The duel’s shockwaves rippled further out, beyond the one city’s neglected slum, to the many distant corners of Saana.
Yamalai, Abhaya, a stretch of desert where five thousand raiders were locked in a nocturnal battle with a multi-story-tall tarantula of animated clay and its minions.
Guilds didn't usually attempt open-world bosses once the in-game sun had set due to the extra challenge of dodging hazards in the dark - an issue that’d recently been exacerbated by the erasure of a moon. However, on The Tyrant’s orders, these raiders of The Company were soldiering on, the encounter lit up by an elaborate system of spotlights. The ongoing boss-fight resembled a pitched battle in scale, with the thousands of players spread across dunes spanning multiple square kilometres in a carefully orchestrated dance.
In a command bunker, two figures—one of whom wore a beaver-shaped mullet under his helmet—had taken a break from the action to spectate a random bout in an amateur 2v2 tournament. Their choice to take a break was causing trouble for the rest – Mayonnaise, a.k.a. Alex Wong, a.k.a. The Tyrant of Saana, had abused the privilege of being the secret leader of The Company to elect himself this raid’s main tank and hog the spotlight while he gloated about hitting Tier 5-3 before next week’s premier winter tournament. Consequently, his abrupt call for a substitution had thrown the raid-teams precise configuration into disarray, and he'd consigned himself and his five thousand underlings to a rapidly approaching demise.
But Alex’s heart stayed as cool and unbesmirched as refrigerated mayonnaise. With a guiltless grin, the beaver-head stared at Henry's match and relished in the lies of his so-called ‘retired’ friend being outed on stage. The truth of his secret martial research was exposed by each dramatic clash of the rapier, each exploding splash of spells.
For setting up this wonderful show, Alex could almost forgive Karnon’s theft of his sword. He himself, even if he hadn’t been contractually barred from doing so, couldn’t have arranged a more sensational reveal event.
Superb! This was how his miserable friend should have done it from the start. One should share their discoveries, not keep them stingily to themselves for years. One should not fall into the tragic trap of humbleness, not wither away in shadow while toadies accepted the credit for their homework. One should stand in the blazing public light, exclaim proudly the merits they had wrought, and shower in the adoration and applause owed to them!
The beaver-head continued grinning right until his friend’s arm got the unlucky chop. “Ouch.”
At the gory recovery a moment later followed by the coup de grace, Alex’s companion gave a whistle “The Invincible Cripple, eh.”
“The Invincible Cripple!” Alex cackled.
After the duel, the two lingered in the bunker, not bothering to rejoin their doomed raiders. Alex meditated on the future ahead, on the movements and scheming of various parties in response to the revelation of his dear friend’s return. This was not like the elaborate, semi-prophetic acts that Henry pulled off, Alex being, himself, the main scheming party.
Finally, as his body began to shake with a mix of excitement and tremors from the approaching boss, he pronounced his judgement. “I do believe we're going to Suchi.”
“We?” His companion stared out a peephole at the tarantula’s uncontrolled legs converting raiders into puffs of red mist.
Alex beamed with anticipation. “Everyone."
Nilke, Humakungan.
This city at the seat of the former Rangbitan Empire sorely missed its founder.
Built during the civilisation’s zenith, Humakungan had once been the jewel of the world, carved by innumerable pristine roads and waterways that dispersed timely materials and produce to its tens of millions of industrious inhabitants. While it’d flourished, life in every corner of this city had progressed according to a seamless order. From birth to death to rebirth, not a soul suffered any injuries, not hunger, not pain, not loss, not worry, not doubt. Elsewhere, one might witness the many tears shed by the vagaries of this unstable world—farmers weeping for their fields withering due to shortages of fertiliser, slaves weeping as they were beaten for a treasonous streak of insubordination, merchants weeping for their businesses lost in the fluctuation of the markets—but every cheek here had been dry. Every Rangbitan had known their Duty, and they’d loved their Duty. Alas, after its founder’s untimely demise, the inhabitants of Humakungan became like plants without a gardener. Untended, they left their designated places; they spilt into the homes of their neighbours, they fought and they stole and they murdered, they multiplied in the summers of plenty and they withered in the winters of plague and famine. To glance now across Humakungan was to take in the sprawling decay of a civilisation well past its twilight, its bones held intact only by the rotting skin of a greater era.
In one of the city’s wealthier quarters, a palanquin was being carried on the shoulders of an armed troop of Orcs. This envoy was soon admitted into the gates of an opulent villa complex. The space inside had been enclosed by a reinforced dome whose ceiling had been decorated with a full-coverage fresco à la the Sistine Chapel. Despite the absence of natural sunlight, enough artificial illumination was provided to grow an orchard that could feed a private armed force.
