A tent crammed with assassins and one out-of-place millennial grandmother.
The Tyrant's tea calibration method was like an occult palm reading, intimate yet subtly creepy.
Grandma Ru was instructed by the teen to rest her hands knuckledown on the coffee table amidst a powder he'd sprinkled in a funky geometric pattern.
The kid meanwhile, his gloves and rings removed, hovered his bare fingers over hers. Stooping down to the table, he whispered to the powder in a language she'd never heard. The words, presumably magic, had a pleasant polyphonic echo, as if half-a-dozen extra voices in his throat were singing harmonies. The breath of this music flowing over the powder caused it to animate with life. Like a swarm of microscopic ants, its grains began to tighten up into thread-thin ranks, which tickled her skin as they marched up the lines of her palm and spread out, eventually continuing the powder's geometric patterning beneath.
His hands then slapped hers to activate the spell. A jolt shot through her body. This was followed by a less pronounced electric pressure pulsating from her scalp down to her big toes. It felt vaguely similar to the scent of the tea. The two magics might've been kindred.
The teen closed his eyes and narrated that he was, basically, examining a constellation map of her Alchemical chakras. This was a new concept to Ruru. However it worked, his face had constricted with an unusual tenseness, a concentration beyond anything she’d witnessed in his duels. When she mirrored his expression, he somehow detected it, joking she should keep her eyes peeled open or they’d melt behind the lids.
“Anything but finger movement’s fine,” The Tyrant assured her when she nearly bolted. “You can go back to studying clips of Emerson. Or chat my ear off. So long as it’s not too specific to your opponent, I can answer anything that you might please. Go ahead, let The Tyrant speedrun some of these troubles.”
The way he mouthed ‘these troubles’ was peculiar, as if they’d condensed into a material form that he saw…or held…or tasted.
"Nothing specific..." said Ruru, in a tone of superficial agreement.
Her reply had its own peculiarity, as she pretended not to notice his peculiarity, filing it carefully alongside his detection of her eye movements as a potential danger.
To Ruru, this conversation would be something of a duel. Her win condition: infiltrate his defences to steal the holy tips. Her tool: the crafty, grandmotherly wiles she'd developed by inhabiting this earth for four extra decades.
(Unfortunately, what the old woman had yet to realise was that the teen obviously had his own ulterior motives in arranging this private conversation. What's more, in the field of misapplying duelling tactics, he could be called her elder. Why, a mere week ago he'd debuted an avant-garde duel-seduction routine to marvellous success.)
During his calibration ritual setup, she'd plotted a 7-phase course, which would proceed as follows: I. Opener - General Tips A; II. Divine Tips A (Brief, Joking - maybe); III. General Tips B; IV. Elderly Sympathy Interlude (Grandma's Sob Story); V. General Tips C; VI. Transition of General to Divine Tips (Freestyle); VII. Victory.
I. Opener - General Tips A
She began with a disarmament opener, requesting several technical pointers on A Thousand Tools. At her probing, the art's inventor first laid out the next dozen sub-skills she’d most benefit from mastering. After that, he tweaked a stat-build for beyond Tier-0 she’d considered herself a genius for designing.
This exchange was fast. Ruru, hoping to get him into a rhythm of confession, accelerated the pace of each question. The teen, in turn, amused by her antics, reciprocated by accelerating his much longer answers.
He soon went too fast for her.
As he breezed through three more questions, as he finished customising an out-of-the-box monster-form combo, which Ruru never would have imagined but which she found herself nodding at eagerly as it fit her strengths, limitations, and personality like a glove, she checked the clock. The time made her baulk with horror.
82 seconds...
Somehow, not even a minute-and-a-half had passed, yet she'd already exhausted the material of Phases I and III without getting him close to the loose, casual mood necessary for Phase II. Divine Tips A (Brief, Joking - maybe).
“But what are you retiring to?” Ruru found herself asking in the blur.
She winced. Herself caught off-guard and distracted, she'd fumbled into a suppressed background thought.
Throughout the week, this mystery about the kid had been on her mind. Why would he choose to exit Saana in his prime, before his prime? Her own retirement had not been voluntary, nor had it for any other pro she’d known. You left because your game was dead, because your team collapsed, because the meta’d shifted from your skillset, because you’d been superseded by the fresh blood. None of this applied to him.
