Suchi.

The sun was rising over one of many modest arena establishments dotted around The Slums. Above this one's gates hung 82 flags, which snapped back and forth in the onshore morning breeze. Each of them represented a Village in The ‘Duchy’ of Australasia, whose taxes funded the facility.

Inside, a thousand Villagers were crawling amongst replica arenas from Saana's premier e-sport tournament, Saana League. Cutthroats stalked their prey down the narrow passages of catacombs. Bowmen scrambled up jungle gyms for an angle by which to lodge an arrow in the enemy healer's noggin.

Cue, a golden Crusader marching through the entrance.

He acted as the vanguard for a group in gold and purple, their clothes damp with the alcohol expelled from their bodies by the Sobriety Soup.

“Justinian!” shouted a Beast Tamer overseeing her recruits battling in a sand-strewn arena. “What delayed you Byzantines today?”

"Some of the noble citizens were in need of assistance," he replied with a white lie, not wanting to confess his unseemly behaviours.

Indeed, in the short journey between their Village and here, they’d been stopped twice. The first was to save a family being abducted by cultists. After that, they'd patched the holes in a grandma’s roof.

The Beast Tamer laughed. “Cleaning up the slums as usual, eh? Good on you, mate. Want to have our boys and girls tussle?”

“Later." Justinian rejected her offer because her arena was packed with combatants from seven Villages.

While he led his Byzantines in search of an uncrowded arena, he was showered with jovial greetings, his accomplishments in The Slums having made him a local celebrity.

None of it had gone to his head.

He eventually stopped at an arena whose model-form was called 'Pitfall', with winding trenches filled with deadly spikes and pits three-stories deep. It had 'only' five Village's worth of combatants.

“This will do," he said, turning back to his recruits. "Sir Henry, come forth and engage me in a duel. I’ll need to assess your skills before deciding how to assimilate you into the group.”

Henry had been walking along in the back with his friends, Cathy’s arm threaded through his like a mother escorting a child to their first day of kindergarten, as she calmed the doubts she imagined he had.

“We can skip this part,” he replied. “As I said earlier, I’ll just fill. I’m confident in any role.”

Tanking, healing, magic-casting or melee-stabbing - with his Swiss Army Knife class, he could do it all.

Justinian shook his head, his golden hair making a swishing noise as it swept across his golden pauldrons. ”Be that as it may, for a knight to lead his companions, he must have intimate knowledge of their capabilities. And the quickest method for developing this is through a gentlemanly clash of blades. You said you were a duellist, come.”

Henry had been talking smack while wasted.

Cathy patted her depressed friend’s hand. “Don’t feel pressured. You can refuse.”

The other Byzantines, however, were staring at him with expectation. A newbie being destroyed by their trainer was a customary part of Slum life. Also, he’d been ranting about how he was going to clean-sweep the 1v1 tournament.

Staring back at them, Henry recalled his initial plan to play an idiot during these team sessions so that he’d be excluded and could practise his solo skills. After all he'd been through, though, the thought of debasing himself to scrimp together some measly hours seemed preposterous.

They wanted to see it? Fine. They could be the first witnesses to The Return of The Cripple.

Using a technique from a Yamalaian dagger-grappling martial art, Jaguar Fang, he gently slipped out of Cathy’s grasp and stepped boldly forward to meet the Crusader's challenge.

And, really, what better victim for his inaugural duel, what better testing dummy for the skills he’d been cultivating for almost two decades? This golden role-player, who’d ranked in the top 100 of his recruitment tournament four times, if he wanted a mouthful of the arena’s dirt, then that’s what he’d get.

To be frank, he was expecting to win all his duels in this world without struggle. After one session in The Overdream, he should already be most skilled player on the planet, regardless of his tortoise reaction speed. Using Nine Fists alone, if he ever connected a strike, he could 100 to 0 any Level 20 opponent with an unbreakable combo.

Nevertheless, his martial arts conquest arc had not ended yet. Beating up these noobs using 7 martial arts was cool. However, beating them up using 84 martial arts plus a supreme martial art synthesised from the greatest characteristics of each - that was cooler.

