A pony farm, a life changing moment, the instant of a world-shaking advent.
“GENIUS!” Henry declared of himself, whacking aside his twig tower as a wacky plan synthesised from all of these leisurely musings. “Kara, we can beef up your stables; in fact, we can do infinitely better than that. However, in exchange, you’ll have to agree that once you die this property gets bequeathed back to my new trust. Here’s my genius plan for this pony farm…”
Kara—merely a few seconds having passed since the last lengthy explanation, her friend chatting almost non-stop—struggled to follow along with the next rant detailing his latest ludicrous scheme.
Henry, as he put it, had been inspired by the creative architecture he’d observed in The Slums, the Villagers using the lack of building codes to make whatever random crap they imagined. His next hobby would be a similar frivolous construction project. The difference would be that, due to his filthy wealth, he could erect gaudy monuments IRL - with real materials, with real landscapes, with real people.
For the rest of his week-long stay on this farm until the tournament, he would test-run this idea, intending to build a luxurious landmark. Right here. Combining his creative assets with his financial ones, he would transform this place.
The run-down pony farm before their eyes, it was about to become the greatest pony farm in the world!
(Author's note: No, don't worry, I'm not going to be writing dozens or even a single whole chapter about over-the-top pony farm design. I don't even know what the hell Henry means by the 'greatest' pony farm in the world, this bizarre concept implying pony farms somehow have an established pony farm ranking system that a person could refer to for forming comparative pony farm judgements. ?????? Ridiculous.)
"...YES, my equine-minded friend, the GREATEST pony farm in the world - nay, the galaxy, neigh, the eternal cosmic...”
Henry, revolutionising the stagnant field of pony farm design, would recontour the hilly slopes around them for the most maximally gentle of trotting, would plant tastefully-composed fields of flowers and mixed native forest, luxuriating the air that the rider whisked through with cooling moisture and the arboreal scent of a wild in repose. A cute cafe, a natural wood-carving gallery, a tiny lake with leaping fish, a playground for the ponies, an amphitheatre for avant-garde pony-themed live plays, these and more would spring forth from the country soil. Here, in the rural nowhere of his nowhere country, like the majestic old capital their guild had once raised in the Lynak Desert of Saana II, would arise a secret pocket of earthly delight. Once open to the public—for a subsidised fee, partially off-setting the maintenance costs—the little children of today could come and ride through the manicured landscape and rejoice through his avant-garde reimagining of the simple pony ride into the pony ride beyond all pony rides, the next-level pony ride of tomorrow!
Of course, trying to ground himself in reality, Henry was not so insane as to believe his renovations could be completed within a week, the forest sections alone taking decades to grow. However, his Frivolous Fun Fund could provide for the hired hands to carry out the remainder of his vision once he'd left this farm.
Then, while others sweated out the boring details, he himself, travelling the world in carefree bourgeois retiree fashion, would pull off a similar dastardly stunt at every location he visited. Wherever he might stop and rest his tired bottom, he would study the land, the people, and all between them and himself, and he would unite them to form a seed of beautiful artistic landscaping architectural expression. His vision of the perfect park, the perfect ski village, the perfect mountain temple, these would he sow throughout the planet they shared! One a week, every week!
As he trotted the globe, he would become like Johnny Appleseed sprinkling orchards throughout America. He'd be like the ancient Middle-Easterners colouring their arid homelands with their enclosed gardens of paradise. In any frost-bitten tundra, in any lifeless bog, a man who was lost might chance across the monuments sprouting from the footprints of his journey. At his avant-garde oasis town, the desert wanderer could quench their thirst, and as the water touched their cracked lips their vagrant soul might just remember the taste of the greater monument, the eternal cathedral, that endures through such barren times inside all men and all ponies.
For a retiree, wouldn’t that be a fun waste of a few months? A year even?
In fact, that might just be the rest of his fleshbag life after Saana...
This brilliant plan might be his destiny. When he examined his whole exhausting saga, his hellish struggles at humanitarian world-building in a loveless videogame, he sensed a quiet teleological current driving him along that ultimately washed him against this one most great idea, this one divine mission, this dharma, this dao, this raison d'être, this purpose beyond all purposes. Yes, Henry's next and final step was to take all of these skills he'd cultivated in a virtual simulator and put them to a practical use rebuilding the real world, to labour at reassembling what'd been lost amidst the flattened fragments and raising it to an even higher height.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Maybe.
He might get bored of the idea by the end of the week. He was pretty mentally unstable right now, the months of sleep deprivation turning him a bit batty.
But, certainly, logically, towards the immediate goal of stepping down from Saana's slope, this project should restore his connection with the physical world much better than the usual boring tourist routine. Only through direct action and interaction did one's Will fully bind to a thing. If he were to create works that were harmonious and long-lasting, he would have to push his every mental fibre to touch and love the deepest dirt of this foreign-feeling realm.
Spam-building miniature world wonders for between a week and a lifetime, yes, that seemed by Henry’s reckoning a smart next step, one far more in sync with the priorities of a well-grounded, mentally-sound 17 year old in the year 2050.
