[Closed] Deciding the Short Story Prompt for October 2022

Below are the full prompts as the poll doesn't allow the full text. I'm going to run the poll for five days and in the case of ties the first option that got there wins. The short story will be finished by the end of the month and will be available to all patrons.

• "Freed" From the System - Most worlds have a problem where they are "integrated" into a system and that's that, this world doesn't have that problem- rather its been integrated for so long that almost no one is left who can function without their skills- most mages don't actually understand their magic, they just yell out the system listed spell names, most warriors have forgotten actual fighting skills for flashy system assisted combat maneuvers, most craftsmen follow system given recipes to the letter. . . or at least that's how it was until a few moments back, when it was "freed" from the tyranny of its system by a being beyond the gods- right now, their civilizations are collapsing as they are forced to re-learn how things function without all the help the system gives them.
• Flashy Fake Mage Duel - I have another go at flashy mage duel two mages at the arch mage level are friends but with another, "brilliant minds think alike," and when they need to battle for political reasons they make it look spectacular without much actual damage being done.
• Cultivation Pollution - So in Cultivation stories, there's a common theme in most of them that when a breakthrough is achieved, the body expels "Impurities" described as black sticky sludge with a horrid stench, and then, its simply washed away and never mentioned again. But hold on, that can't be healthy for the environment. Just how many cultivators have had breakthroughs, how many in the future? That's a lot of Impurity. So what if we have a late-stage cultivation story where the land is rather corrupted by Impurity, with old Immortals trying to prevent new cultivators from making things worse, and the younger generation rebelling against the 'powerful elites'.