I was completely confused...

After waking up I looked around and had the feeling that I was in my room, but at the same time I was sure that I wasn't in my room...

It only took a few seconds for my head to start hurting and for a huge influx of memories to flood my mind.

Memories of two lives!

The Theo of the first life was just an ordinary man, he lived a normal life until he was 26, worked a normal job, had normal friends and spent his entire salary buying games to decorate his Steam account.

In that life I enjoyed every game I played.

Although I had a good talent for gaming, always getting around the Master Rank in all competitive games, I wasn't good enough to make a living out of it, so I just contented myself with playing the best games and platinuming as many as possible.

That life had nothing very important to say beyond that.

The second life was completely different.

Even though he had an ordinary start as an ordinary student at an ordinary school, everything changed when the school tested the students' talents and it was discovered that the Theo of this world had the talent to be a Game Creator.

For a world that was constantly invaded by other races, humanity had to find ways to become more powerful in order to defend itself against these other races.

So governments began to explore how they could make the population stronger.

It took a while for people to understand the seriousness of the invasions, until an invasion happened in London and surprisingly people with wands appeared and dealt with the invasion using spells.

A few days later an invasion took place in China and people flying on swords appeared to defend the population.

From then on, each country showed that it too had the ability to control supernatural means, and it became public knowledge that magic existed in the world and each culture knew how to take advantage of it in a different way.

In order not to be left behind, the US, which didn't have such a deep culture involving magic, had to find another way of dealing with it.

The government hired supernaturalists from all over the world for high salaries to study the different styles of magic and invent a new platform where the user's magic could be used together with technology.

With trillions of dollars invested and decades of work by geniuses and Supernaturals, a way to develop or access virtual worlds with magic finally emerged.

People with low magical potential could only become Players and access virtual worlds to become stronger.

People with high magical potential could choose to be Players or Game Creators, developing the virtual worlds and becoming stronger by making the Players stronger.

Luckily, Theo from this world was tested at school and found to have a low talent for being a Game Creator, which made a place available for him at a University to develop this talent.

The problem was that because he had little creativity and little mana, he never managed to excel at anything, always coming last in the university tests.

Theo often considered giving up being a Game Creator and becoming a Player, taking advantage of the fact that he had more magical potential than normal Players to stand out there.

This was the most common way out for failed Game Creators.

From the memories I received, Theo was planning to quit the Game Creator course today, but now with the memories I had of the two worlds in my mind, I realized that I didn't need to quit anymore.

With the memories of a Theo with decades of experience in playing and re-playing the best games in a peaceful world, and also a Theo with years of experience in magically developing games, even failed games, my potential was too great to waste.

In a world where the focus of games was only to make Players more powerful, games were extremely boring, tedious and repetitive.

Many Players had to force themselves to play the games in order to get stronger because the games weren't any fun.

It was as if Players had to train for 6 hours a day in the gym. Even if there were people who enjoyed the process, the vast majority would die of boredom having to do it.

If I used the knowledge of the best otherworldly games to make fun games for people to get stronger, wouldn't I stand out?

Why would I need to give up being a Game Creator if I could make games that thousands of people wanted to play?

With each passing second I felt as if the two sets of memories were integrating in my mind even more.

The fusion of the two memories was somehow making me feel even better.

Closing my eyes for a few minutes, I just sat and analyzed each memory from both my lives.

Sad memories, happy memories, dreams fulfilled, dreams dashed.

All the feelings of the two Theos came together in me.

When I felt that the memories had finally merged with me, I opened my eyes and felt like a new person.

'I'm Theo Brooks, I just didn't come from another world, I wasn't just born into this world, I'm both.' 'Even though I'm someone new, Theo's life in this world is still my life and I'm going to live it to the best of my ability!'

-

Having understood my mind, the first thing I did was analyze my surroundings.

I was in a place that looked like a 20-square-meter mini-house with space for just a bed, a desk with a computer, a small kitchen and a bathroom.

This place was my dormitory at Nova Forge Academy, Game Creator's development academy.

Because it was a newly built university, the criteria that students had to meet were lower, which is why the old Theo was still able to continue studying here even though his results were so poor.

