Volume 4 – Unrivalled Under The Heavens; Invincible Beneath The Sun

Part 1 - Unrivalled Under The Heavens

A dreamless place, tens of millions of bodies stacked in a pile, all of them in various states of dying.

The strange pile's bottom layer was composed of gargantuan monsters with tentacles split, wings severed, fangs smashed, eyesockets emptied. Above them lay the smaller monsters in no better state. Then there was the layer of soldiers: the elves, the dwarves, and the humans in armour pierced and crushed. Above them were the criminals with nooses around their necks, decapitated heads, and faces blue with poison. And the topmost layer was the citizens: the men, the women, and the children, whose skin had withered parchment-thin and clung to their emaciated skeletons, whose lungs gasped and panted for relief from the debris in which they’d been entombed.

None were fully-dead, though. Stuck for eternity in the last moments of their lives, the dying squirmed and shoved, wailed and howled to be freed from the crushing mass of each other.

On the face of this mountain of the near-dead, a solitary figure would climb. Using the bodies as hand- and foot-holds, he would be forced to dig his fingers deep into their flesh to secure his grip. The closer he would draw near to the summit, the steeper would grow the mountain, the fiercer the gale winds that eternally threatened to knock him off.

He'd lost count of how many times he'd fallen and been forced to restart. This time, too, he would fall, he knew. Nevertheless, he could not stop the climb.

The climber was presently at the very base amongst the worst of the monsters. From the bottom, the peak was invisible and the breeze was so light it wouldn’t disturb a hair.

At the base, studying the shifting layout of the handholds, he was joined by a red-skinned woman. Tall, with sinewy muscles and a square-shaped face, her feminine side was visible mostly in her ornamentation, in a hibiscus flower threaded through hair grown to the waist and a sarong with a dye-pattern fit for a monarchess.

“Again?” asked the woman.

The last time, he mumbled grotesquely through lips sewn shut by barbed wire.

The woman pointed at a spot, far out of sight at the highest altitudes. “You’d have to ascend faster than it’s growing.”

The climber grabbed the wire silencing him, the barbs lodging into the pads of his fingers. Without wincing, he yanked, wrenching the wire free and tearing off half his lips.

“I’m leaving you all now,” he said, the shredded flaps of his mouth splattering saliva and blood down his chin. “I’m climbing the mountain.”

The woman smirked at the monstrous discipline to hide his motives from her even here. “So this is where I end up.” She surveyed the mountain with disgust, regret, and mutual respect. “How do I die this time?”

“Violently, I imagine.” The climber pondered the most likely scenario. “Comedically. 17-months from now, a group of pasty college kids failing their classes decide they fancy your castle. You fight them off for a while, but they never stop reviving. Millions of others seeking the fun of the challenge stream in to join them. When you finally submit, they execute you for XP points. That’s your end. In the next Cycle.”

Bidding the woman adieu, he sprinted at a python five-kilometres long and flung himself upon its winding back, using the scales to begin his final ascent.

The next day, New Zealand, Headquarters of Flaming Sun, an office space for support staff of Saana League.

Over fresh morning coffee, the staff were caught up in last night’s scandal, the news captivating the gaming world and beyond, making move the astounded lips of pros, noobs, and out-of-touch grandpas alike.

Here, in the beating heart of The Company, the fascination flamed its fiercest. In cubicles, in conference rooms, in the company kitchen, in hallways, in managers’ offices and custodian closets, at desks whispered into e-assistants, the word was out: The Tyrant, their boss, was a kid.

And not just any kid! That jobless ‘cousin’ of Alex Wong, who camped out on the storage floor, who wandered the headquarters’ halls in sweatpants and grandpa loafers, bedraggled and eyes half-squinting with tiredness after rolling out of bed in the middle of the day - that kid was The Tyrant. He was The Tyrant, two-time conqueror of the digital globe, an apex savant, the model imitated but never matched, The Hydra whose splitting heads had swallowed a planet, decimating tens of millions of opponents, bullying the best, brightest, and bravest of this generation – with absolute ease.

