***

Twenty Tools.

Twenty Tools – the art from which Henry’d begun this odyssey, and the art to which, after centuries of touring other martial lands, he sailed home-bound for the welcome conclusion.

Tael Heavy-Fingers, the style’s potty-mouthed founder, had never divulged his background. Henry—after his extended research—had been able to reconstruct it, but he judged it both pointless and inappropriate to describe in length. The monk, like himself, would’ve wished to define himself much more by the legacy of his work than by any biographical trivia. Suffice it to say that Tael’d shared the common story of the struggle. He, like many, had been born into one of his world’s pockets of decline. If there was anything remarkable about him, it was only that when the hour of crisis met him, young and half prepared, he’d faltered but he hadn’t fallen. And, of course, he’d been an intellectual freak.

Twenty Tools began sometime in Tael’s late twenties, in the mind of a vagrant martial artist who’d wandered through the apprenticeships of several now-forgotten masters. Polearms had been taught to him by Pedrasin of Ample Spine, shields by Offal-Chewing Eemya, and war-hammers by The Pontifex of Pulp himself, Zong-leh-Bal. His eye had been trained to filter through battle’s distractions by hunting schools of herring with Spike-Diver Yi, and he’d conditioned his limbs for mobility by swinging through jungle canopies with The Mandrill of Dokozyer.

All totalled, his journeying had immersed him in the ways of twenty different sects. At each he’d studied for a mere martial minute before leaving in discontent, finding no art quite capable of fitting the sharp-witted but clumsy mould of his fingers. At some point, he realised his own path lay in none of these. The universe was not willing to accommodate him. His only option therefore was to carve out his own niche, to take the flawed pieces of all he’d gathered and assemble them into one superior technique.

That mission transformed into Tael's single life obsession. He, who’d already abandoned civilisation, abandoned it further. He became a monk. He moved into the remote juggles where neither friend nor enemy could distract from the calling of the weapons’ combination. If he’d been a communicative type, Tael might’ve transitioned to a career in mysticism, to preaching of a higher intellectual design witnessed in his tools. As it were, this conviction—which had certainly floated somewhere in his skull—could only be gleaned indirectly. One had to listen out for whispers of the goal in the structure of his research, in his constant swearing at the universe’s blood and chaos, these two forces his primary enemies as they intervened between him and the secret order stored inside his weapons.

Heavy-Fingers' mad efforts eventually birthed one of Saana's most complicated arts - Twenty Tools. His method was characterised by its flashy, eye-spasming weapon juggle, by the studious identification of an enemy’s sub-conscious habits, and by the exploitation of these through extended routines of provocation and misdirection.

Overall, Twenty Tools had been more theory and aesthetic than function. The monk had only been partially successful at uniting its complex pieces with combat’s brutal realities. Nevertheless, the ambitious nature of the style had attracted the occasional weirdo disciple, others who shared Tael's dream of a higher, more intelligent, more ordered, more creative multiplicity.

One of these seekers happened to be an alien from a foreign universe. This student would bring with him both the abrupt cessation of Twenty Tools and—after a period of quiescence—its phoenix-like rebirth into a much greater beast.

***

A Thousand Tools: A Synthesis

Anonymous et al.

Department of Duelology, The School of A Thousand Tools

DUEL101: Introduction to Duelology

The Class of Duelfessor H. Lee

November 2050

Abstract: A Thousand Tools Abstractly

And so, at last, inquirer to many schools, you reach the end of these dozen vagrant dreamsS1S2S3S4S5S6S7S8S9S10S11S12 in which you’ve crawled up duelling’s page-bound cliffs. As you tread beyond their lofty range, before you cast your eyes to further things, do pivot back a nostalgic glance upon the dozen highest peaks behind you.

1. On but one mountain of the first long doze, you crawled its slopes on all nine85 paws, you bashed your head and schooled your knees, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

2. On but one mountain of the second slip, you clipped your wings106 with rapier cuts, you danced the dragon’s ground routine, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

3. On but one mountain of the third bed-kiss, you scouted in the leafy123 wilds, you floated wind-born tranquilly, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

4. On but one mountain of the fourth relief, you earned your priestly136 robes from death, you dutifully survived the heap, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

5. On but one mountain of the fifth caress, you trod the steppes beneath the stars144, you hunted down colossal beasts, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

6. On but one mountain of the sixth somnamb’, you pranked with sons160 on storm-blown hills, you laughed at combat’s gaiety, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

7. On but one mountain of the seventh spell, you dwelled inside your selfless190 flesh, you learned to talk in monstrous speech, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

8. On but one mountain of the eighth nightsong, you martialled226 from the northern frosts, you conquered dialectically, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

9. On but one mountain of the ninth repose, you closed your lids in torpid245 craze, you drugged your mind with mysteries, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

10. On but one mountain of the tenth dream shift, you prepped to kill the universe255, you manned up as a mercenary, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

11. On but one mountain of the eleventh sleep, you stalked262 beneath the sewers old, you gnawed your foes with mousey teeth, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

12. On but one mountain of these twelfth shut lids, you did your highest duty285 yet, you gave to all eternity, and you saw its peak, as you saw the rest, and then you went beyond them.

At last, these mountains and other smaller mountains fade behind you now, their shapes receding into time’s enfolding and forgetful mists. Only vague aspects of their slopes linger recollected in the callouses that scar your hand, in the exhausted yearnings of your brain to stop these interminate ascents.

At last, the closing question calls to you, who’ve climbed this mountain range, how can you rise up higher still, beyond the reach of all of these tiny hills? How can you take their flattened crests and combine their altitudes you stole to duel upon the moon's far-distant stage?

A Thousand Tools: A Synthesis

In this paper, we'll be reviewing for the beginning student of duelology the syncretic formulations of A Thousand Tools as performed by the venerable Duelfessor Lee at the termination of his years (or centuries) of esoteric duelsearch.

Our synopsis comprises four main sections. The first, introductory in function, bridges the gap between the commencement of A Thousand Tools and the dissolution of its predecessor Twenty Tools, connecting the two in logic, purpose, and design. The second details the method of synthesising the many constituent arts into a single coherent style. The third describes the resulting shape of the art as employed in and, importantly, around the arena. We conclude in the fourth with a post-synthesis deliberation on some of the larger non-martial ambitions of Duelfessor Lee in developing A Thousand Tools. Through this last section, we hope to form a second bridge of departure, connecting the rather abstract duelsearch project to wider fields of material and psychosocial interest beyond.

Due to the casual nature of this paper, the more onerous post-maximalist and cyborg methods throughout have been treated only in brief or substituted for simpler analogical mappings from Dr Heavy-Fingers' precursory Twenty Tools. Students salivating for more exact specifications should refer to A Thousand Tools' relevant volumes on synthesis.

Introduction: Between The Tools

Before we plunge directly into the synthesis of A Thousand Tools, it might serve to rehash a brief phase of Duelfessor Lee’s duelological past between this project's initiation and Twenty Tools. Thereby, we can establish the guiding aims of his duelsearch, upon whose foundational skeleton the many martial arts since learned were to be arranged and attached. At the same time, certain novel points of logic might be elucidated that—although opaque at the outset of this project—have since been clarified after centuries of study.

Compared to Dr Heavy-Fingers, Duelfessor Lee’s start upon this path of cerebral duelology had been comedically modest.

His inauguration66 began during his first hours of play, in the tutorial of Saana's previous instalment. Due to his delayed reflexes, he'd been confounded by the final Ying-Yang Monkey stage, a switch of the monsters' to hyperspeed catching him off guard repeatedly. Then, he’d recognised a subtle effect telegraphing the phase transformation ten seconds in advance - the same with which he’d killed The Redeemer67. Immediately, having barely tried it, the Duelfessor dumped the game's conventional fighting, dismissing it as misguided, and switched to a more conscious and calculated approach.

Within twenty minutes of this event, upon the tutorial's completion, he abandoned the colleagues with whom he'd started - and with whom he'd later reconnect for the non-Duelological career. Alone, he set out on a quest to find a martial art suiting his ponderous brilliance.

A series of rejected institutes later, he’d arrived at Dr Heavy-Fingers' jungle campus12.

At the Twenty Tools sect, he signed up for a Duelastic internship. Exploiting this lowly position, he snuck unnoticed into Dr Heavy-Fingers' library and ransacked the doctor monk's lifetime of documents in a teenage precursor to the post-maximalist research method of industrial espionage. With these and other fair-game procurements, Duelfessor Lee didn’t need particularly long to identify the intellectual machinations underpinning their shared quest for a higher, supreme art of the cranium.

The two of them, he realised, had been 100% correct and everyone else was a moron duelling with a faulty method deserving of rejection.

Here, it would’ve been easy—and generally advisable—to dismiss their assertion as normative cases of the schizophrenic insane or the barking lone wolf. Regarding the latter especially, both Duelfessor Lee, a.k.a. ‘Duelfessor Invictus Cripple’, and Dr ‘Heavy-Fingers’ had been martial invalids. We could reason therefrom that their insistence on a more sophisticated method of combat had been nothing but an embarrassing coping mechanism. By denouncing the present scene for its intellectual inadequacies, they were just inverting their own failure to adapt and projecting a wish for the minor aspects congruent with their personal strengths to obtain more importance. Dismissal of this would, usually, be the appropriate response. As a rule, the lone wolf snarling at the pack dies, and, if one can’t even meet the standard, they’re really not suited to be barking about revolutionary ideals.

However, an origin in some insufficiency could also be found in many—if not every—of the rare reformers validated by history. It was, after all, only through some misalignment with the world that anyone gets to perceive it from the extra, wider perspectives necessary for its reconfiguration.

In Duelfessor Lee and Dr Heavy-Fingers' case, what the dyspraxic pair had observed during their limping surveys of Saana’s martial landscape, in the signs diffused piecemeal across multiple arts, happened to have been the truth.

History’s greatest duelologist, as the first had boasted, should be strategical. Order, as the second suspected, was secreted within the blood and the chaos176.

While Dr Heavy-Fingers had struggled to articulate his suspicions, Duelfessor Lee faced much less difficulty. For him, this was neither a troubling nor a controversial declaration because he was privileged to an insight about this universe concealed from the doctor monk: Saana was a videogame. It was designed. It did have an order. Maybe then, Dr Heavy-Fingers had perceived the tremors of design but couldn’t connect them because he and his people were located too far from the epicentre, which truly belonged to the ‘Offworlders’ who’d recently invaded his planet.

Fun for some – this was Saana’s ruling logic, by Duelfessor Lee’s reckoning. The maximisation of gaming excitement underpinned the distribution of natural resources, the patterns of weather, and even the exaggerated personality characteristics of the NPCs, including the expletive-mouthing doctor monk.

And, the Duelfessor thought, this logic likely also applied to the game’s combat. Fighting might’ve been designed to be complicated and thought-provoking. Saana wanted to activate the gamer’s total being, stimulating both brain and muscle.

So why then, the question followed, was this not the observable case? Why was everybody, NPCs and players alike, wrestling with the crude gruntings of neanderthals, circling for a few seconds, engaging, entangling, clubbing, stabbing, dying?

