Grandma Ru's real opponent turned up in the middle of her group practice. A spear-wielding Fighter, they wore a Roboboomer’s polka-dot mullet. When the official indicated her, they guffawed, ‘The grandma?’, and dismissed her with one prejudicial glance, completely missing her being outnumbered 4v1.

Ruru returned the dismissal after checking out their spear. It was a whole foot too long for the rookie meta, dominated by swordsmen and brawlers who’d simply rush within the weapon’s effective range. More tellingly, its shaft showed few of the scratches that accumulate through persistent training.

Her first opponent—as expected by the odds—was a noob.

Not wishing to psyche herself out by granting the situation undue respect, she transitioned straight into the duel after replenishing her cooldowns, treating it like a mere continuation of her sparring, every little scrap nothing but one revolution in her snowball towards the finals.

This one match progressed without surprise. The Fighter poked her shield. Ruru spammed a steady stream of magic. She used her Bullet-time ration conservatively, activating only when they activated theirs, thereby returning them both to a normal, predictable pace. Unlike the Crusader with the halberd, the Fighter, worse, never mustered up the confidence to charge.

If Grandma Ru faced any struggle, it was small and entirely internal.

As the Fighter succumbed to the realisation of their defeat, their spearwork rapidly disintegrated - their thrusts spilt into erratic slop, and a desperate, rising haste hijacked all control, finesse, and accuracy. In her witnessing of this fatal collapse, Grandma Ru had a sudden crazy urge to leap into it. Her shield’s weight grew tiring and bothersome. She wished to sally forth from out its guard, to slip into the unsteady vortex of the speartip, to deal the coup de grace up close, at the very proximity her strategy demanded she avoid.

This instinct, she knew from training, was bait. It'd hit her on occasion, provoking her to throw several otherwise won bouts by lunging forth dagger-drawn and getting vigorously shitsmoked.

She didn’t understand the origin, but she’d witnessed it in other hybrid players. Boredom, maybe? Or—as with her resorting to the shield—a frustration at employing a dumb fraction of the toolkit, the best fights those that managed to extract every cherished skill?

Even The Tyrant was apparently guilty of this silly error.

Grandma Ru believed the kid had committed it in the debut of A Thousand Tools against the local slumlord paedophile, a duel she’d watched repeatedly for its anti-melee tactics. It'd happened right at the end. For minutes, the teen'd whittled down the king through a long, methodical plan of mid-range casting. Then, in the concluding twist, he’d tossed all previous caution, he’d plunged into the melee, he’d allowed himself to lose an arm and catch a mean stab in the stomach.

Because he’d won, most interpreted this finisher as a flex - he'd burned his spare heal cooldowns to smite Ramiro seconds quicker, had flaunted that his dance routine evading a thousand cuts had been purely optional. Ruru, having now tasted a little of his art herself, could not invest this reasoning with so much certainty. She sensed the factor of irrationality at play. There was some danger-loving drive, a cousin to ‘the call of the void’, the bizarre temptation at great heights to hurl yourself towards death and, perhaps, defy it.

And against this Fighter, she heard that same call: the call of the dagger.

Or maybe—for this bozo—the call of the fist.

But, unlike certain daring youths, Grandma Ru was old, age teaching her restraint. From beginning to end, she didn’t veer one inch from her strategy. She blocked, she cast, she blocked, she cast, and 37 seconds after the duel’s start, the officiator yelled her victory.

No time was given for celebration.

“Cheating old bitch!” the Fighter screeched, continuing to launch a hail of stabs without success. “Fight me properly!”

Her frustrated opponent had been screaming invectives throughout. Ruru’d barely noticed. Her focus had been locked upon their spear’s alluring deterioration.

“I’ll do it.” Ruru, relaxing with her opening duel secured, gestured towards the officiator pulling out a bow.

At the Fighter’s next attack, her shield dematerialised. She darted through the scattering motes and past their weapon’s tip. Her arms expanded with a Gorilla . The fingers of one growing hand planted firmly on their shoulder, as if offering emotional support for the Fighter in their hour of distress. With them steadied thus in place, her other fist swiped their jaw.

