I could feel every beat of my heart, its rhythm as loud as a drum, steady as a march. My whole being pulsed with it, as if I'd just escaped a life-and-death simulation… or perhaps I truly had.
Leaning against the rough bark of a tree, I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling it rise and fall. I was alive. It had to have been a dream. Yet the system window flickering before my eyes told a different story. It was the answer I sought, and the one I feared.
"What the hell happened to me?" I muttered under my breath, the familiar weight of the world slowly easing the tension in my body. I looked around, but nothing had changed. The same forest surrounded me, the same open plains stretched ahead, untouched and still.
"Whatever that system place is, I'll have to go back if I want my weapons," I muttered, biting at my thumbnail. "But how the hell am I supposed to beat that clone?"
