What the hell is that?

Derek entered the simulation space, and he was lost. He got from the strange blue circular thing to some different world. It was a location with a big green field of grass with some trees here and there. The sky in this place was blue with no clouds. The sun was shining but it did not cause any discomfort. There were mountains in the distance. This scene was beautiful, and Dereks brain could not process what was going on. After a short time, Max appeared near Derek and scared the shit of him. Deker jumped in fright and said: "Where the hell am I?"

"You are in a simulation. It is like a different world when you can train and try different scenarios, fight with different people and make mistakes and die unlimited number of times without getting killed in the real world." Max replied with a forced smile. He understood that he will need to explain this stuff for a lot of people or pay the system for a noob guide. He was not sure he could take it. His temper worsened with the time he lived for more than 350 years in the simulation.

"Really?" Derek asked with suspicion.

"Here let me show you." Max said with a smile and shot a fire ball in Dereks face from a point-blank distance.

"Wait, no!!!!" Derek screamed before his head evaporated. The fireball continued its way and exploded on the ground behind the fallen body.

After a short time, Derek respawned and started to touch his head with a panicked expression.

"I'm alive! I'm alive!" Derek yelled. The experience of getting his head melted by a fireball was not fun at all and affected Derek not in the best way.

"I told you that it is impossible to die here for real. I'm making this as a payment for you together with the food. Don't make me disappointed with your performance as my personal guide. You need to know that one hour in the outside world is half a month time here. You will have one hour of the real-world time training every day here. Know that for your level of power its worth one silver coins per hour." Max said. Derek was flabbergasted. He will have more than a VIP treatment here.

"Thank you so much boss Max!" Derek said after some time of deliberation, bowing deeply.

"No need to thank me. I will give you a chance to study the swordsmanship skill. Now a person that looks exactly like you with you power level and reflexes will appear and show you the different movement, defence and offence techniques. After you think all those techniques are mastered by you there is an option for you to fight your doubleganger and see if you really learned the skills or you are missing something. The level of your copy that appear is the lowest level simulation of you in term of skill level. There are ten levels. You can rest assured that you will not get to win this guy in a short time. You can try it now if you want." Max said with a knowing smile.

Who better then him will knew how it is to die from the hands of those bots time and time again. It was not fun, but he learned how to battle better and better with time because of those helpers. He hoped that Derek will have enough talent to win the first level bot after some time.

After that a person similar to Derek appeared. Derek stared at the guy and was shocked again. It was a copy of him. The height, weight, body, face, eyes colour and all the rest were one hundred percent identical.

Max understood his thoughts and said: "This is not a real person. The simulation made a copy of you. It will be easier for you to study that way."

"Where can I get weapons?" Derek asked.

"Just ask to pick a weapon in your mind or out loud and the simulation will answer you call." Max said.

Derek followed Max's instructions and he saw rows of different weapons appear with thousands of different options to choose. His brain malfunctioned again. He stood in a stupor for a few minutes and then started to look around. He did not know what to choose.

"You can experiment with different weapons and find the best option for you. Your copy will use the same weapons automatically. If you chose your weapon just talk in your mind or out loud to the space around and the system will react. If you want to study, just ask for it and if you want to fight just wits for a spar. It is that simple. You don't need to eat here. You can skip sleeping here as well. It will not cause you any harm. Now I'll have to go. I want to try a few stuff myself. After you finish your hour of training you can just sleep on the wooden floor." Max said and disappeared without letting Derek react in any way.

Derek stood there for some time, trying to understand everything Max said.

"Well let's give it a try." Derek said out load.

It took him some time to choose an optimal sword with a shield. It was a classic choice for most knights. After that he wished in his head to fight the doubleganger. In that moment the weapons disappeared, and the copy took the same sword and shield that the original had. Derek was sure in his fighting skills. If he was not a good fighter, he would die a lot of times already.

The doubleganger charged at Derek and swung his sword from above. Derek put his shield to block and was ready to attack with his sword when he was pushed back by some kind of shield attack and then he saw the sword getting from the side and then the world span because his head flew from his body. When he respawned, he did not understand what happened. He thought that it will be fine, but it was not even close. He died in two moves. It was humiliating. Now Derek was enraged and charged at the bot. He tried to do the same thing to his copy, but it did not work. When he tried to show a sword strike and then use the shield to make the true strike, he was seen through, and the bot moved from the attack trajectory and cut off Derek's legs. Derek screamed from the top of his lungs. The pain was very real and Derek fell to the ground, screaming. Then a sword was stabbed into his head, and he died again. Derek was mad. After that he fought the bot for a day with no rest at all and died in a lot of different ways. After that he stopped. "What the hell is that? Can I really get to this level in my lifetime? Is it the easiest mode? WHAT?" Derek cried with rage. It was humiliating to die again and again. After taking a break and relaxing a little bit he said: "Well, I guess it's time to study because I'm not strong enough yet." Derek said after sighing.

He then started to study with the bot teaching him different techniques. Derek was stunned by the universal ways of those techniques. It was a set of different moves for different situations. After studying for 14 more days Derek was ejected out of the simulation and woke up in the capsule. First, he did not understand what happened and screamed: "No. Get me back!"

After a short while he got to his senses and was very sad. He did not finish studying the theoretical moves yet. Not even speaking about fighting. He remembered all the moves he learned and his body felt stronger. Soon he understood that he had a lot more time tomorrow and then the day after. Now he was sure to use those facilities to get to his highest level of strength possible because he was not sure for how much more time he will have this opportunity to study. Then he took a glass of water for himself from the bar and lay down on the floor to sleep on one of his bags he took to the trip.