My emotional high and bout of extreme narcissism came to a quick end once reality came crashing back. All of my newfound overconfidence couldn't prevent me from getting sick once I remembered the picture of the mutilated, headless corpse. A corpse I "made".

It had gotten late while I trained and I was thoroughly tired out. Despite that, I couldn't fall asleep. Whenever I closed my eyes and my mind wandered off, I would see the woman's body in front of my mind's eye. That would make me sick and scared, making it only harder to fall asleep.

Only long after midnight, and a probably unhealthy amount of sleeping pills, I finally drift off.

GENERATE AVATAR ACTIVATE AVATAR

I take quickly account of the content of my Pocket dimension, confirming that everything was where I last left it. I quickly take out my small shield and spear, since my larger shield doesn't fit through the portal of my Pocket dimension.

I take a deep breath to calm myself down once I feel a wave of unnatural aggression washing over me. I hadn't felt this in my second fight, maybe because it hadn't been necessary, but I can clearly feel how it was just enough that I would be able to kill again. Actually, it is a scary thought that those self-proclaimed gods can do this to me. What if they did this outside my dreams? If they made me attack random people? My family?

In another supernatural wave of anger, my newly growing doubts and hesitations are suppressed. Now isn't the time for this either way.

I take another deep breath and take a look around.

As I theorized, the arena had become more complicated. Several large geometrical forms, up to thrice my body height, had been placed all over the arena, and a large number of smaller obstacles has been put on top and in between, and for the first time, I can't see the bottom of the outside wall.

Honestly, I'm a bit stuck in this situation. Where the first map had lead to a direct confrontation, and the second was still relatively simple, this third one is just complex enough to allow for actual tactics while also being too abstract from any natural terrain that I have no idea how to approach this. It isn't like I can just run around like in an ego-shooter and rely on the hit-indicator to go off if my enemy finds me first.

I have to assume that any enemy can kill me from a distance in one hit. Any enemy is a sniper, and for all, I know there is more than one of them. Also, I have to get close up to them.

I quickly hide between two objects. I should try to stay out of sight, for now, to prevent my enemy from sniping me. But I can't stay here and wait. I am clearly at a disadvantage at a distance, so it is I who has to find the enemy first, and that means I have to move around.

As I stand up, I hear my spear clanking against an object. Only now do I realize that the spear is much too unwieldy to sneak around with. I quickly put it away and leave my right hand free. Having a weapon directly on hand would be faster and easier to respond with, but it's still inconvenient to move around with.

Like my last fight, I close my eyes and try to concentrate on the sound, only to realize that there is a strange hum in the background, making it much harder to hear anything.

I quickly open my eyes back up since I can't risk anyone sneaking up on me, and start moving. I try my best to stay low to the ground and move from cover to cover.

I have been shooting guns for years, but sadly that doesn't mean I know how to move in a gunfight. It would probably help a lot right about now, while it may seem clever to me, from an outside perspective I probably look like an idiot.

For the last ten minutes, I have been moving from cover to cover, always going in roughly the same direction. Though, until now, I haven't seen a single hair of my opponent.

Thinking that I may have just moved in the wrong direction, I turn around and start making way at a roughly fifty-degree angle to the left of where I came from.

Just as I leave my cover, I suddenly see to my right a shadow moving in my peripheral vision.

Not wasting a single second, I jump and roll forward. Standing up from the roll in a single fluid motion, I quickly turn back around, just in time to see the fat boy standing back up from the ground.

He walks over to one of the obstacles and crouches down like an Olympic sprinter, one foot braced against the object. In his hands, he holds two knives in reverse-grip.

"You won't be able to win against me, the master of speed! Give up now and I will kill you painlessly!", the boy gives an edgy speech.

"Oh? We are allowed to talk now? That's interesting.", I mumble to myself.

Now that I think about it, it had been a bit eerie how no one had said a single word in my first two fights. Maybe it was just accidental, maybe it was something like the compulsion they use to make us fight. Though I don't really care right now.

"What master of speed?", I ask loudly.

The boy seems like the kind of person who likes to brag about their abilities, so if I am lucky, he just tells me what his ability is.

"Of course I mean that I have sixty points in speed! You slowpoke won't be able to catch up with me! You will die without knowing what hit you!"

Okay, this boy is just an idiot. As far as I could tell, the speed Stat only increases the muscle's explosive strength. That actually means he is going to be very dangerous in close quarters, as his punches would be devastating, but the boy seems to think he is now like one of those speedster superheroes.

He is certainly going to be able to accelerate fast and to very high speeds. But how does the saying go? Inertia is a bitch? Well, close enough. Without the help of a Skill, he is going to have a very hard time controlling his trajectory. And if he isn't an Oscar-worthy actor, I don't think he has a Skill like that.

Before I can consider his possible Skills any more, the boy starts his mad dash at me. He wasn't more than twenty meters away from me when he started, but I don't even have a second to jump to the side to avoid him.

While I still stand up, the boy has braced himself already for the next sprint.

"Well? Are you ready to give up yet?"

He said he has sixty points in speed? Then the question is if he has won one, or two fights. If he only won once, he can have a maximum of fourteen points of stamina, and I could just play matador until he is tired out. But if he won twice, he could also have up to fifty stamina. That would mean he can tire me out a lot easier and I would always be on the defensive.

Then, I notice something. He is aiming slightly to my right? Right, if he runs straight into me, at that speed he would actually be at the disadvantage!

Just as the boy starts running, I take a step to my left and pull out my sledgehammer. Swinging it right into the boy's path, I can see his eyes going wide in the last moment before the heavy metal weight hit him right in the chest, caving it in with the unmistakable sound of breaking bones.