Radical-9

CHAPTER 7: Edge

February 21^st, 2022

1:00 pm

Eldon charges at me again, sword in hand. I jump to my feet and slide to the side just before he can connect his attack. He stops moving on a dime and throws out his foot in a sweep. He rakes my feet up and I'm falling back to the ground before I can even breath. He turns quickly and kicks me in the stomach with his other leg, it feels like an anvil. I'm thrown against the walls of the arena, the semi-transparent force field. It stops me in my tracks as I hit it hard. I stand back to my feet, a little shaken up, raising Elcor above my head to slash downward at him. Before I know it he’s grabbing something off of his backside, a piece of his armor detaches, it turns out to be a large shield. My sword connects with the shield and bounces off with a clang. Waves of pain shoot up my arm as it rebounds. He uses my mistake against me. I see him slash his sword and then feel it only moments later. The cut seems to be delayed, an incision just underneath my ribcage, no blood spill, just the neon green stream of pixels. It hurts as if it were blood leaking out.

My health bar shows up, at first it goes down a quarter, but then it goes down another to half.

“What...you only hit me the one time?” I ask.

“My crystal here let's every one of my attacks hit for twice the damage, it lets me end such silly quarrels with fools like you fast. Better showmanship, don’t you think?” Eldon’s grin grows and he looks like a maniac. I realize that Eldon isn’t looking for just a win, he’s looking to completely destroy me. He wants me dead.

I raise Elcor, fixing my stance. I need to gain some traction here or else I'm done for. I take off with my heels against the ground, I start low as I go for an uppercut with my blade. Eldon raises his, slamming his shield against the blade of my sword, and in the next moment he rushes in on me, sending me to the ground. I can see his sword where I'd expect to see my arm, he's got me pinned to the ground. Eldon tosses away his shield, his grin intensifies like a wild creature. He goes to one knee, taking Oblivion in both hands, twisting it back and forth as if his sword were a stick, as if he were trying to start a fire inside of my body.

The pain is unimaginable, I can feel my muscles being twisted and stabbed, even though I know he is only hurting pixels. This is real, the pain I feel is immense. It is way more than anything I've ever felt. How has he managed to do that in a virtual world? I then look to the one thing I can see over my own face, dangling from Eldon's neck. His crystal. The thought flashes in my mind. He said his crystal is giving him this power and I have to disarm him somehow. I glance at my health bar and it’s dropped dangerously low. It is way below 30%, but the arena still stands, could it be that his status as a boss makes this fight override normal duel rules? I can’t move it at all, so what the hell am I supposed to do? It comes to me in a flash. I close my eyes and twist my right hand back, struggling to move it beyond the pain in my other arm. Elcor begins to glow.

“Hahaha! No sword skill can save you when you can’t even move your arm! You’re finished!” Eldon screams.

I turn my head to see Klein and Athena, their barrage on the arena hasn't stopped, their faces fraught with worry. Athena isn’t even trying to stop her tears now. I turn back over to Eldon.

“I…I” I try to say.

“What a pathetic excuse for your final words,” He cackles and lifts the sword a little and twists it.

As he does I use the momentary freedom he gives me and flick my right wrist, sending the glowing aura from Elcor to my left hand, the blue aura sword materializing between my fingers. I curve my left hand around, swinging the blue blade in a semicircle and knocking Oblivion out of my arm. The pain, while massive, stops it's immediate damage.

“You’re overconfidence in your abilities will be your downfall, Eldon,” I say, using his shock to kick him from underneath. His weight shifts out from under him, my legs are screaming as I push him off of me, the momentum of his armor carries him the rest of the way. He's much lighter without his shield attached to him. I stand to my feet, my left arm feels like it was mauled by a chainsaw. I can't move it. My hand up to my wrist is better, I can keep my grip on the aura sword. I jump up from where I was pinned down and begin running towards Eldon, adrenaline guiding my footsteps. My consciousness threatens to take me away, a darkness almost red hangs on the edge of my vision. I don't know if that's been programmed in or if the real world is bleeding into my vision.

You did fight well, but only after you stumbled to get your bearings together. You have potential man, but you need experience, and I'm not even talking about the in game kind.

I understand. I rush into battle without thinking. I understand what he meant, I need to fix that. I need to survive. I need to keep moving, if I stop I die. My body seems to move on its own, hunting down Eldon as if he'd been the course of my blades all along. He makes it to his shield first, he's able to throw it over himself, hiding behind it. I reach him, my adrenaline-filled momentum crashes into him, sending him into the force field behind him. He keeps his grip on his shield, holding on for dear life. I cross my blades, one of steel, one of pure energy. They touch and create a brilliant white glow between the both of them. I slice into the shield as if it was made out of jelly, it falls to pieces. It seems the attack had not only pierced his shield, but his entire being. His body shows the mark of a giant star carved onto it.

He lets out a final scream, something unlike any of his other manic screams, this one seems...human, desperate. It distorts as he shatters into millions of pixels that float upward. It doesn't leave my thoughts, his scream. The force field vanishes and the arena returns to the earth. Klein and Athena run over to me.

“Dex! I can’t believe you did it! You’ve survived!” Klein says.