This gorgeous villa had recently been gifted to a player who’d curried favour with an NPC Prince after purchasing several in-game businesses for real-life cash.
The palanquin was lowered at the main residence’s front door. From the vehicle stepped out the businessman and his wife, a couple in their late 30s, dressed splendidly for the afternoon spent socialising at the Prince’s palace.
“Lead my character the rest of the way, dear," said the wife. “I’ve afternoon tea with Florence and Jodie at Lyle’s Boutique.”
“Stay online a little while longer.”
“Why?”
The husband replied with a flirtatious look, his gaze devouring the flowers in her hair and the sarong draping her curves. In her dolled-up appearance, he could see traces of the slavegirl who’d outfitted her, the slave’s own exotic sensuosity transferring over.
The wife at first rolled her eyes at her husband having such thoughts in a videogame. However, she happened to be a special woman, that valiant type in whose chest beat a golden heart, a heroine studied well in the moral virtues of compromise and reciprocity.
Calculating how many weeks had passed since the previous exchange, she returned her beloved a generous grumble of assent. “Fine…”
But as the front entrance was being unbolted, the wife received a message from their son adventuring in the jungles south-west. Stopping in place, she projected the duel from Suchi on the ground and began to spectate while her son, Augustus, explained the finer details. She herself had gained an interest in the scene after he’d taken her to a tournament.
Her husband, unable to get her to budge, stood around tapping his toes impatiently, regretting buying her a VR unit.
“Duelling this, duelling that,” he complained. “It's just a bunch of filthy brutes groping each other!"
“This duel’s different,” the wife disagreed. “The techniques employed here demand an extravagant GQ, Augustus says. Says there’s never been a duellist like this.”
“Never? No, I contend that we’ve already met this sly duellist. While he may have dropped the ironic facade and acquired a few more physical tricks during his absence, he still adheres to—if you will forgive an old crackpot his esoteric puns—the same basic strategy.”
“Oh, is that so?”
The husband—not the speaker who’d responded to his wife—had craned his head upwards.
Above, through a hole sawed in the fresco ceiling, a pair of binoculars was peeping down at them. Over the head of a hobo-looking man wielding the binoculars, a glowing crimson ‘Z’ was hovering, marking the penalty for the crime he’d recently committed of plundering the couple’s villa.
“Yes,” replied the peeping thief, “our sly comrade seems to be making his comeback. We should go and pay our respects.”
The husband stabbed an indignant finger at the criminal. “GUARDS!”
Basindi, a soft-sand island in the aquamarine waters off the coast of Wankalga.
Converted into a resort catering to old folk, the island was surrounded by anchored cruise-vessels.
While the youths of 2050 were out fighting child cannibals and giant tarantulas, their geriatric millennial grandparents preferred to use the virtual world of Saana for different purposes. The game was a fun place to unwind. From the comfort of home, one could go on virtual sight-seeing tours, fish at serene lakes, gain extra time-dilated hours after work to consume films and books.
And sometimes, as had been the fashion in the old days, the game for these millennials was a place to let loose and partaaaaaaay. At this island resort, one could see many of the forgotten bacchanalian rites, ugg-boot-wearing grandmas gyrating to dubstep and woo-ing till their ears bled, popped-collared grandpas smoking crack and free-styling bars from their unpursued rap career.
The party was disrupted by a rush of elderly hobbling up the beaches as, at the insistence of their grandkids, they searched out screens projecting a scene stirring up attention around this virtual planet, some dagnabbed thing the youngins were calling a ‘duel’.
Ignoring the crowd were three geriatrics, chilling in hammocks beneath a palm tree, patting their seafood-stuffed bellies.
One of the trio, an elderly lady, was cradling her beautiful granddaughter. For her, this was the gift of virtual technology, a chance to meet with her family far across the Atlantic, to hold this bundle of warmth and love from afar.
Her granddaughter squirmed to escape. “Ruru, they’re saying the duel’s crazy, let’s go.”
“Let’s not,” said the grandma.
“A ‘duel’?” interjected her ex-husband swinging in an adjacent hammock. “I thought this was Saana Online, not Yu-Gi-Oh.”
A third geriatric, a friend of the former couple, broke into laughter.
