Lake Hotferver, the campsite for Merlion Village, a clean-up crew reattaching the tent canopies that'd been blown away by Karnon's exploding wind-sphere.

In a corner, the flute-player and the indecisive beta-orbiter were squatting while sharing a bottle of spirits. The two were sullen and downcast, the liquor having bloated their faces and added a depressing droop to their already miserable eyes.

After Karnon's Doomreaver 'prank', they'd been interrogated separately by both The Empire and The Church. Shown hundreds of portraits of unrecognisable figures, they'd been forced to confess any relations while under the effects of lie-detection magic. Thankfully, the trio had been innocent. They were unwitting victims, like everyone else who'd been subjected to The Trickster God's bewildering machinations. The Empire's team released them with a reprimand for failing to contact them sooner and confiscated all their treasure-hunt booty for further examination. These items would never be given back.

But neither their gruesome deaths nor the theft were the cause of the beta-orbiters' dejection.

"Joel, Elvin, how are you two holding up?"

The inquiry came from a lad passing by. A tall fellow, he had a heavy build and the confident, erect posture that develops in all habituated to succeeding. Within a glance, one sized him up to be the antonym of the beta: the alpha.

Here was the fourth corner of their love quadrilateral, the other guy whose shadow had been cast over them, him.

Glued to the alpha's hip was the girl the beta-orbiters had been pining after, nuzzling against his chest for security. Seeing him after the trio's interrogation, she'd immediately leapt in his arms, forgetting everything in an instant. The clue-search by moonlight, the marathon in the sun, the cause of her tears, all had been erased by his masculine allure.

"Fine." The flute-player's voice choked up slightly.

"Fine," repeated beta number two.

But they weren't. How could they be when all their efforts had amounted to nothing but prepping their crush for the next round with him?

How sad.

Hours later, morning, the campsite for Byzantium.

In a tribute pile in the camp's centre, Byzantines trickling in from their hunts were stacking their kills along with treasures from the rest of the Plains Day's events. Shimmering gems and carved ornaments were strewn around the corpses of rhinoceroses and zebra and wildebeest. These trophies were being arranged into an aesthetic configuration for a group painting with the entire Village to celebrate The Plains Day's conclusion.

Off to the side was a mound of Swampbreath Warthog carcasses that'd been rejected for tribute. The party that'd slain the herd had been disappointed to discover that the creatures were worthless. Their meat was spoiled by toxic glands whose removal, due to the difficulty of the procedure, cost more than the value of the entire hog.

Presently, Henry was kneeling before this mound, using his Starhunting talents to process one carcass after another. The gland removal was a fusion of surgery and bomb defusal, multiple clamps being employed to close off ducts, a constant danger of an incorrect slice opening up a flood of putrescent sludge.

He'd volunteered for the task to occupy his hands while he took a break from the hours of research.

To ascertain Karnon's motives, he'd been compiling information in his Mental Library on the God. He'd pulled up reports from his guild's archives and ancient tomes absorbed from the world's many libraries during his search for The Cap of A Thousand Dreams.

He'd begun with mapping a chronology of the God's life. This, alone, was a monumental job. Karnon had amassed countless feats or 'pranks' in the two-thousand plus years he'd been active. The azure menace often ran hundreds of them concurrently. Some pranks had spanned centuries. Moreover, with the God's globe-traversing teleport, aspects of the same pranks were often written from academics in kingdoms without any knowledge of each other, each of their accounts inconsistent and incomplete. Henry's goal was to puzzle together this fractured collage. He had to disentangle the threads of logic from the insane clutter, assuming any even existed.

Putting that aside, since his return to the camping grounds, things had been relatively peaceful. Karnon was recaptured by his whirlwind wife, and The Church evacuated back to Central City. For Henry, there had been four assassination attempts from outside parties in revenge for him humiliating the 'Queen' at the tournament. After that, though, guards from The Empire had been stationed in the camp to prevent more. These were spies sent courtesy of The Saviour himself, who was probably investigating Henry right this moment. As for the Byzantines, they'd been indifferent to the matter - Suchi's Australian player base lacked loyalty to the Kingdom's predominately South-East-Asian leadership.

