MEDB.

I wish you were here right now -Instead of these idiots.

You’ve done a good job so far; you knew I that I’d never rush in a forceful, dominating strategy. Even if I did -let’s say, had an enchantment for immaculate strength and speed to hold and swing a hillside peak, would I use it?

Of course not.

And I didn’t receive the luxury of time to put test my strategy, did I? Though, it would never have worked after the first attempt, would it? The snaring vines were the first thing that I came up with. The first thing I tried to ask for once I figured I could just ask a specific god the for the things I wanted, and their twinkling eyes in the skies accepting my plea. Ask and you shall receive, I suppose?

But where did that off-the-cuff thinking leave me? As a slave…

There must have been a way to spend my time better; maybe getting some Fighters to analyse the patterns of the Barbarians movements, especially the nukers; Maybe I should’ve done that instead of trying to break this stupid system down to its fundamentals. But I doubt I would’ve done that very well…Simon was right, after all, I might be the only one to hang their hope on that kind of thinking; to treat it like a real puzzle, not a game. How stupid.

I really should’ve thought more about how they might react, but MEDB, looks like you bested me again. Those druids of yours, I see their arms twisting around each other, being pulled around by energy like a mountain pass shaped, thrust into being by a swelling river. I barely see, anyway, everyone else acting upon your orders as best as they can. Or is that an extension of you? I’d love to ask you about it, sometime.

With a hand on his head and elbow far forward, Yeung-Sung continued to open and close his potion satchel, hoping for inspiration to strike. The Gauntlet waited for him.

How many until I can risk it? 1 in 4 chance? 1 in 3? And what if I get unlucky one too many times, even then…

His thought patterns were often interrupted by Luke.

“Just give up now,” he jeered. His boots squeaked harshly against the table, making black, talon-like marks. His officials that remained wriggled their noses whenever he wagged his feet near.

Yeung-Sung squeezed his scalp, purging the image from his mind. “How much can I risk,” he continued, “At what point can I afford to try it?”

A swell of air rushed over his neck. Shirley?

“Stop,” his friend said. Said it with a soaring voice completely at odds with his image.

Yeung-Sung resisted the temptation to look, curling deeper towards his phone, chattering out calculations. But Shirley was obviously not going to let him, which he should’ve guessed. He pried Yeung-Sung’s nails from his scalp.

“Relax, Yung-Sung,” he shouted, like a bloody cough-drop splitting over his words. “You can do this!”

Turning his attention to the officials, his voice boomed across General, meant for everyone.

“Why aren’t any of you helping him? You want him to fail? You want your last days to be in this colony, your graves to be in the cemetery beside the square?” He sucked in another sweeping breath. His commands were more like wails, but his affections were a siren song.

Shirley asked them again, “Why do all of you do nothing?”

It echoed again. Doing nothing

Yeung-Sung heard no reply except for the sound of Shirley start to sob. They did not start to help him, but leaping up, he barely noticed.

“That’s it,” yelled Yeung-Sung, pulling his friend into a swivelling embrace.

“Huh?” asked Shirley.

“Huh?” said the officials.

“Huh?” went PM.

But before anyone could string together a proper question, Yeung-Sung resumed the Gauntlet run.

Ducking under the shield that tilted in the soil, the shining avatar unearthed the closest spear like it was a turnip. Shaking the tip clean, he quickly popped up another to join it. As he knelt, a group of barbarians wandered curiously, slipping out of the fluid rotation of the raid party.

Bounding out from cover, the demi-god ran ahead, following their clockwise trajectory onto a collision course. As he speculated, the barbarians hesitated, but didn’t dare stray from MEDB’s plan -told that he wouldn’t take them all on head to head.

Yeung-Sung dilated time, but held off on drawing the attack line. He admired the slowly dawning looks of uncertainty upon the Celt’s faces as they turned helplessly to the other groups. He scooted the camera over, but there were no signs of retaliation from any other barbs; they held to their rotation perfectly.

Slipping through to the back, he stood before this group’s druid. Locked in his trance, his hands were barely raised up to his abdomen, and soft crackles rang out through the phone like he was crushing a plastic carton. All Yeung-Sung had to do was commit a light swipe with his finger, while the druid flushed with the strain of channelling magic, like the power had great weight and had to be cast -thrown at him like a boulder.

The glowing avatar hoisted one spear over his shoulder. Yeung-Sung flicked the attack just as he realised two things:

One; he was being attacked -he knew that because Airgead asked him where he would’ve liked the stab to be placed on his avatar’s body- and secondly, he had miscounted the group.

