Arena of Sinister Passions

By the time it was 8pm, Fhize's family had already eaten a sumptuous dinner and they were all in the living room.

Fhize's father was watching a Zen boxing game along with his sister while his mother was collapsed to his side, already asleep with her head resting on his laps and well, he was back to his game.

"You are everything a father could ask for, but my only wish was that you could see the beauty of Zen boxing, the masterful acts involved,

There was time you used to be my buddy, but now you've lost your way and left me in the light" Fhize's father suddenly cried out in hurt, his antics making Hannah chuckled and rub his face.

Fhize looked up from his game and stared at the Tv for some second, he watched as one of the fighters grabbed the other by the ankle and swiping the off their feet, slammed them to the ground sending cracks running through it and then he looked away focusing back on his game.

Though Fhize didn't notice it a sad expression claimed his face as he looked away and his father who was rather observant noticed it.

Seeing his son's dispirited look, Peter couldn't help but feel a sharp pain in him, he wished he could help him but didn't know how. Along with the fact that he hadn't opened his own system in what felt like months, systems were the most complex things in the world and only the top dogs of the world knew the intricacies of its manipulation and awakening.

It was 9:30 when the family retired to their room, Hannah, Fhize's little sister having grabbed him to read her a bed time story, while they're father carried their sleeping mother to the room.

Collapsing into his bed, the multiple issues of the day began coming to Fhize's mind, images of dead people flowing through it, but rather than contemplate them, he sat down cross-legged and closing his eyes, began taking deep breaths, his intake and release of air following an abnormal but consistent rhythm, one which looked painful.

For the brain to store a memory it first encodes the memory in the hippocampus turning it to a storable form before then temporarily storing it in the prefrontal cortex.

For long term storage these memories are distributed to several regions across the brain like the occipital lobe and stored, but as troublesome as it was to do that retrieving it was even harder to retrieve it.

For the brain to retrieve a memory, it had to send signals and retrieve the different pieces of the memory it had stored across the brain and merge them together and it was in this instant that memory was at it 's most vulnerable and be easy influenced.

In order to tamper with a long-term memory, seal or delete it, Fhize employed the use of a set of chaotic breathing techniques when he tried to call on this memory.

The goal of this chaotic breathing was to attack and weaken the nerve pathways which were carrying the fragments of his memories, his actions leading to spillage.

To avoid overdoing it and damaging his brain, the process was a rather slow one which required that one avoid stimulations that could cause a retainment of the memories trying to be avoided.

Fhize's excursion with Rose had led to him unlocking a bunch of memories that it seemed he had been trying to either seal or forget and though he didn't know the full story behind these memories, what he knew was them as fast as possible.

It was like a backup warning he had created for himself, his instincts screamed for him to get rid of them.

Fhize spent several minutes on the bed, letting out heavy worrying breaths vein on his head and then suddenly, he snapped his eyes open and fell back, lying down on the bed.

"What the hell man"

Fhize stared up at the ceiling his mind fighting a harsh battle against himself, particularly his instincts, reasons and desires colliding and then the image of the man whose neck he had crushed came to mind, and the battle was decided as rather than avoid his memories he entertained and deiced to satisfy his curiosity on a particular aspect.

Getting off the bed, Fhize pulled his chair from his desk to the far corner of his room.

He climbed it and then hit the top of the ceiling, his actions dislodging the square cardboard placed there.

Fhize took a deep breath, hesitation popping in his face before being crushed. He pushed the cardboard to the side, sent his hand rummaging through the inside of the ceiling and soon he was stepping down with a helmet in his hand and it wasn't just any helmet, it was a VR helmet.

Minutes later Fhize had cleaned up the helmet, locked his door, and lying on his bed wearing it, he took a deep breath and pressed the start button by his side closing his eyes as his mind was sucked away.

.....

After the world was turned upside down following the advent of Aether and systems, excluding humanities massive progress in space travels, their next biggest technology step up was in the VR department and the most ground making creation in this department was Zen online.

Zen online was a VR game which taking inspiration from the sport Zen boxing created a platform where people from all corners of the world and all professions could meet each other and battle in an arena.

Appearing in a crude prison cell lined with weapons of all sorts across its wall and battle scars, this place being his personal game lobby, Fhize eyes moved to the game screen that pooped up Infront of him.

[Welcome back Teddy-blood, it's been 766 days since your last log in]