Hospitals are, objectively, the worst dungeon.
No loot. No mobs. No dramatic music swelling as you kick down the double doors. Just the constant beep… beep… beep… of machines that sound like they're trying to speedrun my sanity.
And the lighting—who designed this? Some villain whose entire personality is fluorescent?
I'm lying in a bed that squeaks when I breathe too confidently, wearing a gown that was clearly invented by someone who hates dignity. If I shift even a little, it flaps open like it's trying to dox me. In the corner there's a chair—technically two chairs fused into one unpleasant shape—where family rotates in and out in the quiet way people do when they're trying to be strong.
I don't like quiet.
Quiet is when your brain starts doing that thing where it pulls up every embarrassing memory you've ever had like it's compiling a highlight reel for your own destruction.
So I do what I always do.
I narrate.
Not out loud. That would get me tranquilized and I'm already at a disadvantage here. But in my head? In my head I'm still me. I'm still the guy who can turn a miserable situation into content, a tragedy into a bit, a pain into something sharp enough to cut through the fear.
It's funny, in a sick cosmic joke kind of way—how you can be the main character of so many people's screens, and still be just a person in a bed with tubes and tape and an IV drip that looks like it belongs in a potion shop run by someone with terrible reviews.
If this was a game, this would be the part where the NPC healer tells you:
"You have done all you can."
And then the camera pans slowly to your party members looking sad, and the soundtrack starts trying to bully you into tears.
Except this isn't a game. This is real life. Which means there's no respawn button, no quicksave, no "gg go next."
There's just time.
I can feel it, even when I don't want to. Time moving forward like a piston, like a machine that doesn't care if you're ready.
My hands look thinner than they used to. My arm is a little too light when I lift it. The strength is still in there somewhere, but it's buried under exhaustion that sits in my bones like wet sand.
I stare at the ceiling and imagine the tiles are a grid, and if I break the right one, I'll find a secret chest with a spare life inside.
Skill issue, universe. Should've patched that in.
A nurse comes in—soft voice, careful steps, like I'm a sleeping dragon and not a guy who has been awake for three hours because the IV machine keeps making that you are not currently winning noise.
She checks something on the monitor. Adjusts a line. Says my name in the tone people use when they're trying not to let their voice crack.
I hate that tone.
It makes everything too real.
So I give her the smallest smile I can manage, the kind that says don't worry, I am still the funniest person in this room, and she returns it like she's grateful for permission.
When she leaves, the quiet returns.
And I'm alone with the biggest enemy I've ever fought.
Not pain. Not sickness. Not even fear.
It's the thought that I might be done.
That all the jokes, all the battles, all the late nights recording and editing and laughing at my own stupid ideas… that it all ends here, in a place that smells like sanitizer and defeat.
I don't want to end here.
Not because I think I'm owed anything. Not because I'm delusional enough to believe the world should bend around me.
But because I'm not finished being me.
I'm not finished being a legend.
I'm not finished proving, in every ridiculous little way I can, that if the universe tries to knock me down I will absolutely bite its kneecaps and call it cringe.
I close my eyes and picture it: a battlefield, a crowd, a throne made of something dramatic—bones, probably. Bones are very in right now for villain décor.
And there I am. Cloaked. Crowned. Holding a sword that's way too big to be practical. The wind is doing that heroic thing where it whips your cape around so everyone knows you're important.
Some guy—always a guy—steps forward and says, "Who are you?"
And I, obviously, say:
"Technoblade."
Then I kill him.
It's Simple. Elegant... Traditional.
My chest tightens and the fantasy blurs at the edges, dragged back into the room by a coughing fit that feels like my lungs are trying to uninstall themselves.
When it passes, I lay there breathing shallowly, annoyed.
This is the part they don't show you in stories. The part where heroism doesn't look like a final stand. It looks like making it through the next minute without drowning in your own weakness.
You can fight dragons.
You can fight armies.
But fighting your own body? That's a boss with unfair mechanics and no pattern to learn.
At some point, someone comes in again—family. They sit. They talk softly. I catch pieces: schedules, food I'm not eating, "did you sleep," "how are you feeling," the usual human ritual of asking questions everyone already knows the answers to because saying them out loud feels like admitting defeat.
They try to be normal for me. I try to be normal for them.
I throw out a joke. Something about how if I die, they better make sure the funeral has good Wi-Fi so I can still get the last laugh.
It lands. Barely. But it lands.
That's the thing about jokes. They're tiny bridges over pits you don't want to look into. Sometimes you can get everyone across. Sometimes you just… stand there building bridges until your hands can't lift the boards anymore.
Eventually they leave, because people have to sleep and eat and exist. And I'm alone again.
It's late—late enough that the hallway noise thins out and the world feels like it's holding its breath.
The beeping becomes the loudest sound in existence.
I stare at the monitor. It displays lines and numbers like a scoreboard.
I have always been very good at scoreboards.
This one is not giving me the W.
It's strange, watching your life become… small.
Not in meaning. In scale. In radius.
