Saturday morning comes, and they tried to get a table to eat a continental breakfast at the Bakhmut Hotel, alongside several teams. But to no avail, since they couldn't all eat at the same time. Some teams instead eat at nearby cafés and all that.

And, of course, they arrive at the same café as the Chinese, North Koreans and Syrians, who all eat what they couldn't eat in their respective home countries. This means no varenyky (dumplings) for the Chinese and the North Koreans, and both teams instead eat kholodets (meat jello) as well as deruny (potato pancakes). On the other hand, Syrians order an entire plate of varenyky once they are assured there is no pork in those. And chicken Kyiv, too.

While the Kansas players all order different meals, such as halushki (Ukrainian gnocchi) for Patricia, borscht (beet soup) for Kirill, holubsti (cabbage roll) for Bohdan, and so on, so forth... they dread the check-in procedures, and parking around the National Ukraine War Museum, a large building capable of housing dozens of military vehicles as well as other hardware. And smaller exhibits about the lives of both sides in the conflict, but obviously centered on Ukrainian civilians and military personnel. However, the Great Hall of the Museum would play host to the ChGK Worlds.

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At the ChGK Worlds, teams are seeded into 3 groups according to their MAK ratings, the top 20 teams are in group A for the first 2 games, the next 40 teams are in group B and the lowest 40 teams are in group C. Then the worst 4 teams from group A get relegated, and the best 4 teams from group B get promoted for the next 2 games, while the worst 8 from group B then go down to group C, with the best 8 from group C promoted to group B. Then the process is repeated after the next 2 games.

Each game at the ChGK Worlds is 15 questions long as opposed to 12 for most regular-season tournaments, so players face a total of 90 questions. Oh boy: winning here means we must play perfectly for all 6 games. And it won't be easy; here we have all the stars of the entire world. We might have faced some of these in tournaments such as the International League final in August, widely regarded as the "last chance" tournament for the ChGK Worlds, notwithstanding the Last Chance Marathon this year, but there's a chance factor at this level of competition, Patricia muses a few moments before the start of the first game. Try to imagine 6 znatoki (experts; it's a term often used to refer to ChGK players capable of playing internationally, znatok being its singular form) at my level or higher, with some variation in their knowledge bases; that's how some of the top teams would feel.

"Here's the deal, Patricia. Stop putting so much pressure on yourself! By now you know the US doesn't do very well at the ChGK Worlds!" Bohdan tells her.

"For months we have been trying to answer past questions from national championships, from past ChGK Worlds, as well as quiz bowl sets, as you requested" Sergei sighs.

"I was anointed the Savior of Kansas ChGK for a reason, our teammates said. We all worked so hard to even be here. I mustn't let you all down and make us come back to Kansas with a poor result!" Patricia warns her teammates, while her face turns red. "Here's our chance to do better than our predecessors!"

"Don't worry, they won't lynch us upon return" Vira tries to reassure Patricia, while looking at the seeding and seating assignments, which are on the central screen.

"Al-Azhar, Azovstal and Hwasong are all teams in group C with us. The Chinese start the tournament in group C, but Brain Art is in B"

"Patricia, why do you obsess so much about these specific teams?" Kirill asks his captain.

"Azovstal because they won their berth at the LCM, which the US hosted. Al-Azhar because of the ethnicity of one of the players with us at the LCM, Catria is a second-generation Syrian American. China, it's about how Xinhua reminds the world, when major intellectual games tournaments are staged, chess, ChGK, quiz bowl, and so on, of that American intellectual games and, with it, the entire American intellectual foundations are nothing without Chinese and Indians, and they do so at every opportunity. Our best bet to get the Chinese to shut up on that topic is to beat them at the ChGK Worlds, here and now!" Patricia shouts while her face turns red, and the TV crews are getting into position.

"I get it, the North Koreans are abetting the Chinese when it comes to politicizing ChGK on the world stage" Vira tries to respond to a Patricia that seems a little on edge about the political implications of the Worlds. "Just defeating North Korea and China won't be the end of the story"

"And then we will accomplish what Saturday Thirteen and the Quantum Computers did not!"

Saturday 13 was soundly defeated in Helsinki 2 years ago, where China won Worlds in overtime, the Quantum Computers were middle of the pack in St. Petersburg, and the Chinese finished in the top-10, Patricia runs down what exactly these two teams accomplished at Worlds while her team is getting seated prior to the send-off. They are lucky that none of their rants are caught on either VGTRK or Ukrinform's cameras, to say the least.

Once the first question is asked, everyone in the room listens intently to the TD, and their minds leap into action.

"It does not require any kind of gas or fluids to form, but one can pop in the wake of natural disasters. What is it?" Vira rephrases the first question.

"Under what conditions would the answer pop in the wake of natural disasters?" Kirill asks the players.

"If that's what I'm thinking of, I'd say that the natural disaster caused a lot of casualties but comparatively limited material damage. Like an epidemic" Patricia answers the preliminary question.