The answer to this second mystery, the young Duelfessor Lee unravelled within a few minutes of his first epiphany.

Multiple systematic points of failure were evident. On one level, the NPCs, bottlenecked by risks like death, had evolved less complicated and safer martial arts. These ill-suited methods had subsequently been blindly adopted by most players entering the game, giving them a poor foundation from which they could never develop. On a totally different level, war acted as a counterweight. Any martial traditions adapted for mass combat—that is, most traditions—had to sacrifice complexity at the level of individual troops for complexity on the unit scale.

Or, in simpler terms, Saana's combat was designed but also poorly designed.

Of these enlightened facts, the young Duelfessor Lee was 100% confident. The problem had never been with himself or his crippled monk teacher. It was, actually, the game that was dogshit.

Now, centuries later, from the enlightened retrospective of A Thousand Tools, we could interject some nuance to this insight, the arrogant kid Duelfessor Lee being partially mistaken. Firstly, these ‘flaws’ were also designed. Most of what he’d called trash had been an intentional component of the game’s discovery process, inviting players to fix them and unlock new features – e.g. himself getting baited into advancing its duelling into duelology. These covert innovation opportunities, quite well concealed from most, just tended to look dumb and obvious to him because he had mutant pattern recognition. Secondly, his assumption of the optimal balance between brawn and brain had been miscalibrated, both he and Dr Heavy-Fingers vaguely envisioning a perfect cerebral combat. This immaculate order palpitated in their fantasies—although it did exist—wasn’t meant to be utilised by either of them. The highest techniques belonged to Saana’s Gods with their inhumanly-amplified mental capacities. This latter limitation could not have been recognised by even the present-day, 2050, non-cyborg Duelfessor Lee.

But, for the young Duelfessor Lee who’d pinpointed the errors of the world, who'd been 100% correct, how was he to next break free from this defective game's false gravity and launch himself to duel amongst the heavens?

One option would've been Dr Heavy-Fingers' path. Multiple martial arts could have been learned, each containing Saana’s hidden cerebral elements in isolation. These techniques could then be unified and re-organised into a single functional style. Prior to this endeavour, a duelsearcher would also be remiss if they skipped the simpler fundamentals of combat; a few common arts that'd achieved widespread employment should be examined for the purpose of grounding these advanced techniques and preventing a spiral into the extremes of intellectual impracticality.

At this plan, the young Duelfessor Lee had taken one calculating glimpse, at the years of daily gaming required to learn martial arts, and he’d replied in the negative. No, not interested. This investment of time, he measured a flagrant waste for a hobby whose raptures he'd yet to register. Lest we forget, his then participation in Saana's duelological scene had been a mere convoluted downstream product of Alex Wong, a.k.a. Mayonnaise (no title - no duelgree, sadly), scamming the Duelfessor into joining a school club and holding hostage the attached academic credits12.

Due to this non-priority, Duelfessor Lee, as masterful at circumventing research as conducting it, thus innovated for these unwanted labours a shortcut: Legendaries. Yes, through the supplement of tools, whose extra power would compensate for his lack of any genuine martial skill and the clumsy non-configuration of his cerebral tricks, he could leap directly into duelology's strategic heights, within months.

So the Duelfessor took that accelerated path, the rest unravelling into his Crippled tragedy.

On the topic of the subsequent debacle, as Duelfessor Lee recounts, his naïve childhood self had anticipated a more congenial response.

His preliminary experimentations on the strategico-instrumental method of duelology, as materialised in The Strategy of The Resourceful Komodo9, should have engendered a welcoming, semi-messianic reception. Each victim he schooled, each of their fans, educated in the proper Way of Fighting Alone, should’ve remarked, ‘Wow. Look at this, the PhD-level of duelling, 'duelology' if you will. Let’s follow in the Duelfessor's lead and invest the years of duelsearch necessary to formulate a non-Legendary equivalent.’ Then, during the international race to be the first, these convert duelsearchers should've scratched their heads in puzzled amusement as they tried to mine his advice from The Strategy's cryptographic270 manual, its answer keys coded into the snappy weeb-parody zingers of his 1v1 montages.

Instead, the lay public, missing the forest for the cheats, got distracted by his items. In his message box, at his open office hours, they inundated the Duelfessor with incessant demands for explanations as to the acquisition of so many luxuriant artefacts, and then they got mad when he only replied in further zingers.

In retrospect, these miscommunications should not astonish. Although simpler from the Duelfessor's omni-disciplinary perspective, objectively, his procurement of so many Legendaries constituted a more substantial mystery than his duelological antics. To this day, the methodology187 had yet to be revealed, and we would be hard-pressed to source a single other acaduelmic who'd consider 'Get Legendaries' a reasonable or faster substitute for the conventional training process. Moreover, the cryptographical inclusion in an already difficult topic may have been erroneous. The Duelfessor may have slightly overestimated the number of students who'd be both hyper-genius and enthusiastic enough to link the disparate clues of his project into a coherent and meaningful whole. Whereas he'd calculated about 5 such students, a handful of mutants vying for the helm of duelsearch in his absence, the number evidently turned out to be a tenth of that, 0.5, one lone Somali girl263 deciphering his strategy manuals several years later for the indirect purpose of avant-garde comedic mystic roleplay.

But, at the time, Duelfessor Lee had not ruminated deeply on these causal mechanisms behind his disseminative malfunction. He’d not, actually—despite pretending otherwise in accordance with The Cripple’s parodical roleplay-lite—been bothered by the public rejection. Born crawling into the beyond, the Duelfessor had been habituated since his toddler days to the misprevailments of his avant-garde projects, not even his parents being able to feign an appreciation for his weird art. Where others might've been grieved, the Duelfessor could always take solace in the fact, as illustrated by the current success of his duelological duelsearch, of being incontestably right.

As for other motivations for correcting the public, such as the establishment of a martial learning institute, these hadn’t ranked amongst his then-priorities, nor had he wished to address the balance deficiencies of a poorly-designed videogame. The Duelfessor in this childhood foray into acaduelmics had merely sought the title of number one in order to complete his club assignment and return to non-duelological inquiries. That, as the blood59 on his tools verified, he'd achieved with flying, crimson colours.

It wouldn’t be until much later that the Duelfessor's thoughts on any of this changed, that the emaciated eggheads of duelology would have our hunger for a radically-multiplex method sated.

Method: On Synthesis

But, as time progresses, people change, their interests change, their means change.

Now, Duelfessor Lee after years (or centuries) had obtained the interest and the means. Through the preceding Overdream survey course of dozensS1S2S3S4S5S6S7S8S9S10S11S12 of martial traditions, he'd mastered both the rudimentary skills needed to found any style in Saana and the rarer cerebral building blocks of his advanced duelological techniques. These together would provide more than sufficient material for the innovation of the game's underdeveloped 1v1s, for the multiplication from Twenty Tools to A Thousand Tools.

For simplicity’s sake, we might frame the method by which all of these pieces coagulated into A Thousand Tools using the Hegelian dialectical triad of Thesis, Antithesis, and—the key buzzword repeated ad nauseam throughout this session—Synthesis. The duel-specific application to this logical skeleton would be as follows:

1. Thesis: The starting condition, the former, zombie-stupid state of duelology, i.e. mere duelling.

2. Antithesis: The new, the collection of upgraded genius techniques that A Thousand Tools sought to integrate.

3. Synthesis: The combination, the current many-stepped merger of those two parts in which, through the dynamic resolution of their contradictions, we arrive at an art encompassing both body and brain, an art larger and fuller than either, i.e. the supreme martial art, i.e. A Thousand Tools.

To refresh the student’s memory, we’ll quickly summarise both the Thesis and Antithesis as presented diffusely throughout the previous Overdream episodes. An advanced cyborg disciple with perfect recall might wish to skip directly to the juicy Synthesis proper. This would be strongly advised against. As stated above, the Hegelian framework was—emphasised with no more humour than a 19th-century German philosopher—an absolute simplification. Duelfessor Lee, a 21st-century post-maximalist trained in non-linear nested multilectics, conducted pseudo dialectical operations throughout both the physical Thesis and cerebral Antithesis, both also evolving within the larger developmental scheme.

The Thesis: The Basics of The Body

The basics of 1v1 combat, due to their near universality, A Thousand Tools truly derived from across all the preceding arts. Nevertheless, it might be worth highlighting in this section the specialist styles that’d taken certain base elements to their unique extremes.

Arranging these according to Duelfessor Lee’s own cyborg schema of the fundamentals would require thousands of pages of supporting explanation. In eschewment of that horror, we’ll have to be content with transposing the relevant styles onto Dr Heavy Fingers' much simpler twenty-part formulation as used in Twenty Tools. A student should take this for a poorly-drawn map pointing in the same general direction of a weapon-aimed multiplicity. Through this fun transpositional exercise, we’ll also illustrate for those unfamiliar with post-maximalist modes of duelsearch one of the contentious principles pushed by our esoteric-re-minimalist-leaning sub-duelsciplinarians. According to this creed, the highest function of any knowledge model is neither a complete nor objective description of the arena but the dissection of it into chunks utilisable for pragmatical considerations such as eduelcation136, enduelrability144, and misduelrection160. If this debatable logic holds true, then sometimes, paradoxically—including now perhaps—the Less accurate model could achieve More.

The thus schematised artsS1S2S3S4S5S6S7S8S9S10S11S12 are organised in Table 1.

Table 1. The Organisation of a Selection of Overdream-Investigated Styles in Accordance with Twenty Tools' Foundational Schemata as Originated by Dr Heavy-Fingers

Tool Aspect Styles (Note: highlighted are styles contributing most to Duelfessor Lee's duelsearch into the specific Tool Aspect)

External Tool Aspects (Note: this External sub-domain corresponds, approximately, with physical processes, as distinguished from the mental processes of the Internal domain below. If certain Tool Aspects seem misplaced, e.g. Environment being classified as Internal, this is due to Dr Heavy-Fingers' non-terrestrial cultural autochthony and English lacking the appropriate terminology to translate the original conceptual duality.)

