Chapter 8 - Virtual Reality

Chapter 8

Author Note: Do I have to put a gore and brutality warning here?

~

The box let out a low mechanical whirring noise after she had pressed the button and much to Nana's curiosity a neon blue light in a grid pattern appeared scanning her body for a few seconds before disappearing.

A few moments later the box let out a subdued hiss before it started unfolding itself revealing the the softly glowing interior starting with it's sides which spread outwards in 8 rectangular black segments followed by the white stripes running around it.

Continuing with a series of clicks and clacks of mechanical parts snapping into their places for the next minute or so, the previous box was eventually transformed into a small but solid looking stand resembling a hand upon which a visor was placed.

The visor's frame was made of a dull white metal while the large frontal lense was made of a pitch black, almost glass like material. The visor itself was connected to a pair of circular blocks meant to cover the ears while further to the back was an adjustable strap meant to fasten it to the wearer's head.

Picking it up, Nana took a few seconds to puzzle out what she was meant to do before putting it on, making sure to tug at the adjustable strap so that it wouldn't fall off since it was a bit too big for her.

Not long after she did, the screen in front of her lit up with a rectangular blue window showing 'Please lay down to proceed'.

[Please lay down to proceed]

Fortunately for Nana who didn't bother to learn how to read, it also included a synthetic voice reading out the message accompanied visual instructions in the form of a stickman repeatedly lying down playing on loop beneath the message window.

Nana first moved the visor's stand onto the desk standing next to her bed before following the voice's instructions starting with making doubly sure, due to repeated warnings that her body may move around while she was inside the game, that she wouldn't somehow fall off the bed by laying down a few pillows around her as rolling-blockers just in case.

She then laid down squarely on her back in the middle of the bed and put her arms along her sides, after that she was finally done with all the steps except one, the visor requesting a startup word which it would record, alongside her body's dimensions which would be matched and updated each time she used it, making it very hard for anyone else to actually activate it.

"Mn~..." Nana didn't really know what to set it as, her mind blanking a bit when she tried to think of anything and decided to just pick something since she started getting more curious about the digital world now that she was about to enter it.

"...Hot dogs."

[Code word 'Hot dogs' registered as user: Nana's vocal lock]

...

[Commencing the dive]

Nana's sight of her room barely being visible through the visor's black glass lens suddenly disappeared, being replaced by what felt like and endless expanse of rectangular white tiles arranged in a grid pattern stretching as far as the eyes could see.

Nana looked around while she blinked in slight confusion, there was no transition period between laying in her room and suddenly standing here at all which somewhat fiercely messed with her cognition, her mind trying to process what had just happened.

Calming down a few seconds later, Nana looked up and saw what she felt was an equally endless star-dotted night sky chasing after the white tiles over and beyond the horizon. Feeling a light refreshing breeze blow past her, she looked down at her arms and clenched and unclenched her fists, idly noting that she was now wearing something similar to her workout outfit prioritizing freedom of movement.

There were barely any, if any at all, differences between this and reality. If she hadn't reached up to her nose and not felt the plaster she knew she was wearing, she would have thought she had somehow just been transported here in the real world.

The only difference she could feel at all was that her current body wasn't as synced as her real one was, presenting a small delay between her commands and her body acting upon them she wasn't used to. Deciding to acclimate to the slight feeling of delay she felt in it's response time, she started running around and went through a few of the routines and movements she was the most familiar with.

A few minutes later when she had gotten used to her digital body, she saw more windows starting to pop up in front of her, though out of the what must have been dozens of different windows, only three of them were actually showing her what hid behind them, all of the other ones being blacked out with a white question mark in it's center.

The first one showed a person in a massive arena resembling a coliseum fighting through wave after wave of enemies in an all out brawl.

The second one showed someone nimbly running across rooftops and through alleyways trying to defend an object from various pursuers trying to steal it.

The third one showed a person carefully stalking through a forest trying to escape a bevy of wild animals out for their blood.

Watching the videos playing for a minute or so Nana eventually decided to just do them in numerical order and promptly pressed the first one making her instantly appear in the middle of the large arena where the person in the video fought.

It was a massive circular plateau of tightly packed dirt covered in a small layer of sand and dust with a 5 meters in diameter metal disk in it's center encircled with 10 meter high walls of solid beige brick, 4 portcullises were also placed in each cardinal direction forming a large '+' from up above. Further up and behind the wall's edge was an enormous crowd peering down into the middle of the arena though they were currently unmoving, almost supernaturally still, as if they weren't activated yet.

While Nana was curiously looking around her, feeling the scorching sun's heat bearing down on her from up above surrounding her with an extremely arid atmosphere and the metal plate below her feet sizzling hot from the sun's rays, her attention was soon attracted by a smaller rectangular window floating vertically to her left.

[Coliseum Chaos]

Information: The coliseum, a place where endless waves of enemies will engage in a ruthless battle royale until one warrior is eventually crowned the king of the arena receiving endless glory, wealth and fame. You may think it would be easier with everyone fighting each other, however, the unseen blade is always the deadliest.

