[Certainly! What kind of adversary would you prefer, Root user?] replied Pen Pen flapping his happy wings, moving like a flash in the direction of his old fashioned computer, already ready to show off his skills as a good little boy. Roberto remained staring at that evolution of events without adding anything else, even though he already had one or two ideas in his mind about what would have been a perfect subject for the test.

His top choice at the moment, at least as far as he was concerned, could be none other than Mario Rossi. Not only would his massive physique be a worthy road test, but it would also test Skill's ability to reproduce the characteristics of real people. No small advantage, considering that in that case he would always be able to know his chances of winning in the event of a real-world confrontation.

However, observing from behind that strange penguin all agitated, happy and, perhaps, a little impatient; as it swayed back and forth from its office chair for some reason froze him. It was impossible for him to tell at the moment if that little animal was a real person or just a figment of his imagination, after all, no one knew what the limits of so-called Personal Skills were.

In any case, whatever the answer was, the way he moved, perhaps spoke, and behaved made the big boy feel a touch of envy. Even as he thought about it carefully, he could hardly remember a time in his life when he too had behaved in that simple, playful way.It had probably happened. Because, at the end of the day, he had come up with some problems but that didn't mean that when he was little he hadn't lived as a mostly normal child.

Therefore, almost with a desire to want him to participate I dare to say, he said, "Well, I don't know. Try to find me out an opponent, I'm curious to know what choice you'll make," after having approached Pen Pen and patting, with an unkind hand, the colored crest on top of his head.

[Huh?] The penguin replied confused, momentarily stopping moving and turning his neck to face his master without moving his 'hands' from above the keyboard. [What do you mean, Root user? Should I decide?] He then continued even more hesitantly, continuously moving his gaze around as if he couldn't really decide where to look.

Roberto chuckled, realizing this only later. He himself was surprised, as he was used to having to force his reactions or expressions. In that instant he didn't need to, a rather welcome change if he had to be honest. Amused by it, he abandoned his last doubts about the usefulness of his latest idea, completely ignoring the fact that it could become a complete waste of time.

"Come on, I already told you I don't have any ideas right now. You're my assistant, right? Isn't it your job to think of details when I don't have ideas?" He then resumed saying as he withdrew his hand, looking at Pen Pen with much more care than he would usually greet people with.

[I... I...] The penguin, poor soul, needed a few moments to gather his courage and put himself forward, but eventually he tapped his right wing on his soft and furry belly and then exclaimed with acceptable conviction: [Root user's request has been accepted! Please wait just a few seconds!]

Charged and ready for work, he then turned fully in the direction of his cathode ray tube screen. The tips of his wings began to beat fiercely against the loud, high keys of the keyboard, causing a myriad of windows, charts, and terminals to appear and disappear. A good minute later he finally seemed to have finished his quest, promptly announcing: [The most suitable opponent for the Root user has been identified as 'Karateka'. Fighting barehanded will reduce the time required for compilation by not having to process any weapons, and the estimated strength of the opponent will still remain very high. Proceed with the analysis, user Root?]

"A Karateka? I think that's fine but I don't know anything about Karate. How can you develop something that is not part of my knowledge or memories? I'm curious." Replied Roberto with some hesitancy, not expecting to have so much freedom of choice.

[Corrected.] Pen Pen 'smiled', opening his beak in a sort of grimace, resuming immediately afterwards by saying, [The Root user does not possess in-depth knowledge of any martial art, however it is possible to retrieve most of the information that the Root user has stored during his lifetime in relation to the topic. All that information will then be processed by the system and through a very large number of simulations will be evaluated as true or incorrect. Any other deficiency will then be mitigated in the compilation phase following the principles of logic and physics].

For the boy, the explanation was quite fascinating. It was, in essence, like having a complex program developed to reproduce part of the world, while keeping the principles of physics theoretically intact. It was a task that not even a super computer could perform without getting tired; not bad at all. Therefore, Roberto raised his big thumb and exclaimed: "Cool. Then give it a try."

[Request received. Root user please wait... Preparations in progress... Preparations completed. Requirements analysis completed. Dependencies obtained and analyzed. Does the Root user wish to proceed with the compilation of the source code? The current estimated time is four hours and fifty-two seconds].

The penguin resumed talking as he went on pressing keys, finding on the other side of the barricade a now less fully satisfied Roberto who said to him as he put a hand in his hair, "Damn. Well, I guess it's more complicated than a knife. Go ahead, in the meantime I'll do a little warm-up and shooting practice. Ah, before you start, could you prepare a target? Nothing complex, I just need a circle with a radius of... let's say twenty centimeters."

