The Overdream. Riverbank Cabin.

For Henry’s digital self, over a century old by now, that teenage drama seemed to pass in a blink. If each ‘visit’ to this virtual realm were equivalent to 24 hours, the whole day outside had amounted to a couple of seconds, a mere sip of tepid tea.

Viewing the events from that detached, time-wisened perspective, he moved on without even a shrug.

After the short hiatus, first investigating Karnon’s schemes, then building his forest farm, he resumed his rudely-interrupted retirement. Having traversed a minor bump, his carefree eternity rolled onwards, Henry farming, exploring, practising avant-garde kung-fu, and writing.

That last ink-anointed adventure was especially lovely to reignite. Now, as we plunged into the tail end of the 8th century of world—

But, no, this was a story about duelling, the discarded pages of literature fluttering in the wind as Henry marched down his single path and, once again, studied seven new martial arts.

A Thousand Tools had been revealed, so what? At this point, his research was mostly driven by his own private pleasure anyway. After all, the true true form of his supreme martial art wouldn’t even be releasable without exposing him as an immortal cyborg. That ugly thing with which he'd beat up that child-cannibal had been a half-baked, clumsy imitation. A Thousand Tool's real version currently raised him to the raw, Legendary-less skill of Saana’s hyper-speed deities designed to be taken down by armies of millions, his own abilities constrained only by the sluggish physics of his flesh. There were just a handful of Gods left with a stronger mind for the 1v1.

***

One Touch One.

For the session’s first art, he learned One Touch One, a sword-style from Wankalga centred around finishing a battle with a single, fatal thrust, delivered precise, quick, and deep.

Contrasting with the complexity of his previously-studied arts—such as Starhunting, with its protracted assault stretched over days and weeks, or Nine Fists, which wove together a string of multi-limbed strikes—the essence of One Touch One was simplicity. One encounter, one opponent, one attack. The practitioner focused on gazing through the chaos of battle to find the gap of minimal calm, the tranquil moment upon which hinged all victory and failure, all life and death, and they stabbed.

It was a respectable style, one that Henry, after his meandering adventures through the foreign realm of the body, could finally approach without embarrassment.

These years passed without complication.

***

Rising Moon Fist.

Next came Rising Moon Fist, from Saana II, the martial jewel of a nation who’d worshipped the celestial object he’d painted over last week.

Like an earlier art, Sacred Warrior, Rising Moon Fist described a generalised set of techniques for soldiers. Crude, brutal, but effective, it catered not to the sons of elite dynasties, conditioned and trained from birth, but to the common grunt mass-recruited during a crisis. It was a style for those granted their martial education in a few crammed months of bootcamp, then forced to learn the rest during the unforgiving practicum of war.

Henry chose this one because it’d been the peak of Saana’s soldier arts before the one developed for his army. The Rising Moon Nation, allied with an enemy guild, had managed to give him a tough run before their annihilation.

Its techniques were integrated with A Thousand Tools in a two-way exchange.

In one direction, Henry refined his own art to be better adapted against NPCs. Compared with players, the NPCs had several unique conditions compared that recalibrated the optimal method of fighting them, like their enlarged health pools and fear of mortality.

In the other direction, Henry refined Rising Moon with A Thousand Tool’s avant-garde lessons in complexity. Due to his player immortality, his willingness to endure millions of bodily deaths, he’d experimented with techniques that NPCs could, theoretically, have always performed if the path of obtainment hadn’t been fraught with too many deadly barricades. This unique knowledge, he added.

Both of these studies were totally omitted from the public version of A Thousand Tools, Henry wanting to limit the art’s influence outside of player duelling.

***

Shrieker Pack Hunting.

The Shriekers had been a tribe of pygmies from the Maranya region of Yamalai, dwelling in the rain-drenched jungles. They’d been renowned for their 6-man hunting parties, who’d developed superb tactics for tracking, trapping, and slaying the local monsters, the groups of height-challenged woodsman defeating creatures ten-thousand-fold their stature. Rumour claimed, far back in ancient pre-history, the mightiest Shriekers had even killed the Imbahalaala that’d once infested the region, making it liveable for humans. Had that been true? Perhaps. Maranya’s northern border today did end where the shadow monsters still existed.

