead, dropping like swatted flies to the ground, HF repeated fending away others in other ways, the wooden swarm he repelled by flicking spears, by bashing axes, by nimble shields, by nimbler daggers. Blitzing through a blend of arms, the teen showcased his martial technique, expansive yet deep.

But lest the stunned spectators forget the teen’s studious Class, he switched his savage arms to Tomes, to the library strapped to his chest. “MA! RA!” he chanted and gestured with the Scholar’s noble pose, he twirled from cancelled constellations to that zipped across the stage and planted sorcerous kisses on Suhita’s neon effigies, blowing their sculptured faces into puffs of pretty dust.

And then, having warmed his limbs and wits, the teen combined the three tools of Tomes, wooden swarm, and weapons into a seamless mix. Parries, obstructions, and blasts, he wove into a hostile harmony, his lonesome self incarnating the maelstrom of a much bloodier field.

To the plebeian eyes, the teen appeared a traveller from a distant time, returned from future days, equipped with alien technologies. In a speechless stupor, mouths-agape, they watched his work, beset by existential doom. Like neanderthals in their caves, they saw their crafty, elven cousin emerging from the plains of Africa. They heard Darwin’s dread command: adapt or be replaced.

Thus, without noise, the pillar collapsed, the gates to the beyond were breached.

To this avant-garde technique, King Ramiro—his weapons cheap and plain, his martial training from the humble, cut-price school of the brawling streets—gave a sceptic frown. “You can juggle all that?”

This art seemed excessive, The Tyrant liable to snare himself, to get entangled in its over-intricate design. But then again, this was The Tyrant.

“It’s only a fraction”, the teen replied. “Over this meagre force, I have complete control and command. 3, 13, 19, 23, 25– the percent of standard magic damage dealt by me against with each of these following buffs.”

To show his poise with this trivial load, while juggling still the previous tasks, he arranged his Spelltomes to a mage-balanced load-out. He then tore a mage’s Stat-Scroll, collected a Flora Charge to boost himself with . Grabbing a Celestial Charge, he shot his mute companion with a , buffing them both.

And thus he pumped his magic stats, his spells the fastest—and sole—way to win. Relying on weapons, this duel would take him hours - with spells, minutes. A glass-cannon mage against a tank - this duel pairing was horrid. The tank always won with ease, the kiting mage getting smashed in seconds once caught.

But the teen would not be kiting. This duel would be fought mostly in melee – hence, the wood, the weapons: the vital parts of his up-close defence.

Then he gathered extra Earthfriend charges and explained with monk-like calm—while juggling still his swords and spells and swarm—his plans for each: first, three Faunas, the bestial type, to in cheetah form, two Celestials to singe the King with throughout their duel, and three enigmatic Floras reserved for a gory last surprise.

A Cutthroat from forgotten pasts, a Scholar, (a Tyrant), and now a hippy Friend of Earth = not three tools, not four, this teen’s combined arsenal numbered a thousand more, a fraction of which he’d use today to pummel this cannibal ‘king’.

To these boasts, Ramiro jeered, his skin aglow with Karnon’s simple golden counter. “How much ‘standard’ damage, do I deal?”

“About 34,000%,” Henry replied offhand. “The advantage is mathematically yours. But this just removes the doubts. Now, the cynics will know without ambiguity, without any piss-poor excuses as to who was history’s number one. The only cheat I’ve ever used was being born ahead. Behold The Gates, you drooling plebs. Behold the next level.”

KWAH-PUFFTH!

And thunder tore the sky above!

The lights re-dimmed, while the symphony from the neighbouring concert sprang back into life, announcing their talk’s conclusion, for spell and steel to speak the rest.

Undaunted, King Ramiro rushed his foe like a bull immune to the petty threats from man and man’s overwrought instruments. His pumping muscles yearned to grasp the thief of his throne; his stomach yearned to plunder the teenage flesh and lukewarm organs.

And HF, in retreat, with his fist to his Tomes, began to summon glittering beams of bright indigo, which, like a flock of well-trained falcons, dispersed to assail the pursuer’s chest, thighs, and arms.

Into this hail, the King advanced, his shield obstructing the falcons’ pecks to soak a fifth of their magic. His plate absorbed two-fifths more.

