- Good morning! It's supposed to be my greeting, but I believe you will find it sarcastic in a few seconds, so I suppose hello will suffice.

A morning starting getting up from the ground, while being greeted by a synthetic voice, was surely going to be absurd. But I never expected what happened later.

- Good morning, what do you mean by sarcastic... AAAAAHHH!

A jolt of pain, so intense to almost make me black-out, cursed through every muscles of my body. Like the time I touched a live electric wire and almost electrocuted myself. I know, I know safety first but it was supposed to be detached from the main source.

Time is relative, I always believed that, because what I think where only a couple of seconds become an hour of agony in my perception.

- What the @#$% was that!

- I believe is better to brace yourself and stay quiet, or you could bite your tongue.

- What? AAAAAHHH!

This time the pain didn't make me spasm and block every muscles, no, this time my head feel like a stump where a giant woodcutter, too eager to work, started chopping wood like is life depended on it. Writhing on the floor, holding my head, and screaming was really one moment of my life best forgotten.

But like everything, better or worse, the pain and the pounding sensation abruptly disappeared, just like they begun. I didn't even want to start considering how much time passed but I thought that, in the end, at least tens of seconds passed.

The muscle pain was atrocious, but that "headache" was absolutely worse. Not only because it seemed to last much longer, but because I was weak to migraine for as long as I remember.

I didn't know how that body worked, but it seemed that my emotional response to pain was still the same. Really a pity, because the rare times I'm angry my reasoning fly off... So still breathing roughly and afraid of a third wave of pain...

- NOW YOU TELL ME WHAT THE @#$% WAS THAT! NO RIDDLE, NO !£$&[@ TALK, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!

The veiled threat was going to be more effective if only I wasn't trembling, I know...

- I heard you the first time, I was waiting for you to be in condition to listen. Now I believe I can answer your question.

- So no more pain? You sadistic @#$%?

- ??? To quote a movie from your memory "You've done that to yourself" I'm not responsible for te pain that assaulted you.

Like being doused with cold water, my anger subsided and I started pondering... Apart from reality, or if it/them can really influence my mind, if this is really a simulation the pain setting was to damn real and hurt like hell.

- How I'm responsible for my own pain? Did I bash my head while sleeping?

- No your sleeping habit have no connection on the upgrade's backlash. I'm sorry to say that it's how the system works, and you always repeated that "everything have a price, be it time,money or pain". I still don't know if you cited someone.

An idea appear and make way inside my brain at he mention of upgrade...

- Menu!

NameRaceAverageHumanHPMP102110AtkDefDexWis10101010Exp80/100

- I hope I'm not right, but can you tell me if the body and head pain is connected to HP and MP? If the seconds of pain are really a direct consequence of the increased value...

- Yes, correct on both, your intuitions are really amazing sometimes. Why you always deny or doubt them is also equally amazing.

- If you really have read my mind or my memories, you should know how I feel about them and why it's like that. Also did you know how condescending you sound...

Still if my "yesterday's" experiments, this always-on light was destroying my internal clock, influenced the grow of health and mana, the price to pay for it may be was too high for the plan I had in mind.

- You said the system is like that, but is the pain only a consequence here in this room?

... ... ...

@#$%& if it didn't hung up on me. Cursing didn't really help but it was a start I suppose. Now the fear of the pain was going to be a real decisive factor for planning what to do.

- Sigh... It's always like this, even in this "reality" it's all the same...

After the anger, and the immediate fear subsided, I sat down in a corner holding my head between my hands.

- Every time there's something vaguely interesting, every time I found myself almost happy, every time... every time...

I really thought that with the passing of time I wouldn't feel anymore this deep hurting sensation of being powerless, but maybe I was only lying to myself, being "happy" in my routine, trapped in my normality...

Well, with my new enhanced memory, I could finally really look over all the times I had misadventures. Staring at the ceiling, one of the many self-analysis I made in the past resurface by itself. Was I really only pessimist? Yes, every time I was happy somethings happened to spoil my mood, but they happened also when I was already in bad mood. Was I really so blind, so conceited? Was I feeling only the difference between the extremes...

- Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!... So it's true that everything have a downside, having a fantastic memory can really make peoples revaluate themselves...

