Chapter 33

“Keep going Ira, just a little bit more,” I cheered for Ira, gazing at my spiny giant beast with a pair of loving eyes like a kindhearted owner gazing at his beloved pet growing up.

Ira, the voice resided inside Wrath’s head and now inside my special designed locker, the persona of the Authority , on contrary to his grotesque spiny appearance, his personality was cute, as cute as a kitten. Just like a kitten, Ira loved scratching the wall surrounding him whenever things did not go his way. Ira scratched the wall as if his life was depended on it, as if I had forgotten to feed him for a week. A thousand razor-sharp claws raked the dark pulsating wall with pure desperation and savagery. The living wall would reform and regrow indefinitely. Technically, from a gamer perspective, it was a situation where the healer completely ousted the damage dealer. Ira howled and screeched, sinking its long and serrated snout at the wall, ripping out huge chunk of meat its raking claws being at work. But even so, the wall healed.

Things could not get more wrong for Ira when his cellmate was none other than the most hated and abhorred persona in this world, Dion, himself. Dion, short for Dionysus, the Greek God of Madness, Wining, Partying, Randomness, and Creativity, was the nickname I gave to the persona of Sanguine’s venom that I had housed inside my soul for convenient sake. I did not enjoy the fact that I had to coexist with it while kept calling it “Sanguine’s venom.” So, Dionysus, I named it because it kept reminding me of how much I miss my old life and how frustrated I was about everything.

Dion was like Valkyria Helper if Valkyria Helper was much shittier than it already was and had a baby with glitches and bugs and could not be turned off and constantly spying on its host’s thought rather than spying on the host’s voice. At one point while using Dion, I had to stop to question the shitty meaning of my life in using the Valkyria Helper over Cortana and Siri and other AI virtual assistants as my virtual assistant, then punched myself over signing that five years commercial contract with URLOX’s parent company to promote the sale of Valkyria Helper. I was the face of the Valkyria Helper, the brand’s exclusive model. I appeared in every Valkyria Helper’s TVC to the point that people linked the image of Valkyria Helper to my face. I could not help but punch myself repeatedly over signing that shitty commercial contract for some quick cash.

Dion’s only saving grace was that it has proven to be the quickest fix to all kinds of mental corruption attacks by being a mental corruption attack, in and of itself. Gluttony’s , Lust’s red dream and Greed’s were rendered completely ineffective in front of Dion. While I was confident that I could overcome all forms of mental corruption attacks that the Demon Lords threw at me, I had no idea how long it would take for me to overcome them. I had experienced all three colored dreams, the black dream, the golden dream, and the red dream, fighting against them in the absence of cheating abilities and balance-breaking skills. It took forever for me to even the fight and then overcome them.

Black is Death.

Gold is Niwdar.

Red is Lust.

Three women, three Queens of Beauty, three killing colored dreams, three ultimate illusions. The black dream made a man realize the futility of running away Death. The red dream made a man succumbed to his wishful desires, then died and reborn as one of Lust’s succubi. The golden dream turned a man into his worst monster, in flesh, and in thought. At the end, when the man could not stand his ugliness, his monstrosity, he killed himself.

It took me an eon to dispel them. And I would not have that kind of time when I returned to reality. The moment when I returned to reality, every second count, every second made a difference. If I was commanding a battle and was attacked by some cheating mental corrupting authorities during the most crucial moment, it could spell game over for me. I could not afford to waste my time, trapped by some cheating and game-breaking mental corruption attacks.

Dion was an all-rejecting and all-disagreeing tool, my answer to every mental corruption attack to ever exist in this world, a malware that was crafted to destroy other malware, a vaccine to mental corrupting miracles and authorities.

If madness could be harnessed into a tool, why not using it.

As usual, Dion acted like a malfunctioned AI virtual assistant, running all kinds of searches and simulations, showing Ira everything. Everything that Ira wish that he could see and everything that he did not want to see, the good and the bad, the best and the worst. But because Ira saw his victory and then the images of how his victory was but a ruse for his eventual defeat, Ira could only see his defeat. As long as Ira had a doubt about his victory, Ira would show him a reality where his doubt became true. Dion feasted on Ira’s thought and fear then shaped Ira’s world with his delusions and beaten Ira with his own delusion, doubt, and fear.

I did not have to lift a finger. I did not have to waste my time dealing with Ira.

Sometimes, the strongest illusion was the illusion that the audiences created for themselves to see. And a man’s worst phobia was him-scaring-himself.

Ira was scaring himself shitless while I was cheering from sideline, watching the battle of a primal animalistic kind of madness versus a crafted and built kind madness, natural versus manmade.

In a battle of madness, where one kind of madness was pitted against another kind of madness, the victor would always be madness, the stronger kind of madness. It was apparent that the manmade madness was winning the war. But it wasn’t always like that. Dion was far from being an equal match of Ira at the beginning. They were equal until I intervened, putting my own weight on the scale disk.

It started out with just a harmless doubt. Ira doubted that all of his clawing and raking at my soul had no effect on me due to my acting. “I’m not Wrath, but keep going. It’s getting itchy there,” said I in a bright and encouraging voice, patting the spiny beast while it chewed and raked and twisted my soul with its fangs, claws, and spines.

