An NPC-ran restaurant inside a tent, a place of calm amidst the duelling bedlam.

The restaurant smelled of many interesting aromas. Desert spices mingled with the sweetness of imported tropical fruits, the gaminess of locally-hunted meats, and a subtle background tang of exclusivity. Its clientele were limited to qualified entrants to The New Suchi Arena—situated right next door—and their vouched-for associates. It, and the shanty town of which it was a part, had come to function during the tournament as a meeting point between duellists and their tourist friends. Of particular note to those ushered in after flashing proof of their duelling rank was the lack of noise. Dampening runes sewn into the venue's fabric walls absorbed the usual rabble shouts outside and made it one of the few quiet spots in The Slums. A professional waitstaff enhanced the sense of privacy further - in Rangbit-style sarongs and with flowers in their curls, they shuffled about the diners with noiseless steps, their glances hugging the floor in the habitual diffidence whipped into their servile castes.

At one table, a pair of British Journalists were utilising the quiet to talk business over a platter of coconut-fried basilisk. One was an intern from Channel 5 News, the other a branch manager shipped in from HQ to replace the re-promoted and currently-jailed Oliver Spears.

“Listen, Trev,” said the manager managerially. “Don’t serve me this defeatist dross. Hasn’t Ollie taught you the power of self-confidence and persistence? Believe that you can get these clips of Septic Rose.”

London Tremor resisted rolling his eyes, the urge so strong they’d likely pop out of his skull. “He’s taught me the power of incarceration.”

He just wished this corporate toad would hop back to his swamp already. The intern, until being summoned out by the croaks, had been streaming popular fights and planning commentary for tomorrow’s brackets.

“Nobody’s jailing an intern.” The manager spat a basilisk talon into a bowl. “Trev, I’ll let you in on a little secret of my career progress. Rules, laws, orders - you can wriggle past any of these with ten quality minutes face to face. Everybody in this game is a hardcore dweeb – no real friends, no real girlfriends, no parental involvement. They’re absolutely starved of human contact.” He forked an eyeball, which then made a liquidy pop between his teeth. “And that starvation leaves these dweebs vulnerable to the most basic levels of social engineering. Treat them to a meal. Get them tipsy. Rub their scrawny shoulders. Ten minutes of schmoozing, and they’ll be crying, ‘”The Tyrant” who? My sole master is you, my best mate. Here are the clips of Septic Rose you wanted.’”

He missed the irony of explaining this tactic while employing it upon the intern.

"That social connection," London replied with special emphasis, "is precisely why this miserable incentive won’t budge anyone." He referred to a bounty of 300 EU credits – about enough to purchase a bicycle. “You're asking the duellists to defect not from The Company but from a community forged and tempered in the heat of the arena, in the heat of HF’s arena. If you’d read my—"

The manager cut him off, reaching to massage the intern’s wrist in application of a thick dose of social engineering. “Trev, bring me the recordings of Septic Rose. I’m not guaranteeing a promotion, but this job would look fantastic on your file when it’s up for review.”

London snapped back his arm in disgust. He was revolted by the greasy contact, revolted by the repetition of this eternal bait dangled before desperate interns globally, revolted by this farce of ‘reporting’.

Like many orgs, Channel 5 were sniffing out the latest buzz around HF’s first—and so far—only loss. In his tenth rookie round, the teen had forfeited a match at the instant of selection, not even permitting the contestant into his blacksite.

The drama sprang around the identity of the individual he’d dodged, ‘Alphamutt’.

Curiously, this female Cutthroat used a cloned avatar of popular in-game author Silver Wolf. This Australian writer, in certain sections of the ‘news’, had been a speculated item with HF, gossip columnists dissecting their exposed interactions. (Much of this footage, as an aside, was accidentally leaked by London, who’d shadowed HF without recognising his companions and who’d since transferred everything to Channel 5.) In a twist of further curiosity, however, this Cutthroat, Alphamutt, couldn’t be the writer. Silver Wolf herself had been spotted in another game zone after sailing against the traffic of migrant ships and reconnecting with her adventure band.

No, the dodged competitor seemed to be the other female comrade of the teen, the assassin Septic Rose, sister of Simon ‘Genocidelol’ Xiao and leader of The Garden of The Grotesque. Aside from the Class, the insulting username corroborated with a host of dredged-up forum comments left via her original ID. Over the past year, she’d chimed in on thousands of threads about Silver Wolf, dipping by to call her a dog, a bitch, a shitsniffer, a communal mutt, ‘Tinfoil Wolf’, ‘Silver Chow-Chow’, and several more censorworthy expletives based around man’s best friend.

