A gentlemanly pigeon purred on my shoulder, munching D*rito crumbs from an open bag. A french girl wore a red beret, a chique skirt and a white blouse that was at once too tight and too large. Fabrics, strings, and sewing implements sat prettily in their correct places around the mannequin bust that dominated her boudoir. It wore a snug vest of scales which ebbed between colors of blue and gray and green.
“What can I say about this, hm? Colors? Confusing, but as the main focus of an ensemble? Yes. Style? Xi-Age one hundred percent. What can I say? Alluring, but not flirty. This is perfect for turning the head of a Young Master and giving them an impression of feisty resistance. And this.”
A bucket of water was thrown on the vest.
“Waterproof!”
She pulled out an assault rifle and emptied a clip into it. They bounced off.
“Bulletproof!”
A tiny molotov cocktail was thrown on the vest and engulfed it in flames. Nozzle of a fire extinguisher drowned the mannequin in CO2 before it got out of hand.
The french girl wiped her sweat-damped hair back, while smiling at the camera.
“Fireproof! Want to make an impression on your local lord? Perhaps interested in joining a sect? Be sexy. Be trendy. Order Vest of Scintillant Scales for 1000 silver or equal trade from our sponsor: Scaled Serpents’ Scales Sect at Olympiades, 75013 Paris, Flat Flat Boringland.” She suppressed a french sob, then shoved the mannequin out of frame. “Now to this week’s project, yes? I have something magnifique for you everyone…”
In the window behind her spread a cozy Parisian street of tightly packed old buildings violated by additional stories of mythical china architecture. Green-blue snake banners hung from every other window. A titanic snake slept coiled around the Eiffel Tower.
A quick thumb movement switched the tab. Another video displayed a Swedish gamer droning off a lazy advertisement for Northwind Alliance’s Arctic Laborcamp recruitment center. Fourteen hour days seven days a week, for food and shelter privileges and a chance to oin the Northern Alliance outer sect. In another tab a cutesy owl-girl Vtube avatar gushed about how dope the Red Rising wage slavership program is, because they’d sponsored her with some hoot-hoot cultivation manuals.
“It’s the same everywhere. They switched from shilling for corps to shilling for the invaders,” said Maxman, showing me an endless deluge of influencers with Xianxia sponsors.
“Only in Eurasia, in Northwind Alliance’s domain. The Americas went full isolationism under the Hiu Dynasty. Africa, Australia, and Oceania are more of a wild west,” I replied, continuing to browse.
We sat atop the hedge of titanic trees surrounding Happyland. It was the only place with half a bar of reception. In our absence, the internet had become a demented paraplegic cousin of the manmade god of knowledge it’d once been. DuckDuckGo was the only search engine still alive and many links ended up in error 404. One third of anything digital ever created had been obliterated alongside the big data centers.
The gentlesir pigeon finished his doritos, tipped his hat, and departed politely towards new adventures.
Maxman’s shoulders slumped. He looked up from his cell, frowning at the horizon of Earthen ruins mingled with alien wilderness. “Ten years… How are we ever going to recover from this?”
I placed a hand on his shoulder. “Gloriously. It is a set-back, yes, but more temporary than dying to the lesser deities would have been.”
“I know, bruh. It’s just.” Maxman shook his head. “I need to hit the weights.”
“Need a spot?”
“Nah, leg day.”
“Nice. Enjoy it.”
Maxman descended into the canopy.
I scratched my freshly shaven stubble and braced myself as I continued reading a ‘citizen cultivation’ blog by a former Norwegian scientist. Laura’s old long-distance boyfriend had married a woman, gotten two kids, and eventually betrayed a once infamous ‘United Earth’ in favor of gaining protection from a local sect. News of resistance had since dwindled, and died out entirely two years ago, when the ‘traitorous’ Silent Feather was caught and imprisoned near an undersea city some sect built in the middle of the Atlantic.
Last confirmed sighting of Neckbeardman was of him dueling a sage realm cultivator inside a sinking nuclear submarine. Outcome of the duel, as well as my friend’s whereabouts, were unknown. With Kevin’s disappearance, even the meme factories mocking the cultivators had fallen silent.
Fires of the Apocalypse had burned and the coals had gone cold. People had begun to do as people do, striving to survive in a new normal somewhere between our golden age and cultivators’ world order. Under the rule of the cultivators, Earth had obtained a form of peace.
