A rustling linden tree, a cloud of sparkling lights emerging from the leaves to float off in the direction of the nearest reincarnation spot.

An excited crowd were rushing over, drawn by the grunts and screams of an intense battle. Before they could close the distance, though, the commotion seemed to end. A series of metallic clashes marked the gradual falling of a machete bouncing off branches, followed by silence.

“What?" one of them cried. "It’s over already?”

“Look!”

There was a heavy thump, a figure landing at the tree's base. It was the leader of the gang.

Ignoring a broken ankle, which repaired on its own, the leader walked away from the fight in humiliation.

As he passed through the crowd, someone grabbed his sleeve.

“Friend, what happened?”

The leader knocked away their arm and continued on.

He didn’t want to talk about it.

When he’d thrown away his weapon and begged for mercy, the ninja guy had stopped and said, “sure,” as casually as if he were being offered a free mint.

To be so relaxed after doing that to his friends, it sent shivers down the spine. What a monster.

He went over to the first homie to be knocked down, lying forgotten in the grass, and helped him to his feet.

"Get up Big Smoke."

“We get that fool? Where are the others?”

The leader shook his head. "Didn’t stand a chance, homes. We'll have to wait to meet them on the flipside.”

"RIP."

"RIP."

With slumped shoulders, the two headed straight for the nearest bridge exiting The Sanctuary in the direction of the respawn location.

The crowd, not willing to let it end there, ran over to the linden tree to search for the masked figure. All they found, however, was a random noob staring up in awe and the items dropped by the fallen homies dangling from branches like Christmas ornaments.

Minutes later.

Near a bubbling cauldron smelling of grass, butter, and used gym socks, the trainees of Henry's tutorial group were gathering, each lugging their half a dozen rabbits.

“What time did you get, bro?” asked one meathead.

“Bro, who cares about that. Did you see the fight? Some expert 1v6’d a bunch of gangsters.”

"A clip’s been uploaded to the forum," said another trainee.

Saana's official forum was accessible in-game. Many players hung out there while travelling or waiting for their companions to log on.

The trainee raised their hand and projected a video onto the ground, the clip visible to the other players but not their NPC trainer or his friend.

The footage had been captured by a bold player trailing behind the machete-wielding gangster roleplayers. It showed the group's arrow-filled approach, the one gangster being killed while distracted, and the others climbing to avenge him.

As the surviving gangsters closed in on their prey, the guy in the kabuki outfit began to struggle and nervously fumble. Up close, there wasn't much an outnumbered archer could do. It seemed he was going to get caught and killed, but, then, suddenly, the scaredy-cat act used to lure the thugs in was dropped.

'El Diablo!'

A gangster about to grab the kabuki guy fell, his descent coming to a jerky stop as a noose tied around his neck broke it. Meanwhile, on the other end of that rope, the kabuki guy came swinging down and kicked the second closest gangster off his branch, before filling him mid-fall with arrows.

By the time the second gangster roleplayer hit the ground and his body shattered into lights, the kabuki guy was already holding a third gangster from behind along with a stolen machete. As this captured sap got his neck sawed through like a victim in a cartel beheading video, the kabuki guy stared impassively down at the leader of the group, who, blanching at the graphic execution of his homie, conceded.

Beside the projection scrolled a wall of user comments.

-Shinigami!

-ZZZZZ. Delete this fake garbage.

-Why's it fake?

-Ask yourself, would a pro really be hanging out in the level 1 monster zone? Absurd!

-Serves these thugs right. I’m sick of them ruining my immersion.

-The Burnt Toast Village extends its hand to this hidden expert!

-Shinigami-sensei, please accept this noob as your underling.

Amongst the trainees watching the clip, Handsome Dan was trembling with excitement. He couldn't believe Big Bro was becoming famous! Noticing a monkey-head popping up from behind a teammate's shoulder, Dan almost shouted out, 'there, the expert bro in the clip is standing behind you!', but he held himself back when Big Bro gestured for him to remain quiet and reminded him of the previous threat.

