Why was he jogging in the tutorial grounds, at night? This didn’t have a clear answer and may, in fact, have had no answer - it wasn’t as if a retiree needed a deliberate itinerary. But a motive could be hypothesised in nostalgia, to close the loop on this holiday in Suchi by returning to his beginnings before departure. One could imagine the hero saying a friendly farewell to the horny boars that’d once tried goring him, a toodaloo to the psychic shadow monkeys and the now-forgotten questline about their devolution from normal-er kungfu monkeys with its allusions to genetic tinkering and holocaust. One could only imagine him doing this, though – in fact, he was doing nothing of the sort, simply jogging at night, and these creatures were not even present, their herds having been culled to await later restoration from a few breeding pairs.
The forest around him was devoid of life except for a couple bats. Those were constantly being frightened out of the canopy by his movements and the camera-flash blazing of his glass shield Legendary as it vacuumed up Nature Energy. That shield, illuminating the forest with its strobe, was directing Celestial Charges into the extra stores of his patchwork Earthfriend tunic, which would in turn fuel his wooden teleportation slippers. This was the same cheat combo that’d allowed him to blitz around the arena untrackably fast, teleporting from entrapments and sniping mages in the backlines before retracting to safety. Off the battlefield, the combo was converting into a means of luxuriously-quick travel.
The specs of his luxuriously-quick travel: After a 33-second, max charge of the tunic, these slippers could teleport him in one bound almost a kilometre and a half, or 44 metres per second, or 144 kilometres per hour on the dot or 89.5 miles for the imperials, enough to reach the horizon of Saana's compact planet in roughly a minute - and this was before the bonus from jogging, at night, between charges. Such velocities by real-world standards of 2050 may have been atrocious, like a scam solar/moon-powered car with a defective battery. In game, though, this was a cheat amongst mobility cheats, and it would open up Saana for a whimsical retirement tour as the multi-week journeys of others were reduced to a day. Travelling just 6 hours north-east, he could be on the other side of the continent, trout fishing in the blood-tinged rivers of Aion Laisije. Or 8 hours south-east, he could be macheting fist-sized dates from the giant palms of Yamalai. In another 12 from there, he could be cloistered in the libraries of Volefa or steeping exotic teas freshly plucked from the plantations of Wankalga. The possibilities for a retiree were endless and everywhere.
Judging from his current north-ish orientation, it seemed that the retired hero was aiming for the white sand deserts of Enuchibe. For others, this was not conventionally a tourist attraction but a deathzone. For him, though, faster than all danger, he might have had intentions of tripping on spicy hashish with the nomads or taming a rare scorpion mount, simply for the flex (he, after all, did not need a mount - being max speed already). These jolly episodes would no doubt be interspersed around the more heroic adventuring of his replacement.
As for the rest of his travelling attire—a tedious but maybe relevant concern with the fashion climb ahead—these consisted of the usual Legendary offenders. He’d clothed himself in the deceptively-shabby pieces of The Syncretist set. One pinky, beneath his item-swapping gloves, donned his stat-boosting ring, one wrist his attack-resetting bracelet. Draped from his shoulders was a semi-new multi-elemental transformation cloak, which had been fused during his last tournament from the three collected throughout the fortnight past.
All together, the gear was an uncoordinated visual disaster, the ex-hero looking as if he'd robbed a second-hand clothing store at katana-point, the owner's gore splashed on him - he was, as a side mention, covered in blood. His styling would hopefully sharpen alongside his fashion sense.
His midnight jog brought him from out of the trees upon a forest trail lit by lanterns. Coming the other way happened to be a geriatric couple on a horse, trotting back to collect their belongings after a romantic evening fondle on the steppe.
His eyes sparkled with a magnifying magic as he inspected their advancing figures closely, perhaps asking whether one or both might be the saga’s next replacement hero. The eye effect soon faded, however, and a dismissive, subtly-disappointed shake of his head suggested their disqualification. The saga, it might be reasoned, had already exhausted the washed-up retiree trope. Hero #2 for a change—or a return to adventuring convention—should be a youth that didn’t stink of moth-balls and infirmity.
Despite their incandidacy, he continued jogging towards the couple to have one of those pointless conversations most savoured by the jobless.
He tipped his Legendary strawhat. “Hey-yo, old-timers!”
“Well, hey-yo there back, sugar,” greeted the grandma driving the horse.
She glanced uncomfortably away from him, unable to handle his shield's blinding, migraine-inducing strobe effect. An enigmatic frown followed as she registered after a delay that he'd been drenched hat-to-slippers in blood.
She was just about to panic, thinking they were being ambushed. But her husband on the horse's rump gave an ecstatic laugh and, recognising the former hero, responded with the odd familiarity that some weirdos have for celebrities known through the intimacy of a screen.
