An Italian restaurant in New Zealand, a group of youths dining together.

Since Henry's friends were part of that alien race known as the socially well-adjusted, they were all chummy by the time they’d finished ordering the first course. What small bumps remained in the conversation were soon ironed out by the arrival of their meal.

His colleague Alex spoke at length about his and Henry's recent trip to China. The three of them, along with Alex’s firstborn, had gone over to visit Alex’s extended family in Harbin. The plan was for Alex and Henry to then head off on their own to Vladivostok, from which they would have ridden the historical trans-Siberian railway to Moscow, before holidaying in Europe. Alas, the trip had been cut short to handle some unexpected problems with their ‘business’.

Although Henry’s friends themselves travelled frequently, they were surprised that he could afford such a luxury, Henry having been a broke scholarship student. This made them even more curious about the 'digital investing' job he'd apparently already retired from.

"Digital investing's pretty vague," said Brian, who'd been studying Business Management. "IPs? Virtual Estates?"

"Even I'm not exactly sure what he does." Alex was running a comb through the tail of his beaver-shaped mullet. "Henry, I'm also intrigued. What type of investments have you been making? Specifically. Please list them."

Henry gave his frenemy a flat, calculating stare, studying each of the treacherous muscles of the beaver-head's face. "I dabbled in a bit of everything. It doesn't matter. I came, I worked, I retired. End of story."

During their dinner, Henry'd been busy trying to fit together the various puzzle pieces to figure out Alex's motives this evening.

Here were the facts:

One, Henry'd retired from his duties in Saana two weeks earlier, their cancelled trip being a celebration of the end of his career.

Two, the ‘unexpected problem’ with their ‘business’ that'd brought them back had been a competing guild in the game conquering a territory earlier than their analysts had predicted. Even though this issue could have easily been resolved on the road, Alex had thrown a fit insisting they return to the country to coordinate a response in person. As a show of strength, the beaver-head had redirected resources to boost his character's level before an upcoming Winter PVP event.

Three, barely after stepping back onto native soil, Henry'd received a call from Cathy, who had also, coincidentally, arrived back in the country with the others and wanted to catch up over dinner.

Four, of all the restaurants in the city, Cathy suggested coming to this one, which was popular enough that bookings needed to be made weeks in advance. This restaurant also happened to be affiliated with one of Henry and Alex’s subsidiary guilds, Flaming Sun, as could be seen by the logo hanging outside the entrance, the sun which had jokingly been set extra on fire.

Five, at dinner now, he'd learned that his friends had started playing Saana a little over a week ago. Strange.

Six, Alex turned up for dinner almost at the same time as them, despite supposedly being so worried about dealing with the opposition guild. A glaring contradiction.

The conclusion from all this? It was obvious to Henry that Alex was using his friends for some evil machination related to the game. The questions were in what way and why? History might suggest that Alex was setting him up for another childish prank between friends. For example, earlier that same day, Henry had been tricked into appearing in the middle of an interview that was being broadcast live over the in-game television network.

He didn't have to wait long before the scheme against him was sprung, the conspirators drawing their daggers.

Alex's pregnant wife was the first to stab. Prompted by her husband, she let slip what Henry'd been trying with great difficulty not to reveal to these school-friends.

"Henry!" Cathy, clasping her hands in joy, emitted a screech so loud it even drew the attention of a middle-aged couple a table down from them. “You’re playing, too? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

Henry glanced suspiciously between Alex, his wife, and Cathy. "Some of my investments require a small degree of online presence. I don't really play in any conventional sense.”

This was another white lie. For the past half-year leading up to his retirement, he’d been performing mostly administrative duties in order to get the guild functioning autonomously before he quit. Would normal people call that playing a videogame? No.

Cathy beamed. “Oh my god—apologies for my language—Henry, you’re playing too? That’s awesome! You’re on holiday, right? No, you've retired! That means you can group, right?”

Henry frowned, her response not logically progressing from his own.

As for grouping with his buddies, he could imagine it now. A small band of chums travelling the wide world of Saana...experiencing the romance of adventure...sleeping under the digital stars..overcoming challenges slightly beyond their capabilities on paper using the power of friendship...meeting a constantly shifting cast of newcomers attracted by his friends’ overly social tendencies...

Disgusting.