The teen smiled, an expression, its contours weighed down by the general flatness, looking less amused and more pitiful. “That’s probably where you should be giving me advice. What did you retire to?”
She'd mentioned her pro-career in an earlier conversation.
Ruru—alarm signals flaring—answered hurriedly that she'd been a streamer for a while of moderate success, a career now also forgotten. She'd gotten married, she'd pumped out a kid, and the kid had cemented her downfall into the oblivion of normiedom.
“After that?” he asked.
“Besides, you know, we’ve just…”
She struggled for a different word to ‘survived’, which never felt deserved. The worst had been spared from her by a nutty prepper fan in Idaho inviting them to hole up in his ranch. Since then, nothing interesting had passed, at least nothing that you’d share with a teenager you were trying to finesse duelling advice from.
“…we’ve existed.” Ruru had to suppress a goofy shrug to keep her hands in place. “Let’s pretend I’ve been in hibernation until I glimpsed a Druid dodge a hundred cuts while pew-pewing a Warrior to tears and I thought, ‘Oh shit, pillar-humping’s back in meta. My time is now, again.’ And that's how I ended up here, relearning how to make a tin-can weep."
Suddenly, the old woman's face, which'd been furrowed with anxiety, smoothened into sunny victory.
?. Improv - The Divine Tips Masquerading in an Elderly Fan's Appreciation
A clear path forward was opening through the stormclouds of her struggle.
The first duel she'd watched of The Tyrant, his dissection of Suchi's cannibal warlord, was a mirror of her own up next in class composition, form, and challenge. It'd been an Earthfriend spell-kiter against a Fighter with a seemingly insurmountable advantage, Ramiro boosted by a God, Emerson Miller by his veterancy.
Accordingly, if Ruru probed the teen on the complexities of that duel, she would get answers for her own.
This conversation belonged to her. GG.
(Alas, the celebrating geriatric could not know she'd already lost. By mentioning retirement, a topic so close to the teenager's heart, she'd inadvertently activated his extended monologue finisher.)
XXXXXXXX. The End - Man's Stubborn Search for More
"So, what am I retiring to, then," mused the teen. "Hmm...firstly, what's your comprehension of my ideological modus operandi, 'Post-Maximalism'?"
Grandma Ru's alarm bells rang at typhoon volume. She didn't like how oblique the question was, nor this 'firstly', which hinted at the possibility of secondlies, thirdlies, fourthlies, fifthlies...
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"More tools," she answered fast, "More drills, More tips. Speaking of tips, against Ramiro, how did you map the sequence of tool reveals to avoid an early loss before their integration?"
Smooth.
“A complex mixture of the natural warm-up order, improv, and random choice. The duel, if you're not aware, was orchestrated by a chaos deity, so plotting from start to end would've been injudicious."
"It was a chaos god," said Ruru, breathing a sigh of relief. "Wow. I didn't know that duel was even more complicated than it looked!"
"Yeah, in light of that background danger, I intentionally refrained from a fixed set of techniques and trusted in my general advantage to always draw on More tools and More of everything else, which is one articulation of Post-Maximalism, although, at its core, it's truly a multi-disciplinary crusade against conditions of decline, a point evinced in its name, ‘Post-Maximalism’, after the maximum, after the peak..."
Grandma Ru listened in awe and despair as the kid, transitioning back without a pause and steamrolling forward, closed shut the gaps of his monologue by condensing it into a single, rambling sentence.
"....and thus, it might be true that, currently, when I glance outside the bubble of this game, I see savannah, a horizon of flat, unfertile nothingness, yet, as a radical Post-Maximalist, my contention is that this is not the fixed state of the world but a momentary slump waiting for resuscitation, if not More, a point that can be illustrated with one example plucked from my own offline social life, which, like many gamers, has its deficiencies, it being fair to say that outside of Saana I have no close friends..."
Grandma Ru found the last admission bizarre. Not long ago, she’d watched his ordeal to lug his schoolfriends to the top of the rookie 6v6s.
“Damn…” she whispered to herself. “So bad you’re disassociating…that’s ruthless.”
