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35: Spoiler! I died.

  The alerts filled my vision as I floated in the black, pain wracking my body with every tick of damage over time. Who’d have thought that what used to be an irritating mechanic would now be such a painful way to go?

  Was this it? After death?

  How… boring. Nothing around me but the darkness. Would it be like this forever? I’d half-expected to simply wake back up in my bed, sweating, with this whole thing being one great dream. After all, with the adventures I’d been on? Yeah, it was pretty great.

  I mean, the pain factor was kind of a turn-off, but it only added to the reality. It stopped me from doing things I would’ve done in games, like suiciding into Sailboat to figure out if there were any weaknesses I could exploit. Or jumping off of cliffs for the heck of it.

  Though I guess it didn’t stop me from, you know, running headfirst into an apparent beetle army. Or… would it be air force?

  Now, I was dead.

  And I never even got to have the most important question answered.

  Is this just real life? Or just a fantasy?

  I was caught in a dung-slide. And this world had been my escape from reality.

  It’s too bad that I’d wasted it. And all to save a dinosaur. One that I didn’t even know… Why would I do that? Idiot…

  What?

  What do you mean “Error”, magic boxes?

  Great. I get to float in death forever, with error messages. Like my own personal hell. Wait…

  Was I in hell?

  Oh please no. Don’t tell me that it’s going to tell me all my downloads are stuck at 99% with not enough memory! Eternally watching downloads play out would not be the ideal way to spend, well, eternity. I’d much rather float in black forever.

  What? The error message? Rescind it?

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Then the pain returned.

  “AAAGH!” I screamed as it poured through my body, suddenly stronger than before. It was as though it had returned with a vengeance, like the dam that had held it back before burst, freeing the build-up behind it.

  What…?

  My brain was too scrambled to read what was happening and fully comprehend. Pain coursed through me, distracting me from too much thought.

  Did I die?

  Then, why did it hurt?

  Boxes flew by my face faster than I could see. I got the idea, though. Somehow, I wasn’t dead.

  Pain shot through my body again.

  The boxes stopped flying past my eyes, and one massive one remained. The pain dissipated, and suddenly I could think clearly. But none of the previous boxes were available for me to read anymore. Only the giant box before me.

  As I read the last option on the list, a light turned on in the darkness. There, lying before me, as a perfect mirror of myself, was a wound-ridden dinosaur corpse. Thick puncture marks bleeding profusely showed where I’d been stabbed.

  Everywhere, basically.

  But the blood was frozen, and the dino didn’t move. Everything was completely stationary.

  Was this… No. It couldn’t be.

  Did the game change just for me? Or was I hallucinating in death?

  No, the image was too vivid for me to possibly have imagined. Perhaps this hell had found a new way of tormenting me: hope.

  Well, Hell, if this is your best option for torture, then I’ve gotta say, I’m not impressed.

  But, on building a dino? Don’t mind if I do!

  After all, I’m a gamer, and I couldn't turn this opportunity down. I grinned as I pulled the dinosaur corpse towards me. It operated just like that game, the one I was so familiar with from years of playing and designing different organisms.

  And if it was real? Heh. I was about to bring this world its day of reckoning.

  Guess there's only one thing left to say… I’ve got dino blood, and a thousand DNA!!!

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