Beside Henry slicing away, Handsome Dan was crouched in alarm as he re-enacted a scene.

"...And all of a sudden, Big Bro, the stampede was upon us! The rooster was airborne! The field was drenched…"

The meathead had been recounting his independent adventures. He was in a chatty mood after being informed that Donkey Bro was recovering well after the death of his comrades. The NPCs, as part of their accelerated lifespans, both built and extinguished their emotional bonds at a faster rate, so the mere days that'd transpired in real-life had been weeks for the mule.

"…but when I pulled the lady out, she slapped me across the face! Big bro, that's the confusing part in all of this. At first, I wondered if I'd been projecting negativity into people's actions. According to my continued observations, though, they are genuinely nasty to me. Everyone's super mean. It's kind of weird."

Henry, having enough on his plate, was uninterested in maintaining this charade. "You're correct, Dan. They're being malicious because you're abnormally handsome to the point of unbelievability. Rather than assume your model good looks are authentic, everyone mistakenly concludes you're part of a group of sleezebags that crank up the attractiveness of their avatars in order to catfish naive chicks. All those girls who've slapped you, they thought you were groping them."

"Oh. Why didn't you explain that earlier, Big Bro?"

"Amusement? Jealousy? Precaution against you being poached by competitors if I start an underwear brand? Bit of everything." Henry grunted as he yanked out an unruly warthog heart. "Sorry."

"Hahaha." Dan was just relieved to know he'd done nothing wrong. "So avatars can be changed, eh? I guess that explains all the cartoon people. Hah! Hey, Big Bro, what do you look like? I bet you're taller."

"Nope. This is me."

"What about the rest of Team Friendship Forever?"

"Same. Where's the reaction to being informed you're astoundingly handsome?"

Dan shyly scratched his thick, healthy hair. "Actually, Big Bro, I already knew that bit. My mum spilt the beans aaaages ago. 'Daniel, you're the most handsome boy in the world.'"

"Lot's of mothers say that, but I suppose, in your case, the girls must've corroborated her opinion."

Dan shrugged his broad, muscular shoulders. "My school's all boys. The team always invite me to town with them, but Coach Brown told me I shouldn't in case my ball-handling skills suffer due to the lascivious distractions. What does 'lascivious' mean, Big Bro?"

"Sex stuff. Coach Brown's correct. Protect your purity, Dan. Life's too short for distractions from the climb."

A Byzantine Alchemist passing by with her hunting party stopped to study Henry's butchering work. When she inspected the extracted glands he was laying out in a bath of ice, she expressed her astonishment.

"Crikey, Big Bro, these Swampy Gibbles are in flawless condition."

"HF," he replied. "Take them if you want."

"Are you sure?"

"My Alchemy's too high for this noob trash. HF."

"Awesome! Thanks!" The Alchemist, not standing on ceremony, scooped them all up into her inventory. "By the way, your matches were hilarious. Shame about you getting caught cheating, but I'm rooting for you next time. Thanks again, Big Bro!"

While she scampered off, Henry angrily slammed a warthog liver into a pile of offal. "HF. HF. HF. HF. HF. HF."

Dan, watching this interaction, was stroking his chiselled jaw, ruminating on whether now was the best time to broach a sensitive topic he'd been intending to discuss for a while.

"Big Bro," he said seriously, "your dislike for being called Big Bro, that's also a distraction thing, right?"

Henry turned to the meathead in astonishment. "That's the most astute comment to ever spill from those handsome lips. Since you understand, why are you still here? Scram!"