Their body, decapitated, burst into soul lights.

Towards their shiny cloud, Grandma Ru dropped her transformation and wagged a geriatric finger, thinking it appropriate to send the rude young toddler off with a bit of trashtalk.

She ended up standing motionless, though. Nothing witty sprang to mind, as if she’d knocked her own head clean off.

“Why the blank expression, Ru?” asked Jorge, sprinting over with Pete.

The two had planned to embarrass her by wrapping her in their banner with exaggerated celebration, but, at their approach, they’d found her unresponsive, lost in a meditative pose.

Ruru, awakened by her buddies from her blank reverie, deepened her frown. “I’m trying to recollect the proper trashtalk for this situation…but nothing’s coming to mind. Maybe, with age, my memory’s failing…or…maybe…”

Pete nodded sombrely. “You’ve, actually, never met this level of trash.”

Jorge made the sign of the cross. “Too trash even for trashtalk.”

The three amigos stared with pity at the Fighter’s trash soul floating off.

Her friends departed shortly after. They left on a mild sour note, her ex-husband having a meltdown when she repeated—not revealed, repeated—that she wouldn’t tour the festival between rounds. She’d promised to join them whenever she got eliminated. (Of course, a Swiss format didn’t have eliminations, advancement determined by the highest final win-loss scores.) While Pete stamped off, she reunited with the other top cadets to spar, the group returning with their anecdotes of easy wins, many duellists forfeiting on recognition.

Grandma Ru continued in this steady fashion through the preliminaries. While the in-game sun rose, set, and rose again, she sparred, blocked, and cast her way through four progressively more difficult victories, each round sorting her within the ever-dwindling club of the unbeaten.

Her sixth duel paired her up against the first mini-boss, one of The Tyrant’s released teammates, TheIndigoGuru.

This Arcanist from India stood lower in the rankings than herself. But, as a fencing specialist, he was heavily advantaged by the preliminary’s bare terrain. The stylistic matchup for her shield-turtling doubly sucked. She needed to hit twenty-or-so to eliminate him at a fifth of his health. In contrast—due to a cross-Class balance handicap imposed on Earthfriends for having spellshields and heals when Arcanists had neither—he could’ve won with just one or two decent rapier thrusts. Her arms, exposed while casting, were a prime target.

Based on this analysis, the match contained little hope. Her general plan for this tournament would’ve recommended changing tactics and rolling the dice of chaos.

However, Grandma Ru—in the spirit of A Thousand Tools, deliberating on the wider circumstances—decided not to switch her method yet – yet another case of ‘The Strategy of No Strategy Beneath The Heavens.’ The fencer, she reasoned, was meeting her after a disruption-plagued beginning. Her sixth equated to his fourth true bout, his first two rounds skipped on account of the ambush. The cumulative effect of the psychological topsy-turvy, of the basic deficit in sparring, would serve to lessen his condition. Minimally, perhaps, but at their level, that could be enough to miss the hits you’d usually land.

Her gambling on non-gambling proved correct. She dumpstered that kid, too.

And, finally after her sixth straight steamroll, as if she’d pleased the gods of luck, the miraculous news arrived of her prayed-for promotion to the stadium. Thus, without a scratch, she could leave her disadvantaged spawnpoint. Henceforth, her opposition would continue to grow tougher, but so would she, finally granted room to stretch out her strategic legs.

In a show of deluxe convenience, her camel wagon over was intercepted by a rider, charging out to courier her—personally—towards her upgraded destination.

Grandma Ru leapt giddily upon their mount and waved farewell to her handicapped beginnings. She waved literally, waving at the camels, waving at the young duellists speeding by, waving at the boundary lines of the rings, waving at the dirt and the grass that’d offered not a crumb of space to kite.

She briefly entertained tossing her shields into the horse’s wake and leaving them there like tombstones to struggles past. However, the clunky things—although demoted in priority—remained a key piece of her armament. What’s more, A Thousand Tools engendering a weird attachment to equipment, she found the idea sacrilegious.

With a last wave, she turned and gazed ahead to the stadiums approaching. In the daylight, their massive structures seemed to shimmer with a glow of invitation and endless promise.