That was all that Dion needed to tip the scale to its favor. A Demon Lord’s Authority when it reached a certain level of mastery would be shaped accordingly to personality of that Demon Lord. Sanguine was bastard who enjoyed corrupted people’s thought rather than corrupting their desire, soul, and form. As a result, Dion, a miracle born from Sanguine’s and Authority, was the kind of substance that smeared reality with illusion and illusion with reality.

Dion made that doubt a reality for Ira, drowning Ira in his worst fear, his worst doubt, his worst illusion, made him lived inside a world where his claws had no power and all of his suggestion and power was rendered ineffective before me, a world where I was his ultimate Cthulhu. Then, it played with Ira’s hope in the most demonic way possible, showing the spiny beast that there was a glimmer of hope, that there was the light at the end of the tunnel. I thought that Dion had started taking its personality after mine.

A Demon Lord’s ultimate weapon, regardless of its sizes, shapes, origin, characteristics, nature, and personality, had a common name. Its name was absolute despair. If a Demon Lord’s weapon and miracle could not dispatch the absolute despair to his victims, it was either that the wielder of that weapon was not a Demon Lord or the weapon was faulty.

But I knew for sure that Dion was far from being a faulty weapon. I have seen what Sanguine did to his victims. Dion played with Ira like a fiddle. It gave Ira just enough hope for Ira to keep going, and going, and going until that hope was squashed before Ira’s eyes. And then, when Ira used its fury to find another source of hope, Dion revealed to the spiny beast that the hope it had until just now was but an illusion. That glimmer of light had never existed from the beginning.

Dion turned me into Ira’s worst nightmare, his phobia, his worst enemy. I did not have to expense my effort to scheme and engineer plan to scare Ira. Ira has already scared himself to death. He built that indestructible dark, pulsating flesh wall around himself, locking himself inside that room with Dion.

Fear was something Ira had never understood. After all, his original host was Wrath himself, the holder of two Immortal ranked Authorities and . Wrath could make quick work of everything and everyone. He could effortlessly smash one of the great continents of Escana apart as if it was built from tiny Lego blocks. He could punch a blazing comet into stardust, obliterating it as if a man poking a needle at a hot air balloon. With a host like that, Ira only feared one thing, Munezee’s authority sealing chain.

When Ira started begging in all honesty, admitting his mistake and betrayal to me, I let him out of his cell.

“Ira, dear. If you overstep your limit just one more time, if you betray my trust just one more time, you go back to that room, forever. Do we understand each other?” I asked my spiny pet while stroking his barbed body.

Ira curled its grotesque and spiny body into a ball like a hedgehog. Its feral, wide-opened eyes spelled terror and regret. Words could not come out of its full of serrated fangs, red mouth, only the high pitched grinding sound of fangs against fangs.

“DO WE understand each other?” I repeated my question with a slight change in the intonation.

The beast nodded his head readily, showing me his belly in submission.

“Good boy,” I said, “Good boy,” flashing my most beautiful smile. I saw my reflection inside the beast’s eyes. My eyes and lips formed the perfect crescent shape, something worse than a Demon Lord inside Ira’s eyes.

Man did not need something like a world bending miracle or a reality-warping authority to brainwash or tame a beast or another man. Man has already invented tools and strategies for that job. The stick and carrot routine, the bad cop and good cop, the conditioning routine. It was funny how these Demon Lords were quick to label mortals as their inferior and lesser. They had their arrogance. I had mine.

Man did not need to make others his puppets. Man did not need to possess the two conflicting and to stare at madness in the eyes. Man did not need to be chained to the to lose himself to rage and fury. Man did not even need the to navigate through the abyss. Man did not need the to corrupt things. Man did not need the authority to blow the red moon out of the sky. Man did not need to possess an all-powerful chain to tame Wrath and put Ira under his control. Man did not even need to possess a miracle at his birth to erode a miracle. Man did not need the to create a miracle. Man crafted and created his miracles. Man had no need for cheating miracles and balance breaking authorities to kill a God. God is dead, man killed him, said Friedrich Nietzsche.

“Show me something that you are and I am not, Demon Lords. Show me something that you can do and I cannot, Demon Lords. I am bored,” whispered I to Ira, thoroughly disappointed at how terrified my pet has become.

I wished to be corrected. I wished to be showed how wrong I was about everything. But things just went the way I have expected them to be. Earth was a cesspool of disappointment and hurt but Escana was just so much worse, a cesspool full of disappointment and hurt.

I did not wish to spell this piece of arrogance of mine to them out of my respect for their intelligence and wisdom. But it appeared to me that no matter how long I waited, other than Pride, no one else has understood my arrogance. Time was not the fix to ignorance. Curiosity is. Learning is. Immortal they were, living a timeless unexpired life, having unlimited time to learn and filling their wealth of wisdom, but still faulted to their ignorance.

It was understandable that Iliva would never understand my arrogance no matter how much I tried to explain it to her. Thusly, I gave her a simple explanation that even she could understand. was not a skill I gained from beating Heavennet. It was funny that these people, these Demon Lords, and Gods had watched my memories and still bought that explanation.

was the symbol of my arrogance. It had always been. In my entire life, I had never listened or followed people who were just about as shitty and bad as I am. There was no reason to follow or listen to people whose existence only proved that my arrogance was correct. There was no reason for man to listen to his lesser, the like of insects, worms, and demons for instance unless his stupidity told him to do so.