"Ah yes, the Chinese real estate bubble. COVID didn't cause it to pop on its own, since the casualties aren't nearly as high as you would imply. COVID, however, caused cash flows to dry up for all parties involved" Bohdan then tells the team about one such example.

"And the corresponding disasters don't necessarily require airborne communicable diseases or anything, no more than an asset bubble of any class could require gases or fluids to form or burst" Sergei then finishes validating against the other fact of the question.

I don't like how the question is worded, since healthcare management, and even more so insurance and disaster management, doesn't generally consider disasters as natural. That, even though the hazards causing the disasters to occur are natural. But I'll play along with the wording since I don't think there are very many actuaries or employees of whatever the Russian or Ukrainian equivalents of the FEMA are among the writers of the Worlds questions, Patricia ruminates while she feels like this question could prove a nut in the context of the Worlds.

But because Patricia takes on the pressure, so her teammates don't have to, here it's her teammates that seem to be playing better, crushing teams from countries such as Switzerland in group C for the first 2 games. At the end of the first 2 games, they finish second, with 25 points out of a possible 30. Second to the Chinese.

Al-Azhar is trailing Kansas by one point and advances, but Hwasong does not advance, having scored only 17 points in the first 2 games and therefore not in the top 8. However, this is nothing compared to the Swiss, who are dead last and scored a whopping 5 points total. After the second game ends:

"I heard you talk about Azovstal at the LCM, so I should ask whose idea was it anyway for someone to host an online strictly synchronous marathon?" an Azovstal player asks Patricia in an Ukrainian accent. "I was feeling targeted!"

"Why did you feel targeted when I slipped a mention of Azovstal? Also I am aware that ChGK marathons aren't very common in certain countries, such as the US, Syria..." Patricia answers the question of the Azovstal player.

"You are implying that we barely qualified for the ChGK Worlds. It's not that we don't deserve it, we totally do and we defeated higher-ranked teams to do so" the Azovstal player seems to speak in a more haughty tone to her.

"I know, Brain Art, right? As for whose idea it was to run a strictly synchronous online marathon, it was my coworker's idea, who believed turning it into a fundraiser was necessary to further her own career"

Ainslee was the LCM's TD of record. I even paid for her IAMG membership for God's sake! I was the one responsible for the gameplay aspect behind the scenes, without the IAMG suspecting anything! Patricia muses while realizing that the Chinese victory in Helsinki was the quintessential Cinderella run at the ChGK Worlds.

"The Last Chance Marathon was the most grueling tournament of my life!" a Syrian player tells her, having overheard the Azovstal player bring up that tournament.

"I guess you entered the LCM because marathons were novel to you... and to me, too. Same went of the Chinese, of the North Koreans, and so on, and the questions are way harder here than at the LCM" Patricia remarks about her experience of both tournaments.

I wonder what happened to Catria... she was Kansas' younger player of color. She seemed a little new to the game, but she holds some promise of international-level play going forward, the Syrian captain muses, believing, for some reason, Catria to be the best ChGK player of Arabic ancestry outside of the Middle East.

"Is there a reason why Catria isn't playing here at Worlds with you?" the Syrian captain asks Patricia in an Arabic accent, making her a little uncomfortable.

"The problem is that, when we submitted our bid roster, she had no real experience of the game, and, on top of that, college interfered with the Worlds. She believed the Worlds not to be worth missing a week of class for it" Patricia shakes as if she let her nervousness loose in front of that guy.

The LCM is where Catria proved herself as a ChGK player, more so than at the Achievement Junkie Invitational, a parasitic thought surfaces and she quickly let go of it.

Meanwhile, the Chinese and North Korean players are the centers of attention among the players and tournament staff because they stand out like sore thumbs. But not the Syrians for some reason.

For the next two games, the pressure to finish in the top-4 is real, and the competition gets stiffer to even get to the top-4 in group B. Yet, at the end of game #4... they find themselves in a three-way tie for fourth place, with 25 points as well.

"Are you happy now?" Yakiv asks Bohdan. "We know we are going to finish in the top twenty-two teams"

"Some teams in the top bracket have been saving their energy for the last four games, playing only to avoid bottoming out. This is where things get serious" Bohdan answers to Yakiv.

"Because of this fact, we must play the games of our lives going into the final two games! Then and only then we can leave Bakhmut with no regrets!" Patricia hurls warnings at her teammates.

They find out that China is advancing, since China is one of the other 2 teams tied for fourth place in group B as of the end of the fourth game, but Syria isn't. They eat dinner elsewhere in the city, hoping to fill up their energy reserves for the last 2 games, knowing their dreaded nemeses, China, is in their pool.

Late in game #6, a question about a variety of subject areas is asked and seems to evoke a wide variety of stuff in the players.

"What do cybersecurity, deruny and cannabis have in common?" Kirill rephrases the question in English but fails to see the connection between these three items.

"My impression being that the cybersecurity clue is key to taking this question" Yakiv points out.