Dan smiled handsomely, this insight being one he'd achieved in their very first encounter. "Big Bro, please, you're mistaken. I know because I've been in your shoes myself. Once upon a time, when I was nine, my little cousins used to follow me around copying everything I did, and I'd get really annoyed with them. Sometimes, I'd even swear at them to leave me alone. Bug off! I'm not proud of my actions, Big Bro. One day, though, my dad sat me down and told me I was committing a grave error by treating them so unkindly. See, what I was actually getting mad at, he revealed, was love. It's love that compels lil bros and lil sisses to imitate us, and it's love that makes us fear that impulse. What if we guide them astray? What if they inherit our imperfections? Annoyance is a mask for the overwhelming, crushing terror of responsibility. But, while it's natural to be frightened, Big Bro, you cannot succumb to this fear. Each of us, when it is our turn to be a big bro, must accept our duty and welcome the lil bros and lil sisses under our wing as we have once been welcomed ourselves. That's how we grow as people. Both them and us. Love, responsibility, these are the weight training regime for our humanity - taking on a few lil bros and lil sisses expands and fortifies the heart, allowing it in the future to bear more. Dad's really wise."

Henry didn't completely disagree. "In general, that's solid advice. The issue is that this mindset has a hard limit, past which it becomes untenable. Eventually, to be able to properly care for yourself and the people you love, you have to refuse to take on more. What if you had a million little cousins following you around? A billion?"

"Well, Big Bro, I guess I'd have to make my heart a billion times bigger."

Henry, submerging his elbows back into a carcass, muttered at the ridiculousness of that statement. "Just make your heart a billion times bigger…this is what I deserve for associating with imbeciles…"

From the processed warthogs, Henry kept only the leaf lard from one for himself, using it to bake extra flaky breakfast pastries stuffed with a sweet Ibanmothe nut-jam. These were claimed within minutes of them exiting the oven. Cathy, while wolfing down one, was moved so much by one of the Ingredient Harmonies that she gave him her forgiveness as long as he promised to put in more effort with the girls next time. Henry, his thoughts occupied with Karnon, wasn't even aware she'd been angry with him, let alone the identity of these girls he'd supposedly offended or hurt or something. Loki and Suhita? Maybe she'd fallen for his trashtalk and assumed he'd try bang the 'Queen'?

Following the arrival of the last Byzantine, Village Head Walker gathered them before the tribute pile. They would be leaving their treasures to be sold off by The Empire, and Walker gave a rousing speech about the necessity of sacrifice. Their inability to takes these goods with them was equated to the monthly struggle of the Ibanmothe who had to forfeit any possessions they couldn't carry every month during the Cleansings. After that, in the spirit of community, everyone was asked to share their aspirations for The Slums. Then, they all posed in front of the tribute pile for the final group portrait.

The Plains Day had an official closing ceremony. The entire 'Kingdom' would gather at 'Lake' Hotferver. With the watering hole's perimeter lined with The Grant Hunt's most valuable 'tributes', the 'Queen' would perform a dance, splashing around in the 'Lake's' ankle-deep waters like a flamingo with rabies.

But Henry's contractual obligations to tolerate these noobs for the evening had elapsed. He skipped the show to travel back to Suchi and find a secure spot for returning to The Overdream. His friends also wanted to end their evening - the event's conclusion had run well over time due to the delays from Karnon's obliteration of the camping ground. Henry agreed to bus them to Byzantium by stowing their inert, logged-out bodies in his camel-drawn wagon. He would drive himself, having relieved the NPCs he'd hired for the initial trip in case of another assassination attempt.

This arrangement somehow devolved into him bussing 15 more Byzantines. None of them were concerned after witnessing the earlier attacks he'd thwarted.

As a gesture of peace, though, Walker briefly rode shotgun along with Henry as they left the camping grounds, offering his presence as protection while they passed through the dense foot-traffic heading in the opposite direction towards the watering hole. During a short chat, Walker lamented Henry and Artemis's disqualification from The Pain on The Plains. The lost Slumpoints would have raised Byzantium to first on the Kingdom's leaderboard. His sadness was disingenuous. At the camping ground's perimeter, the Village Head separated and wished him luck on the rest of the journey.

