I approached the boy with a dark expression, and before he could react, I tested the truthfulness of his statement. And with a rapid, full-force movement of my right hand, I delivered a palm strike to his chest, sending him flying across the room.

He hit the wall incredibly hard before sliding onto the floor of the dark room. He was dead. The boy may have had strength above average, but there was no way he could survive a full-force strike from me.

His statement proved to be correct when the corpse disappeared and the boy appeared behind me again.

Before he could open his mouth, I turned and intended to grab him by the throat. "What makes you think I won't just keep killing you?"

The boy didn't try to say anything, choosing instead to tilt his chin up and look down on me with eyes that exuded intelligence. I glared at the boy before squeezing tightly.

The body disappeared again after a while, and the boy appeared behind me. I spun around and hit the boy on the jaw with a back fist, which had enough power to knock him out but not enough to kill him.

I hoped that knocking him out would give me a break to think about things until he woke up, but I should've known that it wouldn't be that easy. The boy's body simply disappeared again and reappeared behind me in complete health.

'What's the point of this?' I thought in a frustrated manner as I spun around again, delivering a lethal attack in the process.

***

It had been a while since this whole thing started. Sometimes I gave the boy an opportunity to speak in order to see if he would have something to say, but he never seemed to have anything to say. He simply wanted to continue getting beaten over and over.

How could someone bear such pain for hours without budging? It was like he felt nothing.

The corpse on the ground disappeared once again, and I turned with my dagger in hand. I then delivered a quick swing to the throat area of the boy that appeared behind me, but this time he managed to narrowly avoid it somehow.

"What's the matter?" the boy asked as he created some distance by leaping backwards.

'Has the fatigue made me so slow I can't hit him whenever I want anymore?' I wondered before dashing at the boy.

With swift motions, I dodged a punch that the boy threw my way and shoved my dagger straight through his heart. The boy stumbled back a few steps before collapsing and disappearing.

I decided to try something different this time to see if I had gotten slower or if the boy had just had impeccable timing and knowledge of my strikes. I shifted my weight to my front leg and leaned my upper body forward, after which I lifted my left leg off the ground and brought my knee up to my stomach. Then I straightened my leg, and with full force, I kicked the boy who appeared behind me just in time.

The boy managed to block the kick with his forearms but was still damaged quite a bit since he got launched into the wall and most likely broke his forearms. I approached the boy, who was on the ground, coughing and gasping for air since he had gotten the wind knocked out of him.

"Is this what you want?" I asked. "Do you just want to keep getting killed by me?"

Frankly, this whole process was making me sick to my stomach. Just the mere sight of the boy was enough to make me want to throw up. Having to kill him over and over again was just overkill.

The boy gasped for air a little before answering in between coughs, "Yo... you're... weak!"

He stood up surprisingly quickly, and rushed at me with his hand still somehow in fighting condition. I really had gotten weak in such a short time.

I dodged the boy's simple attacks with minimal effort as I talked, "What's wrong with you? Don't you feel anything? Why are you still coming at me after I have brutalized you in each one of our encounters without much effort?"

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"Because... that way... I'll beat... you," he answered while throwing strikes.

I quit dodging and caught one of the boy's attacks with relative ease. "Beat me how?"

The boy looked at me with eyes full of malevolence and said, "I'll break you."

"We'll see," I said mockingly before squeezing the arm I had caught until I heard a crack and the boy's face twisted slightly.

I then delivered a kick to his stomach, launching him into the wall once again. This time, though, he hit his head and lost consciousness.

I had wondered about the meaning of this ruin, but the only solution I could think of was that I had to kill the boy a certain number of times, but I wasn't sure if that was the case.

I thought the boy's words could have been a part of the solution, but I wasn't able to figure anything concrete out of his, "You can't kill me. I'm a part of you." line that I had focused on. Was I supposed to stab a certain part of myself in order to kill him, or something?

For the time being, I couldn't really do much except keep brutalizing the boy that kept coming back again and again.

***

I had gotten so tired of this whole thing that I had simply made the boy immobile so that I could have some time to rest. Still, it was far from peaceful and quiet, since the boy couldn't stop bothering me.

"I can feel it. You're becoming weaker, and I'm becoming stronger. I know you can feel it too. That's why you're not doing anything. You're afraid that things will get even worse? Well, they're only going to get worse, no matter what you do," the boy said to me from the other side of the room with his usual tone despite his injuries.

How was he, who had been getting brutalized for hours, in a more stable mental state than I, who had been doing all the brutalizing?

"You're not feeling bad for me, are you?" the boy asked, sounding genuinely worried for a second before changing his tone completely and continuing. "It's interesting how you're in such shape after just battering me. If I were doing the battering, I would be having the time of my life. It really goes to show how some people are simply meant to be the ones that are battered, while others are meant to be the ones that do the battering. Funny how destiny somehow got it all mixed up with us."

I had heard enough. "Destiny didn't mix up anything. You're weak because you like feeling strong. That's why you don't challenge yourself and never become stronger. But hey, I can't blame you for blaming destiny for all your troubles. After all, that's the thing weak people are the most proficient at."

"I don't challenge myself? Hah, I've been wanting to fight you all this time, but you just want to have a little break time, so here we are," the boy said, with a disappointed tone as he shifted his head from side to side. "If you really think you're the stronger one out of the two of us for a real reason, then prove it! Come on, le—" my dagger flew straight into the boy's head, and he dropped dead.

I unsummoned my dagger as I stood up and turned around to find the boy standing there in peak condition. Before the boy could strike me, I leaped back, creating space between us so that I could get a few words in.

"Well, I don't have my dagger now. It's a fair fight, so prove me that you should be stronger," I said expressionlessly as I took a fighting stance.

The boy took a fighting stance as well, which was the same as mine. "You'll regret doing this."

My gaze turned dark as I prepared to throw the first strike. "Not as much as you will."