"...welcome, our diminutive neighing amigos; you too may trot through Heaven's golden gate!' That'll be the last line of the opening speech to this place, history's greatest pony farm. Thoughts? Feedback? Suggestions?"
“What about the tournament?” asked Kara of the obvious.
“Yeah, yeah, I can juggle that, too,” Henry replied dismissively, using his e-assistant to download resources on architecture and pony farms and landscape design, messaging experts in these areas from Flaming Sun to arrange them to fly over for in-person mentoring. “The tournament was actually getting so easy I was about to increase my number of events. But this is probably more productive (and mentally healthy) than artificially cranking up the challenge in-game again. Someone told me recently that I should occasionally try seeking solutions to my problems that don’t directly involve the thing creating them. That seems reasonable enough to me. So are you in? Feel free to refuse. I can always buy another property down the road. Quick. You have four minutes to decide.”
“Go ahead.” Kara consented without hesitation, rich enough to not care if Henry ruined her pony farm with this latest whacky scheme – plus, although she never fully grasped them, most of his ventures had worked out splendidly and were the reason she’d become ridiculously rich. “Sounds fun.”
The pair loitered under the tree and clouds a while longer, Henry contacting his financial managers and lawyers. He’d have to check what building permissions he could get first. Developmental projects in real life unfortunately had more red tape than Saana, where he’d been able to just rewrite the laws himself.
Soon after, a taxi could be spotted from their hill-side rest, the vehicle flying up the driveway below, its wheels churning up a billowing trail of dry orange dust.
“What the heck?” said Kara. “That was…fast.”
Henry gave the car a wary look - it contained another step down the slope. “Nah, that’s the guy who recommended trying more IRL hobbies. He’s a brain doctor. Visits daily. I’ve been letting him search my skull to replicate the miracle inside, but, for some reason, he keeps giving me unsolicited life advice.”
I.e., it was a therapist he’d hired.
Henry'd probably ask the dude for feedback on his avant-garde pony farm idea, his game-addicted friends being almost as detached from reality as himself.
Kara gasped in fake surprise upon learning that He, The Tyrant, was crazy.
Henry, grunting in annoyance as he got to his feet, went over to his horse and unhitched it. “Don’t tell the others. I still have some pride.”
“My lips are sealed.” Kara stayed put, planning to lounge about her farm some more before returning to the city, before whatever wild transformation would occur to it. “My lips will be sealed in exchange for a beach house in The Bay – a not crap beach house.”
“Not that much pride, not so much to betray our neglected hoofed pals, whose redemption needs that money more now. Catch ya later, Karalligator!” Henry, climbing back on his horse, galloped off, dictating a note to his e-assistant adding an avant-garde tropical beach bungalow to his future projects.
Several real-life hours of therapy and intensive pony farm research later, back in-game, The New Suchi Arena.
The Tyrant’s workshop marched through its second strenuous day. To their dismay, the young duellists had learned that the first session had merely been a gentle opener. Now, after being reeled in by the lure of false fun, he’d hooked them by the lips and dragged them along to be brutalised by his spartan training regime. Their boyish minds and maiden bodies were made to ache as limb and sanity were equally stretched by his torturously-complex lessons. To wield his Thousand Tools, he chided them, one had to develop callouses not only on their hands but on their brains and souls. The future of duelling was many things - but, above all, it was disciplined.
When a longed-for break finally arrived, the exhausted trainees collapsed like kindergartners struck down in mass by a flash heatwave. On the arenas and their obstacles, in the aisles between, upon the viewing stands, and under the contested shade of umbrellas, their little panting forms strewed the ground. In pools of sweat, they fell and gasped. Entangled with their dirt- and blood-caked practice partners, they wept openly together, the ordeal uniting the wannabe duellists like a traumatic frat-house hazing.
“Brother,” one trainee whispered weakly to the stranger he’d paired with today, “haven’t we suffered enough…why ruin ourselves for the 1v1? Isn’t this solitary path too lonesome? Isn’t man a social creature? Brother, our tired mind hallucinates a brighter dream, a vision of a world that no longer neglects our deepest need: the need for each other.”
“The 2v2, brother?” the trainee beside replied to their new best friend.
“The 2v2…”
“Me and you, brother? Together?”
“Yes, brother, we’ll break for the exit together - just as soon as our legs regain their strength.”
Nevertheless, while the option to leave the workshop was always there, few trainees—bizarrely—took it. Against their better judgement, they were held to the arena by a strange magnetism of the flesh, an invisible attraction strengthening duel by duel, drill by drill. As for those who did quit? They were immediately replaced from the eager horde outside the stadium, where over a hundred thousand migrants had gathered in a field of broadcasting projectors, where a carpet of drained bodies was also scattered.
The students were catching their breath. The Tyrant meanwhile, as if denouncing their lazy, pathetic willpower through the superior restless example of himself, continued his 1v1 challenges, summoning the next doomed volunteers to receive a private lesson.
Next up for a meet-and-greet with his fists was an 11-year-old Arcanist, a little boy stepping into the ring wearing wizard robes and a haughty glare...