That wall of wilderness which had sprung up during First’s fight with the lesser deity cultivators encircled Townberg and dominated the horizon. Old wounds and holes dotted the fence of titanic plant life. Vines choked the remnants of the once great wedding venue cultivators had built between Townberg’s skyscrapers. Trees and moss flourished through the Mc-Mansions of the formerly fancy-pants neighborhood surrounding Happyland. No smoke lingered above the industrial district.

Crows cawed. Somewhere in the distance, a beast growled.

Iron gate groaned. Wary footsteps that approached me from where the Earthcoming celebration crashed to a sudden halt.

Gasps and murmurs of shock spread between my friends. I glanced at them with a look of sympathy, and said, “Let’s search for survivors. Can one of you check if the internet still works?”

My junior bruh volunteered and set to the task.

Meanwhile, twenty of us set out, treading streets of cracked asphalt under dead streetlights. I sensed no Dao energies, besides a whisper lingering in the titanic trees.

A pigeon who’d been cooing on Nelly’s head for a while took off. “He kept going on about how the local trash economy has been in a depression even before he was born, and how young male pigeons from rural towns like him have it rough in today’s pigeon society. Wouldn’t give any straight answers, though.”

“We’ll run into a chattier animal sooner or later. Hopefully a human.” I kept [Eyes Of The Alpha] active, hoping to spot survivors who saw me from afar by sensing our eye-contact. So far, I’d felt nothing but an occasional bird or critter.

While the rest of us were in a somber mood, Karen, Armstrong, and Tu Tor eyed the bones of Townberg with endless wonder, chatting amongst themselves about cars and other ‘alien curiosities’ we came across.

Hearing the ruins of your home spoken of like a piece of archeology left me with strange forlorn emotions. I did not doubt my ultimate goal, nor my drive to achieve it, but the big if lingered in my thoughts like a memory of sitting on a bird-pooped bench. If I failed, would this be the future of Earth—a heap of cement, steel, and glass with no-one left to read the labels, or to remark on the story behind the yellow Lada painted with smiling hearts, or the meaning behind the garden gnome army occupying one of the neighbor’s now overgrown garden.

Not even our memes would survive, if there was no one to inherit them.

All sounds of chatter stilled amongst us, when we arrived at what had once been known as the square of some WW II hero or the other. The mustached general’s statue was gone, replaced by the pearlescent crystallized body of the First head of the Gigachad sect.

He’d been petrified into a crouch. Javelin sized thorns and spears of eternal ice sprouted from his back like a hedgehog’s cloak. It looked like he was protecting the single slightly wilted tulip that had been placed beneath his arms, still grinning that winsome Gigachad smile that not even death could kill.

Nelly sniffed the air. “The flower’s Qi started dying yesterday. Whoever he saved is still here.”

“A true Chad until the end,” I said.

“Truest of us all,” said Armstrong.

We alone approached the First’s body and gave him one last bruh-hug.

“Is there a tradition we should honor?” I asked Armstrong.

“Nothing concrete, but it is customary for the reigning head of the Gigachad sect to say a word or two for our fallen bruh, though any bruh may add their piece afterwards.”

I nodded, stepping back from the First.

Wind tugged my beard and hair as I contemplated an eulogy.

“No one knew his real name,” I began, speaking unhurried words. “And yet, his name will live on longer than any world he walked on. History may remember him as a being of mythical power, an ancient Dao cultivator whose deeds echo into legends. Gigachads of the far future will remember him as our founding father, the first Chad to ever Chad, the one who blazed the uncharted path and paved the way for generations to come. Townberg and Earth will remember him as the kind stranger who gave his life to bring the battle to an early end, sacrificing everything to save hundreds of thousands who knew nothing of him, except the hue of his majestic beard. Happyland will remember him as the man who punted us into another world, saved our lives, and granted us a chance to fight another day. And finally, the person he died to save, will forever remember him as the reminder, that even amidst an absurdity of chaos and conflict, in times when all is lost, there are people who care. People, who will never stop caring and will smile until the end, knowing that from their ashes, new good will grow to carry on their legacy. This is how he will be remembered. This is his legacy to us. But remember that though he was all these things inspiring myth and legend, he was also a man. And I dearly hope that all who knew him as a father, lover, and friend will have a chance to come here and remember that man, because every man and woman deserves to be for the people they were, and not only their deeds.”