Oof... Imélie would undoubtedly know more about the technical aspects of cybersecurity than I myself do. And all of us put together most likely. After all, she works in IT, Patricia has flashbacks of her quiz bowl teammate during the early days of college. However, she is reminded in equal vivacity of other patrons ordering deruny this morning. And of deruny being very similar to a dish she regularly air-fried for breakfast back home.

"Thus far, deruny feel very similar to hash browns, and are prepared similarly" Bohdan adds to this cacophony.

"Hashish, or hash for short, is a more concentrated form of cannabis, but my brother is right, what is it about hash that is somehow used in cybersecurity?" Vira asks her teammates, whose knowledge of cybersecurity is very shallow.

"Cybersecurity is a vast field that even I don't know much about. However, as far as I can tell, securing data is often about encryption. In fact, some ransomwares encrypt information" Patricia finally seems to offer a lead that could finally make sure that hash, their tentative answer, is their final one.

"Where would you fit hash into encryption?" Sergei asks the team, with about fifteen seconds to go.

With the clock ticking on the question, they feel the pressure bearing down on them to make sure they realize what exactly in cybersecurity involves hash. Or to think of alternative answers. Patricia's mind goes into overdrive, trying to come up with as many ideas as is feasible. She does so while remaining mindful of her mind's ability to process them or else her nerves could end up "jammed" because of her mental bottleneck.

"Could danger be viable instead of hash?" Kirill asks nervous teammates.

"No, I don't think the writers intended deruny to be thought of as a danger" Patricia continues her train of thought, as the 5-second signal rings. "Hash functions are used in encryption algorithms!"

Why is it that I didn't think of the role of hash functions in encryption algorithms earlier? Hash functions can turn any string of data into, say, a 512-bit hash code if the data is encrypted in 512 bits, Patricia reflects on what hash functions do, while Kirill writes down hash on the card and then hands said card over to the game committee.

Once the scoreboard is updated to reflect the answers to the question... they start sobbing even though the final game is not yet over.

"The bad news is, we are now mathematically eliminated. The good news is, we're still ahead of the Chinese" Vira then sighs.

"This is not over. We are not about to waste several years of sacrifices just because we lost at Worlds! We came too far to give up now!" Bohdan warns his teammates, with a handful of questions left to the tournament.

"Just finish strong and Xinhua will take care of itself. After all, the world is watching!"

"Sorry if I'm asking a stupid question but what exactly is Xinhua?" Kirill asks them.

"The Chinese national press agency" Sergei answers them.

They're supposed to be the best in the world. While finishing among the top-22 is already a lot, hopefully I can commit more to my recovery upon returning home. ChGK Worlds stalled the whole recovery process from my achievement addiction, Patricia reflects on the implications of this tournament's results, as well as the journey to the ChGK Worlds. Which her team finishes in 11th place. Before they leave Bakhmut behind... or more specifically the National Ukraine War Museum, they get together, preparing for the awards ceremony:

"We made so many sacrifices just to play, and place eleventh, at Worlds. I am not sure if they are worth it for future seasons. We can always play at Nationals in future years, because I don't expect the other Kansas teams to take the game seriously, or at least not as seriously as we did, but I wonder how you feel about competing at ChGK Worlds" Patricia asks her teammates about the entire experience. "I am paying the price for my achievement addiction right here in Bakhmut"

"Are you giving up on ChGK?" Bohdan asks her.

"You made us better znatoki, there's no denying that" Yakiv comments.

"What do I have to show for it as a znatok? I always feel more and more burdens and it feels overbearing at times. So much that I feel powerless..." Patricia cries again. "I could have been in a much more advanced stage of recovery by now, were it not of you guys who kept insisting that we could even play here!"

What joy do defeating all 4 teams on our watchlist bring me? China, North Korea and Syria finished in 13th, 74th and 45th respectively. We did beat the Chinese, but Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine all have at least one team each ahead of us. And no, it's not Azovstal; they finished 51st, Patricia's darker thoughts lead her to cry. Then again, she is not alone in crying: so many defeated players not placing as high as they have hoped did the same.

"Of course not, I'm not giving up on ChGK!" Patricia belatedly answers her teammate when she puts herself back together.

The awards ceremony is about to begin, with the teams ranked 4 through 6 starting the ceremony. Loosely translated from Russian:

"In sixth place, from Azerbaijan, Jazz! In fifth place, from Uzbekistan, Mystery! In fourth place, from Belarus, Chronically Sane United! Please stand to be recognized!" the tournament director harangues the crowd and the media present. "The bronze medalists, from Russia, Reaction Mechanism! The silver medalists, from Russia, Ksep! And the 2042 world champions of ChGK are... from Ukraine, Senes!"

The local crowd gives a standing ovation, since Ukraine wins the ChGK Worlds on its home turf. A repeat of 2023 in Bakhmut but under vastly different circumstances.

The head of the appeals committee hands the TD an envelope containing the results of the vote on the location of next year's ChGK Worlds:

"By a vote of three hundred forty-six to one hundred ninety, the 2043 ChGK Worlds will be held in Damascus!" The TD announces in front of the cameras, first in English and then in Russian.