Although the teen genius had gone missing since the duel with Ramiro, his star had only risen higher and higher over the night. Every twenty minutes, another tasty morsel arrived at the gossip table, the rumour-mill and the press grinding at hyper-speed to dredge his juicy secrets from the years of shadow.

To their shock, he wasn’t just The Tyrant. This kid, while leading a globe-spanning colossus, had also somehow found the spare time to learn dozens of martial arts and re-invent duelling, to create Stratford-on-Saana and pen Infinite Leaves, which was according to pompous literati the most obtuse novel ever written. Last week, apparently, using his identity-changing magic, he’d stirred up Saana’s culinary scene by baking the world’s tastiest cookie. A few days later, based on a clip uploaded by an Australian music student, he’d flown country and casually improvised a 24-minute piano concerto spanning a dozen avant-garde genres, some of which did not even yet seem to exist.

It’d been with only one hand, with only one finger, that The Tyrant had swept the chessboard of Saana, the rest of his hours spent leisurely cavorting through a thousand other expertises. His shadow stretched infinitely longer than any of them had imagined, the figure casting it rising far beyond the clouds of mortal ability. Humankind, through his presence, had made their first contact with an alien, a demon, a cyborg, a god.

In one meeting room had gathered the promotion team for The Winter Open Invitational, the season’s premiere tournament, beginning this coming weekend. They’d been told to put everything on hold and called in for a purpose yet to be revealed, the order apparently coming directly from Alex Wong – who was not The Tyrant.

While waiting, however, the team didn’t give a single thought to their false leader or his instruction, their attention captured entirely by the spectacular teen of the moment.

”I still can’t believe it, ” one was saying, overwhelmed by the night’s astounding revelations. “How can that kid be The Tyrant?”

A colleague had less struggle accepting it. “Hmm...it’s more fitting, though, isn’t it? Than Mayonnaise, at least. Spears was always writing about how the real Tyrant never smiles, how he’s got the coldness of a murderer beneath the clown disguise. I’ve never seen the kid...The Tyrant...I’ve never seen him smile. He’s like a walking corpse.”

“Spears,” scoffed another. “What does the British nitwit know? Last week he was putting Alex Wong on blast with total confidence. He fell for their bait - hook, line, and sinker. The smug prick only found the truth because Karnon led him to it.”

“It’s just too young,” said the first. “He was 13 during Flattening Mountains. 13.”

“New generation’s filled with freaks.”

“My son’s 13. He’s a dumb-arse. I can’t even get him to not piss on the toilet seat. To coordinate Operation Phantom Limbs...I can’t believe it.”

Amongst the group, an intern was listening with a smile of self-congratulation.

While The Tyrant’s secret identity might’ve slipped by her colleagues, hadn’t she, basically, figured it out on her first day? She’d guessed the moment the other Company elite had swarmed him to beg. Unlike these old, prejudiced farts, her eyes had not been fooled by The Tyrant’s modest appearance - perfectly fitting for one whose concerns were attuned only to the highest matters of competition and glory. Nor had she fallen for the crafty charade with his puppet, Mayonnaise, a buffoon who could never possess a fraction of The Tyrant’s indomitable might.

One colleague had been at a computer scrolling through the news. “Jesus...last year’s high school exam hacking scandal, that was him, too. The officials hadn’t been lying. There was no hack. He actually sat every test.”

“Jesus...”

“What the hell...”

Someone did the math in their head. “But that was in the middle of The Chayoka Conquest. How could he have possibly found time to sit 16 exams?”

“That’s how they worked it out,” answered the employee at the computer. “The exams were all scheduled between battles. 16 was actually only the first-place rankings. The hacker’s ID had signed up for 21, but 5 had zero scores from non-completion - because The Tyrant was online during those.”

“Jesus...”

“My son is failing basic algebra...”

The intern, hearing this news, nodded with immediate acceptance.

Of course, The Tyrant would score number one in 16 international exams. What challenge could ordinary schoolwork pose for he who’d studied and mastered the battlefield? Hah!

