A punch directed at my chest forced me to use the skill [Cross-Arm Block], my guard preventing most of the damage.
Making some distance – by the impact in part – I couldn't recover my balance fully before being greeted by a boot obscuring my face with its shadow. For instinct I ducked and punched back with [Senda], giving the humanoid foe a one-way ticket out of the fight. Hopefully.
I knew my wishful thinking was misplaced. They will keep coming. They will keep fighting, until the very end.
How much time had I been at this...this fight...this 'Game'. Weeks...months...years? I can't remember anymore.
Catching a mental breath induced me to enter a hyper-analytic state about the circumstances: The circular claustrophobic place I'm in, surrounded by these humanoid mobs...the walls that suffocate me from every corner, even when I have enough space to fight alone...the permanent feeling that I might die at any moment. That last didn't change one bit from before. Before this new life.
Some things are meant to remain, even beyond death.
I wish that one of those things that remain with me is my team from The Nebuchadnezzar. I wish the friends I made in SAO were destined to survive, meant to find their way out of these eternal dungeons. The playgrounds of a madman.
One thing I encountered in this game that I hadn't since my awakening as The One, more than a decade ago, was failure. Under a divine state, a prophet cannot know failure nor defeat. The One cannot be wrong either. For being wrong means you are not The One. To solve such problem, I had to die once to be reborn as the person I was destined to be.
Which brings me to this question: As a man who has died twice, who am I now?
I step aside again, letting pass one of my enemies, and respond with my favorite – and signature – skill; [Counter]. My arms and legs glowed white, successfully landing multiple kicks and punches while dodging everything this entity was throwing with the same motion and skills that me. Same because they all look EXACTLY like me.
I finally land a critical hit, and my clone entity crashed into a thousand brilliant polygons.
One down...forty-seven to go.
I was hoping they didn't have my move-set, but alas, I was proven that the creator of this infernal match wasn't having it. He wants people to suffer...no, the area might as well be a trial chamber for me alone. After all, I wasn't having it with him too. I was being unruly, nasty towards his work.
Disengaging for a moment makes me analyze the results: I had engaged and focused multiple times on the same individual to, at last, get one down. And there's still a full squad to go.
In reaction to the hopeless situation, my conscience began to fade. My eyes lost focus, drifting around the room. I could feel all the accumulated fatigue weighing me down more intensely than ever, as if the world's burden was loaded on my back.
Why am I even here? I should rest. I must be ready to go into the Matrix tomorrow and liberate more people, like I always do. Like I have been doing for months.
Just close your eyes, and it's over.
...No. I'm not there anymore. I'm playing this death game to prove myself. That I can still be me. My true self.
Vision suddenly obstructed, I am being forcefully reminded by one of my clones' kicks that even artificial intelligence doesn't wait for anyone. A black boot lands on my temple. My body drags on the stone floor, my black leather suit serving as a rag until I lose full momentum.
I slowly get up, adopting a Kung fu battle stance...to continue the struggle. Facing enemies and a possible abrupt shutdown of my mind.
I sighed inwardly. Resembling a zombie in all possible ways made me wonder if I was going to be free soon enough. As was back in the old days, when Morpheus liberated my naked and atrophied ass from the machines' crops.
Freedom was within my reach, I know. I just must endure...but for how long?