4...

The door of flame, streaking across the sky, came to a halt shorter than its maximum range.

Swinging open, it spat Henry out, the blue and red cloak he'd looted from the wolves beginning to hum.

He hesitated a moment, both to redirect his telekinetic hatchets and for his speed to reduce to prevent overshooting his target when he used .

The Redeemer, studying the human’s shifting eyes, effortlessly traced the corresponding trajectory of twenty hatchets that chopped into the tree around it. They were forming a puzzle of platforms, attempting to hide the one from which the human intended to attack.

"VE!" Henry .

The Redeemer, identifying the hatchet he'd chosen to land on before the spell finished, immediately jumped at it, the human appearing an instant later, struggling to free a rapier from its sheath - off-guard, dead.

3...

Cloak bait.

As Henry’s cloak finished activating, he and his equipment turned a translucent blue, as The Wolf Emperor had when by-passing the fort's defences.

Transformed into water, he threw himself against the tree, causing his body to break apart with a splash.

The stain he'd become soon faded as the droplets seeped into the wood, into the lines the old monkey had noted carved on this tree's trunk and every other one in the grove.

This was their main purpose. The lines were the surface layer of a network of tunnels carved throughout the wood, created using tools from the Woodworker Civilian class. The tunnels were wide enough for him to travel through with the cloak's aqueous form.

The Redeemer landed right where he'd been, narrowly missing him. "Such a simple trick, by using it, you've underestimated me. Farewell."

In an instant, its ear was pressed against the trunk.

With its heightened senses, it easily heard the water flowing towards a hatchet above its head, from where the human hoped to launch an ambush.

The next moment, The Redeemer's head flicking in a blur, it wrapped its mouth around the trunk and bit.

At once, a vast segment of wood had vanished, along with anyone that might’ve been sneaking around inside.

The top section of the tree, no longer supported, came crashing down against the base. As it began to tip over, The Redeemer shuffled around the trunk to get out of its way.

2...

Unbeknownst to the monster, from a line in the bark behind it, a tiny trickle had dribbled onto the handle of a hatchet.

Moment by moment, the water expanded, from the size of a ball, to a child. When it reached the form of a human, a bar appeared above its head indicating that 97% of its health had vanished.

But Henry, who'd sacrificed that willingly by sending most of his body to get devoured, didn’t need more than 3%.

1...

Stab.

His arm, extending towards the back of the monster, transformed into its regular, corporeal form. The rapier that it was wielding glowed.

The Redeemer, spinning around in an instant, was suddenly facing him. "How uninspired."

Knowing that it could reach the human faster than his weapon finished powering up, it lunged forward, energy gathering into its fists.

Henry, seeing it jump at him, entered a state of total calm.

His work had been completed.

Either the 200-millisecond-long period of immobility between the Yin-Yang phases still existed and he'd won, or it didn’t and he'd lost.

The rest, as always, belonged to the mountain.

0...

The wind whipping around The Redeemer stilled.

Henry, reaching his non-sword hand out, caught the monster by its neck.

Its snow-white hair was undergoing an unfamiliar change. Each strand was turning not just the black of before but an incomprehensibly dark type of black, which seemed as though it would consume the colours of all objects around it.

Nevertheless, for now, it was in his grasp, its body no heavier than a child’s, its arms dangling immobile and useless by its side.

The Redeemer yawned at the white beam of light growing from the rapier. "That repugnant-smelling scientist argued for the unity of breathing creatures based on the commonality of our cellular tissue. I wonder sometimes how surprised he would have been to learn that his insight was but the tip of the iceberg. When you dive deeper, into the very guts of the universe, you learn that everything—creatures, rocks, oceans, sunlight, gravity, even this fancy sword of yours—it’s ALL one and the same."

At the height of its yawn, The Redeemer stretched its jaw to consume the weapon, much as it had, in its millennium-long reign of terror, consumed all that’d dared to confront it.

However, the blackhole it had been expecting to feel in its throat failed to manifest.

On top of The Redeemer's brow rested still the crown of hand-woven flowers, a memento uniting the two parts of its life, the peace in the brief years of its childhood, and the war and tyranny that'd dominated the rest. This crown, and the brow upon which it sat, were obliterated, along with everything else above its nose.

Henry’s face was bespattered with blood fountaining from the monster's skull, the rapier looted from King Torc peeling away the top of its head as smooth as the lid off a can.