But, unlike most of the partying old folk around them, this lot were hip to their grandkids’ lingo, knowing what a duelling was. Once upon a time, they’d themselves dabbled in their own online competitions, the trio’s friendship having begun in the fledgling esports scene. However, it was precisely due to that experience that they felt no compulsion to join the swelling crowd. For them, who’d been there and done that, there was no longer any novelty in any of it; the fanaticism of their gaming youth had faded like the colour in their greying hair.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“I'm going!” insisted the granddaughter, renewing her efforts.
The grandma tightened her grip. “Watch it here.”
Less technologically inept than the other geriatric tourists, she searched up the match’s broadcast and projected it onto the leaves of the palm tree above them.
Her companions rolled around in their hammocks for a better view. Together, they watched the young man going all out on stage, the miraculous dance of weapons, spells, and viscera. In the progression of the duel, the trio were gripped by many feelings old and new, admiration for the passion and ingenuity of youth, nostalgia from their own days in the spotlight, astonishment at the progression of gaming from keyboards and mouses to this more organic full-body competition, and pure respect for the skill.
At the conclusion, the three grey-haired companions shared a sobered look, as if they'd awoken from a night of heavy partying, glanced in a mirror, and spotted themselves dressed ludicrously in someone else’s ill-fitting clothes.
“So…where to?” asked the grandma.
“Where’s this young man?” replied her husband.
“Some place called Suchi.”
The couple’s friend clapped his hands, rubbing his palms vigorously together. “To Suchi!”
Medrisha, Volefa, an ancient city of libraries, scholars, and magic.
In a ritzy courtyard of a private training institute, a group of young Arcanist players were receiving instruction for the upcoming examination weekend, tutors helping them with everything from the basics of increasing spellcasting speed to optimal battlefield positioning.
“Slow down, you wench! Slow down!”
One practising boy was boiling with frustration at his tutor smacking his spell-casting fingers to confound him. Hocking up a thick green loogie, he spat in her face.
The tutor wiped her mouth and nose with her sleeve. Resisting the temptation to incinerate the brat, she turned and walked away.
The spitting boy flicked an expectant glance at an old man in a tuxedo by his side. “Butler.”
“At once, young master!” The butler bolted after the tutor, begging her to reconsider and offering to raise her salary.
The other students stared at the scene with abhorrence. Even in 2050, it wasn’t normal for spoiled brats to be this rude, nor to address their staff by their job titles.
The boy responded to these children with a supercilious glare. He then marched up to a portable kitchen where his personal cook had been prepping snacks and grabbed himself a fresh bowl of sorbet.
“Cook,” asked the boy, “do you imagine I won’t be able to win her back?”
The chef, not raising his eyes from a projection, shrugged.
“People even give up love for the right salary.” The boy sneered. “Dignity is cheap."
The chef didn’t respond.
The boy searched his throat for another glob of spit. However, since he was rather fond of this chef’s dishes, he decided instead to inspect the cause of distraction.
Checking out the projection, the boy was shocked by a dazzling image of a teen mage blocking a storm of cuts with a rapier and a whirlwind of objects - all while zapping his opponent in the nuts!
Not a minute later, the other students had abandoned their lessons to tune into the crazy duel. The rude boy admired every second of the amazing fight, right down to the duellist’s noble, straight-spined exit through the slobbering crowd.
After the match, the boy’s butler returned, apologising profusely at being unable to rehire the tutor.
“I’m sorry, young master, she refused e—”
The boy cut him off. “It’s fine, butler. I’ve already found a superior teacher. Prepare the ship.”
The ice-capped mountains of the Sangatingki range, wedged between Bes and the eastern fringes of the Maalundi Maelstrom.
In Saana, beneath the wars of feuding kingdoms, another war was playing out between all of mankind and the untamed wilderness at the edge of the map, waiting always for a chance to reclaim its stolen territory. The frontier lands were in perpetual flux. At times, the faction of men pushed forward, mineral caches discovered, new technologies enabling hazards to be traversed and monster dens to be cleared. At others, the wilderness pushed back. Disasters laid bridges and roads to waste; never-before-seen behemoths emerged from the unknown and claimed outposts as their den. It was lonely but exhilarating work for the pioneers who prospected on mankind's behalf in these remote domains, far beyond the last assembled piles of wood and stone.
Although it was night in Suchi, here on the other side of the planet, the sun was only beginning to set. A 6-man climbing team, on the return leg of their expedition, were digging an encampment into the side of a mountain opposite to the harsh winds of the Maelstrom. Practising a rigid schedule to ration and maximise their playtime-quota, they logged out during in-game nights, napped briefly, then reconvened at dawn.
