9

Dax woke up again.

He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. The lack of sunlight here in the cave made it incredibly hard to judge the passage of time and the temple fire was burning with the exact same intensity as it had after he had stoked it.

There were still visible remains of the handful of leaves he had thrown into it glittering in the light of the dancing flames. A small pile of the golden leaves he had collected but had yet to burn lay in a corner of the outer temple room undisturbed. As he moved through the room, he found several new leaves on the floor that must have floated or been blown in here. Light reflected by them made shifting specks of colour on the ceiling of the temple.

Despite sleeping he could barely keep his eyes open and the only thing he was absolutely sure of, was that his stomach was growling. It clenched furiously and he was hit with a wave of faintness that led to him having to grab hold of a shelf to not fall to his knees.

'When was the last time this body actually had something to eat?' Dax thought massaging his stomach with his free hand. 'Actually, how long have I even been here?'

Before sleeping, Dax had hung up his sodden clothes and the bandages he had found underneath them to try and dry them. He ran his hands over them, feeling the hem and the places where the fabric was folded over itself to check there weren't any still damp spots. The fabric was incredibly wrinkled but it was dry and that was all that mattered.

Despite the fire and the blankets he was wrapped in, the cave air was still cool enough that he didn't want to sit around naked in it for longer than absolutely necessary. Putting them back on was significantly more awkward and painful than taking them off had been. Getting his arms up high enough to navigate the armholes without popping open one of the barely scabbed over wounds had been a struggle. The buttons were so small that Dax found himself fumbling with doing them up to the point that he almost gave up halfway up his chest.

Now all he needed to do was find food.

Dax scoffed. 'All I need to do...'

Finding food was a task that he was extremely unconfident that he would be able to fulfil.

He was a born and bred city boy. Literally the only thing he knew was not to eat mushrooms you found in the wild, or berries...especially berries. It was probably one of the earliest things you get taught as a child anywhere near a plant.

Don't put it in your mouth if you don't know one thousand percent what it is.

Here he was surrounded by giant fungi that were glowing purple.

Glowing mushrooms were probably toxic as hell right? Or radioactive or something? Dax really didn't want to chance it. Dying by ingesting poison was just below drowning in his top ten ways he didn't want to die.

Dax decided that at least for now he would sweep the golden leaves out of the outer room to pay back for the hospitality. There were probably a few other things that he could clean or put away nicely for the Deity that this place was dedicated to.

He glanced back at the fire that was steadily burning and wondered whether he would need to top it up again but it seemed to be perfectly happy now. It didn't look like he was going to need to intervene with it anymore. Despite that he gathered the leaves together and placed them in the empty space where wooden logs would normally be stored. There was no harm in being prepared.

It hadn't been a waste to collect them.

The leaves that had been scattered over the floor of the temple's outer room had to have blown in here. They had to, there was no other way that they could have ended up on the tiles without it. He'd searched the entire circumference of the cave before finding this place and hadn't found even the smallest of cracks or holes where air could have entered the cave.

There had to be somewhere for the air to get in here though otherwise the fire would have long burnt out.

'Do magic fires need oxygen?' He thought to himself, only just realising the danger of having a lit fire in what until just now he had thought to be a closed cave.

Air was blowing in here from somewhere. It might be a tiny hole at the top most layer of rock in the ceiling but it meant that somewhere there was at least the very beginning of a way out.

Excitement and relief started to flood his brain. It was going to be very hard but now, it didn't seem impossible.

"System connection to server repaired. Commencing download of patch 2.41.5" The mechanical voice of System chimed out interrupting Dax's thoughts.

"WTF! Now you start a download? WTF? Just tell me what is going on! Help me get out of here!" The words just burst out of Dax fueled as they were by his frustration. This situation was only becoming more and more farcical. (A/n: I truly feel you Dax, I rang my Doctors office 34x this morning and still couldn't get through to speak to anyone. 

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ )

He decided to try and actually do up the sleeve buttons on the robes he was currently wearing and tighten the sash at his waist, whilst he was waiting for System to actually be responsive. Looking at the clothes, they were fancy.

He'd noticed it before, but now with System's own golden glow he was able to actually appreciate the finer detail.

'These clothes were actually really fancy.' He thought as he took in the amount of work that had gone into making them. Each layer was constructed from a warm red linen and embroidered with leaves in golden thread, his outer layer having the highest density of stitches. Even if it had all been done by machine, the embroidery alone would have taken hours to complete.

Someone had really splashed out a lot of cash on them.

So shiny was the gold thread that Dax was concerned it was actual gold and the water and subsequent wrinkling might have damaged it.

Since he didn't want to get an infection and the wounds weren't actively bleeding, Dax balled up the bandages and stuffed them into his inner pockets. Wrapping a wound with dirty bandages seemed like a bad idea.

They were covered in dark brown stains that glittered too in the fire light. It was interesting but it was probably because of the dust from the leaves Dax had gathered, or the many ways in which light was being reflected and refracted inside of the outer room.

His stomach growled again and he seriously wondered whether he would starve to death before the System would finish its lengthy update. Right now, it's performance was so bad he almost expected the System to emit the beeps and static of a dial up connection.

Now that he was fully awake and his brain seemed to be functioning somewhat normally, Dax had the time to think about what had actually happened in the... hours? days? since his untimely death.

The last thing that he remembered before waking up underwater was spilling the ramen. Well technically, it was getting a huge electric shock after spilling the ramen and trying to save the keyboard. A keyboard that probably also had passed away.

"Am I dead?" Dax remembered the System's speech about him being eligible for the second chance programme. Second chance... Did that mean his first chance was over?

"FUCK!" There was a difference between knowing you died and 'knowing' you died.

He rushed out to the lake to see his reflection in the still water's surface.

Dax fell over onto the gravel, shouting in pain at the sudden movement and weight he had placed on wounds that were barely scabbed over. Blood began seeping from the scratches on his palms but he was too distracted to notice.

Looking back up at him from the water was a face that was not his own.

The skin, hair and eyes were the same colour... but every facial feature was completely the wrong size and shape and in the wrong place. This face was thinner and covered with the same array of half healed lacerations as the rest of the body.

A pointier nose sat in the middle of it complimented by thicker eyebrows, wider ears and a rounder chin.

It was someone else's face.

Chimes sounded once more from the System before he had any real chance to react to this fully.

A new copyrighted cheerful jingle played before the floating orb spoke to him again. Each note was carefully chosen and choreographed to infer feelings of warmth, familiarity and comfort. "Patch 2.41.5 download complete. Initialising welcome." It said.

Dax's left eyebrow twitched uncomfortably and he could feel his blood pressure rising.

He looked in the vague direction the sound was coming from and frowned. It seemed like he was finally going to get some answers.

Mini Theatre

Dax: You can put my spirit in another person's body but your system repair and download is this slow?

System: Do you know how hard it is to get a Wifi signal through several meters of solid rock?

Dax: *Snorts*

System: I even brought a wifi booster with me.

Wifi Booster: Wifi signal LOW.

System: See.

Wifi Booster: Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW.Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW. Wifi signal LOW.

Dax: *Eyebrow twitches dangerously*

System: See, you think you had it bad. *returns wifi booster to internal storage* 

A/n: Sorry if you saw this chapter early and unfinished. I fell asleep whilst editing it on my phone and somehow managed to post it.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