[Certainly, user Root... Analysis completed. Dependencies obtained and analyzed. Compilation in progress. Compilation completed in twenty-two seconds. User Root has obtained the 'Simple Target' program]

"Thank you dear and good work." Said Roberto last, ending the chat. The penguin immediately after talking to him had already put his head down on his next task and it would take him at least five clean hours to get to the end.

"Oh, well." He mumbled after moving far enough away not to risk causing any bother, adding shortly after as he made the 'Simple Target' appear with a wave of his hand, "I usually sleep for more than eight hours, but this time I doubt I'll even make it to a full six hours. I've been on first watch, so they should wake me up last but I'll probably just barely make it in time to try this 'Karateka' out for myself even putting that into account. Still, for the first day I think I didn't do too bad."

The idea of testing himself against someone else without having the slightest concern, mainly legal and hospital related, greatly increased his expectations as the minutes and, later, even hours passed. He had been training with knives for quite some time now, but still didn't feel the need to stop.

His Personal Skill was indeed impressive, probably much more so than Alex's [Quick Recovery]. Obviously it wasn't a last minute life saver, unfortunately for him, but as long as he was within the Imaginary World he would be able to control every aspect of that virtual space. Tiredness, fatigue and pain was perfectly emulated and indistinguishable from being awake. However, and to learn how to control this aspect Roberto took almost three full hours, a single thought would have been enough to 'reset' those variables and get back to full strength in no time.

Said simply, even if in the real world he wouldn't have had any tangible immediate advantage, he couldn't have asked for a better place in which to train in good or bad what he wanted. An undeniable advantage; tiring for both body and mind let's be clear, but undeniably useful.

"Oh... Well, I may not be a sniper, but at least I'm already better than when I started," the boy commented, out of breath, while reflecting on his situation, clearly feeling a multitude of droplets of sweat running down from the top of his forehead. Even rubbing with his hand didn't produce great results, only managing to dampen his fingers with an oily grease as soon as he ran them through his hair.

"This is one of the reasons I've always been a lazy slob. Sweating like this is ridiculous..." He mumbled then as, with a snap of his fingers, had already made sure that he was perfectly clean and smelling good again. Even the hint of stinging pain that had begun to lock his shoulder again or the strain that had made his legs tremble vanished without a trace, making him genuinely wish he possessed a similar ability in reality as well.

One of the reasons that had always kept him away from the gym was his body's tendency to sweat more than it should and make him feel with interest all the fatigue he'd put himself through during a workout after a couple of days of absolute tranquility. Nothing that a good soap or a proper workout regimen couldn't have fixed, but he'd always been too lazy to make a serious commitment.

Now, however, he had a pretty damn good motivation, so working out no longer seemed like a bad beast to him.Always cursed, of course, but neither too beastly nor too bad. Just bitchy. That's it, bitch might be the perfect term to describe her.

[User Root! User Root!] While he was wasting his time though, dear Pen Pen called out to him loudly to get his attention, leading him to shift his gaze in his direction. [The compilation is finished Root user! The program 'Karateka' is ready to be used. Do you wish to rename it?] The little animal asked him afterwards, raising one of its furry wings upwards.

"Oh... Finished already?" Roberto chuckled, not expecting to be done to spend five hours throwing a mixture of bullshit and knives without even realizing it. If, however, the compilation was over, it also meant that his time was itself was running out. Over the course of the next hour, or even the next thirty minutes, his companions might wake him up at any time. So if he wanted a practical test, he had to hurry.

"No, that's not necessary! You did a good job Pen Pen!" He then said back, imitating for fun the high and agitated tone of voice of his assistant who, by the way, once he heard the compliment began to spin around in his chair in a way that defied the laws of gravity. What a cute little animal.

"Good." He barely sighed, all the while trying to regulate his breathing to prepare himself as best he could. Inside his head, he called up the newly created 'Karateka' program and, again from a cloud of light, a human figure appeared not far from him, dressed in a generic white kimono without the slightest decoration. In fact, it almost looked like a dead man's shroud, so simple was it, but that was another matter.

The man's body was well developed, to the point of immediately putting Roberto on alert. The playful expression he had enjoyed keeping on his face vanished like snow in the sun, leaving in its place only a not very expressive facade adorned by a fixed and difficult to read gaze. Again, during his life the boy had never formally trained for a combat sport or martial art, but his instincts as a human being had been more than enough to communicate to him the danger of the individual that had just appeared.