The assassin! Where was he hiding?

His chest plate was automatically targeted, but Yeung-Sung had time to confirm or re-direct the attack before it landed. The assassin’s thrust seemed elegant in slow motion; his letter opener nicely shaped to fit within the grooves around the shoulder of the avatar’s chest plate. Shifting his avatar quickly, Yeung-Sung managed to finish flinging his spear and also have the assassin’s strike hit his silk cape. The attacks hit at the same time; The dagger parting down the soft silk and the spear, well, spearing the druid inside his dirty robe.

Amber Moon clapped her hands in excitement.

“What is it?” Vanessa asked her.

“I remember that one,” she said, pointing at the avatar’s cape.

“Oh?”

She smiled, fluffing up her powdered cheeks. Twirling her finger in a circle, Amber said, “Fire Wave.”

As she said it, the red sheen of the cape flared out like a saffron dust cloud and the Barbarian group around Yeung-Sung’s avatar covered their eyes, their cries cut off as the heat scorched their throats and burnt their lips. The assassin, however, clamped his charred body shut and clattered to the ground in a final flop. The druid wasn’t long in falling limply by his side, the force of the ‘Fire Wave’ pushing him back through the point of the avatar’s spear.

Yeung-Sung held up a hand to high-five Amber.

“Four in Twenty-two.”

Covered in a thin film of ash, the avatar pivoted, making for the next group. Tatters of his cloak fluttered behind him. Yeung-Sung understood the rotations of the Barbarians better this time, and did not overshoot his path when he charged.

This groups assassin was not so bold. He bared his blade like a vegetarian’s knife. His face streaked with tears and splattered with dirt from all the running, yet upon further look, he trembled with determination. The Celt was fighting with his commands, trying to rid himself of inaction and give in to his urge to rush in and confront the avatar before him, the murderer of his friends.

I wonder what you can do, little one.

What is the limit of your will? How much can MEDB fill you with her own reasons, for her own purpose of not being cast aside, before you come to your own conclusions and realise that whatever you do, you will die.

Yeung-Sung kept time a little dilated and sat back. The skinny barb lifted his little fist into the air and screamed, hurtling towards the shining demi-god.

How human of you.

He stuck the assassin through with the same dirty spear that held up the nuker. That shut him up. Or so Yeung-Sung thought, but there was no quietening and since he had acted, time clicked back into place.

The thin, terrified shout faded. As it drew to its ultimate end it was lifted up by a chorus of a dozen of his kin; The second group had rounded on Yeung-Sung’s avatar. All unarmed, arms out.

They were going to grab him. They were going to pull him down to the blood-soaked earth. They were going to hold him down until he was ready to be sacrificed by their druids. And they would wail and keep the demi-god down by the strength of their sorrow, until all of them were incinerated.

For all of Yeung-Sung’s understanding of the game, he panicked as the barbarians grabbed him and flashed back to the tutorial; The barbarians running to the top of the hill as he watched, not knowing what to do or how to do it. Reining in the trembling of his fingers, Yeung-Sung had his avatar reach for the small satchel of potions. But then noticed something about the blockade of dirty Celts:

The Druids -with everyone else dumping together into one big mess- were exposed.

The demi-god snatched up a flask of silvery mist and dropped it, taking a faraway glance at the nukers as it smashed. The crash of glass made them look, and momentarily drop their concentration on the channelling.

“Oh, he knows he’s done for,” Yeung-Sung said out loud. He checked who had heard.

Vanessa rubbed her forehead. “I am watching the same fight as you, right?”

“Just wait,” Shirley said, interrupting her, “I think I’ve seen this before.” He held his arm out at his side, grinning.

The Celts snarled and coughed only inches away, but the avatar crouched low, hidden in the silver fog. Holding his shield sideways, the avatar charged forward. A couple shadows knocked into him, vibrating the phone the screen. The grey billowed out as the avatar plunged out of his smokescreen and all the PM members in ‘General’ cheered.

Ditching the shield, he ran through the clearing, concentrated only on the nukers that had scattered to the four corners of the Gauntlet. The path was awfully bare, and the Druid before him looked awfully alone.

Despite his heavy chest plate jostling as he ran, the radiant alchemist snuck his hands into his potion’s satchels. Whisking out two vials of melding magenta, he held them between four fingers as he soared towards victory. With the other hand he unhooked a plough and jumped at the Druid.

“Augh!!