A company press conference soon starting, the team used a projector to tune into the broadcast. Several directors for Flaming Sun and prominent members of The Company were putting on their business smiles for the audience. Beside a smug Alex Wong, a chair had been left open, an unoccupied throne, waiting for its real owner to finally claim it.

The promotion team were famished after the morning gossip. Before The Tyrant’s arrival, they sent their intern to run and loot a nearby bakery.

As the intern speed-walked through the department, past open rooms and stalls from which the sounds of the same broadcast murmured, she didn’t feel an ounce of resentment at her last-minute errand.

Her spirits were soaring. As The Tyrant had proved, this year, 2050, belonged to them, to the young of humble means. The old guard, clinging to their corrupt systems that promoted friends and family, were being picked off by the smarter, hungrier, harder-working youth. If a drop-out teen could conquer a world, then who knew what bright future awaited her? Today, an intern. But tomorrow? A contract employee, perhaps. A middle man—

About to step into the elevator, she froze like a deer in the headlights of a freight train.

The Tyrant! It was The Tyrant!

Henry—returning to the HQ for the press conference and suited up with spare clothes he’d bought before sleazing around Australia—recognised the terrified intern from that day.

“Don’t worry," he assured her, holding open the door, "I promise I won’t try schedule another date. The romantic-cringe episodes have already finished. We’re now in the spiritual purification by single combat in a videogame arc."

To move on with a clean slate, everything would be purged – even his silly...even some of his silliness.

The intern gave a nod and hopped on, her head swivelling as she maintained an unbroken stare, her eyes bulging in astonishment.

The Tyrant of Saana! Crusadingintheshadows!

She continued staring, not pressing any buttons until they began to descend.

“By the way,” said Henry, “don’t bother suing for workplace harassment. I’m still, legally, a minor.”

The intern shook her head vehemently.

“That wasn’t a threat. You can if you want. The penalty would just be trivial and not worth getting caught up in the current paparazzi typhoon.”

The intern pointed at herself like a cavewoman, discovering the first rudiments of speech. "Fan."

"Oh." Henry saw his mistake, saw that, once again, he’d been reduced to a caricature, his previous transgression consumed and nullified by his reputation. He grimaced in mock disgust. “Of The Tyrant? Not me. Crusadingintheshadows, what a trash username. Sounds like something an edgy kid would come up with.”

The intern laughed nervously, then, unable to suppress the questions that inevitably rise when one has cornered The Tyrant, blurted out. "That duel was awesome, I watched it a dozen times this morning, the format's never been something I've paid attention to but now the potentials of it are so obvious, is it going to be added to Saana League?"

"1v1s?" Henry shrugged. "SL is Alex's pet project."

Most of his own fighting had been outside the arena.

The intern nodded.

Of course, The Tyrant wouldn't waste too many of his precious thoughts on the simplistic, children's battlefield of the arena! Of course!

The elevator opened upon the ground-floor lobby. Before them, the backs of a crowd of reporters came into view, the journalists pushing and shoving as they competed to squeeze into a conference room.

“So, what’s the latest goss?” Henry asked, stepping out with his employee. “Have they started talking about my uncle yet?”

His mother’s younger brother, whom she used to always tell him he reminded her of, bet on the wrong faction during the revolution and got his head popped by a sniper drone. Henry guessed someone would eventually try to weave that into the grand-mythos of The Tyrant’s origins, his dead family being disinterred and revived as lines on a wikipedia page, as influences, obstacles, inspirations, motivations.

“Last year's exam hacking scandal," replied the intern. “Not that you're a hacker, of course, The Ty—of course, you could breeze through ordinary schooling.”

Henry ignored the slip-up. “Oh, they found that secret climb already? Impressive.” He recalled the time his grandmother nagged him to finish high school by correspondence, and he gave a hearty chuckle. “Hah.”

The two split, the intern rushing away for her bakery errand, The Tyrant pushing through the reporters to stand his public trial.