Evading these partial defences, a and slipped by, the first to his knee, The second his shin. With the struck parts unclad in metal, the spells infiltrated the skin, and so began their clandestine task incinerating the King from within, incising at his buff-bolstered health.

But a Herculean ordeal was required for his toppling, The Saviour protected by laughter-filled Gods.

Enduring these spells like summer rain, the King closed in at speed, the teen’s escape impeded by the constant need to pause and cast.

Then as luck would have it, a rescuing utensil—a ladder!—arrived to extract poor HF, and this object alighted by the foot of a statue, constructing a staircase to sprint up from harm. With his feet and no hands, he ascended its rungs, while he paused in his climb to flick ‘round a shot at Ramiro’s unshielded abdomen – which hit. As the King then caught up, and, receiving to his arm an additional shot, he attempted to grab at the ladder, which fell to the ground from the teen’s kick.

But not needing the ladder, the King thrust up his spear, the sharp point a-glowing with Karnonian might as he aimed at the teen who was stuck on his perch to impale through this juvenile’s arrogant guts.

But the spear flew amiss, its trajectory ruined by a random wood log that fell on its shaft and which knocked, with a thunk, the spear off its course and its point through the gap in the teen’s open legs. And HF meanwhile’d stood, lording over the King, while he cast down his spells without pause.

“RAV! VELK! YAN! TAN! KUM! RUK!” he rapid-fire chanted.

While the King’d tried to stab him, a three-charge managed to enter his royal armpit.

The result for Ramiro was an awkward hiatus, a 3-second opening for his attack to refresh. While he held up his shield to reduce the harassment, he considered retrieving the ladder to climb. But then he thought of the shame if he turned and he bowed his back under HF’s continual bombardment.

Ramiro’s next attack suffusing through his shield, he rammed the statue, exploding its discount wood to a cloud of shard and dust, denying The Company dog his safe perch and forcing him down to the muddy ground more suited to such mangy mutts.

But the teen had expected this wasteful attack. And a plank, like the arm of an emperor’s palanquin, came to rest on Ramiro’s shoulder. The teenager, borrowing support from the King, stepped off his crumbling perch. And, casting one constellation, a into the King’s slavish throat, he jogged down the plank to the ground.

But Ramiro, discarding his spear, had twisted round to seize the insol—and the teen side-stepped him.

Though a chance had appeared for Henry to flee, he instead stood in place, while he calmly exploited this new 3-second window to sprinkle more spells. “LAI! NAT! TAN!"

He refreshed his and - which needed reapplying every fifteen seconds. One , he sank in the King’s belly to take 1% of his health. Another , by ducking a clinch-hold, he fired into the chest to pierce his decrepit heart – for another considerable 1%.

So to speed up this fight, while side-stepping a grab, he slapped the face of a Spelltome with a picture of a priest and a golden, field-levelling scythe. “BAS!”

And his fist, by collecting a brief constellation, began to emit a fiery heat, which, while rolling beneath a swing, he slapped in the King’s unarmoured crotch.

And the , with a flash of bright light, hammered its full explosion into Ramiro’s groin, from which rained down a shower of burnt blood and gore - the man’s eviscerated testes and rectum.

Ramiro did not flinch, his manhood quickly growing back. He stayed upon this pest and stopped him climbing another statue. Activating Bullet-Time, unsheathing his sword, the Saviour read through the mayhem and aimed a strike at the teen’s supple skull.

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The attack, bestown with the might to divide its recipient from brow to his navel, was blocked by a beam from the guardian swarm, obstructing and stopping the path of the King’s thrusting arm.

Though intruding, this beam had no power itself, its velocity gained from non-combatant arts that dispelled at a touch or tap of human contact. With no special endowments, an ordinary beam of planed timber, it foiled the attack by connecting the elbow of the king to the teen’s chest and constructing the simplest of bridges to transmit the mechanical force of the teenager’s counterthrust.

Ramiro, by just squirming his shoulder, uncoupled this link, and the beam to the ground descended. He then buried his blade into his enemy’s shoulder.

But the beam’s work complete, the had passed.

So the sword of the King, with no menacing glow, dispensed no more damage than knighting the teen.