“Depth of friendship is relative," said the teen, relenting on his steamroll when the grandma commented on something unrelated to her match. "Compared with my co-conspirators, or even with these lazy goons,” he gave a gesturing nod at the security stationed around the tent, “those kids might as well be strangers. But your mistake is a prime example of a ‘minimalist’ solution to social ills. If your friends are holding you back, if they fail to meet your standards, what’s the typical advice these days?”
Grandma Ru battled for a way to weave 'advice' back into duelling advice but, being decades out of touch with pop culture, she struggled even to answer the original question. “Are we…are we still cutting out toxic people?”
Toxic people, she was thinking. Cannibals...advice on cutting toxic cannibals...advice on not being cut by toxic cannibals?
“So grinds on the social meta of decline," The Tyrant, smiling at the total collapse of her strategy, charged on. "One or two good friends is all you need, and—if you can’t find one—then learn to be alone, to first cherish your own loving company. And what's the probable result of that strategy? Fewer friends. No friends. The current state of Less. A Post-Maximalist, while retaining the comrade guillotine, juggles many kinder options. You can grow existing friendships by plotting group bonding activities. You can, recognising that friendship is reciprocal and you’re receiving the toxicity you’ve been serving, grow yourself into a better friend. You can—although this is beyond the means of most—grow your friends in the same way, maybe such that they can grow you back, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of mutual development. You can, without altering the friendship or your friends or yourself exteriorly, grow your internal senses of focus, empathy, and gratitude so that you no longer neglect the friendship that’s always been there..."
Grandma Ru, conceding for the moment, sat back and received the monologue as one does a gang beating.
Just fantastic, she thought amidst the verbal pummelling. Her warm-up had been sacrificed to attend a seminar on making friends by a kid who admitted to having no decent ones in real life.
"...Of course, the Post-Maximal hyper-hottake would be that all of these coping strategies don’t resolve the systematic conditions of Less. Instead, before all else, we should aim for More friends, awful or otherwise..."
Ruru contemplated leaving, but any excuse she might summon seemed like it would only earn mockery from this duelling god. What was she to say? 'I'm sorry, but I tried for tips, I failed, and now I think a few extra minutes of prep will better increase my chances of beating a guy who'll beat you.' Ridiculous.
"...for the ultimate root of social misery might be in the number, in a gradual, millennia-long shrinkage of community that has placed us and our diminished crews into a state of partial isolation, one that is for a social ape evolved to hang with hundreds intrinsically unsatisfactory, volatile, and character-deforming..."
With half a mind to sprint off, the grandma glanced back at the tent's entranceway.
For a moment, she was confused, the flap appearing to be closed by a shaggy fur rug. Then she realised, from the way this rug bulged and sported a stubby tail, that it was in fact the giant back of a grizzly bear.
An Earthfriend, one of his guards, had shapeshifted out of a stealth form and sealed the exit.
An instant later, after re-examining the other guards camping the corners with their weapons out, she had a second realisation.
This kid had trapped her.
She was being forcibly subjected to this monologue...
Shoot.
Well, Ruru concluded—finally resigning herself—at least she could now dump her loss on him. The hypothetical it left might be a comfort to her later. Nobody could be sure, they'd say, the grandma could've won if not for that meddling teen.
“...that's one example of a Post-Maximal analysis, but the creed deals with quantitative declines beyond the one person of the friend. Can’t we do with More children, More teachers, More farmers, More doctors, More lumberjacks, More technicians, More diplomats? Hell, I’ll take More priests and More surveillance drones. Me, I’m a fiend for More. Give me More of everyone and everything, and I’ll let this cycle’s next generation of minimalist downers undermine us with their worries about balance...”
As Ruru began to listen, she—given her age and residency in a similar country—was actually able to follow most of the point here that would confuse Saana’s younger, predominately-European player base. The depressions may have been relenting after decades of austerity, but, compared to the Technocommunists, the two of them were not much better off than the shanty-dwellers barred outside this city’s extravagant walls. What she couldn’t fathom, though, was a desire for increased clergy or surveillance. That seemed kind of extreme.