“Sugar?!” said the grandpa. “That’s the T-Man hisself! Yo T-Man—MY MAN—what’s cookin’ with these frock-wearin’ vamps?! Fangs are flashin' too open, man, too sharp. You ain’t gone dull ‘em?”
The retired hero blinked in confusion. Vamps? Fangs? These old foggies seemed to have the wrong genre of videogame, and even if such fantasy creatures did exist in Saana, what relevance could they be to him - a retiree?
“I’ve retired,” he stated factually. “Got everything I needed from this diarrhoea-show, and now I’m dribbling out.”
The shield blinked out of his hand as he made a relaxed, undulating gesture with the arm, smooth and dribbling as his jog into the blissful midnight of retirement.
The grandpa gave a small nod of gratitude at the removal of the shield’s obnoxious strobe. “But where you out to, T-Man? Ain’t much kickin’ out there, man. Just the long grass and the moonlight. Needs you a sweet ol’ girl to make it somethin’ somethin’, if you catch me.”
He pumped his eyebrows lewdly and gave his wife’s hips a suggestive pat. She in turn, rubbing some flashing afterimages from out of her eyelids, threatened to eject her husband off the horse.
The former hero, not wishing to share his luxury travel itinerary with a pair too senile to understand or remember, just agreed with them. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m looking for: a lovely vixen for myself, a T-Woman.”
But perhaps, in his insincerity, there lay a kernel of the truth. Now that he was jobless, a romance could also be on the cards, his unique form of joblessness not having the usual dating contraindicators of poverty and depression. In this old pair of horndogs, he could be gazing at a mirror of his retired future, him and a hot new beau sneaking off to nature just to make out.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“The people back there, though,” said the grandpa, pointing out a supposed discrepancy.
The former hero, who could teleport to the location of any ladies on demand, waved dismissively. “Those are the failed loves behind me. My sights are set upon a better love in the distances beyond.”
And this may have been true as well. One shouldn’t be bogged down in the romantic past but should move forward optimistically, carrying only the moral lessons and opposition research salvaged from their failures.
Somewhat randomly, the unnamed artery-rupturing hammer Legendary flashed into one of the ex-hero's hands, and he performed his weapon animation manoeuvre, this time at a leisurely enough pace to follow. He lobbed the hammer up above his head and—now holding an
He had, as a neglected mention for his outfit, equipped six other weapons before this. The rapier Worldpiercer dangled from one side of his belt, the glass scimitar Worldcleaver from the other. Riding on his left shoulder with a view of any potential threats behind him was the seven-sided attack-cancelling dice. Not visible were three daggers. All of these were also covered in gore, a tangle of hair glued to the flat of Worldcleaver by a drying red paste.
The grandpa, sizing up the weapons, gave a knowing grin. "But whose heart you aimin' at with them stakes, T-Man? Must be a straaaaange lady."
The ex-hero shrugged pitifully. "We can't all be lookers. And my personality is, though it pains me to admit, even more repulsive to women. Some in my predicament might toss in the towel or, worse, waste their lives trying to fix what's unfixable. Not me. I'm following that proven alternative first pioneered by the short: compensation through extravagant displays of wealth."
Striking a pose, he imitated a short king with his elbow raised above his shoulder to lean against a bar. Very casually, he rolled up the sleeve of his tunic, and across his wrist flashed an assortment of bracelets, each more ultra-expensive and Legendary than the last. All the imaginary beauties around the club were instantly moist.
The grandma, taking offence, broke into a minute lecture. She pointed out that most women weren't that shallow - she herself had been the bread-winner of their household. If anything, women were disgusted by this nonsense, which came across as desperate and intellectually insulting. Also, their second daughter had married a short guy, standing at barely 5'9. The retired hero—between winks of complicity with the grandpa, who'd been handsome enough in his youth for brokeness—nodded along the whole time in agreement, as if the grandma were only supporting his point. Two more weapons meanwhile were added to the arsenal: the arrowless bow looted from the yoga lady, plus his two-hand sword of unidentified origin that shot out crescent-moon-shaped lasers.
"Like I said," he summarised, tightening the bow to a forearm. "My personality's so ugly it starts arguments. Anyway, you young amours do mind yourselves!"
Glass shield back in hand, he waved and teleported out of sight.
The old man swivelled in confusion, then he called out to the emptiness. “You, too, T-Man! And take it easy out there! Take it sloooow! Life’s a race, but ain’t nothin’ sittin’ at the finish ‘cept a golden bowl of shit!”
These were wise words from one who’d already lived their adventures and was apparently therefore disqualified from another.
The wife at the reins grunted. “Charlie Davenport, you better soap that tongue if you wan’ it goin’ anywhere near me again.”
“Sorry, ma'am.”
