I sat down, not bothering to do anything about those two old men, but the contestants looked at me with awe and fear, although I didn't care.
After a few moments, an unknown pressure encased the arena, and the middle-aged man's face crumpled, then some older man came out of the staff room and started talking, no one knew what they were talking about, but they knew that the middle-aged man feared the older man.
After they left the arena, everything went back to normal, or at least as usual as possible. Many were still surprised at my strength and brutality, and I quickly became a hot topic. Although I shouldn't have cared, I still unknowingly let out a smile.
Then I just patiently waited for my match again, but soon noticed that it would take at least an hour of waiting just so I could go to my next match, so I decided that instead of watching weaklings fight, I would grab something to eat.
Leaving the waiting room, I looked for the cafeteria but couldn't find one, so I asked a passerby in a hoodie.
"HEY, YOU! Hello, could you tell me where the cafeteria is? I tried looking for one but couldn't find it." As I asked, I noticed that the person in the hoodie shook, but I didn't care. After a few moments, The person just stood there not speaking so I repeated myself, and the person told me where it was. Surprisingly I couldn't identify what gender the person was. They seemed to be planning something, but I thought the person was just sneaking around to better look at the contestants, which I didn't really care about. (Big mistake)
Walking to the cafeteria, I noticed some people recognized me and tried to get autographs or pictures. Still, I merely asked them to leave me alone, which sounded intimidating, and most people left out of fear. However, there were two fans, or rather contestants, that still stayed. Instead of asking for a photo or something similar, they only warned me.
"Ivan and his father won't let this go lightly, you should be careful." That's all they said before leaving, and I just shook off the bad feeling.
"What are they gonna do?" I muttered to myself.
And as I checked the time and got instantly annoyed, noticing that I had only 10 minutes until my next match.
'I didn't get to eat.' It made me annoyed not to be able to eat some food.
Coming back to the waiting room, I got ready and left for the arena. Entering the arena, I get engulfed in cheers, and it seems that I have become a favorite competitor in this tournament. Before the match started, I talked with my competitor, who seemed both excited and scared, but I calmed him down, offering to not go too hard on him if he didn't surrender instantly and actually tried, to which he agreed.
We went to both sides of the arena and got ready. After the now hurt referee told us to start, he sprinted at me while I tried to stay in the distance.
As I got ready, I noticed that I couldn't predict his movement, so instead of trying to hit him, I would at least try to keep him immobile. So I started shooting where I didn't want him to go, and slowly I got him into an unfavorable position. (This dude just playing chess)
I sprinted at him as I reloaded and got my sword out. Before he could even take out his sword, I was already near him. So using my gun as support, I started slashing at him, but he played defensive and dodged most of my attacks except three, and then he managed to counterattack and make some distance. I shot him in the knee as I was recovering from his counter.
"HAHAHAHAA..." I started laughing as I didn't expect to get hurt fighting him. "You are good!" I complimented him as I was ready to finish him.
I shot him but he managed to block the first shot but not the second one. Then, unable to recover, he closed his eyes and muttered, "I surrender." I couldn't hear his surrender, but after the referee ordered me to stop, I realized that either he couldn't fight back or that he had surrendered.
"FUCK! JUST AS THIS WAS GETTING FUN!" I shouted clearly pissed that he surrendered.
[Enemy Beaten... Calculating Difficulty... Adding Bonuses... Gained 340 XP]
The audience was really excited about the match. Even some experts commentated and complimented me for doing such a good job. While it was not as brutal, it still was the most exciting match-up. Most people didn't expect me to win. My opponent Ray was a genius and was predicted to score very high in the tournament. I was super surprised to find out that my opponent was this humble. Not only that, but he seemed to want to become friends with me but was probably too scared because of my outburst.
Thinking about the fight in the waiting room, I began noticing my strange behavior, and after some time, I realized that I was not myself and was, in fact, another person.
After that, I finally noticed how unusual I acted, but before I could find out what was happening to me, I heard an explosion, it was near where my parents were so I went to make sure they were fine. As I went there, I began looking for my parents and asked around. Then, an officer told me that people broke in and had taken hostages, but soon I found my dad and sister, but they were crying, and then they told me the news.
"O-Oscar... Mom i-is a-a-a hostage..."I knew that I should be in shock but I wasn't, actually, I didn't really care.
***
In the mind space 2 minutes before the explosion.
We were chatting about the fight, 'Mr. Insanity's' mistakes and how to fix them.
"Why is he not as good as when I was training? I mean shouldn't he be better?" I asked, curious about why he didn't use the techniques that I learned while training here.
"You may have not noticed but he did, problem is that he just doesn't remember your training just yet. How should I explain this? Imagine a computer, you have a game opened and you decide to put a mod in it, but before you can play the mod you have to restart the game. Do you get it?" I somewhat understood what he was saying but to make sure, I rephrased the sentence and asked him.
"You mean that I need to restart myself for him to remember the training?"
"Yes, but it's a bit more complicated than that, but most definitely the right direction." He tried explaining again, but he couldn't tell his thoughts, so he just started calling me a moron.
After that, we started chatting, but the explosion happened, and Blaze instantly stood up and checked what had happened. And his face crumpled, although I didn't know why, but after I found out what happened to my mom instantly stood up and tried to leave the mind space to get back to my body.
"It won't work... I'm sorry Oscar, your mother may die today."
"There must be a way to save her right? Please I'll do anything" I begged him to help, but he looked lost, and he himself didn't know what to do.
After a minute, it seemed that Blaze had come up with something.
"If I tried I could manage to get control of the body for one minute at most, we should be able to use call Amanda and ask for her to help us, but that may literally fry our brains, we need to exchange some knowledge with her. But I'm against it not only can we get pertinent damage." I was happy that I had a chance to save my mom, but it seemed that if I didn't persuade Blaze I would have to live without a mom.
"Don't try threatening me, that won't work." He saw right through me.
"Arent we main characters by your words shouldn't we have plot armor" I made a convincing point and he thought about it for a bit.
"This mind place may not be connected to the world and we... by that I mean myself could die and I don't want to risk my own death," The more he talked the more hopeless I got it seemed that I would never be able to save my mom.
"Please just save her! I'll do anything... I'll even listen to you unconditionally" I begged and begged, but after a bit, I realized that there was hope and he himself wanted to help me, but he was afraid.
"Alright, but please try to save me if you see that I'm dying" He then proceeded to curse because he of something called death flags or something like that.
____