I slowly opened my eyes as though I was waking up from a long, deep, relaxed and peaceful sleep. As I gently opened my eyes, I could feel a sense of peace within me. I could clearly remember that I had just been in my room and that there was an explosion when I had smashed the modem at my PC monitor. I half expected to smell smoke, but the air seemed clean and pure. Almost heavenly. Was I dead? No. I couldn't be. Because if I was, then how was I still breathing? And if I was truly dead then I wouldn't be able to feel anything. And yet, I could feel myself lying on the ground. And breathing the purest air.
When I completely opened my eyes, I saw a clear blue sky. I slowly sat up and looked around. I was in a great wide meadow full of beautiful looking wild grass. The meadow seemed to stretch for miles and the grass smelled sweet and divine. It also looked strangely familiar. I looked at myself and found myself to be clean. I was wearing nothing but some kind of blue trousers. I had no shirt on. Nor any shoes on my feet. The wind blew so softly and caressed my chest soothingly, making me feel good. The sun was rising and the slow warmth spread over me as I watched.
I tried to think back to what had happened earlier. One moment, I had been in my bedroom, an overweight boy dressed in a hoodie trying to get my internet to work. The next moment I was here. I also now remembered chocking, being thrown backward by the explosion, a burning sensation all over my body and blacking out and later unnaturally waking up in a strange meadow.
It finally occured to me, that I had perhaps died. Else, why did I look very muscular now when I looked like a watermelon earlier. The place I was in was another world. But I wasn't ready to accept it as a fact immediately. I wanted to be six times sure that I had reincarnated. The first proof was my half-naked and muscular body. The second was the clean pure air I was breathing. No way that such pure air existed in the world I lived in. The fourth was the unnaturally clear blue sky. This made me conclude that I had been reincarnated. The fifth and sixth proofs were the most unusual. They completed the puzzle of where I had reincarnated.
The fifth proof was that I noticed a green line above my head. It looked something like a health bar that I knew could only be from one place. The last proof was the fact that upon seeing and understanding the health bar, I tried something out of sheer dumb chance. I mentally imagined a status box appearing in front of me. And wonders of wonders, to no further surprise of my own, a status box popped open in front of me.
I realized that I had reincarnated in the world of the game I loved playing: A World of Empires.