Steadily, the wagon's carriage became quieter and quieter, the passengers logging out one by one. Then, Henry was alone with the miles of grass ahead and a few scattered travellers. The land was eerily quiet after all the wildlife had been extinguished during the hunt, reminding him of the winters at his cabin.

When Lake Hotferver was about to fall beneath the horizon, he paused and climbed up on the wagon's roof. Soaking in a last glimpse of the camping grounds, he summoned his notepad and pencil, and scribbled a final sketch for the little romance he'd been writing.

Once more, in the tradition of man, he moulded the environment to his purposes. The chatter of an announcer's projected voice from the closing ceremony became a light savannah breeze. Loin-clothed Villagers in attendance were redistributed through the yellow grass, in caravans of youths trudging back to the city, tired, but the most satisfying tiredness. The Church's tower, whose blue and white banners had been replaced after their departure with The Empire's flags, was erased to reveal a single fluffy cloud hidden behind it.

For the love quadrilateral's fourth corner, the girl's boyfriend, Henry'd modelled the character on Merlion Village's arena trainer, a Long-Term Villager who'd been a hitman during Suchi's gang era. The character was a playboy, a loose cannon who often caved in to his impulses. His latest infidelity during a bender had been the cause for the girl weeping in the crowd before the marathon. The story's second section, its events unfolding over a parallel evening without Karnon's pesky intrusion, focused around whether the girl would break her promise not to return to him. In the background, imperceptible unless a reader squinted at the page, simmered a question about the fourth corner's nature. Was he someone sympathetic, whose instability stemmed from the trauma of murdering so many people in cold blood? Or had he gravitated towards the work because it harmonised with an innate evil?

Almost the entirety of that backstory was fiction, a projection from Henry's psyche. Although true that the Village's arena trainer had been a former hitman, the notes available to Henry lacked the detail to infer a personality or him being the girl's partner. Plenty of other candidates for the fourth had been available, each of whom would have yielded a different explanation to the mystery of the weeping girl. 'I'm not going back! He's crazy if he thinks I will!' – the utterance was too ambiguous. He might not even have referred to someone with a romantic role for her. Henry could've expressed his own frustrations with identical phrasing in regards to Alex's pressure to cancel his retirement.

Henry, too remote from those four to scry their truth, chose to end his story on a similar unresolved note. For the passage to accompany his last sketch, he ditched his protagonists and composed a short, detached poem on the terrain. With so much hanging in the air, he felt it tacky to resume an idealised literary sentiment with Nomad Sabre. Thus, he simply used the alien mess inside of him. The tragedy of the Singaporean kids was lowered within a confused, jumbled pool, made to drown alongside Henry's contempt and sorrow and guilt and worry and pain for this place, the strange, jet-lagged lure to sleep when the sun was so bright and hot, and the sailor's melancholy as he bid farewell to humanity for the next two-decade haul.

He finished his sketch by drawing the Singaporean youths as four faceless dots amongst the mob. Then, absorbing it and the other drawings into his Mental Library, he paired them with their written passages. While the book compiled, he activated his ring and temporarily switched to an NPC identity.

Congratulations! Your creation of An Ode to Young Men After a Long Drought qualifies as a miracle.

Scholar level has increased by 1.

Artist level has increased by 1.

His eyes rested on the notification for a while.

At the current pace of Scholar level-ups, he would soon be able to utilise the Tier-8 Spelltomes he'd won from Karnon during the cooking competition. A secret reason of Henry's for accepting the bet had been that, in his now spoiled plan to save Suchi, these tomes would have proved useful, their extra power allowing him to minimise casualties by performing the final assassination unassisted. Now, he—

Henry winced.

It was too much. His first consideration should have been for his progression on the literary climb that'd enabled him to turn a subject as schlocky as a 'love quadrilateral' into high-art. This trash zone needed to stop intruding into his life and messing up his priorities.

As if Suchi were mocking his attempts to avoid it, a comical clangour, like someone shaking a cutlery drawer, sounded below him. A golden helmet poked out from the wagon's rear.

Justinian had been amongst the extra passengers, the roleplayer's grandma having rebuked him for gaming past his bedtime.