As the retired hero alternated between phases of teleporting and jogging while his shield recharged, the scenery around him shifted with disorienting speed. At one moment, he was bushwacking through foliage; in the next, his feet were cracking the dehydrated floor of a former mudhole; the next, he was balancing along the brim of an open quarry where cow-fat gerbils chewed on rocks.
Making the most random of debuts during this leg, he summoned a brand new Legendary sword. A rapier, it looked very similar to Worldpiercer, its handle carved with a mirror pattern of continents and oceans. The design of its handguard was different, though—a frog instead of a basilisk—and its blade was an emerald-hued metal instead of ivory. This was evidently a recent acquisition for himself because he tested it before strapping it on. The sword after animation fenced with insects in the forest dark, quartering mosquitoes, severing one wing from an unlucky dragonfly.
What was this sword? Where had it come from? No answer was given.
After further deliberation, he exchanged his artery-eruption hammer for the nimbler one-handed mace that used acoustic magic for the same armour-ignoring effect. His load capped out there, at ten weapons. These must’ve been more than sufficient for attracting the females, and the six remaining intelligences of his Pendant would be kept in reserve, maybe for miscellaneous travel tasks. On close inspection of a glowing trail running down his legs, one of these appeared to be mobilising his jog, the hero retiring from that burden as well, his body puppeteering itself away from tripping hazards.
The midnight jog next met a group of NPC merchants camping at the mouth of a cave. A bunch of reckless teenagers—immediately rejected as candidates—they told him they’d delayed joining some migration in order to sell more product, and this tardiness for reasons unexplained had left them trapped. They begged shelter from him at one of his estates across the river. He refused this, but he did offer an alternative location, where some of his guildmates would apparently let them hide in exchange for their horses. Although the teens would accept this deal, something about it must’ve been lopsided, because as they rode off they all wore doomed expressions. A young girl with them even broke down into tears, causing a baby in her arms to cry as well.
Their horses must’ve been worth a pretty coin.
Our hero, starting his retirement on a sick profit, continued on.
Suchi’s lone river, in which he’d once gone swimming, had shrivelled to a calf-deep trickle. As he reached it, his weapons floated out from him like the extending limbs of a daddy-long-legs spider, and they and he did a quick drop-flop-and-roll drill in the stream. This removed some but not all of the blood. He then jogged up the other bank, leaving the tutorial forest and entering the farmlands of his West Bank estate.
This region looked as if it had been abandoned several days ago. Crops left in the field unwatered had turned brittle and yellow, and the husks of desiccated fruit dangled from the orchards. Rats, vultures, and seagulls feasted on these in the open, the air filled with the obnoxious hissing and squawking of cross-species arguments. An acre patch of ash he ran through marked one field that’d gotten so dry as to combust.
The only other humans were a couple scattered teams from his guild in uniform. These were digging trenches and piling the unearthed dirt into dome-shaped constructions - most likely a cutting-edge agricultural project to remedy whatever disaster had befallen this season’s harvest. Those guildies he teleported past gave salute and wished him godspeed in his travels, saying if not explicitly then in gesture that he need no longer concern himself with any of these minor, sub-heroic quests. To them, he replied, also if not explicitly then in gesture, 'Ah, actually, nerds, I don't need to concern myself with the major, heroic quests either - I've retired and this next phase of my life is about the three luxury Fs of fashion, fitness, and frivolous conversation.'
Behind a greenhouse that reeked of putrefying berries, he reconnoitred with a squad of mobile scouts, half of which were Earthfriends assigned the somewhat degrading job of acting as pseudo-mounts, a point maybe or maybe not connected to the earlier trade for horses. This group generously gifted the retired hero an inventory of carby snacks and juice-filled bladders – perfect supplies for his journey.
They chatted idly for some minutes, although the contents of this conversation were unfortunately obscured by the use of telepathy. It can only be assumed, from the squad’s admiring nods and blushes, that he was gifting them back one of the many diamonds of wisdom gained in his now finished career.
‘Any one of you,’ he might’ve been lecturing, ‘could be the next hero! For heroism, in the humanistic view, is not so much a personal attribute as an inevitability dormant in the heart of every man, woman, child, and even some canines. It waits only for activation by the right stimulus or opportunity - such as the gap left by my retirement. Go forth, into all these duties I'm abandoning, and be heroes!"
His gaze during this uplifting speech had fallen upon one of the team in particular. They were a dashing, green-eyed youngster with high cheekbones, an aristocratic nose, and a tidily-groomed toothbrush moustache, a style worn by all the male members of the squad for a bonding ritual.
The old hero seemed to have spotted in this youngster a hidden quality, a potential recognised by nobody else except his hyper-genius self.
This saga’s successor, a youngster for a change, may just have been identified…