Femi slowly opens his eyes with a moan
"huh...?"
He turns his head to get a look of the area only for him to see absolutely nothing. Every where was black!.
The good news was, he wasn't feeling any more pain
"I've never heard lucid dreams that has series" Femi asked no one in particular
He slowly stands when he hears a robotic voice
"Consciousness restored. Estimated physical condition — suboptimal.
Minimum requirements met"
Before Femi could make sense of what was going on a stream of white light flashed at him before condensing into a humanoid being
It seemed like some kind of ethereal being but it didn't have wings so he was sure he wasn't dead
Femi mind was racing through all kinds of possibilities
'common I wanna wake up.... Shit! didn't those experts say you could control whatever happens in a lucid dream why can't I control what happens here'
"SUBJECT DEMONSTRATES EXPECTED DISORIENTATION RESPONSE"
"INITIATING BASELINE ORIENTATION PROTOCOL"
"who or what the fuck are you? " femi asked with a bold stance trying to act tough
But his mind was in tatters right now!
'hope what does experts say about lucid dreams are true cause I would really love to wake up right about now'
"I AM THE FIRST LIMINAL"
'Liminal what's that supposed to mean'
"THIS WORLD IS THE RESULT OF YOUR COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS VISUALISING DUE TO YOUR ABSORPTION OF THE LIMIT CODEX "
'Limit codex? Is it the silver sphere my brother gave me as a prank. Man big bro really takes things too far! '
"And what is this limit codex?" femi asked
"THE LIMIT CODEX IS AN ARTIFACT DESIGNED TO HELP THE TRAINEE BREAK ALL PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL LIMITS OF THE HUMAN BODY" it stated it like that was what it was about to say instead of an answer to Femi's question
"YOU WILL BE PUT INTO A STATE OF HYPER PERFORMANCE FOR PEAK RESULTS IN 10"
"wait what do mean by hyper performance!" 9
"Damn stupid robot" 8
"Atleast answer my question first
What are you supposed to be, and what will happen after this countdown"
7...6..5
"Damn guess I have to wait" femi said with a tinge of defeat
4
3
2
1...
The ethereal like being began to dim and become more solid while the world began to seem heavy for femi as a he tried gasping for air.
Tears coming out of his eyes and spittle out of his mouth, he could swear he had never felt like this before
The pressure he felt slowly subsided or more like, he didn't feel any inconvenience at all
Like his body was... Perfect. No aches. No hunger. Not even the dull throb in his hands from the fight. It was the kind of feeling he imagined rich people woke up with every morning.
He turned his head to look at the ethereal being on to see him being... Less ethereal.
it was more like a glowing person right now but apart from it's humanoid shape it looked nothing like a human, he couldn't see a mouth nose or eyes or any facial features to speak of. It was all plain light with a glowing white hue.
Femi was still musing on this when the being started another count down
*Training session will begin in
10 seconds*
"Damn it another countdown
Well it did say something about training.
It's just training it can't be that bad"
Femi would soon come to regret this thought of his
The countdown sequence started
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1....
1....
The darkness cracked.
And a world snapped into existence.
Not gradually. Not gently.
One second — darkness.
The next — a wide, open space. Flat ground, pale light from nowhere in particular, no walls, no ceiling, just… space. Clean and endless.
Femi straightened up slowly, rolling his shoulders. He could still feel it — that perfect feeling. No stiffness, no ache, no quiet protest from his joints. His body felt like it had been factory reset.
"Okay," he muttered, turning in a slow circle. "Not the worst place I've woken up in today. That's a low bar but still."
The Liminal stood across from him. Still. Expressionless. Glowing faintly like a lightbulb that had decided to take a humanoid form.
"COMBAT ASSESSMENT WILL NOW BEGIN."
Femi blinked. "Combat — wait, already? No warmup? No stretching?"
"STRETCHING IS UNNECESSARY. YOUR CURRENT PHYSICAL STATE EXCEEDS STANDARD HUMAN BASELINE BY A FACTOR OF—"
"Yeah, yeah, I got it." Femi shook out his hands, bouncing slightly on his heels. He could feel the difference. The spring in his step alone felt wrong in the best possible way. "I'm optimised, super, whatever. Let's just get this over with."
He sized the Liminal up.
No visible weapons. Humanoid shape. Probably slow if it was built for instruction and not combat.
This should be quick, he thought.
He moved first.
Fast — faster than he expected himself to move — closing the distance in two strides and driving his fist straight into the Liminal's torso.
Thk.
Pain exploded through his knuckles instantly.
"WHAT—"
He stumbled back, shaking his hand violently, hissing through his teeth.
It was like punching a steel beam. Not a person. Not something padded or yielding. A steel beam that had personally offended him.
"What are you made of?!" he gasped.
