Saana was an international game. Although Henry slept, this didn't mean an end to the devious designs going on elsewhere around the globe.

Suchi. The Horny Boar Fields.

After the Instructors Union had been replaced by The Empire’s cronies, the proportion of noobs wearing Village insignia had risen to over 90%.

Watching the new blood was a young woman perched up in a tree. Her face had the flat, unmoving quality of a statue or a robot. Signs of life, however, could be found in a pair of athletic legs dangling over the edge of her branch-seat, which pedaled through the air with the energetic beat of a song she’d bought from the in-game store.

“Little sister, by ignoring us, you’re making a grave mistake,” a Village Recruiter addressed her in a condescending tone from below. “The Shanghai Swordfish won’t repeat our offer.”

“My Village is decided,” the young woman replied without emotion.

“Fine, it seems I got out of bed for nothing.” The recruiter threw up his hands in surrender, then began to walk away while muttering to ‘himself’ loudly. “The boss won’t be happy about this, but what can we do? If the little sister wants an inferior Village, we must support her choice.”

He’d be back to her harass her soon, the young woman knew.

But she was in too chirpy a mood to feel annoyed. Bouncing around the inner walls of her heart was a devilish thrill, the same one that’d motivated her to spontaneously create a new character in Suchi.

A small smile being carved into her statuesque face, she continued to watch the noobs.

Their clumsiness, their fear, and their excitement reminded her of her own first day 11 years ago, way back during Saana’s first instalment.

She’d been only 5 years old. Her parents had left her in the care of her older brother, something they avoided doing for good reason, and he’d lured into putting on the game’s VR-unit by telling her she could play with life-sized versions of her dolls.

She could still hear his cackling as a boar gored her on its horn, could see the white of his teeth and the pink of his tongue.

Her brother was a major #@$%.

Nevertheless, for that specific cruelty, she held no grudge. Without it, she wouldn't be where or who she was today.

Her legs stopped moving as a dragonfly landed on the tip of her standard-issue noob shoe.

For camouflage, the top of the insect's body had been coloured the sickly yellow of the grass that carpeted Kanaru’s expansive savanna lands.

Now playing Putrid Corpse Knife Defilement by Necroguts.

To get a closer inspection, she carefully raised her foot to her face, her muscles moving with the conscious poise of a gymnast.

Suddenly, a feathered object divebombed into her peripheral vision.

Her hand flashed out to catch it, but her reaction had been too slow.

The dragonfly, startled by the attack, took flight.

The young woman gave a mean glower at a Rainbow Bee-Eater scared poopless in her grip.

A second later, she felt her palm being wet by a sticky spurt.

“Dumb bird!”

In anger, she wound up her arm and biffed the creature like a baseball.

At the height of the arc, the bird unfolded its wings, undamaged, and flew away to hunt insects somewhere safer.

Swearing, the young woman plucked some leaves to wipe off the bird poop.

While she was cleaning herself, some German dudes from her tutorial group spotted her in the tree. With their equipment torn up from wrestling with the boars, they were returning to their instructor to deposit some bodies, before heading back out onto the fields to collect the rest.

“Girl from China!” yelled one.

“What?” She stared at her desecrated palm, realising that she’d have to make a trip all the way down to the stream. “Or I could scrape it off?”

“If you’re afraid, we can help.”

“Why would I want help?” Unsheathing her dagger, she scraped off the poop-smeared skin of her palm.

“WAS ZU HÖLLE?!”

“TEUFEUL!”

The young woman, flinching at the noise, lowered an annoyed glare at the screaming Germans, who she now realised had been asking her if she needed assistance with the boars.

“That trash?" she sneered. "I finished ages ago.”

Raising her dagger with a flap of skin dangling from the blade, she pointed at a group of squabbling Village Recruiters. The cause of their bickering was the speed trial board for collecting boars, or more specifically the name that’d taken the highest position - Zàngméi33.

The young woman hadn’t planned on submitting a time. Her instructor must have noticed the speed with which she dispatched of the rabbits, then spied on her with the boars.

These Suchi people were vile.

Amongst the squabblers, the recruiter who’d been harassing her last tried to cross gazes. When she slipped this attempt, he came scuttling back over anyway, shooing the grossed out Germans off.

“Great news, little sister! The boss said we can increase the signing bonus to 5000 Slum Points!”

“My Village is decided,” she repeated her refusal once again.