And HF, to return this benevolent grace, utilised Ramiro’s 3-second attack cooldown window to throw his new liege an exuberant parade of colourful spells. "IP!......TAN!......KON!...."

Retreating behind his shield, Ramiro sneered at this dancing pageantry. “All that for what?!” he mocked, then cast his Class’s .

His muscles pulsed and siphoned motes from the air, the spell replenishing the damage, a fifth of his health across a dozen seconds.

In only half a minute, he’d repeat this feat - again and again, erasing the teen’s hard-won wins; again and again, obliging him to gamble against the blows, each arduous skirmish a chance of sudden, swift defeat.

But the teen, anticipating this plight from the start was unworried while shooting his spells in melee. Though he might have preferred it to kite from afar, to outpace the annoying , he was forced to reside within range of Ramiro’s attacks, lest his magic be blocked off by shield and erased.

An impossible feat this would be for the usual mage, who’d be hacked and dismembered before they completed one gesture to cast. The required constellation acquiring effort was no breeze, as the challenge of grabbing them multiplied under the threat of a rival bisecting your head.

But HF was not normal. Equipped with his tools, he’d invented a myriad ways to survive.

“RIN! You have far fewer chances than you might anticipate.TU!” the teen kicked the king in the chest, and he grabbed at a , which impaled Ramiro’s unprotected thigh. “NIN! I’m already outpacing your heals. VAN!”

Ramiro jeered, dismissing the claim, while his sword, its cooldown refreshing, searched for a gap. The King, to make his attacks unpredictable, flicked out feint and feint.

“PO! It’s the truth,” Henry honestly assured, while ducking and refreshing his DoTs. “You resorted to at 26 seconds, by which point I’d embezzled 23% of your health.”

“Then…” the King, a throat-slice swipe missing, laughed. “You only have to dodge…for ten minutes straight?”

“Only,” replied the spell-casting teen. “POT! if my pace was not—LIL!—in—KA!—reasing. VEK! TU! NAN! CEL! KI...”

And so HF, defying mortal chance, stood in range of the sword’s precarious strokes, while dodging bone- and skull-splitting swipes. He stood his ground, and, upping his casting tempo, he thrashed his hand from spell to spell to spell.

The King, against the spell bombardment, snapped his shield left and right and up and down to soak the glittering heat, while his hungry blade pursued the foe’s meat and chomped on wind

and wood. Every opportunity was blocked and spoilt, the swarm keeping his sword at bay, guarding the teen like a rat scuttling through a forest’s brambles. Meanwhile, HF’s missiles swerved ‘round sword and shield, scorching holes into The Sav—

Ramiro’s sword arm—

Ramiro’s sword elbow was abruptly pinned by a plank; his unplated armpit was slapped by a crackling palm. The teen, with lightning in hand, infused a shock into the torso of the holy King, whose body, so sacred, spasmed like a convict’s in the electric chair.

The stun dissipating fast, Ramiro lunged, the face of his shield glowing in surpri—the teen dodged.

Prophetically side-stepping the predicted attack, The Oracle whispered a forecast of three into King Ramiro’s outplayed ear. He shot him once in the armpit, twice in the ar—

The King, discarding his shield, lunged back to seize the—he tripped, a plank snagging his foot.

The teen, in range to catch the King’s fall, did not. Shoving the liege, he pushed him toward a statue, against which crunched the tripping man’s noggin, while his royal arse was spanked with spells.

(But on sober inspection, shooting his butt was not for laughs. The hole in the pelvic bone bypassed his chestplate and formed the best entry point for Henry’s to invade the guts. It bypassed also the skeleton, which Karnon’s buff had made harder than the armour. Hence, Henry’d fired no shots at the skull-encased brain. His spells were mostly aimed at the heart).

The spank-smothered King was granted relief when he and his foe were covered by a burst of smoke - spewed from a trap the teen dropped and crushed.

PUFF! And so the duel’s rules changed.

Ramiro, gaze gleaning around the opaque mist for signs of HF, could see his glittering spells, their motes like hazy stars on cloudy nights.

A murky shadow sneaking up behind the King—who abruptly snatched his slippery prey’s throat.

The teen's face, wrenched close enough to Ramiro’s to share a kiss, stared back at the King with fright.