“The rules?” he asked with a smug grin.

Justinian flourished his golden cloak for no discernible reason. “A combatant will be eliminated if their healthpool falls below 20%, they step out of the arena’s bounds or into a pit, or they admit defeat.”

“I like it. What about the others out there? No penalties for tricking you into taking damage from them?"

The space was cramped, having only a single set of the nine 50 by 50-metre arenas from his tournament, not nearly enough for a thousand people. The Slum Empire must have skimmed the tax money that should have gone to building larger facilities.

The other Byzantines were humoured by the question, it seeming farcical coming from a Level 11 player.

Justinian, though, answered seriously. “A knight must blame his own negligence if he cannot monitor his environs."

“Sweet! Give me half a minute; I’ve got an unfair buff to purge.”

Sitting on the ground, he underwent a breathing exercise to rid his system of .

Simultaneously, he considered his options for demolishing this noob.

Because he’d spent 19 years with nothing but basic attacks, he was most keen to experiment with spell-side of his new class.

In that case, the available styles fell into two main categories. The first was in-fighting, by sneaking low-Charge into close-combat combos. The second was kiting the opponent, creating distance to get off longer, more powerful spells. Between these two extremes existed infinite possibilities.

In-fighting seemed too bothersome at the moment, since it would require extensive theorycrafting and experimentation.

Getting back to his feet, he equipped one of the sets of armours he'd picked up at the markets, a light-weight set, suited to kiting. It consisted of Shaolin-style monk robes, monster-leather shoes, and silk gloves. These materials were dusted with a silvery glitter – plain old Steel, the game’s Tier 0-3 material. His vulnerable head, he hid inside in a Steel legionnaire’s helmet with a demon-mask faceplate. His eyes and ears were left exposed, use of their senses outweighing protecting them.

Justinian assessed Sir Henry’s outfit with displeasure. “If my eyes do not deceive me, you are far below your Armour Rating.”

In Saana, there were few class-based restrictions on what equipment one could use. Instead, a player’s Strength stat increased their ‘Armour Rating’, which represented how much armour one could carry on their person. Tougher materials had a higher cost per gram, such that one could wear less metal than hide and less hide than cloth. The distribution of materials was completely flexible, allowing users to concentrate protection on whichever parts they wished. Exceeding the Armour Rating would deactivate the stat bonuses and effects provided by their equipment.

In Henry’s case, he could have been carrying another few kilograms of metal.

“For this get-up, it’s loaded onto a shield,” he explained, tearing a stat scroll to buff his stats. “But you’ll have to catch me before I whip that out.”

“A kiting style?”

“For now.”

Justinian frowned mysteriously, then swapped out of his golden armour—purely cosmetic—into a set of Tier 0-4 silver-blue Mithril plate. Darker patches around the armour’s belly, chest, and helmet marked areas where the metal had been thickened for extra reinforcement. Only his back was left partially exposed, being covered by a thin sheet of Mithrilhide due a regulation by The Company to prevent stalemates.

It was Henry's turn to frown with disapproval.

From the amount of metal on the Crusader’s body, the guy’d invested into Strength at least half of his level-up stats. The issue with this was that higher Strength made attacks drain extra Stamina. Usually, a full Stamina pool could support 5 Basic Attacks, but the Crusader's Strength was so stupidly high that to produce just 3 he would need to invest all his spare points across Tech to reduce ability costs and/or Vitality to enlarge his Stamina pool. This left no stats for enhancing his class's invaluable hybrid-healing spells.

“Would you prefer split-choice or half-choice?” asked Justinian, his voice muffled by his visor.

“Half-choice.”

“East-West split.”

“North.”

The two of them then stepped up onto their respective halves of the arena.

“Break a leg!” yelled Brian.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Don’t over exert yourself!”

"Watch out for that arrow!"

