Suchi, a full day later, the evening before the weekend tournament mere hours away.

The in-game sky loomed dark above, half a moon visible, the sibling that should have shone fuller painted black. Despite the many ominous signs in the air, on the ground throughout this cursed city of the plains, the mood was light, the mood was joyful.

The Tyrant’s exhausting workshop was over.

In its final, splendour-packed session, the students had been introduced to methods of customising A Thousand Tools' techniques, to tips and drills for accelerating the long road of conditioning ahead. At some point, The Company’s puppet leader, Alex Wong, had appeared to much bombast and armed with a couple Legendaries, he’d issued a challenge, and he’d lost 0-3. Devastatingly, The Tyrant, using a bamboo cane and no abilities, had simply shoved his friend off stage each round. Lectures finished in the early afternoon, the teen prognosticating sappily on the scene’s future in his absence, clinging as he was still to his story of retirement. Then, encouraging everyone to forget their lessons, he'd wished them luck in tomorrow’s tourney, which would mark the closure of one age of duelling and the beginnings of its next upgraded epoch.

With that, their guest sensei for a week, The Tyrant of Saana himself, had quit his public communications. A marquee tent popped up to shelter his stage, and his last few hours expired in a spy-cockblocked silence as he polished his technique, both for the 1v1 and the juggled group formats. Of the trainees and pros who filtered in and out the site, none were privileged with the macroscopic picture, but a few of the non-duellists spoke afterwards of an eerie sensation of slotting into the same grand puzzle. There’d never been fifteen tournaments, one participant insisted, only a single, indivisible stomp of the arena. The shadow glimpsed in brief? It'd belonged to a giant boot descending from the sky to crush them all.

Then, when the tent was torn down, The Tyrant had flown from sight. Satisfied, he’d logged off for an early night.

Serious competitors would follow in his example. The time for learning and practice had passed. Every extra snore of rest would be fuel for the marathon ahead.

Most stayed online to train, and, of these, the competitive chances of most plummeted as they were sucked into the party atmosphere now taking hold.

Everywhere in Suchi, from the slums to the city proper, the fires of festival were being lit. Casks of liquor popped their nozzles, and rowdy revellers choked the streets. Music, boasts, bets, dances, commerce, combat, kisses, tears, sex, death, smiles, winces, drugs, blunders, wisdom, light, joy, joy, and light - everything was beginning to swirl and blend and repeat in the millions-strong carousel of human flesh.

For everyone, the time for learning and practise had passed. “Bring forth the spectacle of blood and sand!” exclaimed each eager soul, and a spectacle of blood and sand each soul would soon receive.

The panorama of radiating frenzy was overseen by many, worried and excited.

One such worried figure was on the Achievement Pillar of Byzantium Village. On the structure’s topmost platform, several hundred metres in the air, a Crusader kneeled before his golden zweihander.

“…Lord," Justinian was chanting, "in darkness and confusion, we ask for Your light and guidance. Be a light for our steps, and show us the right path. Give us wisdom and understanding to overcome all obstacles and difficulties, and guide us towards a better future. Amen."

The knight had stripped down to a loin cloth to perform a preparatory vigil. Over his sacred weapon, he muttered a litany of prayers. He’d been requesting heaven’s help against the chaos taking shape within his heart and without, in the heathens drunk below.

“Lord, in darkness and confusion, we ask for Your light and guidance. Be a light for our steps, and show us the right path. Give us wisdom and understanding to overcome all obstacles and difficulties, and guide us towards a better future. Amen."

These words floated out despondently across The Slums, to several stadiums built on the horizon for tomorrow’s coordinated dance of tournaments, to Central City whose smoothed walls of clay resembled the lineless skin of an indifferent face.

Justinian, at last, had made his choice.

After much internal struggle, he would accept the call to Saana League, he would abandon his roleplay and his half-year crusade in this zone.

His leaving had perhaps been set from the start, when The Tyrant himself visiting their Village in disguise had first encouraged him to reflect on the opportunities of a pro-career for his real-life situation. Offline, Justinian had zero refutation. His parents, his grandparents, the community he’d grown up with – the instant benefits for them from the quantities of money at stake were undeniable, and nothing in this game could’ve warranted him turning down the offer. Every second of his refusal had been outrageous.

Nevertheless, the past few days, following the humiliating duels at the stadium, had relieved him of one of the main blockades, of his grudge against The Company and Flaming Sun managing the pro-scene.

Those dizzy beatings on the playground map had knocked his senses loose from their stubborn focus, and they'd forced him to carefully re-examine both himself and Him. Many false impressions were soon rectified by the information gathered - in Saana and offline.