Why the femme fatale despised the author, why she would impersonate the author, and why The Tyrant would spoil his perfect record to avoid her after hanging out with her last week - Saana’s media were in a race to crack the mystery at the centre of these questions. The most popular theory? A stupid teenage love triangle. The runner-up? A love square with the extra corner being adventurer extraordinaire, Luca ‘Indy’ Johnson.

Most reporters tasked to investigate this highschool drama had been embarrassed for everyone involved including themselves. The scale was shockingly inappropriate for the peak of gaming’s most-watched sporting competition ever. Alas, news pickings had been sparse, an issue created by HF. His prohibition on streaming his own matches combined with his domination of every category had forced them into the awkward pit of re-assembling happenings at the top through exit interviews with losers. Much shame thus existed at prying into the teen’s personal relationships but not a ton of guilt.

Within this shameful episode, London Tremor had been assigned a minor role by this toad of a manager. Decent footage had been unacquirable for comparison of Septic Rose’s duels before and after her avatar change. Messages to the duellists she’d sparred against had been answered with instant blocking, an act of unified suppression presumed to have been orchestrated by HF threatening to expel them from his tournament and/or bar them from admission to his guild. So far, the line of loyalty against leaks had held. Corporate wanted London Tremor to break it by exploiting connections developed through his gonzo coverage of the scene. However, as he'd been trying and failing to convince this manager, that very participation in the scene made the pointlessness of seeking rats apparent to him. Threats or no threats, the top duellists were basically cultists after the workshop, their religion A Thousand Tools, their prophet a deity juggling a thousand titles and aspects, ‘HF’, ‘The Cripple’, ‘The Tyrant’, ‘The Second Gate’, etc etc. The first response of these fanatics to him weaselling for clips would be to kick his arse.

London Tremor—also part of the cult—threw his hands up in the frustration of not being able to use them to choke this manager. “This love triangle is an obvious farce. You’ve seen everything I’ve seen. HF's sole interaction with these girls was bantering while beating one of them up. He isn’t like you or me. ‘Coupling with a chick?’” The intern imitated the teen’s flat expression and monotone, devoid of any sign of stimulation from this uber-plebeian topic. “My squads for the 2v2s are locked in...maybe next tournament...’ No. HF’s of a different species, one evolved beyond the dull mating game of chimpanzees. His only love is for the avant-garde, for multi-tasking an infinity of masteries to flex on us intellectual simians. The ‘side-hobby’ of romance, if added to the mix, would never manifest with such low-IQ simplicity. HF would invent some hellish, post-maximalist innovation of love, like a neo-Genghis-Khanian hundred-thousand-concubine polycule or a next-level dating tournament to scientifically identify history’s greatest mistress.”

The manager sneered, the intern getting cocky with these proclamations after being shown some small favour by The Tyrant, whom he called ‘HF’ like they were pals. “This case is crystal clear, Trev. It’s a love parallelogram. Four teenagers, two of them rejected, two still undecided.”

“That’s why it can’t be,” London insisted. “It’s too clear. From combat to intimacy, HF is a black widow weaving a web of schemes. Whatever we imagine we uncover is merely the second dimension of the subterfuge. You have to go deeper, down through layers three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and by the time you’ve unearthed the truth, it’s over. He’s won. He’s laughing from the clouds while we writhe in the ninth circle of his constructed hell.”

The manager cracked a bone and slurped its purple marrow. “Well, what’s the next layer, Trev?”

“I don’t know!” London Tremor blinked, the possibilities in HF’s wicked mind too staggering to comprehend. “Avant-garde trashtalk? Isn’t this assassin the sister of some defecting general? Maybe HF seduced her to bully her and dump her as a slight against her brother. Then, she signed up this weekend for a vengeance kill. But her opponent, plotting another step ahead, reversed her move by forfeiting to cast extra attention on her humiliation. That’s where we finally recognise our current position in the ploy, getting baited into redirecting the instruments of our trade collected for this tournament to publicising his evil sister conquest.”

“A case of sibling vengeance…a sister scorned…” whispered the manager, intrigued by this angle and wondering if he should push it up the ladder after slapping his name on it.

