O Fortuna, save her, I silently prayed to the Goddess of Luck to stop giving me favoritism when I had no need for such blatant favoritism.

Fortuna is the will of luck, both bad luck and good luck, two sides of a coin. But Fortuna’s favor is not something I truly needed at a moment. Her favor was something my competitions and foes desperately needed at the moment, in both quality and quantity, and that was not even enough.

I snapped my fingers to conjure a tall stack of towels and a bag full of cold water bottles to appear on one hand. Slowly, I distributed the items to my fatigue seasoned staffs while darting a side-long glance at the Pride’s direction.

With her body leaned against the chair armrest, the Perfect Demon Lord rested her chiseled chin against her whitened knuckle in a laidback and carefree manner. Pride patiently waited for me to approach her with the swagger of a winner. But a winner she was in everything but the blindfolded game. Her body language did not look like that of a person who has been so desperate to prolong her defeat for days, knowing the inevitable result. The 15,000th matches last for eleven days. But it should have ended on day four.

I smiled dastardly and blew a kiss at my lioness, trying to get an early reveal of her hidden frustration. Pride scoffed it off as though she has been expecting it, waving her fingers at me as if shooing.

As I distributed the towels and water, I took my time to talk through with my staffers, giving them an encouraging speech and exchanging some casual talk in between. I tossed Searek his towel and water bottle, which he caught effortlessly, and complimented his work. Searek, as ever a person of quiet and solitary disposition, gave me a slight nod. Sasengun, as usual, was light on her feet. The dark elf approached me and stole half of my workload, helping me to distribute the water and towel to the rest of the staffers.

Isonos was intoxicated from his physical exhaustion and the euphoria of a well-earned victory. The one wing Garuda spew a joke so cold and so lame that only a person like me could chuckle.

Not everyone could appreciate a cold joke or a terrible joke, especially the kind of jokes that Isonos has been delivering with his straight, unsmiling face. Appropriately, people, even those who had been working with Isonos for well over ten centuries always had a hard time realizing if Isonos was cracking a joke. I gave Isonos a pat on his shoulder while putting the towel on his feathery head, wiping his sweat like the old-time before I directed my attention elsewhere.

Ember, as usual, was flat on his sweat-drenched back and on the ground wheezing for air. His chest rose and sank without rhythm. His face paled and was devoid of vitality, looking like he was dying from exhaustion. Though Ember was no longer a part of the livings, his soul was immortalized by the work of Madness like the rest of my staffers. If Ember could die again in this dreamland, I would have been much worry.

Slowly approaching Ember, I gave him my hand. Despite our years of spending together, Ember always kept a respectable distance from me in others’ presence. In Ember’s own words, “Others don’t treat you, Your Highness, with the correct amount of dignity and respect that you deserve. You, yourself, Your Highness have certainly failed to … No, you refuse to do that… Therefore, someone must. I must. I must inspire people to do the same.” As a result, Ember taught himself to grow over his familiarity with me and treat me as though I was a royal in private and in public.

Ember, despite his fatigue, forced his body to rise with independence. He respectfully declined my outreach hand and received the items I distributed with custom and tradition.

While the fantastical appearance of Isonos, Searek, and Sasengun breathed a different air to the gold and black of the 2057 Fall version of The Alliance’s uniform and seemed to fit right in the with the suit and blazer, Ember appeared oddly mismatched due to his Nordmen fashion. Ember’s russet-colored hair, though coarse and time-bleached, was well-braided and neatly knotted together by small rings of silver and gold. He appeared like a medieval Viking chieftain who was forced to wear modern-day fashion.

Without that dark, twisted visage that rarely haunted his face, it was impossible to connect Ember’s current image to his villainous history, the Mad Saint, the person who had once lit the entire northern continent of Escana in flame or a hundred years of carnages and bloodshed. He appeared harmless, dignified and oddly down to earth, humble and kind. I lived with Ember long enough to know what he was all about. I have seen him in his most demented and vulnerable moments when his character really showed itself. There was an unsettling part of him that drove him to do certain coldblooded deeds to realize his goal. But there was another part of him that was very observant, philosophical and wise similarly to that Faugus. I have seen many sides of Ember and known him more than he knew himself.

“So, what’s your thought?” I asked.

As soon as he was done with wiping his face, Ember used the clean towel to dap his sweaty head like a scowl. “Your Highness, you need to stop feeding a starved lion to court disaster,” Ember replied. He earnestly begged me to stop feeding “A starved Lioness,” for she would only become stronger and hungrier with every meal.

Feed a starved dog to garner a loyal hound, feed a starved lion to court disaster. It was a local proverb from where Ember came from. The mountain snow lions of White Winter are said to be so wild and proud that they are untamable. No matter the tricks that a man would employ, a snow lion is only loyal to itself and its crowned instinct.

Shrugging my shoulders, “That’s exactly what I would go on doing,” I assured Ember of my future action, knowing that my words were having an accumulating desired effect on Ember.

It sounded like Ember was whining. But when I put myself into Ember’s shoes, trying to imagine the words written in dry blood on Ember’s ledger, I realized that Ember was being increasingly stressed with my current status and unrevealed goal, especially when Faugus, my loudest voice of reasoning, was no longer here to give me counsel.

Ember must have believed that if someone was to assume Faugus’ mantle, it must be him. And in a manner, he was not wrong.

Searek had seen how I could overcome many odds through my stubbornness alone and respected me for that. He would follow me blindly for that reason alone, no further logical reasoning is required. Isonos, a genius he was, but he excessively idolized me to the point that he would often overlook my greatest faults. He would go along with my stupidity trusting that I had always had a plan for everything, which I wished I did. Sasengun, though realizing that I was a faulty world of imperfect and pain, would accompany me to the deepest pit of hell and beyond due to her love. Lynx, on the other hand, had no wish to stain his hands again for someone’s goal. Keenly aware that the other staffers were like that, Ember had forced himself to put on the mantle of logical reasoning that Faugus has left behind.