Hand-to-Hand–Grappling Jaguar Fang, Hardman Handaxe, Mutambi Death-Grappling, Abhayan Hulk-Wrestling, Palm of Emptiness, Monster-Self Veneration Hand-to-Hand–Striking The School of Nine Fists, Insights of The Third Eye, Water Tiger, Monster-Self Veneration Daggers Forbidden Knife Boxing, Jaguar Fang, The War-Priest’s Duty, White Mouse Stalking Heavy Weapons Broken Skull; Tranquil Mind, Hardman Handaxe, Burning River Bravery Swords The Art of Sword and Shield, Eternal Brother Blade, Wingless Dragon, Nomad Sabre, Kolonia Sacred Warrior, Baby-Faced Hook Sword, Wankalgalese Shotsword, The Faceless Prince’s Will, One Touch One, Lightning Sword, Universal Big Man, The Iron Defence, The Left-Hand Nobility Polearms The Final School of Flame, Swamptail’s Courage, Universal Big Man, Loving Spear, Five Stars Sovereignty, Rising Moon Fist, Medrishan Twinspear, Speedweaving, Kolonia Sacred Warrior, Icedancing Shortspear, The King’s Harem, Herdswoman’s Spear Shields The Art of Sword and Shield, Universal Big Man, Rising Moon Fist, Togavian Tulipsinging, Baby-Faced Hook-Sword, Kolonia Sacred Warrior, Bloodriver Stalling Shield Projectile Weapons Small Island Shooting, Snackman’s Immaculate Arrow, Possum Pygmy Envenoming, Young Arrow; Wise Claw, Bow-Shooting, Scorpion-Mounted Bow Duelling Magic The Final School of Flame, Loving Spear, The Shadow Silhouette, The Inner-Fire Spreader’s Duty, Five Stars Sovereignty, Palm of Emptiness, The Faceless Prince’s Will, East Temple Page-Society Connoisseurship, Sibylline Auguries, Architecture of The Dancing Stone, Gentle Paw, Medrishan Twinspear, Starhunting, The War-Witch’s Duty, The War-Priest’s Duty, The Three Dragons, Bloodriver Stalling Shield, Grey-Tongue Battlebardery Equipment (encompasses both armour and consumables) Kolonia Sacred Weaponsmaking, The Reliquarian’s Duty, The Torpid Mysteries, Invincible Steel of the Excavated Mind, East Temple Page-Society Connoisseurship, Cursed Ex-Slave Tactics, Starhunting Abilities–Own 63 Earthfriend Styles, Floating Leaf, Tangye Opera Shapeshifting, Starhunting, Gentle Paw, East Temple Page-Society Connoisseurship, Monster-Self Veneration, White Mouse Stalking, The Left-Hand Nobility, Ecological Research of The Company

Internal Tool Aspects (Note: the inclusion in this primitive schematisation of this cerebral-esque category attests to the messy nature of human duelology. Even in its crudest form, the 1v1 is partly intellectual, much like—on the other end—A Thousand Tools would never be entirely escaping the prison of the body.)

Abilities–Opponent Herdswoman’s Spear, Nilkan Freerunning, The War-Priest’s Duty, The Laughing Son’s Combat System, The Faceless Prince’s Will, The Gladiator’s Duty, Monster-Self Veneration, Five Stars Sovereignty, Sibylline Auguries, The Inner-Fire Spreader’s Duty, Loving Spear, Universal Big Man, The Iron Defence, The Reliquarian’s Duty, The Left-Hand Nobility, The Contours of The Unrelenting Clay, The All-Mother’s Duty Locomotive–Proximate (movement up close, e.g. evasion, dodging, disengagement) Nilkan Freerunning, Hardman Handaxe, Mutambi Death-Grappling, Tangye Opera Shapeshifting, Gentle Paw, The Laughing Son’s Combat System, Insights of The Third Eye, Cursed Ex-Slave Tactics, Palm of Emptiness, Jingzi Doubling, Adaptive Wound Cycling, Broken Skull; Tranquil Mind, Desert Pose-Dancing, The Iron Defence, Water Tiger Locomotive-Distal (movement at a distance, e.g. advance Nilkan Freerunning, Icedancing Shortspear, Starhunting, The Three Dragons, Left-Hand Nobility, White Mouse Stalking Environmental The Contours of The Unrelenting Clay, Ecological Research of The company, Turquoise Sea Scoundrelry, Universal Big Man, The Gladiator’s Duty, Architecture of The Dancing Stone, The No’Are Code of Vigilance, Starhunting, The War-Priest’s Duty, Floating Leaf, Tunnelling Cowmole Claw, Nilkan Freerunning Cognitive–Intracombative (mental actions during a fight, e.g. focus priority) The School of Nine Fists, Floating Leaf, The War-Priest’s Duty, Speedweaving, The No’Are Code of Vigilance, Insights of The Third Eye, Monster-Self Veneration, One Touch One, Broken Skull; Tranquil Mind, The Torpid Mysteries, White Mouse Stalking, The Left-Hand Nobility, Cognitive–Intercombative (mental actions between fights, e.g. preparation and reflection) Tunnelling Cowmole Claw, Forbidden knife Boxing, The War-Priest’s Duty, Starhunting, The No’Are Code of Vigilance, The Laughing Son’s Combat System, Insights of The Third Eye, Cursed Ex-Slave Tactics, The Gladiator’s Duty, Monster-Self Veneration, Rising Moon Fist, Mangerish Dialectical Martialism, Broken Skull; Tranquil Mind, The Shadow Silhouette, Universal Big Man, The Lame Crone’s Vision, White Mouse Stalking, The Left-Hand Nobility, Kolonia Sacred Warrior Chronology–Diachronic (timing of actions considered in sequence, e.g. initiating moves, responding to them) The School of Nine Fists, The Left-Hand Nobility, White Mouse Stalking, The Iron Defence, Broken Skull; Tranquil Mind, One Touch One, Jingzi Doubling, Palm of Emptiness, Insights of The Third Eye, The Laughing Son’s Combat System, The No’Are Code of Vigilance, Speedweaving, Forbidden Knife boxing, Hardman Handaxe, Abhayan Hulk Wrestling, Tunnelling Cowmole Claw, Wingless Dragon, Herdswoman’s Spear Chronology–Synchronic (timing of actions in unison, e.g. combos) The School of Nine Fists, The All-Mother’s Duty, The Left-Hand Nobility, The Final School of Flame, Loving Spear, One Touch One, Palm of Emptiness, The Faceless Prince’s Will, East Temple Page-Society Connoisseurship, Insights of The Third Eye, The Laughing Son’s Combat System, Togavian Tulipsinging, Wankalgalese Shortsword, Speedweaving, Kolonia Sacred Warrior, Nomad Sabre, Wingless Dragon, Eternal Brother Blade Chronology–Tachochronic (timing of actions in terms of speed) The School of Nine Fists, Herdswoman’s Spear, The Bloodriver Stalling Shield, Eternal Brother Blade, Nomad Sabre, Starhunting, The Laughing Son’s Combat System, Insights of The Third Eye, Jingzi Doubling, One Touch One, Desert Pose-Dancing, The Torpid Mysteries, The Left-Hand Nobility

Notably, many styles such as The School of Nine Fists85 extend their aspectual limbs across multiple core domains. For the regular hyper genius, a year sampling three or four basic styles would therefore cover enough of every one to progress to trickier techniques. In Duelfessor Lee's case, wanting as he did to plunder the inner complexities of even these rudiments, he'd piled up multiple arts for every category. The expansive repertoire of overlapping movesets that resulted enabled some of the more powerful post-maximalist structural analyses, identifying sub-foundations and cross-foundations, differentiating universal sub-foundations from the merely specific or contingent, etc.

A student might imagine the basics unimprovable, but there’d been plenty of untapped ground in their interrelations. To gain a sense from a single example, Shield-based defences could pair in many complicated ways with Environmental-based defences (e.g. using obstacles to block), techniques from one substituting for the other, techniques combining into a stronger defence, techniques, alternatively, interfering. Even limiting ourselves to these three non-exhaustive classes of relation, the defensive possibilities underwent rapid multiplication when we added to the first ShieldxEnvironmental pairing Locomotive-Distal defences (e.g. running away), Locomotive-Proximal defences (e.g. dodging), Magic defences (e.g. spell-shields), Equipment defences (e.g. not being nude), Sword defences (e.g. parrying), and defences by the three-way non-defensive-appearing amalgam of TachochronicityxDiachronicityxDagger-offensive (e.g. being faster and stabbing your opponent before their attack completes).

A Thousand Tools—collecting multiple arts for each core—mined into the very abyss of these interrelations. It experimented with the thousands within each core, between their sub-foundations. Since duels weren’t limited to one static combination or its cluster of interrelations, it also optimised how these cluster dynamics shifted across a fight, attempting to build action-schemas for their effective navigation. It was in these final innovations that spawned much of Duelfessor Lee's disturbing cyborg appearance when he threw off the disguise; rather than any genuine strategy, much of his achievement lay in drilling the fundamentals to an unprecedented depth.

The Antithesis: The Advancement of The Brain

As for the more advanced, PhD(note: Philosopher of Duelology, this course awaiting official university accreditation)-level tools that we wish to stack upon these kindergarten-playground-fight foundations, any serious attempt to summarise this abstruse topic would be exhausting, requiring even with the most casual treatment hundreds upon hundreds of pages. Fortuitously, the long-time student of A Thousand Tools could be saved from the pains of this elucidation - or, more accurately, could be saved from further pains. As it were, for those who’d endured thus far through the Duelfessor's Overdream adventures, what’d been slogged throughS1S2S3S4S5S6S7S8S9S10S11S12 had been that casual summarisation, most of the preceding vignettes describing the arts selected for the maximisation of random advanced strategical elements.

The following list recapitulates a selection of these styles and their corresponding cerebralised principles.

List 1. A Selection of These Styles and Their Corresponding Cerebralised Principles.

* Adaptive Wound Cycling223 - Dynamic Constitutionalistic Adaptation

* Eternal Brother Blade106 - Ambidexterification

* Forbidden Knife Boxing125 - Covertive Telegraphic Nullification

* Herdswoman’s Spear85 - Asynchronous Assault Rhythmicity

* Laughing Son’s Combat System160 - Misdirectivity, Combatorial Dynamicity

* Nilkan Freerunning96 - Anti-Prohibative Strategic Locomotion

* School of Nine Fists85 - Diachrosynchronic Attack Segmentation

* Speedweaving139 - Sensory Augmentatory Maximisation

* Starhunting144 - Combatorial Prolongation

* Twenty Tools - Multidisciplinary Weaponatory Combinatronics

* Universal Big Man255 - Generalistic Specifactory Preparation

Many high-level skills similar to these could be gleaned one-to-one from their speciality style. Others, however, had been more diffuse in their origin, solidifying only from novel cross-art syntheses.

A previously-mentioned example of the latter is advanced spell-distance management188. Duelfessor Lee’d formulated this out of the triplet Sea106, Grass106, and Wingless106 Dragons, plus Palm of Emptiness Becoming Palm of Annihilation188. Each of these arts focused on spell-casting at different distance windows – respectively, long range, mid range, weapon range, and grappling. Together, they summed into a magicomobilatorial technique for every conceivable point along the first three spatial dimensions of duelology.

The rest of this section on Antithesis will be dedicated to a quick sampling of other cross-art syntheses. While most discoveries in this area remain utterly incommunicable in the linear, English-esque text format of this introductory paper, taking place as they do in the higher-dimensional skill-swapping orgy of styles, there are a couple whose structure is surprisingly straightforward.

Stalling

Stupidly simple was stalling.

Stalling - this tactic—although immensely valuable in a 1v1, where the duelologist regularly needed to delay their opponent while waiting for cooldowns to refresh—was bizarrely absent in Saana’s arts. When combatants had no abilities up, they abandoned most of their technique and just kind of flailed around defending. The weird deficiency sprang from the majority of learned styles evolving out of group fighting. In war, a soldier had to prioritise a fight tempo antagonistic to stalling, one of alternatively dumping abilities in coordinated bursts and beating a hasty retreat supported by allies. PhD-levels of stalling would’ve required one to discard this conditioning, to stick close to an enemy while hyper-focusing on the threat of their attacks, to reunify and concentrate an attention once divided for the monitoring of threats from third parties intent on stabbing you from the side.