Studying at a new university had its advantages, for example, even though my dormitory was small, I didn't have to share it with anyone and all the equipment was new.

Looking at the computer turned on, I became curious and began to analyze the technology.

Years of absolute focus on technological development meant that this world was decades ahead of my other life.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Unfortunately, looking at the list of games already open on the screen, I had to sigh.

[Knife Throwing Training in the Dark!]

[Ice Shield Defense Training!]

[Training...]

The “Games” of this world were basically training methods disguised as games.

Knife Throwing Training in the Dark!] for example, was just a virtual world in a dark forest where Players had a limited supply of knives and had to kill small birds that flew above the trees in exchange for points.

The more birds the Player killed, the more points he earned.

That was the “game”.

Just looking at it, I could think of several ways to make this game more interesting, for example, making the player earn coins for killing birds, then unlocking prettier knife appearances that could be bought for coins.

Buying machines that throw knives by themselves so that the player can earn even more coins, making tougher enemies that need more powerful knives and can only be killed by powerful knives.

As much as this made it seem like the game would lose its practical meaning, in the end the Player could still continue throwing knives, but now he would have an objective for throwing the knives, getting coins and having more beautiful knives.

Unfortunately, the Game Creator who made this game didn't think of any of this.

And looking at the comments I realized that I was the only one complaining about it.

[I used to suck at games that involved aiming and precision. After playing this for a few weeks, I realized that not only had my [Knife Throwing] Skill gone up from Rank F to Rank E, but I had also improved even in other areas of my life, such as cutting and slicing with precision in the kitchen. Super useful!]

[The points system is motivating. I'm always trying to break my record and, in the process, I'm getting better and better at throwing accuracy and speed, so I'm glad Game Creator decided to add that!"].

[What an interesting game, the variety of birds developed in the game, with each bird having different size and speed made a big difference in training, congratulations to Game Creator, you are very talented].

Reading the more than 80 comments praising Game Creator, I was shocked.

This game was so boring and people in this world actually thought it was good?

Sure, I have to admit that the game did fulfill the role of training, but for people to feel that a points system is enough to turn training into a game surprised me.

'If I'm not mistaken, those games on this list are the games that final year students had to develop in order to be assessed for graduation. What's the game that old Theo made...?'

Thinking about the game Theo made, my mind quickly remembered where the Game Core was.

Behind the bed was a safe, typing in the safe's password I opened the door and saw a small device the size of a Pendrive from another world.

Picking it up carefully, I sat back down in the computer chair and analyzed the device.

Under intense investment by the US government, this little device was the result of a blend of Magic and Technology.

Called the Game Core, as long as Mana was injected into it the Game Creator could send his consciousness into it and use the Mana itself to shape a game from scratch.

The game created depended solely on how much Mana the Game Creator had available and how creative he was, having enough creativity and Mana, it was said that even a perfect replica of our planet could exist in a Game Core.

Sure, it's not known whether this news is true or just something to give humanity hope, but even so, this little device was groundbreaking.

There are different Game Core Tiers, ranging from the lowest Rank, Rank F, to the highest Rank, Rank S.

The lower the Rank, the less storage capacity the Game Core has, consequently the higher the Rank of the Game Core, the more storage capacity it has.

Another factor to consider is that a Game Core Rank F requires 1 Mana Point from Players per hour to use, while a Rank E requires more Mana, with this cost rising to a maximum at Rank S.

Players are also classified by Rank and usually only play games of their Rank, meaning that a Rank F Player will probably only play Rank F games, and Rank E Players will hardly ever play Rank F games again, opting to play Rank E games that provide a greater improvement for them.

But there was no rule preventing Rank E Players or even Rank S Players from playing Rank F games, they just didn't want to.

Why train for 2 hours in a Rank F game if they could get the same result by training for 1 hour in a Rank E game?

That was the Players' perspective, as a Game Creator I thought differently.

'Why limit myself to making games only for Rank F Players if I can arouse the interest of Players of higher ranks too?'

With that in mind, I was even more interested in seeing what the game that Theo had developed was like, even if he didn't have the talent, it's not possible that the game would be so much worse than those games that the other Players had developed, right?