When he heard my reply, Ember’s complexion twisted with the olden darkness of the Mad Saint. The helplessness, the frustration, the confusion filled the veins inside eyeballs with a maddened pulsating red.

To that, I only smiled, casually patting his shoulder.

I knew that Ember was not having any fun with the blindfolded version of ROC and the amount of risk that I have been playing around, and that dislike and frustration clearly showed on his face.

Ember lacked a strong, vivid visualization and a level of flexibility to keep up with the fast pace and unpredictability of this game. But above all, the condensation of Sanguine’s venom inside Ember, the manifestation of his insanity, was an immaterial ledger. This ledger recorded events and highlighted details that have fed into Ember’s paranoia and doubts. Its property was the opposite of Isonos’ crystal wings which allowed Isonos to peer into the distant future through his imagination and intelligence. If Ember’s insanity dug into the obscurity of the past, Isonos’ madness pried the mysterious veil of the future. This ledger of Ember, however, did not give him an edge while playing these blindfolded games in real-time the same way that Isonos’ crystal wings, Sasengun’s compass or Searek’s broken mirror. Its helpfulness only came when he had the time to review the games that Ember had played and watched.

Ember’s ledger allowed him to view the most unsettled parts of his history in written details by pointing out his mistakes, fear, and doubt. It would be a most excellent tool for Ember if he was a member, or the leader, of the Warren, which he wasn’t.

But the biggest reason for Ember’s frustration with these blindfold games had to do with how his greatest weaknesses were exposed and punished repeatedly. Ember’s weaknesses, as usual, was fully exposed, targeted, and exploited by Pride repeatedly throughout the match. He struggled through and through in every game. It has become a norm for Ember since his first blindfolded game.

While I would love to trade for Ember’s spot, to be truly felt punished for my weaknesses and mistakes, to be strong-armed by desperation and struggle like a true underdog until the grace of victory found me, Ember was having none of that. He would rather trade for my spot, having the unreasonable confidence that I would win every ROC game regardless of the number of odds stacking me.

Just like I had no idea how to nerf myself with insecurity and Ember had no idea how to buff himself with confidence.

As the number of victory mounting, I sorely missed the feeling of being challenged, the thrill of one step away from losing everything, the bizarre, crushing fear of having my life rolled out of my control, and the sheer elation from earning a hard-fought victory from overcoming impossible odds. But difficulty and challenges were something that I had slowly lost to this Divine Dream that I willed. Gradually, everything just became easier, much easier for my liking. It was as though I was forced to play my game in an easy mode. Even those boggling difficulties and problems, which had once appeared as herculean tasks, were too easy, nowadays. I barely felt the difficulty. I felt the pain of a max level game character who was stuck inside the invisible walls of the town of the beginners and just one-hit every foe that he encountered. There was no adventure. There was no thrill. There was neither a rush of adrenalin nor a breath of relief. There was only undulating boredom of my doing that kept going forever.

Foes that I was once forced to strategize, and map out my moves perfectly to win, would now fell before me in a flick of a finger. I knew that I must be prepared for the war to come, but, as usual, when I was prepared, there is little to no challenge in my life. So these blindfolded games were the only thing in this endless dream of mine that I could look forward to.

Ember was by no mean a handicap of mine. He was versatile and clever enough that if I gave him an assignment, no matter how impossible the assignment may appear, for instance, the destruction of Coeles, Ember would be able to find the best answer for that assignment. But that was his greatest problem and greatest weakness. Ember would not opt for anything else but the best, risk-free answer. But the best, risk-free answer was ever a rare gem in life and in war.

In this dreamland, Ember was the number one on the leaderboard of abusing the time-chamber that did not include me. Leph was second and Meireen was third on the leaderboard.

In this Divine Dream of mine, when the time has been reduced to a mere device of convenience, none of my staffers were shy from using the time-chamber to solve their inconveniences according to their purpose and intent. But Ember abused the time-chamber to the point that he had grown dependent on it. He always retreated to the time-chamber to get the best answer out of every problem that he had encountered. If Ember lacked a skill, he would hit the time-chamber, coming back in what appeared a second to everyone but a century for him with that skill solidly developed. When I gave Ember a night to be prepared to play Blindfolded ROC, he locked himself inside the time-chamber for centuries to study and practice the game to his best capacity.

“Can I ask you, Your Highness. Why are we doing this? I don’t understand,” with his sweat-soaked back flattened against the floor, Ember rasped, asking the same question that he has kept repeating to me.

“Now, you don’t understand. But, in time you will,” I repeated my usual asinine answer to Ember with a refreshing smile curving on my lips. In my antic and rule, he who asked a stupid question deserved to hear a stupid answer. Ember asked that question of his, fully expected to be disappointed. Therefore, I kept him wallowing in disappointment again.

No surprise there.

Once I was done answering Ember’s question, which I technically didn’t, I told the rest of the staffers to return to their place and get some rest before the next game would commence, knowing that none of them would do that. Ember would hit the time-chamber again. Searek would try to mediate, searching for his inner peace, and maintain his battle skills from rusting. Isonos would find works to keep himself busy at all times. The rest of the helpers would also go back to their Division, continuing with their current assignments.

Only Sasengun dawdled behind when the rest had already hopped on a different time-plane, other parts of this vast dreamland. The dark elf wore a sullen expression of hurt when I declined to visit her chamber for this night.

I inadvertently shook my head and heaved a heavy sigh. “Of all the flavors, why would you choose salt? Having too much salt would only make you thirstier, more insane, and more hurt. I am that salty water that you sailors are taught not to drink when thirsty. You are smarter than this, so why?” I asked. It was not the first time that we had this argument but we kept going about like we were beating an already dead horse it over and over again.