Before The Tyrant could respond or escape, Ramiro’s dagger—without pomp or flair, its humble blade gliding easy and smooth as a kitchen cleaver through a watery cabbage—split the teen’s head from crown to brow, sawing between the conflicted, teary eyes, right through the upturned, pompous nose, to the blubbering mouth, to the fragile neck

Thus, dividing his usurper’s head in two, King Ramiro, The Saviour of The Slums, was showered by a spurt of warm champagne, the sparkling wine of triumph dowsing his cheeks, as the teenage body he held burst into stars.

The Tyrant killed, The Tyrant dead, The Tyrant who sneered remotely in shadows grabbed and made to feel a knife saw through his teenage head.

The King, alone, euphoric with the joy of life, unsummoned his helmet and, with a cannibal’s smile, pressed his dagger’s moist blade to his lips.

How sweet, The Tyrant of Saana’s juvenile blood!

But while The Saviour savoured his enemy’s zest, outside the fog, the fog dampening their noise, the spectators cried and shrieked unheard.

HF—having pulled off a to swap with the invading Villager Cutthroat now tantalising his King’s unholy tongue—was standing safe away, exploiting the break to cast a longer spell, .

“Blix! Der! Jag!” he chanted at speed, his palms collecting Shamanistic lightning.

He synced the last gesture with the smoke’s dissipation, with the first peep of the pervert King. “HAST!”

HF shot an arc of streaking light.

Ramiro took the strike with his grinning face.

And so the King froze, the crime caught in his mouth, his teeth forced to clamp his bloody knife, his fist enclosing the wicked weapon tight like a child fork-prodding an electrical outlet.

A fatal hit! (Without the buff, which cut the hurt to a tenth his health.)

The stun fading, instead of charging the teen, Ramiro sought shelter behind a statue, where he caught his breath and warned the wannabe heroes thinking to help.

“Don’t interfere, you useless *$#*@s!” he swore at the crowd through a cameraman stalking in tow.

With no heart or care to spare for these stupid clowns, he his damaged health and used a Bullet-Time to collect his racing thoughts.

He left the last exchange with more than ego bruised. The chipping spells, while nothing alone, began to hurt when combined. Thirty percent more of his health he’d wasted just now, the teen indeed quickening their battle’s rapid pace.

But more alarming than his plundered health was the wild expense to his Stamina pool, which had sunk to a tiny, paltry fifth – enough for only one last attack.

A king not a duellist, it was not his mode nor style to scrimp on resources. Healers kept his health afresh, and the of his Fighter Class restored his Stamina on damage received and dealt – but against this teen, that last attack aside, his every strike had been made to miss or fail.

This teen presented a mess of puzzling headaches. The swarm, the spells - where was one to start?

A Tier-5 Scholar, his foe was armed with spells unseen in Suchi, spells with manifold combin—

But no, to follow this path was foolish bait. Countless were the genius men who’d tried outwit this ‘teen’ and lost their genius heads. Ramiro’d do best by trusting Karnon’s gift, by apeing The Tyrant’s fun-loving friend, behaving more like beast than thinking man, exploiting nature’s mindless, lawless strength.

The buff, he thought, that’s right…the broken buff.

Rethinking his game plan, he restored his Stamina with , regaining 60% by trading a fifth his health. That damage, along with the rest incurred so far, he wiped away with a potion, whose cooldown was ten minutes.

He then resummoned his shield and helm.

But checking his health, he incurred an upsetting blow, as only eight percent of his magnified pool was topped back up by his low-level potion.

The injury dealt by this bungled trade exceeded the lightning bolt.

And at that precise second, when the King comprehended his flub, the teen popped up back by his side, this previous break granted to prompt that Alchemical slip.

Oracular HF, forecasting ten steps ahead, resumed his volley of . “PAT! TAY…”

He fired his spells, intent this time around to maintain the pace until the end, and thus he would hug the King close with the grit and love of a tapeworm snug in a pig’s distended gut.

“¡Hasta la victoria siempre!” the King bellowed loud.

The people’s liege, refusing to kneel, attacked back at the pest, ferocious as a captive lion springing a keeper who’d lapsed their guard. The teen’s could bite all they wanted, but they dealt Ramiro’s shield no greater pain than the keeper’s nails entangled by the lion’s mane.

