*Evan POV*

I groaned as I slowly woke up from my nice sleep. I stretched but something was different, I opened my eyes and the flippen sun sniped my eyes from millions of miles away. My face contorted, my hands flung up to block the sun rays as my eyes closed up by themselves.

"Damn you sun!" I yelled while waving my fist at the sun.

I don't know if it was the sleepiness but I yelled as if the sun could hear me and would show me some decency by covering its BS up. But, I guess this is it. The first hurdle and the toughest battle of the day. Some people might think I'm weak but I’m fighting against a star sized ball of fire where nuclear reactions happen every second. Being weak to it is pretty normal.

Ok, I’m going to risk it.

I opened my eyes slightly, but nope, the sun rays are too strong. I think the sun rays burned my eye retinas because, beside the black shadow of my arm, everything else was pure white.

Ugh, God damn it!

For some reason. Probably due to sleepiness, my arms moved away by themselves and the sun rays flash-banged my eyes with pinpoint accuracy. It immediately felt like my world was turned upside down as my hands flung back up to protect my eyes but it was too late. Even with my eyes closed everything was white.

Looks like I’m going to lay down like this for a minute or two. My head hurts, I can't think either too, It's almost as if I got amnesia now.

… Do I have amnesia?

My brain quickly started working overtime while it was in a daze to remind me who I was.

I'm still me. Evan, Evan Langford, 6ft tall, 21, single and ready to mingle. Why am I single at 21? well, Let's see my face for that. The image of my face slowly surfaced into my mind. Smooth and silky brown hair as well as brown eyes, a celebrity-like jawline with a mature face and subtle beard.

hehehehe, Look at this Handsome guy. Oh, are you wondering why I'm still single? Well It's because the very second I go near a woman, They run away for they can't handle my heat!

… No, but seriously, I'm on the average side of things, I don't have a girlfriend yet because I'm not interested at the moment, lots of family problems and a couple more stuff which I'm not going into detail with. Welp, there's no point in thinking about sad stuff like that and my eyes have started adjusting to the harsh sunlight too and will open up in about a minute or two. After that, I will be able to resume my day like normal.

That reminds me, what in the hell was I doing last night?

If my memory serves me right, I did stay up late playing Terraria with some of my good friends. I'm not a die-hard fan of it but I do know all the recipes, boss attack patterns, enemy names and trivia, as well as, all the lore things from the very first build of alpha till the latest in journey's end. See? not a die-hard fan.

Oh hey, my eyes are finally starting to open up. I guess Its finally time to wake up. My eyes opened up and i saw the bright blue for a millisecond before I closed my eyes again and stood up on my bed, the sunlight was harsh and i didn't really wanted to stare at the sky for two long, I raised my arms and scratched for a few seconds before I yawned and scratched my back a little bit. My mind was still out of focus but this amount of mourning routine was drilled into my body.

I quickly stood up from my and started stretching for a few seconds before I looked around and noticed something different.

I'm in a forest?

I looked at the ground where I was lying down and instead of my comfy bed, it was a patch of grass. I looked around and instead of my room that I'm used to, There were trees and various critters like rabbits and squirrels hopping around far away in the bushes, there was also a lake right next to the place I was sleeping at and the grass was littered with drops of blood.

Uhhhhh. I was confused but for some reason I looked above me and instead of the celling I'm used to, there was a clean blue sky with the sun rising in the middle. Well, that explains why I felt like shit when I tried to wake up, but still...

"What in the hell is going on...?" I said to myself, confused before I started inspecting myself.

My chest and belly were bandaged up with some black coloured cloth. I was also wearing some grey clothes that had tears and was in bad condition along with black pants and brown shoes which were in good condition. None of these clothes are mine. I don’t remember buying these and I'm 100% sure I didn't borrow these. I also don’t think I drank booze last night. Sooooo… Why am I here?

My sleepiness finally went away and I noticed another odd thing. I noticed a hot bar with 10 slots on the top left part of my view, and on the top right part of my view, there was...

Life:(100/100)

❤❤❤❤❤

And right beside it...

Mana:40/40

⭐⭐

I stood there for a couple of moments looking all stupid as I racked my brain, trying to figure out what was happening. Until finally, it clicked. I clapped my fist to my palm in a sort of 'I understand' way. There's only one explanation to all of this, and that is that I'm in a dream. I couldn't have woken up that easily from all that late-night gaming now, could I? And, as proof, I’m dreaming about playing Terraria again.

Sweet!

It's also a lucid dream or whatever that's called! Which means I get to play more Terraria while I get to sleep in real life and and ignore my real life responsibilities!

