“Stand, and prepare to prove yourself!”

Sweat dripped off Sendai’s nose and hit the grooves of the dojo’s floorboards. He struggled off his hands and onto his knees, then his feet. Fifty push-ups weren’t this hard in the real world, but it was the first fifty his brand-new avatar had ever done.

“Fuck,” he wheezed under his breath, staggering to his feet.

“Silence!” The Mantis Mountain Sect elder overseeing the proving came to a halt in front of Sendai. Looked him up and down. “Pitiful. Why are you standing here?”

Sendai panted and looked to his left, his right. The other hopefuls were mostly wearing the sect’s green uniform, some covered in ornate embroidery of rank. He was the only one in his group wearing peasant clothes – wearing a noob outfit.

“I want to attain the rank of third rank neophyte,” Sendai managed to say.

“You are barely fit to be a first rank neophyte. Go.” The elder pointed toward the back of the hall with one wizened hand, and an impressively long set of fingernails.

Most of the players in the back group were in peasant garb of some kind, but the ones who actually had a chance of entering the Mantis Mountain Sect wore townsmen clothing – Chinese jackets which might have been called magua, if Sendai was remembering the game guide right.

“Uh.” Sendai wheezed. Clasped his hands in front of himself the way he’d seen in cheesy kung fu flicks, and bowed carefully. “Respectfully, elder, I was a top-fifty melee tournament combatant in BlackStar Galaxy, before it shut down. I would like to try for third rank.”

The elder stared at him, lifting a chin. “Speak not of the world-beyond-the-wall at formal ceremonies.”

That was what they called the real world in Wind of the Eight Kingdoms.

“Yes elder. Sorry, elder.” Sendai kept his head down while the elder stroked his chin.

At last the old man gestured dismissively. “Very well. If you wish to humiliate the memory of your former incarnation, you may do so.”

“Thank you, elder.” Sendai bowed a little deeper.

The elder moved on through the ranks, inspecting the hopefuls, and the sect-members seeking to advance, leaving Sendai to reflect on how little his previous mastery meant here in an avatar that got winded with just the preliminary calisthenics.

The hopefuls and the elders were not alone in the dojo’s main hall. A raised dais platform, standing on a set of marble lions holding it off the floor, seated twelve sect officials in green robes on jade thrones.

A wizened, ancient looking guy with a jade ring on each finger kept looking at Sendai. Kept grinning. Creepy. Very, very creepy.

A servant golem – an NPC with an elemental body, this one made from copper covered in green Verdigris, like the Statue of Liberty had been – struck a gong.

The ringing snapped Sendai from his thoughts, and he stood as tall as he could.

“The duels begin. Fifth rank hopefuls, advance!”

Sendai sat with the others at the edge of the ring, and spent the first fight just watching.

Two Mountain Mantis Sect players approached each other on the centre mat, bowed, took their stances, and attacked each other the moment the official seated furthest to the right raised his voice and howled, “Fight!”

The guy on the left was crazy-stupid good. Like, Sendai would’ve been a little scared of the guy if he came up against him in the old Rust Pit. Super hardcore martial arts guys didn’t really play BlackStar Galaxy much, but Lefty? Lefty looked like he did martial arts for real. Serious martial arts. Like, Olympics or something. Righty, Righty had just worked his avatar’s body to oiled perfection.

Lefty put a punch straight into Righty’s face, twisted sinuously away when Righty tried to hook his heel behind Lefty’s knee… Skill versus brawn. And in Wind of the Eight Kingdoms, well, skill counted for a lot. Especially if you knew one of the classical martial arts integrated into the game.

Sendai? Sendai didn’t know any of those martial arts. But he did have a really strong Neural-Affinity score. Which had seemed like a good thing when he signed up that morning.

Neural-Affinity meant more dexterity, more poise, more ability to feel the avatar and control it like a real body. But it also meant that sensory feedback was stronger – not just the sweat Sendai could smell, but the pain in his virtual arms from working out.

Righty must have put a ton of time into this game. Which probably meant he’d either started with, or developed, high affinity. And that explained why he screamed so loudly when Lefty whipped around in a spinning kick, plunging his heel into Righty’s nose and breaking it with gouts of slightly-too-pink blood.

High affinity also meant more accurate pain sensations.

Blood bubbling off his upper lip, Righty roared through it all the moment Lefty came in for the kill and rose to meet Lefty’s descending kick. The bulky avatar caught his opponent by the knee, hugged it to his chest and twisted until Lefty fell down, dangling from the larger player’s grip.