Then she suddenly recalled the statistic nerd’s previous warning. She shot a message asking why promoting early was a bad sign.

A reply explained the matter simply. After The Tyrant had substituted out his team for scrub Australians, a mere two duellists were left in his private arena with the competence to run the perfect streak equal to her own.

The first—who’d skipped the ambush by never leaving the stadium and training with his support staff—had been Whitefrog. That was, the professional Qi Master from Saana League’s Team Pravah, who’d wiped his original character to try become The Tyrant’s disciple and who, succeeding with that petition, had been the sole player blessed with 1-on-1 tutelage in A Thousand Tools. Most regarded Whitefrog as their rookie tourney’s destined runner-up; if he missed that spot, it would only be due to encountering his tutor in an earlier round of the finals.

And the second undefeated duellist who might await her was, of course, The Tyrant himself.

-Y-A-III: So, RIP.

A string of other messages rolled in, sharing their condolences.

Ruru swore. "Fuck."

"Yes, mam," confirmed her escort rider, their day’s task being to shuttle the unlucky to a speedran dismantlement. "Sometimes the bear gets ya.”

“Fuck.” Ruru looked upon the stadiums, their golden aspect receding into the ominous bulk of timber. “Fuck…” She squinted. "...fuck?"

In this last questioning expletive, a veteran of competition, she'd immediately resigned to fate and pivoted her thoughts to consequence and counteraction.

In terms of consequence, at her rank, some losses were anticipated - most advancing to the finals would have several. Overall, this was still a positive turn of events, the change of venue lessening the difficulty of matches subsequent. In that regard, she'd gain nothing crying about one lost duel.

In terms of counteraction, her smartest move would be to forfeit straight on entry. Rather than wasting time and energy upon a hopeless match, she should grab a sparring partner and race to re-adjust to the arena, purging herself of the sub-optimal conditioning of her turtle-casting starter strat. Simultaneously, she would avoid the showing of her cards - she'd obviously paid more attention to either of these two than they would herself, an off-radar grandmother.

Dodging might’ve been the smartest move, but she’d rather not take it. She was not some victory-maximising robot, nor a coward. She’d signed up to this tournament for the sake of pride. More than that, after a week of training, she yearned to test the polish of her antique skills against this generation’s finest. A duel against the very best, against her teacher or her teacher's favourite, the only way she’d miss that opportunity was if she had a stroke.

Besides, in combat, wasn’t there always some element of chance?

….perhaps?

“Fuck...” she mumbled, second-guessing her rising convictions, thinking they might be another suicidal call of the dagger. “Do you know which one?”

“No, I do not,” replied the rider. “But that don’t matter one squirt of spit, mam. Flip the coin. Both sides are tails.”

Ruru, still undecided, pulled out the scam booklet, the Selected Writings of The Invincible One. Its advice to not strategise had influenced her last win. Maybe it would help again. Thus, she used the book as her own grandma had the I Ching, selecting a random passage and tugging at the strings of fate.

Her next duel’s fortune read: ‘67-B: This is the truth: to walk The Way of Fighting Alone, you must first slither through The Way of Fighting Not Alone. A Komodo’s Aloneness is Strategic because it is a deceptive Aloneness, a Not-Aloneness-Made-Aloneness. In your stomach should ferment the whole jungle of Bushido. Samurai Lizards, Samurai Insects, Samurai Rodents, Samurai Monkeys, Samurai Deer, and Samurai Bison - bite every small Samurai, infect every large Samurai, and ingest every Samurai of every size. Then, only after slithering, will you be able to walk The True Way of Fighting Alone.’

Grandma Ru skipped the explanation and decided to interpret this garbage as propitious. Yes, she should take a nip at every samurai, including the Komodo samurai…

She coughed, hamming up her feeblest voice. “Be kinder to the horse, young lady. There’s no need to rush.”

The rider nodded. “Speakin’ god’s truth right there, mam. Ain’t nothin’ to rush to but nothin’.”

Entertaining the poor old lady’s request, they slowed their gallop. Ruru meanwhile summoned a notebook and hurriedly reviewed her two thickest entries.