18 Purging avatar

"Dang, it's annoying," Tom said almost as soon as he entered the dungeon. With his secondary character having its own quirks and special attributes, it felt weird to move around in it. Even the act of feeling the avatar's body didn't help.

But rather than attributing it to a state of mind, it was caused by Tom's memories.

'Now that I know that it's not a game in the first place, it's just hard to accept merging with an avatar like that,' Tom thought, making his first few steps in this old avatar of his. 'I guess the different build of this avatar also makes it harder...' Tom thought, hesitating over making a radical yet most likely a necessary step.

"Well, let's go through the first floor and then think about it again," Tom muttered under his nose as he finally moved forward.

Thanks to buying the stacking knife at the auction, Tom could now invoke its code to make it appear in his avatar's hand. The physics behind it was strange. Even with all the hidden knowledge that Tom recently unlocked, he could not make any sense out of it.

"It was obvious back when I believed it was all just a game, but now," Tom said to himself, smashing his fist into the very first monster that appeared in the dungeon. This time, it was the simplest of the simple monsters, a slime.

Its body comprised a solid core the size of a glass marble that kids used to play around with back in the days, and a varying amount of liquid mass that made the exterior of its body. Just like the slime boss that Tom fought with before, in order to kill the slime, one had to crush its core.

Yet, its thick outer body was made to prevent any damage from coming to the core. Only by equipping a blade, using enough strength, or just outright casting magic one could reach the core and get rid of the monster.

"In my scenario, I could just let it munch on me for several hours before it would as much as bruise my skin," Tom sighed while shaking his arm to force all the remaining slime that stuck to his arm to fall off.

"Well, I already know everything." Just a single fight with the slime was enough for Tom. From this single fight, he could already tell that with the current state of his avatar, there would be no future in the dungeon for him.

"I guess that's the only thing I can do right now," Tom said to himself in order to nail the point home. Once he did that, he turned around and moved back to the entrance of the dungeon.

He returned to the lobby. As annoying and distracting as the colorful mass of other players was, Tom couldn't really do anything about it, so he decided to just plain out ignore players around him.

Sealing off all the chaos of the lobby, Tom approached the desk where players would usually cash out their earnings. Yet, Tom didn't conquer a single floor of the dungeon yet.

"I wish to purge my avatar," he announced as soon as he got to the reception desk. The character on the other side of the counter turned its eyes towards Tom's avatar, only to nod its head.

"Do you wish to purge your avatar?"

"Yes/No"

This time, the AI didn't ask Tom personally. Rather than that, it gave him a selection window to make his choice definitive.

'Is it to make sure there are no mistakes when it comes to purging or they just can't afford a professional AI?' Tom asked himself while confirming his decision.

The next moment, a chill ran down his spine. For a moment, his vision blanked out, leaving Tom's consciousness in the familiar, white nothingness.

But it only lasted for a short moment. In just a few seconds, Tom regained his vision and other senses. And he was still standing at the counter.

"The purging is now finalized." The message appeared in front of his eyes, instantly shaking the young man awake.

"I guess not even thank you or fuck you either," Tom said to himself, shaking his head over how basic the service of the online hub here was.

But he didn't waste his time either. With the purging, all the data related to his avatar was now gone. All the skills that he earned in the past, all the improvements that those skills could give to Tom's avatar.

What was left, was a character at the same level as before, one that has yet to take a real shape. And in order for it to happen, Tom stepped towards the doors of the dungeon before pulling out the one thing that prevented him from resenting his character in the more traditional way.

"This spear... Well, let's see how useful it really is," Tom said to himself while invoking a code of the only item he held on this avatar so far.

A spear of thunder, an item that even in the local auction could easily go for more than several million. An item that when sold, could provide for the next few years of Tom's life. Or an item that could make his climb back to greatness way easier.

With all of his progress outside of his level now voided, Tom once again entered the dungeon. This time though, he held his weapon firmly in his hand as he pushed forward to find his first opponents.