The vast majority praised this budding new age of cultivation as a deliverance from the issues of our old modern society, toiling under the illusion that anyone could earn power with hard work.
Without the support of the people, my path forward looked infinitely harder than before. I could not rely on Big Dick energy generation from the masses if they saw me as a selfish Sigma, rather than a benevolent Chad. I would doubtlessly face opposition and hatred on my path to reach the level of lesser deity cultivators, nevermind the climb to Celestial Emperor. Yet my conviction did not falter.
Even if I became Earth’s enemy number one, I would prevent my home from being warped by the Realm of Dao.
But that was all in the future. Right now, I had a Kevin to find. And before him, we needed to secure Townberg.
***
Later, after I’d returned to Happyland.
“Mr. Chadman, with all due respect, you need not coddle us as if we were children. Go. Find your friend. We’ll keep Happyland and Townberg safe in your absence.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The balding old man faced me, his arms crossed and his glare firm. Looking at the firm conviction of the others, this decision was a unanimous decision.
Their determination warmed my heart. “I appreciate your conviction, I do. But I swore to protect Happyland.”
“Until you completed your foundation, if I recall correctly, which I do,” noted Mr. Maxson. “Go play the role only you can play, and leave organizing the support to us.”
“This one promises.” Tu Tor spoke in a broken accent. “Make hidden valley from Happeeland. Uses two Dao artifacts. Uses one beast core. Uses formation. Towenbeerg and Happeeland make into hidden valley of hiding. Best protection. With Nelly and Laura much help.”
“A hidden valley?” It might be the only viable way for us to create a long-term base. As powerful as Chad protective formations were, not even the arrays I’d crafted with Armstrong could hold against lesser deity realm cultivators. There was only one problem.
I grimaced. “The Gigachad sect cannot hide.”
“They’re aware of it, bruh,” said Armstrong. “That’s why, if you don’t mind, I was planning on establishing our official gym a couple kilometers west of Townberg. Gigachads will act as the front of the hidden valley to handle interactions with the cultivators, while the hidden Happyland will handle refugees and rebellious organizing. And should the worst come to worst and the attention of divine cultivators turn on us, we’ll take the hit in its stead. Though, the decision is of course yours, Seventh Head.”
To communicate his unyielding commitment, Maxman went as far as to assume a version of [Unlimited Abworks].
I was awestruck. Never had I fathomed to possess allies with such competence and determination. Never had I dreamt to truly be among friends of such Gigachatitude. Leaving the organizational side and day-to-day security to them felt like shedding three angry Grogs off my shoulders.
“Thank you, everyone.”
***
Hours later, in the countryside around Townberg.
Nelly’s goodbye kiss from an hour ago still warmed my cheek as I followed on the remnants of a highway at a casual Chad-walking pace of 50km/h. Roots crept over the asphalt and dandelions bloomed in its cracks.
For just a breath, I paused to appreciate that this right here was the furthest I’d ever been from home (if you didn’t count dimensional travel, which I didn’t).
I followed the signs to Cityberg, Bergcity, and Bergberg all the way to the former border of my homeland. Nights I spent beneath trees. My hunger I sated with protein shakes assembled from the bounty of the forests, and my exercise requirements I covered with whatever workout trees and boulders allowed me.
My meandering journey through the roads of the lands formerly known as Europe had me battle border guards, bandits, Dao Cultists, and awakened creatures. I befriended a sentient rock named Chad Thunderock, a happy young couple managing a spiritual herb farm together with a host of awakened beasts, and had a Young Master swear loyalty to me after being impressed by my Chadness. I told them of the Gigachad sect near the remnants of Townberg and continued, without stopping, all the way to Porto De Lisboa. There I bargained passage aboard a deep-sea fishing vessel that pulled double duty as a smuggling vessel.
The voyage was thankfully uneventful, with only a couple run-ins with pirates, two sea monsters, and a treasure hunt through an abandoned cultivator Dao ship to break the mundanity of lazy days at sea.
Six days after my goodbye kiss, I descended the boarding plank and set my foot on the promised land of unregulated corporations, guns, and yeehaws. Specifically, I’d arrived in Houston Texas. Aside from the eight-hundred meter sword someone had struck through downtown, it looked like the American cities do in movies, except dirtier and older.
