Luca actually made it back, probably at the expense of 10 years of his life, which was not too much considering the lengthened life spans of humans today.
He never thought about such a thing because death was so common during his past life.
But when he heard the nurses talking about their ultra-great ancestors as if they were still alive, he realized that people here lived for a lot longer, like hundreds longer.
He actually shuddered at that. Most would rejoice at the thought. But his first instinct was to calculate how long he would've been imprisoned if people's lifespans were that long back when he was in Tesseris.
Then he thought of his new life and got excited until he learned how to use his terminal.
He didn't notice the device on his wrist when he first woke up. It wasn't clunky and was surprisingly flexible, which may have been why it went unnoticed until a notification popped out.
That dashed his hopes.
Luca hadn't seen his new world outside the four walls of his room, so when he saw the notification alert for a slew of cosmic disasters, he was suddenly disheartened.
Why couldn't he just end up somewhere peaceful?
Then he scrolled down to check all the notifications he automatically got as a citizen of the Empire.
Countless brain-numbing articles followed, and he was swamped with videos of more bad news. Then, he stopped at one that captured his interest. And he couldn't help but choke on his saliva.
[SPIRITUAL POWER IMBALANCE NOTICE]
It piqued his curiosity as it felt too familiar. And Luca felt like the universe was playing tricks on him. This made him scour the Starnet for familiar terminologies, but he got nothing save for muscle pains.
They didn't even have a concept of what dungeons were. Then, what could cause spiritual power imbalances to the extent that they mirror a rampage?
It didn't take long for him to find out. The answer was excessive use and meridian injuries.
They weren't dealing with dungeons but had to face corrupted creatures, insectoid attacks, alien invasions, oh and planetary annihilation.
And he thought Tessarians had a shit load of problems. What was this? How bad were they in their past lives to face this kind of shit.
But more than that, what did he do to deserve this kind of life?
He even paid his taxes while imprisoned inside a tank! So, why did he end up here?
And apparently, these impending disasters forced the Empire to conscript without discrimination, so people like him had no choice but to go.
Thankfully, he had a body double, and all he had to do was survive the assessments.
But really, what was the Duke thinking?
There was no way the original Luca would pass anything.
Heck, he wouldn't even be able to get inside the medical pod without assistance.
Just fudging the records wouldn't be enough to fool anyone.
And that brought him to his current situation.
Luca decided to go back to his space to give him more time to think.
If he had complete control of his powers, it would've been possible to better adjust the passage of time in his space. But with his inability to use his powers, he was stuck at 1:3 of reality.
Three days in his space were equivalent to one day outside. While that wasn't enough time for him to fully recover, it was better than a normal week.
He planned on recuperating inside for several reasons: He needed more time, a safer environment, and actual sustenance.
Modern medicine barely did anything to him because what he lacked was conditioning. They've got medicines to cure diseases, but not something that would fix his physical and spiritual constitution. But his dungeon should have them.
Then there was the issue of his safety. He had such bad experiences with humans that he couldn't sleep well in an unfamiliar place.
But most importantly, his issue was his body's sustenance. He was so sick and tired of liquid sustenance that he took one look at the nutrient solution and wanted to throw up.
The cafeteria offered food, but he'd die before he could walk there.
No, thank you.
Thankfully, he's got fruit-bearing trees. He'll have to make do with that while he's got limited access to his space.
His access was so limited that it barely covered his little cabin. As in, he could only walk on half of it.
This protective barrier prevented him from passing and only allowed him access to a small portion of his space. He was lucky it allowed him access to part of his storage, literally one drawer.
Now, his dilemma was choosing from his available pills.
Luca sat on his mattress, displaying seven balls of varying sizes on a small wooden tray.
He looked at each of them, trying to decipher whether it would kill him in his current state.
He was capable of making more pills, but his space was locked, and all he got were the seven pills from that one drawer.
These were his experimental pills. He stored them separately because he wasn't sure they would work. But aside from being experimental, his concern was overdosing.
He wasn't imprisoned just because he was a threat to people's love lives. It was also because he had a talent for pill concoction.
It was a talent he forcefully honed so that they'd have use for him. So many people wanted him dead, but when they discovered his penchant for making Guiding pills and realized that the imitations weren't as potent, they kept him on a tight leash.
He's long regretted showing his abilities, not that he showed them everything. But before being placed in the medical tank, he was confined in a lab to further his studies. And that was where he learned to make other pills.
He was now staring at three top-grade Guiding pills, two spiritual power recovery pills, one fasting pill, and one stamina pill.
It was easy to exclude the Guiding pills. Those weren't for him. The problem was grading the remaining four.
He couldn't grade them back at the lab because anything he graded would be reported to the authorities, and they would just force him to make even more pills.
So, taking these would be risky, especially given his current constitution, but not taking them would be tantamount to giving up. If he remained this feeble, he wouldn't last past this week.
So Luca reverted to his most basic principles. Since the universe wants to maximize his existence, he probably wouldn't die from this.
Maybe I'll get sent to another world if I conk out from this?
With this in mind, he proceeded to swallow the Stamina pill.
He had one eye shut, expecting a sudden reaction, but found it anti-climactic when nothing happened.
Huh? Was it a dud?
Luca started questioning his skills when his chest suddenly seized. Then, his entire body pulsed as if it was getting bigger. And then the pain hit him.
He screamed as he felt his entire body vibrating. Wasn't this just a stamina pill?
Luca toppled over, passing out from the unexpected level of pain.
He figured it would hurt, but he had no idea it would feel like growing a new head.
This better freaking work—