The entrance of The Jungle of The Psychic Shadow Monkeys.

They called it a jungle, but with the water shortages in Suchi, it was more like a slightly denser forest, the branches too weak to support creepers, the ground barren of shrubs and fungal life. In a sickly-looking palm tree, a bat was nibbling on a star-shaped fruit when the arrival of four humans along the road prompted it to fly away.

Henry, who'd been listening to Caramel prattle on about dancing at a club after last night’s party, addressed the bald trainer. “Instructor Apari."

Instructor Apari bolted upright, “Your command, Ekeukwuu!”

This was followed by an awkward silence, the bald trainer himself blanching white.

-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: What did that mean?

-Bob From San Francisco: Who knows?

But Henry knew, the title translating to, ‘Supreme Tyrant’.

After years of vigilant secrecy, his identity had been exposed by this stupid zone within hours...

However, this bald guy probably wouldn't leak it further. His faction in Aion Laisije had been loyalists.

Setting that aside for now, Henry, pretending he hadn't understood, pointed at a bamboo thicket. “There’s another bunker inside there for you and your friend to hide in. We’ll be back in thirty minutes. No more funny business while we’re gone.”

Instructor Apari gulped. “We would never dream of it!”

He definitely would not.

Henry, swapping to the donkey, rode off into the ‘jungle’ with his guildmate, following a path cut out by The Slum Empire.

As they galloped along, he admired the vibrant colours of the green-ish-ery, the birds, fruits, and insects, all illuminated by lanterns strung amongst the trees. It was refreshing after so much white.

“Are you even listening?" Caramel grew annoyed.

Henry raised the pitch of his voice, imitating her. “'And Limabean, the lightweight, was soooo hammered he picked up a guitar thinking he could, like, play it in real life. What a flipping idiot, right?'”

The night's antics had taken them to a karaoke bar. Limabean played an Accompanist.

“Then why are you so unresponsive?”

Was he? Henry wondered.

This may have been a by-product of spending months without human contact. He should make note of that in the future.

“The task to come," he replied gravely, "requires all our focus.”

The Speedtrial Station outside the Psychic Shadow Monkey area was empty. With most players occupied with the wolf invasion, the monsters that gave this space its name stood around in peace and harmony.

The monsters looked like rhesus monkeys, except they were the height of a woman and completely hairless, with translucent, pale skin that revealed their inner organs. They showed extreme sexual dimorphism. The males had black claws long enough to scrape the ground when their arms were lowered. The females had swollen, light-bulb shaped heads; without skulls, one could see the convolutions of two bulging brains positioned side by side.

“You know what to do?” asked Caramel.

“Of course." Henry'd studied up on them in order to predict the capabilities of their boss.

The sexual dimorphism extended to their abilities.

The male monkeys were melee fighters who alternated between two phases, one, where they swiped with inhuman speed, and, two, where they moved in slow motion. Their purpose, tutorial-wise, was to familiarise players with the speed altering effects of , which would be unlocked after this section.

In contrast, the female monkeys were Spellcasters. They had two spells, one, , a short-cast, slow-moving spear, and, two, , a long-cast spell that would decrease one's health by a quarter. The second spell was particularly nasty because the percentage damage applied regardless of one's stats.

Their king equivalent might be a superior form of either of these, or both. It might also be The Great Black One, since the Imbahalaala and this species were related.

“Ride close enough for me to hold your shoe,” Henry told her.

“Why?”

“To appease my lonely heart.”

He doubted the quest would allow both of them to be transported away, but if it were possible, he would bring her, too. As for why he was grabbing her shoe, the donkey was much shorter than her horse.

Linked together, the pair rode up to a Psychic Shadow Monkey.

The monster's response to them drawing close was...nothing.

All that changed were its eyes, which flashed rose-pink.

“Wow,” said Caramel, “I wouldn’t think they had Sentience.”

"Hmm...doesn't seem to do anything for them, though."

This was the species strangest feature. They were always inert; even their dietary needs were provided through a photosynthesis-like process whereby they absorbed energy from the universe. They only moved when mating, after birth, and whenever they or a nearby monkey were touched by humans or attacked. Around Henry and Caramel now, owls were perched on the heads of some monkeys while field mice scurried between others' legs.

The Psychic Shadow Monkeys actually weren’t the sole monsters with this trait of inertness. They were part of a lineage of psychic, shadowy, passive monsters, including, perhaps not so coincidentally, the Imbahalaalas.

Hence, Henry’d been stumped at first that one would name itself and meddle in his affairs. As strange as it may sound, none of the monsters in this lineage had thoughts or emotions, not even the rudimentary ones of an animal. Instead, they were like the earliest Artificial Intelligences, capable of responding in superficially complex ways to external stimuli but without genuine insight. In exchange for this limitation, though, the species had a unique ability to create pseudo-neural connections with objects in the external world. Much as a human moves and feels their finger, these creatures could move and ‘feel’ a stone or a plant. Hence, their psychic/telekinetic abilities.

From this foundation, the lineage had undergone intense speciation, creating a variety of types. The pinnacle were the Imbahalaalas who could connect with a being's mind, making them capable of predicting one's actions, and control one's muscles, allowing them to stop a heart with a thought. And the lowliest trash were these goofy-looking, goofily-named Psychic Shadow Monkeys.

The monster before Henry continued playing statue, even when he'd reached close enough to sniff the rancid odour of its pale flesh.

