“Oh my God! Holy shit! Iris, save me!” Matthew panicked and was about to run away, when he noticed that the woman totally ignored him and started sprinting over to the other side of the arena. After that, he looked at his own holographic card in the corner of his vision.

[Summoner: Matthew Leblanc
ID Code: Trashmob-707
Rank: Unranked
Level: 2
Experience: 8/10
Mana: 2/2
Cards: 15
Description: A pathetic loser who did absolutely nothing to earn his place as a Summoner.]

“Wait, I got credit for that anyway?” He turned around and noticed that Iris’ left eye had literally exploded. Copious amounts of blood were dripping from the socket and she had fallen to her knees in pain.

Matt hurried over to her and reached out a hand to help her up, but she screamed “Fuck off! Agh~! Don’t touch me! Shit, I lost my concentration… I don’t think I can do much else in this match. You’re on your own. Just wait till they kill each other and finish off whoever makes it over here, okay?”

“Yeah, shit, I’m sorry…” He sighed, “I admit it, okay? I’m a pussy. I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid fighting and violence. Then all of a sudden-”

“Shit happens.” Iris struggled to stand and then grabbed onto his left arm to avoid falling. After leaning against his side, she whispered “I was the same way too. Whole life was peaceful, then outta nowhere… When I saw my sister’s corpse, something in my mind just snapped. Like I was replaced by someone else… Something else. Something much darker. A monster that wanted to hunt down and massacre every last one of those filthy fuckers who defiled Alicia! Those demons who took her from me!”

She coughed a bit, then looked up into Matt’s dark-brown eyes asking “Are you seriously fucking crying right now?”

“I’m sorry! I’ve just been through a lot lately!” Matthew complained, then gazed at the blood-soaked Asian woman with brass knuckles. She had several stab wounds and cuts on her body, but she was still able to fight.

“No one controls me!” She roared while charging towards Iris and Matt. The furious woman threw the meat-cleaver out of her left hand and it plunged into Iris’ left shoulder. Which caused her to drop the pristine katana onto the ground and groan in pain.

However, the orange-haired girl didn’t fall. She looked up at Matthew again with her only remaining eye and growled “You better summon me again soon.”

Then Iris pushed off of him, grabbed the broken katana with her right hand and threw it towards the Asian woman. Although she wanted to dodge the slow and obvious attack, she couldn’t move at all. In fact, she reached out and grabbed the handle against her will, then stabbed it into her own throat… twice.

At that same moment, Iris directly exploded into meat-paste and bones. One of her ribs flew out and stabbed into Matt’s left side. He shouted “Agh~! What the hell?!” as he collapsed onto the filthy ground.

Then the number on his left hand instantly rose up to ‘29’. Of course, he was in far too much pain to notice that. However, it was impossible for him to ignore the childish voice that announced “Oh wow~! That was pretty nifty, huh?! Congrats, congrats kiddo~! Now send in da burrs~! Muhuhahahaha~! Bonus~ round~! Hyahaha~! *Snort!* Hehehe~!”

A huge grizzly bear appeared in each of the ten empty cells and rushed out. They first growled and roared at each other, some fighting, while others just started eating the corpses. However, the one that appeared in Matt’s cage immediately charged towards the screaming man. He threw the blood-soaked rusty katana, but it missed. Then he picked up the sharpest katana and tried to stab at the sprinting beast.

***

“Gah~! Fucking shit, goddamn it! Argh~!” He opened his eyes and immediately started flailing around on the bed, cursing vehemently. However, once he looked around and realized that he wasn’t being eaten by a bear anymore, he let out a long sigh.

It was early in the morning, but the hospital was still just as active as last night. People were constantly yelling, groaning, screaming, crying and talking, so his outburst wasn’t particularly strange.

Since he was hungry, thirsty and needed to urinate, he decided not to head back to the Private Server right away. There was something strange however, “Why does it seem like… Is there some kinda time differential between reality and Hell?”

[If you are asking if there is a temporal differential between Chaotica’s Coliseum 3 and Old Earth Online Servers, then no. They are synchronized. However, since you were unconscious in one game and dead in the other, you returned to the state of ‘Sleep’ automatically. When your body was required to awaken, you woke up feeling as if only a moment had passed.]

“Guess that makes sense.” As he was getting up out of bed, a young red-headed, chubby female nurse entered the room. When she saw him, she immediately rushed over and helped him up.

“How are you feeling?” She asked him, as she noticed that the bandages on his face were blackened and obviously needed to be changed. She wondered “How long has it been since they changed your dressing? Has anyone been in here to check on you all night?”

Matthew shrugged, “I’m not really sure… I was sleeping most of the time. Why, what’s wrong?”

“You were shot in the face and had major surgery the other day. There’s a serious risk of infection, so you need to have your bandages changed frequently. Sit down and let me change them for you real quick…”

He sighed and followed her instructions, but still muttered “I really gotta go to the bathroom.”

“You’re a big boy, you can hold it.” She chuckled, then began removing the bandages. It took her a few minutes to clean the wound off and put new dressings on, then he was finally able to head over to the bathroom. He went to check on his mother after that, who was actually awake.

“Matty~! Baby, I was starting to worry about you. Have you had breakfast yet? They brought me all this food and I can’t eat it all by myself.” His mother was playing with her cellphone and had her glasses on. There was a plastic tray resting on the bars of her bed, with several bowls of chicken noodle soup and two glasses of orange juice.

“I was just about to eat something…” He walked over, pulling his IV rack into the room with him. Then he closed the door and walked over to the side of the bed. Matt grabbed the untouched glass of orange juice and started drinking it. A few seconds later he asked “How are you feeling Mom?”

“There’s a tube in my cooter and I had to poop in a bucket, how do you think I’m feeling?!” After venting a bit, she admitted “Considering that I was shot in the tummy three times the other day, I’m actually feeling pretty good right now. The doctor said that he was amazed at how fast I was healing. If things keep going this way, I’ll be out of here by next weekend.”

“Good… That’s great. The sooner we can go home, the less money we’ll have to pay for the hospital expenses.” He picked up the bowl of soup that his mother hadn’t eaten from and held it in his left hand, using a plastic spoon to eat it slowly.

“Money money money, is that all you ever think about?” Anaishe scolded, then she showed him her phone and said “Look, you worry so much about money. When my friends at church heard about what happened, they started crowdfunding for us… To help us pay our doctor bills. Now look! It’s only been a day and they’re already over ten-thousand dollars!”

Matthew gasped, while his mother had a smug expression. Then she told him “You just need to worry about recovery. Don’t let all your worries and anxiety cause your injury to worsen. And don’t let the Devil in either. Just keep praying and everything will work out. God always has a plan.”

 

*Author’s Note*

 

Gotta admit, when I read “And don’t let the Devil in either.” while editing the chapter, I chuckled a bit… I think we all know why. Anyway, I’m gonna advertise “Observing the End” again lol. Check it out if you want, though anyone who read this AN, probably already read OtE anyway…

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