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I took my time to recreate an old memory of mine, a green meadow of young sweeping winter reeds that stretched itself into the infinity and beyond. In Vietnam, the reed flowers bloomed at the end of autumn, signaling the end of the temperamental flood and hurricane season. The sight of pristine snowy white reed flowers blooming on green uncultivated meadows has always been a welcoming image to me. When the wild reed flowers bloomed, arrived winter, the season that I loved the most, the season where the cicadas became quiet and burrowed themselves deep into the ground. Winter was the season of championship and defeat, the season where ROC World Cup was held and concluded. And thus, the sight of blooming wild reed flowers was linked to my victory and defeat, glory and shame, and a start-over. Watching the winter reed flowers, I knew I could always rise again. Thùy Dương loved the velvet roses of fog city for glamorous look. Alice loved the tiger orchids for their grace and dignity. I loved the wild winter reed flowers. Without the help of man, they weathered the worst storms, the worst floods and laughed at the coldness of winter while looking fabulous.

Standing in the middle of the meadow, I revealed my trump card to Acrẽa. In my left hand, an Immortal-slaying weapon, or what it represented, the silvery edge of Enfermé coated in Dragon Bane.

“You understand, right? In the real world, a nick from this blade would be a death sentence to all Immortal, all but Death. Enfermé́ would seal all of your powers, be it active or passive. You cannot even escape from your flesh vessel. Just a graze from Enfermé and you are just as helpless and powerless as any mortal. And when your miracles and authorities are sealed, there is nothing you can do to prevent Dragon Bane from spelling your inevitable destruction. If nobody helps you purging Dragon Bane’s curses out of your body, that’s your death.”

Acrẽa’s cold eyes squinted as if she was questioning how would this battle related to Pride’s victory against her. After all, I have evicted Acrẽa out of her room by force, promising her that I would show her the reason for her defeat.

“Now, try to attack me as if you meant to kill me. Remember, if you are hit by this blade once, it’s game over for you and we will restart the battle all over again. Of course, I would not use any power that I have earned from creating this dreamland on you. Because that’s not the lesson. I will fight you with whatever URLOX has given to me, no more, no less.”

“HOW DOES THIS HAVE…” screamed Acrẽa. Her gleaming eyes flared with anger.

I already closed the distance between us with a quick teleportation. My right hand cupped her chin in an amorous manner. My lips locked, sealed her cold waxen lips. Our tongue entangled in a swift surprising exchange. My knife, cold and without emotion, burrowed deep into her exposed flank. Acrẽa cried out in pain, pushing me away but her hands trapped empty air. I had already teleported out of harm way.

“What are …”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I ripped the words from Acrẽa’s mouth. “You just died to the hand of a human. A human who is not even a full-pledged fighter. I am not a FUCKING FIGHTER. I am A GAMER. WAKE THE FUCK UP. Be ashamed of yourself. RIGHT NOW, I AM YOUR FUCKING ENEMY. TREATING ME LIKE ONE. COME AND ATTACK ME FOR REAL OR I WILL KEEP STABBING YOU UNTIL YOU DECIDED TO SNAP OUT OF IT,” I hollered, pointing a replica of Enfermé toward Acrẽa.

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I often lamented how fragile and breakable a Demon Lord of Kharigan was. Take away their power, strip their miracles and authority, and there was nothing left of them, not even their personality. It was true with Sanguine and Rasahlu. It remained true with Pestilence. It was true with Gluttony. It was true with many other Demon Lords.

This is not how Champions are made.

Their minds broke the moment they realized how helpless and powerless they were. Suffered one defeat and they looked like they were living in an apocalypse.

But I did not expect such a problem would befall on my personnel. Acrẽa was not just my lover. She was my Admiral and the Head of my Naval Warfare Department. If it wasn’t for Isonos’ suggestion, I would never know how weak Acrẽa was, in term of fighting prowess and fortitude.

Acrẽa refused to come out of her room regardless of my encouragement and many attempts to draw her out of her room. She could not bother to doll up, making herself look excessively stunning like our usual daily tryst. She had already resigned to the depressive dampened air of her room. I would not doubt that if I could have given her access to my experimental brandy storage, Acrẽa would wear the brandy odor like a perfume. But, Acrẽa would move. She would immediately jump me whenever I knocked on her door, bound me in a tight bondage created from her lamprey hair and living dress. After that, she drowned out her depression in wanton pleasures. Acrẽa used me like her doctor-prescribed depressant and drowned the depression out of her brain.

I was reduced to Acrẽa’s living sex toy, no more. We held each other in our arms and fleshy bondage. We kissed and fucked each other. We did not fornicate. We did not make love. We fucked. We fucked the brain out of each other’s head like a pair of unintelligent animals, the kind of animal that was born and bred in captivity only to fuck and spent every breathing moment living in carnal pleasures and orgasms and nothing else.

And, I had no problem with that, as long as it served a greater purpose.

It almost felt like I have been trapped inside Lust’s red dream once again. But there was nothing inside this dream, nor wish, nor thought, nor future, nor hope, blissful happiness, nor anything. We fucked each other, living inside a time capsule of pure nothingness. While everybody else was moving forward, we were stuck inside the blur of our depressive wantonness, trapped inside the bondage of our flesh and carnal desire.

Having sex with a beautiful woman had never been so abhorrent and depressive, but I no longer had an idea if Acrẽa fit the description of beauty in my standard anymore.