Amazing!

I focused on my hot-bar and saw that I had the starting equipment of a new character and not the end-game gear I had before when I was playing last night. The starting equipment of a new character is always a Copper shortsword, pickaxe and axe with random modifier which may buff or nerf those tools. Looking at the Copper shortsword I got, I got it's nerfed counterpart with the 'Annoying' modifier.

Annoying Copper short sword:

Damage: 5

Knockback: Weak

Critical chance: 4%

Use time: Fast

Annoying:

-20% Damage

-15% Speed

Lets check out the tools too.

Copper Pickaxe:

Damage: 4

Knockback: Weak

Critical chance: 4%

Use time: Fast

Bonus: -1 range

Copper Axe:

Damage: 5

Knockback: Weak

Critical chance: 4%

Use time: Medium

Bonus: -1 range

Not the best starting gear, but neither the worst, The shortsword is canonically the worst weapon, so I'm going to change that with the Wooden Broadsword sooner or later anyway so any bad modifier on it doesn't really matter.

my gaming mind was fired up. I need to do the basics quickly, gather wood, make house, fight off hordes off enemies, get wife, make children.

The last two were a lie. I'm a gamer not a realist, regardless, I quickly made my way to the nearest tree and stood there. Staring at it all menacingly as if my stares were giving it passive damage and it would just cut itself off.

… Hmm.

How do I really equip my Axe? It's sitting there in hot-bar but how do I actually equip it in my hand? And the moment my thoughts went to equipping my axe, the copper axe materialized itself in my hand. My mouth was open wide with surprise, but at the same time, excitement.

This is amazing. I thought to myself before I stood straight in posed myself ready to chop down a tree. But, before I started hacking the tree down, I suddenly got an idea. I'm pretty sure I can still move my other hand around… So, shouldn't I be able to equip something else in that hand as well? In the original game, you can only equip one item at one time, so you can't dual wield two swords. or axes. But here... I just might be possible.

I thought about equipping the Copper Short Sword in my other hand and it immediately materialized there. My jaw dropped again as I was in awe with the possibilities.

Oh My God! My thoughts screamed out. I can dual-equip like a certain anime protagonist now! Well, I’m in a dream so I guess anything here is possible. While I was fan-girling over my ability to use both my hands for the purpose they serve, I saw some green slimes hopping around in the distance. I want to fight them but I'll engage them after I get a better sword. The Copper Short Sword is infamous for being the worst weapon in the game. So my eyes are out for a wooden broadsword.

I Un-equipped the short sword from my other hand and went all in on chopping this tree down.

*10 Minutes Later*

"TIMBERRRR!" I screamed out as another tree, victim to my axe, fell down. As soon as it crashed the ground, the tree segments became wood items and transferred immediately to my inventory. I opened my inventory and a blue screen appeared in front of me, showing me my inventory slots, along with a crafting menu right below it and my armor and accessory slots on the right which I had none at the moment.

I had been cutting trees like this for quite while and I finally had more than 500 woods along with a couple of saplings. Truth be told, I cut down way more than I would actually need. I usually go with 200 or 300 wood before making a house but the reason I wasted more time in gathering wood now was because it wasn't even mid-day yet. It’s still early morning and I might as well get extra materials if I can,

But since I have still have a lot of time left for activities. LET'S GO EXPLORING!

I crafted a workbench which only requires some wood to be crafted from the crafting menu and placed it down on the ground, It looks like a small wooden stool that a little wide. For self-defenses, I can’t rely on the Copper shortsword that I have, which is why I’m going to make a wooden broadsword. The wooden broadsword is much larger, more powerful and knocks enemy back further than the Copper shortsword. I guess that the Copper shortsword is faster, but meh, the negatives of it outweighs the positives of just a normal Wooden broadsword.

I was about to craft the wooden broadsword which also costs a little bit of wood, But before I did that, I noticed something odd about the crafting menu. When I wanted to make the wooden broadsword, an additional option opened up. A modifier option. It was asking me which modifier I wanted on this weapon.

Oh My God!

This is a literal game changer since in this isn't possible in the base game. What are modifiers, you may ask? Well, it's an added buff or debuff that sticks with the weapon or tool permanently, the modifier can be changed later on through the goblin tinkerer NPC but that will be after a long while. This function was not present in the original game that I remember of. But it looks like there’s a price to using this. The higher tier modifier will increase the build requirement by a certain percentage, while the lower tier modifier reduce the build requirement.

