The bald trainer blew a horn. "Enough with the game of hopscotch, get over here! We begin.”

Henry, dodging one last rock, joined the others gathering. In total, with some students having arrived during his warm-up, the group had grown to sixty pupils.

The trainer folded his hairless arms over his chest. “Apari, Instructor Apari, it doesn't matter what you call me; we won't be knowing each other for long. In this brief course, we'll be speeding through the basics, the assumption being that you all either know the rest already or will develop your skills later on with other teachers. To start, since some of you Offworlders will still need to habituate to your new bodies, we'll do a warm up. Find a partner, grab a pole from the barrel over there, and start whacking each other. If your Universal Protection runs low, my friend here has graciously roasted up a batch of rabbit to replenish it. Any questions?”

Universal Protection was what the NPCs called health points.

A student raised her hand. “Will we be learning any fighting techniques?"

“For now," replied the Instructor, "make do with the age-old technique of hitting harder than you get hit. I'll roam about giving more specific pointers. No further questions. Pair up! Quick!”

Henry, listening in the back of the group, turned to the archer he'd first asked to shoot at him. “You and me, buddy?"

“Ah...” The archer gave a hesitant response.

To him, after that arrow stunt, Henry seemed psychotically intense.

Luckily for the archer, his salvation came running over in the form of one of the shirtless muscle freaks, separating from his group of meathead buddies mobbing their solitary female captive and competing to partner with her.

“Hey, monkey-bro," said the meathead, approaching Henry with a friendly wave, "I’m the odd-one-out in my group! What do you say to us going a few rounds, bro v bro?”

Henry gave the meathead a frown.

This was indeed an odd-one. Earlier, while Henry'd been minding his own business training his accuracy, this guy had jumped beside him, laughing about "how fun it looked". Within minutes, the other meatheads had followed.

Beyond his rude behaviour, the kid had also beautified his character to an absurd degree trying to pick up ladies online. With a granite jaw, a hulking v-shaped, abs-having torso, and jet-black hair as luscious and healthy as the mane of a lion in its prime, his avatar was impossibly handsome. The guy had meticulously crafted his character like an airbrushed model from a men’s fitness magazine cover. Combined with his boyish voice, the effect was jarring.

The overly-attractive meathead offered Henry a handshake. “My username’s Danontherightwing, but you can call me Dan.”

Henry gave the huge, muscular hand a repulsed look. "Sorry, but I've already found a—" Gesturing to the archer, he stopped as the guy abruptly broke into a panicked sprint. "What the hell?"

Henry, confused, watched as the archer ran from him like a child fleeing a molester's van, dashing for the nearest lone player and begging them to group.

The other unpaired players were avoiding Henry’s glance and quickly getting together with each other. None of them wanted to spar with him. After a long day at the job or in class, they were here to relax and unwind in a fun fantasy escapade, not get their faces smashed in by an undercover expert.

Henry, scanning the backs of their turned heads, read their fear, their laziness.

"Disgusting noobs," he mumbled. "This is why you'll never get anywhere. Useless—" Remembering his recently-adopted philosophy of retirement, he corrected himself. "But that's not a problem. It's OK to stay right where you are. Go ahead, then, children. This grandpa approves of your mediocrity."

Dan smiled. “Guess I’m your last choice, bro!”

Henry shook his head, having humbly received his lesson from the youth. “You've warmed up. I've warmed up. That's enough. Now, we fight the toughest battle of them all: doing absolutely nothing."

He had many reports to read from those commissioned this morning to update him on The Slums.

Dan didn't understand. "Bro, should I grab a stick for you?"

Henry, seeing this meathead's insistence, had a sudden paranoid sense that this kid was another piece in the odd puzzle of this morning's strange inconveniences, another malevolent attack to disrupt his plans.

Henry wouldn't fall for this one. "I will give you a million gold right now if you and your meathead friends agree to leave, wait two hours, then return for a different tutorial group."

“Hahaha" Dan flashed his handsome teeth, perfectly white and uncrowded in the copious space of his massive jaw.

"I'm not joking."

"I believe you, bro. But what's money before friendship?"

Henry squinted with hatred at this kid's stubborn, disgusting sociability. "I'm not your friend, motherfucker. I don't even know you."

"Not yet!" Dan laughed handsomely. "Bro, let's spar! I’m confident I can go toe to toe. Throw your hardest at me. I'm pretty tough!" He flexed his muscles. "I've been doing a lot of weightlifting lately."