“Of course, you’ve decided on Village, we at Shanghai Swordfish respect your choice, but, listen, if you jump down, I can show you footage of our state-of-the-art training—”

“Ignore the lies of this southern dog!” yelled another recruiter, sprinting over. “Their dilapidated facilities cannot compare to those of The Beijing Ducks!”

“Quack, quack, quack!” taunted yet another recruiter. “Can a duck stand up to the cat’s claw? Sign up with The Shenzhen Leopards!”

The young woman sighed.

Without her levels, she had no means to swat these buzzing mosquitoes, and calling in the girls would blow her cover.

How would Cripple-gēgē handle this?

Pay them to scram? Her gold was with a friend.

Septic Rose presented the recruiters her clean palm. “I’m not interested."

Muting her external sounds, she cranked up the music and returned to noob-watching.

The Slum Empire Headquarters.

Fuelled by coffee and cigarettes, Ramiro and his conspirators had been in a gruelling meeting dissecting the many strange events of the previous day. Each member had reported back their findings with the respectful, mournful tone of one delivering a speech at a funeral.

Duke Edwaldo, in his search for Senior Director Okai Van, had discovered that the moles under the Senior Director’s command had also been abducted, indicating that The Company was building a case against The Empire for their smuggling operation. Best case scenario, The Empire would be forced to pay a crippling penalty fee and return the stolen arms. Worst, they were done.

Head Scholar Enrique’s analysis of the cure for Sikarmilki’s curse that'd been distributed by the Ibanpita found that they’d used alchemy supplies stolen from The Empire’s arsoned warehouses. From this, he concluded that the Ibanpita church had set the episode up to entrap them. Oba Iskander, an Alchemist using the pseudonym ‘Master Brady’, Karnon’s abducted protégé, and several other suspicious figures that’d been sighted around The Slums, these were The Church's agents. The reasoning behind the Ibanpita’s actions remained mysterious.

“It’s dangerous.” King Gustaf wrung the nerves out of his fingers. “Withdraw the funds and pay off The Company. Once our position is stabilised, we can...”

Ramiro, unlike his underlings, was in a tranquil state. Reclined in his chair, he stared up at the purple haze of his Basindi Boiler spreading across the flapping roof of the tent.

When his father had taken to the drink, he used to boast that the men of his line were hard because they had Amazonian blood in their veins. He’d claim that the disease-ridden jungles and the cayman-infested rivers had ingrained in his Indian forebearers, down to their DNA, a contradictory love. The Indian had to be a family man, who to feed the village must sweat himself close to the point of death by dehydration. Simultaneously, because the Amazon had a way of randomly besetting the Indian with catastrophe, he had to be capable of withdrawing his love at will. He who could not ignore the mewing of his injured child, who could not abandon them where they lay crying, soon found himself victim to the jaguar as well, and shortly thereafter his other children would perish without his protection. To survive, you needed to move on from the losses quickly.

Ramiro didn't believe his father’s drunken fables - their family had the typical Spanish lineage of most Argentines. Nevertheless, he appreciated the trait wherever it'd arisen from, for in situations like this it allowed him to make the decisive call when lesser men would crumble.

He cut off Gustaf. “I agree with both you and Sanchez.”

“How?” asked a Metalworker, alias Count Sanchez. “If we withdraw funding as the Swedish coward would have us do, then the smuggling operation is over and, with it, the West Bank operation.”

This was the reason The Empire had been smuggling weapons: to build an army capable of seizing the private property belonging to a certain someone on the West Bank of the Suchi River.

The territory had been a growing cause of concern for The Empire. Under their dominion, the population of The Slums had exploded, and they'd become increasingly dependent on the resources produced by the WBAE to feed the swelling beast. This was an intolerable point of vulnerability in the long run.

Thankfully, through historical analysis, they’d discovered that the Ibanpita would refrain from interfering in fights over the territory so long as whoever controlled it had progressed far enough through The Trials of Nerin to obtain a permanent building exemption.

The conquest had initially been set for four months from now. They’d boosted Ramiro far enough through The Trials, but their army's strength was not yet up to the task. The current owner of the WBAE seemed to spend all the profits that should have gone into development into importing mercenaries to deter an attack.

As troublesome as that was, it was also a sign of insecurity.

Count Sanchez had argued that they should invest more funds into the smuggling operation to conquer the WBAE sooner. With the territory secured, they could auction off plots to gather the funds with which to appease The Company.

