Carl was speeding down the hill, eager to get retribution.

He knew the chances were meager, but it was all about the challenge, about putting oneself out of the comfort zone, and anything more than that was just a bonus.

“Hmm, how do I approach this?”

The lion was indecisive yet again, superbly reading Carl's intentions. That was exactly how intelligent creatures were supposed to act when faced with an unknown – a testament to the competence and capabilities of the programmers and behaviorists designing the software.

Carl stopped right when the beast tensed up, holding the knife in a crude hammer grip in front of him. Evidently, it was perceived as a threat, because the feline was eyeing it, growling and snarling angrily. But it also clearly didn't regard the little invader as a serious danger, as its body language indicated an imminent assault. It started circling around, gradually getting closer.

“Gonna hit me with a paw again, aren't you?”

Predicting its attack pattern, Carl held the dagger tightly and got ready to withdraw his hand from a possible slap.

“I guess I need to tank the charge with my body, and then start stabbing. I can't count on being able to target the weak spots. Maybe in the future …”

Bam!

The strike was so unexpected and so swift, that Carl didn't manage to pull the blade back in time, and the claws connected with the metal.

“Gah!” he exclaimed through gritted teeth. Somehow, he didn't lose the grip on his weapon despite a considerable force of impact, but his whole hand was moved aside, momentarily creating an opening for the big cat.

“I'm so bad at this!”

To his delight, however, the lion seemed hurt from the exchange. Naturally, such a small cut was merely an inconvenience, but it was a small mental victory nonetheless.

“Haha! didn't like that, did you? Come! There's more where that came from!” Carl shouted disrespectfully, hoping to intimidate the beast even further. But as he edged a few centimeters too close to his adversary in the spur of the moment, another paw came, just as fast and abrupt as before … and landed solidly on his armed hand, cutting deep bruises and ripping tendons.

“Are you kiddi–”

Carl tried to express his exasperation while watching the blade flip through the air, squinting from the reflecting sunlight, but the beast waited for nothing. The paws and the jaws arrived practically at the same time, knocking the breath out of him. He instinctively tried to wrestle, but his off-hand was now out of commission, clamped down by a terrible, toothed vice, and the momentum of the lion's quarter tonne of mass pushed him over and pressed him into the ground, making resistance nearly impossible.

Unwilling to be beaten so easily, Carl wriggled and punched with the free hand, but his opponent was unmoved. This eventually opened up a window of opportunity – since the immobilized hand was the only severe damage he sustained so far and the claws weren't scratching him, but holding him down instead, he still had plenty of strength to fight back and succeeded in balling up his legs, bringing his knees under the feline's head, which in turn gave him leverage to effectively press his thumb into its eye with full force.

“Gotcha!”

He didn't anticipate it would be this easy to pull off and was pleasantly surprised. For a split second he clearly felt the depression he made in the eyeball, and was already preparing himself to get up and dart for the knife once the hurt lion backed off …

… but it never happened. No-no. The beast's reaction was to let go of Carl's hand, retract its head with a furious growl … and go for the boy's throat.

The would-be victorious hand fell down to the ground limply, and Carl's vision darkened.

“Controls! Restart!” he commanded in his thoughts angrily.

System prompt: Would you like to turn auto-loop on? You will be automatically brought back to the starting point upon death.

The message flashed before him as the simulation was restarted and he appeared on top of the hill again.

“Oh, that's nice. Agree!”

Now that he realized it, he might have omitted more goodies.

“I should spare some time to rummage through all the options. There's bound to be something interesting there. But first things first!”

“Controls! Weapons! Combat knife! Let's see … auto-equip on startup!”

Carl resolutely rushed at his enemy yet again. He felt no fatigue in this virtual body, so there was no point in wasting time. He was on the clock, and each hour of gameplay was likely worth thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands, so he had to milk it for all it was worth while he had the chance. Speed-running this challenge was the logical move.

“Playing unreleased games on a supercomputer! Holy Smokes! I have to focus!”

He blithely arrived before the cautious lion, his previous failure forgotten in a flash.

“Alright, third time lucky?”

He kept the knife a little further from the beast, provoking it to charge him, but annoyingly, it turned out much more difficult than it should have been. The growling, the snarling, the showing of teeth and threatening jabs continued. It actually resembled a stand-off between two angry cats.

“Am I seriously projecting this much confidence?” Carl was flabbergasted. “Well, if you don't want to come to me, then I'll come to you!”

And as soon as he stepped too close for the lion's comfort, the attack inevitably came. It was lightning quick, but not committed, meant to force a retreat. The claws slapped Carl from the side, and then the head approached to bite his waist – that's where it collided with the tip of the blade.

“Score!” Carl celebrated.

He immediately got disappointed, though. The wound on the maw was shallow, because the feline halted its aggression halfway and fell back. From this experience he understood how hard it was going to be to plunge the dagger to a lethal depth, especially on the skull. The lion had a much thicker skin than humans, and Carl had the same physique as in real life – he was as slim as a rake, weighing barely a fifth of his adversary.