Yelps of disgust eked around the hall as he ground the plough into its face. Wide eyed, Shirley said, “Umm, Okay, I haven’t seen him do that before.”

“That’s your handle, is it not?” snapped Kelly-Ann, “Because it’s definitely not one of ours.” Arms crossed, she shivered as she saw the gore on the screen. “Seriously, you people are savages.”

Leslie shrugged. “It’s not real.”

Yeung-Sung was barely paying attention, too focused on not getting killed during the reaction time-window. He waited to see if anyone would emerge from the cloud of smoke.

“I can get at least one more,” Yeung-Sung said and dragged the end of the plough from the nuker’s skull.

Something is odd, though. He shifted his vision down to the end of the table, to Luke. Why does he find this funny; I’m winning.

Yeung-Sung wasn’t the only to notice; the officials were also giving him a variety of looks. The speaker of PM clutched a hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter as much as he could. But that hardly stopped him, except from knocking him off-balance enough that he had to get his feet down off the table. Clearing his throat, the edges of the mouth continually jiggered as he said, “I’ve heard of farming mobs, -ha -ha…but this is ridiculous.”

Approaching the second of the four druids, Yeung-Sung had a method for making himself more comfortable with eviscerating its features; He pictured Luke. As the avatar swung, the channelling hand lock that the druid held fell away into a hapless, martyr-like pose.

Another round of reactions boomed throughout ‘General’, yet Yeung-Sung couldn’t help but notice that Luke still seemingly enjoyed his success.

“What,” he challenged the speaker of PM, “Have you accepted the fact that you were wrong? That it had to be me to do this, no one else?”

Luke grinned at the provocation, sitting forward. “The way it looks to me,” he said, pointing the to the screen above that was replaying the action that just occurred, “You couldn’t have done it without our help.”

His laugh blossomed like a carnivorous plant, Yeung-Sung thought he saw him drooling, his tongue flicking madly.

“You even use a sickle and plough,” Luke said, “A sickle and a bloody plough!”

The emblem! It’s looks just like it.

Luke continued, “You’ve shown everyone your loyalty to us now, at least, after I share this footage. Whether you win or lose, I -we take the credit from any results.”

“No,” Yeung-Sung protested, “They’re just farming tools. That’s why I chose them.” He turned to have all faces smiling at him, a fully realised version of the night of the riots.

“No,” he repeated. “No…”

So many faces, so many coloners expecting me to save them from this place, this experiment. Just a minute before they were telling me to conform, to sty inside the norm and now they have hoisted me out of it with their belief in me, that I am what I foolishly said I would become. He cast his eyes down to his phone.

“It’s not over. I haven’t won yet. I can still –”

“What was that?” Luke asked suddenly. “Don’t give up now, Yeung-Sung. The colony’s counting on you.”

“Yeung-Sung,” Shirley started. He held his shoulder again, a little thing, comforting but worthless.

Yeung-Sung hung his head close to the screen. His hair flopping down like curtains over his sight, he could pretend that he was alone, just for a moment and finish this.

“He’s right. This is the right thing to do,” Shirley told him.

Shrugging him off, Yeung-Sung resumed combat.

The smoke had cleared and he was in the same position as before; the fighters and archers and assassin amassing towards him like the arms of a dragging current. But this time, rather than fleeing, his avatar simply uncorked the two vials in his hand. With a flourish he poured the first on his breastplate, then, after waiting a moment, sprinkling the other over one of his bracelets.

Seeing the armor sizzle, Yeung-Sung breathed a sigh of relief. His avatar waved the fumes of liquified carbon away from his face to keep his eye on the barbarians. Yet as quickly as the fumes came, they faded, and the glowing demi-god shook the limp remains of his copper band and continued on his way towards the second to last druid, a tower of vines between him and his pursuers.

Yeung-Sung swiped at the inventory again. Over pressing it, it flew open then closed, but he was still relieved at the result; It was still his turn.

It doesn’t count as an action.

His avatar took two more acidic vials from the satchel and repeated the process of destroying his own gear to activate their blessings; Ensnare and repair. After a third time, Yeung-Sung panned the camera away from the Celts as his avatar closed in on the Druid.

The nuker still chanted, his hands in the locked-pose at his shoulders now. A growl of energy like a running motor crackled out of it. His hair flew back, his cloak and robe rippling along with it, but he still kept his sole focus on concluding the channel of the spell.

Close.

Yeung-Sung took another glance behind him and laughed. As luck would have it, the three snares that he set up erupted, like environmental roadblocks. The Barbs roared as they stumbled around their trapped friends, losing momentum but gaining rage. Not believing his luck, Yeung-Sung wondered what he would have done if that didn’t work.