As for Henry, his face behind his mask was scrunched and pinched like he'd taken two sips of expired milk.

The first sour sip was from the random noob filming him and turning this trivial Starting Zone skirmish into a much bigger deal than it should have been. At this rate, Henry might not even be able to finish the tutorial without blowing his cover. How irritating.

This was his punishment for betraying his convictions and trying to help, for breaking Wu-Wei's sacred tenet of Non-Doing. Like an ancient Chinese emperor, his well-meaning efforts had backfired due to the chain of unintended consequences in a system too complex for any individual to fully grasp. Henry should have learned from history. The best way to relieve your fellow man of suffering is to totally ignore him; even if that doesn't cure the problem for him, it will cure it for you.

The second sour sip molesting Henry's tongue was because, back in the day, when he'd fought infinitely more impressive duels, he'd never once received such a positive reception. Everyone then had dismissed him as a no-good cheater, as a hacker, as a talentless hack reliant on his Legendary items for a crutch. Therein lay the tragedy of greatness. When you climb too high, the plebs below can no longer make out the trail by which you reached the summit and they assume you just got dropped off by a helicopter. They can't even fathom that owning a helicopter is, also, a talent.

Making a note to destroy the Japanese outfit, Henry logged onto the forums to upvote the comments calling the clip fake and downvote the rest.

Well, better they think he was a cheating hack for a while longer...

Following that, he went to the bald trainer stirring the cauldron to purchase a sword in case someone noticed him reusing the bow.

Not long afterwards, the tutorial progressing, Instructor Apari blew his horn to draw the students' attention. “For your first prize, I’m going to unlock your Martial bodies.”

At the trainer’s direction, everyone gathered kneeled in the grass as though they were about to be knighted.

“Close your eyes," he continued. "My friend will be coming around to anoint each of you. Tolerate the pain.”

The trainer's friend, lugging around a cauldron, went from trainee to trainee, dabbing a viscous, tar-like liquid onto their foreheads. The concoction was so hot that, upon making contact with their skin, it seared through the layers of flesh and fat to expose the bone of the skull beneath. Those who hadn't lowered their pain settings far enough screamed.

One sneaky trainee snuck a peek at the instructor, who, after stripping naked, had doused himself in the same liquid, and who was now performing a dance that summoned a mass of glowing balls.

“It won’t work if they’re open,” warned Instructor Apari, not showing a sign of pause. “Miss this and you’ll have to find another class.”

“Sorry.”

When all the trainees had been anointed, a sharp, percussive clap was heard.

Clap.

And the air hummed with a low-pitched drone.

“Now," intoned the instructor, "repeat after me: Amagwu ukwku, ngozi ya inye im.”

“Amagwu ukwku, ngozi ya inye im," the trainees mumbled in an out-of-sync fashion, most missing the phrase’s tonal pattern.

To Henry, an automated subtitle appeared, reading ‘Great Amagwu, gift unto me your blessing.’

This ritual was performed in an extinct language spoken in the Aion Laisije region about eight thousand years ago. Henry’d learned it doing another quest.

As he repeated the phrase himself, he felt the heat of the ointment on his forehead transferring to his brain, and his senses grew dull as if he were entering a drunken haze. The view of the veins on his eyelids blurred. A thick window was drawn between him and the screams of the players still running about the field. Simultaneously, the drone loudened, intensified.

Instructor Apari had gathered enough energy to make himself as painfully bright as the sun. Meanwhile, his friend, positioned between the bald trainer and the class, was acting as a conduit; he held one arm towards the former, the other towards the latter, and he shook violently as ropes of blinding light passed through him and entered the trainees' foreheads.

The instructor bellowed a full-lunged scream of war. “Ma ya ebeahu ndu!” (‘You are there!’)

Henry, along with the rest of the class, found himself to transported to a distant scene.

His body was bound to a pillar ontop of a stone pyramid, a landscape of untamed jungle stretching around him towards a sky that, unlike Suchi's was dappled with sailing white boats of cloud. These sights, the humid, fecund scents of the tropical jungle air, the warmth of the sun, the coarse texture of the rope binding him - all these senses felt as real as if he'd been standing here in person.