No wormhole appeared.

What were the requirements, then? he wondered.

The common conditions prior to the encounters with the over-sized boar and the wolves were Sentience, close proximity, him having levelled up, large numbers dead, and—maybe—fear. It was unclear whether the pups had been scared.

Then, first, he would touch the monster.

As soon as Henry had this thought, fifty or so monkeys around him screeched in unison. The one in front of him began casting a spell. The long-clawed monkeys charged.

“Need help?” asked Caramel.

“Should be OK.”

Despite their apparent Sentience, their attack patterns had not changed.

Jumping off the donkey, Henry poked the monkey's face—still nothing—then unsheathed the rapier from his belt and ripped a scroll.

He flicked his hand, and the Legendary rapier he'd retrieved extended in a beam through a distant monkey about to cast , blowing off its top half and ending its life.

In addition to negating armour and adjusting its stats according to the user's level, this Worldpiercer weapon's main power was that its attacks could be adjusted up to a length of 15 metres and a diameter of 2. It may not sound too Legendary, but ability ranges were rigidly set in Saana, with the balance being heavily dependent on them. Melee attacks extending so far would be extremely disruptive, especially against ranged classes.

Henry shoved the closest monkey back to steal its casting space and force it to restart, then he moved slowly about, swinging the rapier, stabbing at the approaching melee-type monkeys, one-shotting each. When another out of range finished its spell, he side-stepped and used to phase out of existence temporarily to dodge.

While Henry was slaughtering the hairless monkeys, Caramel watched him with nostalgia.

His crude movements, the hitting him which, for her, would have been second nature to dodge, these reminded her of how he'd been long ago.

After she’d been convinced by Alex Wong to transfer to The Digital Justice Club from the fencing club while recovering from her injury, she'd started the game as part of a batch of fellow recruits, including Henry, then a random 12-year-old kid, a scholarship student who'd skipped grades. On the afternoon when they'd done the tutorial together, he'd been exceptional amongst them, not only for his youth but for his ineptness. Each lesson, the rest of them—Alex selecting them due to their physical talents—had to wait for Henry to finish up before moving on.

Afterwards, the struggling kid announced seriously his need to go off on his own to focus on research. Otherwise, he claimed, solving his assignment to become the greatest duellist in Saana would be too difficult and he'd lose his extracurricular club-participation credit. At this, they’d snickered and given him permission with mock encouragement.

68 days later, he completed his assignment, demolishing the top duellist of the time, Mrtyu, in a best of ten series so overwhelmingly lop-sided that his opponent never recovered and vanished into obscurity.

However, the group didn’t learn of him doing so for many months because, at their bi-monthly progress presentations, he'd hid the information inside unreadably long and tedious reports, his intention being to avoid having to choose an extra assignment.

Personally, she'd been astounded when Henry had been exposed as The Cripple.

Despite not playing a Cutthroat, she’d watched all the clips available from his notorious series of duels against the game's greatest stars. His anti-fans had called him despicable for resorting to so many cheats and ignoring the unspoken rules, such as not spending millions of gold on consumables for one fight, but she’d felt differently. She’d sensed that his convoluted playstyle was an attempt to elevate 1v1 fighting. By resorting to everything, The Cripple was demonstrating the full possibilities of the virtual duel. He was announcing that, here, in this world, they could step beyond the limits of reality to battle in a way that was more nuanced, more chaotic, more cerebral, and more gorgeous.

After witnessing his clips, she’d known that, whether her injury healed or not, returning to fencing would be impossible. That would be like drawing with crayons after growing accustomed to the myriad shades of oil paints.

It would turn out that Henry was actually just trying to cheat, but, by then, she was already hooked.

As for the rest that followed in the years after, well, everyone knew that story.

She watched The Cripple before her now, groaning like an old man as he heaved a monkey into another, knocking the latter down.

Activating , he angled the fire tunnel such that it incinerated two more about to reach him. As he reemerged, the rapier was thrust out at its maximum length, killing the two monkeys that’d been knocked over plus two others that were, after his positional readjustment, directly in line with his attack. Finally, this new spot allowed him to, without budging, deliver a slow but accurate series of fatal thrusts.

That's exactly it! thought Caramel. The alternation between crude and dexterous, each segment woven together to build towards a—

Wait a minute...

...huh?

Over the past few days, she’d sparred with him repeatedly in their guild’s VR Gym, the last instance being yesterday afternoon. The years out of the arena had made him super rusty, and she’d beaten him effortlessly. Yet now he'd performed one of his irreproducible manoeuvres on his first wave of monsters, presumably having predicted their timings and movement speed from seconds of observation and reading descriptions.

Her confusion grew even more when Henry proceeded to do something far more ridiculous.

He activated a Pocket Smoke in a Box, hiding himself in an indigo cloud that blocked the line of sight for the spellcasting monkeys. From out of the cloud, after a pause in which he completed a Shaman spell, a lightning bolt zapped out, striking the closest monkey. After this monster was vaporised, the lightning arced through the four he’d killed in one thrust, blowing them up, too, before bouncing further along. On and on the chain of lightning spiralled outwards, bouncing sometimes to corpses, other times to living monsters, until it eventually reached the Spellcasters, who happened to be arranged in a perfect circle.

The next moment, he stood alone in an empty field, a swarm of glittering motes flowing into him.