A Thousand Tools addressed this odd gap through its cross-style carousel. It took the more generic support of foundational grappling and mobility skills, plus the specialisation of Mutambi Death Grappling’s138 passivist friend-transporting techniques, plus Empty Palm’s188 unarmed spell-casting, plus Hardman Handaxe’s125 outnumbered group body throws, plus The Iron Defence’s260 out-numbered survival parrying, plus Jingzi Doubling’s189 1v2 speed techniques that could be dimensionally transposed to 1v1 speed stalling, plus Nine Fists’85 insights into attack disruption through its reliance on lengthy attack sequences, plus the Laughing Son’s Combat System’s160 dragged out joke fights, plus Bloodriver Stalling Shield—the most developed spiritual antecedent to A Thousand Tools' present exercise—‘s98 melee-range shield-casting techniques, and it combined them all into one frustratingly long stall.

Stalling-based humour aside, advanced methods of stalling were astonishingly impactful. A student disciplined in them removed many of the frictional impediments to strategising. For example, cooldowns could be utilised much more liberally due to the increased confidence in surviving their temporary unavailability.

Non-Melee Role Viability

Although not a specific technique, we might also qualify amongst these advanced syntheses A Thousand Tools' duelological innovations for non-melee classes. Since these roles had never competed in 1v1s, their adaptation to this field had thus required the seismic, cross-style mingling summarised in Table 2.

Table 2. Arts Utilised in A Thousand Tools' Syncretic Renovations of Duelological Standards for Underperforming Roles

Role Styles Physical Ranged

Small-Island Shooting101, Snackman’s Immaculate Arrow139, Possum Pygmy Envenoming146; Young Arrow, Wise Claw189; Bow-Shooting245; Scorpion-Mounted Bow Duelling262, Eternal Rain Zoology279

Mages

Bloodriver Stalling Shield98, Sea Dragon106, Grass Dragon106, Wingless Dragon106, The War-Priest’s Duty136, The War-Witch’s Duty139, Medrishan Twinspear143, Starhunting144, Architecture of The Dancing Stone162, East Temple Page-Society Connoirseurship165, Palm of Emptiness188, The Final School of Flame256

Healers

(Most of the previous mage arts), Gentle Paw146, Sibylline Auguries165, Loving Spear244r

For each role and their relative Class specs, A Thousand Tools had attempted to gift a viable path for operating in the arena, for standing on equal footing with the melee and melee-hybrids currently crowding them out of the field.

In terms of raw fighting, A Thousand Tools failed with this goal. The roles were, objectively, not designed nor balanced for 1v1s in Saana, and no quantity of duelsearch would ever upturn this sorry situation.

Ultimately, however, this wasn’t much of an issue because most duels of significance these days weren’t situated in the unbalanced wilds. Instead, everyone had switched to stadiums owned by the Duelfessor's guild and whose gear, rules, health handicaps, and maps could therefore be adjusted to resolve any class-specific issues.

At this higher and systematic conception of duelology, accounting for its exterior supporting structures, all A Thousand Tools really sought was to make 1v1s for these roles interesting. The ranged classes only needed a sense of interaction and variety. If they had the opportunity to delay and disengage from the devolution of their duels into frustrating brawls, if their average match allowed them to fling X number of spells and Y number of arrows required to maintain a coherent self-image of still occupying their chosen role and not a forced hybrid, then that was sufficient. Any remaining gaps in objective performance could be erased through the rebalancing of Duelfessor Lee’s background systems. After some protest, this meddling would be begrudgingly accepted and forgotten, as it was in every game, the Duelfessor's infrastructure having achieved the semi-official status4 of a game within this game.

As historians of the duel took smug joy in pointing out regarding that last aspect, the very concept of 'duelology' as known by us today—with standards maps, with officiators enforcing rules, with open-entrant tournaments, with workshops, with introductory dissertations—was questionable. What we now refer to as 'duels' could be described as an artifice constructed by these institutions and validated by them. Our own modern 'duel' had not, some students might be surprised to learn, always existed in the same form or popularity. It was from certain perspectives a domesticated descendent from a much wider spectrum of pre-arena, pre-duelological modalities of duelling, e.g. assassination. Only through systematic reconfigurations, such as military conquest and external funding, had the present species of duel prevailed over these competing antecedents.

But, irrespective of one's position on the historical and semantic duelbates, at least within the confines of our institutionalised version of single combat, the goal of A Thousand Tools towards the viability of these neglected roles had been a marvellous success. Thanks to Duelfessor Lee, all of us, from the unmuscled mage1 to the humble priest215, could now participate in the joys of the arena. "Be at ease!" his thousand stadiums shout to our once timid compatriots in robes. "This world has opened up for you! Come forth from the library191! Come forth from the church143! Come forth into the sand and duel!"

Civilian Duelological Tricks

A related field had been A Thousand Tools' cross-art adaptations to duelologies for non-combative Civilian roles, as represented in Table 3.

Table 3. Civilian Classes and The Styles Through which They were Examined in The Course of A Thousand Tools

Civilian Class Styles Alchemists Sheathed Dagger255, Torpid Mysteries245 Arcaneworkers The Reliquarian's Duty261 Carcassworkers Starhunting144 Constructionists & Landworkers Architecture of The Dancing Stone162, Contours of The Unrelenting Clay278 Metalworking Invincible Steel of The Excavated Mind226, Sacred Weaponsmaking279 Peopleworkers Rising Moon Fist223, Torpid Mysteries245 Performers Desert Pose-Dancing245 Scholars East-Temple Page-Society Connoisseurship165 Waterworkers Turquoise Sea Scoundrelry260

Except for Duelfessor Lee’s own Scholar Class165, A Thousand Tools had not endeavoured greatly to produce viable duelological methods for these roles in isolation. Due to the option of their multi-classing with each other and Saana's Martial Classes, the art focused on the refinement of modular applications of their respective skills. These civil labours had brought about the manufacture of such wonderful aduelptations as the timber-obstruction juggle202, the clay-bunker building283 , the swap enchants261, fun poisons107, duel-specific armour226, and—derived from none of those arts but the Peopleworking of Duelfessor Lee’s military investigations—a nifty visual-tagging system based around .

The Synthesis: Body x Brain

And with those, we’ve gathered finally in hand the two halves of the arena’s dialectic. In the one resides the simpler Thesis, the duel’s brutal, muscular foundation. In the other, an assemblage of complex intellectual Antitheses. All that remained was their Synthesis, the procedural cramming of the latter into the duel’s thick-walled skull, evolving it from an ape to a true tool-wielding hominid.

A newer student might figure this combinatory process trivial – we should take all the tools, memorised and mastered, and use them together to enact our genius strategies. However, the result of such an undueliberated synthesis would be an unwieldable clusterflub of techniques.

In their raw form, as thieved directly from their founding institutes, the cerebral skills could not be compatibly integrated with either each other, nor the basics.

All of them, studied by their originators in isolation, possessed wonky and inharmonious proportions. Some, like the health adaptations of Adaptive Wound Cycling223, overfocused on their speciality's technique, building cognitive schemes so intricate they stole attention from higher combat priorities. Some, lacking key supplements, had achieved their goals through convoluted workarounds - like Twenty Tools using inventory juggling to perform weapon combinations instead of enchants. Some, like Starhunting’s144 principles for endurance duelology, were never designed for single, human-versus-human duels, and the findings of these schools could only be applied after intensive non-duel-to-duel alchemoduelological transmutations.

It would not suffice therefore for us to merely spin or reposition the techniques together as if they were pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, arriving in the fingers machine-cut to fit. The task, exponentially more difficult, required the alteration of every technique. Prior to synthesis, the techniques had to be reshaped, resized, and divided into smaller constituents. Some of their parts, faulty, had to be deleted. Other parts, although necessary for the operation of larger techniques within an invisible hierarchy of nested dependencies, did not exist in any of these arts and had to be created from scratch.

This extra step of skillological resculpturistics was but one point of frustration to our synthesis. Duels, by their beautiful but bewildering nature, were dynamic across environment, opponent-type, weapon-type, cooldowns, etc. Thus, the ability of techniques to fit at one coordinate of these dimensions only gave a nebulous suggestion as to their fit elsewhere in the fluctuating matrices of duelographic variables. For another issue, since techniques competed over shared resources like attention and available limbs, the guiding question of the synthesis was not always can these techniques fit together, as a binary, but how many can fit together? And when? And where? And how? And for whom? Duelology in these regards becomes a matter not of qualitative but quantitative analysis.

As we see therefore, in ordaining to order dozens of arts, A Thousand Tools confronted a confusing field of duelological multiplicities.

Duelfessor Lee’s own methods of tackling these obstacles, both public and cyborg, would be preposterous to detail fully within an account as casual as this one. Thus, in answering them, we’ll have to suffice with, first, a crude analogy for the process of synthesis via Dr Heavy-Fingers' approach with the Twenty Tools institute, followed up by a summary of A Thousand Tools' key differences.

The Twenty Tools Synthesis

Following the doctor monk's method, having collected our prize tools, we would ignore most of the previous warnings, we'd jump straight into sparring, and we'd immediately attempt to juggle the techniques, both metaphorically and literally.

Now, exercising some caution and duelological modesty, we wouldn’t start off trying to juggle all of our tools at once. First, we’d pick a few traditional combinatory favourites for a base - like a Polearm, a Dagger, a Shield. This crude selection is essential. By starting from what had been demonstrated to work within the existing field of the arena, we would immediately ground ourselves at a stable position within the web of otherwise infinite duelomorphic possibilities.

It's from that grounded point that we'd begin our synthesis, one extra tool at a time.

For the first invitee to join our PolearmxDaggerxShield combo, perhaps there'd enter a Sword. The subsequent task would be to establish this newcomer amongst its juggled brethren. We'd add moves that it could perform that they could not - slashes in the mid-range. We'd substitute it into moves once performed inferiorly by others - the mid-range Spear-stabs upgraded into mid-range Sword-stabs, the Dagger-parry upgraded into a Sword-parry. We'd practice utilising this new tool with the previous ones individually, such as ShieldxSword, SwordxDagger, SwordxPolearm, and we'd discover some of these to be less effective than others. As we'd progress to the more demanding combinations beyond, we'd try to reduce the frictions that arise impeding their cooperation - limited by two hands, we'd drill, repeatedly, manoeuvres for rapidly discarding the Polearm and unsheathing the Sword.

Then, after some time, once the sword had been successfully integrated, merging into a PolearmxDaggerxSwordxShield combo, we'd add another tool. Maybe, eager to leap into the intellectual heights, we'd next toss in the Herdswoman's Spear's85 Asynchronous Assault Rhythmicity, the four friends about to dance unpredictably within and through this fifth.

In the course of these additions, the further we'd advance into the multiplying tools, the more challenging would grow the juggle and the more we'd fuck it up. However, dedicated to the duel, a bit insane, this would only motivate us to work our heavy fingers harder and faster.