“We end the smuggling,” continued Ramiro, “and divert the funds into mass producing mid-tier arms. During the chaos of The Cleansing, we’ll have the displaced Ibanmothe zerg the place. We should do it this month; I have a feeling The Company will come down on us hard, and we’ll need the land to survive an embargo.”

His underlings were speechless. The Company retaliating in this way wasn’t impossible, but the conspirators had been skirting around the issue out of a sense that it was a dead-end if it came to that. As for the next Cleansing, that was in a fortnight, much sooner than they’d anticipated.

Queen Atusa pointed out a flaw they'd established previously that prevented them from using this tactic. “If we arm the masses, we lose the guarantee of controlling them.”

“That’s correct,” Ramiro agreed. “Or it was until yesterday, when the enemy gangs up and left during the moth episode to escape persecution. Dead or fled, the balance has tipped in our favour."

"Far enough?"

"My intuition tells me it has, but, if it’s not there yet, we can coerce it a bit closer. Maximise the Ibanmothe casualties during the assault, perhaps.”

“Do you have their loyalty to that extent? Will they sacrifice themselves?”

Ramiro responded without hesitation. “Definitely.”

After answering his underlings' minor quibbles, he had them check the validity of his plan by bringing out the data.

Inside The Living Fortress, The Market of the Convergent Winds, the shopping district of choice for any self-respecting Southern Wind Elemental.

In a home furnishings boutique, a bubblegum-pink tornado was hovering before a two-hundred-metre-tall wall of levitating curtain samples.

“What do you prefer, darling?” asked Princess Pateela. “Sinister Umber, Celestial Cinnamon, or Walnut of Wonder?”

Behind her moped an azure tornado. Spinning inside his straighted-out internal winds were bow ties, knitted cardigans, beige pants – the standard attire for a well-behaved, well-domesticated tornado husband.

“There’s no difference,” replied Karnon with a slight temper.

The Princess pulled a sample off the windrack. “The Walnut of Wonder reminds me of late spring with coconut highlights. But it’s 1150 Windbits more per square metre. Isn’t that a bit pricey, darling?”

“You’re royalty. Ask, and they’ll cough it up for free in a pretty package with a bow on top. Always worked for me.”

Princess Pateela, putting the sample back, gave her husband a chilly gust. “If you think for ONE SECOND that we’re going to be using your IRRESPONSIBLE, INCAUTIOUS approach to mismanage OUR domains—oh no.” Her winds tinged a sick shade of green. “Oh dear, it looks like our sweet Karneela is kicking up a storm. Don’t worry, baby. While mummy wummy’s in the little breeze’s room, daddy will pick out the curtains for your nursery!”

The Princess hurried off to the tornado bathroom.

Karnon, as his wife flew away, hovered in place for a few seconds.

An opportunity for freedom!

Slowly, very slowly, he began to float down to the ground, where he could cast his global teleport and escape.

But he failed to notice a thread-thin, bubblegum-pink chain tied around his tornado ankle, which was tugged by his devious descent.

“DON’T YOU DARE, KARNON! CHOOSE THE CURTAINS OR YOU’RE GOING TO SPEND A WEEK SLEEPING IN A STORM CLOUD!”

Karnon froze.

“Fiddlesticks.”

Curtains of Chilly Cedar and Brown Brunette flapped in front of him, mocking his misfortune.

With his God senses, he could detect minuscule differences in hue, tint, shade, texture – all these curtains were EXACTLY the same boring type of brown.

“Gods damn it!” he huffed in a tantrum, ejecting a pair of polished leather boat shoes.

But the curtains were as indifferent to his misery as they were identical.

Werewood, Calm Coffee, Charred Peanut, Choco Espresso, Brown Russet...

Karnon’s winds suddenly became unstable as a tremor ran violently down from his corona to the base of his tornado tail. This was accompanied by an internal rain with near-freezing droplets.

“Ugh,” he groaned, bearing the tearing pain of the convulsion, his seventh in the past hour.

They’d been growing ever more frequent.

The Princess had—

“Ugh!”

The Princess had dismissed his complaints as being his body synchronising with her morning sickness, another proof of their destined love, but Karnon—

“Ugh!”

But Karnon knew the truth.

They were withdrawal symptoms.

“UUUUGHHHHHH!”

How many hours had passed since his last act of mischief?

As the word mischief echoed in his mind, he was gutpunched with a monstrous convulsion. This one was more than a thousand, billion, quadrillion times more intense than any pain inflicted upon him in his millennia of existence, even than that one time he’d tried to consummate a different sham marriage with a porcupine.