It’d turned out Justinian had been operating off an outdated judgement, formed eight months ago during the peak of their imperial expansion, when it would’ve been ridiculous to assume anything except the usual motives. The Company's subsequent U-turn into reformation that might've altered this had been largely missed by his limited awareness in The Slums.

Retrospectively, unclouded by prejudice, the wider pattern of their military conquests did seem to align closer with a goal of liberation than commerce or subjugation. The guild had prioritised invading wretched and oppressive regions. The eunuch tribes of Chayoka whose reclaimed penises had been flashed at him were but one example, along with the west’s hyper-stratified megalopolises. Meanwhile, The Company's armies had skirted by regimes that would’ve yielded greater resources for a fraction of the effort, just as long as their leaders were halfway decent and willing to negotiate. Today, despite the guild’s exponential surge in power, these minor territories still retained their independence. Overall, the campaign had incurred its share of blemishes, but reckoned against any global empire, it stood the cleanest of its scale. Ever - whether judged from Saana or real-world history.

What Justinian himself had observed directly of the guild in Suchi could be tallied amongst their rare blemishes. He, like most subjects of The Empire, had accepted without critique Ramiro’s propaganda conflating them and Central City’s clergy as allies due to their peaceful dealings. The pair were framed as coordinating to pincer in The Slums, one from the land, the other from the ocean. This framing, however, comedically obscured their true relationship. If The Slums represented anything between the two giants, it was not an enemy but a barrier, an extra, hostage layer of the wall. They might be the reason for peace.

No. The Tyrant had been—as he'd professed to be—the benevolent paradox, the crusader of shadow, the sword that pacifies peace, the nightmare that prolongs the dream. Critics who dismissed the reformations as a mask for Alex Wong’s sell-out avarice were reversing the order of the disguise. As intended, Justinian imagined. In these godless days, someone motivated by greed might be more believable than an altruist. The level of sacrifice involved would be inexplicable to a public lacking serious convictions and unaccustomed to putting even family this far before themselves, let alone strangers, let alone strangers in a videogame.

When Justinian re-examined The Company thusly, much of his resistance lessened to joining Saana League, his guilt in associating with The Tyrant’s misunderstood 'evil'.

At the same time, reading about their reformations had cast a deprecating shadow over his meagre slum adventures. In the six months in which they’d wiped out plagues and built grand cities, what had his knight’s crusade achieved? He’d chased stray cats. He’d carried a couple water jugs. Meanwhile, the organisation he’d championed had been run by a child-eating monster. Embarrassing.

Together, as the barriers to leaving collapsed along with his reasons for staying, the dilemma binding him had reached its logical conclusion.

He could go now. He could ditch this slum. He could drop his knight charade.

This resolution had surprised him. After all, not everything had been settled. He still had his original grudge against The Company’s other tyrant, ‘Him’, Alex Wong, the prick who’d instigated his banishment to Suchi. Evidently, however—according to motivations unnoticed by Justinian himself but perhaps deduced by Henry during the verbal and physical trashing—the weight of this personal conflict must’ve measured very little against the moral one. To have a clown for a CEO would not deter him.

And so, he’d made his choice. He would leave. He would cross to the other side and join his former foe. He would sheathe the crusader’s sword and start a new life of competition, fame, and prosperity.

“…Lord, in darkness and confusion, we ask for Your light and guidance. Be a light for our steps, and show us the right path. Give us wisdom and understanding to overcome all obstacles and difficulties, and guide us towards a better future. Amen.”

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Then, the moment Justinian’s conscience trespassed this barrier, everything around him spiralled into chaos.

First, on the evening of his duel with Henry, Byzantium had been hurled into disarray when Village Head Walker quit to join Ramiro’s loyalists out on the savannah. Then, while they attempted to recover from that disaster, some creepy African lady had turned up outside the gates preaching about an apocalypse. Following her arrived a mild plague - this may or may not have been connected given the regular occurrence of plagues in The Slums, but within the larger context of instability, it certainly disturbed.

Finally, today, for a fourth (or third?) punch, aimed at Justinian’s heart, most of his arena squad had up and quit, citing their embarrassment at losing while being monitored by so many due to their association with The Tyrant of Saana. Only a useless handful of players had stuck around - Lady Kittykat, a literal child; Team Friendship Forever, a bunch of filthy casuals. With Justinian moving on to Saana League, this had been his final shot at the recruitment tournament, and he’d so far invested more into this run than ever before. Yet this month’s effort would also end in vain, it seemed. How could this team of leftovers be ready by tomorrow? Alas, his crusade was caput. His stolen weapon, brought within a few kilometres of his reach, would NEVER be returned.

How should he interpret any of this strange series of ruins? It was as if the universe itself had been listening to his thoughts and wished to punish a betrayal!