Occasionally, in the exhaustion and swearing between the constant failures, we’d document what’d worked and what'd flopped. From the analysis of this documentation, we’d begin to form crude models out of the patterns of combinations, which in turn would sprout testable hypotheses. Guided by these, we’d develop experiments for micro-tuning each tool and its sub-skills, altering them in terms of number, variety, proportion, placement, etc. We’d remove sub-skills. We’d add others. We’d try different combinations of sub-skills at different times and in different niche situations. Whenever we’d hit a wall, we’d retreat to tool combos that’d worked earlier. In rare moments, we might spice things up by dropping to the very beginning and restarting with a completely new base selection of juggling stables – Shortbow, Acrobatics, Trap-building, Trained-monsters.

Throughout this whirling labyrinth of duelsearch, the Weapon Juggle—the literal, swords-phasing-out-the-inventory technique—although itself impractical in combat due to its huge cognitive burden interfering with the use of other complex tools, could be one valuable intermediary tool for our experimentation. The 3-second summoning delay for each weapon imposed an unforgivingly tight window in which a host of variables like time, location, and attack opportunity needed to fall into alignment for even the slimmest chance of success. The Weapon Juggle, thus, while not itself necessarily the best way of using any weapon or technique in a live duel, provided during sparring duels one of the strictest litmus tests. If you could juggle a set of weapons, you could rest fairly assured you'd smoothed out the worst of their incompatibilities.

At a deeper and freakier level of the juggle, practising it long enough would concretise a bizarre fusional mental-body-action-weapon sense. A sort of metaphor via action for synthesis, the Weapon Juggle would infiltrate synthesis into our psychic being. Thereby, we'd improve not only our ability to theorise higher weapon syntheses but to physically perform them, the two faculties assisting each other just as the weapons do. Ultimately, we'd be thinking in the Weapon Juggle itself, our cognition partially projected and externalised into the spinning configurations of the steel. This outcome, to be clear, would not be negative but tremendously desirable.

And eventually, hopefully, with enough brute persistence, at least one workable arrangement would condense, maybe thousands.

We’d stand in the end like a primaeval engineer of the duel who’d developed from the mere concept of a vehicle to a racer speeding down the strip. Between the beginning and the debut would hide a graveyard of discarded juggle prototypes. There'd be an evolutionary procession of the weaponry equivalents to sledges, carts, chariots, and motor cars, each junked for their missized wheels, snapped axles, stalled engines, and crumpled chasses.

Voila, whatever monstrosity would be spinning in our fingers at this conclusion, that'd be our supreme art.

The Thousand Tools Synthesis

But following the doctor monk's crudely-swearing duelgineer method, the duelsearcher wouldn't even reach the combination of twenty arts196.

As for A Thousand Tools' superior synthesis, addressed here only in brief, this method was, unironically, a synthesis of several methods of duelological synthesis.

Pre-duelology, it started from a general post-maximalist syncretic framework, one centred on cross-field, evidence-based modelling and a non-linear, multilectical iterative regime of praxis, imitation, analogy, deliberative experimentation, industrial espionage, analysis, and refinement. Using these tools, a research field's semi-discrete principles could be clustered and nested by type and their sub-components integrated across multiple overlapping dimensions. Certain hotspots for improvement, never apparent to the human eye, then became obvious when elements of an art were transposed into the appropriate comparative matrices. Most of these post-maximalist procedures were so demanding that a human required computational assistance.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Fusion of this nerdier po-max tech with synthesis-based arts from Saana helped to simplify and adapt it to the arena. Twenty Tools, as one foundation, blended with others like The Final School of Flame256, The Way of The Unknown Ancestor256, The All-Mother’s Duty285, and the fight-grammar investigations of White Mouse Stalking262. These together armed A Thousand Tools with other duel-specific performance tests like Dr Heavy-Finger's weapon-juggle, with alternative mental models for conceptualising duel elements and their relationships of compatibility, with pre-explored maps of failed and viable paths.

Publicly, it’d been into the resulting chimaera of theory and systematic sparring that Duelfessor Lee’d been inputting his joke matches in Suchi. While pretending to jot duelsearch notes108, he’d moulded the proportions of each tool in his Mental Library as fixed in a web of modelled interrelations. The workshop and trainee experiments/’drills’232 had subsequently accelerated these developments.

The cyborg version of A Thousand Tools used a more advanced system yet, one incorporating the millions of Duelfessor Lee’s duels, plus mass testing with trained battery farms of replicas137.

Those panging for further helpings from the higher human-level synthesis should refer to A Thousand Tools' relevant manual volumes. Students accepting this challenge would delight in progressing beyond the crude body-mind dialectic employed until now for rhetorical purposes. This simplified paradigm would be upgraded into a much more fascinating and accurate multilectic of brain modules, limb freedom, resource availability, prep access, training efficiency, and tenacity.

Results: The Final Shape of A Thousand Tools

At the end of all of that, what is the shape of the final art, of the tool, left in our fingers? What is the anatomy of this one supreme baby gasping its first breath after such a multifarious parentage and labour? How many steroid-swollen limbs does it have? How many schemes swim inside its bulbous head?

A perceptive student might interject with the preposterousness of the singular framing in this questioning. A Thousand Tools could not, possibly, synthesise into one martial art. Considering the sheer scope of its techniques, considering the many non-technical topics examined in its previous episodes of its course like duelological ethics256 and duelological tournaments277, this extravagant project must’ve aimed at something much more multitudinous and revolutionary than the formulation of a single supreme method of duelology.

Such an accusation couldn’t be denied. This project, obviously, had higher ambitions and it would’ve been incredibly confusing and frustrating if interpreted only through the one lens of building a martial art.

Nevertheless, for the present, such an irascible student would be advised to restrain their suspicions until the discussion section when these exterior matters will be addressed. For now, we should focus our multiplying views upon the multiplying shapes of A Thousand Tools' final styles.

These, of which there were thousands, could be summarised from A Thousand Tools' two polar extremes. The first, given much less attention here due to its coverage in A Thousand Tools' training manuals, was its universalist method of producing duelological styles, an avant-garde-style-build-building toolkit. The second was the specific application of this method to Duelfessor Lee in the form of one, coherent style build designed for his unique situation and talents.

The Shape of A Thousand Tools' A Thousand Schools Toolkit

A Thousand Tools' A Thousand Schools Toolkit - this was a program of simultaneously learning A Thousand Tools and customising it. The toolkit adhered to the structure of pre-A.I. education systems, users completing a universal course of study and drills together before splitting off as smaller groups and individuals to specialise.

The initial part trained students in basic skills essential to A Thousand Tools’ derived arts. These, not to be confused with the foundational skills as learned by Duelfessor Lee, consisted of a reconfiguration of the basics, intermixing skills that in the past would’ve been deemed advanced. Thus, within the first week of the program, a trainee would drill both grappling and combinatory cooldown tracking. The practical implementation of this required decomposing the more challenging skills into their simpler-to-learn components, fine-tuning the sequences of presentation, and delaying the introduction of several former basics like swords and armour.

Next, the basics learned, trainees would diverge into a more advanced, semi-modular course system for niche skills like acrobatics, spell-kiting, or weapon swaps. Within this, any player could simply input several variables—what skills they wanted, what skills they had, their weaknesses, their strengths—and A Thousand Tools laid out a rough map to the final goal. If one student wanted to juggle civilian duelological tricks, poisons, bare-handed sword-catching, and magic, A Thousand Tools gave them a path. If another wanted to juggle axes, knives, poisons, and stealth, A Thousand Tools gave them a different path.

The semi-modular aspect of these secondary courses had to be emphasised. Many advanced skills were themselves built from nestings of advanced skills and were therefore inadvisable until a student had mastered the prerequisites. What’s more, each tool was not static across the system. For example, the utilisation of poisons in the above two combinations—Set-A: civilian duelological tricks, poisons, bare-handed sword-catching, and magic; Set-B: axes, knives, poisons, stealth—were not identical. The merger of poisons with other tools instigated a unique selection of poison sub-skills assigned different prioritisations of training and in-combat frequency. Likewise, these prioritisations could evolve drastically different proportions within the same supposed combinations as a consequence of many external variables. Set-B would be unrecognisable between a Cutthroat vs a Crusader, the latter having no Class-specific stealth or poison-application abilities and therefore sneaking around manually and hurling vials like a chemist quitting their job in style.

Another critical difference from old-school education was the proportioning of time between the universal and specialist phases. An individual could complete the first in three weeks to two months. The second, depending on how many tools a trainee sought and to what complexity, might demand between hundreds or hundreds of thousands of collaborative lifetimes.

Those highest demands reflected the titanic scope of A Thousand Tools' influence upon duelology, it truly being a global-level project. This art signalled the annihilation of countless martial schools and the necessary reconstitution of new ones from their graves. In the coming days, organisations old and new would be racing to adapt A Thousand Tools' innovations to an inexhaustible combination of class specialisations, weapon preferences, competencies, aesthetic choices, and so on. If the game lasted long enough—and nothing suggested it wouldn’t—then this art should spawn hundreds of distinct duelological styles.

Although Duelfessor Lee, retired, would only follow these evolutions as a spectator, it should be fascinating. To prompt the kids along, A Thousand Tools had already established the theoretical groundwork for several viable or semi-viable Class-specific implementations. Many of these have been alluded to in earlier episodes, like a Dancing-Stone-Architecture-based Earth Shaman build162 or a Twenty-Tools-based Forsaken Master build164. The formulations for dozens more were available in A Thousand Tools' manuals. All that remained was for others to polish out the kinks in the numbers, to discover through their own trials the specific proportions of each tool in the mix. Importantly, unlike with the Duelfessor's previous failed attempts at initiating a collaborative duelsearch with The Strategy, this recent work was already underway, led by the pros and their supporting organisations attending his stadium workshop.

The Shape of His Thousand Tools

The Duelfessor could’ve picked for his own duel-needs from thousands of random style builds he’d spammed with the toolkit. But, minimising the risk of cyborg exposure, he stayed within the general parameters established by his public sightings. That is to say, he'd maximised a Scholar Earthfriend hybrid plus Legendaries.

Because A Thousand Tools' present naming scheme to differentiate so many builds would be meaningless, we might borrow, for syncretic nostalgia, from Duelfessor Lee’s old Cripple parody jargon and label his final choice ‘The Bookfriend (Ultra-Deluxe Author Signed Edition)’ or ‘Bookfriend+$$$’.

For describing the procedure of the Bookfriend+$$$'s derivation from the toolkit, we could—although not duelontologically true—frame it as morphing out of two simpler hybrids. The first would be a jack-of-all-trades Earthfriend adaptation of A Thousand Tools; this we might label ‘The All-ah Friend’ or All-Friend, acknowledging its dedication to the highest powers285 of duelology and its marriage, Quranic style, to all four Earthfriend domains together, each given a tiny bit of starting love but also kind of neglected. The second would be a hybridisation of our All-Friend with the non-Legendary multiple Spelltome armament122 Duelfessor Lee’d previously used, i.e. ‘The Bookfriend (Petty Bourgeoisie Edition)’ or ‘Bookfriend+$’. The Bookfriend+$$$ then would be this second hybrid stage adorned with Legendaries and adjusting the proportions of its skills for their effective utilisation.