Righty crouched, levered Lefty’s leg against himself, and then it was Lefty’s turn to scream with a shard of bone poking through his ornate green gi. That’s what they called that kind of martial arts uniform, right? Gis? Sendai wasn’t sure – gis were for Karate, and that was Japanese. Everything on this end of the Wind of the Eight Kingdoms continent was more China-styled.

Righty won. So brawn could beat skill here, at least sometimes.

The next match, Sendai spent most of his time studying his competition. He knew that there were six slots available for third rank positions. Eleven hopefuls in his group, although nine were Mantis sect members. The other odd one out, like Sendai, was wearing a fancy-ass looking set of blue robes.

It was possible that the other guy had just logged in and bought those robes today, but that would be expensive. Very expensive.

The fourth rank matches weren’t as impressive. Players a little more average, but some of them were brutally quick. If this was the Rust Pit, Sendai would’ve given himself maybe a sixty percent chance of beating them. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the Rust Pit. And based on the match where one dude kicked the other straight across the dojo, being able to perform the martial styles of this world accurately translated to a lot of bonus damage.

When the last pair of fighters seeking to attain the fourth rank staggered from the centre mat after a fight that had come down to ground grappling, the elder from before pointed at the guy in blue robes. “You!”

Blue got up and bowed respectfully.

“And you!”

The elder gestured at a girl in green, who hopped up energetically. She grinned, bowed, and joined Blue on the mat.

Blue won. Fast. Hooked his toes behind her heel as she advanced, pulled her foot out and she fell flat on her ass. She couldn’t get up before Blue leapt into the air and pounded her with a brutal falling punch that made the air ripple with blue fire.

Green girl’s body rippled, like she’d been hit with a sledgehammer, and instantly she went still. She looked dead.

Nobody said a word, on Sendai’s side of things. The other hopefuls just stared. But the officials on the dais nodded, glancing between each other with low words.

Chi powers? Qi powers? Sendai wasn’t sure which way it was spelled, but abilities like that were high level shit. Much too high level for this area of the Eight Kingdoms.

Blue bowed respectfully, and after Green girl was revived with a small black pill, she bowed back with the same energy as before.

“It was an honour, Liu Huan,” Green girl said.

“Likewise.” Liu’s lips didn’t quite match what he’d said, but the translation algorithm kept his tone – respectful, friendly – absolutely clear. “I am only sorry that I cannot honourably seek a rank higher than third among the Mountain Mantis Sect. I hope to meet you again further in your journey, Mao Lin.”

All smiles, and Liu Huan went to stand with the others waiting to be inducted into the sect.

The other matches went by quickly from Sendai’s point of view, as he wondered whether Liu’s powers were part of some kind of game mechanic to grind out, or if it had more to do with Neural-Affinity scores and actual learned skills rather than avatar state.

Soon enough, the elder called on Sendai with a harsh cry of, “You!”

Sendai was the only third rank hopeful left, though. Any chance of a bye, just being let through, died when the elder turned to Lefty – whose shattered leg had been healed, again, improbably with some kind of pill. “And you!”

Lefty bowed, and got up to take his place, limping a little. When he took his stance, he did it with such force and speed, whirling his arms, that his robe sleeves whipcracked.

Seriously? Sendai wanted to complain out loud, but he wasn’t that stupid. He kept his mouth shut and moved to the centre mat, peeled off his peasant’s shirt, baring his chest, and flicked it into inventory.

His shirt didn’t go into inventory. He tried shaking his hand again, but… BlackStar Galaxy’s inventory system wasn’t like Wind of the Eight Kingdoms’.

“Shit,” Sendai muttered, while literally everyone in the room stared at him ineffectually waving his shirt.

The guy who kept grinning at him took pity though, made a gesture, and the servant-golem stepped up and held out its hands. Sendai nodded his thanks, then gave it the worthless shirt.

“Black Hound, Fourth Rank,” Lefty said, introducing himself in a harsh whisper.

“Sendai… noob,” Sendai replied.

Lefty smiled almost cruelly, but calmed when Sendai took his classic Rust Pit brawling stance, fists up, weight on his front leg, back heel up a little, ready to spring forward.

“Fight!”

And it was on. It was very goddamn on. Lefty shuffled forward in an efficient scamper, angle of his hips and shoulders remaining absolutely perfectly aligned in relation to Sendai’s body.

