Earlier, The Horny Boar Fields, the world's greatest retiree just minding his own business.

After finding an isolated spot, Henry'd decided to practise against the boars using a trick of PVE players to increase the difficulty of the monsters they fought.

The mechanics of the trick were somewhat convoluted.

Whenever he faced a Horny Boar, he equipped a high-level, Tier 5-2 Spelltome for a second.

Spelltomes were an off-hand weapon available to some of the Spellcaster Classes - Miracleworkers, Shamans, Bloodmancers, and Arcanists. These items gave users a bit more flexibility, granting the wielder one extra spell that they might not possess due to their sub-Class. For example, Shaman at higher levels could specialise in different elements, and Ice Shaman at Tier-4 unlocked a unique spell, , a short-range freezing blast; other Shamans could only use the same ability when wielding a corresponding Spelltome.

Although Henry fit neither the Class nor Martial Level requirements, he could use Spelltomes due to the perk of his Scholar Class, every player who chose a Civilian job for their Primary Class having something to counteract the combat disadvantage of their Martial Class being restricted one-tier lower - e.g. Landworkers got boosted stats, Alchemists enhanced poisons. These perks only partially negated the disadvantage, just enough that casual adventure groups might consider bringing along one Civilian Primary member.

So, back to the boars, whenever he equipped one of these tomes while fighting them, this had the effect of turning the monster’s eyes from crimson red to a pinkish rose. Along with the visual change, the beasts underwent a stark behavioural shift, gaining intelligence and discarding the usual predictability of their attack patterns. For example, the smarter boars would cancel misaimed charges and attempt to gore him with their tusks, or they might shoot their horn well before their HP reached zero.

This state of greater intelligence, known as Sentient Bloodlust, was a balance measure activated whenever players were too high level for an area or used overly-high equipment – hence, him using a high-level Spellbook. Sentient Bloodlust disincentivised players from taking gear acquired in one zone and sweeping through all the others. Its downsides were much more prominent in dungeon raids, where groups relied heavily on the predictability of bosses - a gear advantage became irrelevant when a 200-metre tall stone golem gained the smarts to ignore your tanks, walk over to your backline, pick up your healers and throw them off a cliff.

Anyway, that's what Henry'd been doing, using his Spelltomes to make these tutorial boars more intelligent to give him an extra challenge. With the Horny Boars putting up a friskier fight, he'd been able to feel himself recovering some of his old melee weapon handling skills, along with a bit of situational awareness.

Where things had turned into pudding was when one of the Horny Boars, which he'd been hanging on the back of stabbing, used its charge ability to rush over a short cliff. As the creature landed with a splat and Henry lost a third of his HP, he found himself standing in the middle of a 50-boar herd.

The herd itself didn't pose a problem. With their unwieldy body size, they couldn't utilise their numbers' advantage, so it was more like fighting a group of 3 monsters in a tiny room with shifting walls made of razers, 17 times in a row without break - tiring but not difficult.

The issue came when he was about to deal the deathblow to the last one. The Horny Boar released a desperate squeal, before, poof, it vanished into thin air.

Henry, sensing he'd triggered another nuisance game event, tried to flee. Moments later, though, he heard a familiar click, followed by a pressure in his temples and a sound of rushing wind.

Click - ('No use in runnin' now, ye wee torture-lovin' bastard. Get over here!')

Suddenly, Henry found himself spinning around in a tube of colours, sounds, and smells fluctuating in a chaotic, psychedelic fusion. His body underwent strange changes, stretching to a thousand times the length, then shrinking to a dot. His consciousness was given a similar beating, tossed around his shunted around his contorting physiology; one second, he was a nail in his middle toe; another, he was an armpit.

A wormhole, Henry concluded in annoyance.

Wasn't this going beyond the aesthetic scope of a fantasy RPG? Yet again, Saana demonstrated its terrible game design.

The wormhole spat him out in an oddly-decorated throne room.

A stone chamber—40-metres wide and long, 20-metres tall, the dimensions of a moderate-sized group boss battle—it had carpets and wall hangings were all sewn from wolf furs, and the furniture appeared to be crafted from bones of the same animal.