“Oh my God,” exclaimed Amber.

“Yes!” cheered PM as the plough was swung, the druid fell and Yeung-Sung sat uncomfortably inside ‘General’.

He looked around again to gauge the reactions, working his fingers through the motions of his plan, armor cracking and melting like he was absent-mindedly stirring soup.

He swallowed. “The…the strategy works. I had to use everything, every back up and idea but -I’m doing it.”

“You are,” Kelly said, tapping herself with her stylus in disbelief.

The replay played in the big screen above and the crowd cried out again in disgust before launching into deafening, maddening cheers. Yeung-Sung flinched.

“What’s wrong?” asked Vanessa, “Your plan is fool proof. Idiot proof.” She knocked him on the side. “Cheer up, you go on.”

He was close to responding with anger that lurched up quickly into his tongue but he forced it down. Given a moment to think, he beckoned her over and whispered, “I’ve won this one, but what happens next? The AI -she adapts, she learns. There’s no way that I can continue to outwit her until we’ve cleared sufficient Gauntlets…or even once more, to be honest.”

“Honestly, dude?” she said, rising from his confidence, “You’re putting way too much pressure on yourself.” Making a tight fist, she rammed it at Yeung-Sung, halting just under his nose. “Fucking enjoy it,” she hissed.

Several hands fluttered to his defence, she drew away, putting her hand behind her back.

“What the hell was that?” Shirley demanded.

“He thinks,” she said, projecting her voice so even the PM members outside the hall could hear, “That what he has done is not enough. He worries that he’ll have to carry the burden of defeating the rest of the Gauntlets alone.

“That’s ridiculous,”

“I can’t believe it.”

Hundreds of murmurs scattered out over both sides as Yeung-Sung drew in a breath, his cheeks poppy red. “Did you have to shout it out?”

He closed his eyes to try ignore the rallying crowd, his fingers still crawling along in precise movements on his screen.

They’re so naïve. They don’t know MEDB. They don’t know Jordan. For all the melodrama that comes with it, I am burdened with the knowledge and experience of what we’re facing off against; I know what’s at stake…perhaps then It’s a good idea that I win this.

Shirley pulled Yeung-Sung away from his thoughts and showed him the crowd.

“Look at them,” his friend said, “Your actions gave them this hope.”

Biting down his words, Yeung-Sung bowed at them. And afterwards, despite his fears and uncertainties about PM members or his own abilities, he forced himself to look; to really look: Cheeks birthing joy; Faces watered and fed with excessive smiles, laughter, drool; Eyes rubbed dry as often as they were blanketed with tears. He had to wave out to them.

Happy as Yeung-Sung’s actions made them, they still kept their distance. It was as if he was a wild but useful animal, or a sociopathic general that was always victorious -some all-powerful machine that made everyone else’s life better, but nobody knew how it worked.

As he reached out for them, they backed away from him, So he brought his hand down, turned around more wide eyed than ever, knowing that the mass watched on.

A rough tap and he severed the last nuker like a timely head of corn. The shiny avatar’s plough had enough and cracked. Still, he held the shaft as he turned back, dragging its broken head through sloppy dirt fresh with wet, squelching footprints towards the remaining Celts.

My enemies blindly charge towards me. My friends consciously walk away.

With that thought, he began striding down the length of the table. Officials applauded him as he approached the head. Kelly-Ann even nodded, saying “Well played,” and attempted her version of a head-bow.

He showed his screen to Luke, who beat his eyelids down like a broken windscreen. He was half-hidden in his lapels of his coat, clearly chewing on his words, contemplating how he would turn this around as a victory for the Player’s Market, for the people, for himself.

Yeung-Sung shoved it closer. “I did it.”

Luke took the phone in his hand, but couldn’t look away from Yeung-Sung.

Even now he doesn’t want to acknowledge he is in the wrong. He doesn’t care about winning, or the Gauntlet, only his own image.

For a moment Yeung-Sung thought about leaving the phone with one of his officials -Kelly-Ann perhaps, and she would get some acknowledgment out of him. But then he saw his new Airgead balance; 1M. The letter was capitalized. Not ‘mm’ or ‘mc’, but one whole Medal.

Luke had swung back into his natural, skiving pose and banged his fist against the table, but Yeung-Sung had already turned back, stuffing the phone as far as he could into his back pocket.

“I’ll be leaving now,” he told them.