Henry, ducking, strolled forth, hopping over the arena’s spike-filled trenches, whose arrangement and width were exactly the same as those of his tournament's. Since the Crusader stood on the half-way line to minimise his charge distance, Henry moved to a spot about 4 metres south of him.

Justinian scratched his helmet. “It's advisable for kiters to start long.”

Henry, shrugging, began to gather his Charges.

“Since you can't compensate for the weakness of your Steel armour," said Justinian, "you may prepare 10 Charges.”

It was customary for an Earthfriend to begin a duel with 5 charges, the class being helpless if ambushed with 0 but overpowered with all 10.

Accepting the offer, Henry rescanned the arena, then gathered 5 Elemental Charges in his left hand, and 1 Flora and 4 Celestial Charges in his right. He immediately expended the Flora Charge on , boosting his Magic Power and Magic Affinity.

Justinian, his expression obscured by his helmet, frowned again.

5 Elemental Charges - . This was a bizarre, impractical opener. With them being so close, how could Sir Henry hope to complete the spell's 6-second cast?

Putting his confusion aside, he adopted a stance, gripping his zweihander with two hands, lowering its handle to near his groin, then angling the blade perpendicular to his body.

“Ready.”

The stance was fairly generic, but Henry recognised from the muscle movements to position into that it belonged to The Mage’s Shield. This was a West Togavian style employed by Crusaders assigned to guard their platoon’s spellcasters. A practioner would position in front of their companions and swing their sword in wide arcs to fend off multiple attackers. It was a reckless, berserker style, the Crusader relying on their spellcasters to heal them.

Of particular note, Justian’s adoption of the form contained a masterful elegance. He must’ve been training in this style for significantly longer than the 6 months he’d been in Suchi repeatedly enrolling in Henry’s recruitment tournament.

The style explained both the Crusader’s terrible stat build and his zweihander, a typically inferior weapon to a pole-arm or a one-hander plus shield for the class.

Henry scanned the arena again, imprinted the location of the other combatants in his mind, then aimed his right palm at the Crusader.

“Ready.”

Justinian dashed forward, one hand sliding down the sword grip in preparation of an overhead slash.

Henry, beginning to jog backwards in a way that seemed erratic and shocked, spent two Celestial Charges to hit the Crusader with and , both unavoidable at this range. The former, which would inflict its first tick of damage in 3 seconds, refreshed its Celestial Charge when it melted through the Crusader’s chest armour. The created a chain of phosphorescent moons between them.

Justinian faltered a step when his Magic Power was boosted by the . His hesitation lasted only a blink, though, before he dismissed it as a mistake. Winding his zweihander back and up, he prepared for a downward chop to Sir Henry’s clavicle.

A swordsman would normally use a flurry of unenhanced attacks, which did insignificant damage at Level 20, as feints, waiting for an opening to power their weapon for a proper death blow. Justinian, though, concluded from from the misfired buff-spell and a nervousness in Sir Henry's demeanour that he'd been caught off guard. Thus, he activated part-way through his first slash.

But these nerves were a trick.

Before the baited even activated, Henry burnt 25% of his gauge to slow down time. The sword seemed to suddenly be impeded by an invisible lava flow. Individual motes of golden energy could be seen channelling into the edge, building into enough force that would have hewn him in two and killed him if it struck.

To the observers, his feet became a blur, taking three extra paces back in two-tenths of a second, whisking him out of the sword’s reach.

Continuing the action, since bullet-time function was used in minimums of 2-second chunks, he executed a set of moves with frightening agility.

He jumped and stretched his arms backwards to latch onto a Fighter who’d been in a four-man stand-off to his rear. Using the startled man’s neck like a pole, he swung around to the other side, then catapulted himself into the air, skipped off a kneeling Crusader’s shield a moment before an struck it, and dove through the legs of a Beast Tamer’s Dwarf Mammoth companion.

Twist-rolling out of the dive, he came up in a crouched stance with his right palm aimed back, tracking the Crusader through the gap.

Crap in close combat? The Cripple was now an anime ninja!

