Green flash …
...EMERGENCY SYSTEM ACTIVATION...
...An attempt to attack the owner's soul has been detected...
...Part of the energy has been absorbed...
...Excess energy used to eliminate the effects of the attack...
...Error...
...Unable to eliminate the consequences...
...Determining the cause...
...Searching for information...
...Response received" - Due to the performance of a dark ritual, a fragment of another intelligent being's soul has entered the owner's body...
...Excess energy is directed towards absorbing the foreign soul fragment...
...Due to an incorrect system startup, a reboot is required...
...A full description of the situation will be displayed in the logs after restarting...
...The system will be unavailable for 26279 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds...
A few hours before that (maybe years, maybe centuries — who can understand these gods?).
You may ask, what just happened? The answer is simple and complex at the same time — I died. There were no signs of trouble, but when I was walking home from work, I felt a sharp pain, and then darkness.
I woke up in a room littered with junk. Looking closer, I realised that it wasn't junk, but various toys and boxes of different shapes and sizes and other things, and on a chair about 10 metres away from me, someone was sitting at a computer. I tried to stand up, but nothing happened. Listening to myself, I realised that I had no limbs at all and looked more like some kind of glowworm from Warcraft. After a couple of minutes, it dawned on me: "I can see, which means I have a body, or at least its functions, and, imagining how I get up and walk, the firefly (that is, me) rose and floated forward through the air. Around me were Dendy cartridges, boxes with discs for various consoles and the consoles themselves, boxes with table games, decks of cards, slot machines and just mountains of all kinds of toys, apparently made based on games.
But then the chair moved, and I noticed the person sitting at the table, and the table and chair were so fancy, and of course, the six huge monitors looked just awesome. When he stood up, I almost fell over laughing: standing in front of me was a nerd from South Park from the WOW series. Realising my reaction, the nerd laughed, raised his hand and snapped his fingers (a poor imitation of Thanos), covered himself in ripples and turned into a normal guy of about 25, of average height, with messy hair, slightly unshaven and wearing a white T-shirt with "iddqd" written on it, in short, a typical sysadmin.
"Well, hello. Let me introduce myself. My name is Shiro, I am the god of games.
"Hmm... a popadoss, that is, a popadants. I've read a lot of fan fiction, of course, but I never thought I'd end up in a situation like this."
"Hahahaha," he laughed, "you're right about that, unfortunately you died because of me, today was my turn to watch over mortals, but I got distracted by a game, I mean, by important divine matters," he said, glancing nervously at his computer, " "And, as funny as it may sound, I missed you, and you were hit by a tiny piece of a meteorite... Don't worry, no one else was hurt."
"Oh, come on, so now I'm supposed to worry about accidental victims? I'm dead, for crying out loud... BRING ME BACK."
"I understand your anger, but unfortunately, it's impossible to bring you back," he said sadly, lowering his head, but after a few seconds, he raised it and said happily, "But I've figured out how to atone for my guilt in the best tradition of time travellers!
"Okay, you must be reading my mind. I guess I have nothing to lose, although there's a chance that this is just my comatose delirium and I'm lying in a hospital ward. But still, tell me what you've come up with. I just hope I won't have to suffer and overcome anything..."
"No, don't worry about me. I'll take the fall, so you can go to an interesting world that you're familiar with. Plus, you'll get your favourite system and a box of supplies as a bonus.
"I hope the system isn't version '666 SATAN EDITION'?"
"The system will be the same as in a game, only in your case it will automatically adapt to the world you find yourself in, plus it has a huge knowledge base, you just have to ask the right questions, and I'll add a little humour ;)
"I don't like your smirk. But okay, tell me about the world I'm going to and what kind of supplies I'll have."
"The world will be a surprise, but you'll know right away where you are. As for supplies," he paused for a moment, "well, this box will contain several things that will be useful to you, it all depends on your luck. It could contain anything that has ever existed and been invented by humans and gods, you'll figure it out yourself.
"That sounds suspiciously good. What kind of 'but' will there be? Are you giving me a quest with a difficulty level of 'You'll never complete it'?"
"Relax, just have fun, but keep in mind that in other worlds, gods don't have to watch over mortals, which means that if you die, I won't be obliged to save you. Perhaps one of the local lesser gods will ask you for a favour. They cannot interfere much in the lives of mortals, but you are not obliged to help them unless you want to.
"One more question: will I retain my memories?"
"Of course, your memories of your loved ones may fade, but there are reasons for that.
"I see, well, there's nothing to be done... send me on my way."
"Good luck!"he shouted joyfully.
And as soon as he said that, my vision blurred, and I woke up lying on something soft, my whole body moving sluggishly. Opening my eyes, I saw two blurry silhouettes, heard some cries in a vaguely familiar language, and then... a green flash.
***
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