Finally, after years of silence, The Tyrant spoke.

He managed the flow of the Q&A with his tyrannical efficiency. He gave some answers so rapidly they would have to be slowed down and reviewed afterwards. He skipped journalists without pause when their questions bored him or touched a topic too private for his comfort. Gradually, the reporters fell into a compliant line, attempting their best to match the teen’s frantic pace as he steered them through the labyrinth of his career.

The questions meandered at points to his duelling side-hobby that'd ultimately caused his exposure.

Was his art exclusive to Scholar Earthfriends?

Not at all. The Tyrant had optimised for that build due to it matching his own strengths and weaknesses. However, the techniques were designed to be modular, adoptable by anyone depending on their Class, style, and skill. Fundamentally, more than creating a specific martial art, he’d unlocked the potential that already existed in Saana's single combat, moving the duelling scene forward by a decade or two.

Did that mean all duels would end up several minutes long? Would everyone soon be juggling weapons and construction materials?

The Tyrant answered in the negative, stating that it would simply be an option, an extra, that those who swung fast and hard would continue to have a home in the arena, the body conceding a limited amount of its territory to the brain.

Would he be releasing another manual, like with The Strategy?

Maybe.

Would it be as sarcastic, dense, and bizarre?

Probably not. He wasn’t a 13-year-old weeb anymore.

When exactly had he identified this hidden potential?

The Tyrant had sensed it on his very first day, doing the tutorial in Saana II. However, it’d remained an unproven theory by the conclusion of that instalment. He’d known that, without the crutch of his Legendaries, at minimum, he could never hope to execute the more complex techniques without studying dozens of martial arts, and, still, it might’ve been a dead end. He completed enough to confirm it this year.

How many arts had he learned?

A thousand, The Tyrant joked, before answering seriously bits and pieces of a couple hundred with more extended studies in around eighty.

How had he found the time to practice this myriad?

In this instalment, he’d racked up months of in-game dead time, just sailing and riding between battlefronts. In Saana II, the majority of his playtime had been devoted to duelling, both before Flattening Mountains and, afterwards, when he’d Ascended to the Cosmos. Additionally, he had a mutant brain.

So, wait, wait, he was confirming the events in his self-written fanfic, he’d achieved Ascension and battled with solar-system-annihilating monsters?

Yes, if a player could make it that far, that’s what awaited them. Like Earth, Saana was merely one grain of sand on one edge of the vast cosmic ocean.

Then—

The Tyrant wouldn’t elaborate on the game’s higher mechanics. He’d divulged all he was willing to in his series, and they’d have to sort themselves between the facts and fabrications.

If he’d, honestly, managed to get that far, why go to all this effort with The Company? Why didn’t he simply Ascend again and wipe out the other guilds solo?

Because that, The Tyrant yawned, would be boring. He didn’t care about single-player games. This hobby had no meaning to him without other people, without interaction, competition, danger, without struggle. In this era, you could reach the top of any mountain in the world by plane, but, still, some chose to trek by foot.

And the Q&A veered elsewhere, to The Tyrant’s recent doings uncovered in Suchi.

Why had Karnon been pestering him lately?

The God had inferred his identity last week and wanted to mess with him for amusement.

Had they formed a secret alliance?

They obviously weren’t ‘teacher’ and ‘protege’. The God had abducted him and forced him perform silly pranks like pinching Mindobelli’s underwear and painting a moon. The Tyrant would’ve killed him, but he lacked the capability due to the blue menace’s global teleport. Karnon knew of his murderous intent and found this amusing, too.

What was the pink whirlwind that’d knocked out Svanto?

The cookie baked that day?

Would there be consequences for the attacks on The Trading Posts? Would The Company escalate their actions in Togavi?

Who had been his previous opponent, at The Empire’s plains tournament with the chained monsters?

Loki of Asatru, The Tyrant answered openly. Enemy spies followed him everywhere, having been informed about his real identity when Simon [i.e. Genocidelol] defected. They’d kept it secret due to threats to demolish them further. No, he wouldn’t comment further on the spies. Yes, he’d planned and aimed the shot at the pillar. In fact, Loki diving into the hole afterwards had also been planned. It’d been essential to not show that he’d had a spare charge after dodging the mongooses manually. That’s how he’d won, Loki not predicting this capability either.

What was his connection with the author Silver Wolf?

He’d edited for her and other members of the writing circle. None of them had been cognisant of his identity, including Milo [Werther]. Milo managed the organisation’s daily affairs, The Tyrant providing funding from his own personal wealth.

So he denied the accusations that Stratford-on-Saana had been built to bolster The Company’s image?