This was the payoff for the years spent learning an acrobatic martial art called Nilkan Freerunning.

For the criminals of Humakungan, the megacity capital of Nilke, being captured by the authorities meant joining the undead army of the demonic princes who ruled the land. To avoid this ghoulish fate, the local thieves had refined techniques for escaping through the city's dense urban streets. They'd combined parkour, gymnastics, athletics, mental mapping, improvisational weaponisation of the environment, and physical theatre. Nilkan Freerunners were most famous for changing their body language in subtle, deceptive ways. They could blend into a crowd by imitating a veteran's limp or—as Henry’d used to bait out the Crusader’s chop—fake panic while slipping a dagger from its sheath.

In The Overdream, he'd tortured his body drilling the style's acrobatic aspects. His cheeks had been sliced open plunging through glass windows. His skull had been cracked on jagged coastal rocks. His guts had been perforated by the pin-like branches of Elvish Forests. His skin had been removed by superheated geysers dodged milliseconds late.

By merging this hard-earned system with his Earthfriend spells, he would become a kiting god. Even now, with him having comparatively no experience using these spells, with him engineering these combos on the fly, the Crusader could not hope to match him.

Laughing, he fired a two-charge .

The Crusader, unable to dodge it at this close proximity, had less than a breath to select from three options: activating , activating the spellshield ability , or simply tanking the shot.

Through months of arena experience, Justinian instinctively chose the optimal solution. With his bare, unenhanced senses, he shifted so that the , as it phased through his chest plate, seared a section of lung rather than the heart it was targeting.

With the spell having so few Charges, his armour halving its damage, and all of Justinian’s non-Strength stat points being invested in Vitality, it caused a loss of a paltry 4% of his health pool. It would have been a waste to block this negligible amount with a shield or dodge it with .

Henry didn’t even witness the impact, though, as the instant the had fired, he’d begun to sprint away to set up the next exchange.

Leapfrogging a Bowman sipping Stamina-restoring soup, he approached a kidney-shaped pit that looked to be too wide for anyone but a professional long-jumper to cross.

But Henry was even better than a professional long-jumper. How many of them had trained with gory death as the punishment for failure?

The toe of his shoe fell millimetres from the edge, then he launched himself over the pit. Tucking in his legs and throwing his arms back, he soared with the grace of an owl gliding silently through the night to snatch up its prey.

Landing on the other side, he didn’t continue the motion to dissipate the force as one would in real-life but saved time by allowing his Vitality-reinforced legs to absorb the impact. Snapping around, he saw the Crusader standing motionless in the position of his failed attack, psychologically stunned by his foe's aerial excellence.

Henry utilised the delayed reaction to regather his Celestial Charges, then planted his feet and raised his left hand.

A single Elemental Charge dribbled down from the tip of a finger into his palm, where a thumb-sized ball of lightning crackled into life.

Now, he was presenting the Crusader a far more complicated puzzle than the last, with 6-seconds to decide wisely before being blasted in the face by an undodgeable .

The previous tactic would be the worst choice, since this would result in 17.4% of his over-sized health pool being chunked-away.

Another dud decision would be to charge Henry to interrupt the cast. Leap this kidney-shaped pit? Barely a dozen Saana League pro-players could do that consistently, so the Crusader would have to go around it, which would not be quick enough. And if by a miracle he did make the leap? Henry would fill him with while he was mid-air then jump back over himself.

As the second Elemental Charge was added, the lightning ball doubled in size.

A decent but still sub-optimal choice would be mitigating the spell with . Due to the Crusader’s low Magic Power stat, he would still lose 7% of his health pool after the shield was accounted for. This excess damage, in turn, could be fully replenished using the Crusader heal, . However, those two spells had a 12-second cooldown each, while took about 9-seconds per cast.

Moreover, the Crusader’s low Magic Affinity stat meant this combo would drain 44% of his area’s Divine Energy, while Henry’d only expended 21% Nature Energy on his. This pushed Henry towards one victory condition of exhausting the Crusader’s spellcasting abilities, although such a victory might, with Henry's limited spell-usage experience, take hundreds of exchanges to accomplish.