During the rise of The All-Mother’s religion in their area, the pygmy tribe had been genocided for a stubborn refusal to submit. Fleeing the cullings, they’d attempted to open up new jungle territory by hunting Imbahalaala again, but—if they’d ever had the ability—it’d dilapidated from millennia of disuse. They failed, and the rains of time washed away their presence.

On a tangential note, Suchi’s Zone Guardian, Nerin, happened to be a Shrieker. Her parents had been part of a splinter group who’d sought survival in nomadic pastoralism, choosing the monsters of the plains over the monsters of the jungle. The technique of hers Henry’d learned, Herdswoman’s Spear, bore no resemblance to her ancestral hunting art, Nerin born during the emigration after her society’s collapse and starting from nothing. A couple centuries later, during the rebellions to overthrow The All-Mother’s factions, the goat-smelling pygmy emerged from the savannah to fight with the rebels. During those battles, she'd slain five Rangbitan Princess and Princesses in single combat. This feat had been what’d caused her nomination as Suchi’s guardian - although not without controversy because, carrying a slight grudge for her people’s genocide, she’d finished off her enemies by eating them alive.

But Henry, just a duellist now, had a motive for studying Shrieker Pack Hunting that was comically detached from this background lore.

For any duellist, especially any who relied on expensive Legendaries to tip the match in their favour, the single largest threat in a 1v1 was often not the single opponent in your concentrated sights. Rather, the more deadly danger lay to the periphery, in the corner of your squinting vision where a multitude of pissed-off friends/fans lurked with plans to jump you after you'd won. This could be disastrous. Say, hypothetically, you’d carefully arranged the match to have a close ending in order to increase viewer engagement, then one blindsiding arrow could cause you to lose your winking eye and, with it, tens of millions of gold in stolen Legendaries. Yes, in 2050, the age-old plague of pile-jumping had yet to be resolved, despite many complaints to the game developers. Thus, in an irksome paradox, to become the greatest solo-fighter, one must also become the greatest group-fighter: the greatest solo-fighter against groups.

So Henry reverse engineered Pack Hunting towards this goal. Using the sad, outnumbered monster as an analogy for the duellist, the ruthless gang of pygmy bullies for the interfering noobs, he synthesised the ultimate soloist system for 1-v-many survival. Once again, his past lessons aided in his noble mission to reign unrivalled under the not-so-solitary sun. Although alone, he was supported by the clustered war-tactics of Hardman Handaxe, the two-v-one speed-stalling of Jingzi Doubling, the situational awareness of No’Are Vigilance, and many more arts as numerous as the interlopers needing to be crushed.

***

Adaptive Wound Cycling.

Wound Cycling, this one was based around changing fighting methods depending on available health points.

The Adaptation Sect from Jingzi, Basindi who developed the style were obsessed with a philosophy of cyclical adaptation, holding this to be the ultimate meaning of The Cycle. They applied these methods to every aspect of life, from crop rotations to political transitions, from stages of romance to business deals. Wound Cycling was but one manifestation of their dominating worldview.

In a fight, the idea had some value. Saana’s health-point system, like its other gamified combat elements, did indeed change what tactics were best suited to each moment, risky techniques for an obvious example being inadvisable if one didn’t have the health to spare failure. In practice, however, battles were so blindingly fast that a combatant over-focusing on this adaptative dynamic would get distracted, would underperform in every phase, and would lose. In practice, you should just use the common sense tactic of hitting while not getting hit all the time. The Adaptation sect really survived in spite of their adaptative technique, because their obsession had, in civilian domains, made them fantastically rich and well-armoured.

But for Henry, with more brain than muscle in the first place, who’d mastered combat flow during the Laughing Sons episode and style-switching during Nomad Sabre, this path posed no problem. Improving the sect’s art, he perfected the methods of health adaptation. He did so for adapting to the duellist’s health, for the opponent’s health, and the shifting health differential between them. And, then, striving beyond this flattened plain, he perfected Cooldown adaptation, and Stamina adaptation, and Boost adaptation, and mental fatigue adaptation, and more. Finally, he adapted adaptation itself, generating an introductory regime that hand-held a noob as they adapted to the bewildering domain of adaptation, strategies for counter-adapting to the opponent’s adaptation, and counter-counter-adapting...