At the pyramid's base, in a freshly-cut clearing chopped down for the structure, thousands of armoured figures were standing with their arms linked in a chain. Each person seemed wildly different in appearance, in weaponry, in race, except they were united by one common thread: an aura they exuded, one of unimaginable power.

A similar scene appeared before all players who underwent the ritual to unlock their Martial bodies.

For most, it was a mystery, but Henry knew the history.

7600 years ago, The Epoch of Heroes, when every minor province would produce a few Gods, came to an abrupt end. A sentient monster, known as The Redeemer, orchestrated the assassination of most of the human Gods in a single day, along with the destruction of the secret technique they had been using to transmit their powers to their acolytes.

After such a loss, monsters swallowed the world and humanity were driven to hide in the planet's remote corners.

Thus, began The Age of Beasts. During this period, the Gods who'd managed to survive the assassination sought to strengthen and rebuild humanity by formulating a new method of power transmission. In the end, they would succeed and, with their new army, they eventually reconquered the world - but not before suffering huge numbers of casualties. After a millennium of global warfare, The Redeemer, cornered, his commanders beaten, his territories lost, committed suicide. Thus, began the present age, The Epoch of Civilisation.

What Henry was experiencing now was the method those Gods had developed. Each figure standing around the base of the pyramid was a deity taking their turn to impart their energy into a dummy that would transmit their powers across the ages. Most of them had long since either died or ascended to become Cosmic beings.

“Amagwu-no,” said a figure at the pyramid's base standing on a podium, calling up the next God to take their turn.

A flash of sparks blasted the stone in front of Henry.

From out the small explosion emerged a beautiful woman in her 40s with seductive grey eyes. Where her hair and eyebrows should have been were strands of crackling lightning.

The exact God that would come forward for each initiate undergoing the ritual would differ depending on the trainer, this lady, Amagwu of The Lightning Sword, being the bald trainer's matriarchal ancestress.

From Henry’s recollection, she'd been a Tier-11 Aionian Lowgod who fell at the naval Battle of Himatsu, 7244 years before the game's present calendar date.

The dead lightning Goddess extended her hands to his face and cupped his cheeks like a mother sending her son off to war, her palms rough but warm.

"He won't be easy." She said, smiling the complicated smile of one who's lost all hope but chooses to fight anyway. "Good luck, kid!"

Suddenly, a painful jolt ran through every fibre of Henry's body, his teeth clamping, his muscles seizing.

“Return and open your eyes,” Instructor Apari's voice boomed, summoning him back to the present.

Henry, along with the other trainees, remained frozen for a second as sparks of lightning travelled out of them and into the ground.

The bald trainer, the energy surrounding him having disappeared, looked like he'd fallen into a mud pit. His friend was panting and sweating.

Congratulations!

You have unlocked your Martial Body, allowing you to learn combat-related abilities and gain levels by killing monsters.

Presently, you are a Level 1 Adventurer. Further Classes will become available as you progress in your journey.

Note: Due to you having a Civilian Primary class, Scholar (Tier 5-2), the maximum level of any Martial class you choose is restricted to one full-tier below, 4-2.

Having picked a Scholar first, Henry's direct combat capabilities would always be limited. But what did that matter? He'd only come to Suchi to win an amateur recruitment tournament, not fight Gods or anything this time around.

Instructor Apari whipped out a sword and saluted the sky, screaming in the tongue of his dead ancestress. “Henceforth, you are children of the storm! Your home will be the battlefield! Your food the souls of your enemies! Grow fat and die with honour!”

The bald man then sheathed his sword, returning to his former placid composure.

To Henry, from the abrupt shift in manner, it was evident that the Goddess's descendant had not understood the ancient words himself, having only memorised for the ritual their sounds cleansed of meaning by the passage of time.

“Alright," Instructor Apari continued, "next you're going to learn how to absorb souls and reinforce your Martial bodies.”