“Don’t ask me to do something you cannot do, Shandorei,” Sasengun replied, stubborn as ever on the subject. She would listen and comply with every selfish and insane wish of mine, but not this one. Sasengun was not the type of woman who wore makeup or perfume when she was alive. But she did, wearing them here in dreamland, for my attention and affection. Sasengun was not the type of person who bowed and obeyed to whims of others. She commanded and others bowed before her. But here, she waited, devoting herself for my orders and commands.

“Sasengun, baby, a good woman like you deserves a much better lover, someone who would reciprocate your feeling and fidelity in full and more, but that someone is not me. I am the worst material to be a lover.”

“I sentenced my first husband to his death. I sacrificed the two lovers that I had ever had after that and even my children to Sanguine. I’m not a good woman,” Sasengun countered with the same argument that she has adopted in the last two and a half centuries. Her brown, captivating eyes turned misty.

Frustrated I was, though not nearly as frustrated as Sasengun. My tongue clicked like it had a will of its own while I was sorting the jumbled mess that was my thought and emotions in an orderly fashion. Dion internally cursed me for being a dick. Shut the fuck up for a moment, I cursed the faulty prone virtual assistance of mine right back. For once, I regretted drinking that venom and created Dion.

“So you are telling me that you have been using your love for me as a punishment for your lovers’ death?” I specifically picked the words that would hurt Sasengun the most. Lortenite and Meireen, and everyone else had kept telling me to stop hurting Sasengun. But the only way I could stop hurting Sasengun was dissuading her from pursuing me.

Unlike them, who could pursue their goal over their emotions for me, Sasengun could not. If I went to hell, those women who had grown over their affection for me would wisely choose not to follow my footsteps to that place. But Sasengun would. If the worst happened to me, they would seek revenge, and then mourn. But this dark elf would revenge and then seek her own destruction. That was something I could not allow to happen.

On the contrary to my hopeful mental prediction, Sasengun steeled herself, “You know that is NOT what I meant,” she hissed heatedly, her eyes boiling with salty water. “You know that is NOT what I meant.”

Of course, I knew, the words thankfully got stuck inside my throat, could not come out as intended. I took a breath and smirked, “Then what do you mean?” I absolutely hated the cruel cutting edge of my smirking voice.

“I love you. There is nothing that I would not do for you. I love you, Shandorei,” Sasengun sobbed, her slender but solid shoulders started to shake uncontrollably. Her boiling, watery beads flowed, washing away her mascara in two broken, tainted salty streams. With the falling tears, crumbled anything resemblance that of authority, gallantry and fortitude that previously exhibited in Sasengun when she took the command position. Her voice broke, begging and tearful. “Please stop commanding me to do this. Please, stop giving me this command. This, I cannot do. I would not ask for your reciprocation, but please, just allow me to love you and stay by your side as I am.”

Using your tears like this is unfair. I pulled Sasengun into my chest and let the dark elf sobbed her eyes out.

Mind games I played, psychological tricks I had employed, but this dark elf refused to be strayed from her goal. I felt as if my relationship with Sasengun could not progress further from this stage in the direction that I have wanted.

Acrẽa’s tears, I could stand. Acrẽa employed her normal tears and crocodile tears too slyly that I had developed immunity toward her tears. Others’ tears I could scoff off. Their tears sometimes contained too much self-pity. Those kinds of tears, I could get used to. But Meireen’s tears and Sasengun’s tears were terrifyingly hard to deal with. Theirs were the tears of pity and worry. One cried asking me to love myself while the other cried asking to follow me wherever I might go. Conquering the world is easier than complying with the request of these two. How am I going to solve this problem? I mulled, half wanting to cry for Sasengun and half wanting to cry for myself. I wanted to be challenged, but not with this kind of challenge.

I sighed again. I lamented how Father Time had failed to chisel me into a better man… not that I had ever entrusted myself to the work and machination of Father Time. So again, Father Time was not to be blamed, I was. This Divine Dream, too, had failed to shape me into a better person.

A Divine Dream was a reality-bending miracle, a place where the will of the stronger person would decide the result and the reality. Depending on how it was used, it was said to be capable of making a weak man strong and an ignorant man wise. A poverty-stricken, manure-smudged farm boy was turned into a Slayer of Dragon and an Emperor in a Divine Dream through the miracles wielded by two Immortals.

There were some fifty Immortals presented inside this Divine Dream, and yet, none of them had the power to change me.

Though I have gained an army and an improved wealth of trickeries, I remained the same, the same person that I was in my last six years on Earth.

I failed to comprehend how a reality-bending miracle could have failed to change the both of us, me and my other half, from the people that we were.

We had been transported into an alternate reality. We both have looked at Death in the eyes. We were both tested by Father Time. We have been touched by reality-bending miracles and Authorities. A myriad of skills I had attained, yet, nothing has truly changed. I was the same disagreeable asshole that I was in my last six years living on Earth. And he remained the same since that dark, dirty day.

This chip is just too hard to toss away… I internally complained. “Oh, baby… What should I do with you, Sasengun?” I resignedly asked, burying my face into her brunette hair. I smothered her sobbing frame within my arms, unable to predict how our future would shape. At that moment, my attention was Sasengun’s alone. Everything else was an afterthought, even Pride and the war.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

For the last six years of my time living on Earth, every single day, I had staked everything that I possessed on Fortuna’s hands. Everything.

