A throne room, a giant boar waxing villainous to a tired-looking human.

The Horny Boar King, King Torc, after listening to various methods by which it would destroy Henry, paused to stare off forlornly into space, a hot energy simmering in his beady boar gaze from the times before his cruel imprisonment. "My tuskless friend, do ye know what waiting alone for thousands of years with only wolves for company does to a boar? No more, I say! After I gore ye through yer stomach, King Torc will trot the fields and mudholes flaunting his thick hide in the sunlight. From here on, King Torc will roam Saana, no longer impaired with the pickiness of his youth about whether this sow has too little fat on her bones or this one has too small a tail. From here on, King Torc will, indiscriminately, sow his oats..."

Henry, ignoring the over-sized boar's increasingly excited ramblings, had closed one eye, brainstorming his options in his Mental Library, while using the other eye to assess his surroundings, taking in the dimensions of the boss-room, the usable objects.

He then moved his consciousness into his Spatial Bracelet.

Closing his free eye, he imagined a small version of himself journeying from inside his brain, down his spinal cord, following the fibres of his peripheral neurons to his wrist. Upon arriving at that point, he was sucked into a bright, glowing whiteness that extended in all directions. Even the floor on which he was magically floating was white.

Scattered around this white space were some of the tools that he'd prepared to deal with such complications.

There were vials of potions and herbs, ropes, tents, saws, axes, an array of weapons—daggers, swords, shields, spears—piles of dried meat, lanterns, waterskins, a backpack, a sleeping roll. A shining floating assortment beside these would catch the veteran eye first, consisting of forty assorted pendants, relics, and rings; each of these jewellery pieces was one of kind, forged from unique stones, metals, and bones, and crafted with diverse but immaculate workmanship representing the finest material achievements of various cultures, some living, most extinct. These Legendary trinkets, Henry didn't give a glance. The whole lot were actually too high-level for him to use - he intentionally carried them as dummy artefacts because they'd be lost if he died before the Legendaries he did care about, Saana prioritising loot drops by highest value. He'd chosen these jewellery Legendaries because they were light and consumed minimal inventory space.

With a thought, his body inside his Spatial Bracelet was suddenly transported over to a floating wall of multicoloured Spelltomes. Each tome had a different cover painting, each emitting a magical aura. One book with a bowl of fruit was shrouded in a golden, sacred aura. Another with a portrait of a child holding hands with his grandfather seemed somehow to exude the unfathomable aura of time itself. Numbering over a hundred unique spells in total, this wall was much more useful to him than those artefacts.

In of itself, Henry's Spelltome perk wasn't a cheat, but it did become cheat-like when combined with his filthy richness. Using his wealth, he'd purchased a copy of every non-Legendary Spelltome in the game. This wide selection had helped him escape countless sticky situations in the past. In fact, he'd already exploited several Tomes this morning - after meeting the corrupt official, he used a fire spell to incinerate his documents and hide his traces; before digging the bunker earlier, he'd stealthed to the location using an invisibility spell. That cannibal wagondriver could have been one-shot with a high-level spell, but Henry'd wanted to be discrete, anyone who saw his Spelltomes being able to pin him to his guild.

Examining these books, picturing the layout of the boss room and the anticipated abilities of the giant boar, he wove together several plans.

Outside with his body, only a few seconds having passed, he changed his equipment, his clothes disintegrating and flowing into his inventory to be replaced by others.

On his chest materialised a set of bandolier-like straps. In place of bullet cartridges, the straps were loaded with vials, random consumables, and six different Spelltomes in a combination Henry'd just improvised. The Spelltome set-up had been copied from a defunct Scholar martial art, whose practitioners had invented this arrangement in place of the conventional method of holding one Tome. The technique had the benefit of freeing up a hand and granting the Scholar quick access to multiple spells. On the downside, the Tomes were technically not equipped, causing them to all drop on death and allowing the enemy to easily tear them off and steal them. Also, most people couldn't afford six Spelltomes. Henry, filthy rich, didn't have to worry about any of those limitations.

Around his throat appeared a necklace of seashells that'd been smoothed and decoloured by decades in the ocean. When he tapped three of the shells in quick succession, the necklace constricted around his neck, activating. This Legendary pendant had been obtained from the Godking Nimblewit, who'd fought by controlling a swarm of flying weapons. It allowed the user to sustain multiple channelled spells, which could normally only be cast one at a time.