Well numbers never lie. So seeing the undeniable facts of, what I'm starting to consider, my previous life, I could only start to revaluate myself and many of my life choices. Sure, I had pretty bad moment in my life, and many were clustered pretty close in time, but...

- Better change this train of through, "the past can't be changed, only the present exist"... sigh... I should have stopped more often to listen to more experienced people's word.

I got up and started pacing around the room. Even all of this introspection didn't change the fact that I was, or at least felt like, trapped there. So it was time to think seriously at the choices I had at my disposal.

If the exercises, both the physical and mental ones, made "forcefully" my HP and MP go up, maybe a more normal way should prevent the pain. One of the way to see if it's true is to find a way that is considered natural... If there's an Exp value, the most sensible guess is a level-up?

- But if a +2 in health, and +10 in mana caused such pain, what will involve the raising of other stats? Sigh... There's only one way to find it.

More easily said than done, when I crafted the blade, and had success in my magic experiment, I was rewarded with experience... I think... So let's craft something. I preferred crafting, even if I had more idea for new magic than things I can build, because if I was right it's the meditation that raised my mana.

All I have at hand are the remain of the bed frame and half sheets... I felt like I needed the most famous improvisation/build/repair master's help .

Last time I had built a blade, and to continue on the same road I started organising all the pieces on the floor, and decided to build a pseudo armour. Four of the metal bands that supported the mattress could be wrapped around, and fixed with the fabric strip, like arm and shin guards. Two pipes, after a little engineering with simple levers, were bent to make the frame where the other metal pieces can be fixed to form of a really simple jacket-like thing.

The all ensemble was more rough than I believed was realistically possible, and it leaved me with only to pipes and four square angular connector. But the results were more than I hoped for.

Feeling tired I lied down and tried to sleep, but to no avail. Even if coiling and intertwining the metal and fabric to make my pseudo-armour, plus arm and shin guard combo, took most of the "day". Hard to tell how much time really have passed without a clock and with this unchanging light.

Last time I was tired both physically and mentally, but now I didn't feel like resting at all. Yesterday I was objectively more excited for all the magic, and still the moment I laid down I was out for the counting.

Maybe the pending HP an MP augmentation influenced my tiredness or, even in this room, my internal clock could still tell the night from the day. Years of getting up to commute and sleeping at certain hours conditioned me, I suppose.

Well that new doubt could wait, it wasn't really at the list's top, and anyway I could use the extra time awake to test other things.

First of all was to see if meditation was the cause of the mana raise, and consequent pain. Doing some magic experimentation could also prove if mana regenerated naturally or meditation was mandatory.

Leaving alone the "elements" I tried yesterday, I launched myself into one of the things that always fascinated me, in all kind of media, force construct aka barriers. I mean, they are often disregarded save for strategic purposes like defending a city or to passively protect. Instead I found really interesting the idea of a way to interfere with the physical word, and it's laws, with non physical object.

Sure sometimes barriers are depicted like shining or semi-transparent so they must be physical and have a kind of mass. But in the cases of immaterial barriers I always wondered... If they can be placed at will, even if through a medium of sort, can they be used actively to sever or destroy things?

This ideas sounded wacky even to myself, but, given all the time I was alone as a boy, strange theory on fictional story were the less dangerous thing I could've done.

Now, absurd or not, how to proceed? Concentrating on the image of a physical object proved to be feasible, but how to imagine force, or motion, or any of the physics I barely understood...

Even with all the data I remembered reading, and studying, nothing seemed useful in this case. I sat down and started mulling over various ideas.

Every time I had made something appear I had in mind the simplified representation of the element, just like the images I saw on books and on-line. I also focused on what I knew of the true nature, how it works, of the subject. What I believed it truly was.

So I concentrated on force, and I started to imagine a way, at least plausible, to make a invisible wall. After many attempts I was tempted to give up, but often desperation is the way to find a solution.

In all my attempts to visualize a physical manifestation of force I started like all the other times, but that proved to be the flaw. For a force interaction I needed first to concentrate on the point where it will appear, and only after the position and shape was chosen, I could procede to visualize the wanted effect.

To tell all the truth when in the end it appeared, in all the white shimmering glory of a bi-dimensional wall, I was so abruptly tired that no more than a whisper escaped my lips.

- menu...

NameRaceAverageHumanHPMP102110AtkDefDexWis10101010Exp110/100

And then I crushed on the mattress...