“Of course,” the teen answered her visceral withdrawal, “I don’t deny the dangers in the extremity, but so far—within this game at least, accepting the limitations of analogy—an ambition for More has rarely steered me wrong. What is the martial art you’re learning but a product of the Post-Maximalist drive? Where others were content, I acknowledged the decrepitude of every style and, More than their decrepitude, I acknowledged the vast beauty dormant in their multiplicity, which—if re-combined, re-combined, re-sized, re-shaped, re-loved—would have the potential to fashion even a grandmother into a passable duellist in one week."
Ruru, merely pretending to be resigned, dove for the out. “Passable enough to maybe pass a former best? Maybe? With a killer tip? Please teach me how to win instead of this."
Giving up on circuity, a tactic she admitted her defeat in, she went straight for it.
But the teen, a tyrant in title and monologuing, soldiered on. “Likewise, with Mayo’s backhanded tournament relocation after the exposure incident, I could have taken the minimalist solution to these nuisances. I could’ve returned to my reclusion. Hiding this week in disguise, I could’ve dissipated my frustrations grumbling about the immediate misuse by these morons of the powers that I’ve granted them, or I could’ve followed the temptation to re-snatch the reins and cancel everything. Instead, accepting and embracing the inevitability of change, as you should the inevitability of this monologue, I asked myself—and have continued to ask—how can I maximise this stagnant episode..."
Ruru blinked. Did he just break the fourth wall of his monologue there?
"...Thus, I declared my entry into fifteen categories, enough—after riling so many anti-fans—to sum up to an adequate challenge. Then, before the tournaments, to maximise the training out of its monotony, I invited a queue of old rivals and new rivals to settle hundreds of disputes, and, when that wasn’t hard enough, I multi-tasked a teaching workshop. Then, during the tournament, I’m maximising the easier matches by experimenting with techniques, by staking dumb bets.” For a split second, he paused his monologue and nodded conspiratorially at the old woman. “In the constant downtime, while others nap, I’m continuing my training and evolution, I’m juggling non-combat tournaments outside, I’m sorting guild business, I’m fixing avant-garde cuisines.” He emphasised fixing for no apparent reason. “Beyond the mere stuffing of time, I’m analysing—and conversing with—competitors to understand what exactly you’re deriving from these tournaments that seem so pointless from my view...”
Grandma Ru, misinterpreting the declaration of pointlessness, snickered at him still trash-talking in the middle of a monologue, snickered also at the schadenfreude she could anticipate later when this oblivious windbag lost.
The teen copied her snicker. “I’m immersing myself in the unique motivations of you all: from the one duellist preoccupied with victory and loss as they nurture the competitive flame far beyond a practical age..."
"Wait, is that me? Are you talking about me?"
"...and from this other duellist, maximising the event with their own irritating method of avant-garde costume theatre. And from that one, navigating the complexities of sexual identity in the post-flesh virtual age. And from this one, seeking a resolution to heartbreak from the person least suited for the task. And from that one, on a similar doomed quest, venting PTSD through a simulacrum of the cause.”
“Who’s that?” interjected Grandma Ru, actually interested in the quarterfinalists and unable to identify this competitor.
“That one’s me,” The Tyrant joked. “And from that one, a kid so young and arrogant he's convinced he’s ready to surpass his teacher. And that one…well…”
Veering on a tangent, as if to punish her and guarantee her resignation, he explained that he refused to learn from Justinian. In fact, after a failure to get the roleplayer to curb the knight dialogue, he’d resorted to tactical muting. Any vital communications were summarised and translated by his staff. Justinian, despite them winning three categories together, had yet to notice he was blocked.
“...a Post-Maximalist clings even to the petty things to reconstruct their joy. Anyway, from all these tales and More, I—who anticipated nothing worthwhile in these tournaments—am stacking the fragments of human significance into a…into a podium on which I can stand tall and proud with my fifteen gold medals. And what’s the final outcome of this dogmatic insistence upon More, of my will to maximise the slump? A sentence that began with dreary prospects has been redeemed. This week has risen from nothing into one of my life’s most complex, most productive, most fascinating yet. I would never admit this to Mayonnaise, lest it encourage more obnoxious interference, but I almost had fun.”
Then, from out of nowhere, the teen paused.
The grandmother frowned.
The pause grew on.
Was that the monologue's climax? Ruru wondered. Should she clap? Or was he expecting an answer to a question engulfed by the torrent of words?
In her distraction, she'd completely lost track.