But I was fine with that, at how ugly that I and Acrẽa had become, at how miserable that the two of us looked and acted. But I was fine with that. I was fine with being her ugly, living sex doll. I was surprisingly fine with that, living that kind of life, the kind of life that made death and destruction looked beautiful, desirable and enviable.

Acrẽa and I, the two of us trapped each other inside an endless loop of intense, mindless orgasms and the smell of our sex. There were times that Acrẽa had forgotten about the existence of Ira and Dion inside me, sinking her fangs into my body, but not to mark and claim my body as hers as usual. She has forgotten her self-control and lost herself to her vampiric impulses. Acrẽa sucked out my soul as she did to her vampire consorts, then immediately recoiled and retched. Dion was an intolerable and abhorrent persona as ever. Then, there were times that Acrẽa cried out, setting loose of her frustration and fury over how Pride had dominated her so easily. But I did not blame Acrẽa.

Pride was good. She knew how to fight only one battle to win the rest. That golden lioness knew how to win the psychological war.

But I had hope.

I thought it was just a phase and before long, Acrẽa would be back to her feet. But before I knew it, Acrẽa displayed every single symptom of the sickness that I loathed the most. I threw up, could no longer watching her listless husk or having sex with her. I threw up even when there was nothing inside my stomach, even when I was still living inside a dream. I threw up from the mirrored images that Dion showed to me. I retched at the sight a midnight sun that refused to shine at midnight.

I loathed vampires but I could always overlook Acrẽa. But I refused to admit that I had made such an ugly and disgusting woman my lover. I did not make a fuck-doll devoid of personality, beauty, and ambition my lover. I did not make love to a cardboard built with a name tag “Acrẽa, the Vampire Queen,” like that cardboard’s only value was that name tag. I refused to admit that my hope has been squandered and I have lived such meaningless life, trapped inside ecstasy and wantonness for no reason.

My patience and self-control had finally hit its long-stretched limit.

Like any devotee and student of Sun Tzu’s Science of War would do, I gave Acrẽa three deadlines and one ultimatum to get her out of her room. I treated her current ugliness and deplorable form like an enemy to be weeded out.

Acrẽa unspectacularly failed to meet all four. Apparently, Acrẽa must have thought that just because we had sex and did S&M on a basis, I would be kind and lenient to her failures. Oh dear, how wrong you are! I sighed internally. On the contrary, it was the opposite. It was precisely because we had sex and did S&M together on a basis, I could afford to be cruel and merciless on her failures. That was just how abhorrent she was to my eyes right now.

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

Since Acrẽa had failed herself and my expectation four times in a row, I waged war on Acrẽa’s ugliness, making no further compromise on my decision making. Mankind history has always been like this. It was either compromise or war. If one side or both sides could not find a compromising point, that meant war.

Ira came out of the darkness of my mind and cheered for me to beat the crap out of Acrẽa, its usual solution and fix to every problem that it had ever encountered in life. While I agreed with Ira that violence was a quick fix to almost every major problem in the world, Not now, said I, willing to give Acrẽa one more chance out of my stupidity.

As usual, Dion acted like a complete malfunctioned AI virtual assistant, running all kind of searches and simulations, advising me on how I should deal with Acrẽa without waiting for me to ask. I hated how annoying Dion was. Even Ira took a back seat to it when Dion went nutty with its searches and simulations.

In the end, I kept my words, delivering judgment on the person who failed to comply with my ultimatum.

Like a lion securing its kill, I grabbed Acrẽa by her ankle and dragged her out of her bed by force. I considered Acrẽa’s kind, the kind of people who fell once and refused to stand up, as worse than a bomb-first-question-later terrorist or a fanatic cultist of the Injustice cult because I can least talk either one out of it but never Acrẽa’s kind. Back on Earth, I had never bothered to negotiate with their kind. Now, on Escana, I stuck to my no-negotiation policy when dealing with them.

Acrẽa screamed incoherently, cursed me and sank her fangs and claws into my body, raking and tearing while clinging to the darkness of her room as I dragged her like a lion dragging a gazelle on the savanna. Pride beat Acrẽa so hard that she became a shadow of her former self after a single beating. And there was nothing much of her former self, to begin with, nothing worth mentioning or looking up to. Not cunning, not fortitude, not wisdom, not pride, nothing that I could admire other than her waxen beauty.

Her dignity and grace as a Demon Lord were already gone from my head so I stopped treating her as one, a Demon Lord.

I considered tossing Acrẽa into an ice bath, making her cooling her head for a quick fix. But then, Acrẽa was the Vampire Queen. According to the lore, she was born from a knot of Naharis’ dismembered entrails. Thus her conception form, her true form was that of a thousand hagfishes knotting their tail together. To a lamprey-ish vampire living in the darkness of the abyss, an ice bath should be considered a joy ride. So I dragged Acrẽa and dropped her off just one meter away from the kind of treatment house that a lesser-than-terrorist like she deserved to have.

“For your information, that bubbling and steaming liquid is not water. That’s a lubricant,” I spoke emotionlessly, “Secondly, I am a Save-the-Earth kind of guy. So, I designed this bathhouse to be solely powered by harsh sunlight and nothing else. Lastly, I am a known pervert and an exhibitionist. Therefore, I designed this bathhouse so that its content would be broadcasted uncensored to every man, woman, child, elderly person, god, goddess and Demon Lord who lived inside this dreamland of mine.”

