“I quit.” Henry, taking another step down from the summit, moved forward without any pomp. “In fact, I quit three weeks ago. Although I’m still pottering around Suchi polishing off some old duelling research, I’ve already retired. My duties at The Company, both officially and unofficially, have been relinquished. All my responsibilities have been divided and transferred to the others arrayed around me. Behold the new leadership.” He swept a hand, introducing his successors. “Unlike after The Schism, I haven’t transitioned to another behind-the-scenes role. The reformations were my main ambition at the outset of the campaign. Having achieved them, I’m finished with Saana. Forever, this time. I won’t be returning for subsequent instalments. ‘The Tyrant’, this gamer nickname I once used, is dead and retired."

The audience responded uniformly. A quirk of The Tyrant’s that they’d come to learn throughout the conference had been that he spoke in a flat, emotionless tone, regardless of whether he was being sincere or giving a long-winded absurdist monologue. This trait had forced them to decide between the two purely from context. Now, they laughed, mistaking his announcement for a continuation of the joke about tossing his character into a blackhole.

They noticed soon, however, that the rest of The Company hadn’t joined in this time, the members side-eyeing The Tyrant with solemnity, with curiosity about what lay in store for both for him and them on the other side of his retirement. What did The Company mean in the absence of its leader? Even Alex Wong had dropped his usual mockery for a pensive mood.

One by one, the laughs dropped off, the room descending into the morbid quiet of a wake, this being The Tyrant’s last send-off, delivered weeks after his burial.

“I’d never intended on announcing my retirement,” Henry continued, “since my hope, until last night’s incident threw an azure wrench in the plan, had been to just fade into obscurity, like after the first round. Consequently, I have no grand speech to close up my career, no pithy wisdom to impart to the next generation. Even if I had planned this, the capacity to condense such a monumental endeavour into words is far beyond me. Whatever endures of my work will speak for itself, and the rest will have to stay buried beneath the cold snows of the mountain.” He glanced around the room, only half-seeing the people gathered. “Four final questions. Make them meaningful. This will be my only public appearance as The Tyrant. I’m moving on with the remainder of my life.”

Hundreds of hands shot up.

Henry, skipping those he expected to insinuate this was another deceptive move, pointed at a journalist whose previous question he’d liked.

“Since you’ve been training in duelling, are you planning on transitioning to other things in Saana, to professional play, to fighting Abyssal Sleepers again?”

“Those ridiculous fights are over, too," Henry answered. "With the duelling training...to be honest, the purpose of that stumps even me. I'm in a strange position right now. It’s a bizarre mental state to be in after voluntarily stepping down from controlling an empire-sized organisation. Maybe I’m dealing with that through the arena. Distract myself. In the long-term, Saana-wise, you’ll still spot me on occasion in game, but it’ll only be with the trivial type of hobbies from before Alex roped me into this second conquest. Making avant-garde paintings and architecture and so on. The time-dilation is too valuable to forfeit.”

The second question came from an analyst for a popular war-strategist forum. “Hypothetically, if another Tyrant turns up to destroy The Company as you did your predecessors, you won’t be returning to save them?”

“They’ll handle it, or they won’t.” Henry flicked a finger of responsibility onto his colleagues. “However, at this point, after spending the past months cementing our rule via the reforms, I don’t foresee any significant challenges, nor do I imagine many aspiring generals would even want to destroy the guild. Our sanctioned battles in Aion Laisije are infinitely more fun than what I ever did. How many people, really, miss the days of army building for months only to get curb-stomped by rich-out-the-arse Euro and Chinese guilds who poach half your friends? Awful. I hope, by next instalment, you all will have seen enough evidence of my system’s merits to establish your own without a tyrannical despot forcing it upon you.”

“Beyond Saana, what’s the next obsession? Seventeen, a limitless future ahead.”

Henry shrugged. “At the moment, I’m fine-tuning a multi-layered book tetralogy designed to appeal to every level of readership and, as with the duelling research, expand the limited terrain of appreciation and possibility. That’s been my personal aim within the Stratford-on-Saana project, beyond supporting the hobby in general. After literature, no clue. Alex’s presentation was pretty snazzy; maybe I’ll shoot films. Or fashion design. I do feel that the fanny-pack never got a proper shake in history due to the unfortunate name, that there’s space available for a serious, respectworthy waist-mounted storage accessory liberated from the prevailing sartorial dialectic of irony and post-irony disguised as authenticity. The hip is just, logically, the most convenient place to carry minor items on your person.”

Awkward laughter followed.

And finally, came the last question, the last word of The Tyrant of Saana before he vanished back into the shadows he’d briefly left.

“Please, Mr Lee, answer Mr Wong.”

Henry sighed at the beaver-head, who’d been swinging his arm in front of his face. “Go on.”

Alex smiled connivingly. “Are you still in our wager?”

“Why would I be?” Henry replied with distaste. “A Thousand Tools has already leaked. Yes, I admit to everything, you were correct, I had been secretly studying martial arts. Hi, my name is Henry L. and I am a videogame addict.”

“Everyone already knew that part.” Alex’s eye sparkled with a victorious glint. “But what about The Card, Henry? Don’t you want the priceless Card back?”

Henry stared at him blankly for a few unblinking seconds, then shrugged. “Yeah, whatever, dude, let’s finish it.”

