[Hospital Hallway, Present]
Luca's got a week.
Only one more week left after wasting the first week of his arrival. He's really got no more room in his cramped schedule to fit in any more walking trials.
Left, right.
Left, right.
Left-
"Lord Luca?" Called a worried nurse.
Luca couldn't help but purse his lips. He had worked hard just now to gain that little walking momentum, only to be stopped mid-way.
"If you're going towards the Main Hall, you're going the wrong way. That hallway leads to the medical pods."
Haaa…seriously?
"Is that so? Thank you then." He offered a polite yet embarrassed smile that earned him a blush from the young nurse.
Luca had to restart his crawl toward his room without making his struggle too apparent to everyone around him. Easier said than done when he kept on feeling the need to throw up his guts.
But he had to keep up appearances.
He was someone else now, not the best "somebody," but at least he's got a physical body. That's one significant change.
But to everyone else who has heard of "him," he was Luca Soren Kyros, the Empire's most useless Flower Vase—the poster boy for the pampered nobility.
Okay, maybe the "most" was an exaggeration. There should be someone worse than him, right? Right?
Anyway, as the only son of the Duke of Kyros, there was no way he should be limping like this towards his room, and yet here he was, struggling to get from this end to the other end of the hallway.
Heck, even breathing was a struggle.
But considering everything, he knew he was relatively lucky.
The options were either limping or dying. And Luca didn't even get the chance to choose.
In fact, he had long lost all his faculties and abilities, so one could just imagine his shock upon waking up—this time, with eyes that could actually see. For the first time in a long time, he didn't have to cheat by stretching out his spiritual power.
In the grand scheme of things, he just went from being a total waste to a waste with functioning limbs. And he was struggling to use his new appendages.
He had a shopping list of issues, but his mobility was the most pressing one.
Because he's got one more week before the physical assessment starts, and a cripple who couldn't even walk back to his room won't survive five minutes of that test.
As Lucas, he had long forgotten how to control his muscles. After all, you wouldn't need them while imprisoned inside a medical tank. He didn't expect Luca, the original owner of this body, to have a similar problem.
Luca was a pretty doll, one that had to be carried and wheeled around to go anywhere.
So, both Lucas and Luca had no functioning muscles to speak of. But at least Luca managed to keep his body intact. He, on the other hand, was just a collection of organs stitched together by the time of his death.
Ideally, he should be celebrating each muscle spasm as a sign of life, but any more walking and he would lose what little life he's been able to hold on to.
This whole thing started about a week ago. Something may have happened before that, but it had only been a week to him.
***
[Assessment Room A, a week ago]
His body convulsed as his eyes shot open. The shock made him choke on the liquid inside the medical tank.
Luca coughed, and he felt like his ribs would puncture his heart if his body kept seizing like this.
*WARNING: CRITICAL ERROR*
"Pull him out, now!"
The nurse monitoring the exam noticed how the applicant reacted inside the medical pod, so she ended the assessment when an error popped out.
At first, he was too docile, needing assistance to even get into the pod. Then, the next moment, he was convulsing inside while struggling to get out.
However, that drastic change was because somewhere in the middle of that medical assessment, Lucas from Planet Tesseris merged with Luca of the Solaris Empire.
"Check his vitals! He suddenly went into shock inside the pod." said the nurse who oversaw his assessment.
Luca kept on convulsing, and anyone would wonder how he reacted negatively inside a medical pod.
"Was he allergic to the solution? I've never seen someone react like this?" asked a younger nurse, probably a trainee.
And she would be right. Transmigration was something most people wouldn't see in their lifetimes.
But they did.
Not that they would know of that. And now they're tasked with saving this fledgling who had survived far worse ordeals.
If I died like this, wouldn't it be too embarrassing?
He wasn't allergic; he had just swallowed liquid by accident. But his throat burned when he tried opening his mouth to inform them.
It was as if the throat he had now hadn't been used in a long time. But to be fair, the last time he spoke was to beg his superiors, which clearly did not work because he ended up dead.
The nurses crowded around him, assisting him in expelling the fluid that had gone down the wrong pipe.
*Cough! Cough!*
Lucas really wanted to think and speak, but his lungs and throat wouldn't cooperate. He could only look around.
He could actually see.
Damn right.
And he even had hands that were currently clutched on his throat as if strangling himself.
But he had no time because he felt like oxygen wasn't reaching the places it should be reaching, and the poor guy just passed out.
It would take some time and a lot of assistance from more medical staff for him to wake up.
Not that the nurses were ill-equipped to do it, but because this was Young Lord Luca Kyros, and no one wanted his death on their hands.
"He's going to survive, right?" Nurse Abby asked a more experienced senior.
"Yes, he was just in shock." They watched the applicant-turned-patient as he slumbered peacefully, a far cry from the noises he was making earlier.
The place they were in earlier was merely an assessment room. No one expected a medical emergency when all they were testing was spiritual powers.
So when the alarm sounded, they rushed over, only to see the last person they wanted to be hospitalized trembling on the floor.
"Did he finish the assessment before being pulled out?" Asked the Doctor, who came in rushing from the nearest Military Hospital.
"No, we might have to redo it. We were just halfway when he started showing signs of distress."
"Show me what you have."
The nurse handed in the partial results she got, and the Doctor couldn't help but check them thrice.
"You got this from him?"
The nurse was worried, but she had to say yes. Even if they checked the pod records, they would eventually get the same result.
In Doctor Brent's 40 years as a medical professional, he has never seen an assessment result that looked like a mountain.
His result started from an E-rank that shot up all the way to an S-rank, only to go back down again.
He looked so puzzled that the other personnel tried looking at what he was reading.
"Maybe the pod's defective?" Asked one of the surprised nurses.
"I guess…Have the maintenance personnel check on the pod." Said Doctor Brent, who was still quizzically looking at the results in his hands.
But the medical staff could not be blamed. After all, they had no idea that the body's owner had been replaced.
Heck, even Lucas didn't know.