“And lastly, I wish to say to you, First. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Armstrong echoed.

Others murmured their thanks behind us.

I and Armstrong shed one manly tear each. Great Big Dick energy concentrated around my core, but instead of accepting it, I directed it all into First’s petrified body as a final gift to send my spiritual grandfather to whatever Heaven waited for the men among men.

When I did so, I noticed a secret hidden in his posture, concealed in the code-language of masculinity that Sixth had used to embed the moves and secrets of the Gigachad sect in that H*-Man action figurine. A secret containing the final inheritance of the Gigachad sect’s founder!

I’d barely begun to decode it, when the hum of a metallic resonance pulled my attention to the halo of objects descending from the sky. Fifty-five emerald feathers the size of great-blades buried through stone, forming a sharp barrier around us. Qi formations flared bright pink on the feather’s surface, activating a constant high-pitch humm, which caused most of our company to collapse while clutching their heads. Karen and Tu Tor remained standing, their expressions ones of pained focus.

A slender man with an emerald robe and long black hair decorated with colorful feathers stepped out of one of the blades. “This one is known as High Feather, third stage sage of the Humming Blade cultivation and the young patriarch of the New Humming Blade sect. As the appointed warden of Ruins of Townberg, I shall-”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I took out my Chad and marked nearby feather blades with one of the most primal displays of dominance. Imbued with Big Dick energy, my technique immediately dispelled Featherman’s formation.

I allowed him almost a half-minute grace period to process the emotions of shock caused by the steaming liquid currently sliding down his swords. When anger distorted his face and his mouth opened to spit out vitriol and vengeance, I spoke first.

“I am Titan Maximus Chadman, the seventh head of the Gigachad sect and protector of Happyland Asylum, attending the belated funeral of my sect’s founding father, in my destroyed hometown, with my friends, family, and my partner, after returning to Earth less than two hours ago. I am weary from a very, very long journey and wearier still from finding our beloved Townberg in such devastation. While I know that many of your kind are capable of redeeming their ways, if given the right therapy, and that much of your behavior is caused by the Realm of Dao, my patience today is at an all-time low. Choose your next words with care and take your next actions as if they may be your last.”

Featherman, as one would expect, swore vengeance and launched his blades to decapitate everyone around me.

Had I provoked him on purpose to let out some steam?

Possibly.

Could there have been a more peaceful solution to him?

Most definitely.

But while Chads may represent one of the many paragon ideals of man, we are still men. And though we may strive to embody the perfect ideal, there are times in every man’s life, when we inevitably take a sidestep from the path of greatest virtue and indulge ourselves in the instincts as primordial as the mud.

And at that moment, I indulged, perhaps too greedily.

Big Dick charged [Eyes Of The Alpha] allowed me to take eye-contact with the blades, directing all fifty-five attacks to myself. Qi coated the blades, transforming them into six-winged abominations of feather and claw with an odd number of beaks and far too many talons. Another Qi technique deafened all sounds beneath a low droning birdsong, which by itself could sever flesh and stone like a sonic blade.

World slowed down as I dipped deeper into Big Brain mode. My hand slid into my pocket, retrieving my battered old cell phone. With thumb-movements that exceeded the speed of sound, I turned on a Chadtastic dance-song with enough bass to send an army of angry grandma’s running after any driver brave enough to play it on a casual neighborhood drive. I turned the volume to maximum. Utilizing Big Dick energy, I turned it past maximum, thrice over.

Good times and limb trembling dance vibes shattered Featherman’s sound technique. Spinning with the rhythm, I caught all of his flying feather-monsters with a single [Alpha Slap], and sent them crashing through the wall of an abandoned building.

Before my second slap reached him, Featherman disappeared in a poof of feathers and re-appeared from one of his blades, already conducting his flock of blades into another technique. A single long stride of an Alpha Walk brought me face-to-face with him. He tried to poof again.

I grabbed his shoulder, improvising a Chad grappling technique on the spot. “[Bruh, Where Are You Going?]”

“Release me mortal!”