While the others left, one team member volunteered to stay online to monitor for Maelstrom-flares or camp-attacks from the wendigos that stalked this section of the Sangatingkis.
Alone, this climber refreshed the warding stones lining his clothes and hiked a few hundred metres back to this mountain’s summit. Reaching the top, he made a fireless campsite, from which he admired the view of the sun setting over the land they’d been adventuring in. They were located about two-hundred kilometres south of the Maelstrom; nevertheless, the anomaly was still visible as a massive purple wall on the horizon extending up to the planet’s stratosphere, rippling with the destructive forces stirring inside. While the sun descended into the swirling mass, its cresting rays dyed the mountains an eerie violet hue.
The wind was painfully cold at this altitude. The climber's misty breath turned into icicles in his beard, and his extremities throbbed with the ache before frostbite. Still, he enjoyed the sensation. It was good to feel something in his limbs.
-Taiwo Bankole (Suchi, Kanaru): How far today, Saheed? My peripatetic friend, you must check this out.
His work-buddy had sent him a link to a duel gaining notoriety. The climber projected the match onto the violet snow and watched a couple minutes of the one duellist outplaying the other.
-S Okeke: Nice.
-Taiwo Bankole: Nice, my friend? This is greatness. This is a miracle from the all-mighty. This is the ‘next level’.
-S Okeke: Night here. Team's resting. Have to nap.
-Taiwo Bankole: Saheed! How can you close your eyelids in these electrifying—
The climber, putting his status as offline, turned off the duel and the rest of the noise, and he returned to the comforting solitude of the wilderness.
Not everyone had to share the same mountains.
Back in Suchi, in the sky over The Slums.
Ramiro chose to respawn at a monument far away from the match grounds. As his soul made the slow flight of defeat, he was able to spy the Villagers below reacting to his loss, the dense streets being clogged by a costumed mass marching to assault The Company’s damaged Trading Posts.
A dumber fellow might take solace in their fanaticism, their collective action on his behalf reflecting the extent to which they’d been captivated by his grand leadership. Ramiro, however, knowing his people, knew that the mob would eventually give up and dissipate without a fight. Their loyalty to him was infinitesimally smaller than their loyalty to The Tyrant’s systems of domination.
He'd already been abandoned by the comrades with whom he’d spent this tiring year building their empire. He was getting some messages inquiring about the fight, but only from the lower-ranked minions. Those aware of The Company’s takeover, of his dethronement, were dead silent. Nothing would be heard from Atusa, the weasel-hearted $@%&.
Such was the limit of human loyalty.
If he joined the mob, he would be able to convince them to commit to the revolt. But he wouldn’t. Compared to the send-off The Tyrant had originally been teasing, this fight would be too pathetic. The Saviour, king of sand and shacks, leading a couple thousand newbies to splash their bodies pointlessly against The City’s clay walls – he’d become a laughingstock. He wondered, given he’d lost that fight after all the set-up, whether humiliating him with this kind of comedically-dwarfed scheme hadn’t been Karnon’s ultimate plan. That could have been the trickster deity’s most unpredictable prank yet: genuinely allying with the small-souled, castrated sons of The Company.
Ramiro considered leaking The Tyrant’s identity out of spite, before dismissing the idea as too petty and womanly.
His soul descended to a monument surrounded by formerly dead players logging back on at the thrilling news of revolt. Anonymous in the crowd, he threw on a cloak and stalked off for a quieter section of The Slums.
Was he feeling calm after the defeat? Not in the slightest. But for the silly feelings this game invoked, he did have one reliable method of purging them…
He escaped the festival to arrive in an empty side-street. As luck would have it, a young boy jogged past him - a Roach out an evening delivery. The child vanished around a corner. Ramiro, desummoning his shoes to reduce noise, gave pursuit at the relaxed pace of a lion chasing one gazelle after filling half its stomach on another.
But no sooner did this stubborn cannibal round the corner after his victim was he swallowed by darkness, his body being smacked around comedically as he tumbled through the winding intestines of a mischievously long tunnel.
Heimland, Manger, the capital, its plain but functional architecture granted a dash of colour from blossoming spring flowers.
This had been the chosen site of the biggest international event in months.