To be honest, the thought of such a lengthy battle excited him a wee bit.

With the third charge, the ball grew large enough that its arcs singed the dust thrown up by his landing.

The best option would be using the other combatants for cover, but this was made difficult for the Crusader by his 7-foot-tall, over-sized superhero knight avatar. He could potentially hide his profile by hugging the back of the Dwarf Mammoth through whose legs Henry'd dived earlier. But could he make that decision in 6-seconds? If the Crusader could, then Henry would have to give him an applause, before transitioning on to beat him another way.

What should he do next? Maybe he'll manoeuvre the Crusader into a 24-man brawl taking place 14-metres away. There, he could distract him with weak into being struck by the stronger spells being flung around.

After the fourth Elemental Charge was consumed, he was surprised to see his opponent make an unpredicted but not unreasonable choice.

The Crusader, perhaps having accepted the futility of contesting such an arena god, lowered his sword.

“Cancel it,” said Justinian in a defeated tone. “The duel’s already—”

A blasted him in the face and sent a shower of electric sparks running throughout his armour, seizing up his body.

“Sorry,” said Henry, cringing. "My reaction speed’s not that great, so you should have conceded faster.”

“It’s fine,” said Justinian after the paralysis wore off.

Henry had to admit he was let-down by the duel's premature end. However, he respected an opponent who knew when to call it quits. By being able to identify what is impossible for oneself, one can focus their resources on enhancing those areas that can be improved.

An honest, critical eye of self-reflection – this was an essential tool in the path of personal growth. If more of these Villagers had possessed this laudable trait, then The Slums wouldn’t have turned into such a trash heap.

But this conclusion was totally wrong.

“Concede?” Justinian unsummoned his helmet, revealing a face that teetered between disappointment and confusion. “Sir Henry, are you still intoxicated? The loss is obviously yours!”

“Huh?”

There were no debuff indicators in his vision.

“No, I’m sober.”

“Then why did you make so many basic blunders?” Justinian raised his fist and extended his index finger to count off the first. “Never turn your back on the enemy.”

“What?” Henry was gob-smacked. While a decent principle, if one never veered from it, they wouldn’t be able to execute rudimentary movement tactics. “Are you joking?”

“The arena is no joking matter.” Justinian extended his middle finger. “Mistake number two, while you were running away, what exactly did you expect to happen to your companions left without support? Never give up ground.”

?????

“It’s a 1v1, though.”

“Never give up ground.”

What? So he was supposed to stand there and risk being one-shot by a Strength-dumping neanderthal? While Henry had studied a style called The Bloodriver Stalling Shield to accomplish just that, it was ridiculous to expect the same from normal spellcasters.

“Are you guys hearing his nons—the heck?“

To his dismay, he discovered that the other Byzantines, including his so-called friends, were nodding in agreement with the Crusader’s garbage assessment.

“Never turn your back,” said a team Arcanist, whose class was balanced around them running away to find positions for casting their spells.

What’s more, a second-hand embarrassment on their faces indicated that they genuinely thought he’d lost the duel.

“How?”

Had they not witnessed his immaculate Nilkan Freerunning ruse? His dodging through the battlefield? His calculated shots? His leap over the infamous Kidney Pit?

(Unfortunately, none of them had heard of this ‘Nilkan Freerunning’. From their perspective, it seemed like he’d panic-cast a buff, burned instantly, fled in terror, shot a pointless spell, then used the adrenaline fuelling him to vault that random pit.)

“Never give up ground,” agreed Cathy, a fragile Miracleworker with no tools for fighting toe-to-toe.

Henry threw up his hands in disbelief. “You’re all too incompetent to appreciate my genius!”

“Please, Sir Henry, it’s unseemly to lose your composure after one defeat. Continuing on,” Justinian extended his ring finger for the third blunder, “I tried to hold my tongue, but, ‘kiting’, this is not a style becoming of a knight.”