Explicitly, yes, his literary interests were independent, The Tyrant taking up the hobby between commanding stints. As an artist, he was horrified by the thought of people wasting their time and talent promoting a guild in a videogame. At some level, however, the influence couldn’t be dismissed completely, the members reliant on the guild’s infrastructure and therefore driven to self-censor their harshest criticisms. He himself had not editorialised for this purpose. Those fans familiar with the circle’s catalogue should be able to spot authors who clearly loathed The Company, many of whose works he’d personally given the go-ahead on.

But he’d made money off that loathing?

Nope. After recouping investment costs, the rest of the circle’s revenue had gone to other members and support staff. The Company made him enough.

As an aside, how much had his career made him? Roughly? 24 figures? 25?

Suffice it to say, he’d become filthy rich.

Had he—as Oliver Spears asserted—been in collusion with Ramiro, a fellow child cannibal, for which reason Karnon had exposed them by orchestrating their duel?

No, The Slums had never been his guild’s jurisdiction, and The Tyrant didn’t even know of Ramiro until his arrival in Suchi last week. The Company, also in the dark about the strange perversions, had demanded that the Argentinian be ousted recently for an unrelated offence of bribing an official - who’d been executed on the day of Karnon’s first Trading Post attack when the God had stolen an Ortheerian sword. Fury over that ejection had been why Ramiro’d insisted on fighting him. On The Tyrant’s side, the journalists didn’t have to scramble for any deep or insidious reason why he’d been pissed off that evening. It’d been apparent to him, the moment Karnon orchestrated the fight, that his duelling research would be exposed prematurely and, with it, eventually, his identity as The Tyrant, although the pacing did blindside him. He’d recognised Ramiro instantly from his chubby build and the limited set of mystery guests Karnon might invite to maximise the soul-expanding drama.

Then, was The Tyrant going on record denying he’d ever ingested the flesh and blood of an innocent child?

Not for a sadistic or roleplay reason. Every day in the arena, he bit off his opponents’ heads and limbs with his forms, and not everything could be spat out. Many of his opponents were minors - like himself.

If he wasn’t in cahoots with The Sadist of The Slums, then why did he spitefully punish Oliver by firing him?

The Tyrant, clueless about the dismissal, let Pim Duong [k9] of their public relations division answer. She guessed that both the initial demotion to Suchi and the firing had been ordered by one of the rival guilds sponsoring the network due to the aforementioned internal suppression arrangement where they’d be purged if his identity leaked to the public. However, those guilds had since been informed no reprisal would be administered, The Tyrant squaring the blame for last night’s incident on Karnon. The Tyrant, chiming in himself, gave an official blessing, saying Oliver could get his job back if he wanted it and leave Suchi.

But, of course, the bulk of the interrogation focused on The Tyrant’s true occupation, his week duelling in Suchi merely being the public tail of a much longer, much more illustrious career, spanning dozens of world-shaking military campaigns.

Flattening Mountains or The Company, which conquest tested The Tyrant more?

Both had their challenges. FM - higher average level, his alliance’s abysmal starting location relative to the rest, The Tyrant’s immaturity. Company – modern commanders were infinitely better, lower naval mobility, stronger NPC presence, the reformations. Overall, The Tyrant said The Company.

How did his general Fyodor [NoRemorse] teleport from the Third Battle of Cvemat to Tasilguh Siege?

Ex-Lagos's suspicion was correct. Cvemat had only been Marlboro and The Tyrant, who'd imitated Fedya’s command style to mislead the Nigerians.

Had he used that tactic before?

Constantly. Since Flattening Mountains. The journalists could do their own homework to identify other instances.

Frenneberg continued to assert that he’d stolen the original A-Ditch.

And others had stolen hundreds of tactics from The Tyrant. This didn’t matter. War was not art. The point wasn’t to express an original idea. Franz clung to her obsolete invention because it was the last time she had anything valuable to show.

October 17th?

No comments on The Besalaada Offensive.

Across his career so far, who’d been the toughest commander?

In terms of absolute difficulty, Simon, when he wasn’t self-sabotaging. Relatively, Seeto Vadha.

Seeto Vadha?

Saana II NPC, Rising Moon Nation. The Tyrant had underestimated his grasp of player-centred tactics.

What about the new generation? Had any fledglings caught The Tyrant’s eye?

Ed Bich, Anatoly [Fire Water Fire Fire], B-EL-K - The Company had hoarded most of top 20 or so newcomers.

Had they missed any?

Poland’s Malek [Malek IV] and Passive from Heavenly Mountain. The Tyrant advised HM to triple Passive’s salary before he got poached.

Another Company member, Rupert Robinson [Dingo Grandson], seated at the table swore. “What the fuck, Henry?”

