Dante was breathing heavily as he ran along. He was not even slightly winded, but the pressure of the incoming fight got to him despite this being a virtual world. That was the value of virtual worlds after all: their near-perfect realism that could immerse a person fully.
In this moment, Dante likely understood how those brave young men who crashed onto the beaches of Normandy felt. The fear, the excitement, the bloodlust, the madness – it all surged through his mind and ended up making his eyes bloodshot, just like every man with him who was also running to fight. Given their speeds, they immediately clashed with the enemy troops and began spraying blood and limbs all over the place.
Dante was squeezed forward until he came face to face with a woman with a very thin and unattractive body that was not very feminine in shape, but her red eyes and bloodied uniform showed that she was not to be trifled with.
She screamed and swung a sword at Dante, aiming to bisect him from the top down in a show of maddened strength. Dante's heart leaped to his throat, and he parried clumsily, panicking foolishly.
Dante should theoretically perform better than this, but he was too immersed, too caught up in the moment. He used the Testing World to kill some bandits that robbed a mall and only vomited after, but now, he could barely deal with a single fighter who was not even using combat skills.
However, it was the same theory as students who study hard and can recall information easily suddenly going blank in the exam hall and unable to remember anything.
No amount of preparation, none, would prepare you for the execution. You could be like an overly cautious hero and prepare endlessly for the final moment, only to fail miserably. It has happened before and will happen many times until the universe comes to an end.
This was why training was important. This also highlighted the importance of virtual worlds.
To Dante, all he saw was a woman slightly smaller than him who was covered in blood, swinging her sword while screaming and cursing at him, trying to end his life and looking like she would thoroughly enjoy the prospect of doing so.
Growing up in the relatively peaceful Earth of the 21st century, Dante could not fathom such raw hatred. Social hatred he could understand, as the internet and social media were littered with different people of different factions spewing hatred at each other day by day.
But raw, martial hatred like this? He was overwhelmed. This was a 21-year-old lad who had never been mugged, kidnapped, or entered any truly dangerous situation. The worst were some school fights with fellow boys, but how could that be compared to this?
Killing monsters in an Apocalypse World was different; those were nonhuman. It was not morally wrong to kill them, and he always had the advantage. Because of the presence of superpowers, he also was always able to disable the feeling of immersion and remind himself why he was there.
Now, he was just too invested. If he didn't snap out of this illusion, he would suffer from real trauma after being killed by this woman, even if he later realized he was in a virtual world.
A lot of people ignorantly assumed that they could easily start killing and switching up their actions to be ruthless if they changed societies if they transmigrated or regressed or gained some power.
It was obviously easy to say that when you were lying on your bed while rubbing your stomach and flipping through your phone, but in such a situation, most would perform worse.
Even right now, such fellows would not even be able to cut the head of a chicken or goat if it was presented before them, clucking or bleating with fear and unwillingness to die, even if it was for their afternoon meal.
Dante still managed to survive on instinct. He might not have specific combat training, but what he did have was able to make him slightly better than his peers and especially this untrained woman who was hurriedly conscripted to defend her homeland against the evil Indra Kingdom who was invading.
She had seen countless friends from her village die in the previous fights, so her heart was filled with hatred and madness, which overrode her fear and gave her strength. She too had been like Dante when the army assembled, and even judging from the splotch on her thighs, she had likely peed herself when the Vanguard Shock Troops made the initial charge.
However, after blocking her attacks for a while, Dante reacted.
One thing about men who grew up in peacetime was that if suddenly met with violence, they were more likely to panic and be confused. However, after feeling pain and fear for a bit, their aggression would erupt as the adrenaline pumped and their bestial instincts would arise.
Men who lived in conflict were used to this and even trained to harness it, so it was more controlled. However, for those like Dante, it was like an explosion of power as they would become stronger and faster at the cost of wasting their stamina.
'Why? Why? Why?? Why does she want to kill me?' Dante roared in his heart as rage and fury surged outwards, making his fear and confusion dissipate. 'Since she wants to kill me, I will kill her as well!'
This was the prevalent thought in Dante's mind as he counterattacked brutally. The fury-filled woman was shocked by Dante's strength and immediately lost an arm when Dante swung his halberd at a clever angle.
Even if he wasn't perfectly trained, he had been fighting monsters for a while, so he was not a noob at using the weapon in his hand. He might not have systematic techniques, but then again, there was nothing complex about smash, pierce, slice, cut, and stab.
The moment she lost an arm, the woman immediately screamed in pain and sobered up. Her bloodlust and madness disappeared and were replaced by fear and shock. She had actually slaughtered so many people just now, and so many of her friends were killed.
Before she could even reflect on her actions, she saw the red-eyed Dante raise his halberd to cut her in half. Immediately she panicked and screamed for Dante to spare her life.
In this moment, she could not think of anything but wanting to live, and she would do anything Dante asked for at this moment, without hesitation, as long as she could live. Coming down from madness and being thrust into pain and fear, her survival instinct was overpowering everything else in her mind.
However, just like how she had been lost in a sea of killing intent and slaughtered many other men as well as women who begged for their lives, so too was she cut in half from brain to groin, both halves splitting and flying far away thanks to the force of Dante's swing.
Dante panted deeply as his eyes were slowly losing their red color and his rage simmered down. Immediately he woke up from his immersion/trance then remembered who he was and why he was here.
Achieving this much-needed clarity, Dante could almost feel like his mind was purified and he had reached a level of maturity he could never have touched while living on the peaceful Earth.
When he looked around, he noticed that everyone around him was fighting their own foe and no one had time for him yet. This allowed Dante a slight window of time to deal with something that was important and would likely change him forever.
He had encountered a crossroads of life and had to pick a
branching path.
He could lie to himself and place himself under the illusion that these were only characters in a virtual world, so killing them did not mean anything and in fact, killing them was okay.
Or he could admit to himself that real or virtual was irrelevant and he was killing sentient beings like himself and would keep killing them as long as it suited his purposes.
If he chose the former, he could still maintain some level of 'innocence' and convince himself he was a 'good guy,' that he was only doing this to train himself and he hadn't actually harmed anyone nor would he become a callous killer later on.
If he chose the latter, he would simply accept the real nature of his actions and break the final barrier in his subconscious that affected his morality towards killing. After that, it would be easy for him to kill in reality, and whether he became a ruthless killer, a casual killer, or a reserved killer would depend on his future experience and life choices.
This was a necessary choice anyone who had grown up in a peaceful and non-violent society would have to make after performing their first kill, regardless of how the kill was made, either lie to yourself that it was manslaughter or accept that it was murder.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