The value of my own existence and heart was cheap, in fact, dirt cheap had they were not directly linked to my other half. Monetary wealth is cheap for I could always earn them right back, one way or another, through my investment and business, ROC or through the cult. But it was the other things, invaluable and priceless worth, family, brotherhood, love, important bonds, that had me on a roller-coaster of emotions. They were precious things that no substantial amount of wealth in the world could purchase. They were things that I would gladly trade my own life to exchange. Every time when they were slipping away from my hands, I felt like there was a sharp knife stabbed into my chest, twisted and wrenched a gashing hole there. It was my own doing, I knew. And I hated it. My eyes would boil in salty steam. There was a furious, gnarling beastly voice inside my soul, cursing and growling at my own self-inflicted stupidity and insanity. This beastly, immaterial voice made me laughed at how naïve and ignorant Ira used to be. Ira acted like a gangster when it just moved to its new house. Ira thought it was the manifestation of anger and hatred. The spiny beast was housed inside Wrath’s astral body in the same manner that a frog living inside a well thinking that it has seen the world. Ira could multiply itself by a thousand and that horde would not come close to what I had.

Whenever I lost those gambles, when those invaluable chips slipped away from my grasp, I was always one trigger, one knife-cut, one leap of faith, and one drunken, crazy party with a bunch of lunatics away from death. But they, too, were gambles within gambles. I gambled in and out of the pit of self-hatred and curses, in and out of a losing gamble.

I told myself that if I could turn the most important pieces of my life into chips, there is nothing else in the world that I could not do. That’s a great fallacy, in and of itself, I had always known, but I kept deceiving myself by repeating it.

Fortuna was, often, kind enough to let me become broke first then regain everything later. Don’t lose them ever again. Sometimes, in the foggy undulation of my drunken nightmares, I heard Fortuna’s reprimanding voice, urging me to stop. But, still, I chose to gamble on. Fortuna would punish me in the exact manner that I had expected that she would. When Fortuna was like that, words failed to describe her wrathful frustration with me. Fortuna punished me as if she was meant to undo me with the crushing weight of the world. In those moments, no matter how broken and devastated I was, I learned to find the way to please Fortuna and improve her mood, somehow, by going on gambling some more.

When the most important parts of my life returned and assembled on my hands, I clutched them inside my fingers, weeping a tearless cry. A man-made demon, a self-trained worm I was, worst of the worst, the epitome of Injustice, the world is better without me. But, while holding them, I felt a vivid illusion that there was still unfound meaning, hope, and purpose in my wretched, fucked-up life.

But an illusion, no matter how vivid, how real they appeared, was unreal. Earth or Escana, there is no hope or meaning for the like of worms and demons. For the like of them, the purgatory flame of hell is their only purpose and suffering is their only calling. That is the reality.

Once I lived out my life, that’s where I belong. Not this place, not this universe.

I could not stop myself from gambling away everything that matters the most to me. They were better to be away than be with me. I had no intention of dragging them to hell with me. I lived, paving my own path straight to the pits of hell. That’s how I intended to live.

Six years, Fortuna had kept that life stake of mine on her hands. That was long, too long. If I was her, Lady Fortuna, I would have tossed that wretched burden aside six years earlier.

I believed in Fortuna. Fortuna is luck, both good luck and bad luck. Therefore, I kept practicing my faith in her. I kept gambling with my chance.

For Pride, blindfolded ROC was a costly, high risk and high reward investment. If she kept playing against me, she would risk losing more of her Authorities with her failures and defeats. But defeat me just once, I would become hers to command, to love and to own.

In my case, this blindfolded ROC was like a Gacha machine. For every 5000th win, I got to crank the Gacha machine once. A random Authority belonged to Pride would be skewered by the Golden Sword of Superbia, cut off from her dominion, and be delivered into my hands.

I thought I would have to slowly grind my way to solve that Wrath’s problem like how I had once climbed my way to the one percent of ROC pro-league.

Either or would do the job, giving Wrath a clear will of his own, a defined consciousness. Either following the evolution of Nature or the path of Civilization, Wrath would gain his own consciousness, no longer just a mindless tool of destruction alone. But I had intended to give to Wrath and to someone else. Through the first 5000th loss, Pride parted with her . As soon as the fell into my hands, I immediately used it as a bargaining price to trade for Wrath’s through the help of Envy and Lust. With the , my share of memory and experience of the time when Thuỳ Dương sat next to my other half, forcing him to learn the piano again, forcing him to welcome music into his life again.

It was a time when an important part of Phúc’s life was reclaimed through the tyranny of a Goddess. It was a time when bitter tears turned into notes and outraged hurt was converted into music.

The remaining of that task is putting my faith on the stupid people of dreamland to nurture that newborn will of Wrath toward a peaceful, non-destructive goal. No matter the character of Wrath deep down, he could only survive dreamland by growing up with that kind of goal. Even a child among the stupid people of dreamland was more destructive and angry-prone than he has ever been. Therefore, as long as Wrath lived inside dreamland, violence is never an option. The moment he exerted force and violence, he was just asked to be flattened.

Fortuna has given me one of the Authorities on my wish list with my first Gacha roll.

It was as if Fortuna was whispering to me, “Keep trying,” telling me to keep cranking this Gacha machine. So I did. was put on the chopping block with Pride’s second 5000th loss. I nearly got a heart attack, but Pride must have suffered a worse heart attack. Of many Authorities that Pride possessed, rolled out of the Gacha machine. Fortuna favored me too much, giving me an early winning streak in this Gacha. Not even I had expected to land myself on this Authority this early. The loss of did not hurt Pride as much as the loss of this one. It was her identity.

Pride belonged to a group of seven Demon Lords, whose names were uniquely linked to the seven deadly sins. Just like the other six, Pride possessed a unique Authority attributing to her nature and name. The name of these unique Authorities spoke about the identity of these seven Demon Lords.

Wrath was the , and a slave he was, to both Ira and to Munezee. Sloth was the . Lust was the . Gluttony was . Envy was the . Greed was the , the “Master of Avarice”.