Difficulty: Not set

Duration: Not set

Clear Condition: Not set

Failure Condition: Not set

Nana directly skipped over the large section of flavor text and saw four sliders below it currently set at the leftmost position. Sliding the time slider back and forth, the duration switched between 0 minutes and an ominously glowing 'Endless'.

Scratching her head in confusion Nana stared blankly at the various options changing while she was adjusting the slider back and forth. Tilting her head in thought while idly poking at the window, she didn't really come up with a good solution to circumvent her problem of being unable to understand the options and decided to just set them all to the rightmost position.

When she had adjusted all three of them she waited a couple of minutes for it to start, eventually looking back at the window when nothing happened.

[Start] [Exit]

Being presented with more choices a small feeling of impatience started sprouting inside of her. Why was there so many things she had to do before she could actually get to the fighting? Nana blankly stared at the two buttons with what could generously be described as a glare, seeing as someone unfamiliar with her mostly unchanging face wouldn't spot the difference.

Giving the right button a punch she instantly appeared back in the lobby where she first arrived when she initially logged in.

"..."

Quickly going through the same process of selecting the coliseum level and adjusting the sliders again, she gave the left button a punch this time making a small bell-like noise ring out reminding her of the one she heard during her boxing tournament.

[Ding!]

[Coliseum Chaos]

Difficulty: Daredevil

Duration: Endless

Clear Condition: N/A

Failure Condition: Death

Nana saw the window in front of her flicker before fizzling out of view, just seconds before she heard the previously unmoving crowd letting out a round of thunderous cheers and booming chants, using whatever they could get their hands on to slam against the railing, walls, floor and even their seats producing a deafening cacophony of chaos and mania as a blood filled atmosphere quickly washed over the whole arena.

Nana's face gained a very subtle frown as she felt her ears being pierced by the blaring melody of feverishness as confusion swirled through her mind, unable to understand why they were being so loud for.

She got her answer a few seconds later as a synchronized deep sound of metal parts connecting together rang out followed by the sound of rusty gears being turned. Looking towards the source she saw one of the portcullises being slowly pulled up, their age on display as the gates would occasionally hitch on a particularly rusty hinge letting out an ear-piercing whine before continuing.

Idly glancing around her, she saw that the other three were also being pulled up, meanwhile, the crowd surrounding the whole arena platform were only getting louder and wilder the higher they were cranked.

Not really seeing the point of moving from her spot, she decided to stay on top of the circular metal center of the arena and see what would happen when they reached their peak, not to mention that she was also taking advantage of the heated metal disk to increase her pain tolerance.

Just half a minute later the four metal gates were pulled to their apex and locked in place with a mechanical thud and a small shower of dust dispersing throughout the arena.

Nana let out a small noise of curiosity as the moment they were properly locked in place opening up the four passageways, the crowd instantly quietened down.

Though not long after she noticed that the ground started subtly trembling kicking up a light layer of dust, accompanied by a low rumbling sound approaching from the distance.

As it got closer and closer, the subtle trembling transformed into a small earthquake and the low rumbling turned into a hail of thunderbolts smashing into the surrounding area. Just as both the shaking and the booming noise reached it's zenith, hundreds of people in various states abruptly exploded into the arena emerging from the four openings.

Some of them wore rags and carried farming tools like sickles and hoes, some wore sturdy brand new leather armor equipped with bows and daggers, and some even rushed in clad in pristinely polished full plate armors carrying swords and shields.

Those were only the most common however, the group also included more esoteric weapons like whips, massive maces, large hammers, spears, kusarigamas, fans, fangs, staffs, some were even carrying various kitchen gadgets like large pans and woks, there were too many different weapons to realistically count in a reasonable timeframe.

The arena was quickly filled up with fighters who wasted no time in starting to hack, slash, slam, slice, pierce, bludgeon and shoot everything that moved, the arena quickly descending into chaos only further fuelled by the crowd's restarted rampant cries for more mayhem and violence blending together to form a discordant symphony of blood filled frenzy and screams of agony.

Nana was a bit discombobulated by the quick change in pace and blinked in confusion, trying futilely to take in everything happening around her before having to quickly dodge a spear thrust aimed at her head. Slipping under it, she grabbed the wooden shaft and yanked it towards her along with it's wide-eyed wielder due to bad footing. Using the momentum, she shifted into a wide-stanced crouch and delivered a fierce elbow into his lower stomach before hastily maneuvering his limp body to block a whip strike aimed at her back she saw out of her peripheral vision.

Harshly pushing his body at the whip wielder making the both of them crash to the ground and getting a gigantic warhammer slammed down onto them a few seconds later resulted in their bodies exploding in a shower of blood, gore and meatpaste.