Now, however, the animal had also learned a lesson – there was legitimate substance to the intimidating object sticking out of the strange creature's hand. It became much more careful and measured in its responses, seemingly waiting for Carl to make his next move.

“Heh, I have to admit, this must look ludicrous from a third person perspective! I have to check the replays later. I wonder if I can copy them? That would be so cool!” he deliberated with excitement.

Beyond any doubt, jaws would hit the floor if Carl showed it off at school. He couldn't stop a grin forming on his face as he pondered over this perspective.

As could be expected, this mistake was his undoing. The beast noticed the weird change in Carl's readiness and lunged at him decisively. Inertia did the rest. Although this time around the knife finally found its mark on the feline's chest, it only went a third of its length in before the boy lost his grip on the handle, thrown off by the up-close inspection of huge, sharp teeth he was offered. The grisly jaws closed down on his temples, engulfing his entire vision before he even hit the ground. He suddenly lost all sense of touch, and because it was dark already, he only saw light back at the starting point.

“Aaaaargh!” he gave off a battle roar. “I will tear you to pieces!” he shouted in frustration and run down in berserk mode, properly startling the lion. It even backed off significantly, seeing the incoming madman and hearing his crazed yelling. But Carl gave it no room to retreat, ramming into it at full speed.

He had good reasons to behave this way, though.

First, he decided to throw strategy out the window and simply go all out. Yolo was now the name of the game. It was faster, more fun, and he felt like doing it. He could just write off a number of runs as unavoidable losses, and use them to get accustomed to this reality, to his opponent, to the weapon, to gain experience, and to hone his instincts and reactions.

Secondly – he was now directing a promo video for himself …

“Just you wait! I'll put you in your place soon enough!”

Not this time, though …

His reckless tactic resulted in incredibly intense struggles, and prompted the lion to repeatedly attack Carl's delicate head, which was common in fights for domination among apex predators. Rarely did a confrontation last more than ten seconds now, since the boy was actively restarting the simulation once he knew he was done for. Whenever the beast attacked his throat or head, it was pretty much game over right there.

But it was as if Carl didn't care in the least. He was very happy and fulfilled. This fighting style suited him perfectly, so he persevered with childish joy, despite miserable results. Sure, he landed many strikes with the dagger, which he was gradually getting better at holding on to, but they were never life-threatening, and the feline's vitality was such that it often ignored gashing wounds and went for the kill before worrying about itself. That's how far Carl pushed it with his frenzied assaults.

It was all worth it, though, because it made the occasional exchanges where the lion got hurt and kept running away all the more satisfying. Not to mention, that the beast was consistently on the defensive, until it wasn't.

Carl even thought he was close to winning a few times, but his fragile body invariably failed and gave in to injuries and blood loss, showing weakness at the most inopportune moments. If only he had some light body armor …

But that would be admitting defeat, so Carl restrained himself for the time being. He really wanted to get at least one kill in a fair fight before he started fooling around with additional gear. He was already too invested in this challenge.

He had to see it through!

Carl lost count of the runs, even if the system was keeping track. It was definitely in triple digits by now. Although his tempo was absurd, the routine was surprisingly harmonious – about half the time he spent sprinting, which at full speed only took about ten seconds to reach the lion's spawning point, and Carl used those junctures to refresh his attitude and compound what he had learned thus far, always on the lookout for new opportunities. The other half he fought so fiercely, that there was no way for him to plan or strategize in the heat of battle.

By the time he got mentally tired and ceased the madness in order to let his weary soul find some respite, the progress he had made was fantastic. As he looked back on his first clumsy attempts, he could only laugh at his ineptitude. He hardly ever lost the knife any more, he worked out how to efficiently protect his head with his off-hand, he became more tenacious with thrusts, scoring deep wounds and cuts, which started to really get to the feline and either provoked it to go all-out or forced it to back off, and the critical strike to the eye seemed so close now, he could smell it.

He nodded with content. It was time to check the options for more shortcuts, and then resume the strategic approach, maybe also see if the beast was prone to any tricks.

“Controls! Auto-loop! Let's see … advanced options! Hmm … where is it?”

He wanted to shorten the distance, but all he could find there was the lion's position, not his own, and he didn't want to end up fighting on the steep hill if he brought the beast closer.

“Gah! Are you kidding me?”

Irritated, Carl wanted to call Jin, but just as he checked the general settings, he found something so awesome, that his frowned countenance turned into one beaming with unbridled glee. He could hardly believe his eyes.

Map selection: Hillside Savanna (#40/181).

Enemy selection: [1] [African lion] (adult, male, prowler, #264/3135) [LAT: 0, LONG: 70, ELEV: default], |add spawn|.

“Am I … dreaming?”

He completely misunderstood Jin. This wasn't merely a dedicated engine with a preset encounter made for a singular experiment – it was a bundle of dev tools for Immortal Frontier!