"Lao Shi, take me to mount Hasegawa," I told him. And with that, he flapped his wings quickly, flying ourselves to an extreme point of the map where I would complete my training quest, and grow stronger than ever before. I may even be able to match my strength with Kirito.

16:12 PM

Mount Hasegawa, 1st day of training

After a few hours of flying on the back of Lao Shi, we finally arrived. Mount Hasegawa was the widest mountain on the Akamaru mountain chain. There's was a particular thing about mount Hasegawa that made it stand out from the other mountains, according to Lao Shi. This mountain was a ki hotspot, one of many others that dot the landscapes of Aincrad's hundred kingdoms. The objective for the quest that we all received from that infernal update was the following: Go to X to get in touch with your inner Ki. In doing so, you will have activated a Ki bar right under the stamina bar. To do this, you will have to enter inside your soul and defeat your inner demon. It was an optional mission that didn't have to be done. I wondered exactly what that meant. I consulted Lao Shi about it, and he told me that I'll have to meditate to reach the center of my soul. With the information received, and my arrival in this barren area, my inventory filled with rabbit meat picked up from the grasslands, I was ready.

"Damn, meditating is harder than I thought," I said to myself out loud. No one was around, so it didn't matter what I said. I did like Lao Shi told me, and sat down, trying to control my breath. I did exactly that, but my mind always derailed from the objective in hand. I had no choice but to blow the whistle. After I blew it, the dragon dove through the clouds and landed elegantly.

"It's not working, Lao," I told him.

"I've got an idea. Show me all the food you've collected so far," he said, an evil grin stretching across his face. I had no choice but to oblige.

"Sure, I've got 200 rabbit legs right he- OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" I yelled hysterically as the dragon burnt all the food I placed before him.

"Hunger will make you concentrate. Trust me, my master did the same with me," he told me solemnly. I dropped to my knees and started crying.

"What will I eat now?" I asked sobbing. He looked at me like I was the dumbest monkey in a science convention.

"Nothing, that's the point, dumbass," he answered. "Now, stop calling me. A brother's gotta get some sleep once in a while," he said, and with that, took off to the skies.

"Damn you, damn you, DAMN YOU!" I yelled towards the sky. Well, I guess it can't be helped. I sat down in a lotus position and started meditating. These are gonna be two long months.

12:00 pm

Mount Hasegawa, 4th day of training

It's the 4th day of not eating anything, sitting in the exact same position for approximately 96 hours, minus all the hours spent stretching after each 12-hour sessions. The hunger was definitely getting to me. There was nothing else on my mind than my empty tummy, completely dissociated with my real life body, which most likely has been brought to the hospital and is on vitamins and nutrients, due to my seemingly comatose state. My stomach stopped growling about 48 hours ago, now replaced with a burning sensation stemming from the lack of food.

"Ommmmmmm," I said for the 50,000th time, trying to meditate. It was to no avail. I was going nowhere at this rate.

17:30 pm

Mount Hasegawa, 7th day of training

This would be the day. At least, that's what I kept repeating. I kept sitting in a lotus position, closing my eyes, controlling my breath. It was then it clicked. My hunger stopped. I felt no hunger. After this, I could feel my body dematerialize as everything turned black. I suddenly materialized into a black room. It was so dark I could hardly see past my stretched-out arm. After a second, the room suddenly turned bright. I was in my room, back in Kenya. The country I was forced to move into after living a great life in the states. The room, messy as always, had someone inside. That someone was me. He was sitting in my computer chair, immersed in whatever game he was playing. As I approached him, the game paused and he rotated my computer chair to face my direction. I sat there, grinning like a maniac.

"Who are you?" I asked him. He looked at me, inquiringly, as if I should have known. The truth is, I did know.

"Well, I'm you. Or at least, everything you would never want to become," he told me.

"Are you my inner demon?" I asked him. He smiled at me like the answer was obvious.

"It depends. Would you ever allow me to be?" he asked me, philosophically. I pondered the question for a few moments, before finally formulating an answer.

"You are what you are, inner demon," I told him, confused. What the hell is this, I never remember telling the game about my room.

"Oh, please. Call me Tony, or rather, call me Anthony," he said, using my real name. I staggered by the use of my real name.

"What the hell is this? How does this game know my real name? How does it know how my room back home looks like? HOW DOES IT KNOW ANY OF THIS?!" I shouted, now completely lost. This can't be... unless...

"You're not playing Martial Arts Online right now. You're interfacing with your mind. The Nerve-Gear has connected us in a way that you can directly communicate with aspects of our personality, but of course, you already knew that. I am you, after all. The only limit to what I know is what you know," he said. He was right. I knew all of that after analysing the situation a bit.