Acrẽa stared at me, eyes widen in horror as if she was questioning whether my heart was part insanity and part ice.

“Right now, only I knew about this disgracing and ugly look of yours. But feel free to continue acting in the most disgraceful manner as you like because this broadcast would go viral in public. The world will watch your disgraced self and my disgraced self. You and I will live this bathhouse as a most abhorred pair of disgraced perverts. Together, we will become the most talked pair of this world, forever living in infamy. If the broadcast of the two of us bathing in this bathhouse could not go viral in this world, I had no idea what else would. But I will try to find the new method to achieve that goal. Over and over and over and over again.”

Acrẽa knew that I was not joking. And I could sense that knowledge from her.

It was my ironclad policy to make people like Acrẽa stand with force if they refused to stand up on their own. If time could not fix them, if consoling words and encouragement failed to reach them, if they could not motivate themselves to stand up, force was the answer. War was the answer.

Then, there was him, I sighed internally, waving my hand to summon a clock.

“You have ten seconds to stand up and fix your dress. After that, I will show you why you lost and Pride won.”

While Acrẽa was still staring at me with a dazed look, I mechanically started the countdown in the most self-serving and tyrannical manner.

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“COME AND ATTACK ME FOR REAL OR I WILL KEEP STABBING YOU,” I hollered, expelling the invisible rage out of my lungs while pointing a replica of Enfermé toward Acrẽa.

Reacting to my forceful command, Acrẽa gritted her teeth and raked empty air, sending a pitch-black gale toward me. Just like her in-game avatar, Acrẽa was a ranged fighter. She primarily fought with projectiles and spells.

The black gale was fast, but my well-timed was many times faster. But even the instantaneous movement felt slow to an anticipated mind. I had already anticipated that attack long before it manifested. I stood behind Acrẽa. Enfermé rested on her pallid neck, making a careless bite.

“You just died again. Twice.” The edge of Enfermé cold, my voice colder.

Acrẽa cried out in pain, taste the edge of Enfermé twice. Her claws raking backward, her living hair trailing. But I was already back to where I had previously stood.

“Let’s do it again. Now try not to die so quickly,” said I in an impassive voice. Then added a finishing touch with a smirk that dripping of sarcasm and fury, “OLD HAG.” Lampreys were a kind of hagfishes. Going by that logic, a hagfish type of vampire was a hag. And the oldest vampire was nothing but the oldest hag.

“TO HELL WITH YOU,” Acrẽa cursed. Infused with fury, her claws picked up speed. The dark gales came, sweeping the green meadow with screaming fury. The white reed flowers that were touched by Acrẽa’s dark gale died instantly, shriveled in dark yellowish color. I teleported left and right in blinding succession, avoiding the flesh-eating gales.

Acrẽa’s eyes flickered, keeping track of my position. She crossed her wrists. It was the exact casting animation that her in-game avatar used before the activation of her Omni-direction attack . I had already expected Acrẽa to use her before she crossed her wrists and entered her casting animation, adding a luxurious 0.3 second of spell casting to that, I could not help but feared Acrẽa’s simple-mindedness and obviousness. If I was to be hit by something so obvious while I had the means to escape it, I would have retired from being a pro-gamer.

And I kept telling Acrẽa that I was a gamer, not a fighter, I complained inwardly. I kept giving people hints to beat me but they did not get it. It was as they refused to understand me.

I was truly shook to the core of my soul. Back then, Ekar died without knowing why he died like a toy in my hands. I knew his attack animation, both the timing and range of his attack. When he attacked wildly, using all the variations that existed outside of his in-game character used, it was already too late. He was already too tired to swing his sword. He was unlucky when he ran into me without knowing who I was.

Acrẽa had the opportunity to see my memory. She had the opportunity to learn what I knew. And yet, she learned nothing.

Wisdom was an OP power. Knowledge was a game-breaking power on its own. If I was allowed to choose and craft my character’s ability, I would rather have the knowledge of how to create a nuke and how to use a nuke correctly than having a nuke of an ability at my disposal. Meaning, I had no need for any game-breaking ability to be relevant in this game.

Acrẽa should have learned my weaknesses and strength and made her preparation since. But she didn’t. I could not help but internally ask what she was watching when she watched my memory record. She was like a person watching an animal video on Discovery Channel and then described that channel as a channel that promoted animal pornography.

Acrẽa should have learned that I could see through her normal attack animation and her abilities’ casting animation from watching memory. She should have learned that I knew her attack patterns and timing. Acrẽa should have, but she obviously didn’t.

She had not learned a damn thing since that beat down Pride gave her.

I took to the sky with a maximum range of . I teleported in multiple quick succession to keep myself out of the killing range of . manifested its power with Acrẽa stood at its center, a booming five hundred meters globe of pure darkness that devoured all non-vampiric life forms standing on its path to recover Acrẽa’s lost health while granting Acrẽa a short seven-second to access to a lightless world, granting Acrẽa a full unlimited access to her Authority even in high noon.

In the game, was often activated defensively as an escape mechanism for Acrẽa, to make Acrẽa’s enemies temporarily lost sight of her position. remained stationary even when Acrẽa moved. Acrẽa was invisible in and thus could not be targeted by any single targeting abilities and skills. When was used for an offensive purpose, this ability was used to buy five seconds for Acrẽa to cast her channeling abilities uninterrupted from single targeting abilities. However, I have already learned from watching the battle between Pride and Acrẽa, this barrier of darkness would not fade after five seconds. It remained indefinitely as long as Acrẽa willed it. It could be recast immediately once broken without a cooldown timer.

