Even Further Beyond [Complete]

With an unceremonious thud, a nameless man lands harshly on the floor of the barracks. A few of the warriors milling about spare him a glance, as if eyeing a piece of meat, but as he groans and pushes himself up from the floor interest quickly wanes. He stands up, taking a stooped but stable stance, keeping his head on a swivel. Not that it would save him, since only a moment later, a piercing horn sounds, and a voice resonates through the huge hall he'd been dropped into.

"The next round starts in 30 minutes! Gather your equipment, prepare yourselves, and pray to your ancestors!"

The next round? The next round of what? The nameless man quickly looks around the crowd that surrounds him, which has exploded into activity, the gruff personages donning armor, grabbing weapons from chests by the racks of beds which lined the walls, even several flashes of light and odd sounds as warriors presumably activate magical items or techniques. The man considers what he has at his own disposal, remembering his introduction to this strange land. It is at that moment that another loud voice screams, seemingly directly into his ear, "Get moving, idiot! I know better places to find loot than fighting scrubs like these, and if we move quickly we might be able to escape before whoever's guarding this rabble notices one less prisoner."

The voice is instantly familiar. It is his own, albeit burdened with age and wisdom. His Reincarnation, he can only assume. He follows his own advice, and tries to weave his way through the roiling horde, away from the direction he heard the horn come from and towards a gate he can see past the heads of the throng. He can feel a sliver of power in his body, flowing through his veins and pumping in muscles, though can't tell what exactly it is with his attention focused on making his way through the crowd. Fortunately, he isn't capable of really making waves among warriors of this strength even if he tried, so his passage goes unnoticed. Or, so he hopes...

He reaches the gate with a few minutes to spare, he estimates, and noticed himself running faster than he ever did before once he'd gotten past most of the people. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop a woman with a shocking presence from appearing through a whirlwind strong enough to knock the nameless man on his ass the instant he stepped through the gate. "I see we have a volunteer for the first match." She speaks with a cold contentment, though her face is all but expressionless. "Try not to die too quickly." With that quip, the woman radiates an aura of icy wind cold and fast enough that it feels like it will rip the man's flesh from his bones, and shoots down the hallway at incredible speed, the man dangling from her arm like flag in the wind.

"This woman's a monster. Stronger than an adult dragon, even. This place must be massive, I didn't feel even a wiff of something like this earlier. I guess that escape plan wasn't fated to succeed."

The man is a little surprised by his Reincarnation's fatalism, but most of his mind is preoccupied with trying to hold his body together in the face of the wind battering it. Another small part notices that, despite the woman's mind-blowing speed, they travel for several seconds before slowing down, and another few seconds before coming to stop at a barred gate, where he once again is thrown to the grown like so much meat and can only watch as the woman disappears into the whirlwind.

"Get yourself up on your feet, back into that thing you called a stance. If we're not getting out of here without a fight, might as well get serious."

Again taking his own heed, the nameless man takes a few breaths to settle himself and get into a reasonably stable posture. Time passes slowly, until another horn sounds, and the bars of the gate in front of him slide into the ceiling, and the shimmering force-field he hadn't previously noticed fades away as well. A gust of air roughly shoves him out the gate and into a wide arena. The lack of stadium seats feels dissonant somehow, but far off at the rim of the arena there is a box that seems like it might be holding a small crowd. Looking back down to the ground, he sees what must be his enemy, a hulk of a man, covered in scars and radiating a palpable aura of weight. He shouts, seemingly to no one in particular, "Ha! You give me a weakling as my first fight. I'd be insulted if I thought you put any thought into these matches!" About midway through his aimless speaking, he begins to run towards the nameless man, his speed and aura growing quickly, until almost in the blink of an eye he is there, a swing of his heavy blade angled perfectly to cleave through the nameless man's neck slicing through the air as time seems to grind to a halt. The man can feels waves of mortal peril lapping at the edge of his mind, the tide rising to swallow him up as the blade continues to approach. Then, something in him snaps, time seems to stop entirely, and the world becomes pain. The nameless man commands his body to move, and it feels like he's pushing his way through a mass of razor blades while being dunked in hydrochloric acid, but his body obeys. He agonizingly steps around the sword swing, and marshals all his willpower to bring his arm up and attempt a simple punch to his opponents throat. It is a success, he supposes, though rather rebounding off of his opponent's thick muscles as he expected, his fist parts his flesh as though he were pushing it through slightly warm jello.

Before he knows it, the nameless man has decapitated his opponent. He expects to feel nauseous, even to puke, but as the world returns to normal speed, he collapses to his knees out of weakness, not revulsion. No, it actually felt pretty good, despite all the pain. Glancing to the corpse he's created, he ponders what to harvest, and going from the man's physique, the nameless one decides on strength, and quickly feels his body bolstering while the corpse withers with unnatural speed.

Then, he's picked up again, by another person who moves on an icy whirlwind, perhaps somewhat less bone-chilling than before, and deposited back into the barracks a moment later. His older self speaks, but he doesn't pay attention. Instead, he slumps over into a nearby bed and allows himself some rest.