Though she didn't have time to rest as she was besieged by a dense storm of smoothly flowing slashes courtesy of a dual wielding dagger user, unfortunately for Nana, this person was obviously alot more experienced with fighting, keeping his distance while gradually filling Nana's arms, which she used to block, with small cuts which only grew in quantity with time since she didn't really know how to fight against a constant flurry of slashes, on top of having to dodge around all the chaos surrounding them, the few times she tried to retaliate only resulting in larger cuts.

About half a minute later Nana's arms were involuntarily shaking, filled with gashes of various sizes leaking a small waterfall of blood down onto the arena's floor while the rest of her body was covered in injuries from stray attacks she either didn't see or didn't have time to dodge. While she was focusing on deciphering a way to break through the onslought of what seemed to be an endless amount daggers constantly slashing at her though, she unfortunately didn't see a stray arrow coming her way.

"Ngrh..." Nana let out a small grunt as her face twitched in pain when she felt an arrow lodge itself deeply into her right thigh. Losing the majority of her mobility, which she had been using to barely hold on until now lead to her current opponent capitalizing on the instant her body locked up due to her muscles tensing and pushed her into another fighter.

Getting a metal clad elbow to the side of the head in response to her knocking into his back, Nana, disoriented by the blow felt her vision visciously shift by the force as a muffled ringing noise appeared in her head and barely managed to keep her balance while restricted to a single leg, almost falling.

Unfortunately, before she could right herself again, her first opponent swiftly swept her remaining leg making her harshly crash into the ground. Instinctively trying to use her arms to soften the impact was a bad decision as her sliced up forearms flared up in pain, barely able to exert any actual force.

The last thing she saw was a sharp glint reflecting off of the dagger before it pierced through her eye and punctured her brain as her vision went black.

...

Appearing back at the selection lobby, Nana blinked in incomprehension as she looked around, having gotten too into the fight, she almost forgot that it was just a game for a second.

[Game Over] - [Coliseum Chaos] - [Daredevil]

Time: 1 minute(s) and 9 seconds

Kills: 0

Nana ignored the window that appeared in front of her. Blinking as she looked down at her fully healed arms she clenched her fists, not feeling any of the pain she felt just a few seconds ago, doing the same with her leg showing the same result.

Nana's eyes minutely widened in amazement as she continued prodding at her previously, probably lethally injured, body which had magically healed in an instant while she thought back to her first go at the arena. Although it didn't last that long she felt that she had learnt alot, not only was it a whole new, different way of fighting. It also helped her recognize a few glaring flaws in the way she usually fought.

First of all, she was not at all used to fighting against multiple opponents at the same time. She was used to being able to focus on a single opponent at a time, something she really didn't have the luxury of doing in the middle of a massive battle royale. Contrary to fighting 1 on 1 where you normally kept your eyes on your opponent and delegated lesser attention to your surroundings, in the coliseum she not only had to keep an eye on her opponent, she also had to watch out for stray attacks, other people joining her opponent against her, the situation around her, the amount of space she had to perform techniques and so on, it made her feel blocked in with so many people fighting in such a small space.

Even then, just a single stray attack could hit you and if you're unlucky? You're dead.

With so much chaos happening around her she didn't really have the time to properly take in her surroundings, and since she was used to being able to just tank hits while getting her bearings she wasn't fast enough at making a coherent plan in how to proceed since she usually took her time in puzzling out her opponent and operating based off of that.

She also had a habit of hyperfocusing on her opponents which worked against her in this case because she found her eyes frantically darting around the battlefield trying to observe way too many people simultaneously due to her curiosity.

Secondly, she had never fought against anyone wielding a weapon before. It was so different from what she was used to that she didn't really know how to fight against it. Everyone she had fought against so far has been barehanded with no exceptions. The results of her suddenly going up against someone having a weapon, and actually knowing how to use it properly? She was at a sharp disadvantage.

The whole fight she was basically stuck at trying to acclimate herself to the rapid, high-intensity pace of the battlefield while also trying to desperately survive for long enough to actually give herself enough time to get used to it.

In other words...

Alot of what she had learnt for the past 6 years was utterly useless.

Despite all this however, while most would understandably never want go through the previous experience again whether due to the pain, possible trauma, fear, indignation at having to essentially restart their learning of the concept of fighting and so on.

Nana's eyes were currently shining brighter than ever before, eager to get back into the arena to learn. Learn how to operate on the closest thing to a war she had ever touched upon, learn how to defend against and maybe even win against not only that dual wielding dagger user, but also every single weapon she had the chance to go up against, learn how to quickly and concisely survey her surroundings in her head so she could instantly map out a plan of attack.

Standing up, Nana in her excited state tried summoning the scenario selector with her will, slightly surprised when it actually popped up in front of her. Making a mental note to try navigating the digital space with her mind more often, she quickly tapped the [Coliseum Chaos] ready for another go.

She wanted to thrive on that chaotic battlefield, and she wouldn't stop until she could.

---

"Fuck!"

A loud shout echoed through a massive, brightly lit room with a row of capsule like beds arranged in multiple rows pushed against one of the walls.