Taking our nostalgia further, a step-wise approximation of this developmental process—from All-Friend to Bookfriend+$ to Bookfriend+$$$—has been summarised in the following commentary and tool tables, which transpositionally combine Dr Heavy-Fingers' twenty-part foundational schema with a small selection of build-relevant advanced skills. Note, at the behest of a re-minimalist duelsearch colleague, we have simplified the advanced skill nomenclature as used in the Antithesis section, sacrificing precision and aesthetic pizzazz for ease of comprehension.

The Shape of The All-ah Friend

Behold Him:

Table 4. The Skillogical Metamorephosis of The All-ah Friend

Skillological Domain Morephologic Proportions The Fundamentals as Presented in Twenty Tools' Aspectual Schemata

Hand-to-Hand–Grappling More Hand-to-Hand–Striking More Daggers Less Heavy Weapons More Swords Ultra-Less Polearms None Shields Ultra-Less Projectile Weapons None Magic More Equipment Less Abilities–Own More Abilities–Opponent Less Locomotive–Proximate Same Locomotive-Distal More Environmental More Cognitive–Intracombative Same Cognitive–Intercombative More Chronology–Diachronic Same Chronology–Synchronic More Chronology–Tachochronic Same Supplementary Advanced Skills

Acrobatics Ultra-More Adaptation More Anatomical Precision Less Advanced Movement Ultra-More Advantage Negation More Advanced Preparation Same Atypical Fight Rhythms More Civilian Duelological Tricks Ultra-Less Deception More Hybridisation Ultra-More Hyper-Focus Less Micromuscular Control Ultra-Less Melee-Magic Less Prolonged Kiting More Spell Positioning More Spell Juggling None Stance Switching Ultra-More Trick Combos Ultra-More

In explanation of Table 4, since this casual paper omits A Thousand Tools post-maximalist dueloeconomics, to capture the interdependent quantifical dimensionality of skillological proportion and balance without overwhelming a novice student, employed here is a fun and introductory seven-point cross-skill-normalised Morephology scale. Within the scale's rankings, a skill posing the value of ‘Same’ indicates that its importance weighting for the build is roughly identical to that in a statistical aggregate of all A Thousand Tools builds. ‘More’, ‘Ultra-More’, and ‘All’ specify three grades of increase to the skill's allocation, while ‘Less’, ‘Ultra-Less’, and ‘None’ specify three grades of decrease. Weighting, in this regard, denotes the relative allocation to the skill of such finite resources as training time and time in hand during a duel. Throughout and overall, to maintain a practical balance, any increases of weighting in one skill must, roughly, correspond with a decrease in at least one other. Due to the hybrid nature of The All-Friend and subsequent builds, none of their skills achieve the highest score of ‘All’.

Examined closely, patterns in the Morephological flux convey a rough narrative of The All-Friend’s divine generation from A Thousand Tools' A Thousand Schools Toolkit.

Discarding physical arms almost entirely, it reduces the allocations to Projectiles, to edged and pointed weapons. Correspondingly, the values are increased for the two Hand-to-Hand domains, Heavy Weapons, and Acrobatics. This skillological triplet, after transposition to Fauna’s monster ability-set, unlocks a moderate utilisation of shapeshifting, capable of supporting through mobility the three other non-Fauna Earthfriend wives conjoined in the More of Magic while always leaving open the possibilities, through the More of Deception, of a sneak monster kill.

Connecting the four Earthfriend paths further is an increase to a hybrid-focused complex of Synchronicity (i.e. combos), Hybridisation, and Advanced Movement to tie them together in space and time, along with Earthfriend-transpositions of Stance Switching and Atypical Fight Rhythms. Meanwhile, as this one skillological complex swells, a counter-balancing deformation ripples through other skills competing for its shared cross-skillological resources, manifesting in the decline of Anatomical Precision, Civilian Duelological Tricks, Hyper Focus, and Micromuscular Control. In this mutual trade, the decline of a series of specificities, we see The All-ah Friend's hybrid sacrifice.

From out of the geometrical shifting of these interconnected tools and others, eventually morphs the flexible shape of our All-ah Friend, a shapeshifter who flexibly connects all paths. Stars, plants, elements, monsters, and the polygamous man between - any student who might adopt this shape becomes each and all, merging with the duelological heavens.

This four-way peak wouldn’t be the worst spot for most earthly friends to rest. However, for Duelfessor Lee, the Earthfriend was only a Tier-0 Secondary Class and could not encapsulate his entire martial Morephology. As is often said, more duelsearch was necessary.

The Shape of The Bookfriend (Petty Bourgeoisie Edition)

In this next gorgeous table contrasting their proportions, we observe the education of The All-ah Friend into The Bookfriend+$. The original build auctions off its Fauna wife and uses the cash to purchase a blasphemous set of books on magic. While then turning studiously through the arcane pages of its tomes, it allows the former skills of the muscles to wither. Note, the green-white-red colouration indicates a relative increase or decrease from the previous style build, while the Morephological proportion values continue to be relative to A Thousand Tools as an aggregate.

Table 5. The Skillogical Metamorephosis of The Bookfriend+$

Skillological Domain Morephologic Proportions

All-ah Friend Bookfriend+$ The Fundamentals as Presented in Twenty Tools' Aspectual Schemata

Hand-to-Hand–Grappling More Same Hand-to-Hand–Striking More Less Daggers Less None Heavy Weapons More Ultra-Less Swords Ultra-Less None Polearms None None Shields Ultra-Less Less Projectile Weapons None None Magic More Ultra-More Equipment Less Same Abilities–Own More Ultra-More Abilities–Opponent Less More Locomotive–Proximate Same More Locomotive-Distal More Ultra-More Environmental More More Cognitive–Intracombative Same Ultra-More Cognitive–Intercombative More More Chronology–Diachronic Same Ultra-More Chronology–Synchronic More Ultra-More Chronology–Tachochronic Same Ultra-More Supplementary Advanced Skills Acrobatics Ultra-More Less Adaptation More Less Anatomical Precision Less Same Advanced Movement Ultra-More Ultra-More Advantage Negation More Less Advanced Preparation Same More Atypical Fight Rhythms More Less Civilian Duelological Tricks Ultra-Less Ultra-More Deception More Less Hybridisation Ultra-More Ultra-More Hyper-Focus Less Ultra-More Micromuscular Control Ultra-Less None Melee-Magic Less More Prolonged Kiting More More Spell Positioning More Ultra-More Spell Juggling None Ultra-More Stance Switching Ultra-More More Trick Combos Ultra-More More

The main stylistic upheaval is denoted by the decrease of one skillological complex—Deception, Adaptation, Stance Switching, Atypical Fight Rhythms—and the increase of another represented by Civilian Duelological tricks, Spell Juggling (an advanced syntheticotransposition to magic of Dr Heavy-Finger's Weapon Juggling and The East Temple Page-Society Connoisseurship165), and Own Abilities. This corresponds with the Bookfriend+$ downsizing its use of Earthfriend abilities to focus on casting with Spelltomes, the most powerful item in the arsenal of Scholar Primary like Duelfessor Lee. Due to this same Primary class selection, his Bookfriend+$ also ramps up reliance on other Civilian-based combat implementations, like Constructionist bunkers, Arcaneworker traps, and Alchemist poisons. These, if we dimly recall, were more potent for him than ordinary players, because 1) Civilian Primaries—as compensation for their weakness and lack of popularity—could level other Secondary Classes up to their Primary level minus 1 tier, while Martial Primaries are limited to their Primary’s level minus 2 tiers, and 2) he’d brewed Legendary poisons107.

As the favoured distance for the Bookfriend+$ from the opponent grows, the priority once allocated to skills of Hand-to-Hand and Heavy Weapons for supporting offensive Fauna moves is transferred to those increasing mobility. At the same time, to prevent issues of the build collapsing when caught, minor improvements to Shields, Melee-Magic, and Locomotive-Proximal (i.e. close-range movement) enable this bookworm build to survive the moments of direct confrontation, to even slap a few spells through the ribs.

Notably, Hybridisation does not decrease. Coupling the maintenance of this with the Tacochronic (i.e. tempo) leap from Standard to Ultra-More, along with the boosting of Dr Heavy-Finger's other cognitive Internal domains to More and Ultra-More, we get hints that, overall, this style of the Bookfriend+$ is much more complicated, more strategic, more More.

Indeed, on a raw dueloeconomic basis, this style build is strictly more demanding. Compared with The All-ah Friend, it juggles roughly a dozen extra Morephological degrees, an acaduelmic leap that would over-burden most duelologists and cause them to fumble. But for Duelfessor Lee, specifically, this was not a problem. When the skills were broken down to their physical and cerebral demands, most of the reductions had been in the former, with which he had more personal troubles, while the growth had been in the latter, his forte. This therefore equated to a null Morephological change for one of his crippled genius.

In this quantitative achievement of The Bookfriend+S, we glimpse one of the most valuable lessons, both practical and ethical, in A Thousand Tools' A Thousand Schools Toolkit. In these future days, it is imperative that we both adjust to our instruments and adjust our instruments to us, for only through this dual maximisation can we hope to maximise ourselves as duelologists.

The Shape of The Bookfriend (Deluxe Author Signed Edition)

At last, we have the final transformation of the Bookfriend+$ into the Bookfriend+$$$, our build accessing the highest duelological universities and the fanciest textbooks due to sponsoring by its filthy rich oil sheikh parents, ascending into a creature of skillological opulence.

Table 6. The Skillogical Metamorephosis of The Bookfriend+$$$

Skillological Domain Morephologic Proportions

Bookfriend+$ Bookfriend+$$$ The Fundamentals as Presented in Twenty Tools' Aspectual Schemata

Hand-to-Hand–Grappling Same Same Hand-to-Hand–Striking Less Ultra-Less Daggers None Less Heavy Weapons Ultra-Less Same Swords None Same Polearms None Same Shields Less Less Projectile Weapons None Same Magic Ultra-More Same Equipment Same Ultra-More Abilities–Own Ultra-More Ultra-More Abilities–Opponent More Ultra-Less Locomotive–Proximate More Less Locomotive-Distal Ultra-More Same Environmental More Less Cognitive–Intracombative Ultra-More More Cognitive–Intercombative More More Chronology–Diachronic Ultra-More More Chronology–Synchronic Ultra-More Ultra-More Chronology–Tachochronic Ultra-More Same Supplementary Advanced Skills Acrobatics Less Same Adaptation Less None Anatomical Precision Same None Advanced Movement Ultra-More Ultra-More Advantage Negation Less None Advanced Preparation More Ultra-More Atypical Fight Rhythms Less Less Civilian Duelological Tricks Ultra-More More Deception Less Less Hybridisation Ultra-More More Hyper-Focus Ultra-More More Micromuscular Control None None Melee-Magic More More Prolonged Kiting More Ultra-Less Spell Positioning Ultra-More Same Spell Juggling Ultra-More More Stance Switching More Same Trick Combos More More

The introduction of the Legendaries initiates a seismic shift on many planes. Weapon skills, neglected by the preceding style builds, surge back into a minor existence. Thus, the Bookfriend+$$$ relearns every option at a primitive level, acquiring a comfort juggling one-of-a-kind Swords, Shields, Polearms, Daggers, and Projectile Weapons. Simultaneously, due to the immense demands of time and concentration while maintaining this all-weapon juggle, the finicky mental elements of the earlier style builds collapse across the board, descending to Less, Ultra-Less, and None.