Henry continued to squint.

This was the vilest type of a person, a giga-noob too stupid to know when they should give up, too ignorant to perceive the vast meaning of a million gold, the towering mountain of skill separating them.

Henry was deeply suspicious to have found someone this profoundly foolish, even if, logically, he shouldn't be because this was a starting area for newbies who'd only been logged on for a couple minutes.

“Fine...” Henry reluctantly agreed to beat the snot from this arrogant meathead's well-formed nose.

This impertinent child insisted on sparring him? Very well. Henry would give him his first taste of Saana's combat, his first sumptuous mouthful of blood and broken teeth.

Henry slipped through the crowd surrounding the wooden poles and searched for one of the right size. The noobs around him were simply grabbing the biggest, heaviest ones possible. This was a mistake.

Saana Combat Pro-tip #1: In a virtual game, where weapons weren't merely pixels on a screen but something you had to physically swing, it was essential to balance between weight, reach, manoeuvrability, and many other dimensions. Veterans always had their equipment custom-made to their personal build, preferences, and contexts. The ideal spear, for example, could change significantly depending on whether one was fighting in a duel, a small group skirmish, a pitched battle, or a monster hunt.

At its core, Saana's combat system, exemplifying both halves of 'virtual reality', was a blend of real-life fighting and magical abilities. When the game had first been released twelve years ago the duelling scene had been dominated by people with prior fighting experience, martial artists, combat sport athletes, military vets from the AI Revolution. Henry, starting off, had enrolled in fencing and jiu-jitsu classes along with practising the in-game arts.

Henry grabbed a pole about one-and-a-half times the length of the overly-handsome meathead’s forearm and tossed it behind him.

Dan, catching the weapon, compared it with the ones being grabbed by the others. “Bro, isn’t this a bit short?”

“Depends. Do you have training?”

“Nah, training stops during the summer. The ground's too dry. Scrapes the knees.”

Henry squinted in confusion. “OK...well...anyway, that’s the perfect length for you. Roleplay a neanderthal and swing it like a club.”

Dan accepted the advice unquestioningly. “What about you, bro?”

Henry, reaching behind his back, pulled out and presented the two deadliest weapons in the universe. “I’ll use my fists."

Dan nodded unquestioningly. “Bro, where are you from? I’m from New Zealand.”

“San Francisco," Henry lied.

“America? Cool! Bro, how old are you?”

“43.”

The monkey-mask hid Henry's face, making it impossible to tell.

“Really?" Dan stared at the skin of his arms. "You don’t seem that old.”

“I moisturise diligently.”

"Oh, that’s smart. Hey, I’m only 16. I guess that makes you my Big Bro. Can I call you Big Bro?”

Henry squinted. “Don’t ever use that nickname again. My name’s Bob. I'm Bob from San Francisco.”

Big Bro...this was far too similar to what someone else used to call him. Henry couldn't stand it.

Dan's perfectly-aligned, identically-sized eyes bulged. “Big Bro, quick! Before it’s too late!”

Henry watched flabbergasted as the meathead sprinted to a spot beside the girl his group had collectively been trying to woo. The other meatheads had the same idea, three pairs already massed around her, the lot of them vying to give her pointers.

The annoying thing to Henry, amongst the many annoying things, was they didn't need to fight over one chick. In this, the year 2050, Saana wasn't plagued by the abysmal gender-ratio problem of old school MMOs. You could sleaze to your heart's content.

Henry, walking over to the hopeless lot, saw the meathead who'd scored the poor girl as a partner grinning at the others like a lunatic.

“Hold up, Russian Sis." The meathead squeezed beside her and tried to reposition her hands on the wooden pole. "Let me help correct your form.”

Another meathead spoke up in contention. “Bro, what are you trying to teach our Polina?” He came forward and moved the girl's hands so close together that they were touching. “See, you’ve gotta get more stability.”

“Bro! That’s way too much stability. You need some flexibility. Here, let me try...”

Henry sidled up next to the overly-handsome meathead, spying on the others giving their terrible advice from a distance.

“Dan," Henry whispered.

“Yeah, Big Bro?” Dan looked on in dejection, jealous of his bros' confidence.

“I’m about to attack you. Is that OK? Do I have formal permission?”

“Go ahead.” Dan, continuing to observe his mates, wanted to try compete, too, but—"Ah!"

