Appraisal

After taking down my first opponent so easily I was ready to start looking for a challenge. 

I wanted to fight with one of the other people who had managed to stand up to and distract the mecha when I’d been knocked down, giving me the chance to take it out, but I had no way to search them out. 

I also had a feeling that, since they were there to see me deal with the Mech first handed, they were actually less likely to try and hunt me down than anyone else who was currently present in the Battle Royale. 

They knew what I was capable of. They had seen my strength, felt the heat of my beam attacks as they scorched through the air and ate through the hull of the metal giant. 

[Really waiting for someone to put you on your arse and shut up that cockiness you’ve got going on,] The AI sighed. 

I decided to ignore the artificial construct. 

There wasn’t any point in dwelling on the negativity of a creature who was living rent-free in my head. Instead, I chose to look around the area that I had been deposited into by the portals up above. 

The easiest way to get a better look at my surroundings would be getting to somewhere that was high up. 

I was in a relatively flat area, it was wooded but there weren’t any hills for me to gain a vantage point on. I’d have to climb up a tree if I wanted to know what was going on. 

I’d loved climbing trees as a kid, but as I’d gotten older and I’d gotten a little bit more unfit doing stuff like that was something I did less and less often. 

Fortunately, with both my increased strength and speed in my new body, scaling the tallest tree in my immediate area was simple enough. 

I scrambled up the side of the tree and poked my head out of the leaves. 

From my vantage point, I could see that fighting was going on all over the arena. I couldn’t see everywhere, at one point there were even mountains blocking my view.

 From the areas I could see, though, there were multiple places that were enveloped in thick black smoke as fresh explosions tore through the landscape. One location was covered in a thick layer of ice, and another part of the forest looked much denser than the rest. I could only assume that those were the locations of two of the contenders who had helped me take down the mech. 

I hopped down from the top of the tree and landed deftly on my feet. 

[So what now, you go to one of those locations looking for a fight?] The AI asked. [Do I even really need to tell you how stupid of an idea I think that is?]

I continued to ignore the AI. It didn’t need to tell me how stupid it thought the idea was because I knew how stupid it thought the idea was. I also didn’t care. I was one of the strongest people in the Battle Royale, and I was going to act like it. 

It felt like the AI was rolling its eyes in the back of my skull, not that it had physical eyes to actually roll. 

I set off in the direction of the frozen landscape at a sprint. I wasn’t running as fast as I could, but my steps were still strong enough to cut gouges out of the ground beneath me. 

It was exhilarating to move so quickly. I was barely able to sidestep out of the way of trees as they came my way. It was like I had become the Flash or something, I could even simulate throwing lightning bolts by blasting things with my energy beams. 

[Dive to the ground right now!] The call from my AI took my off guard and I didn’t so much dive to the ground as I did trip over. 

Moving at over a hundred miles per hour and then tripping in the middle of a densely packed forest wasn’t the best of ideas. I tumbled through the grass and smashed through trees, cutting through the thick wooden trunks and felling them as if they weren’t even there. 

I must have skidded for almost a hundred meters before coming to a stop. 

I stood and brushed myself off, I hadn’t been injured but I was a little bit confused at what had caused the AI to suddenly freak out as it had. 

[I freaked out because an attack was coming your way that not even your impressive strength and defences would be able to deal with,] The AI said, this time it sounded genuinely worried. 

“What do you mean, I don’t see anything…” I muttered, scouring the tree line. 

[Dive to the left, now!] The AI yelled again. 

I did exactly what it told me to and dove as far to the left as I could. This time I saw the attack. A strange bubble of warped space sliced through the area I had just been standing. 

It didn’t seem to have any physical impact on the world around it, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what would happen if the sphere actually managed to hit me. 

“You’ve got impressive reflexes, human,” A voice came from the gloom of the forest. “But they won’t be enough to stop you.” 

One moment the space in front of me was empty, the next there was what I could only describe as a six-foot-tall tentacled monster standing before me. It seemingly moved faster than my eyes could keep track of, which so far had been impossible to even imagine. 

One of the tentacles lashed out at me and slapped me across the head. It didn’t hurt, the creature wasn’t stronger than me, but it did send me spiralling through the air once again. 

Spiralling. Until all of a sudden, it felt like the world had slowed to a crawl and I was hanging there, unable to move at all. 

Somehow I had been completely frozen.