Sendai launched himself forward, and juked right at the last instant, just as Lefty’s weight started to shift. The kick went wide, and Sendai put his knuckles into Lefty’s face, felt something soft give way.

Yes! It was all coming back. It wasn’t exactly like BlackStar Galaxy, but the moves were right, the weight was right, Sendai could do this.

But so could Lefty.

Caught in close quarters, too close to kick, Lefty was all elbows and anger, smashing them into Sendai’s ribs with bitter force.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt about as bad as that one time Uchi crashed her single-seat starfighter with Sendai hitching a ride on her lap. But elbows weren’t shards of Duraglass. Sendai could handle elbows – or he used to.

Grimacing, he backed up a step, winding up to deliver another blow, but had to sway out of the way of Lefty’s next punch instead. When Lefty realized he’d missed, he twisted his wrist and jabbed Sendai’s shoulder with a sharp cry of Iai!

His shoulder went numb. Limp. He only got one arm up to block Lefty’s roundhouse kick, and even if that took the sting off it, the impact of his own arm against his face was enough to throw him off his feet.

Sendai hit the mat and struggled to get up – fumbled with that one bad arm – and didn’t even see Lefty deliver the coup de grace, a kick that definitely broke ribs.

“Winner!”

Lefty rubbed blood off his lip, then lifted a hand before striding off.

When Sendai was sensible enough to stand, he was directed to go sit with the losers. And apparently he wasn’t injured enough to rate one of those cool pills.

“Damnit,” Sendai wheezed, sitting back down.

“You’re fast,” Green girl – Mao Lin – whispered, leaning over. “How in the heck are you that fast on your first day?”

The servant-golem flung Sendai’s shirt into his face. Sendai almost choked on it. He debated trying to rip the shirt up and use it to bind his ribs, but he neither knew enough about the game’s medicine system, Chinese medicine, or medicine in general to do a damn thing about it.

“Two years in the Rust Pit,” Sendai explained, grimacing while he got his shirt on.

“Where’s that?” Mao Lin asked, squinting at him. “Andong? Seorabeol?”

“BlackStar Galaxy. Planet of New Idaho.”

She covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh no. I read about that. It shut down today?”

Sendai nodded. “Eight hours ago.”

“I am so sorry. Here. My name’s Mao Lin. Take it as a welcome gift,” she said, holding out a small phial of red liquid.

“Thanks. I’m Sendai.”

It wasn’t as miraculous as those pills – after downing the little potion Sendai could still feel something flexing in his ribs the wrong way – but the pain stopped almost immediately.

Once he could think straight, he thought about just leaving, but the fights were still going, and nobody else had left after losing a bout. Probably be rude to just fuck off and log out, and people seemed to care about that here.

There were a lot of second rank matches to get through, but thank God – or thank the gods, or ancestors, Sendai wasn’t sure how it worked here – the first ranks took their bouts in groups of sixteen, eight duels taking place simultaneously. After two rounds of that, the elder who’d been running the show rose to the dais and began to accept the winners by name, giving each of them engraved swords.

They were nice swords, but even Sendai could tell they were for hanging on a wall or something. The engravings were pretty nice, though, at least for the fifth and fourth ranks. The losers were gathered and dismissed from each group, bowing to the victors before leaving.

When the fourth rank victors had taken their place, holding their swords, and the losers bowed, one of the officials on the dais rose a hand. “I will take Hit Bong as my apprentice.”

The dude who’d been kicked clear across the dojo, who’d lost, grinned, and stepped away from the losers. He bowed, while the elder muttered something.

The official who’d picked Bong – a tall, thin man in green silk, said simply, “It’s an awesome name and he’s a great dude.”

The elder hissed urgently, and Sendai definitely heard him say the word ‘unseemly’, but Bong and the tall guy in silk had already high fived. High fives were, like, a contract. Even in the Eight Kingdoms. Deal done, the tall guy in silk gave Bong an engraved sword.

In the third rank group, Mao Lin was called on by another official – a woman with white hair drawn up into a bun – and that seemed absolutely right to Sendai.

He joined in on the applause, and was about to bow to the winning third rankers when someone yelled, “I will take Sendai Rustbeater as my apprentice.”

The grinning dude, with the jade rings. It was him. He stood, gesturing Sendai over.

As Sendai approached, the elder whispered sharply, “You can only take an apprentice from inside the sect, honoured Master Lio.”