Henry, trying to be polite, explained to Cathy that the planet of Saana was an eighth the size of the earth and, as of yet, had no methods for instantaneous transport. Travelling from zone to zone could take multiple real-life weeks, making the idea of casually meeting up with people preposterous.

But, coincidentally, his friends, out of thirty-odd starting areas, had picked Suchi, the zone closest to his character's present location at his guild's island base and a short trip away by boat.

Undefeated, Henry then explained that he had an end-game, Tier-5 character. His friends meanwhile were training to participate for fun in a monthly recruitment fighting tournament hosted by his own guild, a tournament that was restricted to Tier-0 characters. Obviously, he couldn't join them.

“The level difference might not be a problem," countered Alex.

Henry turned to the beaver-head, who was giving him a shameless, arrogant look, much like that of an alcoholic son demanding his father's last kidney, the surgery knife already in hand, the second dagger drawn.

“Well," said Henry through gritted teeth, "at the moment, I'm Tier-5, far beyond the appropriate level range of Suchi.”

Simultaneously, he sent Alex a message on his e-assistant.

-Henry Lee: Stop it, you dick.

Alex, reading the message, smiled even more arrogantly. “You’re a tier-5 Scholar, but what about your Martial Class? What level was that exactly?”

In this, Alex, the disloyal oaf, was referring to the fact that Henry had only levelled his production and crafting skills. In two years of playing the most recent instalment, he’d avoided choosing one of the ‘Martial Classes’ that about 95% of the player base picked, such as a Cutthroat or a Shaman.

Henry's reason for avoiding doing so was simple: he didn’t want to. Saana was tiring, time-wasting, hard, overly-competitive, and stressful.

He’d been sick of the game before the new server even opened. This was the third instalment of Saana. In the previous one, which Alex had hoodwinked him into playing during high school, their guild had also lucked its way into moderate success. At the start of the most recent version of the game, the developers had sent Henry a free VR set, as they did most notable players who were too poor to afford one. Henry, however, having seen the peak of the mountain once, had felt no interest to undergo the ordeal again. His only reason for creating a character this time around had been to exploit one of Saana’s new features, a time-dilation effect that made time in the game last four times longer than reality. He’d wanted to exploit this effect to have more time to read and work on his hobby of writing in between shifts at his parents’ fast food restaurant.

If it weren’t for Alex catching wind of him making a character and pressuring him to start another guild, Henry would still be in his in-game bookstore happily drowning in a sea of comfy novels.

Henry, with Alex interceding now, finally saw his motivations in joining them tonight, in orchestrating this farce of a dinner.

Alex wanted him to start levelling a Martial class with his friends using this tournament as an excuse, in order to reinvolve Henry in the game and cancel his retirement.

“So does that mean you can group with us?” asked Cathy.

Henry could produce many further excuses, but if Alex were motivated, they would all be refuted. Technically, nothing was stopping him from participating in the tournament...his own tournament.

But how ridiculous would that be, participating in your own recruitment tournament? Embarrassing.

When Henry turned to reply to Cathy, he was shocked.

In her eyes too, there was also a shameless, arrogant look, like a grandmother blackmailing her grandchild into giving a loan that she expected to die before repaying.

Et tu, Cathe?

This so-called friend of his had armed herself with a third dagger in the conspiracy alongside Alex, who'd perhaps won her over with some sob story about how Henry was suffering from burn-out or clinical depression and suggested that nothing would brighten his mood more than a two-week-long dose of social gaming. Now, she was trying to force Henry's hand, through that sharpest and most deadly of weapons: peer pressure.

But, thought Henry, this level of manipulation wasn't enough to work on him. The ordeals of his career had hardened his heart to the point where, emotionally, he'd feel absolutely nothing telling a childhood friend to get bent. In fact, if it weren't illegal and they didn't live in a surveillance state, he could have effortlessly leaned across the table and slapped the smugness from both their faces.

These conspirators needed to offer him more incentive than this.

The extra incentive arrived now.

Henry's wrist vibrated with a message. "One second,” he said to Cathy, excusing himself.

Few at this dinner would realise the gravity of what he was about to read.

-Alex Wong: holy crap just agree already!!!! what's taking so long!! here’s the deal: if u get 1st in the 1v1, i won’t pull that card again.’

The card, Henry's attention honed in on this.

