The New Suchi Arena, a crowd gathering for the showdown between two inveterate foes.

To the joy of the spectators, Henry, The Invincible Cripple, climbed back onto the arena stage, agreeing to a quick best of five for old time’s sake against his former rival Death.

The Indian duellist Mrtyu followed in his wake. A set of humble arms materialised onto his emaciated person: a dagger, a side-arm sword, a shield, a spear. These were four weaponry pillars for any melee-oriented combatant, invaluable for both a newbie and a veteran.

“You can pick map one,” said Henry. “Not Sand, please.”

The bare sand sub-map was his worst, containing no obstacles for strategic play.

“Graveyard of the Gods seems fitting,” Mrtyu replied.

The pair walked across the arena’s sub-maps. They passed from the rustic Hamlet in which Henry’d previously been duelling, over the hill in the arena’s centre honeycombed with Catacombs, down to a grassy Graveyard dotted with a dense array of life-sized statues.

The frozen figures were posed in distinctive ways, with a variety of weapons, crafting equipment, garments, animals companions, and other miscellaneous accessories. Each represented one of Saana’s NPC heroes who'd Ascended to the Cosmos before going silent, either because they'd been slain or the civilisations that'd prayed to them had perished. For duellists, however, the statues were simply different-sized obstacles for ducking from missiles behind or hindering a chasing opponent.

The crowd followed by circling around the perimeter, their numbers growing as trainees abandoned their matches and sprinted over. Those in adjacent arenas climbed onto the tallest obstacles for a better vantage point.

Henry, the moment he’d agreed to the fight, began speeding through an exhaustive checklist of Mrtyu’s unique features. He examined everything from the guy’s customary styles to his physical and mental limitations, in order to determine which tools were best suited to his specific dismantling. A Thousand Tools had an official methodology for this task, derived primarily from Universal Big Man. This upcoming art had originated in his kingdom, Chayoka, the island’s economy before his conquest being centred around mercenaries who needed to adapt quickly to the variety of enemies they were hired to battle.

At the most basic level, the first primary factor that would make this series different was Mrtyu’s Class. Henry hadn’t had much recent practise against Qi Masters because, as the keen-eyed might have noticed, he’d not duelled a single one in-game this week.

At Tier-0, Qi Masters possessed four active abilities. was a Basic Attack, with half the cooldown and Stamina-cost of . instacast a short-range, slow-moving spell. let the Qi Master leap 15 metres in any direction, and it gained extra qualities depending on the Qi Master stance - , the first available at Tier-0, caused to behave like , the user phasing through weapons and players while inflicting a minor burn. Finally, imbued the Qi Master's weapon and limbs for 6 seconds with extra non-damaging force, giving a significant grappling advantage. The last two skills presented the greatest threat at this level. Combining them, Qi Masters could catch and pin opponents easily before setting up the opportunity for a mortal wound.

In addition to these active skills, their passive hardened their skin at the cost of losing the capability to wear non-fabric armours. While reducing their weight and increasing their speed, it was overall a weakness at Tier-0 and would have killed their viability without The Company’s cross-Class health penalties.

Additionally, in Suchi, most players couldn’t legally cast fire magic. This made two and a half of those abilities unusable and Qi Masters functionally useless - hence, Henry’d not duelled any yet.

Henry, rejecting the joke of a victory against Mrtyu that last prohibition implied, shared the fire magic permissions he’d gained from Nerin’s Trials for the duration of their bouts. He gave an official declaration accepting any responsibility for resulting damage.

As for the threats unique to this one Qi Master, Mrtyu, 'Death', there was no simple summary, this former rival embodying the totality of what Henry'd once fought so hard to defeat.

To claim the throne in any era amongst millions of competitors, you had to be a monstrous freak. Mrtyu was a kind of dinosaur, his era long preceding the destined arrival of high-minded, tool-wielding chimps. His had been a primordial time of muscle and fist, when strength and swiftness alone had reigned, and it was in this respect that he'd dominated his world. The polar opposite to Henry, a genius of the body. Strong. Brutally quick.

And, now, in his early 30s, had this veteran slipped from his physical prime? Hardly. These virtual combat sports didn’t cripple older competitors with accumulating injuries or brain damage - aside from the ordinary brain damage from playing videogames far too much.

Henry, to combat this freak of physique, could have chosen from any number of complex tools.

Or, he could choose none of them, rising beyond this false dichotomy of the mind in conflict with the body.

Gathering a Flora-heavy Earthfriend load-out for Spell-shields, Henry brought out a sleek two-handed sword and nothing more - no vial of five-million-gold instakill poison, no hidden dagger. For his armament of crafty tricks, he’d also crafted the most devious trick: non-trickery.

Equipped with a simple sword, he warmed up with a few stances from One Touch One, his two-hander cutting with efficiency and precision. For their opening match, he would end it with a single stab, demonstrating how, even at old Death's game, he had become unrivalled under the sun.

Mrtyu, inspecting the technique from afar, discarded his spear and unsheathed his own sword. His instincts determined at once that this fight would inhabit the space within the spear’s tip, a mere flash. That suited him perfectly.

“Can you do much with that thing at Tier-0?” asked the older duellist with curiosity.

Henry cut down and up with two simple strokes. “Parry a cannibal king hundreds of times in a row.”

Looking closely at his two cuts, the first had brushed so close to a passing fly for the dragged wind to knock it from the air. The second, his sword turned, caught the insect harmlessly on the flat, before it buzzed off in alarm.

Mrtyu laughed. “Well, I am a little faster than him or a fly. .”

His Qi Master stance activating, the whites of his eyes blazed fire-orange and his arms, the shield and sword they bore twitching, radiated with the burning memories seeping from his muscles, the scorching resentment of the body, which does not forgive injuries until justice has been repaid in blood.

The map was split, halves chosen, and then they were then counted down by an officiator monitoring their health. The crowd stirred with anticipation, wondering at the unknowable outcome of these ancient duellists’ rematch, at what wild techniques The Tyrant might debut at the tip of a simple sword.

The pair themselves, awaiting the call to fight, paid the noise no heed. They'd already entered the cloistered trance of the one-v-one, when the universe shrank to the few metres between two souls intent on taming the other’s violent magnitude.

Mrtyu fixed upon The Cripple an unwavering stare, his peripheral vision consuming the little dangers scattered here and there, arranged and hidden ‘round the graveyard of statues, this playground space where he would chase and catch his slippery, multi-weaponed foe. His body brimmed with the remembered struggles of countless duels against this one enemy and others, faded but not forgotten. His limber legs, recollecting chases past, hopped from heel to heel. His hands quivered, his sword and shield swayed spasmodically with the knowledge of arms, the nostalgia of weapons swung and thrust, the mortal hatred.

Henry, meanwhile, stood in a tranquil pose, motionless in an open clearing between the statues of Gods spread around him. The blood in his veins moved in balanced measure between his body and his brain, propelled through the webwork of his head and powering his flickering eyes to study the shifting of his enemy in the present alone, the past of his crippled history cleared away as he focused within this minimal moment of the now and searched for when his limbs should strike swift with his sword.

In this simple state, he invited his opponent to cross blades.

Their duel began.