Feeling the wetness upon his cheeks, Henry gave a sigh of relief, followed by a smile and a laugh. “Senile old bat!"

This decrepit monkey hadn’t realised that its one-shot bite attack had about 0.4 seconds remaining on its cooldown.

Henry, knowing the bite could stop his stab, had baited the attack so that its cooldown would overlap with the 0.2-second transition from the Yang to the Yin-phase, where the monster couldn't dodge.

Most Gods wouldn’t have fallen for this since they could monitor their abilities down to the tens of milliseconds. Alas, The Redeemer throughout their skirmish had demonstrated multiple errors with its time-management. This flaw was not the kind to be mended by any number of memories; it was merely one of the cognitive faculties lost with age.

Its time-management was actually more degraded than Henry’d predicted. He’d thought it would have been able to track the 10-second timer for its vulnerability and try to escape from him for that moment. Instead, it’d thrown itself right into his arms.

Such a generous gift, Henry would never squander.

Where the top of the monster’s skull had been, a glob of blood was solidifying into brains, bone, skin, and hair.

As it finished reforming, Henry, in time with the tick of a 120-BPM metronome he’d just started, delivered another stab, peeling off its skull again and showering himself in another victorious spurt of brain matter and cerebrospinal fluid.

Worldpiercer, using its extensible feature, had been adjusted to make this action convenient. With its length short but circumference wide, it only required minimal arm movement to stab the monster in the brain repeatedly.

The damage of each of these stabs was negligible, such that it would take tens of thousands to deplete the monster’s health pool, requiring more Stamina than Henry had. As 'luck' would have it, this problem had a straightforward solution, this convoluted tutorial giving him a tool to solve this issue as well.

Continuing to stab along with the metronome, Henry stepped off of the hatchet, into the open air.

While they fell, the wind passing through the unconscious monster’s ugly baby-face robes was only moving fast enough to produce a gentle moan.

Whomp!

The top of the tree crashed below, crushing Henry’s hammock and his bowl of fruit salad.

The destruction didn’t stir his heart a bit. Frankly, in the year he'd spent preparing for this fight, he'd grown sick of fruit. He’d avoided consuming animal meat on the slim chance that doing so would prematurely enrage The Redeemer, who happened to have been a vegan when not eating humans.

Henry landed shortly after and, like when he'd sky-dived earlier, the impact was totally negated by a Vitality buff from a stat scroll. The abrupt stop did cause the neck of the frailer monster to snap, but since it wasn’t decapitated, he could continue stabbing without interruption.

Stab. Stab. Stab...

Henry, stabbing away at the monster, walked carefully, avoiding tripping on any of the lumber now littering the jungle floor.

Garbage disposal.

The whole fight between Henry and The Redeemer up in the branches had been observed with dull interest by a shabby creature chilling by a man-made lake.

Donkey Bro, seeing the nasty human approaching it carrying the mutilated monkey, turned and presented its rump to him.

It wanted nothing to do with that mess.

Henry grinned. “Don’t reject me so quickly, mate. You wouldn’t want to miss out on your favourite snack!”

With the clattering of bones, a Skeleton Archer landed beside him to join his march. It threw away its bow and, into its empty hands, an item was summoned from Henry’s Spatial Bracelet.

Donkey Bro, catching whiff of a gorgeous scent, took a quick peek behind it.

Its eyes went wide.

The skeleton was holding a platter of wolf ribs roasted to perfection. A honey glazing mixed with a marinade of soy sauce, onions, and fine herbs gave the ribs an alluring, golden-brown sheen.

Donkey Bro gulped.

How long had it been since it’d eaten meat?

Using every ounce of willpower, it resisted charging forward. The human always gave it extra treats when it waited for the orders.

As the skeleton brought the platter to it, Donkey Bro patiently faced the food, not a muscle moving.

“Ready up!” said Henry.

Donkey Bro, humiliated but hungry, popped its mouth open obediently.

Henry delayed to allow his 6-second cycle to refresh.

Then...

“Garbage disposal!” he shouted.

The donkey’s mouth stretched wider, large enough to swallow the platter in one bite.

Henry shifted the from his rapier to his fingers, ripped the Spatial Bracelet off the monster’s wrist with a force that shattered its hand bones, stepped between the donkey and the wolf ribs, and tossed the old monkey in.