Alex gave a smug nod, knowing it could be no other way. “Do you trust me?”

“Not with my life; not with a can of soda.”

“Well, Henry, my dove, I trust you - or, at least, I trust the part of you that has beheld the glory and what shines so brightly beyond. To prove the magnitude of my trust, I’m going to give you something right now.” Alex clapped twice. “Enter!”

At the beaverhead’s signal, the lights dimmed and an obnoxious hype song blared through the overhead speakers. The journalists crowding the entranceway were split by a security detail escorting a toddler in a pin-stripe suit.

Little Liu, flexing his newly-found speech abilities, thrust a finger here and there, naming all he observed. “Camera! Geezer! Microphone! Beard! Morbidly obese!”

Henry, watching his nephew’s dramatic appearance, was reminded a little of the ridiculous entrance last night, as Karnon had brought in Ramiro with the dead girl’s partially-eaten corpse.

He frowned. “I don’t want your kid, dude. I can barely look after myself these days.”

“Please,” Alex beggingly whispered. “He’s gotten insufferable with the constant chatter."

When the toddler reached them, the music shut off and Little Liu pointed at his uncle, recently exposed as Saana’s pre-eminent gaming emperor. “Tyrant!”

Henry didn't deny it. “Yep, that was me, The Tyrant, but now he's dead."

“My son,” Alex addressed his spawn with paternal affection, “where have you hidden Uncle’s retirement gift?”

Little Liu directed Henry to help unbutton his suit vest, then, performing the next part himself, threw it open with a suave flick. Reaching for an inner pocket, he withdrew a jewellery box with a gorgeous vermillion lacquer, which he presented to his father.

Alex, in turn, presented the box to Henry with the pageantry of an archbishop bestowing the royal crown to the succeeding sovereign. The beaver-head, making sure to optimise the angle for multiple cameras, pried it open carefully, revealing a silk cushion on which rested a dazzling, awe-inspiring pendant of nothing.

The journalists, The Company directors, the other guild members, Little Liu, and the millions tuned in stared with confusion at the empty box.

Had the retirement gift fallen out? Maybe an enemy spy had infiltrated the real-life HQ and stolen it to spoil the occasion, a last act of defiance against The Tyrant?

However, neither Alex nor Henry showed any surprise, the latter tilting his head with amused curiosity.

Alex, guiding a hand carefully forward to the empty setting, pinched the air into his fingers and mimed as though he were picking up something. Raising the object with deathly gravity, he brought it first towards himself, within a hair’s length of his nose. He twisted it, scrutinising from many angles its immaculately-carved facets of nothing, studying its non-existent contours with a heavy heart, like a newly-wed cougar about to gift her younger househusband a limitless credit card. Finally, pushing through his doubts, nodding as he set foot down this road of no return, he stretched out his hand, pushing it towards his friend. He conceded it.

Henry studied Alex’s pinched fingers, the rectangular lines extending invisibly up from them.

The beaver-head was pretending to hold The Card.

The Card...that secret device by which Alex had coerced him into reconquering the globe a second time, dragging him from one misadventure to another, that intangible memory of the old favour when Alex had helped his ailing mother in her final days, that symbol of their years as comrades bloodying limb and soul in the arduous struggle upwards.

Alex was giving The Card back. With this gesture, he would sever the last connection between them and free Henry of any further obligation, wishing him the best in his chosen path downwards to retirement.

Henry—mirroring Alex’s half-joking, half-sincere demeanour—reached out carefully, plucked The Card from his former colleague’s grip, and discretely slipped it into a pocket.

It was over. In a way that only the two of them would ever know, it was finally over...The Tyrant was dead.

The pair, with the audience clueless and thinking them—correctly—insane, shared a last nod of understanding and farewell.

Alex then turned to the cameras and, explaining nothing of the odd exchange, moved on to the closing item of the conference’s agenda. “I have my own announcement to make – no, I’m not retiring, you don’t have to worry about that silly charade from me. Mine’s much smaller. Due to unexpected setbacks, levelling my character to Tier 5-3 has taken longer than anticipated. I won’t have time to make the long voyage back from Abhaya to Heimland for our Winter Invitational.” With a despondent sniffle, he mirrored Henry's funereal mood and cast his gaze downwards, down to his hopes sinking into the earth's loamy, skeleton-slumbering embrace.

The journalists, after the earlier revelations about tyrannical plots and wars and Cosmic God battles, had no significant reaction to the anti-climactic announcement.

Mayonnaise missing the tournament wasn’t a tragedy, was it? If anything, players would rejoice, since he’d unfairly dominated the open-gear categories with his Legendary items.

A few reporters, hoping they could weasel in a last question for The Tyrant, raised their hands.

Henry—eyes closed, his mind flashing with the events unfolding ahead—swore. "You childish, irresponsible cocksucker..."

Little Liu, the toddler learning a fancy new phrase from his uncle, pointed at his father. “Childish, irresponsible cocksucker.”

Alex smirked, then whispered his first proclamation with glee. "The Tyrant’s dead. Long live his successor, unchecked and all-powerful.” He raised his beaver-head anew, awakening from his expression of false defeat as he, The New Tyrant, reclined into his mock throne and, sliding out a crown hidden under the table, placed it upon his own brow. "For my first edict..."