"A spectral paintbrush? Or maybe just a pickaxe… but how would I hide it afterward? It's not exactly small…"
I muttered, sitting in Terraria, trying to decide what to use for my next "pulling items out of the game" experiment.
"Even saying it out loud sounds stupid…" I dragged out, thinking it over. "Alright, Vic, let's start with something simple…"
My inventory was open, my character safely inside his house, nothing attacking him. My gaze landed on gold coins, the in-game currency. I hadn't really used them much, to be honest. I mostly played for fun, not diving into wikis or anything, just messing around.
With the same anticipation, I slowly reached toward the laptop screen, and as soon as my finger touched it, the familiar разноцветные помехи turned into multicolored static. More confidently now, keeping my goal in mind, I moved my hand toward the coins in the inventory and… I felt them.
There were a lot of them, like I had dipped my hand into a bucket full of coins. But I grabbed just one and pulled my hand back out…
And only now did I notice something else. Behind that static, my hand seemed to… become part of it. Hard to describe.
"Well… an oval gold coin." I examined it in my hand.
It wasn't round like you'd expect from the word "coin," but rather oval, with a slight indentation in the middle. About the size of a quarter coin, maybe a bit bigger, but not by much. It was bright yellow and, if the game description was to be believed, made of gold.
This time, I didn't feel confusion or anxiety like during my first attempts with Diablo. Now I was thinking… where did this ability come from? I hadn't heard anything about superpowers in the real world. No magical or technological disasters, no meteor falling from the sky, nothing like that. Or had I always had it, and just never touched screens like this?
But I had touched my laptop screen plenty of times before, so that didn't make sense… then where from? I didn't believe in pure coincidence. Things like this don't just happen. People don't randomly get billions dropped on them without a cause. Something must have led to this… but I couldn't remember anything. Someone's experiment?
"Hey."
A loud knock on the door made me flinch, and the coin slipped from my hand, falling to the floor.
"Go to the store! And grab some drinks too, you know what kind! Hurry up, the game's about to start!"
My first instinct was to snap back, but after exhaling, I just agreed. Nothing criminal about it. I was going to the store anyway, and I'd have time to think. I picked up the gold coin, slipped it into my pocket, and headed to the door to put my shoes on.
Hundreds of thoughts ran through my head. Wealth. Fame. Power. Greatness. Not that I was obsessed with the last one, but who would refuse the chance to be "special"? If you gave someone a million, would they refuse? Well, assuming there's no catch. Of course not. Why would they? Money brings opportunities, and power brings confidence. But what did I actually want?
If I summed up everything I knew so far, I could pull items from games into reality, and they retained their properties. Like the ring and the amulet, they affected me the same way they would a character. And there were countless games out there. I didn't even know where to start. What could I get from Terraria? Money, weapons, armor… magical stars that increase mana, "Life Crystals" that increase health?
But how would that affect me? I didn't have a health bar like a game character. Would I just become healthier? Gain regeneration? Slowly die but recover faster?
There were no clear answers. I could only find out through trial and error.
On the other hand… if I could pull anything from games… what about food? Water? I could basically become an infinite resource generator. I could help people. Everyone in need, everyone suffering… Yeah, I'd heard "Think about the starving kids in Africa" before when throwing away food. Not often, but still. And in reality, people rarely think about it seriously.
There are people out there who are truly starving. Not complaining about not having food in the middle of a city, but actually starving. And… I felt nothing in my chest about it. I understood logically that helping would be good if I could, but… how? Just magically dropping food from the sky? Donating to organizations?
I didn't understand any of that. Jumping into something like that blindly… people like that don't end well. They end up in a ditch with a bullet in their head, or at the bottom of the ocean, a river, a lake.
There are already powerful people in the world, and they wouldn't want to share that power. Even with my near-zero knowledge, I understood that.
So shouting "I have powers!" or "I suddenly have tons of money!" would be extremely bad for my health.
And I still hadn't figured out the limits of this ability. I had only pulled small things. But what about something bigger than my laptop screen? Much bigger? Like a person? Or a car? How would that even work?
Not something I could test in my room… well, not with a car. But something medium-sized? Bigger than the screen, but not too big… that I could try.
Lost in these thoughts, the trip to the store and then to the liquor shop passed by almost automatically. Soon, I was back in my room, already forming a few ideas.
"Alright, Sims… your turn."
I launched the game, waited for it to load, and my vampire character appeared, sitting in his room, working as a programmer while smelling terrible and needing blood. I ignored that and made him walk over to the microwave.
Then I pushed my hand into the screen again.
It was still surreal, watching my hand disappear and end up somewhere else. The static didn't stop me from finding what I needed. And strangely, even though the microwave looked small on the screen, it felt completely normal in size, like my hand was actually inside that world.
Placing my hand on top of it, I started pulling. I wasn't even gripping anything properly, it felt like just the intent was enough. And out of the screen began to emerge a freaking microwave.
Well… part of it.
Then something unexpected happened. It suddenly shrunk, collapsing into itself, until I was holding what looked like a small toy, about five by four centimeters. A toy microwave.
"Uh…"
I turned it in my hand and glanced at the screen. The microwave in the house was gone, as if I had sold it. No money though.
But before I could think more about it, I felt the weight in my hand increase. The tiny microwave started expanding back to a normal size, and I had to grab it with both hands to hold it.
"Well… that answers the size question," I muttered, carefully placing it on the bed.
It looked… normal. Plugging it in, I confirmed it worked. But the interesting part came after. I couldn't push it back into the screen. It just hit the surface like any regular object. But my hand, holding it, still passed through with static.
However, when I wanted it to shrink again while touching it, it collapsed back into the toy version.
More questions, no answers. The amulet didn't shrink no matter how hard I tried. Same with the coin and the ring.
But this shrinking mechanic gave me an idea.
Opening Terraria's inventory again, my eyes landed on "Piggy Bank."
"Let's see…"
A few seconds later, I was holding a pink piggy bank about the size of two fists. And what shocked me the most was that once it appeared in reality, I could somehow… sense forty storage slots inside it.
A piggy bank was definitely less suspicious than a fancy ring, an amulet, or a random microwave. After experimenting, I realized I could store anything from my room inside it. Even my wardrobe. Chairs too.
When I pulled items out, they either appeared next to me or in my hand, depending on size and intent.
"In my room right now is something scientists would kill for… basically spatial storage working by unknown laws. Any government would tear me apart for this. Fame too… but yeah, they'd just take it from me."
I shook my head.
Sitting back at my laptop, I closed the game and opened… a wiki. Yeah. Terraria wiki. And just froze at how much stuff there actually was.
There was an upgraded version of the piggy bank. And even a "Void Bag," a small pouch that stores items when your inventory is full… no idea how that would work in reality, but it sounded promising.
And also…
Potions. Food with buffs. Books that grant abilities, like "Water Bolt."
And that's just one game.
There are… a lot of them.