"DENSE CONDENSED ENERGY MASS. EQUIVALENT STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY — APPROXIMATELY 4.7 TONNES PER SQUARE CENTIMETER."
Femi stared at his hand. Then at the Liminal. Then back at his hand.
"...You could've mentioned that before I tried to punch you."
"YOU DID NOT ASK."
"I... " He exhaled sharply. "Okay. Okay fine. New plan."
He circled slowly this time, watching. The Liminal turned with him, unhurried, tracking his movement without reacting.
Don't hit the steel beam directly. Got it. What else have I got.
He feinted left, then dropped low and swept at the Liminal's legs.
The Liminal didn't sweep.
It simply stepped sided and in one smooth motion it had already sent a return strike a Femi.
The return strike came before Femi even processed that he'd missed.
It caught him square in the chest.
The air left his body like it had somewhere better to be.
He skidded back three full meters before hitting the ground, rolling twice, and coming to a stop face up, staring at the pale ceiling that wasn't really a ceiling.
"...Okay," he wheezed. "That one had weight behind it."
"CORRECT. IMPACT DELIVERED AT THIRTY PERCENT CAPACITY."
Femi slowly sat up.
"Thirty," he repeated quietly.
"THIRTY."
He got up.
Round two went worse. Round three was embarrassing. Round four he didn't want to talk about.
But somewhere around round five, something shifted.
Not in his strength — he wasn't getting stronger mid-session, he wasn't delusional. But his eyes were adjusting. His brain was starting to read the Liminal's movement the way it had never quite managed with human opponents. The shoulders dropped slightly before a strike. The weight shifted to the back foot half a second before it stepped.
Small things. But small things were all he had right now.
He stopped trying to hit back entirely.
Instead, he moved as swiftly as his lean body could.
The Liminal threw a straight strike. Femi didn't block it, he tilted just enough to let it graze past his ear, feeling the shockwave of air it displaced, and immediately drove his knee upward into where a human's thigh would be.
The Liminal staggered. Barely. But it staggered.
There.
"So you do have weak points," Femi muttered, breathing hard.
He kept moving. Trips instead of tackles. Deflections instead of blocks. He stopped meeting force with force and started redirecting it — using the Liminal's own momentum, guiding strikes past him and using the half second of recovery to dig into joints, pressure points, the back of the knee.
He wasn't winning.
He was very clearly not winning.
But he stopped getting completely destroyed somewhere around round eight, and for now that felt like a personal achievement worth celebrating.
Round eleven, a strike caught him across the shoulder.
He spun, hit the ground, and just… stayed there.
His optimised body, his perfect factory-reset physical state, had apparently found its limit. Every muscle screamed at once in a language that had no words, but it was enough for him to understand that he had reached his limit.
"...I'm going to need a minute," he said into the floor.
The Liminal looked down at him.
"SESSION COMPLETE. PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT — BELOW AVERAGE. IMPROVEMENT NOTED IN ROUNDS FIVE THROUGH ELEVEN. ADAPTATION SPEED — ACCEPTABLE."
"Acceptable," Femi repeated flatly, still face down. "I just survived eleven rounds with a four point seven tonne steel man and I get acceptable."
"WOULD YOU PREFER INACCURATE PRAISE?"
Femi thought about it.
"...A little bit, yeah."
The pale light began to dim.
The ground beneath him softened.
His eyes grew heavy before he could form another thought.
He woke up gasping.
Ceiling fan. Rattling weakly. Lagos heat pressing down like it had missed him.
Femi sat upright in bed, drenched in sweat, chest heaving. He looked down at his hands immediately — half expecting blood, torn skin, the damage from eleven rounds of getting thrown around by something made of compressed energy.
Nothing.
Just his hands. Normal. Unmarked.
He flexed them slowly, then let out a long breath that had been sitting in his chest since he opened his eyes.
"Okay," he said quietly, to nobody.
He sat there for a moment, the sounds of the city filtering through his cracked window. Drones humming. A danfo honking somewhere below. The distant shout of a vendor.
Everything normal. Everything exactly as he left it.
His body ached faintly, not from the training though, just the ordinary tiredness of someone who hadn't slept well. The real pain hadn't followed him back.
That was the first good thing that had happened to him in about twenty four hours.
He fell back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling.
Army acceptance. Aleria. The alley. The sphere. The Liminal. Eleven rounds of getting walked over by a glowing steel entity that gave him a participation trophy in the most robotic voice imaginable.
"...What is my life," he said softly.
The fan rattled.
No answer.
Because no one was there to answer him
He closed his eyes.
For the first time in a long while tears streamed from his eyes,
He didn't feel sad, he didn't even know why he was crying, or maybe it was relief of coming back to the real world
Maybe if his brother was here he would have told him.