His leggings were replaced with a pair of woollen viking-pants tied up by a cord of frayed rope. The rope, plundered from the tomb of an ancient architect, was the Legendary he'd been using to give him extra Universal Productivity after exhausting his pool translating that demonic message. As for the woollen pants, which he activated by rolling their left leg to his knee, their purpose would remain a secret for now.

Henry, not having a Legendary helmet or hat on him—yet—kept his monkey-mask. Even against this boar, he didn't feel comfortable fighting without some disguise.

As a final effort to broker peace with the beast-king, he clicked to transmit a multi-page-long negotiation message. Henry pointed out in clear terms that the over-sized monster dying was the only logical conclusion to this battle, and that they both had more to gain by him being sent back peacefully.

King Torc didn't reply immediately. Falling silent, the beast seemed to consider the offer seriously, as one does when confronted with a straightforward sketch of one's own demise.

Henry nevertheless walked to a spot in the middle of the room under a chandelier and prepared for the inevitable refusal.

This videogame had never let him off with the easy option. Now would be no exception.

As expected, a negative reply soon clicked in his ears.

King Torc, seeing his bleak future written in full in Henry's plans, wanted to concede but he simply couldn't bring himself to do it. "Why should King Torc bow before the threat upon his life? To die would be hardly different from this eternity of imprisonment...this eternity of celibacy. An isolation this long teaches a boar that loneliness and death are merely two shades of the same black affliction, the cruel severance of the connection between one boar and his fellow boars that imparts a life with meanin' beyond the biological imperatives of eat, shit, sleep. Could ye still be called a king without a kingdom? Could ye be a Horny Boar without a Horny Sow? Nae. It is only by livin' with, by keepin' the precious company of others, that ye truly live. The boar alone is already dead."

"It's not the same," Henry disagreed. "Loneliness is hardly the most miserable affliction, and, even if it were, a miserable life at least always contains some possibility of change, some bright Maybe waiting in the dark ahead. Death has none of that. It's nothing."

King Torc snorted. "What do ye know of death, human? Yer just a piglet."

Henry took a moment to answer, recalling much that defied any paltry attempt to be condensed into words. "I know...everything."

The boar king found the boast amusing. "Well, King Torc knows that at least death has none of this misery."

"Life is supposed to have misery!" Henry snapped back, his voice flaring slightly with a personal hatred for any romanticism of these morbid matters. "Life isn't just peace; it's also war, the beautiful struggle. Life is fighting with the knowledge that you will one day lose, and learning to love the divinity in that hopeless fight. Life is the one-in-a-trillion privilege to stand in momentary defiance against the law of nothingness. Life is rushing to piece yourself together from the scraps of the universe before it reclaims them and saying proudly, 'these were mine for a while, this was me, fuck you'. The other side doesn't need anyone's helping hand. It's already dismantling us."

"Aye," answered King Torc with finality, "such is life, too. King Torc, then, will choose the beautiful struggle. The Great Black One's prophecy has been uttered. Prepare yerself, human."

The beast-king's choice was made. Shedding the lethargy of his solitary imprisonment, he rose to his feet, his trotters creaking beneath the weight of his six-ton bulk. Lifting his snout to flaunt his royal horns, he unleashed a war squeal that shook the throne room, the strength of his cry dislodging dust and debris from the ceiling. Violent waves of energy were absorbed from the air into his legs in preparation for a mighty charge, one imbued with a desperate will to survive...to love.

He chose the life of a Horny Boar King; he chose war.

King Torc trumpeted valiantly. "Only one leaves alive!"

His feet propelled him forward in a sudden charge, each step as loud as a sonic boom and causing the room to tremble.

Henry, standing dwarfed before the mountain speeding down upon him, sighed and tapped one of the Spelltomes on his chest. “NAKTH!” He shouted a spell syllable, his hand curling into a strange shape and catching a cluster of tiny stars that'd materialised before him.

Woosh!

A flood of magical energy condensing from his surroundings, a burning door swung open in the space before him, revealing a hellish interior of magma and fire. At once, a force sucked his body inside, and the spot where he'd had been standing was engulfed in a pillar of flames.