Everything about his physique was intimidating in one way or another. With, perhaps, the exception of his height, which remained average. However, the thickness of his neck, the width of his shoulders, the visible musculature of his arms and the knuckles of his hands alone told a different story. Clearly, even to the untrained eye, such a level of athleticism stood out enough to suggest he had nothing to do with it; or at least amply suggested not to piss him off unless you wanted a trip to the hospital.

Another detail that came overbearingly to the eye was the fact that he was totally faceless, in a manner very similar to what a clothing store mannequin might have looked like. That was probably due to the limitations of the compiler and Roberto didn't pay much attention to it, but for some reason it still helped make things worse.

"Oh, well," he puffed, blinking a couple of times. "I asked for it, didn't I? Might as well see how it turns out. I should be safe here anyway... In theory at least." He continued to then blather in a flat tone as he hopped in place and moved his arms back and forth to warm up.

"Ho! Ho! Ho! Yeah come on, I haven't gotten too bad," He commented after trying to throw a couple of punches in the air, testing first his left and then his right. Both punches obviously lacked technique and contained dozens of mistakes, starting from the posture to the point where the knuckles would probably impact against the opponent's flesh, but it would not have been a good idea to underestimate the damage a beginner can do.

In fact, several years earlier, when he still had some hope in humanity left in his veins, with those same inefficient and inaccurate punches he had sent a dickhead who had been messing around in a club to the emergency room, only to end up with a more serious prognosis himself. There was also a subtle irony in the fact that on one of the very few occasions he'd forced himself to go clubbing he'd ended up in a half-baked brawl, but that was how life went.

"Great, we can go now."

Determined and hopeful, he then set off forward, hurling himself in a straight line towards his opponent. His sprint had been amateurish just as his punches had been just before, but still more than enough to make him accelerate and, with a slight twist of his upper body, put him in position to strike. The Karateka, however, did not assume any guard position and instead waited for his arrival keeping his legs apart and his arms along his sides, not giving the slightest sign of aggression, as if he had not even seen him.

Noticing this, Roberto tried to take advantage of it by launching himself even further forward ready to use a left jab as soon as he came within range. All this happened in just two or three seconds, so it was safe to say that at the moment the side with the advantage had to be him. His body was already at speed and his fists in place, loaded with the same momentum that would make them a pretty dangerous weapon. In addition, apart from some very rare case, it would have been impossible for human reflexes to dodge a punch already started and accelerating, especially if one didn't even have his guard up to save his life.

But what happened another second later subverted all that beautiful, colorful reasoning. Not even Roberto could say exactly what hit him. In fact, it would be better to say that he didn't even realize he was dead; a bit as if the lights had suddenly gone out without warning.

However, going beyond what the boy was able to understand and going back a bit; before the impact the Karateka actually avoided moving almost completely. His body was still relaxed despite the danger, a factor that helps explain the explosiveness behind his subsequent actions. In fact, moving to the side, barely dodging Roberto's punch, he almost seemed to go through the boy's arm; using the absolute necessary and nothing more.

Then, finding himself in a favorable position, he moved his right fist forward with speed and violence, tightening it only a fraction of a second before it went to impact against the lower part of Roberto's face. Legs, hips and arms moved one after the other in perfect order, triggering the limb as if it had been a spring under tension. It goes without saying then that combining the force of the martial artist's fist with the motion coming in the opposite direction, his opponent's neck could not take that kind of damage and broke almost immediately with a very unpleasant sound.

Basically an instant death.

"Ho! What the fuck!?" Roberto screamed as soon as he regained his senses, after the system recognized his status as 'unrecoverable' and forcibly reset his instance, combining deep confusion with astonishment and a hint of disappointment.

Sitting on his ass on the floor, he could do nothing but sit still and stare at the Karateka once again in his relaxed position. There was no doubt about it, that had been a total beating and luckily it had happened in that dream world where he could not really die... "Oh, well... Otherwise it would have been a problem," he then took the piss himself when he too reached that realization.

So much for a practice test, that fucking penguin had just created a monster.

"Pen Pen!" He then called out in a raised voice to his dear assistant, turning his head in search of him. "Are there any settings I can change? Like how strong to make him or make it so I can have him train me?" He continued to say, trying to see the glass half full, managing to push aside his own voice of reason.

[Certainly! There are different ways-] The penguin, poor thing, answered as fast as a thunderbolt, but his voice quickly became a distant and inaudible noise. The very world around Roberto began to fall apart, and though momentarily shitting in his pants at first, he quickly realized what was happening.

"Ah... I guess time is up, too bad."