But if he’d endured that, then he could endure this, too.

Gritting his winds against the torture, he soothed his suffering with the memories of previous pranks.

Breeding penguins to adapt to a volcanic environment!

Replacing Emperor Lavant’s castle walls with fruit cake!

Committing petty theft—

"UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!"

Committing petty theft as a God!

No matter his efforts, however, the indistinguishable curtains taunted him.

Drab Fields, Cooked Coyote, Sleepy Sepia, Beavers in Love, Choco Camel...

Each one of their bullshit names was another monotonous punch to his stomach, another gob of sameness saliva spat on his shrinking soul.

This misery, these ten quadrillion-billion papercuts to the webbing between his conniving fingers was his shrinking. His jubilant soul was shrinking!

"Mischief, please! One tiny morsel of misconduct! My kingdom for a monkey trick! AGGGHHHHHHH!"

Black Bistre, Copper and Iron, Marvellous Mahogany, Choco Biscuit, Choco Dirt...

"Wait!"

Karnon—the withdrawal symptoms ending instantly because he'd been faking them to earn sympathy—gave his surroundings a sneaky scan. The boutique’s shopkeeper was hovering around the entrance to the bathroom, waiting to attend The Princess. No extra security.

Naive fools!

His winds becoming still, he extended a tendril to the Walnut of Wonder and moved the sample over to Sinister Umber's rack. Then, he took the Sinister Umber sample and—wait for it—moved it to the rack for Walnut of Wonder!

It was the classic switcheroo!

“Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehe...hehehehe...heh..heh...huh...ha...”

But his snicker, like everything else that’d been once glorious about him, drowned a slow death in the mundane swamp of marriage, its sinking arm waving desperately for help but receiving none from this cold-hearted world.

Karnon, recolouring himself Sinister Umber, threw a bottle of vanilla-scented cologne to the north-west, sending it speeding over the horizon. “Just you—UUUUGHH!—wait, Professor T! The semester has barely begun. I will find a—AAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

The Slum Empire HQ.

A couple hours into their planning, Ramiro received a message informing him that a delegation from the Ibanpita church had arrived.

Leaving his underlings to continue, he went out to meet them alone. Whatever their demands, he would happily swear his compliance. Words were free, and the rest could be delayed until the WBAE belonged to him.

Passing through the military compound, he was greeted by the NPC guards that had swapped onto duty during their planning. Using a Peopleworker skill for prompting personal info stored about the target, he replied to them with questions about their loved ones and their hobbies. Being spoken to thusly by The Saviour sent them over the moon. No doubt they would spread the news of his beneficence.

Outside the tent for entertaining guests was stationed a platoon of church guards.

As Ramiro ducked through the flap, he saw a solitary figure, a young, bald-headed man kneeling on a cushion before a coffee table.

This guest’s sky-blue robes, inscribed with the names of Gods, were rolled up at the sleeves, exposing the soft and unmuscled forearms of the non-labourer. His hands moved through the last preparations of a pot of tea with an effeminate elegance.

The feminine first impression made for an unsettling contrast when he swivelled a pair of eyes upon Ramiro so deeply sunken into the skull that they were cast in the shadow of his brow.

“King Ramiro.”

“The illustrious Archdeacon! You should have waited. It’s unseemly for one of such high-acclaim to dirty their holy fingers.”

Archdeacon Mohon gave him a cheeky smile then turned a hunter’s focus to the red stream spilling into his teacup. “Excuse my impatience. I’m sure you’re aware that such luxuries are forbidden to us except when meeting for official business.” When the tea reached the cup’s brim, the Archdeacon raised it to his mouth and took a dainty sip, his eyes closing with pleasure as he savoured the berry-zest popping on his tastebuds. “Pray I am reborn Wankalgalese so that I may wake up every day to this ambrosia. There’s our proposal.”

The Archdeacon gestured towards an envelope on the table across from him.

Ramiro, seating himself, picked it up, undid the seal, and withdrew a letter. His hand reached for a cup that the Archdeacon poured him but halted when he noticed that the author was Pope Berbahaya. This was the leader of the Ibanpita and, effectively, the ruler of Suchi.