"So that means..." I began.

"... I'm an aspect of your personality, or rather, a manifestation of everything you loathe about yourself. Everything you would never allow yourself to become. I am the chaff to your wheat," he concluded.

"I see. In that case, there's nothing you can say that will make the both of us assimilate," I told him or it, honestly, I don't even know anymore. I knew what it wanted, after all, we are the same. He wants me to accept him as my primary personality, the will that will drive me from now on. Call it what you want, all I know is I'm not allowing it.

"How can you say that when you can't even get over your fear?" he asked me, spinning around on the chair as he did so saying it in a singsong voice.

"What fear?" I asked in honest confusion, before thinking for a second. I thought of the answer exactly the same time he uttered it.

"Me," he said, his smile widening with every second that passed. I looked at him, wondering what he was on to.

"You don't have to fear me, you know. Just do as I tell you. You wouldn't want Alice and the others to get hurt, now would you?" he asked me. I was shocked by the names.

"How do you know them?" I asked him, my hands shaking all the while. I immediately realised how stupid I was by getting surprised by that. He was me, anyway. There was nothing he knew that I didn't.

"Why wouldn't I? I'm you, dumbass," he clarified. I simply nodded as he continued. "You need me, you know. You need someone merciless to protect your friends and family because you know damn well that you are not a good leader. You wouldn't be able to handle more blood in your hands, now. Especially not after that episode, remember?" he said. Suddenly, we flashed back in front of the dreaded car accident. My sister lay across the street, a bloody trail following her scratched up body. A bit further from there lay the girl. The girl I'd wish to have forgotten for all these years, yet still haunt my dreams to this very day. I was in the car-wreck, uninjured. I was the uninjured one, not the girl, not my sister. My evil aspect and I were both onlookers in this horrible tragedy.

"You wouldn't want this to happen again, would you? After all, history does tend to repeat itself," he said, not even bothering to hide his ominous tone of voice. I pondered this long and hard, but suddenly I remembered my main objective.

"No," I whispered ever-so-silently. This raised my evil aspect's eyebrow slightly.

"Can't hear you, boy," he said, both of his hands in his pockets.

"No! I don't need you in my life at all!" I yelled with all my might. This got me a confused look from the aspect.

"Whaddya mean 'no'? Want your friends to die or sumthing? YOU NEED ME," he shouted, suddenly growing in size, his eyes completely shifting with red pupils and pitch black scleras. The setting we were in changed drastically as all lights were shut and now the only object in the vicinity was him in his monstrous proportions.

"I don't need you, nor do I want you. Anger leads to hate leads to suffering," I told it, completely ripping of Yoda. The fellow had a point.

"Don't kid yourself, boy! I can make you stronger than your wildest dreams!" he shouted, his voice deepening into a satanic frequency.

"You are made of everything I don't want to become. Assimilating with you is pointless. I don't need you at all. Begone, filth," I told it. He kept getting angrier and angrier, no longer focusing on appearing appealing.

"You fool! You haven't seen the last of me. I will never leave you alone" he shouted, and with that, he melted into a puddle of black viscous liquid. I walked over it to look at it.

"I'm here if you need me, Anthony. You may be able to suppress me, but you'll never get rid of me. Such is the way our souls work," it told me. Sensing that I was victorious, I tried waking up in Aincrad again. I sat down to meditate once again, trying to revert to my old body. After a few minutes, I opened my eyes, and noticed I was sitting on hard rock. I saw old mount Hasegawa and knew I was back. What I didn't expect to see was a haze of green emanating from the surface of the rocks. I checked the menu and saw that I had a ki bar: 250/250. I went to my skill list and saw it. 'Ki mastery 1/1000'. I was finally done. More importantly, I could finally eat. I summoned my whistle and called quickly for Lao Shi. He dove through the clouds like normally and landed in front of me. He looked at me analysingly before smiling in a warm way, very unlike his usually bombastic personality.

"Well done," he said as if he knew of my accomplishments without even having to hear it.

"Aw hell yeah!" I yelled, raising my fist high up in the air.

"No, swing bro," he said. I didn't understand his request at first.

"You deaf or sumthing? I said swing, bro!" he repeated. I understood it this time. He wanted me to punch him. I withdrew my hand and went for a linear palm slam. He raised his talons and absorbed all the impact with his palm.

"You stupid or sumthing? Use your ki, dumbass," he told me. I had ki, yes, but the true mystery now was how to use it.

"How do I do that?" I asked, confused. He sighed before he continued.