His donkey, transported along with him, was hiding in one corner, its head peeping out from behind a rotting pile of wolf carcasses.

At the head of the room, lying atop a throne of wolf skulls, was a boar as large as a mammoth. A circular array of horns protruded from its head like a kingly crown, and, dressed in regal fashion to match, it'd adorned itself in a tattered wolf-skin robe. The giant boar stared at Henry popping into its throneroom cautiously, its rose-pink eyes examining his features—his attire, his weapon, his Spelltome—with a perceptivity and calculation far beyond that natural to its species.

Under its robe, like a bratty child escaping a beating behind his older sibling, was tucked a regular-sized boar, the one that Henry had been about to kill earlier, throwing him a reproachful look and oinking to the larger boar to inform it of Henry slaughtering its herd.

Henry grunted at the smaller boar with annoyance. "You guys didn't seem to think the odds were unfair when it'd been fifty against one."

As for the oversized king boar, Henry supposed it related to what the bald trainer had been talking about earlier, a beast king that enforced the segregation mechanic for tutorial monsters - the wolves that vanished seemed to get teleported here and turned into decorations.

He didn't know anything more about this boss monster beyond that. In his position, why would he have ever paid attention to the lore about level 2 monsters?

The giant boar clicked its tongue, transmitting Henry another message. "Isn’t this a crackin’ surprise? Old King Torc thought he'd struck it lucky with another of ye handy-handed folk to furnish his room, but you are a much more precious prize."

Henry, pretending not to understand, put on a front of nervousness as he scanned the room.

The walls seemed to lack any doors for entering or exiting. The floor was the same. Dangling from the ceiling were chandeliers made of wolf bones, but they didn't lead to any vents - one chandelier seemed to have stacked neatly on top of it a bunch of crafting equipment and a leather-bound diary, a fact Henry quietly made note of.

There was no apparent entrance to this throneroom, this space appearing to exist in some kind of magical, liminal realm disconnected from the rest of Saana.

Henry, checking the game clock, made the peculiar observation that it'd completely frozen.

Oh, he realised. This was another Legendary quest.

The giant boar clicked again. "Pretend all ye want, ye wee sprat. King Torc knows ye can hear. Long ago, The Great Black One prophesied yer coming. 'A monkey with a bloodied sword, who stinks of ink and mounds of gold, with a thousand ears and crafty tongue, will slay Torc’s kin for nighttime fun.' You are definitely he."

Henry, hearing the words 'Black’ and ‘Prophesied’, combined with the language being spoken and the odd coincidences this morning, had an epiphany.

Yes, this was definitely a Legendary quest.

Henry pondered for a moment, then sneered internally, refusing to fall for the trap.

The Great Black One...The Vilified One...why did he never draw the attention of supernatural powers with less sinister names? Just once he'd like to be taken hostage instead by The Great Supporter of Reasonable Vacation Days and Sick Leave.

How irritating...

Shedding his nervous demeanour, he clicked his tongue and replied via the same secret language. "OK, whatever, I'm here, the prophecy is fulfilled. I've got better things to do, so what do I need to do before you open a wormhole and send me back? Am I being punished? Do you want me to sew a wolf-leather lampshade?"

The whole throne room had the tacky wolf-crafted furnishings theme. In addition to the earlier described items, there were wolf-leg framed mirrors and wolf-eyeball lightbulbs, and on and on and on.

Henry suspected that, by the game's lore, unlucky crafters were probably summoned here as punishment for using overly high-level items in the starting zone to slaughter noob monsters, a sort of perversion of the segregation mechanic that made higher-level monsters disappear. Hence, he'd triggered this by using his Spelltome.

"I'd rather not waste time sewing," Henry continued. "Has your species advanced to currencies yet? I'm happy to pay. Gold or platinum. Let's haggle."

The boar king snorted in amusement. "A smart one, ye are! Aye, in the past, King Torc would take ye up on that sewing offer. This day, though, between us, there can be no peaceful conclusion. According to the prophesy, if King Torc manages to murder ye—squish ye like a bug, fix ye on a tusk—then he'll be released from this dingy prison..."

Henry, listening to the lengthy villain speech, shook his head.

Stupid game...