Around the stadium normally used for The Company’s local recruitment tournament, a temporary city had popped up with facilities to support a massive influx of visitors expected in the future. The site was already crammed with more people than usual. It'd been hosting Saana League this month, pro-team organisations setting up bases with practise facilities and fans of them flooding in to spectate the scheduled matches live. The number of visitors would swell further by next weekend, when The Company’s Winter Open Invitational would be held at the same venue. This premiere event could be entered by anyone, veteran or rookie, and it covered additional PVP formats than Saana League’s 6v6, competitions being on offer for everyone from solitary duellists to guilds that churned themselves up in thousand-man meatgrinders. Seven hundred thousand attendees had already completed the pilgrimage to Manger. Millions more were anticipated, trekking overland from the other regions of Heimland, sailing on private vessels or The Company’s merchant fleet, creating their characters anew at the spawnpoint.
Pravah was the top Saana League organisation based out of India. At this team’s practise centre, like in those of their competitors, all the members and their staff had put their training on hold to study the duel going on in Suchi, news of the impossible fight reaching them quickly after the match-start.
"Wow...wow...wow..."
"What?"
"That parry sequence..."
"How? Dude...how?"
Even for these pros, at the very peak of skill, technology, and martial training, the duel was shocking. In a way, it was more astounding to them, who’d smashed their own bodies against what they’d assumed to be the highest limit of combat. Their first instinct was to dismiss the match as a choreographed farce, but their keen eyesight dispelled this idea within a few seconds of observing the desperate struggle. This teen existed too far beyond them. Their greatest feats of dexterity and control—when all the stars aligned—would not amount to what he enacted within one of the six-second
"WOW."
Amongst the stunned group, Whitefrog, the team’s starting Qi Master and a pro younger than the teen juggling weapons in the footage, was doubly shocked because he recognised Henry.
For the past few days, Pravah had been staying at The Company’s real-life headquarters in New Zealand while doing promo-work for the Winter Open Invitational. During their stay, the young pro, while practising in their gym, had sparred repeatedly with Henry. Although Whitefrog—being a pro—had always won easily, he’d kept pestering for more matches because each one was interesting, the guy experimenting with techniques from a whacky number of styles. The end result of that experimentation must’ve been this monstrosity.
"Crazy," he said, adding his astonishment to the others'.
Chaos broke out after the duel, some of Whitefrog’s teammates frozen in worry, others fervently discussing while rewatching it. Within a few minutes, the number of people in the practise centre had tripled, analysts and other teammates logging on. Managerial staff also appeared, asking for any information possible about the guy. Whitefrog’s dazed teammates, mentioning their real-life encounters at the HQ, pointed him out as the member who’d sparred Henry most. The young pro then had to cough up everything he knew, from the styles he could identify in their sparring matches to the observations of Henry being quite friendly with prominent members of The Company. He also shared the odd rumour of the teen being a cousin of Alex Wong’s who lived rent-free in the headquarters.
Once Whitefrog managed to escape the inquisition, he caught his breath away from the hecticness beside his one-v-one Qi Master coach. Taking a seat next to the man, he gave a greeting that was ignored, the coach hyper-focused rewatching segments of the duel.
The young pro supposed this stuff must've been extra exciting for the coach.
A long, long time ago, about half a decade earlier, Coach Mrtyu had ranked as the number one duellist in Saana. Most outsiders assumed that he’d retired due to his skill falling off; the tail end of his career had been one disastrous losing streak, the coach resorting to increasingly absurd techniques to recover his prime condition and failing even harder. But Whitefrog and anyone who’d had the privilege to train under the coach knew the flaws in this story. When Mrtyu sparred with the pro’s in a standard fashion, he still demolished them; his single weakness was that he refused to fight normally, for whatever eccentric reason - boredom after reaching the top and having no more rivals left, that’d been Whitefrog’s guess.
The young pro wanted to ask this expert from a bygone era what unique insights he might've had. However, he decided against it, Mrtyu in one of those trances of concentration that was sinful to interrupt.
Whitefrog glanced back and forth between the duel footage and his colleagues in a frenzy all around him, some already beginning the race to deconstruct the techniques, to steal what could be stolen and equip themselves against the upcoming upheavals.
As for himself, with youth’s talent, and perhaps privilege, to read more opportunity than doom in the ruthless storm of change, he flashed an excited smile. “Well, whatever comes of it, at least the future won’t be dull.”
“Not the future,” Mrtyu spoke up suddenly. “This is how it used to be…for a brief moment. This is how it should have been."
The coach, giving no further explanation, rose to his feet and walked off to the exit, leaving to go who knows where.
Shortly after his abrupt departure, Whitefrog and the other pros received news that the teen was an ancient figure,‘The Cripple’, a duellist from the past renowned for cheating. Searching archival clips unearthed a neglected treasure trove of much, much flashier duels.