Ira, I had tamed. Avaritia, I had befriended. My relationship with Luxuria was as big a mess as a mess could possibly be for I had stolen its favored bride and its daughters. The other three personas, Indivia, Gula, and Acedia, I had not met or spoke to, but I knew that they must exist. In that sense, Pride’s unique Authority was written as . She is Superbia in a sense.

In the aftermath of Pride’s 10,000th loss, her Golden Sword of Superbia was forced to cut itself and its owner in halves. Pride’s , one of the four trademark miracles from the Authority, fell into my hands. remained in her possession. and were being disputed. Pride and I shared a custodian over these two miracles. The two of us had half of each miracle. It was as if we were a divorced couple disputing over our asset. If I was surprised that Pride did not break after experiencing something like that, I did not appear so.

“Pray to Fortuna,” said I in a taunting voice, returning from Sasengun’s house to escort Pride back to her mansion with a cruel smirk curved on my lips, “Hopefully, your is not on the chopping block again this time.” I acted as if a blink of an eye was really what it was. What appeared as a blink of an eye for Pride was a week for me. But Pride did not need to know about that.

“Good game,” the Perfect Demon admitted her loss with a subtle hint of frustration in her voice, giving me her hand.

Seeing how Pride has refused to buy into my trash talk, I smiled and took her hand, helping the seated Demon Lord to rise to my height. Only then, I shook her hand and flashed an eloquent, respectful smile, “Good game, you have tried your best. But there could only be one winner in this game.”

“I don’t need your pity.” Pride curtly drove a fist into my gut to settle her frustration.

I heavily dropped to the ground on my knees, wheezing for air, my hands clutching to my own stomach. Teary eyes, I was half-suffering the radiating pain from a flattened liver and half-aroused from it. Pride controlled the force and gave me the exact amount that I needed, neither too much nor too little.

As usual, “Perverted Prince,” Pride coldly insulted me. Her eyes rolled with pure disdain, her chin cocked with condescension.

“I certainly did not ask you to fuel my perverseness. Out of free will, you chose to do it,” I replied.

“Shut up,” she yanked me to her eye level and smothered me with the promised victory kiss while exerting her dominance. Pride’s fingernails dug into the scalp of the back of my head as she hungrily sucked my breath away. Amidst that steamy, magical-induced euphoria where our body and mind were one, our unfiltered emotions were shared and pooled through the entwining, slippery smacks of our tongue and through the connection between two halves of Pride’s golden sword.

Miracles and Authorities shaped after their wielder’s personality, intention and emotion. When half of Pride’s Golden Sword of Superbia fell into my dominion, it was changed in the same manner that Ira’s appearance was changed. It absorbed my horrible personality and disagreeable emotions. So when the sword reunited with its other half, those emotions of mine flowed into Pride as hers flowed into mine.

Pride, alone, was the first and only person in this world who has ever tasted my emotions in full. I would say that she knew me more than my allies did. Pride savored every bit of my reluctance to admit that. Reaffirming herself with that knowledge, royally pleased and proud Pride was. Intoxicated by excitement, she pushed me down on her gaming chair and the Lioness slowly yielded her reign of power to our alchemy.

Mandated by our alchemy, our body lines and thought melt as one. Aroused she was forced to admit by the imperial order of the new monarch, but Pride was unabashed in admitting it. She even took joy in admitting it. Her fingertips meandered through my cloth, stroking, fondling my chest and back according to the mandate of the new monarch. Her breasts fell on top of my chest, hot, swollen and hardened with arousal thought, but ever pleased and proud by the sight of my own painful stiffness below. In that haziness of alchemical steam, where my fingertips blindly melt into the gorgeousness of Pride’s golden curves and the taut loveliness of her flesh, Pride’s euphoria over the brief reunion with a part of herself, which she has lost to me, poured into my head. There were moments when our lips parted, and yet, somehow, our emotion was still one. I heard her accidental purrs when pleasure took her when my lips traced her fair neck with ardent kisses. I relished Pride’s casual acceptance of her undeniable hotness for me and her desire to make me pay for everything that she had gone through. Pride savored what I felt about her frustration and disappointment in her own losses, her hunger for a win, as well as her hidden grudging satisfaction from being beaten.

It was a back and forth affair until the two of us casually dethroned our monarch from his unruly reign. Our short-lived monarch did not understand the concept of power or knowing how to control it. But we did. Our arrogance was similar, we listened to ourselves and ego, we gave into our intoxication for lust because we could wrestle our consciousness back at any moment.

We gazed into each other’s eyes, chuckling. Our lips connected again, a true victory kiss for me this time. Only then, as per the dictation of our agreement, the Golden Sword of Superbia, now whole, worked its miracle effect, parting a random Authority of Pride and giving it to me. When our lips parted, “Are you by chance not aware of the ultimate consequence?” I looked into Pride’s dazed eyes, asking. “You cannot keep losing this game forever. You know that right? Or must I explain the math myself?”

Every time I got to crank this Gacha machine, there is a chance that I would be able to pull the card out of a deck of over forty cards. And every time I pulled out one card, that card is mine and my chance to pull out the would increase with the next.

Another one of Pride many Authorities, the , has just been deposited to my dominion. This Authority, at the moment, had no use to me. Neither my soul nor my flesh nor my ethereal body was that of a God, a Demon Lord or a primordial spirit. I could not part my flesh or soul like Naharis had done to create an immortal being. Half of me was disappointed while the other half was relieved.

There was a half of me wishing that Pride would rescind her challenge and admit her losses. There was a chance that she might lose the other half of her in the next 5000th loss.

Fortuna had a will of her own, a maddened gambler like me was clear about the will of Fortuna more than anyone.