I look at both of them.

“Yes, but at what cost?” I say, looking over at Athena.

“I…I didn’t know this world had changed him this much…I don’t know what to say.”

I cringe. I don’t know what is happening. My vision bursts and I see deep reds. Something's popped, the reds from the edges of my vision fill into the rest of it. Everything sounds muffled.

“H-y D-x! Are you al---t?” Klein seems to say.

I don’t hear what Athena says, her mouth just moves.

I look over to my health bar. It’s at 1%. I look down to my chest and my arm, they're still glowing with the pixels, but slowly getting dimmer and dimmer. My life is fading. I place my hand up to my head, it feels weightless. I fall back, almost as easy as breathing, as letting go. My hand reaches out towards Klein and Athena almost by habit. Time seems to slow down exponentially, everything slows and then the slows begin to slow. I see their faces turn from one of concern to ones of panic, the world seems to freeze completely on them now, panicked. My eyes fall shut and I feel nothing. I won the battle.

My eyes open, slowly, it hurts too much to do it too fast. It seems almost instantaneous since I closed them, like a single moment's passed. I’m in an all-white room. I can’t tell what is above me or even below me. It’s all one uniform shape, one uniform entity. A couple of seconds later I realize the room isn’t actually all white, it is just painted white on the walls. The floor is a sort of a copper-like color. I seem to be in a sort of hospital room. There is a table at the bedside, but no windows. I catch a glance at my health bar, it’s full. And seeing as I still have a health bar...I'm still in the game. It’s true then. I’m not dead…but how? At the side of the bed I’m resting in I see Athena.

She is sleeping, her head propped up on the edge of the bed. How can she bear the sight of me? I killed her brother. This time...this time I knowingly broke my own rule. I killed Eldon. Maybe if I could've convinced him...maybe if I got some sense into him we could've had a powerful ally. The most powerful, perhaps, he was the highest level player even if he was a jerk.

I close my eyes and all I can see is my last sight of me falling back. I see her face, worried for me. I hear Eldon's scream, that desperate wail. It hurts too much. I struggle to get out of the bed, everything aches, especially my right arm, I still cannot move it. The adrenaline has long since evacuated my blood stream. I can't even move my hand anymore. Even though I'm at full health I feel like shit. So much disconnect, it's like so little time went into the actual game, like all of it went into constructing the monstrosity.

So much is still a mystery, though. Where did Eldon receive that crystal, or even Oblivion for that matter? Were they bonuses he got from beta, or did he receive them for picking up the job as a boss? Why did he change? Was that also an effect of his role as a boss? So many unanswered questions and there is not enough time, not enough brainpower to even begin considering why. I move to slide out of the bed,

“Don’t think of just wandering off, I hardly think you could make it out of here without collapsing. You've been out of it for a few days,” A muffled taunt from Athena, she seems to have woken, or maybe she's been awake for a while now.

I stop.

She picks her head up and yawns, and then finally moves hers away. She walks over to the other side of the bed and sets me back, sitting on one edge of the bed. “Why are you here?” I ask, lying back in the bed. Her face displays all kinds of hurt, it tears me up inside. “I mean like...you should hate me, I won that duel. You know the consequences of it as well as I do. Your whole reason for coming in here...” I try to keep my voice as level as possible, but I cannot help the rising amount of guilt from pouring out.

“I…I’m glad you won,” she quietly mutters. “My brother changed in here, he became violent. If...if he did that to other people, to the other players that he was planning on bringing to the second floor...” I keep quiet, but slowly nod, “...then I'm glad that you stopped him,” she finishes, a tear comes to her eye.

“I'm sorry it happened, if there was another way I would have definitely taken it,” I say.

She takes in a deep breath. “I think it has to do with him and that crystal. It was the only thing that dropped from him when he…died,” Athena explains.

“Yeah, it doubled his damage output and let him hurt me outside of the duel. I think he sort of blended the two realities together with it, I got hurt for real in this virtual world,” I say.

“Oh?”

“It's why my arm is so fucked up,” I say.

“Does it hurt now?” She looks over as if to examine it, but hesitates over my arm.

“Feel free, it's not like I can feel it,” I say.

“I...no, I'm sorry, I shouldn't” She picks her hand back.

“I can't feel it, which means I don't think I'll be doing that sword skill for a time,” I say.

“What was that, anyway? I hadn't seen anything like it, that bright light, I mean,” She asks.

“I don't know, those last few minutes kind of just happened, I don't really remember how or why, they just did,” I say, looking away.

“Klein said he remembered seeing crystals like the one he had in the beta. There were eight of them, he called them Keystones. He didn't mention what they were for, though. He left to go check on something, I assume it has to do with the Keystone,” She explains.

“So, these Keystones, do you think that the other bosses have them? Or maybe they're scattered around the world?” I ask.

“I don't know, it's anybody's guess at what they do or where they are.”

“Maybe they could be what let's us get out of here, find all the keystones go beat Jack Adata, kind of deal?” I ask.

There is a knock on the door. Athena and I turn to face Klein as he appears, in his hand is the Keystone.

What is it about this stone that I...desire so much?