Ripping the vr visor off of his head revealing a birds nest of black hair, a lanky young man in his late teens on the verge of adulthood cursed venomously as he accurately chucked the visor onto a side section connected to the capsule's side.

"Tried advancing difficulty again?" A lethargic voice drawled mockingly from the bed next to his.

Directing a scathing glare at the slightly pudgy blond young man leisurely lounging in the bed capsule idly scrolling through the news with a tablet, the black haired youth felt his temper explode.

"The hell are you so smug for, huh!? Asshole! You don't even go above [Easy]!" The black haired youth shouted indignantly, pointing at him accusingly.

"And now, why would I do that? I'm pretty comfortable not feeling pain during the simulations, after all. I'm not a masochist unlike to a certain someone~" The blond teased in a sing-song like voice.

"Who the hell are you calling a masochist!?"

"I never mentioned that I was talking about you, did I? It's good that you are self-aware enough to acknowledge your perverse desire for pain." The blond gave him respectful nod.

"You-!" The black haired youth gritted his teeth in anger as his fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white. He should've known that trying to argue with this eloquent piece of lard would end up with him on the losing end.

"Well. At least you can restrain your depraved cravings for long enough to retain the sanity not to go above the [High] difficulty." The blond quipped casually as he shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.

"Tch. Which fucking lunatic would do that voluntarily?" The black haired youth scoffed as a frown appeared on his face.

"Who knows? I'm sure there are plenty of people who would at least want to try though. Humans are curious creatures you know? We don't recognize danger until it's nibbling at our flesh."

"Fucking crazy bastards all of them. I can barely stand [Hard] on a good day and that's only at 30% of pain transference. It may not feel as real with the dulled senses but who the fuck would go higher just because of that?"

"I don't know about crazy, but they're probably all unhinged in some way or another, yes."

"What even are the difficulties again? I forgot."

"Memory of a goldfish." The blond mocked idly while tapping away at the tablet.

"3 step steam train." The black haired youth shot back grumpily.

"I will graciously offer you the knowledge you seek, young one." The blond turned his tablet towards the black haired youth while he caressed his nonexistant beard.

[Difficulties] - [Pain Transference]

Baby - 0%

Easy - 0%

Medium - 15%

Hard - 30%

Hardcore - 50%

Daredevil - 100%

"Eurgh... Put it away, I'm getting the heebies just thinking about it." The black haired youth shivered, feeling a bone piercing chill shoot through his body as he frantically rubbed at his goosebump covered arms.

"Alright." The blond shrugged and went back to browsing the news.

"Hey, how many do you think tried it? The [Daredevil] difficulty." The black haired youth asked in morbid curiosity.

"Not that many, though you'd think the first few people that tried would be warning enough, but people are stupid."

"What do you mean, what happend to them?"

"You don't know?"

"No, why?"

"I though everyone knew about it."

"Well, I don't. Tell me."

"I will if you beg?"

"Fuck you."

"I suppose you wanting to engage in sexual intercourse with me despite us being the same gender properly displays my attractiveness despite the crude words used. I will accept your compliment in place of a grovel, now listen closely."

"..."

"The first few candidates that tried [Daredevil] fuelled by foolhardy arrogance ended up eating shit and went into a coma from pain overload convincing them that they were really dying and their bodies conforming to the mind's delusions, the end."

"That's it?"

"What more do you want? It was a clean, concise explanation to a very long and unecessarily complicated situation."

"I mean... I was expecting a story or something... That was kinda anticlimactic to be honest."

"You get what you pay for."

---

Dodging the swipe of a sharp metal claw gauntlet aimed at her side Nana quickly moved into her opponent's guard while blocking his other hand with her forearm before slamming her shoulder into his leather chestplate that reduced her resulting force from a football sized rock to a few pebbles.

Driving her elbow into his unprotected lower stomach making her opponent let out a wheeze of pain, she smoothly moved around his side and hooked the back of his knee with her arm, giving it a fierce tug while simultaneously sweeping his remaining leg.

As he fell to the ground with a heavy thud, Nana brutally stomped on his throat using all of her weight before leaving him and moving onto another opponent while somewhat nimbly maneuvering her way around the sea of fighting people, though still gradually picking up various unexpected injuries she coudn't avoid.

Nana didn't know how long she had been going at it or how many times she had 'died' and restarted so far, however, she felt much more comfortable moving around now compared to her first attempt.

Rebuffing a sword slash aimed at her by smashing a bloody metal helmet she found on the ground into it's trajectory she followed up by mercilessly driving a knife-handed strike into the wielder's throat making him involuntarily drop his sword due to extreme pain.

Snatching the sword mid-air Nana swiftly sent an inexperienced slash at his throat, the sword cutting deep enough to catch on his spine before stopping, Nana not having enough strength to force it through all the way.