“That is not so, Pan,” Lio told him. “I can take anyone I know to be fit for the role as an apprentice.”

“But he started his account today,” Elder Pan hissed.

“Trust me. We want him,” Master Lio whispered back, only to welcome Sendai with a smile, and an engraved sword of his own. “Go stand over there, Senny boy.” He gestured toward the other third-rankers, like Blue.

Sendai blinked. “Tex?”

Lio grinned wider. “Talk to you later.”

Tex, or Lio, or whoever the hell it was went back to sit down on his throne, and Sendai moved over to stand beside Mao Lin and the guy in blue, Liu.

While the second and first ranks moved up to claim their prizes – engraved wooden swords – Mao Lin leaned over.

“How do you know Master Lio?”

“I… I think I smuggled guns with him.”

After the induction ceremony completed, and Elder Pan gave Sendai his new green Mountain Mantis Sect robes, Sendai was summoned to meet Master Lio for tea.

Master Lio’s chambers were small, cozy, and in deference to the ancient China theme in this part of the Eight Kingdoms the wall paintings were rendered in ink brush and watercolour.

Even if done up like Chinese calligraphy, Sendai could still recognize a picture of a cowboy with two pistols aimed into the air.

Master Lio, Tex, swirled his tea bowl around self-importantly once Sendai had sat. “You still a Rustbeater, Senny Boy?”

“You are Tex, right? I ain’t imagining things?”

Tex grinned. “It’s me.”

“What’s up with Master Lio?”

“Master Ell-Eye-Oh. Oil, backwards.”

Sendai picked up his cup of tea. “You jackass.” He grinned.

“So you finally left the Galaxy behind, huh?”

“Yeah. It shut down this morning.”

Tex’s eyes widened. “No shit? I thought it’d still be going.”

Sendai shook his head. “Not enough N-bux were coming into the system to keep paying for the servers. The admins declared bankruptcy yesterday.”

“Fucking Lobo.”

“Yeah,” Sendai agreed. “Fucking Lobo.”

Two months ago, after the biggest war ever to rock across BlackStar Galaxy, Lobo had fucked the entire game. Lobo had manipulated the heads of the largest two corporate conglomerates into putting him in charge, and he’d liquidated seventy percent of the entire in-game economy. Cashed out an estimated fifteen to sixteen million Neurocoins, bankrupting the game’s conversion accounts. Which meant bankrupting the funds that kept the game online. Sendai was pretty sure Lobo had probably only walked away with half of that, though. The costs of making transfers that large with a neuro-based cryptocurrency could be extreme, especially when doing hinky shit like that, and by the time Lobo was done crashing the game’s economy and fucking everything over it would have cost a full ten Neurocoins for Sendai to offload his inventory and avatars from the game.

Ten Neurocoins were years and years of mining time? He didn’t have that much. Not nearly.

Tex had left four months ago, back when thanks to shit like Lobo’s the social culture around the game had turned poisonous. It had been impossible to trust anyone, and for Tex, the game was always about making deals and playing politician.

Tex got out a bottle of rice wine, and the pair raised their drinking bowls to their old hangout. They toasted the old days – the run from New Idaho to Ganges station, that time Tex’s ex-wife had come in-game looking for her alimony payments and Sendai had PKed her thirty-something times.

After each toast, Tex demanded they smash their drinking bowls and made a servant-golem bring fresh ones while they regaled each other with the old stories.

A dozen toasts later, with his avatar’s inebriation making Sendai uncomfortably woozy, he got down to business.

“So I get the third-rank stipend now, right?” Sendai asked. “Two strings of cash a week?”

“Uh huh. So long as you do all your third-ranky chores, or up until you piss me off and I kick you out, anyway.” Tex grinned.

“What’s that converted into real money?” Sendai asked. “Fifty N-bux?”

“Sixty N-bux,” Tex said, “If you trade under the table instead of going to an exchange.”

“And you’ll trade me under the table,” Sendai said with a grin.

“That I will,” Tex said.

Sendai could work with that. N-bux were just fractions of a full Neurocoin, but sixty N-bux, even without mining time, would keep him and his cat fed for now. Rent… he had time to worry about rent later.

“So what are my chores?” Sendai asked, tipping back another bowl of rice wine and throwing it against the wall, where it smashed amongst its fallen comrades.

“Well,” Tex said, looking around at the shards of shattered pottery. “You can start by cleaning up.”

Sendai groaned.