The air smelled of rotting sea, oil, and distant forest fires.
Sweltering midday sun made me equip my star-shaped Dao sunglasses. I flexed my body once, and the rather restrictive button-up I’d worn to disguise my muscular frame combusted. I bribed a Hiu Dynasty border officer with some of the loot I’d obtained while traveling, walked a block to the nearest hotel, and slid into a rusty old taxi filled with photos of places destroyed in the Apocalypse.
The driver was a small gray-haired latino gentleman. A nice man all in all, and though he was at first reluctant to drive me after hearing where I wanted to go, he couldn’t say no to a large helping of pirate treasure.
***
Two men stood at the entrance of the factory building turned clubhouse turned nondescript warehouse. This was in the part of the town where the building stood out between the newer buildings like a hobo in a dinner party. Pedestrians and cars likewise avoided it like one, giving the two men a wide berth.
Both men wore black suits, unfazed by the heat and humidity. Despite it being an atrocious code violation, Moore kept his collar unbuttoned and fanned his shirt. Though it made him grumble, James kept his trap shut. Fussing over protocol was what had earned him a transfer to Houston so he sure as hell wasn’t about to fuck it up all over again and get ported to…
“Come to think of it, where do they send guys who fuck up here?” James asked.
“Huh?” Moore shot James an annoyed glare like he’d been just woken from a nap by a slap on the head. “Where’d that come from?”
“Answer the question.”
“Figure they get sent to the Hole.”
“Hm. Harsh.”
Moore shrugged while blowing air under his collar. “That or the Office. You ask me, I’d pick the Hole. At least you don’t gotta wait for death too long there.”
James snorted at that. He was about to reply when a taxi pulled over and an impossible man stepped out onto the street.
A cheap ass tourist stetson sat on the man’s head. He wore cowboy boots and fresh jeans which struggled to contain his enormous thighs and manhood. Eight foot something, maybe nine, this star-glassed body-builder was easily in the top five biggest people James had ever seen, and that’s including the cultivators. Except, unlike with the massive cultivators, James didn’t feel a spark of Qi from this walking talking testosterone sculpture. Despite that, a primal instinct bubbling deep in his guts brought James’ hand to hover over the handle of his Ki-enchanted .45 Magnum.
He’d been through Hell and back with the gun. It’d gunned down eight cultivators above his realm, gotten him through two duels, and saved his ass during Red Demon February. It calmed his night terrors and gave him balls to face demons. The gun and him were one in spirit and Qi.
But now, before this widely grinning stranger without so much as a speck of Qi, James’ trusted partner felt less reassuring than a water gun and his fingers slower than overcooked noodles.
“Howdy there stranger,” James called out, ashamed to hear a warble of uncertainty in his voice. “You lost? This ain’t the tourist info.”
“Good day, getnlemen,” the man said with a distinct European accent that James could not quite place, though it gave the strong impression of a country with many cities that were all berg-somethings. “I am Chad Titanman, and I was hoping to report a case of tax evasion regarding pirate treasure.”
He turned his pants pockets upside down and dumped a good three hundred pounds of gold and silver on the street.
“And in this case, I am the tax evader.”
Sweat beaded down James’ brown. His heartbeat hiked up to the border of heart-attack. His entire being from soul to core to body screamed for him to roll over, close his eyes, pretend this never happened, and go home to eat ice cream. He could not stand up to this… this man-man.
Another part of James, one that had been trained with taste of blood on his tongue and sound of gunfire in his ears demanded lightning-quick action, despite him knowing deep down that any offensive action against this being would amount to signing his own death warrant. But so would inaction.
His sweaty palm gripped the Magnum. Shaking hands trained the gun at the muscular giant before him.
From the bottom of his lungs, James let out a squeaking scream. “This is the IRS! Drop your weapons and raise your hands. You’re under arrest for tax fraud. You have no rights and everything you say will be used against you.”
“Fantastic.” The man smiled, raising his tree-trunk like arms. “We can skip the fake court thingy and go to the part where I get sent straight to the Hole.”
Thirty years later, James would go on to tell his grandkids about how he arrested the Seventh head of the Gigachad sect, and inadvertently caused the destruction of the cultivator created monster cradle that had, before the Seventh’s arrival claimed the lives of over twenty thousand tax evaders.