In a simpler sense. If something cost 10 wood to make. If I use the best modifier there is, the build requirement will increase by 20% and it will cost 12 wood to make instead of 10 and vice versa with the worst prefix. Usually, you get a random modifier when you craft anything, and if its a bad modifier or a modifier you dont like then the only thing you can do in the early game is to craft that weapon again. But now, I wont have to do that.

For now, I'll just craft a wooden Broadsword with a legendary modifier and an Unreal wooden bow. These are both the best modifiers for melee and range weapons respectively. After just thinking about it, the weapons were crafted and magically appeared in my hands. Honestly, I like this system, I have to just think about it and it happens. Pretty fast and efficient.

Legendary Wooden Broadsword :

Damage: 7

Knockback: Weak

Critical chance: 4%

Use time: Fast

Legendary:

+15% damage

+10% speed

+5% critical chance

+10% size

+15% knockback

Unreal Wooden Bow:

Damage: 4

Knockback: None

Critical chance: 4%

Use time: Average

Unreal:

+15% damage

+10% speed

+5% critical chance

+10% velocity

+15% knockback

I couldn't help but whistle looking at these stats. Well, there's only one problem, the stats are good but the numbers are still bad. At most, it will just make killing slimes easier and nothing else, which is only, if this world is on expert difficulty. The only difference between the normal difficulty and the harder versions is that the enemy stats are increased, which isn’t that much of a problem for a veteran like me, but it still makes doing normal things a little bit hard.

I turned off my inventory screen and noticed a green slime that was very much in the air and very much about to hit my face. The first thing a seasoned veteran like me would do in a situation like this was to scream like a little bitch in such a way that I surprised myself. The slime landed straight on my face and that little blob of liquid actually knocked my head back a little bit.

-22

IT-! Wait?.... It doesn't hurt? Oh yea, I'm in a dream! Of course, it won't hurt! HAHA!

Looking at the damage numbers that popped up in the air… the -22 is the damage I received, and that's double the amount of damage slimes normally do. Which means that I'm definitely in the Expert world, as long as I’m not in the Master world. I’m good with anything.

Either way, This slime is about to witness the combat power of a veteran who has watched years of anime. I took out my legendary wooden broadsword and pointed it at the slime.

"Omae wa mou shindeiru!" I said the words I heard in an anime once before I started flailing the sword around like a kid in the park who found the right kind of stick. The slime promptly responded with lunging back at my face, to which I responded by panicking and placing the large hunk of a wooden sword in front of me in an attempt to block.

{Author's note: 'Omae wa mou shindeiru.' Means 'You are already dead.'}

The slime actually got repelled by my sword and the strangest thing happened Immediately afterwards.

New skill unlocked: Parry

That line popped up in my Notifications tab which is on the bottom left side of my view, It’s usually hides itself until you get a notification.

At first I was confused, but if the system was trying to tell me that I parried the slime then next thing to do is obviously to counter attack! I kicked it immediately to gain some distance between me and the green slime. It seems like my kick dealt some damage to it since I saw a -4 number float above it. I didn't give the slime any kind of chance to jump at me again and immediately hit it with an overhead strike.

-9

*Skill unlocked: Counter*

*Skill unlocked: Sword Mastery (Lvl: 1)*

I don’t have time to think about what's happening in the notifications tab right now but Hell Yea! This feels awesome! Only a few more hits to go.

The slime jumped at me again. But this time I ducked and it went over and behind me. I quickly hit him with a 360 no-scope horizontal wide slash. I struck away the slime as the number -7 floated above it.

This is really fun! Have you ever swung a giant sword around and hit someone with it? I don’t know about you, but for me this feeling is great! Well, regardless of how good it felt, I was once again bathed in the mistake that I made again, which was not focusing on the slime. The slime had jumped at me again.

-21

It hit my stomach and a weird sound came out of my mouth. As I stumbled back a step but there was no pain so I quickly recovered and swung my sword down at the green blob right after he landed on the ground and split him apart in two. It became a pile of green puddle and disappeared into the ground.

A silver coin and 2 green gels popped out of its gel like corpse and went straight into my inventory. I got 57 HP left from fighting just one slime, and that’s half of my max HP left...

This sucks! A single green slime brought me down to half my HP, I blame this on the fact that I have no armor and in no way because of my own stupidity. But still I’m more interested in the Skills part that I kept unlocking during the fight.

And it does sound awesome but how do I check 'em? Is it the same as my inventory? Do I have to think out loud about something like "Open Skills menu"? and it would appear?

To my surprise, the second I thought of that, a blue screen opened up in front of me as a list of skills came into my view...

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