Throwing the sword with the intent to pierce through the head of someone with their back turned towards her, she made a small noise of dissatisfaction when it missed her target by about half a meter before having to quickly engage someone carrying a massive shield which he used to slam into her side, barely managing to raise her arm to guard her head before she was easily sent flying.

Unfortunately for Nana, her flight path happened to coincide with a large mace barreling through the air. Letting out an involuntary noise of pain upon feeling a dense metal ball the size of a handball smashing into her lower back, Nana felt her bones cracking from the power of the body bending blow as she involuntarily let out a choked noise of indescribable pain.

Harshly crashing down into the hard-packed dirt floor further worsening her probably broken back, she still didn't give up just yet. By now recognizing that her legs were probably unsusable for the rest of her current attempt relying on her experience of dying in various ways the past few hours, she used her forearm to shift her body to dodge an opportunistic sword strike just enough to barely miss her heart, getting lodged between her ribs.

Feeling the cold metal sliding into her body accompanied by a searingly hot burning agony, Nana tightly clenched her blood stained teeth and pushed through the pain as her normally blank face was replaced with an unnaturally intense expression, her wide, brightly shining, almost glowing eyes fiercely staring up at her opponent with the piercing glare of a cornered beast.

Raising her hand, she firmly grasp the sword's blade anchoring it into her body to make the wielder unable to extract it, though not for a lack of trying, his attempts at retrieving his sword making it saw up and down despite her efforts to keep it still, further cutting into her.

Fortunately Nana didn't have to wait too long until someone who had spotted her opponent being stuck utilized the opportunity to proficiently manipulate his whip to wrap around his throat. Her opponent's hands instantly moved up to tug at the whip's cord, straining against it while the small metal spikes weaved into it raked across his skin, small streams of blood soon started leaking from both his throat and his hands drenching his whole upper body, dyeing it a brilliant red.

It wasn't long after that, that his struggles started slowly abating, his body lifelessly hitting the ground a few moments later.

As Nana laid there on the ground covered in various wounds, and blood, paralyzed legs and a sword practically shoved through her body so deeply it poked out on the other side, the overwhelming feeling of exctrutiating pain insistently tormenting her mind was ruthlessly suppressed to a small corner where it couldn't interfere with her thoughts.

Taking short sharp breaths of air Nana's eyes slowly turned muddled as she felt her vision blurring and hearing disappearing from what she gathered was a combination of bloodloss and her current agony.

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately a woman dressed in dirty, torn clothes looking more like repurposed coarse bags saw her state and frantically ran over, as if afraid someone else would take the opportunity, and using a rusty sickle, raked it's blade across her throat leaving a laceration what must have been the third of her throat's width as a shower of blood instantly followed.

Nana felt like her neck had been cut into with a burning hot knife while whatever scraps of air she had managed to gather instantly disappeared, replaced by a thick, cloying red liquid she knew was her own blood clogging her airways.

The woman's expression turned esctatic seeing her state and excitedly whispered under her breath, turning her back towards her.

Looking at the woman standing over her while rapidly losing her blood and subsequently, her life, Nana decided to use whatever remained of her body's strength to perform a last act of revenge. Staunchly ignoring the excrutiating amounts of pain her body was currently sending her, she stubbornly gritted her teeth and mentally pictured what she wanted to do in preparation.

While the woman was absentmindedly lost in thought, she acted. Removing the sword from her chest as fast as she realistically could using her right hand, Nana used her left hand to stutteringly slowly prop herself up into a sitting position before gathering everything she had left and with a harsh, blood-gurgling grunt pushed herself off of her left hand, while also steadying herself with the sword in her right hand into a fascimile of a standing position, and with a sense of iron-willed sluggishness barely keeping herself conscious she swung the sword in her right hand, having to use both momentum and her body weight to even get it to the correct height since her strength was pretty much used up, her body feeling like it was filled with lead while also underwater, and barely managed to lodge it deep into the woman's throat.

Nana's broken body covered in blood harshly crashed down into the ground like a puppet with it's strings cut landing in a boneless heap.

Despite this however, Nana's face pulled into a small childish smile filled with joy radiating a feeling of accomplishment before the familiar blackness quickly encroached upon her vision.

...

Appearing back to the game lobby space, Nana sat on the ground idly fiddling with her fingers while her mind replayed her last attempt like she had been doing since her first death, mentally going through every instance of when she got injured, no matter how small. Cycling through them, Nana began slotting in different techniques and movements she could have used to potentially avoid it, even using things she had seen others in the arena doing courtesy of her impeccable memory.

[Game Over] - [Coliseum Chaos] - [Daredevil]

Time: 8 minutes and 56 seconds

Kills: 11

After she continued to digest her previous battles mixing and matching different techniques she had seen during all of her previous attempts for the next half an hour or so, Nana was snapped out of her daze when the previously dark night sky was broken up by a soft orange glow approaching from beyond the horizon.

Blinking her eyes, Nana briefly shook her head to clear her mind and decided to log out for today since although it was great that she could spend her time 'sleeping' inside the game, she still wanted to continue growing stronger physically aswell.

