"Open your eyes, Caelus. Time to wake up."
Caelus groggily opened his eyes. A woman with wine-red hair came into view, a faint smile on her lips as she looked at him. Beside her stood a shorter person, of whom Caelus could only see the top of their head.
Caelus raised a hand to his temple, feeling weak. He felt terrible, as if he'd been asleep for several hundred years. His mind was a complete fog, and he couldn't remember anything from before he fell asleep.
Seeing Caelus's dazed expression, Kafka felt a pang of sympathy, but she and Silver Wolf couldn't stay here for much longer.
"Caelus, listen to me..."
[Spirit Whisper V: 59:59]
Caelus noticed a rather familiar-looking negative BUFF status bar suddenly pop up at the edge of his vision. On pure reflex, he swung his fist straight at Kafka.
After throwing the punch, he froze. He noticed that besides the Spirit Whisper, there was another, different status effect listed.
[Steve: The total weight of all items in the inventory is converted into physical strength.]
Kafka was startled and quickly raised a hand to block Caelus's punch. But the force behind it was so immense that it sent her stumbling back two steps, a sharp pain radiating through the palm that had caught his fist.
Caelus's sudden resistance took Kafka completely by surprise. She turned her head to look at Silver Wolf.
"Why did he attack me?"
---o---
When Kafka looked back at Caelus, her eyes held a trace of hurt. Caelus, of course, saw her expression and felt a little puzzled himself.
Did he know this woman? He didn't seem to have much of an impression of her...
However, the pixelated debuff icon that had just appeared reminded him of something. Before he 'fell asleep,' he had been playing a game called Minecraft.
But why would things from a game appear in reality? And in reality, he didn't have any keys to press to open a game interface...
In the next second, the MC's inventory interface suddenly materialized before his eyes. The empty inventory had only a single, brightly shining ball of light in the very first slot.
As Caelus's gaze shifted to that ball of light, its item description appeared alongside it.
[Stellaron (Cannot be removed from inventory)]
The system text might as well have said nothing. The moment it said "Cannot," Caelus couldn't help but wonder what would happen if he took it out.
Kafka and Silver Wolf were still off to the side, discussing his situation. But when the two turned back to look at Caelus again, they were stunned to find that he was now holding the very Stellaron Kafka had just placed inside his body!
Moreover, the Stellaron in Caelus's hand began to flash erratically, looking as if it was about to explode. Kafka immediately rushed forward and pressed her hand onto the Stellaron, finally managing to stabilize the volatile object.
Silver Wolf, standing nearby, let out a sigh of relief before glaring at Caelus in annoyance.
"You just woke up and you're already trying to die? Don't drag me down with you! Unlike you, I still have a ton of games I haven't finished!"
Caelus glanced down at the now-stable Stellaron in his hand, then looked up at the tense faces of Kafka and Silver Wolf.
"It can explode? How powerful is it?"
Silver Wolf blinked, slightly taken aback.
"Is that what you're concerned about? You've lost your memories; shouldn't you be asking who we are? Or what our relationship is to you?"
Caelus returned the Stellaron to his inventory, hopped off the strange machine he had been floating in since he woke up, and landed on the floor.
Now, he had a pretty good grasp of the situation. He had lost his memories, but for some inexplicable reason, he now possessed a game system. Furthermore, he had inherited everything about the game character Steve, and it seemed these two people in front of him were deeply connected to his past self.
"Are you going to tell me?"
Kafka and Silver Wolf shook their heads in unison. Perhaps they would tell him someday, but that day was definitely not today.
Caelus shrugged, adopting an expression that said, "Well, there you have it."
"So, I'm more concerned about how big of an explosion this 'Stellaron' thing can make."
"More than enough to destroy half a space station," Kafka replied patiently, seeing how fixated Caelus was on this question. She then turned and gestured to Silver Wolf, who understood and walked over to her side.
Then, Kafka turned back to Caelus, her tone becoming very serious.
"We can't stay here any longer, but you have to. Don't worry, it won't be long before someone finds you. Go with them. You will experience many things after this, but you must remember this: when you have the power to make a choice, don't make a decision you'll come to regret."
Empowered by Spirit Whisper, these words were deeply etched into Caelus's mind, impossible to forget even if he wanted to. By the time he processed it all, Kafka and Silver Wolf were gone.
Seeing that he was alone, Caelus simply turned around, plopped himself down on a nearby piece of equipment, and began to study the special changes to his body.
He tried opening the MC interface several more times, confirming it wasn't some hallucination from sleeping too long.
The interface was more or less the same as when he played MC, with one key difference. When he clicked on the 'Mods' option, he found that in addition to the standard mini-map, JEI item manager, and health bar mods, there was a new one he had never seen before: a Proficiency Mod.
[Proficiency MOD: When the proficiency for a corresponding action reaches its maximum value, a random, removable MOD will be generated.]
Caelus looked closer and saw several proficiency bars: Combat, Equipment, Support, Tech, Survival... Apart from the Combat proficiency bar, which was at 1%, all the others were at 0.
That must be from the punch I threw at Kafka earlier. So that's what raised the combat bar.
In that case, he understood perfectly!
Though he didn't know what he used to do or where he was now, he knew one thing for sure: it was time to go on a killing spree!
But before that...
/gamemode 1
[Insufficient permissions. Command execution failed.]
/gamemode 0
[Game mode has been switched to: Survival Mode]
Okay, invincible mode it is!
With the survival issue sorted, the next step was to find a suitable weapon.
Caelus cast his gaze toward the glass display cases lining both sides of the room. They contained a variety of items, many of which looked like they could be weapons.
He first walked over to an object that looked like a pistol. The moment his eyes landed on it, the JEI mod activated, instantly displaying its information.
[Rating Pistol: A strange Curio that can score any living creature.]
As Caelus stood before the Rating Pistol, the large eye on the weapon suddenly blinked open and stared at him. A second later, as if it had seen a monster, it slammed shut. The pistol then turned itself around, pointing its grip at Caelus as it cowered and trembled in the back of the display case.
"Hey, at least give me a score!"