, what I considered junk at the moment, was still a part of Pride. Losing a part of oneself, no matter how small, hurt. I knew from my experience.

“Do you believe that I could be dissuaded with that argument? I will take back what’s mine.” Pride scoffed and blinked her eyes while flexing her passion seasoned flesh through the shambled state of her dress. Her voice was half-filled with the barbs from the sore of her latest loss and half laced with ardent steam.

I inadvertently gulped while trying to clear the fog inside my head. “Do you know why I told how I defeat Heavennet?” I asked. Good luck taking that Authority back from Wrath, I thought, imagining the moment when Pride realized that I no longer had her with me.

“Because…”

As I have expected, Pride has carelessly been baited to answer this stupid question. “Don’t be stupid,” I cut in. “I’m not Heavennet. I am much stronger than it. You will have a much harder time defeating me than I had when I defeated Heavennet. That, I promise. That, I swear on my banner.” Pride wore a displeasure look on her face from being interrupted. I fixed Pride’s dress first then my own, pausing for but a second to the question of how did my shirt came off, questioning if it was the work of my own hands or Pride’s.

Then, as usual, we bickered back and forth while on the way back to Pride’s mansion. We reviewed the game and made mental notes to improve it.

Pride was aware that if we kept playing this game, over and over again, that day would come, the day when she would find the way to defeat me. There was a part of me wished that the Lioness would keep challenging me until the end, and be it through a calculated or miraculous feat, conquering me the way I had conquered Heavennet.

The other 19 All-stars played against Heavennet to win and to learn the AI’s winning moves and statistics in addition to earning some extra dollars. Those three AI nerds, the creators of Heavennet and public its face, would provide the All-stars with the data, history log of Heavennet recording of the right plays and wrong plays for their team’s analysts to work. So, as the All-stars were improving Heavennet’s logical reasoning with their knowledge and experience, Heavennet also empowering them with its learning. It was a win-win for every party involved.

Though that event was well-documented by the league in a 40 minutes clip and later glorified by various Esports writers and content makers, only over three handfuls of people have learned of how I had truly defeated Heavennet. Some found out on their own ability. Some knew due to my disclosure. And some were my accomplices. They all learned that victory was not an enduring testament of mankind’s greatness and untapped potential. It was not that I had outwitted Heavennet’s calculation ability. And it was not purely luck.

My victory over Heavennet was the result of my intimate understanding of it and my preparation for it. As good as they were, FY, Superior and Nightmare could only win against Heavennet before its second birthday. The other All-stars, too, hit their limit against Heavennet for their lack of understanding and preparation for it.

Heavennet began with Thuỳ Dương. Thuỳ Dương had decided that she did not have to play the ROC or be good at ROC to kick our asses at this game. She started working on Heavennet, pages of codes at the time. Since that moment, Phúc and I had schemed to foil the ultimate work of our goddess just once. Phúc has devised a strategy when Thuỳ Dương first wrote the codes for Heavennet.

Neither Phúc had seen the effectiveness of his strategy nor Thuỳ Dương had real-time the completion of her project.

What they started, I completed. I hired those three AI developers with my own money through a third party. With their help, I intended to realize Thuỳ Dương’s vision. And when Thuỳ Dương’s vision is realized, I intended to test Phúc’s strategy.

Though it was not nearly as much as the number of games that Heavennet has played against itself, I had played 39,807 matches with Heavennet, nearly twice the combined numbers of games that the other 20 All-stars have played against Heavennet. Whereas they would lose some and win some, I only win one match.

I have only won one match, the one that counted the most.

I taught Heavennet to be prepared for one scenario and one single scenario alone. I taught Heavennet to go after my stationed warlord when I abused my hit-and-run to deny it of a conclusive battle. The 39,806 times that Heavennet has gone for that opening against me, it won every single time. I taught Heavennet’s learning program to flag that move as one of the winning moves for that exact situation. I taught Heavennet to counter my play style and to win against me.

Phúc’s strategy was base on ancient philosophy, “Cultivate an army for three years, use an army in an hour.”

Preparation is everything.

Using Phúc’s strategy, I played against Heavennet, willing and repeating that exact scenario to develop 39,806 times and lost to the AI 39,806 times. By paving the road with the stones of our accumulated defeats and losses, we had a clear, direct path to victory.

On that day, the day when Heavennet crushed ten of the top Mythical Ranked All-stars and worked its way to demolish the ten Immortal Ranked All-stars of the league, the world gasped and watched in the scene in horror.

I, being the disagreeable bastard that I was, rejoiced for Thuỳ Dương’s success in secret. When FY, Superior, and Nightmare was beaten, it was time for me to put my faith in Phúc’s strategy and myself while assuming the mantle of mankind’s final defender.

By relentlessly pushing my assault and extending the combat situation with it, I informed Heavennet of the composition of my army. Heavennet, being its logical self, defended and carefully built an army with units that countered mine base on the provided information. Slowly, Heavennet carefully accumulated and built an army that I could not afford to engage in direct combat. Therefore, I could only avoid to engage in combat with it through hit-and-run and left my warlord in the final fortress for safety measurements.

That was the scenario, the exact scenario.

In that exact scenario, Heavennet followed the script that Phúc has planned for it four years ago, going straight for my warlord and final fortress. Heavennet learned to counter my playstyle. It learned of my army’s composition. It learned many things. But it did not learn how disagreeable I could be.

What Heavennet did not learn was the existence of my siege troops, the witches. I kept them a secret, constantly hid them in the fog of war until the final hour. I taught Heavennet everything that I needed it to learn, but not the one that it should learn, the most important lesson. That alone was the sprout of Heavennet’s greatest downfall, its greatest strategic and tactical error made on that day. The remaining task was the execution of my own tactics to defend against Heavennet’s counterattack and a little bit of currying Fortuna’s favor for security sake.