Remembering that the menus seemed to respond to her mind, she tried picturing herself back in her room, her sight promptly being covered by a show of light blue pixels swirling around her.

When her vision cleared up a few seconds later, she found herself staring at the ceiling of her room through the vr visor.

Sitting up and removing the visor from her head, she put it on the stand next to her and groggily rubbed her eyes while letting out a small hum. Despite remaining in the game for the whole night, evident by the soft sunlight peeking through her curtains, she felt well rested and ready to go.

Crawling out of the bed she went to do her morning routine, being finished a few minutes later and donned her workout outfit while making her way to the kitchen.

Not seeing Yama in the main living space she went to check his room and went back to the kitchen when she heard light snoring coming from inside, figuring she might as well get started with breakfast.

Although she had only learnt cooking by accident, she found that cooking was a very convenient skill to at least be proficient in. Not only could she choose what she wanted to eat herself, she could also adjusts the taste of the dish according to her own preferences, not to mention her liking to cook for the people she was close to.

Especially now that she wasn't at the Dieseldunk Gym anymore, cooking also reminded her of Sam, Chad and Coach John so it was something she was wanted to continue doing.

Remembering that Yama said that he was going to go to the grocery store yesterday Nana checked the fridge and after having a quick look-through, she eventually settled on a heavy, very rich, meat stew dish with a side of rice and oven-roasted vegetables.

Luckily the kitchen cupboards were already stocked with basic cooking utensils.

...

About an hour later, a groggy Yama slowly lumbered his way into the kitchen with large yawn seeing Nana sitting beside the kitchen island with an absentminded expression on her face while a heavenly aroma drifted over from a softly simmering pot placed on the stove.

"Good morning little Nana, how do you feel? Any pain?" Yama walked over to crouch in front of her as he gently asked in concern making her snap out of her daze and look over to him.

Already used to it by now, he repeated his question and received a head shake in response a few seconds later. Although he was a bit skeptical since the gym's doctor sounded a bit frantic yesterday, he calmed down when he remembered that he said that he was going to check in on her again today just in case.

"Okay, that's good however I would be more more relieved if you could wait with going to the gym until the doctor checks on you again. Can you do that?" He asked softly making her hum in affirmation a few seconds later, Yama breathing a small sigh of relief.

Taking a seat next to her Yama started contemplating buying a computer for himself. Since he determined that it would be better to help Nana get back up when she was knocked down instead of preventing her from being knocked down, he had thought about how to actually get started with his studies.

He directly crossed out trying to apply for a medical school or something similar. Not only were there probably very strict requirements to even get admitted into anything related to medicine, he didn't want to leave Nana alone so that was out.

The only other option he thought of was just trying to learn by himself, and although he knew it wasn't the smartest decision in the world to not have anyone teaching him, he didn't really see any other options.

Not to mention, it wasn't like he was going to be doing any surgeries or anything even close to that. If Nana was injured badly enough to need an operation he wouldn't even trust himself to attempt saving her, not in a million years.

However, he could start with studying some basic muscle relaxing massages and first aid, maybe read up a bit on how to promote recovery from overtraining, something he knew Nana was pretty much doing every sessions of hers.

After that, maybe he could look around a bit to see if there were any anatomy training dolls focused on setting and re-aligning bones for sale? He didn't even know if they existed, however, he would at least take a look and in his opinion, doctors didn't just go into their first attempt with purely theoretical knowledge... right?

It would probably also be wise to study the human anatomy in general.

While the two of them sat in comfortable silence with Nana immersed in the coliseum stints and Yama slowly making a game plan towards his goal it wasn't long until a timer softly rang through the kitchen.

Yama was knocked out of his thoughts by the noise and startled slightly, calming down when he saw Nana getting up and tending to the pot.

A couple of minutes later she carried it to the kitchen island, placing it on top of a trivet she had fetched earlier before taking out the roasted vegetables and putting them in a bowl, doing the same thing with the rice.

While she was doing this Yama was setting the table and not long after, the two sat down and started plating up.

"Nana... You have to eat at least some vegetables..." Yama lightly admonished with a wry expression on his face seeing her purposefully ignoring the bowl of vegetables. Something that made itself apparent when she started cooking herself was that, although she would eat pretty much anything if presented to her, she very much preferred hearty, rich dishes compared to something more light.

Which resulted in one of them, him, Sam, Chad or Coach John, having to keep an eye on her because if given the opportunity she would normally stick to the main dish unless the side dishes also caught her attention, and if they did, they were probably also very rich.

She oddly wasn't that adverse to fruits though, which somewhat relieved their worries.

Nana let out a quiet growl of dissatisfaction when she heard him before quickly shoveling half of the bowl's contents into her mouth and swiftly swallowing with small signs of disgruntlement appearing on her face before it quickly eased up when she tasted the stew, letting out a small hum of satisfaction.

"..."