The Tyrant shrugged. “If he’d ever transferred, it would’ve been as a mole.”

Branching from the topic of Simon, would The Tyrant ever repair his fractured friendship with Genocidelol?

The Tyrant and he were never friends, just allies of convenience. In that regard, allying with him twice had been sufficient.

In interviews, Geno—

The Tyrant was not making an emphatic statement about his present dislike for Simon post-defection erasing the past. The two of them had, at no point, been friends.

But The Tyrant went on a date with Geno’s sister yesterday?

Septic Rose, he’d known before Simon, from duelling. He would take no further questions about her.

In the half year since The Company’s conquest, during the conflict-free phase of their commercial reformations, what has been driving him, personally?

Humanitarianism, The Tyrant joked.

Hahaha. Seriously, though, what sustains an inveterate general through these months of post-war somnolence? Was it simply the wealth?

Humanitarianism, The Tyrant doubled down with the joke, refusing to confess his genuine motivations.

And so The Tyrant, divulged to the world a portion of his story.

Within twenty minutes, plus Alex Wong’s presentation, a dozen dozen questions had blown past, as if The Tyrant were racing for a conference speedrun high-score. However, any viewer studying his face in their screens at home, would find not a trace of impatience, his features flat and perfectly composed, this still moving much slower than his preferred pace in his native space of war.

Through what he shared, the viewers came to understand a little better this enigmatic figure who’d lurked in Saana’s shadows. They deepened also their knowledge of The Company, the sinister second face and complement of Flaming Sun.

Of course, public opinion couldn’t be swayed too far within such a short time frame. Most watching, splitting and transferring their conception of The Tyrant from Alex Wong to the teen, accepted from his answers whatever slotted best into their pre-existing notions.

His haters dug up new points to prickle over, taking issue with his opening up only after being exposed, with his appearance, his unemotive, calculating mannerisms, his brusqueness. They second-guessed and discarded his honest confessions. They projected the worst into the gaps of omission.

His admirers meanwhile praised his fearless candour. They saw in him a model youth, a type of revived renaissance figure who, as with his blend of warfare and duelling, struck a superb balance between justified cockiness and voluntary modesty, between seriousness and silliness, between violence and calm, between genius and more genius.

Nearing the Q&A's conclusion, a question came from a journalist who had been in contact with a colleague in-game poring through The Cripple book series after The Tyrant confirmed the events. “Mr Lee, what’s the significance of The Saga’s ending? Why pick a Legendary Class before commiting suicide by diving into a blackhole?”

The Tyrant shrugged. “The message in that part wasn’t particularly subtle. Around then, it’d dawned on me, after obsessively playing Saana for so long, that videogames are a pure time-sink, a dopaminergic trap that bombards our neural systems with a level of stimulation we’re not evolved to handle and transforms us into stunted half-creatures who, in the pursuit of contrived increments on a data-table on a server, forsake everything long-term and existentially substantive. Thus, I did what every sensible game addict does upon waking from the digital haze. I accelerated towards the final erasure hardcoded into all that’s arbitrary, I deleted my character, and I quit this trash MMO for good.”

The Tyrant had quit for good.

The room burst like a balloon inflated with laughter, cameramen, journalists, Company board members howling at his preposterous statement, uttered on this morning with everyone gathered here, years later, to interview him in the wake of his second conquest.

Gaze around them now. They were in the conference room of an office building whose concrete edifice attested, unambiguously, that not only had The Tyrant failed to quit, but he’d gone even further in his second round. His gameplay had achieved such a critical mass to break from its virtual containment into solid reality. Out of game, the cameras, the audience tuned in, the chairs on which the reporters sat, the windows and furnishings and posters with Flaming Sun’s insignia masking The Company's ownership, the affiliated stores and arts programs, the media machine pumping out press releases and films; and in game, the colossal possessions of castles, palaces, trade fleets, army barracks, crafting cities; and the curt answers he’d given over the interview that attempted to downplay the unfathomable depth of esoteric game-knowledge required to connect these pieces – the immense behemoth that'd accumulated with him at its centre negated his absurd claim. Perhaps no other individual had ever plunged their psyche deeper into the matter of a videogame and lost all sense of its arbitrariness.

The Tyrant quitting? How laughable.

The Tyrant, a teenager named Henry, observed and listened to their hyena-cackles, to his guildmates alongside him adding theirs.

Feeling nothing of it, he laughed, too. Then, turning to Alex, the pair sharing a look of understanding, he made a gesture signalling for everyone to shut up.

“Hah,” he laughed merrily again. “But while we’re on the topic of quitting videogames, this is a perfect segue into today’s main announcement: I quit.”