The conclusion of an opening ceremony, stars twinkling over the stadiums.

A crowd of millions were spread across a field, sitting and yawning patiently while a teenager monologued smugly at them in front of a towering statue of himself about to be ignited.

The ceremony’s final guest appearance? The Tyrant of Saana!

“….I am history’s greatest duellist,” the young man was explaining, “who’s yet to meet a single real peer. So, I’m not acquainted with this bronze medal, but some of you about to lose might make friends along the way. Comradery - this can also substitute for the higher pleasures of victory….”

The audience groaned in unison. A few whackos chuckled.

Saana’s favourite despot had been lecturing on the consolations gained by the arena’s hard-working losers, on the virtues of humility, nobility, and courage exemplified by those who chose to duel even when confronted with assured defeat. This was, mostly, him picking at the public scab caused by his diabolical scheme to monopolise the wins of fifteen categories.

A riot should've cut him short, but the crowd was happily sedated after previous entertainments. A string of fun events had rolled on through the in-game sunset, from dancing mammoths to showmatches by yester-season's champions.

This last segment, a grand speech, had initially been delivered by Alex Wong, who gave one customarily before each event. Mocking his co-leader’s sombre tone around retirement, he’d appeared in mourner’s clothes and dedicated the weekend to his departed friend. A poor-taste, black-and-white montage’d revealed candid moments captured behind the scenes of their campaign - the disguised Tyrant sipping tea, the disguised Tyrant napping in a trench while a rivulet of drool dribbled down his mud-smeared jaw. Throughout, Alex Wong’d gesticulated with exaggerated grief past the teen himself—seated on stage with other members of The Company—to the colossal statue looming over the crowd and built in his ‘dead’ likeness.

But then, stopping abruptly, Alex Wong'd claimed his wife had called him to eat dinner and logged out. A team of hired clowns had followed, tumbling to the podium and performing a séance summoning his comrade’s ghost to complete the memorial's remainder.

And that’s how they'd arrived here, listening to The Tyrant's obnoxious listing of runner-up prizes. Shooing off the clowns, shutting down the montage, the teen had reminded everyone of his retirement and his refusal to speak on the matter again, before returning them to the present matters of a tournament. On this small affair, he was happy to comment, if only in his capacity as another ‘anonymous’ entrant.

His talk would draw heavily from his prior Cripple hijinks. He examined the coping methods of his defeated enemies, then applied their 'wisdom' to the future losers of this tournament, some of whom were—in fact—the same people, stuck in a miserable cycle of losing. To speed through the half-hour lecture, his explorations covered everything from alluring ladies, to mindless entertainment, to comradery, to LARPing as a samurai, to the prospect of sweet vengeance against bores who stall events with lame presentations. Finally came his own motives, if he’d ever theoretically lost.

“…from my own post-maximalist, post-Saana perspective, I’d have most appreciated duelling for all of the above and more. It's a kind of fun compilation of humanity. I could reminisce nostalgically about the multiplicity of means and characters I've met, about the infinite discoveries that’d sprung up in myself when forced to clash and reconcile with the divergent methods of the enemies who might've defeated me. Yes, rubbish like that would be how I’d tolerate my worm-like existence at the bottom of the compost heap. It’d be, as the French say, my raison de losing.”

Boos followed in French.

“As for losing in a duelling tournament…” The Tyrant paused and frowned, like an anatomist inspecting a cadaver sporting a new, never-before-documented organ. “Losing alongside millions of other, unique losers, that could've been highly enlightening. In post-maximalist terms, a tournament might be a real top-grade piece of installation-art/group-development-workshop....”

More boos.

All this waft considered, the audience turned out to be surprisingly receptive.

The prior week since his reveal had marked a shift in his once-loathed reputation. In a process still unfolding, his deeds—formerly scattered across identities or misattributed to puppets—were being gathered and reattached to the teenage figure familiarised through the hours of his duelling workshop. Within the merger of identities, the two detested traits of his chief personas—The Cripple’s obnoxious parody, The Tyrant’s brutal despotism—had seemed to cancel out. As light annulled dark, what remained was the constant factor present in both sagas: his awe-inspiring artistry at every tier of violence.

This young man, some were mumbling beneath their boos, was he not actually a god of war whose mere appearance in the virtual flesh had blessed them? Was this not an authentic hyper-genius who’d proven his claimed invincibility by battling to the highest peaks of combat’s two extremities? Did he not 100%, irrefutably deserve the honours of this triumph? After skulking unappreciated in the shadows, was it not his god-earned—nay, his self-earned—right to invade the open light and cast down and trample on this world’s unworthy, second-rate champions while giving ridiculous monologues over their butchered bodies?

For the first time in his life, the teen had acquired genuine fans.

The greatest converts were, astonishingly, his workshop trainees. Despite their constant tears about his drill schedule, this lot grew incensed when a tribe of anarcho-primitivists attempted to disrupt his speech, and they massacred these hide-clad rebels before his troops could infiltrate the crowd. In this act, in their coming to their slavemaster’s defence, one saw an excellent example of how love and hatred often blur, of, perhaps, Stockholm syndrome.

The Tyrant finished with his own Buddha-like moral lesson reached in his retirement. "Nothing here is permanent. Win or lose, all of our 'achievements' will one day be deleted with the server. Nevertheless, what will persist will be the depths of our own spirit discovered in the highs and lows of competition. All these pointless mountains offer that at least. In every tough climb, we make contact with our immortal essence, we exercise mankind's heroic capacity to struggle through the endless cycles, and we condition ourselves thereby for the rest of Life’s more meaningful engagements." He rolled his eyeballs at a private message cueing him off. "Of course, if you invest smartly and sell before the downturn, the material gains can also persist. For the other lucky finalists:”

He turned and walked back to his seat as the stage was stormed by clowns again, who ripped off their costumes and became swimwear models holding placards. A smug Alex Wong followed in their tail. He and his models proceeded to advertise in-game manors, resort trips, cash bounties, and other generous offers from their sponsors.

Fits of laughter seized the crowd when the winners’ grand rewards were revealed. All the originals had been bumped down to the second-place spots, and replacing them were booby prizes. A free 2-year membership with The Company, a real-life lunch date with Alex Wong's child son – that’s what The Tyrant would be hoarding now.

In this one bold move, the tournament had been saved. Hail to the new tyrant!