"Ahaha..." Yama wryly scratched the side of his temple upon seeing her antics before letting out a resigned sigh of exasperation." Well, I suppose it doesn't matter how she eats them as long as she does." Shaking his head Yama shortly dug in as well, a decadent round flavor instantly sending his tastebuds dancing in euphoric satisfaction upon his first bite.

He was still surprised at how quickly she picked up cooking, though maybe he shouldn't be considering he knew that she probably had some sort of savant syndrome seeing as she pretty much never forgot anything no matter how insignificant, something Sam had found out by accident, and her hyperfocus in specific areas of interest.

This on top of her aversion to communicate verbally, her drastically lower than normal response time and her tendency to frequently space out being a pretty clear indicator of her at least having something similar.

They hadn't gone through an official examination but they didn't really see the need to either since it wasn't like it majorly impacted or hindered Nana's ability to go through her daily life.

The two of them finished eating just a few minutes before Dai Hui arrived to take another look at Nana and after a quick but thorough examination, he lightly advised her to rest another day before getting back into the gym. Although there was no damage done to her muscles overall, her muscle fibers hadn't had time to completely heal either despite her monstrous rate of recovery.

Much to Yama's surprise, Nana didn't make much of a fuss and even went along with Dai Hui's recommendation to skip the gym for today. Though instead, she spent most of it with the vr visor on her head, Yama rousing her when it was time to eat.

"Is it fun playing the game Nana?" Yama asked inquisitively while the two were having dinner. For the years that he had known her, there was basically nothing that could prevent her from going to the gym since she started really gaining an interest. The two of them actually living inside a gym only further spurned her on, really.

He didn't think she would stop going just because of a doctor's recommendation either, so he was a bit curious of what she found herself so absorbed in.

"Mn..." Nana let out a quiet hum and gave him a small nod in response, though Yama could see that she was preoccupied with something else mentally. It was something he had noticed during the course of the day, she tended to be alot more absentminded than she already was before, even this morning.

He had already gathered that she tested the game last night but he didn't think much of it since it didn't require her to actually physically move her body according to what little he knew about vr in general, however, he was a bit happy that she found something other than just constantly training to occupy herself with.

---

For the next two years Nana's routine consisted of waking up after spending a night fighting in the coliseum and making breakfast for the both of them, Yama making sure to keep the fridge stocked, before spending most of her time in the gym. However, she was now much more focused on actual physical training rather than sparring since she pretty much spent the entirety of her nights engrossed in the middle of a non-stop battle royale.

Somchai had also arrived at the gym about a week after her first stint into vr and offered to train her in muay thai which she unsurprisingly accepted.

Yama had also started to let her amp up the intensity of her weight training since they had Dai Hui just a few minutes away leading to Nana constantly pushing her muscles to their breaking point and beyond, something that would have quickly lead to major injuries had her body's recovery rate not kept up.

Which it fortunately did, somehow seeming to get even stronger for some reason.

The results of this cycle of Nana breaking down her body and it rebuilding itself even stronger pretty much every other day combined with her body entering a growth spurt quickly made itself apparent as her strength practically exploded, even slightly surpassing Chang-hoon's.

She had also began body hardening sessions with Somchai after he taught, and was satisfied with, her grasp of the basics by having her punching, kicking, elbowing and kneeing progressively more solid items starting with a soft punching bag. He also had her strike at sand filled buckets with her hands in various configurations and techniques like palm, back of the palm, side of the palm, heel of the palm, hammer arm and fingertips.

As for the rest of her body, Somchai had gotten a couple of arnis sticks which he used to repeatedly strike at her body, though he was very clear that she was to tell him immediately if she felt that it was too painful, much to his consternation since she never did leading to him having to keep a sharp eye on her, since body hardening was a gradual process. Doing it to the point of hurting yourself may lead to faster results, however, you will eventually pay for them later.

It was also here that Somchai ended up having to re-evaluate Nana since although he very quickly found out that she was stubborn as a mule and would never tell him to stop by herself, her body was also somehow keeping up in equal measure leading to her quickly graduating from a soft punching bag to progressively tougher ones followed by hard hands pads, eventually reaching padded metal poles until she ended up ultimately removing the padding entirely.

Meanwhile, the sand was gradually replaced with smooth marbles followed by metal slag and then concrete blocks with a towel laid on top before also eventually ending up with the metal pole.

Though thankfully for Somchai's sanity, her body slightly lagged behind in terms of hardening, though whether that was because he wasn't doing it hard enough or because of something else he didn't know, either way, his arnis sticks were currently replaced by a bundle of thin, tightly bound metal cables.

Chang-hoon and Somchai had both gotten very familiar with bruised limbs during this time while trying to teach her since hitting Nana now was like punching a boulder clad in human skin, though Somchai fared somewhat decently compared to Chang-hoon since he had already hardened his body since he was practically a toddler.

Though, much to their confusion, while she was also making rapid progress in terms of technique, she was also starting to incorporate weird movements they hadn't seen nor taught her before into their spars more often than not catching them off guard.