"Sir Henry, I've been meditating on your answer from before our departure, the aspiration you shared for this impoverished realm."

"The roleplayer genocide?" Henry's mood was thoroughly ruined - what the hell was happening today?

The Crusader pretended not to hear that. "'To see the flowers blossom', these words of yours, were they a jest or a figure of speech?"

"Neither, I'm a hobby botanist."

"Sir Henry, I, too, cling to this sylvan dream, in which the wilted buds in these dry soils may be revitalised to blossom and bloom. I must apologise for my earlier reservations."

"If you're asking me to help with your 6v6 team again, stop. Stop roleplaying."

Justinian was in anguish about the humiliating defeat at the tournament. "Hitherto, Sir Henry, I've been beset by trepidations as to the innocence of your aims. Now, however, in light of these common morals, I, without caveat or qualification, do formally invite you to join me in the crusade against Him and His shadowy legion. Together, we shall pry His rapacious fingers from the realm's throat and invite back the missing air. Let the good folk grow! Let the flowers blossom!"

With more clangouring, the roleplayer began to clamber up a staircase to extend a gauntlet for a desperate handshake.

Henry tried to slap the offered hand away, but the kid, with his freakish reflexes, dodged the action instinctually, his arm pistoning back mere millimetres beyond the danger range, some proximity maintained for an immediate counterattack.

The Crusader gasped. "What be the meaning of this assault? Has a demon possessed you?"

Henry resisted the urge to plant a foot against this idiot's golden forehead and kick him off. "Firstly, you keep using vague, masculine pronouns: Him, He, His. He is The Tyrant, yes?"

The Crusader roleplayed tensing up in fright. "Foul not your tongue with His accursed epithet. Speak of the devil and He shall—"

Henry, clapping to interrupt, pushed the cover of one of his Spelltomes at the Crusader. "This a Tier 5-2 item. For me to own it, what guild must I be affiliated with?"

"The Company…" Justinian's knightly countenance broke for a second into the confusion of an ordinary teenager. "You're a member?"

"Yeah, dude. So there's no way in hell or heaven I'm signing up for whatever quixotic crusade you've planned to destroy Him by winning a recruitment tournament. I reject. I refuse. I'm not interested in any of your low-level, ineffectual solutions. To clarify, I wasn't attracted to the organisation for riches or power. I'm all-aboard The Tyrant Train, morally. You can find me in the engine room, shovelling fat heaps of coal into the furnace. Choo-choo-choo, let's go, Tyrant, spread that rule of law, dish out that universal access to medicine, employment, education, and housing. Some murderous scumbags like your 'King' got a problem with this? $%#% them! Let their corpses be fertiliser! Let the flowers blossom!"

Henry restrained himself from ranting further.

There was no need to ask why this roleplayer hated him, The Tyrant. The unflinching oppression he'd used during his reformations had made him the big bad of Saana, its Emperor Palpatine, its Sauron, its Pharaoh. Naturally, a knight would view him as a dragon in need of a sword through the chest.

"Save any requests to fight over honour or whatever for the arena," Henry warned. "I won't cheapen this moment further by boxing out a gilded can of fucking idiot."

Justinian—who'd missed all prior mentions of Henry's guild membership because no one gossips with a dark-age-era knight who never breaks character—struggled to formulate a response to this barrage in character. This situation was complex. On the one hand, Walker had forbidden him from attacking The Company on sight due to the blowback and embarrassment. On the other hand, this shock double-crossing should enrage Justinian enough to over-ride his sensibilities. On a third hand, it wasn't technically double-crossing because Henry had been hostile to him from the start. On a fourth hand, Henry's revelation had employed an anachronistic metaphor, beyond Justi—

Henry clapped again. "Speed it up; the delay is also out of character."

"Excuse me, but while I meditate on this black revelation, I must reje—"

"Cool with me. Bye."

Henry, kicking the roleplayer off, jumped back into the driver's seat and continued on without a second thought.