The final 20 seconds of that game, I managed to see what my other half had foreseen four years earlier, I saw Heavennet’s fruitless stalling the inevitable. The AI knew of its defeat but still, it struggled to delay that crushing defeat. An asshole I was, humiliating the AI even further, queuing-action to a win. Before Mistress Death graced both sides of the screens with her appearance, I have already run out of the glassy game booth, howling and screaming like a madman. I was intoxicated with emotion and thought, the arena erupted, howling the defeat of Heavennet. They cheered for my success in defending mankind’s dignity against a piece of machine.

I shouted and cheered for their victory. Amidst the deafening cheer of the crowds, I was as loud as I could possibly be.

That day was Phúc’s victory as much as Thuỳ Dương’s victory. She won the war. Heavennet had proven itself. It would only get stronger and more complete from there. Her goal reached. My other half won the greatest battle of that war because that was the only battle that counted, the only one that mattered. He and I knew that she had the war in her book. History has proven again and again that AI and robot would win and pave the future. Therefore, we only schemed for one victory, the victory that mattered the most, the one that would become an important milestone in history. His strategy and my execution worked against that monster of an AI.

Only when the rush of emotions was over, I realized that I did not win my battle. He remained silence inside me, unmoved and unawakened.

While the Golden Arena was thunderous with applauds, being the loudest that it had ever been, I experienced my greatest lost yet. I had no idea how else I could hear his voice again. Only when that realization hit me like a truck, I howled a madman and cried a teary laughter while my body still being tossed in the air. The world believed that those were the tears of joy. For them, that was the truth. That was enough.

That day, that was the last time the Prince of The Alliance was in tandem, at least in terms of functionality, when he handled the strategy and I handled the execution of tactics.

“If you wanted to have the Prince of The Alliance, earn him. Conquer him first and his service is yours,” I kept telling Pride.

I did not ask her to defeat me. I did not ask her to defeat Phúc. Defeating me meant that Pride has only defeated Fearless. Defeating Phúc only meant that Pride was bullying a man who has fallen into despondency and grief.

I demanded Pride to lay waste to the Prince of The Alliance. A ghost, our ghost, his and mine.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The newest average time for the two us, Pride and me, to complete our match was around four days. When I mentally did the simple math, 5000 times four, around twenty thousand dreamland days have passed. I could barely feel the passage of time anymore, thanks to the experience I had accumulated through this endless dream and the lack of adrenalin rush nowadays.

In a blink of an eye, it was yet another decisive battle, another inevitable for Pride. Her ownership over her Authority was once again being put on the guillotine.

5000 matches of blindfolded ROC in the real world would be labeled as “many,” but not in dreamland. No amount of games or matches was ever too many or too much inside dreamland, as long as they were conducted with purposes, which the two of us had more than enough.

“You can still stop now,” I suggested.

“Today marks your fall,” Pride declared before the game.

“I will fall to the ground laughing at your loss,” countered I, having the final word as usual.

Pride was confident because she was armed with a new weapon or two. If you have a trump card, save it for the right moment. And Pride had certainly revealed it at the right moment. It was not an ingenious scheme or tactic or anything huge.

For once, the Lioness stopped being stubborn about using the dark occultist to defeat me. She swallowed her words. That alone was an improvement. Pride had perfected a method to rest her mind and restored her freshness while playing the game. It was something so insignificant, just a mechanical skill, and yet, a game-changer. Combining this skill with her developed micro-controlling skill, Pride willed our battle into that of attrition battle while directing the point of her attack at my Achilles' heels.

Though, our side had already learned to communicate through hand sign and code outside of oral command to save us energy. It was not enough to keep up with the physical demands of the blindfolded games when they could last to a month.

Isonos and Ember were Pride’s primary targets. Ember, no matter how much training I had subjected him into, had a limited threshold toward pressure and quick thinking. Ember was if I would word, a normal person who had overachieved his normal status.

Not every person could solve a hundred problems in twenty seconds. That, I had accepted. Not every person could be like FY, not everyone could overcome his weakness to pressure simply by getting used to the motion and constantly putting his mind and body to the meatgrinders of pressure. Not everyone can overcome stress by exposing himself to more stresses. Not every slow person could train himself to be fast. Not every person could butt his head against the wall and expect the wall to fall down. Such absurdities of tasks required abnormal people to address.

Isonos could not meet the insane physical demand of the job especially when Pride had exposed his physical handicap and narrowed down her attack on him. To scream, yell, communicate, and think for twenty-seven days straight without stopping to rest, Isonos lacked the physical demand to do that. On top of that, Pride had finally put her own analysis and scouting reports on Isonos’ commanding style into proper use for the first time.

Her patience was to be feared. Since that night when Pride had discussed with me of her analysis of Isonos, over 10, 000 blindfolded games had been played. A true hunter the Lioness was, only struck when she was sure.

Within nineteen taxing days of endless, high octane and high mobility combats and repeated barbaric slugfests, Isonos for the second time in his life were absolutely crushed. The one wing Garuda suffered failures upon failures upon failures. His tactical decisions were read. His planned moves and even impromptu moves were predicted and countered. He was toyed and crushed mercilessly. Isonos was exhausted in strategy, willpower and emotion.

When I realized Pride’s game plan, I resorted to my oldest trick and pulled my staffers out of their duty to rest them in shifts and rotations. Losing teams of helpers to energy-management was painful, as painful as losing eyes and ears, but losing a tactician of Isonos’ level and a strategist of Ember’s caliber on top of that hurt... a lot. I would rather lose my eyes and ears than losing my brains.

