"Ouch.."
I said as I hit the door while rolling my wheelchair.
"Are you okay, Dendi?" My mom called me.
"It's fine. I just bumped the door, that's all," I replied.
"You'll be 18 this October, dear; be careful, okay?"
A year ago, I had an accident which caused me to be like this. I didn't want to talk much about what happened that time, but after the accident, I was depressed, and I had no idea what to do.
I found myself intrigued with the online game I saw and have been playing it every day now.
Lately, I have been making a scene in the online community due to my rapid and accurate micro-management skills.
However, due to my currently worsening condition, I stopped playing a week ago, as advised by my doctor.
And here I am right now, exhausted, despite the fact that I haven't moved an inch from my bed. Well, I'll just sleep for today...
I woke up, and I could feel something bright before opening my eyes. It was a text message floating with a bunch of 3D figurines.
[Choose your hero: ]
> Shadow Fiend (A shadowy figure with no legs and glowing red eyes)
> Storm Spirit (a panda a figure with blue skin and glowing white eyes)
> Medusa (A snake figure with hands holding a bow and snake hairs)
[1:00 time left]
???
'I am confused. Is this a lucid dream? But everything seems to be so detailed, which is not supposed to be happening in a lucid dream.'
[0:55 time left]
I opened my mouth and said, "Sto-" I was cut off by my dry throat. I tried to wake up with all my will to grab the nearest glass of water. And gulped them slowly.
[0:46 time left]
'Wait, please, I need to organize my thoughts. So, assuming this is not a dream, these figurines seem highly similar to the ones I played. Also, how is this thing floating? I tried to touch one of the figures.'
[Are you sure? Click to confirm]
I was bewildered. I immediately touched the cancel button.
[0:44 time left]
From what I know, the third figure, Medusa, has the best option for farming gold, and I don't think the Shadow Fiend suits me in my current condition as it is mostly a single-unit DPS hero as well as Storm Spirit. So then, I clicked on Medusa.
[Are you sure? Click to confirm]
[Yes]
The figures exploded in a glittery yellow flash, which disappeared in the next second. What comes next is a similar window with flashy icons.
[Choose your talent:
> Grand Librarian: Grants access to 8 additional choices of skills when choosing an ability.
> Momentum: Every dungeon clear/duel wins, gives you a 3.5 increase to all attributes, stacks with itself.
> Blitz Strike: Any damage to enemy above 50% health is multiplied by 500% crit.
> Magus: 0.4-second cooldown, your attacks have a 30% chance to activate a unit-target non-channeled active skill (Ignores mana and cooldown)]
After looking through all of them, I thought It'd be best to choose Magus. Sure, [Grand Librarian] sounds nice, it can give me more choices of skills but I can just buy a [Skill Reroll] for 3000 gold later.
Momentum is also incredibly nice, I can definitely get super strong in no time. But I can also just buy a [Stats Tome] later for 5000 gold.
Blitz Strike is crazy powerful. But I didn't choose it because it'd be more effective on spell-based units, which is not suitable for my physical-based Medusa.
I chose [Magus], knowing that it can apply a unit-targeted spell for pretty much free. If I were to get a unit-targeted skill like [Doom], I can spam the skill every 0.4 seconds, which was supposed to have a 180 seconds cooldown.
Then, what comes next felt weird. I felt out of the world for one second, and another second later, I feel like I just woke up from a good night of sleep.
I can mentally know that I can do multiple actions like attacking, opening a shop, etc.
[Shop] I thought subconsciously. And it opened. It's precisely the same items with some other new items as the game I played. I didn't know how I knew about shopping. It just feels very natural to do that.
[Shop:
> Healing Salve (110 Gold)
> Tango (90 Gold)
> Quelling Blade (130 Gold)
> etc... (list extends to dozens of more items)
Gold: 600]
[HP 20/720 <0.5 hp / s>]
My health points, as I checked, was 20/720. Which meant that I was dying. My gamer instinct told me to do what I always did, buy a healing salve.
[Gold: 490 (-110)]
And what came next surprised me even more. I could mentally understand that the healing salve was in my [Inventory], which seemingly had an infinite space. I brought it out and drank it. It tasted sweet, apparently, and it seems that I have a new buff.
[Healing 40 hp/s for 10 seconds]
And boy, it felt very relaxing and energetic. It felt like eating incredibly chilling ice cream on a blazing hot day. I checked my health:
[HP 426/720]
Something, however, felt nostalgic. Strangely, I could feel my leg.
I was sure of it; that I could feel and move my leg, I thought as I cried.
I tried getting out of bed and stood up on both of my feet. I have never been this excited before.