I have discovered that the cooldown timer did not exist in this world. I have learned that some abilities did not fade away like their in-game fading time dictated. Some of these abilities remained for as long as the user willed them to be or until the mana reserve of the user hit bottom. As a result, has become something akin to Acrẽa’s second ultimate in this world. From the pitch-black darkness of , Acrẽa’s vampiric eyesight could see the world unobstructed but others could not see her. She could move around that globe of darkness and gain full access to the core of her power while staying invisible to her opponent’s eyes.

As I skydived and stared at the unbreakable globe of darkness from the above, an army of cold blue gleaming eyes and waxen skinned figures wrapping in dark tattered armor poured out of that lightless world, searching for me. Elder vampires they were, not to be mistaken with the lesser vampires due to their living lamprey hair, a trait that they inherited from Acrẽa. Acrẽa’s male and female consorts, directly turned into vampires by none other than Acrẽa’s fangs. They were the royal and lords of their society in the lore.

Like I have predicted, Acrẽa activated . This ability supposedly opened a summoning rift, calling Acrẽa’s vampires to her. But in this world, inside dreamland, this ability allowed Acrẽa to summon a replica of her army, dolls without personality like the various clones that I had spread across dreamland.

One of the elder vampires spotted me, shouting and alerting the rest. A thousand pairs of gleaming blue eyes trained at my figure.

I have already predicted that Acrẽa’s flesh corroding gales were coming before she used them. And I loathed how correct I was. The dark gales trailed a good four to five seconds as if Acrẽa was playing ROC on a potato PC with a potato internet connection. Her attacks informed me Acrẽa’s general location, where she stood and how she moved around inside that pitch-black sphere.

I wept tears at the terrible lag that Acrẽa must have suffered. Acrẽa was the Vampire Queen. She possessed inhuman strength, stamina, reflex, hand-eye coordination, and agility. I had sex with her for so long and so often that I knew how dexterous, fast and strong she was. Acrẽa was someone who could trade blows with Bloodbeard, Ekar, Hyrios and the Hound of Hyrios at the same time with a pair of empty hand.

And yet all Acrẽa could do against me was whiffing empty air. Thus, I could not help but rage. She had all the superb hardware in the world, and yet, running on pure garbage software.

IF YOU WANT TO ACT STUPID, BE GOOD AT IT, I raged internally.

Acrẽa’s lag had nothing to do with the internet connection or shitty PC. Her inability to assess and predict my action was the primary result of the lag in her attack. She wasn’t outgunned. She was completely outplayed and out-predicted.

Why? Acrẽa had never bother assessing my strength and weaknesses when she watched my recorded memory. She had completely squandered her chances and opportunities to gather information and learned about me. She had not gather the necessary information about me and thus she could not predict my action. But I could. I knew her in-game avatar like the back of my hands. I memorized her avatar’s attacking speed and casting speed. I remembered all of her abilities’ casting animation and casting speed. After all, I have played this stupid ROC game for over a decade. Adding that catfight between Acrẽa and Pride to the list, it was safe to say that I could read Acrẽa’s thought and attacking pattern like a book.

Information was important. People like Misery’s fans kept arguing with me that the Zombie Dragon of White Winter won all of his battles and wars that he had ever fought because he was a fucking genius. I kept telling them that their answer was not an explanation.

The Zombie Dragon won all of his battles and wars because he had already won the information gathering war before he even fought his physical wars. This is what you called an explanation.

One of the three of the primary reasons why I declared war on Kharigan was the fact that my weaknesses and strength were exposed to every God and Demon Lord participated in the Reign of Chaos. If someone who was good at analytic was to watch that record, they should know how to make my life miserable. But they would choose not to, for their own safety unless they were insane or stupid or both. I could not think of meeting a sane and smart man who knew about my capability for mayhems and destruction and still pick a fight with me. It was incomprehensible that these so-call Immortals could label themselves with the ”Greater”, “More Intelligent” and “Wiser” when they tried to involve someone like me into their conflicts. People who tried to pick a fight with me were either ignorant- but that can be fixed easily, or plain stupid and insane, that, even Death and the infinity of time could not cure.

Acrẽa’s elder vampires took out their bows and magic scepters, spamming their projectiles at me en masse. Black feathered arrows blotted the earth out of my vision. Flesh-eating vampiric spells formed a long dark arc, leaving a trail of insidious flesh-eating mist. I wept at how low their chance of hitting me with a single volley tactic, me, a single target figure who could cover a hundred meters faster than a blink of an eye.

You need a fucking flak screen, or at least multiple rotating volleys to have a chance.

“MOTHERFUCKER, I am Fearless, the Prince of The Alliance. IF YOU WANT TO HIT ME, GIVE YOURSELF A FUCKING FAT CHANCE FIRST,” I shouted and teleported in an evasive fashion. I then swooped down, abusing my balance-breaking teleport-swap combo on Acrẽa’s flightless vampires, wreaking havoc across the battlefield. One moment I was up in the air and then the next moment, I was down on the ground, standing among the rank of Acrẽa’s elder vampires.

