Infinite Realm

"Indeed. It's over."

*Thud*

With a thud, the lifeless body of the mirror image landed on the ground. Even till now, Sato felt that it was a bit unbelievable that the haughty duplicate of himself, that had caused him to eat so many losses, had finally died.

At the moment, a system notification ding sounded in his head but before Sato could check it out, he abruptly collapsed.

"Ugh." Sato managed to use the sword and keep himself from falling while also puking out a mouthful of blood.

-54 (6/150 Sato's HP)

'Damn.' Sato sucked in a large breath of cold air.

"The backlash is this much?!" A tinge of unbelief decorated his voice.

"Luckily, it only happened after I had defeated the mirror image. Otherwise, I would be a goner."

The theory behind Sato's last move was to use his body as a medium to channel the astral energy and perform the skill, [Astral Blade]. However, while he did succeed, his body was never suited to be a true medium for the energy so there would inevitably be some issues with this technique.

While in its pure form, astral energy contains a boundless aura, it still harnesses a destructive power behind this boundless air. As the astral energy passed through his body, the destructive capabilities of the astral energy would ineluctably damage his body. The only reason he received the injuries now was because Sato had previously suppressed and delayed it to defeat the mirror image first. However, he was only capable of doing that for only a second. Once the time was up, his internal organs had ruptured and the damages would only continue to increase. Luckily, he had succeeded in defeating the mirror image with that attack otherwise, not only would he have died, but it would have also learnt a new skill.

[[ System notification :

Player has suffered extremely severe internal injuries and would lose 30%-40% every 5 seconds till injury is at least suppressed.

Player will suffer a temporary drop in ability :

-50% to all Main attributes including [Vitality].

-50% to HP and Mana recovery speed. 

-40% to Stamina.

More Stamina and energy are required to perform actions.

Player will be in constant pain till the injuries are treated completely.

System Description : Player is advised to seek medical attention for faster recovery.]] 

'This is bad. I need to recuperate.' 

The effects of the injury were worse than Sato had thought. Not only was his avatar currently crippled, but it would still receive damage over time due to the severe injuries.

Not wasting any more time, Sato took out all the health potions he had stored up and uncorking them. Most of the health potions were stored in regular laboratory vials but a few of them were stored in a special kind of cylindrical glass flask.

The current Simple grade Health potions in the market had a limiting factor attached to them. After taking one, a player would have to wait for 15 seconds or so before they can take another but Sato's current condition didn't allow for that. His HP was already below 10% ad if he couldn't get it above 40% in the next few seconds, he would die. Luckily, Sato had purchased a better version of the health potions. While they weren't of the Advanced grade, they had better healing ability than the regular potions and also could be taken continuously; the only downside being that the effect would be far weaker. The only problem was that these Health potions cost even more than the common one and so, Sato could only afford a couple of them.

*Gulp*

With no hesitation, Sato began downing potion after potion, raising his HP above the red line. However, when 5 seconds was up, a large chunk of his HP was gone, but compared to before, he only lost 30 or so points. 

'The potions are finally taking effect.'

Health potions didn't just bring a player's HP back to the green zone but they also helped with certain ailments and conditions. Even if one had a broken leg in the game, so long as they could afford the right potion, they could recover back to their peak.

'However, I doubt these will be enough.'

Sato's injuries were very severe that the low-level potions he had weren't enough to handle them. The best they could do would be to suppress the injuries. Eventually, Sato would either have to find a doctor, a [Cleric], [Druid], or a [Paladin] to heal him.

'I should try as much as possible not to use this technique. It's dangerous both to my opponent and myself.'

After another 5 seconds, Sato lost 15 HP and following the next one, he lost only 5 HP. After that, Sato no longer received any damage from his injury as the vials and flasks of Health potions he had taken had succeeded in suppressing the injuries.

[[ System notification :

Player has suffered extremely severe internal injuries that have been barely suppressed.

Player will suffer a temporary drop in ability :

-30% to all Main attributes including [Vitality].

-30% to HP and Mana recovery speed. 

-20% to Stamina.

More Stamina and energy are required to perform actions.

Player will be in constant pain till the injuries are treated completely.

System Description : Player is advised to seek medical attention for faster recovery.]] 

'At least the backlash has weakened considerably.' Sato sighed.

With the dwindling of the backlash effects, Sato would be able to recover much faster and at least, wouldn't be so weak anymore.

"This time I was close to death. If not for that moment of enlightenment that helped improve my compatibility rate, I might have died again. If that had happened, who knows how long it would take me to complete this challenge."

Infinite Realm was a virtual reality game that enabled one's consciousness to experience an all-new virtual fantasy world. Through constant experimentation and improvements, the virtual world of most VR games was perfected to mimic reality. However, this was only to a certain degree. In the end, a virtual world was still not reality so not everything would be the same. 

It was because of this that even though the virtual world would look realistic, it wouldn't feel so. For example, in some games, players would feel a slight hindrance in their movements or senses due to the lacking compatibility and resonance between the game engine and servers with the player's senses[1]. This would make things difficult for the player in the game and would potentially harm their careers if they were pro players. 

To avoid this, some games had developed an in-built syncing software and a calibration device that improved a player's compatibility rate and movement in the game. However, for this to work, the player in question would have to demonstrate a lot of actions and push their body to the limit to achieve the highest compatibility rate possible. But this was quite impossible with players since they barely found any reason to push themselves to the limit, after all, death in the game didn't mean death in reality. So even till now, no player had ever achieved a 100% compatibility rate in any VR game. Even IR, with its advanced technology, can only assure players a basic 70% compatibility and adjustment rate; the rest depends on the players themselves. The highest known compatibility rate in a game was 92.7% and that was achieved by one of the most popular gamers in the world and also, the renowned strongest; God Emperor Black. 

Increasing one's compatibility rate without outside help was extremely difficult but Sato had managed to pull it off after having engaged in a series of high-intensity battles with the mirror image. Thanks to it, not only had he improved his compatibility rate with his in-game avatar but he had also refined his martial art skills. A few other special trials and opponents were created with various degrees of martial artist ranks as their base strength and the mirror image was one such. As a result, battling with such opponents would, in turn, help improve one's skills.

It should be known that the strength of the mirror image wasn't simply a Peak Master rank as Sato had thought. On the contrary, it was actually developed with the abilities of a Grandmaster as the foundation. However, the difficulty was reduced as not a lot of players would be able to defeat a true blue Grandmaster, and also the Mission's difficulty was not even at the S rank. Hence, when compared to a true Grandmaster, the mirror image's skills were a bit lacking.

Nonetheless, the knowledge and the battle experience of a Grandmaster were still left behind so it was still stronger than a peak Master rank martial artist. In other words, Sato had actually succeeded in defeating a Grandmaster rank fighter. Even though he did so with the aid of a few tricks in the game and some unconventional tactics, he still managed to pull it off; this alone was a fit that not a lot of players could achieve. Unbeknownst to him though, he would never know of this.

"Now, time to have a loot at my rewards."