The Pope had written that he and The Church were mighty impressed with The Empire’s efforts to alleviate the sorrows of The Slums by improving the infrastructure and ‘fixing the long-standing enmity between the sand and clay’. So impressed were they that they’d decided to help. They were instituting mentor programs to assist those Ibanmothe who’d stagnated in their progress through The Trials of Nerin. Additionally, The Church had partnered with the West Bank Autonomous Exclave to distribute land grants for Slum citizens with desirable skills, local and Offworlder, and loan programs to kickstart their businesses.

All that was expected from The Empire was that they continue their charitable work. Also, they should cease their assassinations and promotion of factionalistic rhetoric, lift the barriers preventing The Empire’s craftsmen from accepting jobs with the Central City guilds, and allow the non-Slum-Empire Offworlders to participate in the festive tournaments.

In short, they were going to strip Ramiro of his power.

The hatred held by the impoverished NPCs of The Slums for the affluent residents of Central City was a key component to The Empire’s dominion. Militarily, it motivated the NPCs to sign up for the army. Spiritually, it was the fuel of his growing cult of personality that prepped them for the transition to true monarchy. Monetarily, the added sense of purpose from ‘joining the cause’ meant workers accepted drastically lower wages and rejected more lucrative positions offered by Central.

In so far as this hatred diminished, the Slum Empire weakened. If it fell low enough, they would have to compete with Central over the labour of Slumdwellers on purely economic grounds. That might've been possible with the WBAE as a production centre. Alas, The Church had just cockblocked them from seizing the territory by allying with its owner.

Axe in hand, they were spreading his balls on the chopping block and expecting him to stay still.

Ramiro levelled a cold gaze upon the Archdeacon, who was relishing his tea with the spice of humiliation dealt.

The means of retaliation for Ramiro's goons were limited. The Ibanpita wielded a grotesque amount of magical power, with which they’d repelled invasions from forces a hundred-fold stronger than Ramiro’s meagre townwatch. Their rule over Suchi, including The Slums, had always been absolute. Theoretically, much as they incinerated The Slums every month, they could exterminate anyone or any organisation they wished without repercussion. Only, they never exercised their power because they adhered to a rigorous code of indifferent self-restraint, much like the Zone Guardians.

Ramiro was confused. During his rise to power, he'd been careful never to commit an infraction that would warrant The Church's interference. A part of him burned to ask the Archdeacon what he’d done wrong exactly. However, his tongue was held by a stubborn sense of honour, a trait that his father also claimed came from the Indians.

“I won’t see you out.” Ramiro got to his feet and left to inform his underlings of the changes.

Auckland, New Zealand. The sun rising over the harbour.

When Henry awoke, Hannes contacted him to discuss the state of his brain. Everything seemed to be normal, so he was at liberty to start the next Overdream session whenever he wished.

He performed his usual workout with Alex and a few other members of the inner circle. Since his experience from The Cap of a Thousand Dreams was inaccessible in the real world, he lost his sparring matches in the VR gym handily, although his win-rate did improve slightly from the non-Overdream hours of practice.

Afterwards, feeling in no hurry to return to Saana, he caught an auto-taxi to his grandma’s house for breakfast.

His dad had already left for work, while his younger sister had gone to school early for swimming practice.

Still, the house was far from empty. There were two dozen other relatives, who lived in the same run-down housing complex with his grandmother. Like many of the poor of 2050, they’d coped with the financial struggles by cramming into multi-generation housing.

After striking it rich, Henry’d spoken with his grandmother about purchasing individual houses for his uncles and aunts. However, she'd declined, saying that his offer was excessive and that family should live together. In the end, he achieved a compromise by secretly, unknown even to his grandmother, buying their apartment building, fixing it up, and slashing the rent.

During breakfast, his grandmother—who had easily detected the housing scheme, Henry's sly techniques having been learned from none other than herself—gave him an extra large serving of Seaweed Omelette for his capitulating on the matter of university enrolment.

Leaving her place, he wandered aimlessly around the city and soaked up the urban sensations.

At a museum for antiques, a greying gentleman demonstrated the use of a 'cellular phone'.

A pedicurist who read fortunes warned Henry that he needed to stop skipping classes.

From a book store, he bought a Korean light novel from an unrecognised author. In good company, he walked to a nearby memorial garden for casualties of the A.I. revolution, where he wasted the rest of the morning reading under the rustling shade of a silver maple.

It was well past noon by the time he logged back in.

In Suchi, he travelled down to the docks to pick up supplies he’d ordered, did a tour of the Central City market for some extras, then went to a hidden room in the attic of a bed & breakfast.

Having obtained all he wanted from the real world, he entered The Overdream for the next 19-year stint.