If we were to quantify dueloeconomically the aggregate skillological Morephology wielded by Duelfessor Lee using the build, The Bookfriend+$$$ was—due to an incongruity between the increased physical weapon techniques and his innate cerebral leanings—a strict shrinkage from The All-ah Friend and Bookfriend+$. Judged accordingly, The Bookfriend+$$$ was a Less skillological and therefore inferior build. The loss, however, was offset by the compensatory unlocking of hundreds of Legendaries. Each item had a higher effective skillogical value than any of the sacrificed skills, and the more advanced formulas accounting for such non-skill skillometrics thus ranked this build as not only More skilled but thousands or millions of times More skilled.

The functional consequence of this Morephologic expansion was especially evident in the diminishing complex of Opponent Abilities, Environment, Prolonged Kiting, Adaptation, and Advantage Negation. These factors, representing the fretting of less-equipped geniuses, vanished for The Bookfriend+$$$ into nothing, wealth clearing its brain of a host of circumstantial burdens.

In their abandonment, we see another practical and ethical lesson of A Thousand Tools’ A Thousand Schools Toolkit. Man adjusting to tool, tool adjusting to man – this maxim only applied to plebeians. Actually, the top-end tools, if we could purchase enough, were far more powerful than any individual. To picture any equality between them was nothing but the old human duelusion, the blindness to how we were already partial cyborgs, both acting and thinking through our tools. In The Bookfriend+$$$, Duelfessor Lee shook off this denial. He accepted the patheticness of the mortal flesh within the equation, he prostrated both muscle and brain beneath the higher powers of the tool, and he thereby ascended into an all-mighty god of duelology. Through raw technological power, the transient meat of the Duelfessor would be elevated above the contingent forces of location, time, and man. To duel anywhere, to duel anytime, to duel anyone – this was the panoply of duelcisions bestowed upon those who could and dared to choose the style of material luxuriance.

Note: the Bookfriend+$$$ and other previously described style builds only applied to Duelfessor Lee as a non-cyborg. As a cyborg, the very notion of A Thousand Tools having any shape in the form of a static style build would be ludicrous. The Duelfessor, who’d mastered thousands of style builds, could now juggle them as a mortal hyper-genius juggled tools, switching up style builds depending on the opponent285.

The Shape of Lower Things

And that’s where—if we were social cripples like Duelfessor Lee’d been in his youth, mere maximalists—we might conclude the shaping of A Thousand Tools. The founder had his customised selection of skills in the form of his Bookfriend+$$$ style build. Any other aspiring kung-fu-polymaths could pick one of the pre-set style builds or slog through A Thousand Tools' design procedures to generate their own, and, before we’d known it, the once ignorant masses would be fighting epic PhD-level duels complete with logic, strategy, interaction, narrative, bad comedy, and worse pathos.

However, we duelologists, Duelfessor Lee72 , and A Thousand Tools all had our originations in the post-maximalist struggle, born as we were after the maximalist peak, after their mountain was flattened. A Thousand Tools, shaped by this experience, could not rest in satisfaction with the above, with arts shaped exclusively for the purposes and values of summit. A student should understand, as the maximalists had not, that the avant-garde, duelological or otherwise, did not exist in isolation but was inextricably tied into larger and more popular systems. Within the artistic whole, any higher creation like A Thousand Tools had a direct dependency on the lower. Nobody was born destined to make, perform, or appreciate works of any specific level. The self-titled patrician was a minority proportion of the greater mass, spawning out of the same struggle up the same mountain. As with a mountain, the layers above had to be supported by those beneath - if the base were wider and sturdier, then the top could extend higher and sustain more occupants; conversely, the collapse of the base made everyone, eventually, fall. Thus, the patrician, although above the pleb, could not completely look down on them, could not confuse himself for the mountain's foundation instead of its most weather-exposed tip.

For Duelfessor Lee, the post-maximalist supreme, who’d risen and fallen and risen again, his commitment to the lower cause could already be observed in the unrelated field of his literary reformations. Going beyond himself as an individual writer, he’d funded an entire publishing industry. He'd sponsored authors of every class, including minimalists and other vomit-worthy plebs. In this way, by expanding the base, he’d sought to expand the infinitesimal minority who, one day, might give him company upon the summit.

A Thousand Tools, informed similarly by post-maximalism, dispensed similar charitable measures to reinforce the dueological structures behind and beneath it, assisting those who would never ascend to its skypiercingest heights of duelogistoastronimetrics.

The very design of the art's modular toolkit embodied this ethos, its progressive course allowing students to stop at any limit, even if that be at mere non-duelological duelling. Other contributions had already been described in previous arts, selected with the systematic obstacles in mind. A Thousand Tools crafted efficient student exercises from The Death Training of The War-Priest’s Duty136. It’d redesigned the arena through The Contours of The Unrelenting Clay278. It’d tweaked the scene’s meta-game through The Gladiator’s Duty188. It’d maximised the web connecting all of these and both the duelologist and the duellist's personal need for fun through Mangerish Dialectical Martialism226.

Although Duelfessor Lee had retired, the dissemination of these supports would not cease in his absence, being carried out by his duelgreeless colleague Alex Wong and Flaming Sun. They would assume the integration of A Thousand Tools' recommendations into their guild’s much larger network of duelology-based reformational institutions, like Saana League and the pre-existing seasonal tournaments. (And, in a cynical light, none of this was charity. Duelology—as a whole—could be regarded as one of the ‘circuses’ amongst the bread and circuses employed tactfully by their regime for social manipulation. A Thousand Tools, framed thusly, would, by improving both duelology and the duelological scene, increase the efficacy of multiple authoritarian functions to tempt, distract, divert, discipline, unify, and control. Although incidental to the project, these gains would not be rejected by Duelfessor Lee, who’d once made his fortunes as a videogame tyrant.)

Within this onslaught of support, even an event as minor and transient as Duelfessor Lee’s performance at the weekend tournament220 served an assistive function. The more he dazzled, the more he smashed, the more he thereby impressed into the public conscious the significance of A Thousand Tools as an art worthy of pursuit. Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, would be watching the event. For some portion of this spectatorial behemoth, the visceral images of his dominance would cement into a motivating dream, a fantasy of themselves confused into his place that compelled them restlessly towards their own future in the sand. His matches were thus the starter for the fire of his duelsearch, the amount of heat he added in this one moment determining whether it would continue to burn on its own or fizzle out in smoke. This was, of course, not everything, or even a main thing, but it ceased on such scales of humanity to be a trivial factor.

As the post-maximalist duelologist's credo goes, everything cycles back into everything, an art never just an art, a duel never just a duel.

Discussion: The Post-Synthesis

So there we have it, Twenty Tools synthesising multiplicatively with the arts of the body and the mind between into A Thousand Tools, into the Duelfessor's single Scholar-Earthfriend-Legendary art, into the system of A Thousand Tools' A Thousand Schools Toolkit and its supports that would enable others seeking to shape the tools to fit their own custom style.

Our process of synthesising A Thousand Tools could’ve trudged into infinity. However, as duelological school of avowed post-maximalists—in distinction with the maximalists—our fixation should not, despite the jokes or the structures of this introductory paper, be entirely on the pointless accumulation of More for More’s sake. In the end, we must learn from our ancestors. We must not die staring in confusion and inaction at the multiplicity. To have any lasting meaning, our pursuits must integrate in function, value, and proportion into the larger systems of life, out of which all arts are born and to which their fragments go when they die, to be recycled or forgotten.

This necessity of integration prescribes a limit to every post-maximalist crusade at the outset, as the Duelfessor had demonstrated by allocating twelve Overdream sessions to A Thousand Tools, no Less, no More. If we’re to fit within the whole, we must plan when we’ll be done with both the steps of maximalist accumulation and its post-maximalist synthesis. While this pair, eternal in their nature, may not be done for everyone, they must eventually be done with us, who’ve reached the heights for which we’d aimed, who’ve absorbed from our labours on this one set of slopes the many lessons that might serve us in the conquest of unrelated ranges.

Everything cycles back into everything, but not everything is everything. A duel, which rarely lasts more than a few minutes, is never everything.

As we descend from the peaks of these styles and their duelomorephic combinations, none of which were everything, we should fix our gaze upon the hills populating Duelfessor Lee’s horizon. Simultaneously, as these next murky crests rise to replace this one obsession, we might reflect upon the neglected rest of everything in A Thousand Tools, upon the many intertwining goals he’d tackled within the by-gone duelological struggle, forming thereby a bridge to connect some of the art's gathered prizes forward to later climbs.

What’d been Duelfessor Lee’s non-duelological goals in A Thousand Tools? What else finished with its synthesis? What could he carry on? What, of any of this duelsearch, mattered to him, for whom duelology was but a side hobby?

Although the analogy had its flaws, we might, in post-maximalist esotericist fashion, map the answer to these questions according to the eight-fold plots of the pleb-bait written at the outset of Duelfessor Lee’s cyborg journey.

The Non-Duelological Collectibles of A Thousand Tools as Transposed Upon The Eight-Layers of A Tetralogy

List 2. The Non-Duelological Narrative Pan-Structure of The Plebeian Bait

1. Low-Tier Plebeian: a videogame adventure

2. Mid-Tier Plebeian: a videogame melodrama

3. High-Tier Plebian: a satire of a videogame adventure

4. Low-Tier Patrician: a tragicomedy in a videogame

5. Mid-Tier Patrician: a pastiche of a videogame adventure

6. High-Tier Patrician: a maximalist modernisation of the Greek Romance Daphnis and Chloe in a videogame

7. Ultrapatrician: a post-maximalist Jungian allegory for the destabilising social ramifications of the AI Revolution as exemplified by a videogame

8. Uberpatrician: a post-post-maximalist non-linear inversion of the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh as achieved through a videogame

1. At the most basic level of the Low-Tier Pleb, in the mindless adventures of a videogame, A Thousand Tools had restored the reputation of his crippled career, had developed a bewildering204 martial art and martial art system, and had equipped Duelfessor Lee with the optimal means to shit-stomp an elaborate sequence of duels described by the kids these days as a ‘tournament’220.

2. For the melodramatic Mid-Tier Pleb who takes these game affairs a little seriously, A Thousand Tools revived his monk bud’s dead child134, pulling its corpse out of the blood and the chaos and gifting it and its love for the complexities of the 1v1 to the next traumatised generation. (Whoops.)

3. For the satire-savouring High-Tier Pleb, A Thousand Tools had been littered with the light-hearted joke. Duelfessor Lee, throughout this prelude side-hobby to his fanny packs86, had taken the piss out of his loser opponents285 as he mingled and equated the styles they’d venerated with activities that were clearly not duelling, like trash-talking from rideable scorpions262 and composing jerk-off papers and manuscripts on duelling ‘ethics’255 and 'duelology'.