Their gleaming eyes transpired an empty blue sky whereas they should have watched their surroundings. That way, they would give themselves a chance to hit me with a lucky swipe when I swapped my position with one of them. But they stood, stupefied, not knowing the answer to my game breaking teleport-swap combo, acting as the perfect target practices for me to unleash my rage over Acrẽa’s incompetency. The reason these elder vampires sucked so hard at dealing with me and my ability could only be blamed on Acrẽa’s incompetency in information gathering and studying.

And I had just given Acrẽa the hint. Enraged, I made a rain of elder vampires.

No more arrow took flight. No more bloodsucking and flesh-eating spell discharged. But the rain of flightless vampires plummeted on the ground in a sickening senselessness of bone-crushing and blood splashing downpour. These motherfuckers have completely squandered their good eyesight, inhumane reflex, and agility. They could not see me, they could not react, they could do nothing, simply because their eyes were laser-focused at the incorrect location and they stood in a tight formation. That was like asking me to bomb them with their own. Their incompetence and Acrẽa’s incompetency fueled my rage. Flesh bombs made of elder vampires whistled through the air. Vampires bombed the ground like missiles made of flesh, killing their own in blood-curling fashion.

Inside the perfect lightless guise of , Acrẽa spammed her , flooding the battlefield with more elder vampires and all shape and form of other vampiric creatures that had never made a canonized appearance inside the game. I could only laugh, totally lost it while staring at the absurdity that was a vampiric Kraken crawled out of the dark globe among the rank of vampiric creatures under Acrẽa’s dominant.

I inwardly thanked Acrẽa for the opportunity of testing a random what-if question that just popped inside my head like a lit bulb. What if I make a Kraken go skydiving?

How many men have asked himself this what-if question? How many men had the opportunity to test out this what-if question and saw its result?

I suddenly felt blessed.

I thought quickly, making all the mental calculations needed to make this experiment a reality. My mental calculation bore good results quickly. The world before my eyes warped rapidly in a quick chaotic fashion, chaotic but never senseless. A chain of well-timed teleport-swap combos in rapid succession took the 30 meters giant squid a good three hundred meters into the air.

Since Acrẽa gave me a bigger and heavier bomb to bomb the hell out of her army, I used it. That several tons bomb made of vampiric calamari crashed on top of the vampire army, squashed the little vampires in a most satisfying squashing sound to my sharp ears. Like a musical note. The most unholy kind of musical note to ever exist.

The result of the experiment was so horrific that I had to turn the color recognition function of my brain off. Watching the world in monochrome, I teleported, avoiding a few of Acrẽa’s pathetic attempts to attack me with a cheap attack.

She only needs to land one hit and she just cannot land that one hit.

I was shocked that the vampiric Kraken lived after its first skydiving experience. Somehow. I took it to the sky one more time, a shorter distance, a short one hundred fifty meter parachute-less skydive, making it dropped on a dense gather of elder vampires. Still, it lived.

Amazed at Kraken’s spectacular vitality, I rewarded the poor tentacled creature with one more earthshaking skydiving trip. Still, it lived, but that problem could always be fixed with more parachute-less skydiving experiences. I took the creature to three more skydiving trips in psychotic rampancy while predicting Acrẽa’s , , among her normal range attacks coming my way. Not once had I forgotten about Acrẽa’s presence while having fun with her vampiric pet. With three massive booms, I filled the battlefield with things that resembled the shapely corpses of Acrẽa’s flightless vampires and their billowing decaying mist.

Elder vampires poured out of the dark globe. But this time, finally learned a lesson, Acrẽa summoned her mutated winged vampires and spread them out instead of putting in tight formation. A swarm of grotesque unintelligent vampiric creatures of unknown origin with tentacled wings flew out of the dark globe. None of these vampiric creatures looked the same. Some had feather. Others had a coat of bristled fur, while most were scaly. Some had a pair of wings. Some had three sets. Other four and five. But if these creatures had something in common, they were mounted by an elder vampire.

I wept tears and rejoiced that finally, our battle had fully become a 3D battle. Up until this moment, I approached this battle with 3D maneuvers in mind while Acrẽa was stuck in a 2D mindset, which put her at a severe disadvantage. And I, as a human was born flightless. It was ridiculous that Acrẽa, a Demon Lord, the Vampire Queen fought me with a 2D mindset until now.

I was done playing games. I had too much fun with that Kraken shaped bomb. I had already confirmed that Acrẽa had stopped moving around from the direction of her latest attacks and abilities. Her latest attacks and offensive skills all came from a general location. Map awareness was an important skill for a pro-gamer to survive the rollercoaster competitive scene of ROC Esports, especially for an Ender. I often argued that map awareness was the utmost important skillset for an Ender to build, polish and maintain. It was more important than an Ender’s good decision making ability and presence of mind. It was more important than raw mechanic, reflex and whatnot.

All-rounder. Defender. Supporter. Raider. Ender.

The player, who is assigned to the Ender position, is tasked to dispatch the opposing team’s warlords without getting game-over in return. If the opposing warlords locked themselves inside a fortress, bring down that fortress. If the opposing warlords took the field, snipe them down. Most of the time, the Ender is the last surviving player when the games end. Ender is arguably the most combative position among the five positions. Therefore, an Ender is required to keep track of various units’ movement across the map at all times, especially the movement of opposing team’s warlords. If an Ender had a terrible map awareness skill set, he would lose sight of his objectives. He will become useless. A person cannot dispatch his enemy without knowing where his enemy is first.