Congratulations! You are the first player to complete The Mad Monkey’s Asylum (Tier 0 – Level 4 – Limitless – Global)! As a global achievement, your accomplishment will be announced to the world!

Henry, watching the big bad boss get annihilated by a donkey, smiled again. "Good game; easy.”

In matters of war, some conflicts lasted for decades, but some? Some were resolved in minutes.

Donkey Bro, shrouded in the golden-light of a level up, glared at the human for tricking it so cruelly.

“Sorry, dude," Henry apologised, having the skeleton lay the roasted ribs before it.

Along with this, he brought out all the wolf-based foods remaining in his inventory, building a pyramid of meat.

Donkey Bro returned him a look of love.

“Go on," Henry encouraged. "At will!”

While the gluttonous beast dug in, he patted its knotty-mane with affection.

Things were about to get dicey there. If he hadn’t finished off The Redeemer, after regaining its identity, it would likely have slain this donkey simply for being an unaccounted variable. In turn, without the donkey’s one-shot bite—which it seemed to have gained like the other monster kings after The Great Black One fed it an apple—the fight would have taken several decades to complete.

At least, several decades had been what he'd anticipated beforehand. Most of his plans relied on the Yin-phase being a state of vulnerability. If the monster had transcended this limitation, then defeating it would have taken centuries.

In sum, he was extremely lucky to have this dumb monster-king-animal-thing with its bottomless stomach.

Speaking of Donkey Bro’s stomach, a cluster of soul lights were floating out of it.

Henry shuffled back to put some distance between them, not wanting to absorb this genocidal maniac.

The soul lights, powered by rage, resisted the magnetic pull of the heavens, staying around to berate him.

Henry shook his head. "Don’t look at me that way, dude. You did nothing to warrant an honourable death. Sic semper tyrannis."

The lights clattered together, the action resembling an excited swarm of fireflies.

Henry raised his hands in exasperation. "I understand your reasons. Your family being abducted by poachers sucks, a lot of us are scum - I totally get it. But, still, you’ve got to maintain a sense of proportion. Wiping out an entire species is excessive. It’s also unnecessary. All you needed to do was ban meat-eating, promote a hippy state religion teaching equality between monster and man, execute any law-breakers, and, within a few generations, the survivors would be enforcing these practices on themselves for millennia, long after you perished. That's the advantage of human culture; it's malleable."

The clashing of lights became even more fervent, as though the members of the swarm were trying to tear each other part.

"Don’t tell me you didn’t have the resources, mate," Henry continued to argue. "You controlled the entire globe. The reason you didn’t make the rational decision is because your underlying motivations were always petty. Man is my enemy; I must kill my enemies. That’s the grand-sum your ethics fundamentally amounted to. 'The Redeemer', what a load of monkey crap. I've read all the stupid game lore, dude. I know you executed half your monster citizens for criticising your trash regime. They call me The Tyrant and even I don't pull that spiteful nonsense. You're just an egotistical, megalomaniacal, over-sensitive little bitch - like everyone you hated. In fact, by most objective metrics, you're much worse. Almost 7,000 years have passed since the collapse of your regime, and history has yet to produce a single bigger cunt."

The downfall of The Redeemer's empire had arguably been more due to its subjects betraying it than humanity regaining their strength.

The soul lights, unable to handle the insult, rushed at this arrogant teen daring to lecture them.

Henry jumped back further. "Whoa! The Ring! Do you really want to spend eternity on my finger?"

The lights froze.

They didn’t.

After a brief silence, they expanded and then slowly contracted - a sigh.

Giving up, they stopped resisting and allowed themselves to be carried off into the clouds.

Henry waved them away. "Be kinder in the next Cycle."

Thus, the big bad boss departed.

Henry rubbed his hands together greedily.

So, why one must ask, did he bother enduring this lengthy, overly-complicated tutorial?

For the sweet spoils, of course.

The Redeemer’s Spatial Bracelet was lying beside him, containing the treasures of the many kingdoms it'd plundered.

Henry tapped it with the toe of his shoe, and it disintegrated into dust and a massive burst of lights.

The next moment, a mountain of loot had risen before him, dwarfing him at quadruple his height. It consisted of countless priceless artefacts. There was a golden banner that carried the majesty of ancient heroes, a halberd made from crystallised leaves whose razor-sharp edges were slicing nearby items on contact, and a ton of other sick items.

But only one of them mattered to Henry, the prize for which he'd endured this lengthy affair.