The card!

What was the card? Long ago Alex had helped his family out in a massive way when Henry's mother had fallen ill. Since then, it'd been reminders of this favour that'd motivated Henry to put up with Alex's nonsense.

In a way, the card was the last thing binding them together. Once it was removed, it'd really be over...Henry would be retired for good.

So that was tonight's wager: first place in his own recruitment tournament in exchange for eternal freedom, the warm bliss that lay beyond the mountain's frosty slopes.

Henry, totally ignoring Cathy, leaned back to contemplate the offer while, across from him, his long-time comrade feigned indifference sawing through a piece of pork.

The Card...

The Card...the Car—

But wasn't this underhanded scheming too much?

What had Henry ever done to deserve this treatment? Had it really been too much to ask for a 17-year-old man to retire quietly in peace? Had he not put in enough work for one lifetime?

It seemed so silly to him.

Recently, in the spirit of retirement, he'd been doing much reading about his new non-vocation. The greatest insights had come from the bearded philosophers of ancient China, who'd captured the essence of quitting perfectly with the principle of Wu-Wei, or non-doing.

Non-doing, one might argue that this was the secret spice to all human advancement. Just as the life of an individual required offsetting its more active, doing parts with more restful, non-doing parts to maintain a functional balance, so too might this greater life which we call civilisation require offsetting its more active, doing people with more restful, non-doing people. Man was a creature of comparison, and without the low achiever, could anyone truly be a high achiever? Behind every great man of action, Henry would assert there was another man—much less great but no less important—a man of inaction, a man whose inert, flabby example terrified the great man and drove him to strive on to ever-higher altitudes. And who were we, the non-doers, to strip this great man of his vital motivation? Ask yourself, if the next Einstein walked through the door right now, would you deny him his potential? Henry could never be so selfish. For the greater good of society, he would leap in front of the lazy bullet. He would sacrifice himself by becoming one of those men who dare, boldly, to do nothing. As for his great man, he could be any one of the souls brimming with untapped potential around him - he could be the waiter, he could be an anonymous diner, and, why of course, he could even be you.

While Henry was fantasising about the restaurant applauding this silly monologue, his body was undergoing a very different reaction to Alex's wager, a feeling surging up from his deepest core, a warmth being carried out through his blood to his tired limbs.

The source of this feeling was hard to say.

Once upon a time, in a past life, he'd been a prominent duellist, his soul steeped in the gory romance of the 1v1. Perhaps this desire to fight originated from that nostalgia.

What the heck, thought Henry.

It was only two weeks. Two weeks of playing a videogame, two weeks of giving the latest generation of youths a humble taste of his wrinkled knuckles...that was a tiny price to pay for The Card.

Refusing Alex's first offer, he messaged back to negotiate terms. Actually, first place, even against noobs, was beyond his capability, their recruitment tournament averaging about 5,000 participants in each zone. What's more, Henry was long out of practice with duelling, and his specific talents, for complicated reasons, weren't suited to the simple, standardised format. 1v1s also had some level of intrinsic unpredictability - even the greatest duellist of all time might get randomly eliminated by a meathead amateur who just happened to swing their sword a few milliseconds quicker.

After a rapid text exchange between them, he managed to reduce his win condition to placing in the top 10. In exchange, he wouldn't be able to exploit their guild's resources or his other spy networks, Henry having to do everything alone from scratch. Alex also weaselled in a clause mandating a minimum number of hours hanging out with his school friends, predicting correctly that Henry would otherwise have ditched them to maximise his solo training.

Their wager settled informally for now, the two would meet again later at their company headquarters to sign contracts.

“Sorry about the delay there, Cathy," Henry apologised, he and the beaver-head's negotiations taking less than a minute in total. "Some psychopath had gotten a hold of my number. Anyway, this tournament thing, do you have any info on it, just so I can double-check my eligibility? I wouldn’t want to waste a boat ride.”

Cathy clapped her hands in joy. “Let me bring up the website!"

And with that, the wager was made, Henry setting aside the next two weeks for a quirky little side-adventure with The Card as the prize.

Two more weeks playing a videogame...this was barely anything to him, who'd played much longer. Before you could blink, victory would be his and he'd be right back to this luxurious retiree life of inactivity.

Beginning of Volume 1: History's Longest Tutorial