“…Lord, in darkness and confusion, we ask for Your light and guidance. Be a light for our steps, and show us the right path. Give us wisdom and understanding to overcome all obstacles and difficulties, and guide us towards a better future. Amen.”

Yet these external signs of chaos paled compared to the turmoil inside himself.

A horrifying discomfort was seizing him whose origins within he couldn't locate. Was this a natural reaction to such a seismic shift of occupation, a necessary earthquake that destroys cemented values and enables their reconstruction? Or was it the grief of ditching his cherished hobby and his comrades of The Empire? Maybe he was in denial? Maybe he couldn’t deal with Alex Wong stealing his sword?

But none of these answers echoed true to him.

Thus, he’d resorted to prayer.

“Lord," he repeated yet again, "in darkness and confusion, we ask for Your light and guidance. Be a light for our steps, and show us the right path. Give us wisdom and understanding to overcome all obstacles and difficulties, and guide us towards a better future. Amen.”

As he continued to beg a higher voice for guidance, Justinian cast out a conquered gaze, the strength in his eyes dwindling at this, his crusade’s termination.

He looked upon the frenzy in The Slums below, upon the Villages aglow with festival debauch. He looked upon the dark shacks crammed between, which resonated closer with the anarchy and destitutions of his heart.

“Lord, in darkness and confusion, we ask for Your light and guidance. Be a light for our steps, and show us the right path. Give us wisdom and understanding to overcome all obstacles and difficulties, and guide us towards a better future. Amen.”

He looked upon The Company’s distant tent city, upon the stadiums that would one day be his home, upon their prospects of abundance and serenity emerging from this desiccated soil. He looked upon these star-bathed monuments offering their wealth to all, yet also not offering their wealth, he realised now.

Closer, he looked, upon the covert boundary between their region and this slum, upon the emissaries who’d filled potholes and who’d patched rooves but had avoided anything of substance. He looked upon this, a crystallising limit between, upon the limit imposed also on themselves, their structures similarly made of cloth and timber, of tinder for the fire. He looked upon a line taking form that these forces of The Tyrant would not cross, and he looked upon his puzzlement at why they, who’d crossed so many lines, would not cross this one line.

Why?

“Lord, in darkness and confusion, we ask for Your light and guidance. Be a light for our steps, and show us the right path. Give us wisdom and understanding to overcome all obstacles and difficulties, and guide us towards a better future. Amen.”

And Justinian, who knew exactly why, looked upon the clay-walled city of this plain, upon the unholy spire observing all with patience and whispering, ‘Try it. Cross the line, and learn what follows.’

And he, who’d suffered here for months, who’d witnessed the regularly-scheduled apocalypse euphemised so insultingly as a 'cleansing', looked back and forward upon that, too, upon the opening gates, upon the marching troops, upon the tide of slouch-shouldered migrants carting their meagre possessions off into the steppes, upon the demonic curtains of fire chasing at their back and ushering them out like rats from a burrow.

“Right,” said Justinian, looking upon the discontent inside his heart. “The ‘goodfolk’…”

Although his new career would transport him to brighter prospects, this blessing would miss the others here, left to starve beneath a hostile sky.

The knight’s grudge, the roleplay – no, these did not amount to anything to him either, who was more than capable of reconciling their abandonment. These were mere costumery. Their significance derived only from the deeper cause they’d enabled him to act out and express without the pains of commitment.

The goodfolk…it was the people and the people alone that concerned him. From the vendors down the street who fed him snacks for nothing, to the old codgers who exploited his knight’s vows requesting help with pointless chores and—truly—company, it was these people who rebelled inside his soul, these people he was abandoning here to rot.

Justinian grimaced at a spasm of torment. At once, the cause, no longer held at bay by the separating device of his ‘character’, pressed down upon his heart with its raw, crushing, impossible magnitude.

“But what can I do?” he asked, not as a knight but as a helpless teenager. “I’m just one person. I can’t keep doing this. What have I achieved so far?” His eyes began to weep as they recognised his inconsequential actions, no longer filtered by the crusader’s silly persona, as they acknowledged the uncomfortable fact that he—as The Tyrant had insinuated—lacked the strength to be the fairy-tale knight he wished to be, that he’d cowered in a quixotic joke of a knight absolved of expectation and responsibility. “Nothing,” he confessed. “I have done nothing. But there’s nothing I could have done.”

Apparently, He—The Tyrant, with a whole empire at his summons—would not cross this line between the sky and sand, would not confront the blood-sucking demons of this cloudless plain. What hope then had Justinian, one tiny figure, a microscopic ant flailing a twig at this city’s towering brutality?

His staying would help no one.

And, even if it might, how could he neglect his real family? They were also suffering. They, too, were stuck in an impoverished pit that he’d once been helpless to address, the tensions of which his knight’s crusade might’ve been nothing but a dumb catharsis to relieve. Now, offered the means to rescue his kin, he had to accept it. The priority was clear.

