Battle Junkie

After selecting the highest difficulty, purely because he felt like it would be more fun facing a more "human" opponent, Fumio was more than curious about how different the clone would be.

Just like before, a clone materialized quite far from him, holding the same emotionless expression as the last one, which made Fumio feel somewhat disappointed.

However, a few seconds later, Fumio was startled to see the clone's lips slowly curl up into a wide, almost-scary looking smile.

Wondering what he signed himself up for, Fumio dashed towards the clone, aching to know how much 'smarter' his previously-emotionless opponent got.

It seemed like the clone had the same bright idea since it also dashed towards Fumio, dooming both of them to meet in the middle.

Who got the first hit?

Both of them. Fumio's right hook landed on the clone's cheek, and the clone's right hook landed on Fumio's cheek.

This punch to the face was the first-ever time Fumio had ever got punched, which caused his brain to get stunned for a bit, but he was surprised to see that the clone became stunned from the punch as well.

Fumio jumped back to distance himself, after recovering and watched the clone do the same.

However, instead of looking at him in shock, like Fumio was doing to him, the clone softly laughed as it stretched its jaw with its hand.

Fumio's palms started sweating, and he accepted that he was in a real fight right now.

However, this was something he had always wanted. Watching Rock Lee fight Kimimaro, etc. made his blood boil, and he wondered how it would feel if he was in one of those crazy, unrealistic fights.

Fumio knew that his opponent wasn't any stronger or weaker than him, and neither were they strong enough for their fight to compare to those examples from the anime. Still, at least it gave him an idea of how it might be.

"My next move's going to be a kick," Fumio muttered, before seeing the smile on the clone lessen.

'It can hear me...' Fumio said in his head before he tried to confirm it by following through with making his next move a kick.

As expected, once he covered the distance, Fumio's approaching leg easily got grabbed by the clone before it strangely pushed his leg away, instead of taking advantage of it.

"Don't tell me your next move..." The clone said with a voice that had an ominous tone, utterly different from Fumio's but still sounded similar.

'This is so weird,' Fumio said in his head before he decided to start fighting seriously, treating this more like an anime fight-scene, as embarrassing as that might be to admit, but it did an excellent job at calming his nerves down.

---

{5 Minutes (of a fight that was the Opposite of One-sided) Later...}

The clone managed to land a spin-kick on the side of Fumio's mouth, which caused him to lose a tooth. It reacted to it by laughing before it asked, "You alright, bud?"

'This guy even talks the same way as me...' Fumio thought in response.

The fight was mostly attitude-based because they were equally matched in skill. This made it especially difficult since the clone seemed to be a border-line battle junkie...

Fumio would usually be very quick to give up when running a mile, but now that he had a clear reason behind doing something that required a lot of effort, he became adamant about not giving up.

---

The reason why this difficulty setting wasn't recommended or lower than Easy difficulty, was because the Smart Opponent had the potential to grow stronger than the Hard difficulty opponent.

Additionally, it had the capacity to quickly learn all of the things that the Host would use against the smart clone, that is if the Host actually made the safer decision of starting out with the easier difficulties, yet Fumio did the opposite.

This caused the Smart Opponent to solely serve as a training partner for him, instead of the intended end-game Opponent, it was actually meant to be.

---

Both Fumio and the clone were struggling to stand straight. The clone was even punching his knee-caps to make them work.

"Heh... I know my body's limits. It's time to stop," Fumio said as he fell backward, on his butt.

Their faces looked terrible, having parts of it swelling, many parts bleeding from cuts, and many of their teeth were missing.

Fumio could no longer handle the pain as he said out loud, "Close Progressive Combat Training!"

The clone dematerialized, and Fumio saw his teeth fly back into his mouth, along with the disappearance of the pain that was all over his body.

However, his muscles still felt sore as hell from the fight.

"Maybe I should've learned some Taekwondo moves before fighting in the simulation..." Fumio said, before closing his eyes and deciding to take a short nap, while unconsciously smiling.

In the 'short nap,' that took a few hours, Fumio dreamt of fighting someone other than himself.