The only thing I needed was to control a small part of the Mana in my body to enter the Game Core, something that with my memories wasn't difficult at all, and what I saw in the Game Core...

...

Looking at the contents of the Game Core, I didn't even know how to react.

It's not possible that the old Theo thought this was something useful, right?

I even started going through my memories to understand his thought process to find out why he did something like that, but there was nothing.

It was as if he was just doing something for no reason.

In front of me was a table.

A wooden table.

Why on earth did he only create a wooden table?

Of all the ideas he could have had, why would he need a wooden table?

And looking at this wooden table, seeing how detailed and beautiful it is, he must have spent at least 50 Mana Points on it.

My total Mana is only 68 Mana Points, why on earth spend so much Mana on a single table?!

'Breathe in... Breathe out... Breathe in... Breathe out...'

I had to try to calm down.

With a calmer head, I just ignored the table as if it didn't exist and started testing with my Mana.

Fortunately, the Mana recovered, so even though he had spent 50 MP on this table, my Mana had already recovered and I had 68 MP available to develop again.

Sure, I didn't have any plans to develop now, but I still wanted to test what it was like to control Mana in Game Core.

Opening my hand, I controlled my Mana to leave my body and form the first small object that came to mind, a playing card.

What first appeared was just a blank card, but the more Mana I poured into it, the more detailed the card became, gaining the drawings and numbers the card had, even allowing me to make different drawings on the back of the card.

Best of all, I only needed 1 MP to do this test!

Looking at the simple card in my hand, I decided to test it out a bit and erase the drawing of the numbers and symbols on the card, which cost me a fraction of a Mana Point.

Despite playing a lot of games in my other life, I wasn't a good artist, so I wanted to see if I could make beautiful art on the card or if I needed talent for that too.

As a basis for this card I was thinking of a drawing of an imposing blue dragon.

This card came from an online card game I played a lot in my previous world, Runestone, where the cards had abilities, attack, defense, there were spell cards, and Players had to put together their own Decks to battle other Players.

Strangely, when I tried to draw the card, I felt as if my Mana was building up on the tip of my finger and not coming out.

Confused, I insisted on it even more and used 1 more MP to try to draw on the card but it was still just accumulating on my fingertip.

This time I just kept using MP and tried to figure out what was going on.

When the total cost reached 5 MP my finger finally stopped absorbing the Mana and a window appeared in front of me.

[5 Mana Points Stored, do you want to model a Saphire Drake Card?]

'What?' I was shocked.

Searching through all the memories in this world, I couldn't find anything related to this screen that appeared in front of me, even more so because the name that appeared on the screen was exactly the original name of the card in Runestone!

The strangest thing was that while my memories in this world knew nothing about this screen, my memories in the other world had a vague idea of what it might be...

It could be a system!

'If it really is a system, I've hit the jackpot! But first I have to test whether it really is a system...'

“Yes.” I replied.

As soon as I said that, the screen disappeared and the Mana stored in my fingertip began to flow out, being molded perfectly into the appearance of Runestone's Saphire Drake Card!

Even the shape of the card was identical, as there was also a Mana crystal in the top right corner of the card, showing the cost of summoning this card, as well as attack and defense statistics that this card had and an effect that the card exerted when summoned!

To test this even better, this time I decided to try spending 5 MP to make another card, but this time I used my Mana directly, without letting the “System” control it, and the result was catastrophic...

My otherworldly artistic talent also came with my memories, making the card look like it had been made by a child!

Come to think of it, Theo from this world also had a terrible talent for art.

'This System came with the perfect functionality for me, covering my great weakness! ' I thought excitedly, even more so after thinking about how modeling worked in Game Core. 'Other Game Creators need to model each thing several times to get the perfect mold, with this System I'll be able to model it in a single attempt without having to spend so much Mana on it! That way my deficiency of having too little Mana will also be compensated for!'

Thinking about the possibilities I had with this System for the future, I got quite excited.

Now what I had to do was decide the most important thing for my career as a Game Creator: what would my first game be?

This question was extremely important, because if the game I made didn't show any potential, my career as a Game Creator would be over.

I had to make a great game with the few resources I had... but which game to make?

Looking at the card in my hand and the table that, despite being useless, was beautiful, an idea began to form in my mind.