The next real-life day, Suchi’s Slums, The Kingdom of United Europe.

Here in Suchi, with The Company not-so-secretly seizing The Empire, new funding was pouring into the zone for the Winter Open Invitational. Under their management, The Slums were undergoing a much-needed makeover. The chaotic layout had been made more rational by city planners, who'd relocated marketplaces to centralised locations, who'd installed medical facilities and schools and water-distribution stations. The donkey wagons jostling along the main thoroughfares no longer caught their wheels in potholes, and their drivers could relax their vigilant lookout for thieves and cannibal cults due to a functioning police force patrolling 24/7. Still, many of the former features were retained. The skies continued to be marred by Achievement Pillars jutting from the Villages as disorganised and free as their builders, and the shacks of the Ibangua were as run-down as ever.

Despite those last decrepit hold-outs, a fair portion of the tournament migrants had chosen to spend their visit slumming it in The Empire’s quarters over The Company’s cleaner city being built to the north. For whatever reason, they saw whatever charm in this inhospitable place the original Villagers had.

Amongst those choosing this rougher path were the three geriatric millennial ex-pro-gamers who’d managed to beat most of the migrant peak by arriving early in Suchi.

After completing the tutorial yesterday, they’d split for their respective Class-attainment quests, they'd re-joined to level via instance dungeons, they'd logged off, they'd slept, and they'd logged back on to start another exciting day. Somewhere along the way, their group had picked up two grey-haired strangers, with whom they’d become fast friends through the happenstance thrills of Saana's adventures.

Now, these wheezing geezers were joining a Village, enticed by some hard-working recruiters. Riding on a wagon towards the temporary home in this Euro 'Kingdom', they glanced around with awe at the liveliness of the congested streets. Down every alleyway, before every market stall, crowds of their fellow migrants teemed, joyously swept up in the atmosphere of the grand tournament ahead and its magical promise of all possibilities.

Most of the oldies rode in comfort, reminiscing about their glory days and sharing cob-webbed memes. But, behind them, Grandma Ruru was trailing on foot, shapeshifting between Earthfriend forms, weaving between pedestrians as a cheetah, climbing up shacks and jogging along their roofs in her grandma form, slamming the ground as a gorilla, catching back up to them as a horse.

At first, Ruru’s actions would seem random. But by studying their timing closely, one would notice a temporal regularity. Currently, she was performing a free-style drill from The Tyrant’s duelling workshop, an exercise designed to steadily increase a player’s actions-per-minute. Synchronising with a sound-track, the practitioner had to moderate everything according to the various instruments, the pace of their steps, the timing of their breaths, the monitoring of their environment.

Ruru had found adapting to the drills awkward at first. However, as she'd settled into a comfortable but challenging tempo, she felt as if she were losing herself in a dancing trance. Her old limbs, her senses, her thoughts, all were melting together and flowing through the blurring universe. Never in her life had she been suffused by this level of full-body animation.

From the wagon ahead, the granddaughter was watching Ruru's elderly form leaping from the roof of one shack to another.

It was...it was a strange thing to observe your own grandmother doing. It seemed...wrong.

“Grandad,” the young girl pursed her lips. “Ruru’s kind of intense.”

Grandpa Pete nodded nostalgically. “Yep.”

The intense grandma soon jumped back on with them to take a rest.

Joining them, Ruru turned off the game’s violence filter, which changed the player's perspective into a stylised cartoon.

She’d started enabling it whenever training after the rather traumatising sight of her granddaughter getting eaten by that monkey boss yesterday. The game's hyper-realistic gore was a bit much for her, and The Tyrant had advised anyone finding it distracting to turn it off, the duelling gains only marginal.

As Ruru's filter faded, her cartoonish senses slowly transitioned to a higher definition, the wrinkles and liver spots condensing on her hands, the smell of sweat on herself growing more pungent.

She simultaneously tried to calm her mind with a breathing exercise. Methods for rapid relaxation had also been taught in the workshop to help trainees preserve their mental stamina across extended series. Still getting used to them, Ruru couldn’t make the transition quickly, and the world around her, gaining extra clarity and detail by the second, continued to buzz, her mind racing and racing.

“Pete,” she said to her ex-husband, “I was thinking there’s no need to stick with these crusty avatars. It’s a fantasy game. We can become anything. We don’t even have to be humans. We could be dwarfs or elves.”

“Not elves.” The granddaughter shook her head. “They’re not unlocked yet.”

“Are you sure?" asked one of the group’s new buddies. “I have seen elves around.”

Despite the race being absent, some roleplayers distorted their human avatars to resemble them.

While the others pondered this oddity, Grandpa Pete gave his ex-wife a sly, knowing look. The fantasy aesthetic garbage didn't matter a lick to her, he knew. Her min-max instincts of old were re-emerging, and she wanted to optimise her character for the arena, to make her limbs younger, stronger, leaner, and longer. She seemed to be taking the upcoming competition a tad too seriously for one their senile age.

“Hmm,” he teased, “but what would I swap to? Aren't I already the prime physical specimen?”

Much to his granddaughter’s embarrassment, the grandpa removed his shirt and flexed his old-dude gamer bod for his buds, showing off his stick-thin biceps and a small pot-belly. A flock of passing drunks wolf-whistled and tossed him a beer, which he ceremonially sculled.

The group were soon dropped off at their destination Village. Outside, a crowd of several dozen players were gathered, fellow newcomers waiting to be welcomed in.

Ruru and her friends fraternised with these kids. Most of them were British, the grandparents choosing the Village with convenient times for their granddaughter in Europe to play after school. None were as old as themselves, but they all shared the youthful attraction to this tournament and this dinky slum.

They were nice people, Ruru thought.

The whole lot of them were eventually given a tour of the Village, of the tent they’d be sharing with three other transferred groups. The 'Village Head' showing them around was a Norwegian guy with a Filipino girl’s avatar. Why the look? He didn't explain but was very, very adamant in correcting a Virtual Realist among them that he was neither a woman nor Filipino. Despite this quirk, he seemed quite nice, although he grew a bit frosty when a bored Ruru started reviewing footage from the duelling workshop.

The other Villagers initiated Ruru and her pals into the fold with a drinking ritual, the alcohol appearing to be laced with a mild hallucinogen.

Overall, she thought the place was nice, the Villagers nice. It was really nice how they were all focusing on their own little things, the dungeon teams, arts and crafts, etc.

Throughout the initiation, Ruru found her eye constantly wandering over to a small arena, where several Villagers were practising. Once her friends were smashed and babbling about rainbow serpents, she poured out the rest of her drink and slipped away for a couple quick rounds in the ring.