"Can you feel the ki surging through your body?" he asked me, deadpanned. I did feel something surge through my body the moment I returned to Aincrad. Perhaps this was the ki. In order to inspect further, I went down to take a lotus position so I could meditate. After doing so, I felt it this time. The feeling was weird. It was like an invincibility potion streamed through my blood, no, ki veins. I remember reading it somewhere, that people who believe in ki also believe that it runs through a certain vein in your body that connects all the four limbs to the heart. I could feel the vein. I could feel it running through me. The intangible, yet tangible entity that was ki. I tried manipulating it a little as currently all my ki was distributed equally through the body. I raised my right hand while still meditating. Hm, I wonder... my arm? I attempted to push the ki to my right arm by concentrating the area. I could feel all my ki reserve push towards my arm, and when I opened my eyes, it was covered by a golden haze emanating from it.

"Damn, bro! You're a natural," Lao Shi said as he observed my apparent talent. "Now punch me, dammit," he said impatiently. I promptly stood up and walked towards him. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my palm this time. I prepared for an open-hand palm slam and executed. Lao Shi absorbed the attack with his palm, and smiled this time.

"Man, that almost tickled. Congrats, bro, you did it, and it took just 7 days. The technique's a bit sloppy," he said smiling. I smiled too. Then, his face turned serious before giving me another training regime. He slammed the mountain floor with his claws, somehow raising a large pillar of stone a bit further from the impact zone. "Break that pillar and I'll get you some food, aight?" he asked.

"Fair enough," I said, looking at the size of that pillar. The dragon smiled, and with that, took off to wherever the hell he always went to that was above the clouds. His crib? I looked at the rock, no boulder, once again and tried comprehending its size. It was wider than a car and went up higher than a monolith. This was to be my task, then. To destroy this pillar with my bare hands.

OST: Rocky Theme Tune

"Get busy swimming or get busy dying," I said out loud to myself, shamelessly quoting Shawshank redemption. I filled my hand with ki before punching the rock. This left an imprint of my fist on it. My fist started hurting too. Damn, the pain dampener did disappear. What a bummer. I braced myself for a second punch, this time using only my palm. I charged up my entire hand, my first mistake, and attempted an attack. The handprint was apparent, but the pain in my wrist was unbearable. I cursed like a sailor before getting to my senses. I reflected on what I might have done wrong when it suddenly clicked. When I apply ki to specific body parts, they get hardened and are stronger. I didn't regard the wrist, even though it's a big part of the execution of the attacks. This time, I pumped ki into my wrist and to my palm only, to preserve ki and concentrate more of it in the affected areas. I went for another attack, this time causing a crack in the rock. The crack formed more cracks around it before a large area where I attacked it crumbled over. I looked at my ki bar, and it still read 250/250, most likely due to the area I was in. My active status effect was 200% ki regeneration, courtesy of the ki hotspot existing inside this mountain. I punched once again, shouting this time. It was a hyap or a war-cry. I slammed again, slowly digging through the pillar one attack after another.

"I CAN DO THIS, I-I CAN DO THIS!" I shouted as I kept slamming my palm at the stone, slowly digging through the layers of rock. I slammed again, this time charging the attack with all the stamina and ki that I had. I got through a good chunk of rock after that attack as it slowly started to crumble.

"I CAN DO THIS, FOR MY FRIENDS," I yelled as I slammed my palm again. The pillar finally started to break. A horizontal crack stretched out through the pillar. One more hit but gotta make this one count. I got the skill book from the inventory and tried searching for a certain technique that caught my eye once. Bingo. The spinning jump hook kick. I did a few practice runs before doing it to the stone pillar. I spun to the left and used my left leg to execute a high kick. I did the same, this time jumping. I felt the system assist guide my leg correctly both times. I felt I was ready this time. I prepared by charging up my left leg with ki, this time using all my reserves, depleting my ki completely. I kept a constant stream of ki flowing in my leg, before jumping while spinning to the left, then kicking the stone pillar dead-on at the front. Time seemed to stop for a moment before the pillar was completely obliterated. I stood up, looked towards the sky, and shouted with all my breath.

"I DID IT!", I yelled. I immediately saw my stamina bar and realised just how fatigued I was. I then fell down on the ground, as if I had just carried a mountain. I uttered the last words that I could utter before falling unconsciously.

"I did it," I whispered, lying on the ground.

Finally, I made a new chapter. Sorry if it took too long. I promise I'll release them faster. Please, follow, favorite and review if you liked the series and review it for more. The grammar in this chapter was a bit sloppy. I'll make sure to fix it when I get home.

Best Wishes,

Sherlock D Holmes