“My path is set. I’m accepting the offer. I am going...I am going…”

Thus, Justinian conceded to his limits as a single person, and he gave to this drought-stricken land the last that he could spare for it, a few millilitres of moisture from eyes averting their gaze.

And as the young Crusader sunk into despair, the heavenly guidance for which he’d prayed suddenly arrived.

From the sky’s night black canopy, a thin beam of golden light descended!

“Huh?” Justinian froze, as the shining pillar cascaded down on him, immersing his suffering features in rays so warm as to evaporate his tears. “Huh?!”

Into its piercing brightness, he squinted with astonishment. He watched on as the holy beam, seeming to select him for its divine mission, began to move, to skirt away, to speed across The Slums, over the partygoers in the streets glancing skyward in confusion.

Back and forth, the Crusader gawked, at once upon the travelling pillar, at once upon the heavens. In the latter, he searched for its shining source but found the power of his sight inadequate to pick it from amongst the stars. In the former, he searched for the purpose of the beam, meandering along the shack-strewn landscape.

“A path…” Justinian whispered. “Is it drawing a path…for me?” He lifted a bewildered flutter of blinks. “G-G-God?”

Were his prayers being answered…by God?

What the hell?

To be honest, he’d never once believed in God, the Christian fanaticism merely a fun inclusion adding to the authenticity of his knight roleplay.

Crossing himself and begging forgiveness for his blasphemy, he continued to monitor the holy beam’s progression. A few kilometres away, it came to a halt, whereupon it spread its golden glow to encompass an enormous structure rising from the chaos of shacks.

Behold, the light seemed to declare, The New Suchi Arena...The Tyrant’s massive stadium.

“That’s my path? The stadium?” Justinian frowned, wondering if he’d misinterpreted God’s symbolic messaging. “But I was already going to the stadium, already abandoning the people to become a pro-gamer.” He paused. “Or maybe God means that stadium specifically? As in, he wants me to go there and win the tournament or something? In this case, though, I’m struggling to see the logical connection between winning a tournament and The Slum’s pervasive political issues. What’s more, this path would never have needed divine inspiration. Hopeless or not, I’d still intended on competing, if only for the slim chance of retrieving my stolen sword, plus the epic concluding performance for my RP hobby. Then it must be some other specific feature of the stadium. Does he want me to…attack it?” He questioned the sky and its wisdom. “God, you’ll have to give me powers. It would take me years to solo that stadium, and they would probably arrest me in the process.”

Shrugging, Justinian was about to leap from the Achievement Pillar and assault the stadium. But then the holy beam—annoyed at his obtuseness—retraced its path halfway. Jittering back and forth between The Slums and the stadium like someone underlining a sentence multiple times, it emphasised their overall connection.

The Crusader stared at the erratic movement, before slapping an epiphany waiting on his thick forehead. “Right! OF COURSE! It’s all connected…from The Slums to the stadium...my pathway leads to both.”

How silly of him. He’d been fretting about the conflict between Saana League and The Slums, when the two were perfectly compatible.

As his career might benefit his family, it could also benefit the goodfolk trapped in this hellscape.

The pro-scene would give him the strength that he, as but one person, had lacked. He could refine his skills against the best. He could gather a horde of fans. Throughout, not neglecting his humble origins, he could champion the goodfolks's plight and guarantee they went unforgotten.

And then one day, having sprouted from a child into a titan, he could return to these shores with an army of followers and simply step across the walls once looming overhead.

This was his path.

It might take years. However, the six months of his slum-bound purgatory had bestowed him with the crusader’s gift for patience.

‘God’, enjoying Justinian’s resolve, altered the beam’s colour in a rainbow kaleidoscope of approval. The lights frolicking upon the stadium then blinked out. As randomly as they’d appeared, they vanished, and on the soft breeze travelling through the renewed dark was carried a faint but soulful thread of laughter.

Justinian continued to meditate a while on the freakish miracle – although not as long as he should have.

His path, the path of the arena, had been illumined and ordained by God himself, he concluded. Instead of casting off the guilt for the people saddling his conscience, he would accept his responsibilities and repurpose them to fortify him in his mission.

Setting down his path now, he supposed he should start off at a sprint. He would try, as he had so many times before, to win this tournament. But maybe this time would not turn out the same. He, Justinian The Great, would enter tomorrow armed not only with the petty motives of his own crusade. Behind him joined the infinitely greater spirit of everyone who’d supported him thus far and whose kindness he vowed to pay back in a tribute of strength and victory.

End of Volume 4, Part I - Unrivalled Under The Heavens

Next up: Volume 4, Part II - Invincible Beneath The Sun