Qi turned his limbs into talons and his robes into a flock of sharp-feathered wings. Both the man and his feather blades rained a barrage of techniques upon me. All of them glanced off of my defensive Chad postures. Swift wiggling movements of my neck kept on shattering his blades with [Jawline Guillotine] to the ever present pounding rhythms emanating from my cell phone speaker.

Realization widened Featherman’s eyes. Denial drew his face into a snarl. “Foolish mortal! You underestimate the third stage of the sage realm. I shall leave you a breath away from death and make you watch as I take your-”

I’d gotten tired.

So damn tired.

No technique guided the fist I planted into his face. No Big Dick energy empowered it. And no Big Brain calculations were involved in the angle of its landing. It was a fist drawn from an older, more elemental age before the conception of things like Dao and martial arts. It was a fist from the age of sticks and stones: An eruption of ancient violence.

He endured it well. Afterall, the man was a powerful Qi cultivator wrought in an armor capable of humiliating modern cannons.

The next punch didn’t have much effect either, barely pushing the man back a few centimeters.

He didn’t even stop singing those endless boasts of vengeance.

Not even after ten punches.

Not even the thirty-somethingieth forced him to kneel.

He fought back even when I pounded him onto his back and mounted him. Qi flowed from him in a waterfall so intense even my non-cultivator eyes could see fluctuations in the air. His blades struck my back over and over again. Parts of the building around us transformed into gigantic feathered beasts. A continuous barrage of sonic techniques and exotic blade-strikes drummed against my defensive techniques. If I gained wounds, I didn’t register them. My mind was focused solely on bare knuckle-baking his face into dough.

Without rest I pounded him to the rhythm of the night thumping from my phone.

His snarl shattered. His nose broke. Blood soaked my fingers and left smears across his expression. Slowly, parts of the skull beneath his splinted flesh began to crack and crunch.

I took pleasure in these sounds.

Delighted in his suffering.

Felt it as a justified consequence of everything we’d lost and endured.

Already, my mind played out fantasies of hunting down everyone responsible for Townberg’s destruction. It wasn’t enough to kill them. It needed to hurt.

Arms wrapped around my back.

“TITAN NOOO!” “Don’t do it, hun!” “That’s enough, son. That’s enough.” “Ungabunga!”

Nelly, Karen, Armstrong, Grog, and several others struggled to restrain my single arm.

Armstrong spoke quickly and calmly, “Son, you're a step away from turning Alphahole. Take a deep breath, a step back, and let Dr. Edelfelt and Sergei handle the interrogation. If he needs to die after all that, he will die. But don’t let some no-name bird cultivator be the one who destroyed your Chad Core.”

Nelly wrapped her arms around my neck, nuzzling my ear, begging with a soft sob, “Come back hubby. I need you.”

My fist softened and the knot of wrath that had wound itself around my heart melted.

I stood, allowing Nelly to take my hand and lead me away from the unconscious bloody pulp that High Feather had become. We went to sit on the steps of First’s statue, while others took care of stabilizing and restraining the cultivator.

A bunch of pigeons had landed on First’s shoulders to replace the base with constant cooing.

“I didn’t think I had a breaking point.”

Nelly chuckled. “You wouldn’t be a human if you didn’t.”

“It’s not the Chad way.”

“Nobody is a perfect Chad, I bet not even the First wasn’t.”

I didn’t reply.

“Even if you stopped being a Chad one day, as long as you don’t become an Alphahole or something, I wouldn’t mind. You’d still be my precious Titan.” Nelly squeezed my hand.

I squeezed hers back.

My emotions floated in uncharted waters, unable to settle down onto a clear conclusion, but I let them and let my mind whirr from one stray thought to another, not even attempting to figure out what this meant to my Chadness or my path. Sometimes, the true Big Brain move is to not Big Brain and to let things settle before acting. I would probably figure things out at next morning’s work-out session.

“WOW! Really?” Nelly sprang up, crawling over to a one-eyed black pigeon with fluffy feathers under its neck. “Uhu, yeah, and then? Holy heckers… no way. Hey, Titan! This pigeon is a Neckbeard cultivator and promised to lead us to Kevin if we give it D*rito crumbs.”

Thank the First, Kevin is alive.