I had a chill during that moment when I first pulled Isonos out of the game in a losing moment on our side. The veins in his misaligned eyes were bulging, dark, and pulsating with fury and hatred for his own disability and weaknesses. The last time I have seen this look of Isonos was when I crushed him in ROC alongside his dream team. Back then, Isonos had Sasengun to handle my offense, Faugus to man the strategic positions and resources, Meireen to contest APM and high mobility combats with me, Searek to mount the offense, and Isonos himself as the mastermind of the team. Back then, when I demolished his dream team, Isonos also had this crushed look.

I diverted my attention from the fight by leaving the command to Searek and Sasengun. I crowned a cold, white towel on Isonos’ feathered head, “Never forget this moment,” commanded I.

Isonos’ complexion hardened. The one wing Garuda nodded his head, cracking his taloned knuckles.

What doesn’t kill you, only make you stronger, I grinned at the face of my success.

Even the monsters of logical reasoning and foresight like S0rr0w and FY experienced utter defeats. But what made them the monsters that they were, my equal and better, was their willful rise from their defeats. Every time they suffered routs, they return a stronger monster. Attempting to defeat them was like trying to defeat my own mirror image. They refuse to go down or stay down.

The landscape of the pro-league of ROC has always been a constant arms race. It was never about how strong a team was or could be. Being stronger and more developed at every moment is more important in an arms race. That’s the spirit of every competitive sport and Esport. War is a similarly constant arm-race. It was good for a genius like Isonos to suffer failures and shame at this level.

I created a monster out of Pride and fought her for many reasons.

Smart people would shoot one arrow at one bird, and one thousand arrows at one thousand birds. Stupid and insane people like me would shoot one arrow at a flock of one thousand birds, hoping that arrow would miraculously land all of them.

To conquer a monster, a person needs to be as strong, if not stronger than that monster, be it in might or in wit, which I needed my generals and commanders to be. If I could make Pride submit, good, I would gain a monster size of an independent warlord. If I was submitted by Pride’s sword, also good, my generals and commanders would be even more driven to realize my goal. For them, it would be a personal business with Pride and whoever involved with the Great Game. URLOX’s stupid prophecy would be hilariously proven wrong. Win or lose this blindfolded game against Pride, the Great Game would end by my design.

Everyone involved with this stupid game would receive the “FUCK YOU” in Fearless’ style to their face, I thought and grinned.

When I pulled Isonos and Ember out of the roster to let them rest in rotation, even a battle seasoned orc like Searek had a difficult time to go through that kind of shouting hell. Not every human had the physical makeups, skills or experience to scream, yell, communicate while forcing our mind to work for weeks without resting like Sasengun or me.

The fact that the two of us were fully capable of going through with the demand of this insanity of a task could be attributed to our history with insanity. Just like old-time, Sasengun and I had to do most of the heavy lifting for our side throughout the match, especially whenever I rested Isonos or Ember. It was nothing new or novel. It was the same old trick of ours. When everything else failed, I took over the offense scheme while she single-mindedly ran the defense setup and everything else. I cut any unnecessary information off my attention and doubled down on causing as much damage to Pride’s faction as possible.

Just like that, our side persevered. Our quagmire of perseverance absorbed Pride’s waves of assaults. Her waves of assault were endless, our perseverance was bottomless. Our clash was a contradiction of ideas. And just like all contradiction of idea and ideology in the world, illusions, lies, and holes in human perception, our clash was.

When Pride ran out of troops and good generals to toss at me, I spearheaded our force to victory.

Another Authority of Pride fell into my open palm, an Authority which granted me the ability to traverse the abyss and the lightless corners of the world. The possession of this Authority contributed significantly to Pride’s dominance over Acrẽa in their catfight.

“Do you want to withdraw now? Now is the perfect time to withdraw from this game,” I honestly advised Pride from initiating the prologue of my fifth gacha roll.

“Try me,” scoffed the Lioness, confident in her chance and in her newly upgraded weapons. Seven days we traded lives in our giant, simulated battlefield. Pride fought valiantly. But valiance alone would not save her from defeat. , a most villainous Authority, rolled into my possession early as though Fortuna told me to become a mastermind villain in a hurry. Ever Fortuna’s faithful disciple, I learned to master this Authority within two minutes.

Same Authority, but every Immortal and Mythical ranked had his own method and tool. Sanguine controlled his puppets through his tentacles and venom. Thrall moved inanimate corpses by projecting a part of his ethereal body into their rotten fleshes. Flokí toyed with his victim through his mind corruption power. Similarly, I was given a Miracle to summon an immaterial mouse and keyboard.

was next, followed by , falling into my possession one by one.

Of all the villainous evil and injustice in the world, these two Authorities have certainly fallen into the most corrected hands, thought I. Maxing my ceiling at the Conqueror rank in these two Authorities was not even remotely a challenge.

Hurt, but Pride could still laugh at her losses back then. Her losses fueled her hunger for a win. The match where Pride lost her Authority was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

My side was strategically superior but her side’s execution of tactics was far smoother. Fortuna was sick of rooting over me for once and favored Pride. My dark art of stupidity backfired and I had to rely on logic and my staffers to weather the storm. The tide of war was on Pride’s side throughout the length of the game. The Lioness did everything right. Until the very last moment, she was. In a race to see whose warlords would go down first, I completed the race ahead of Pride by a margin of five seconds.

I had a much needed dosage of adrenalin and thrill that I had starved for at the expense of Pride. For the first time since we have met, Pride looked truly shaken and vulnerable. I was a game that has successfully escaped her claws and fangs even when everything was on her side. The Lioness sat on her chair, deflated and crushed.

“And I thought I am the one who has a serious issue with gambling. Apparently, you too, are having this issue. It’s about the damn time that you cut your loss and put this issue behind you,” my arrogance compelled me to issue my warning to Pride yet again. But I doubted she would listen.