A year ago, my world was screens and messages and videos and memories, people laughing at my jokes in places I'll never see.
Now my world is the reach of my arm, the taste of water, the way my own heartbeat sounds when the room is quiet.
There's a moment—there always is—where your brain tries to bargain.
If I could just get a little more time.
If I could just feel better.
If I could just—
But bargaining implies someone is listening.
And the universe is notoriously bad at customer service.
So instead, I do what I do best.
I make a decision.
If this is the end, then I'm going to meet it on my feet.
Metaphorically. Because literally my legs feel like cooked noodles, but you get the idea.
I inhale as deeply as I can manage, and in my head I speak into the dark like it's a live audience.
Alright.
If the game is ending, then I'm ending it like a champion.
Not with fear. Not with regret.
With the full, unreasonable confidence of a man who has never lost a duel in his life (do not fact check that).
I let my eyes drift closed again, and this time the imagined battlefield holds longer.
I see a sky split by banners. I hear steel on steel. I feel the weight of Netherite armor on my shoulders—heavy, familiar, reassuring, like a promise.
I think about everyone who watched. Everyone who cheered. Everyone who laughed with me, or at me, or because of me.
I think about how weird it is that a person can be gone, and still… not be gone.
I think about that phrase people keep saying.
Technoblade never dies.
It started as a joke, a meme, a flex.
But memes are funny like that. Say something enough times and it starts to grow teeth.
In the quiet, with the beeping and the dim light and the sense of the world narrowing down to a single point, the phrase stops being funny.
It becomes… stubborn.
Defiant.
A challenge.
Like I'm daring reality to try me.
My breathing slows.
The aches soften, not because they're gone, but because my brain is sliding away from them, like a hand loosening its grip.
A nurse comes in. I hear movement, distant and muffled, like I'm underwater. Someone says my name again, softer.
I try to open my eyes.
They don't cooperate.
That's… annoying.
I try to speak.
Nothing.
Okay.
Rude.
There's a pressure in my chest, then a strange lightness, like the moment right before you fall asleep—except sharper, cleaner, as if something is unhooking.
The beeping changes. It becomes urgent.
I can tell by the way footsteps quicken. Voices overlap.
But it all feels far away. Like it's happening in another room.
And then, suddenly, the hospital smell fades
Not slowly.
Instantly.
It's replaced by something cold and metallic and real—like iron in the air after rain, like stone, like smoke from a fire that's been burning a long time.
My eyes snap open.
I am no longer in a bed.
I am lying on hard ground that presses into my back through cloth that is not a hospital gown.
Above me is not a ceiling of tiles.
Above me is a sky.
A vast, open sky, bruised purple and black at the edges like someone spilled ink across the stars. Clouds move too fast, dragged by wind that howls like it has a vendetta.
I sit up so fast I almost black out—except I don't.
I should.
My body should be weak, trembling, exhausted.
But when I move, I move like my muscles remember something they never had a chance to be.
My hands—my hands look… right.
Stronger. Steadier.
I flex my fingers. The motion is smooth, powerful, like testing a new keyboard.
I breathe in.
The air is cold enough to sting, and it tastes like pine and ash and something sharp I can't name.
I blink rapidly, scanning.
Around me is a slope of dark grass and broken stone. Not hospital landscaping—ruins. Old, cracked blocks half-buried in earth, carved with symbols worn down by time.
In the distance, I can see a line of trees like black spears against the horizon.
And beyond that… faint lights. A settlement? A fortress? Something.
My heart is hammering, but not with pain.
With adrenaline.
With disbelief.
With the dawning realization that I have just been forcibly recruited into the world's weirdest isekai.
I look down at myself.
Clothes I don't recognize: dark fabric, layered, practical. A belt. A pouch. Boots that actually fit.
And beside my hip, half-hidden in the grass, is a stick ?
A iron sword .
Not a decorative one. Not a toy. A real sword, with a worn leather grip and a blade that looks like it has seen combat and survived out of pure spite.
I pick it up.
It's heavy—but it sits in my hand like it belongs there.
Like it's been waiting.
The wind whips around me, tugging at my clothes. Somewhere far off, I hear a sound like a horn—low, distant, ominous.
The kind of sound that, in a game, means you are about to be introduced to the local wildlife in the most violent way possible.
I stare into the strange sky and let out a single, shaky laugh.
Of course.
Of course this is what happens.
I die in the least cinematic place imaginable and wake up in a fantasy world with dramatic lighting and a free sword like I just spawned into a new server.
I stand, testing my balance. My legs hold.
I roll my shoulders.
No IV lines. No monitors. No weight pressing on my lungs.
Just me, the wind, the ruins, and a whole new world that has no idea what it just let in.
I grip the sword tighter and speak to the empty air, because if this is a story now, then it's going to start correctly.
"Alright," I say, voice rough but there, real and alive.
Then I smile, slow and sharp.
"Round two."
And somewhere in the dark, unseen and very unfortunate, fate queues up its first opponent.
Technoblade never dies.