4. For the nascent patrician, laughing beside this pleb but not in quite the same tone, A Thousand Tools might alternatively be appreciated according to its Low-Tier tragicomedy. On the one, sorrowful hand, his studies numbered a series of alleviations to his pent-up suffering, progressing as he had through the coping mechanisms of distraction84, meditation123, self-flagellation137, analysis138, detachment188, and embrace273. On the other, laughable hand, anyone taking an objective view could only smirk at his absurdity. To imagine that anyone might cure shellshock through videogame duelling241-243, that he might escape—through further immersion into a videogame—the very problems caused by that videogame – this is, obviously, doomed and silly.

5. The Mid-Tier Patrician then rose beyond the previous ironies to A Thousand Tools' pure, sincere, and unabashed thieving of pastiche178. Duelfessor Lee might’ve initiated his studies on severable laughable grounds. Nevertheless, he’d accumulated along the way a great deal of affection for every martial art. Dumb or not, whenever we plunge far enough into the depths of any created thing, we observe, again and again, the universal play of human genius. In fields low and high, in fields living and dead, it always makes some appearance, re-expressing itself in a shape altered to a speciality’s conditions, quirks, manners, techniques, and struggles. For the Mid-Tier Patrician comfortable in the middle of all cultural tiers, all to which any man has devoted the entirety of his soul becomes an art worth treasuring. Recognising the richness in every sincere work, we plunder all with greed, we steal through imitation what jewels each offer, we pile them in the hollows241-243 of our chest, and we allow them as they mingle inside our heart to spill back out and transform us into another agent of man's most precious instincts, to create and recreate.

6. As for the High-Tier Patrician’s maximalist modernisation of a Greek romance, this analogical layer mostly failed due to the specificity to his pleb-bait, the transposition to A Thousand Tools only achievable through contrived stretching. But, if we interpreted his ‘failed love’ in the triple(quadruple) entendre as utilised throughout the love triangle148(quadrangle157 ) of his pleb tetralogy, i.e. his failed love for the alpha-pleb214, his failed love for the NPCs197, and his failed love for the mountain216 , (and somewhere, preceding and pervading all of this, his failed love for his dead mother72 ), then A Thousand Tools could be re-examined as a psychotic response to his three(four)-way devastations in love. Duelfessor Lee, maximalist even in rejection, had hit the gym for centuries, grunting and sweating out his pains across dozens of arts, transforming himself into a hyper-jacked freak of muscles capable of alluring a better replacement babe. The outcome of such a scheme, if we supposed it real and not mere completionist padding for this 8-fold post-maximalist post-synthesis conclusion, would still be up in the air. Would any sexy duel-diggers167 (or mother substitutes285) be attracted by his tournament performance? The High-Tier Patrician would have to wait and see.

7. Thankfully, the analogy was much less forced for the pleb-bait’s seventh, Ultrapatrician layer, i.e. the Duelfessor's post-maximalist Jungian allegory for the destabilising social ramifications of the AI Revolution241 to 243. Interpreted through this plot line, A Thousand Tools had been both a brilliant example of affliction and blessing, exemplifying through this dual function the precarious technological ambiguities navigated by the post-singularity human subject.

In terms of the affliction, we could hardly conceive a more perverse post-maximal curse. The Overdream in which he'd trained for this art represented the worst example yet of the tendency of modern technological systems to misdirect the libido and attached behaviour away from real, socially-productive outlets and into an abstract, bottomless, inhuman, nowhere-going, suicide-inducing complex of drug addictions130, social media addictions, vicarious celebrity drama, gambling, religious cults, advertiser-driven consumerism, conspiracy theories, ideologies devoid of meaningful praxis, clownish politics demanding an opinion on topical and inconsequential movements like Virtual Realism152, scam investment vehicles, misanthropic pornography180198, and, of course, videogames. Duelfessor Lee, the post-maximal archetype of the digitally-degenerated human, had discarded his entire physical shell and uploaded his mind into a virtual world within a virtual world, in which he’d subsequently wasted centuries refining techniques—including A Thousand Tools—for excelling at playing this videogame. He'd thereby fused himself with the loop connecting to nothing, becoming one with the ouroboros of modernity deepthroating its own tail. This, for any man who offered no critique or resistance, who allowed himself to choke on the technological multiplicities of nothing, was assured annihilation. The species might endure, but what of himself? Does he even fathom why he should want to endure? Often, he is deprived even of this, the basic Will to Be.

Yet, despite these many dangers, the post-maximalist arena also contained the possibility of hope and blessing. Maybe, if man rejected his blind enslavement to these forces, if he paused to identify the many invisible pitfalls of behaviour into which he'd slipped, if he plotted the arduous path up needed to escape, if he strengthened himself by thoroughly reapplying—as the Duelfessor had through the martial trials of A Thousand Tools—the discipline of body and mind this world had stripped from him, if he dared to climb, to fall, to climb again, then he might—maybe, maybe—retrieve some share of his hijacked libido and ride this technological tiger into man’s next and higher infinity. Others might miss it, including Duelfessor Lee’s teenage self. However, the present one perceived the full vista of functions for this immortality tech, a landscape of opportunity far, far beyond the sandbox of a poorly-designed videogame.

8. And, finally, for his pleb-bait’s Uberpatrician post-post-maximalist non-linear inversion of the epic of Gilgamesh, A Thousand Tools was, obviously, but an opening step into the new and lengthy reality before him.

You see, His story was beyond that moralising post-maximalist, too. His story was also beyond that of the Sumerian king recounting mankind’s eternal struggle to negotiate the demands of life, always shouting at him to rise and rise and rise, against the knowledge of his inevitable fall into death and the necessity therefrom to make peace with his finitude. His saga marked the first reversal of these ancient conflicts. He—having accepted the Faustian bargain at the very start during the tutorial, having out-duelled Noah66 and stolen his blessing from the top of his peeled-open skull67—was, actually, immortal. He, for tens of thousands, perhaps tens of millions, of years had escaped death and did not, in fact, have to fret like Gilgamesh or the preceding stages of humanity that this hero personified.

After this acquisition, many of life’s previous dictums no longer applied to Duelfessor Lee, his toes resting at the frontier of an entirely novel complex of questions. How should a man cope with not declining into death? How should he compose himself to sustain joy, interest, fulfilment, health, excitement, human kindness for infinity? How will he be changed by this latest technological invention, both as he has been changed by all his significant inventions before and yet—most critically—as he’s never been changed by them, these changes being permanent, happening once and then, exceeding man’s control, enduring forever? How should he, Duelfessor Lee specifically, maximise these transitional days between his own immortality and the proliferation to others of the same permanent bestowal with its ambiguous libidinal valence as both blessing and affliction?

And, within this highest stratum of the journey, although impossible to truly fathom for his fellow humans, limited as they were by conventional time scales, the centuries he’d sunk into developing A Thousand Tools had, in fact, not been a waste of his time whatsoever. Quite the opposite. This had been an amazingly productive initiatory phase, in which, while juggling the goals of earlier martial layers, while juggling non-martial goals like his literary conquests, he’d simultaneously sampled through this sequence of arts dozens of highly-divergent lifestyles containing the mixtures of man’s cyclical follies and glories. None of the difficulties that might've appeared in this course were troubling or burdensome for him. He could, effortlessly, juggle everything. He, who existed on multiple planes, could be an obsessive duellist AND a teenager crawling towards happiness AND a cyborg meditating on the consequences of eternity.

In that expansion of potential arose perhaps the final post-post-maximalist moral lesson of A Thousand Tools. By not whining like a coward or some neo-Amish about the devastations of technology, by demanding More of it and More from it, by embracing man’s destiny as a ghost within the machine, and by possessing the fantastic luck to steal the prize of immortality first due to its bizarre implantation in a videogame, Duelfessor Lee’d surmounted all previous restrictions and contradictions of the flesh. To him, a cyborg, every trial faced so far in developing A Thousand Tools had been a calculated nothing. Even his supposed errors still conformed to the general scheme79 of his multi-century cyborg design, which—by cyborg design—anticipated and allowed for blunders. To state all this was not even arrogance. He was a cyborg. He was, objectively, capable of more than every previous human to exist, his only worthwhile competition being other digital hyper-mutants158. Should one design flop, should he ever lose, the fact remained that he was an immortal with infinity on hand. ‘Defeat’ to him only spelt delay, a pushing back of his victory by a couple extra naps.

Yet, at this cyborg level, even this talk of losing as it pertained to A Thousand Tools was highly misleading. In terms of any duels on the horizon, he’d won those ages ago. The questions occupying his cyborg consciousness were far beyond that beginner’s step, progressing past the verbs of victory to its adverbs. How well had he won? How quickly? How deceptively? How immaculately? How permanently? How childishly? How enjoyably? How easily? When he stood alone at the end and declared, 'good bloody game,' what would be the specific quantities of those two modifiers, the good and the blood136185215?

The Synthesis of The Post-Synthesis and The Transition to Further Slopes

But, out of kindness for the human post-maximalists perhaps getting sucked again into the confusing vortex of ever-spawning multiplicities, we should apply some degree of syncretic proportion to this abundance of takeaways, ensuring that we don’t lose total sight of what was essential and non-essential in A Thousand Tools. Thus, we’ll conclude this post-synthesis, and our entire duelological inquiry, with a final synthesis recentring on the main priorities of the above as they applied to the three chief parties impacted.

For most of the world, A Thousand Tools had been only what it appeared on its Low-Tier-Pleb surface, a complex and very cool method of duelling. And that, if one was a member of this class, was perhaps the single point of pontification. What are the cool duels ahead?220

For the Duelfessor's struggling teenage self, who’d seen much loftier pursuits than duelling, this performative aspect of A Thousand Tools amounted to a benign triviality. Instead, ultimately, the art played into the more personal Low-Tier-Patrician’s tragicomedy, its contribution consisting of the brief, two-week distraction/holiday/career-termination, plus the longer trials via clone for how he might move on from his failed youthful loves to the rest of his life. In the transition ahead to adulthood, the job before him would not be too dissimilar to the synthesis of these tools. Objectively, this game had granted him many scattered abundances - wealth, skills, connections, fame, (immortality). We might suppose, beyond this hiatus of frolicking and weeping in the sand, the eventual task would be to amalgamate these treasures towards some coherent, functional purpose. To build excessive monuments, as he’d recently taken up with the pony-farm weirdness248? Maybe.

And, lastly, for his cyborg self, far beyond the scope of humanity, A Thousand Tools had been the leisurely juggling of all, simultaneously being—on the scale of millions of years—its preliminary excursion into his Uberpatrician immortality experiments while also being—on this tiny scale of the centuries—an entertaining Low-Pleb hobby to kill time and opponents285.

So, let's move on to other fun time-killing cyborg hobbies. As we now wave bon voyage to A Thousand Tools—as we kick that violent kid from out the family home and hope it doesn’t murder too many plebs—let’s unlock from the basement the more civilised and more promising sibling from whom this art had rudely stolen our affections. Finally, at last, at last, at last, with the responsibilities to duelling passed, we can resume the feeding of Duelfessor Lee’s—scratch that, the feeding of HF's all-encompassing, all-synthesising exploration of world literatu—