Leaping upon the company dog, he swiped his glowing sword with bestial strength, the blade aimed—

The blade missed, the blade held back by a beam of timber pinning his arm aloft.

His shield swatted away the nuisance beam.

The teen, suddenly crouching, fired a into King Ramiro’s saintly, sovereign groin, and frying—

Ramiro, his sword a-glowing still, cleaved the teenager’s ducking head – a mis—

But HF tumbled away to escape with frantic haste as the King pursued with a barrage of thrusts and swipes, Ramiro’s weapon never relenting its deadly glow, the lion’s paw sharp with unretracting claws. This time, no three-second cooldown disrupted his assault. In the previous pause, Ramiro’d caught his error. Karnon had freed him from Saana’s fixed restraints. His every attack could possess the glow, divided but deadly thanks to the blessed buff. The slightest stroke was enough to split his foe, a clip to cleave his crown, a brush to burst his body apart, a prod to pierce his heart. Thus, with royal abandon, with bestial rage, with cannibal gluttony, he swiped and stabbed, and swiped, stabbed, stabbed, swiped and stabbed, stabbed and swiped at absolutely nothing…

SWISH! THUMP! TONG! SWISH! CLUNK!

Even infused with his buffed-up, untamed ways…every attack was ruined by the wooden swarm…

Every stab was falling inches short…every wild swing was breezing air…

SWISH! CLUNK! THUMP! SWISH! SWISH!

Confused, The King hastened his sword with Bullet-Time. And as his senses sped up as well, he saw now, through the slowing down world, a glimpse of his foe beyond the deceptive veil.

This timber tornado, into whose chaos he cut, adhered and obeyed to a strict, monstrous rule. Guiding the beams was The Hydra’s dozen heads, the swarm of wood possessed by soldiers’ ghosts, instilled with the phantom wisdom of countless wars. Like limbs of a thousand-armed Hindu god, the timber moved with multitudinous mind to thwart the lines and angles of each attack, holding his arm at bay, delaying his sword by milliseconds, wedging into dangerous gaps, and nudging his wrist off trajectory.

SWIIIIISSSHH! CLUUUUUUNKKK! SWIIIIIIIISSHHHHH!

Behind this defence, the ‘teen’, perfectly hid, dispensed orders with his multi-tasking gaze. and most horrifically, most unbelievably, the King’s abrupt activation of Bullet-Time, this time accelerating, minutia-revealing spell, unveiled in the swirling swarm of wood not one - not ONE gap through which his sword could pass.

Not one.

Their proximity was an illusion, The Tyrant locked away, secure behind his impossible wall.

Impossible!

SWIIIIISHHHHH!

Again and again, Ramiro clawed the wind, his fury foiled by the whirling planks, his lion-like strikes observed, predicted, solved.

His outplaying was then enhanced with trips, as stakes and fences joined the fun to confound his steps. The teen, inches away but far beyond reach, harassed the King with mocking blasts of spells pelted through the swarm of wood like rocks cast past the iron bars of a prison cell.

The crowd, watching their Saviour’s dismantling, were seized by rage, by pity, sorrow, and helpless dread, by a stomach-deep, ineffable ache, beyond the expressible means of words of a level head.

Dumbfounded, dumb, they aired their ache in complaints of foul play.

“He IS cheating!”

“Company Dog!”

“That guy is hacking!”

“HF, you prick!”

“Cheater!”

“Message the devs!”

“You cheater!”

That’s right! Why had he told them he wasn’t a cheater? Because he WAS a cheater - a hacker, a crook!

So The Slums bewailed their King’s unjust plight, his humble form forced—by hacks—to stumble and fumble through wood and spanking spells, while the tyrannical teen—enhanced by hacks—dodged his righteous hits and danced like a tumbling clown,

But a few in attendance still held their tongues. These thoughtful mutes were glimpsing past the veil, glimpsing what was possible in these impossible feats, glimpsing beyond the gates to the next level, glimpsing the alien shape of duelling to come.

By the arena side, Rose trembled, forgetting her task to watch for intruders, as her whole being was absorbed by Cripple-gege’s dance, by the future, present, and past converging into this one, exhilarating bout.