Artic blitz

Hui gritted her teeth in frustration as she pulled out her WWCF card. "I hereby proclaim that you have beaten me fairly, and legally, and as such, you earn the right to rematch me, my badge for besting me, and your choice of either 100 points or your country's cash equivalent of 100 euros. Which shall you choose?"

Okisato decided to go with the cash, allowing him to have more war-funds to take down the SPCMs and Xiao Lin. As soon as he got his spoils, he immediately challenged the girl with short hair and multi-colored highlights to an atomic chess match.

"Sure, I think I familiarized myself with this game. Name's Tao Xun," the girl smirked.

Okisato nodded and completed the payment. However, unlike last time, he was now playing as black.

"Let's see how well you do against me," Tao smirked as she moved her knight to f3.

Okisato responded by moving his pawn to f6.

"The arctic defense? Well, I suppose here it is actually a good move since it keeps my knight from advancing," Tao shrugged as she moved her knight to a3.

Okisato went quiet and moved his knight to h6, prompting Tao to advance her knight to b5.

"And now, I win," Okisato snickered as he moved his knight to g4.

"Um, no you don't bye bye, checkmate," Tao sneered as she captured the pawn at c7 with her knight, destroying said knight, Okisato's knight, Okisato's bishop, and Okisato's queen. "HUH!? WHY IS YOUR KING STILL ALIVE!?"

"Cuz you didn't capture the piece adjacent to it, that's why."

"But if I had checked..."

"You would have lost, since you can ignore checks if you can kill the enemy king. Well, guess you at least know the rules, but that doesn't mean you're any good at this. Checkmate, ba-ka," Okisato snickered as he captured the pawn at f2 with his knight, destroying said knight, Tao's knight, Tao's bishop, and Tao's king.

In just under 3 minutes, he had beaten Tao. Tao seemed to take her loss better than Hui though and smiled before pulling up her WWCF card.  "Not sure why the maestro's so obsessed with this money format, but I guess if it allows for fun like this, it's not so bad. Maybe I'll even make my regular challenge atomic chess," she mused as she warded Okisato his spoils of victory.

Once he received all his spoils, Okisato checked his phone. 12 minutes had elapsed since he arrived in China, and he still had 5 SPCMs to beat before taking on Xiao Lin herself. "If that bastard can teleport back to London, I'm screwed. I should have actually made it so he couldn't leave, but it's possible he might've found a way to get out of that. That bastard's really a troublesome enigma," he thought as he contemplated his next move.

"Oh, and you can't challenge us all to same variant due to the rules. Sorry, but there's only a limit of two challenges per variant," Bai sneered.

"My, that certainly was a quick update to the policy," an effeminate young man with long hair chuckled.

"I'm Master Xiao Lin's right hand. She told me to stop this guy from blitzing through the place, and that's what I'm doing."

This new rule complicated things. Now if he wanted to get back in time before Red Reaper, Okisato would need to challenge 3 of the remaining SPCMs to a 4-player chess variant. The problem though was that a 4-way chess match could take a long time to play, not to mention it would likely turn into a 3v1, which would make winning much harder for Okisato.

"Just to confirm, if I choose to challenge 3 of you to a free-for-all 4-player variant, you'll all treat the match like a proper free-for-all and not gang up on me, right?"

Bai scowled before a malicious smirk appeared on his face. "We all have our wills. And in 4-way chess, I'm afraid anything goes. Though I suppose giveaway is more strategy based."

Giveaway chess was a chess variant where the goal was to give away all your pieces first. It could be played in either the standard 2-player format or 4-player format. However, a key rule of the game was that capturing pieces was compulsory.  If a piece could be captured, it HAD to be captured. While it would give Okisato a better fighting chance in a potential 3v1, the game would likely take a long time to play, and being short on time, he could not afford to waste time on such a game.

"You said all chess variants were good, yes? Then how about Modern Chaturaji?" Okisato asked.

Everyone stared in silence for a bit, before Bai shrugged and said it was allowed. Okisato nodded and decided to challenge Bai, the effeminate man, Fen Huang, and the woman in the white china dress, Jia Long.

"So we are to compete in Chaturaji. Very well, once we confirm the payment, we'll crush you, little boy," Jia sneered as she fanned herself.

"Looks like you're getting left out, Xiu," Fen nodded as he glanced at a girl with curly pink hair clad in a red tank-top, black dress, and white sneakers.

Xiu Mei-mo, the girl with the pink hair, merely smiled as she gazed at Okisato. "Oh that's alright. It just means I have loads of time to pamper myself up. Now, I wonder what that guy's kinks are," she maliciously thought.

The full game:

White: SPCM Tao Xun (2096) Black: Okisato Tanabe (2575)

1. Nf3 f6 

2. Na3 Nh6 

3. Nb5 Ng4 

4. Nxc7 Nxf2#