Playing Blindfolded ROC with Pride redefined my map awareness, giving a new layer to it, updating my map awareness from a 2D perspective to a 3D perspective. Sasengun often asked me why I kept training Pride to be my bane. Training Pride, I did. But I did not just train Pride and Pride alone. I trained myself. I trained my General Staff. By making my competitor stronger, I became stronger.

And because I played a 3D version ROC with a blindfold, I had to rely on various tricks to track down various units’ movements in real-time.

The waiting-to-be-attacked trick was just one of the many tricks.

Every shot arrow had an arc. Every launched spell and ability had its own unique range and arc. If I knew the range and the arc of the projectiles, I knew the location of the attacker.

Abilities like and presented the biggest “Fuck you” to the law of Physics. They refused to be bend or tie-down by gravity. They flew straight until they dissipated, without flexing, curving or arcing. Meaning, if I could work out the geometry, the intersecting angle from the many times Acrẽa launched these projectiles at me, I had already pinpointed her location. Asian power was a superpower to be feared. In a life and death situation, an Asian’s math was still unshakable, even when that Asian was a math hater.

With , I teleported around, dropping a few of Acrẽa’s winged vampires from the sky with some cheap surprise back attacks, doing exactly what was designed for, distraction. Spells and arrows from the elder vampires trailed. One flesh-eating spell came close, grazed me, putting me to a high alert mode. I was waiting for Acrẽa to use one of her bigger spells or abilities.

spewed out of . Bundles of giant entrails soared skyward, homing straight at me in their grotesque slimy glory, followed by . I teleported, but they curved, tracking me. I have been marked.

In the game, those flesh-eating spells that Acrẽa’s elder vampires kept spamming and Acrẽa’s normal attack had a chance of inflicting the status on their victims. Units that were inflicted with the status would be visible even when they were hiding behind the fog of war. More importantly, and gained the homing status when Acrẽa used them against a unit suffered the status.

But in this world, these abilities tracked their targets by the smell of their blood. Therefore, a small graze was enough.

I teleported around in quick succession, then swapped my position with one of Acrẽa’s elder vampires standing on the ground, luring the spectral spear and those giant slimy tentacles to crash through the rank of elder vampires army. Decaying black mist erupted in a giant splash of slimy black sludge, playing the perfect role of a smokescreen for me to execute my magic trick.

I just hated how easily everything has gone according to my plan.

Casting in parallel alongside granted me a ticket to enter Acrẽa’s . Knowing the how and why and can track their marked targets given me the ability to escape them.

While the chaos outside had still yet to settle down, I entered as one of Acrẽa’s elder vampires. Vampiric senses were convenient. I could spot Acrẽa from half a kilometer. I could hear her barking orders to her vampires to search for me while keeping the summoning portal opened.

Good luck searching, I inadvertently sighed a quiet sigh.

I had become one of the bloodless, one of Acrẽa’s cold walkers. There was no way that these vampires could track me down with their sense of smell. I blended in with Acrẽa’s vampiric creatures. Slowly and quietly, I made a long detour and approached Acrẽa from her behind.

It was honestly boring to the last second.

Enfermé’s wicked point tore a hole through Acrẽa’s back. Acrẽa cried out, arching her back in pain. receded when Acrẽa turned around, staring at me in the eyes.

“You are so much stronger than me, physically. You have an army. You have a world of magic and miracles at your command. You and your army only need to land a good solid hit, and I am fucked. Yet, you still lost to me,” I spoke to Acrẽa with a stern impassive voice.

Acrẽa bit her lips and gave me a look of sullen dismay, a look as if she asked me why I was doing all of this, why I was treating her with such cruelty, why I did not show her any sympathy. I could read her thoughts like an open book.

But I did, I did show you my sympathy.

I spent such a long time licking her wound in a wanton manner while throwing everything else behind me. Acrẽa refused to stand up. So I had to act.

If kindness and gentleness only made things worse and cruelty was the obvious answer, cruelty it is.

Undoing my transformation, I pulled Acrẽa’s head to mine. Our nose and forehead touched. “A wise man has once said, know thy enemy, know thyself, a hundred battles thou shall not suffer a defeat. The reason you lost so one-sided to me did not prove that I was more skillful or more intelligent than you.”

I tightened my hands on Acrẽa’s cheeks. “It proved that I understood you Acrẽa but you don’t understand me. You know nothing about me.” Mercilessly, I sprayed salt on Acrẽa’s wound, “You know nothing about me even though we have been together for so long. You know nothing about me.” I repeated my words, spreading the salt, making sure that it stung.

Finally, Acrẽa lost it. Her vices clamped down on my wrists with force.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?” Acrẽa howled, “You said you understood me. BUT DO YOU? Do you know how much suffering I have gone through because of you? DO YOU? DO YOU KNOW HOW PAINFUL IT IS FOR ME? DO YOU?”

I smirked.

“WHAT IS SO FUNNY?” Acrẽa continued to holler.

“Nothing.”

“WHAT IS SO FUNNY? DO YOU ENJOY LAUGHING AT ME AND MOCKING ME?”

“No, no, no,” replied I, trying very hard to contain the smirk on my lips. I should have done this from the beginning, I thought.