"Beep...Beep...Beep..."
The sound of a heart monitor echoed through the halls of an abandoned hospital. Connected to the heart monitor, a patient wearing a futuristic pair of sun visors laid on a hospital bed.
"Beep...Beep...Beeeeeeeep..."
All of a sudden, the heartbeat graph displayed on the heart monitor stopped moving. Only the eerie sound of an endlessly long beep could be heard.
Was the patient dead? It had to be right?
The heart monitor's graph flatlined. That was the usual sign that a patient has stopped breathing and passed on.
Usually though...
When the long beep reached the 10 minute mark, the motionless patient's eyes flickered for a second before their eyelids fluttered open, revealing a pair of onyx colored eyes.
"Where am...I?"
The patient blinked a few times as he tried to move his arms.
"Kak kak kak!"
Neck, shoulders, arms, and even the spine. A series of loud cracks exploded outwards, making him feel sore all over his body.
"Beeeeeep~"
"Ahhhh, where is that annoying sound coming from?" The patient wanted to plug his ears and escape the noise, but just moving his shoulder caused a jolt of numbing pain to course through his body.
A light "fuck." was all he could mutter out. He then tried his best to wriggle around. He hoped that he could at least sit upright later.
**
When night fell, the patient's room turned completely black. Only the soft glow of the heart monitor and its annoyingly long beeping sound could be seen and heard.
"Almost...there..." The patient grimaced as he placed his hand on the rails and pushed himself upwards.
The patient who spent the entire day wriggling around had finally sat upright. It was then did a proud smile surfaced on his pale face, feeling the sense of accomplishment that no one else was there to witness.
[Ding! Congratulations to the host!]
Without any indication, a semi transparent light blue colored rectangular panel appeared out of thin air.
[The host has completed a basic goal - First Stretch - and will receive a basic reward!]
"Huh? What is this? Am I dreaming right now?"
[Calculating rewards based on the host's karma...]
"Karma? As in the Buddhism's Causality?" Confused, the patient tried to interact with the holographic panel. To no avail, his hand simply passed through.
[Ding! The basic reward has been successfully calculated!]
[Congratulations to the host! You have received a basic reward - Memory Fragment x1!]
[Accept] ~~[Decline]~~
Faced with reward message, the patient got even more confused.
'Memory fragment? Who's memory fragment did I get? What kind of shitty system is this?'
Letting out a sigh of defeat, the patient moved his index finger and accepted the basic reward.
Following that, a shiny blue crystal materialized in front of him like that of a divine item. It then shattered into millions of light particles before they dove into the patient's glabella unceasingly.
"Hey wait, I wasn't ready-!"
Too late.
Just like that, the patient was hit with a head splitting headache as countless old memories began to resurface.
The resurfaced memories included the day he was born, the day he first entered middle school, the day he graduated college with a diploma, and the day he put on his virtual reality full dive visor and entered the virtual world of Dragon Apocalypse Online.
"It's...It's coming back to me now! My name is Neoh...I...I...How am I alive?" Neoh clutched placed his face into hands, obviously shocked by the memories he regained.
One of the memories he unlocked was him being mauled by the last boss, the Dragon King of the Karmic Cycle and died at the beast's hands.
The hole in his abdomen, the arms that the giant dragon had ripped off of him, Neoh was sure that no human could survive fatal damage like that.
But unexpectedly, Neoh was wrong. He was alive.
Alive and well, not that well. The most he could do right now was sit upright and sweat buckets.
By the time he had processed most of his newly regained memories, his entire back was soaked.
"I died and woke up on a hospital bed...This sounds just like the start of a reincarnation webnovel...Fuck this~"
Just then, another system message popped right into his view. The message with a different looking frame read:
{Congratulations to the player, Neoh for clearing the death game, Dragon Apocalypse Online!}
{Due to your heroic deeds, the remaining players have been sent back to their respective worlds and timelines in due haste.}
"Huh? Dragon Apocalypse Online? Why does that sound so familiar?" Neoh stared at the system message for a good while, trying to look through his newly regained memories and see if he could spot this name.
A few minutes later, Neoh recollected himself and shook his head in dismay. "It sounds familiar, but it's just not there. Maybe I'll recall it if I can get another memory fragment from this holographic screen."
With this thought in mind, Neoh spotted a curious look as he waited for the next message to appear.
{Because of you, hundreds of players get to return to their homeland! The World has decided to grant you a reward!}
{The World will begin calculating your rewards.}
"First the System granted me a memory fragment, now the World will give me a reward too? What world though? Is he talking about the Blue Star?"
{...}
{...}
{...}
{Calculations complete!}
{Since the player 'Neoh' has accumulated a huge number of [good] karmic points, the World has decided to bestow the player with a [Karmic Heaven] Body Merge!}
"Body merge? Merge with whose body?" Neoh read the message and became confused.
[Ding! The system has received an update!]
"Oh, it gave my system an update?"
[Ding! Update complete!]
Just like that, Neoh's vision became black as his mind was sent back into the deep abyss of sleep, his upright back slumping forward like a deflated balloon.
[The Host has been put to sleep. The update will now be installed.]