With my gaze on the white floor, I started reminiscing about my past.

The first time I was truly introduced to violence and the power it held was when I first found myself in the facility.

I had no friends, and I was neither formidable nor obedient, so I was a target. A perfect one at that. A target no one cared for. A target who could not fend for himself and had nobody to help him.

'What a beautiful world it is that we live in. Others not only don't help but go as far as to laugh and help your oppressors,' I thought with a mix of amusement and spite.

I never felt strong emotions during my early years, but after a while I realized just how bad I had it and just how good my life could have been, and there was nothing that could make me angrier. I was angry all the time. I could not sleep because of my anger. All I could do was fantasize about something more, something better. No, I could do more, and once I realized that, I got to work.

'Training hurts. It hurts so much, but you don't want to quit, so you keep doing it. Training is torture. Nobody likes it. Even masochists only like pain they can control, but if you have to do something, you're not really in control," a young voice echoed in my mind.

It seemed like I was back in my young body, hearing my past thoughts.

'Crying is something that is thought of as a coping mechanism, and a completely healthy one at that, but I've always despised the feeling. To me, the inability to control and manage one's own emotions in a way to be able to not cry or irrationally lash out in anger has always been something to be ashamed of.'

'However, when you reach a certain point where you have to either stop torturing yourself or allow yourself to cry while you continue, what do you do? Nothing. You stay like you are, and you push past what your body tells you.'

'Do you think the people who stand at the top were designed to do that? No, of course they weren't. The ones who stand at the top may have tremendous talent, but they would just be among the very talented people if they didn't do one simple thing.'

'To be at the top, it's a necessity to push past what you were made for. You have to walk over the lines that were set for humans. Until you do that, you will never be the best. So push, Akir. Push!' The young voice inside my head screamed, and at that moment, I regained feeling in my body and my vision went dark.

I could once again feel my skin being torn and bitten, but this time, it wasn't a negative feeling. Far from it. The pain felt exhilarating. I felt an adrenaline rush incomparable to anything I had ever felt before. My hands shook, and my heart beat profusely.

My eyes shot open, and my muscles flexed. I pushed myself off the ground with an unknown number of undead weighing on me and quickly transitioned from laying on my stomach to my back in the space I had created. I then pulled my extended legs towards my torso and managed to get my knees in the middle of me and the pile of undead. I pushed with my legs and arms, and once the gravity center of the pile tilted enough, I managed to get the pile off of me.

However, this wasn't the end. The adrenaline was still in effect, and I was furious.

Some of the undead were still on me, so I pushed them off of me with full force, and they flew into the air. The undead weren't as heavy as normal people, so moving around a couple of them was an easy task.

I got onto my feet before any undead could get on top of me again and immediately sliced up the ones that were trying to reach me.

I then jumped onto the pile of undead that had yet to be dismantled and started to stab, kick and punch anything I could get my hands on.

I grunted loudly as I demolished the undead in a fit of rage. There was no clear reason for me to be angry, but what I felt was undoubtedly fury.

The undead seemed to be able to regenerate, but they did it slowly. I didn't know if they felt pain, but on the off chance they did, I wanted to make them feel it. Even if they regenerated, I wanted them to feel it. They had to suffer.

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Something pulled me from behind in an attempt to get me off of its friends, but I elbowed it in the head hard enough to make it stumble and fall off of the pile and show no signs of moving again.

I then kept cutting the corpses under me into pieces. I liked imagining them being conscious and suffering through all of my attacks in horrible pain, wishing to die but unable to due to their regenerative powers.

The undead kept trying to approach me while I did what I did, only to receive injuries that would be considered lethal if they were humans.

My anger started to show signs of fading, or maybe it was just the adrenaline starting to wear off, and I was starting to wear out.

I had already mutilated all the undead, so there was really no further damage I could inflict. With this in mind, I decided to move on to simply defending myself and trying to survive through the night.

My calves and arms were bleeding from wounds inflicted by the undead biting them, so after the night, I needed to somehow fix myself up. However, the injuries would still be there, which made me afraid that they were going to make the next night a lot more difficult, which would increase the chances of me dying.

Right now, all I could do was make sure that I wouldn't receive any additional injuries, and the way to do that was to fight safely.

Fighting safely was pretty hard to do, though.

Fighting is seen as two or more people trying to harm the opponent or opponents as much as they can while not getting harmed themselves, but while fighting, you always get harmed.

Fighting is chaos, and to be a good fighter, you need to find ways to control that chaos. In other words, you need to know the causality of fighting. For example, if you throw a jab and your opponent ducks under it, you'll get an opportunity to land an uppercut. When fighting humans, it is fairly easy to predict what the opponent will do, especially if you know the abilities, intelligence, and personality of the opponent. The problem currently is that I was not fighting humans.

Monsters had their own predictable traits, though. There were just too many of them for me to be able to control the chaos completely. However, I did have a strategy to make the best of my circumstances.

What I aimed to do was use the large number of undead to my advantage, not try to fight them all directly.

Having thought of the strategy, I jumped forward and stepped onto the head of an undead. I then leaped further off of the head of the undead, and when I landed, I created space by putting my feet on the chests of the undead that were on my left and right sides. I pushed the undead against their fellow undead, and as a result, the undead on my sides couldn't reach me.

Now, there was the problem of the ones in front of me and behind me.

I jumped, and after rotating 90 degrees clockwise In the air, I executed a split kick, which made the undead bump into the undead behind them and fall down.

I then defended myself against the undead rushing at me with relative ease since they stumbled on the undead under them.

Soon, though, the undead were trampled, and I could be reached without problems. This was when I had to repeat the process of getting into a new spot. It was really draining, but at least I was now assured that I would survive.

However, the night was still going to last for a long time.

***

The darkness of the sky was fading, and the night would soon be over.

I was thoroughly exhausted, but I kept on fighting like I had done for the whole night.

As my loud breathing resounded in my ears, time passed, and before I knew it, the zombies started to collapse and turn into dust.

I was left there, in the middle of the woods, breathing heavily with my dagger still tightly in my grip and sweat running down my body.

[Nights survived: 1/3]

A message echoed in my head as my eyes rolled up, and I fell unconscious.