Suchi, a tornado of Limebirds dancing across a sky scarlet from the first rays of the morning sun.

High above, a skydiving figure wearing a wolf mask was laughing to himself. “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

232-months of free time! Per day!

Henry, after a couple spins and eagle roleplay, landed near the spawning cave for the Psychic Shadow Monkeys. Beside him, a portal spat out a shabby donkey who'd recently devoured a genocidal monkey god, the pack animal wearing an angry, bitter expression.

“I’ll get you some more later, dude," Henry said to the beast. "There's a whole universe of much tastier meat beyond wolf.”

Donkey Bro snorted, not believing his deceptive words until he'd seen the evidence himself.

From out of the spawning cave, a young woman in a tiger mask emerged, showered in the dust that had fallen from the cave roof when it'd shaken earlier.

“Any luck?” Caramel asked, patting herself off.

Henry shrugged. “Quest timed out. Guess I failed. Sucks!”

Caramel squinted in suspicion. "Then why do you seem so upbeat?"

“Well, it finally occurred to me that it's not the worst fate to fail at a goal that you reluctantly set your heart upon less than an hour ago." Henry turned away from her to admire the glow of the heavens peeking through the jungle canopy, the sky giving a radiant welcome to the sun after the lengthy evening of this tutorial misadventure, and he folded his hands sagely behind his back as the new dawn brought to him the essential lesson from the night's struggle. "Caramel, even if this mountain throws you down flat, there are always new mountains beyond, and mountains beyond those. The gloomy state of failure, while it might seem endless in the moment, is only truly as permanent as our decision to lie with our backs against the chilly soil, to not stand up, to not urge our dreaming feet on and upwards to the next beautiful climb. Nothing lasts forever, Caramel. Not even misery. Nothing except your ugly mug."

"Kill yourself."

"Hahaha."

After his guildmate unhitched her horse, they made the return journey through the troops of impassive Psychic Shadow Monkeys.

Henry, noticing her eyeing him restlessly from the side, remembered that she’d shown a clip of him training to the other inner circle members, ratting him out.

Giving her an annoyed glance, as a gesture of forgiveness, he pulled out the rapier Worldpiercer and tossed it over.

The Legendary wouldn’t be necessary anymore. His new hippy Earthfriend class didn't fight with swords, and Hannes had promised him that any further Legendary quests he ran into in Suchi could be abandoned and ignored forever as usual.

Henry's sole concern now was winning the recruitment tournament. Exploiting his tutorial reward, The Cap of a Thousand Dreams, his victory was assured. No matter what challenge or challengers this wretched world might bring forth, how could any of them compete with him, who—'two weeks' from now when the event began—would be a centuries-old kung-fu genius cyborg?

Caramel stared at the rapier in her hands in astonishment. “What the heck? Bipolar?”

“No, my dear Caramel," Henry replied condescendingly. "If I’ve learned another lesson from this humbling tutorial, it’s that the happiest folk are not those who do whatever it takes to attain the greatest heights for themselves, but rather those who learn to put aside their selfish needs for the betterment of their friends and their loved ones. You see, the heart of man, alone, is limited in its size. Eventually, it reaches the temporal boundaries of the human body," if you lack a high-tech item for extending your life by tens of thousands of years, " and you can only grow it further by taking on the hearts of those around you, by becoming the world and all its boundless joy.”

“What the fuck?”

Soon enough, they reached the bunker where the bald trainer was hiding, ready to undergo the tutorial's final ritual.

To unlock the last basic ability, , and acquire some of The Redeemer's hyper-perception, Henry was tied back to back with one of the monkeys he’d slain.

In the invoked vision, he saw himself moving in slow motion, Worldpiercer stabbing monkeys left and right. As The Great Black One had said, the creatures were unthinking abominations. In the memory of the one he inhabited, no feeling of pity for its falling brethren could be sensed. The thumping of The Vilified One in the backdrop incited no rage. When the human him sidestepped the slash of his claws and directed the rapier at his head, he watched his death with indifference.

After the visions, Henry had the bald trainer skip the lesson on using because the skill hadn't changed since the previous instalment.

Its corresponding Boost resource could be used in three different ways: producing visual indicators to assist with aiming and dodging, programming actions in advance like reflexively ducking jabs or chaining combo attacks, and amplifying senses, including the sense of time. How to ration the resource across these three was a complicated topic, the best answer differing based on circumstance and individual play style. Henry, during his Cripple days, had used it mostly to compensate for his poor reflexes.

Following that was a final ritual mirroring the first that had unlocked his Martial Body.

Kneeling on the ground, Henry was entered into a trance by a clap. The bald trainer, doused in tar, performed a dance that summoned a mass of glowing balls, while his friend acted as a conduit between them.

“Great Amagwu,” chanted the trainer, “for your blessing, we thank you.”

“Great Amagwu,” repeated Henry, “for your blessing, we thank you."

“You are there.”

Henry stood once more on top of a stone pyramid surrounded by those ancient Gods, most of whom would eventually fall to The Redeemer.

Only a moment had passed since the end of the first vision of this scene. His body was still bound to a pillar, and the Goddess with lightning for hair was cupping his cheeks with the death-tinged maternal affection that he'd not felt for a long time now. As the sparks she'd fed into him channelled back into her soft palms, his teeth unclamped and his muscles relaxed.

“Wasn’t so hard, was it, kid?" The dead Goddess winked. "Go out and do us proud. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one to bring his head back.”

She laughed, her laughter having a wondrously musical quality.

“RETURN AND OPEN YOUR EYES!”

Back in the bunker, Henry saw a tiny spark shoot into the space in front of his face. From out of the air, a single mote of light was excited into existence. Although small, it shone bright enough to make everyone around him squint. As it entered his forehead, he felt awash in calmness, as though his body were being lowered into a warm bath.

Congratulations, Adventurer, your Martial Body is complete!

The next step is to explore one of Saana’s many Martial Classes. If you are struggling with your choice, visit the nearest Oracle Coven to receive free guidance.

Note: Martial Classes can be changed before Tier-1.

Finally—after a couple of hours or, depending on how one looked at it, a year and a half—Henry'd finished this bloated, over-complicated, meandering, poorly-paced tutorial.

Instructor Apari, the Goddess’s bald descendant, drew his sword and bellowed in the dead tongue, “We are children of the storm! Our home will be the battlefield! Our food the souls of our enemies! We will grow fat and die with honour!”

With so few of them in the bunker, separated by the millennia from the gods who’d devised these methods, Henry felt the trainer’s words had a lonely quality.

Standing up, he brushed the dirt from his pants and summoned the five million gold coins he’d promised the trainer for ditching the others with him.

Although the trainer might have messed with his plans, he wouldn’t begrudge someone being manipulated by a meddling developer and a mind-reading demon of the shadows.

Instructor Apari’s friend gasped.

Caramel snickered.

The instructor himself, ignoring the money, dropped to his knees and pressed both his knuckles and the top of his bald head into the coin-littered ground.

“Ekeukwuu, ekele im inye ya!” he shouted.

Henry and Caramel looked at the prostrate man awkwardly.

-Caramel_Sprinkles_Sunshine: What does that mean?

-Bob From San Francisco: Don't know.

Henry did know. It meant, ‘Hail to The Supreme Tyrant!’

He'd been exposed.