11. Reality loss?

A persistent ringing sound awakened him from his slumber but this time he woke up in the same, small cellar-like room where he was bound to reality through a cable in his neck. The sound came from a rather small device pinned to a wall near the exit, in today's terms it would have most likely resembled the functionalities of an intercom.

"As requested the three hours have passed, would you like to continue Sir?" A robotic voice said.

With one movement he ripped the cable out of his neck but the feeling of the rough clothing rubbing on his skin and the weight of his looted rusty sword on the waist didn't leave his body, even the air seemed to have changed. Now he faced the biggest challenge of abusing VR, everything in him craved to go back into a world full of mystery, back to Nelenia but a quick glance on his phone prevented him from prolonging his stay.

<15 Missed calls from Mom>

"I wi... will leave, thank you."

"Thank you for visiting Sir, an employee will be waiting for you at the elevator."

Pens on the small table turned into swords while the table itself turned into an old medieval desk, everything around him started to change back and forth between how it would look like in a fantasy world and how it looked in reality, even his character switch flipped for a second.

"Status!" Out of habit, he wanted to check his stats.

It was a common occurrence that people who just came back from a VR dive would suffer from severe reality loss, meaning that they couldn't distinguish the real from the fake world. But this time was different, he could clearly see the status window that popped up right in front of him, despite not being in the game. Bao's jaw dropped open with nothing but strange squeaks coming out of it, incredulous his hands tried to touch the window and press the plus button on it.

"There are..."

"There..."

"There are no..."

"There are no action points left."

The exact same voice as in the game appeared in his head and restarted the sentence every time he pressed the button. Absentminded his finger continued to click the buttons why could he still see the status window, was he going crazy again? Something on it looked different than in the game but what could it be? Bothered by it he read through the list over and over again until he noticed that he overlooked the most obvious thing, the name. Written on top of this Status was not the name David but Bao. Does that mean the skills transcribed to the real world? What was going on?

"Sir are you not feeling well? Should I send someone to assist you?" The voice from the intercom stated.

"No, I'm okay, I'll leave right now."

"Understood thank you for your patronage."

With wobbling feet, he stood up, his bones felt like broken glasses piercing his sore muscles with every step he took. He bit on his lip to suppress the urge to scream in pain all the way back to the elevator, through the net cafe and ultimately the streets until he stood before his home. Every inch of his body was screaming to stop and not to go any step further than he already had. With his remaining strength, he walked through the doorstep making the stairs to his room the last hurdle.

"Where have you been this whole time!? I tried to call you a million times! You could've at least answered them or write a response!" His mother screamed through the whole corridor.

"I said... that I'm going to my friend's house, I had my phone on silent so I didn't hear the calls."

"You didn't go back in one of those... those things did you?"

"No, I didn't we just played normal games and talked about what I missed out on during my absence."

"Why are you looking so pale and sweating so much, I hope for you that you didn't take any drugs."

"MOM! What do you take me for, a junkie who sleeps on the street! I probably just caught a cold you know how fragile my body is. And now if you permit it I'll go take a rest hoping that it won't get any worse."

He walked up the stairs that in his eyes seemed a tall mountain whose's destination was his room. Like a rock climber, he fought for every step until he reached the peak. Before lying down on the bed he wrote a message to his friend, brief and short:

<We need to meet, at our usual spot tomorrow 14:00>

As he lied down with every limb throbbing in pain he remembered something the tutorial voice said when he first awakened in Nelenia, 'be aware of the level up sickness.'.