The less said about Jonah the better, even if Nana decided to just stand in place for the whole spar, he would probably still be the first to tap out. This lead to him also starting to harden his body with Somchai's help, though he was in no way progressing as fast as Nana no matter how much he prayed.

Chang-hoon, Somchai and to a lesser extent, Jonah, had also felt Nana's presence and movements getting much sharper throughout the years, only increasing in intensity the more time passed. It wasn't like she changed much in temperament or behavior... they just felt a sort of inherent danger slowly integrating itself into her mannerisms despite not seeing any major differences externally.

This, unknown to them, was solely due to the amount of blood she had shed in the game. One of Nana's debatably strongest points was that she was very adaptable both due to her never-ending curiosity and also the potential to evolve ingrained in her bones, this was one of the reasons that she didn't blink an eye upon seeing such a harsh battlefield the first time she entered the coliseum, not to mention that she had no qualms about killing in the first place she had just never been in a situation in which it was needed.

The past two years, the vr technology had also developed rapidly thanks to both the participants, Nana being a big reason since she was so active in the game, and the upgraded facilities provided by the Chambers family.

Jonah had also gotten himself a vr device the first opportunity that presented itself.

About a year ago the first finished product, Fully Immersive Virtual Reality Helmet or 'FIVRH' for short, had even launched on the market throwing the world into disarray as a massive sea of customers, mostly young people and those acute enough to smell an opportunity for business, immediately swarmed the stores like sharks smelling blood practically setting a new record.

The FIVRHs were sold out half an hour after they hit the shelves and it would have been even faster if not for some people making a ruckus for one reason or another delaying the purchases.

Of course, when they were released to the public they still only contained the research instances created for the stress tests since one, they weren't game developers and two, the boss wanted to see others' creativity being brought to reality rather than doing some half-assed quickly put together game, [Hardcore] and [Daredevil] were also promptly locked on all the devices sold to prevent people from being stupid.

They may have had to sign a waver stating that the company would take no responsibility for adverse effects that may occur due to the realistic sense of pain, but it wasn't like they were going to push for it to happen either, not to mention that other games could just shut off the function entirely if they wanted to.

Though it wasn't long until the novelty wore off and some small vr games also started to pop up here and there. The most popular one by far being a type of social game where you could create your own avatar and interact with others in custom created environments ranging from a mundane streetwalk to a cafe on the moon or something equally fantastical.

Safe to say, it quickly exploded in popularity as soon as it was released. With people being able to shape their own appearances to their preferences on top of exploring mystical sights as much as they wanted either solo or with their friends, how could it not.

However, the release of genuine vr technology didn't only bring curious customers into it's borderline magical world, it also brought attention from the darker side of the coin.

There have been multiple rumors of hackers that were able to completely remove the lock on the [Hardcore] and the [Daredevil] difficulties on the devices and when they put out an offer to do the same on other vr devices for a price?

Well, there would always be someone curious enough to want to try it, evident by the cases of people entering coma due to pain overload sharply increasing just after it was announced, though it started slowly tapering off after the consequences were shown on the news.

Some of the people close to the victims had tried punching back and blaming the company for creating inhuman torture devices, however, the clause was very, very clearly displayed practically in the middle of the waver everyone had to sign to even get to take a vr device home so it fell flat.

Though now that people knew that it was actually possible to remove the lock, more and more people from the illegal side of things started congregating together creating a sort of vr version of the dark web/underworld illegally releasing multiple games with the lock removed entirely.

They even managed to somehow get the statistics of the pre-release stress test participants that took part in the developement, though they couldn't get anything more than the results since the company had taken an entirely hands off approach in terms of control.

Essentially, they could see the end results of all of their runs in the initial scenarios, however, the videos themselves only showed a white humanoid avatar resembling a blank faced mannequin going through the motions of the participants.

They did this because they didn't want to make the testers feel that they were monitored and hold back because they didn't want to be seen brutally murdering, although digital, very convincing humans, and although they couldn't really do anything with the footage itself except maybe upload it on some media sharing platform, it lead to the creation of what would eventually become an urban legend in the vr community.

While the first hacker to witness the videos, after slaving away for literal days in front of his computer to get through their security watched those white figures performing borderline inhuman physical feats in dozens of different scenarios and environments a large twisted smile slowly spread across his face as a crazy thought was born.

Wouldn't it be interesting to pit these monsters against each other?

This insane idea born from a deranged sense of sadistic desire to see bloodshed was, upon being proposed, quickly picked up and nurtured. Starting with a small group of like-minded individuals and ending with multiple hundreds of people working to make it a reality as soon as possible and now, after a year of relentless developement, countless hours of uninterrupted work, it was finished.

An arena type game permanently locked into the [Daredevil] difficulty with only a single rule, a very simple but brutal rule.

You are only victorious when your opponent is dead.

Welcome, monsters from all over the world!

Let the [Gauntlet of the Underworld] commence!