"We haven't met the spider yet," London Tremor refuted himself gravely. “That’s the web’s third layer. Meanwhile, in actuality, the person we mistook for ‘Septic Rose’ impersonating ‘Silver Wolf’ was, in fact, a double imposter: the general brother in disguise. This guy, corrupted by HF’s conspiratorial kink during their alliance, had arranged to swindle his enemy by making him unwittingly gay. However, HF, the eviler of the pair, knowing the charade full well yet having long transcended the ‘trapological dialectic between homosexuality and heterosexuality’, pumped and dumped the brother anyway, before revealing that he also pumped and dumped the real sister, along with their parents and grandparents, and their family goldfish, AND the family refrigerator.” The intern waved a palm across the table, as if the meat-stripped basilisk carcass were the devoured remnants of a dynasty. “Voila: a whole household, from humans to appliances, romantically dumpstered by the one fiendish innovator of the relational avant-garde – date and discard everyone and everything. But…” he lowered to a whisper, plunging further. “But this is still only a side-hobby twist to the tournament he annihilated during our distraction, which in turn is also a side-hobby to...to...” London, about to theorise the debut of a new line of luxury fanny packs, shook his head violently, casting away the invading mental demon of More and More. “This love triangle is a distraction. Please. Let me focus on my duelling section of the web.”

The manager decided he would promote this plot – the vengeance plot, not the other demented drivel. “Trev, your focus will be fine.” Taking over the rest of the show, he dropped a basilisk leg and presented both his grease-smeared hands, “You can continue this fantastic job interviewing the competitors.” He wriggled the first. “AND you can schmooze recordings of their sparring matches with the dumped sister.” He wriggled the second and merged the two. “The more we chit-chat, Trev, the clearer it becomes to me that The Tyrant picked you out for a special reason. He saw the same likeness between you two that I’m noticing now, a capacity to juggle multiple roles. Be like your friend 'HF'. Juggle.”

“They’re going to snitch. I’ll be locked in the cell with Oliver, and I’ll miss the grand finale.”

“Trev, never say this to him, but I think you’re better than Ollie. You could be Gaming Journalist of The Year 2051 – or, if you play the cards quick, 2050. Your journey starts with securing the team this vital footage of Septic Rose.”

London gave a defeated sigh.

Fearing he might punch this out-of-touch gaffer, he leaned back in his chair, putting as much physical distance as possible between them.

Words, he was realising, could not bridge this gap. How do you explain the magnitude of the arena to a person who's never dared to set a toe in it, who hasn't been awakened from superficial interests like teenage love affairs by the higher stimulants of blood and action? Ten minutes of schmoozing compared to that...London could accomplish infinitely more with ten minutes in the ring against this flabby clerk.

The intern's leaning motion expanded his view slightly of the restaurant and the other dining duellists. Absorbing them, thinking in their language, he saw an escape.

“300 Creds and schmoozing," he said, "that’s enough?”

The manager—who’d schmoozed the intern to this breaking point without resorting to the incentives he’d budgeted—smiled. “For you, it’s enough. Believe in yourself, Trev.”

London nodded. “If it’s enough, then you don’t even need me, mate. One of Septic Rose’s sparring partners is right over there.” He indicated to a family across the room. “The grandmother nibbling on the zebra, waiting for your schmoozing and 300 shiny Creds.”

“The grandmother?” The manager, cleaning his fingers on a napkin, checking out the woman and her avatar with pumped-up muscles, wondered if this intern were pulling his leg.

“A retired e-sports pro. She uses HF’s own compensatory methods for slow re—”

The manager cut this coward of an intern off, sliding out his chair. “Watch how us professionals earn our salaries.”

Brightening his smile, refreshing a spritz of pocket cologne, the manager sauntered over. He gave a smarmy introduction, claimed he was a fan, then asked if their parties might bump tables for just ten minutes. In exchange for the pleasure of his favourite duellist’s company, he would generously cover 40% of her bill.

A few sentences of bargaining later, both reporters were escorted by guards out of the restaurant, which had a zero-tolerance policy for media scum.

The restaurant's maître d’, a female NPC, approached the table to apologise. In an odd example of the game's seniority by power, she aimed her address not at the elderly lady who'd been harassed but a twelve-year-old boy amongst them, a schoolfriend of the group's granddaughter. The boy, joining them with his father, was a high-level Bloodmancer participating in the main 6v6 tournament. In accordance with his Class, usually outlawed in this region, the NPC spoke to him in the foreign language of the zone he'd migrated from.

"What did she say?" asked the boy's father after the NPC'd left.

The young Bloodmancer held his tongue. The woman, a Rangbitan, had dropped a bigoted remark about the pains of distinguishing the vermin from good society once they’d been allowed to mix and everyone had sprouted tails.

Forgetting that, he turned with the much more interesting point to his schoolfriend’s grandmother. “Was that true? You had the misfortune to duel Septic Rose, Sister of The Eastern Tyrant?”

Grandma Ru stared back blankly. Her brow then creased grumpily as she parsed the odd question and struggled for an answer.