Dan screamed as a sharp heat shot into his brain. Curling over in agony, he fell to the ground, blood pouring from his broken nose.

With a stunned look, his eyes spouting tears, he gazed up in horror at the one who'd punched him in the face, the monkey-headed figure looming over him.

"B...Big...Bro?"

Henry was squinting in disgust.

This handsome noob, could he be one of those Virtual-Realist masochist scum who aimed for an 'authentic, high-fidelity digital experience'?

“It shouldn't be hurting anymore," said Henry coldly. "Your nose is fixed."

Dan felt his nose with his hands, finding that indeed it had been fixed, and that the pain had vanished. "Huh? Sick! Big Bro, did you heal me?"

"No, that's Saana's, this videogame's, automated self-heal function. Tied with your HP." Henry pointed at the noob's healthbar now floating above his head. "Before we spar, can you at least turn down your pain settings? I don't want to get banned."

“How do I do turn the pain settings down, Big Bro?”

This question made Henry squint even harder.

Pain levels were adjusted during character creation, as the developers wouldn't want to get sued for unwittingly torturing someone.

Had this noob skipped the character creation? If that were the case, then...

Henry studied the meathead's overly handsome avatar more closely.

"Whatever." He shrugged. "You just have to think about turning it down and the system will do it for you. A confirmation box should pop up. Try changing it to 6% of the maximum intensity - zero pain feedback feels uncanny, like you've got a neuropathic disease."

Dan stared into the distance for a few seconds, then pinched himself. Feeling much more pressure than pain, he tried punching himself in the arm. Again, almost nothing.

“Whoa!" he shouted in amazement. "There's no pain. Big Bro, doesn't this mean we're practically invincible? We can fight anything!"

"Unfortunately..." Henry nodded, while summoning his bow, with which he shot four arrows to mark the corners of a box large enough to enclose several other sparring pairs as well. “Dan, here’s how this is going to work. Stay within the box marked by those arrows. Those are the borders of the battlefield. For your benefit, we'll have two alternating phases, 15 seconds each. Phase A, I attack. Phase B, I evade. You can attack during either.”

“Huh?” Dan couldn't follow, Big Bro talking too rapidly.

Henry clapped. “Phase A.”

Before the meathead could think of getting off the ground, Henry grabbed the kid's leg. Instinctively, his opponent tried to wrestle free, but Henry's grip was too strong. Henry punched him in the face, breaking his nose again, and then, laying the kid out, stomped on his neck, snapping the cervical vertebrae as he got to work.

Dan, his ears ringing with the sound of crunching bone, his body folding and twisting like a pretzel in tumble-dryer, stared frozen at the spinning world, his vision clogging up as his eyeballs were smeared with dirt and blood.

Wasn’t the pacing too quick? Wasn’t he being beaten up too hard?

“You delusional ant!" Henry screamed, pinning the kid's chest to the ground with his knee. "Did you think this was a kungfu novel where the strength of everyone in the starting zone is calibrated to be near your own?" Henry punched him three times in the mouth, the smashed teeth lodging in his knuckles. "Audacious! For not knowing the heavens from the earth, you will be rewarded with a feast - a feast of shoes!”

Henry, jumping up while raising the kid's lower body by his muscular legs, began stomping on his head. The first kick caused the dry surrounding soil to crack, and the rest buried the kid's skull deeper and deeper down into the groaning earth.

Henry, finding this kid immune to his million-gold bribing strategy, had switched to a different tactic for ridding himself of this noob's unwanted presence.

He didn't care what logic said. This eye-catchingly-handsome dude turning up at the tutorial with his freakish meathead Kiwi buddies was too odd to be a mere coincidence. It certainly spelt something ominous. He should cut the guy off before he evolved too far beyond a minor, forgettable character into part of the permanent cast.

Thus, inspired by his previous trainers, Henry'd decided to beat up this kid as brutally as possible, to bully and scare him away. Although beating the crap out of the meathead before he turned his pain sensations off would have been preferable, the game system, being able to detect Henry's thought process, would have banned him for torturing a minor.

Saana Combat Pro-tip #2, final tip: In a world without rigid laws, violence sometimes does solve problems, and often quite efficiently.

Good game.

Alas, this scheme of Henry's, like the rest of his schemes on this strange morning, backfired marvellously.

"What the hell..." he muttered, stepping back cautiously from the meathead he'd been beating up.