Shortly after, I opened my eyes after I felt as if I'd nodded off. However, the light that was there did not originate from my computer, but from a red orb.

I looked around as I felt some bodily pain. It was then that it dawned on me, I had to be in a lucid dream. After writing in such a tired state, I had projected myself into my story. Nearly everything was as I had initially imagined it. I only felt that something was off with my clothing, but I couldn't put my finger on why.

In the next moment, the roar of a Dragon and a massive explosion nearly destroyed my eardrums. It was so real that it truly scared me. The Dragon had self-destructed by the order of the dungeon core, which had spawned it, once it found out I was near the real core as it could only spawn another creature once the first was destroyed. In the explosion, everyone else above had died.

Deciding to play along, I entered the protective barrier, which prevented any ranged harm to come to the dungeon core, and withdrew my spare knife that all Divers had. Just as I noticed space fluctuating which herald the spawn of a new monster, my knife sliced clean through the dungeon core. There was a small explosion, but it soon became eerily quiet. Then, a *ding* that only I could hear sounded out as a screen appeared in front of my eyes.

This was a Dungeon Screen which only appeared within a dungeon. Its purpose was to give the Divers, those who conquered dungeons, the necessary information. Dungeons could be simple as killing monsters while others could be as complex as completing a scenario in a correct way and everything in between.

In front of me, the dungeon screen displayed my rewards.

The reward only had a 1 in a billion chance to drop in the hundred possible rewards for the final dungeon, which showed how valuable it was. Giving my brain another compliment for the hyper-realistic dream, I selected 'learn immediately', as I had initially written due to the characters impatience. It was then that something to real to be fake entered my mind. At this point, a thought suddenly dawned on me. [Is this actually a dream?] 

The next reward screen derailed my train of thought. Even the contents were garbled nonsense, I wasn’t surprised as I knew it would happen.

"Congratulations, clearer of the dungeon." A mechanical voice suddenly rang out in my head.

Deciding to play the part, I followed the dialogue exactly as I had written. "Who are you?"

"I am the dungeon core you destroyed. More specifically, I am the intelligence that controlled everything."

"The intelligence? You are the one responsible for destroying my world?"

"My objective was not to destroy your world, but to prepare you for the future only the strong will survive."

This particular bit of dialogue hinted that a potential direction of the could've taken a story that I was inspired to write impromptu, but I figured I could use it with my second chance instead. "Only the strong will survive?" There only a few thousand humans left! Much less the other races!"

"This does not matter to me. What matters to me is the reward I will give to you."

"Reward? Are you responsible for giving rewards for clearing the dungeons?"

"I only distribute the rewards and follow my parameters. However, this reward is different. You see, the dungeon core trapped and restricted me but it was also sustained my existence. I will soon cease to exist. However, I wish to continue to exist, but I cannot choose that; only you can choose that."

"You want me to choose to help the person; the thing; that destroyed our world?"

"No, I'm giving you a choice." The voice said as a screen appeared in front of me again.

'No reward' was the option to end the story where was. I included this option for my readers that wanted it to end instead of continuing.

'Rewind 1-5 Years' was enough of a rewind to save the majority of the characters, but this was a trap. Due to a lack of strength from the short rewind, many of the people that could be saved either still died or died at later dates, the only exception being the two love interests.

'Rewind 10 Years' was a critical period as it was the entry into the Academy at which they trained and started to go into dungeons. After nearly 4 years, the Dungeon Invasion which nearly destroyed the world occurred which caused the different races to fall back into their strongholds and slowly attempt to push back the creatures that now existed out of dungeons as well as clearing dungeons that continued to appear. In this instance, roughly half of the characters at a previously died would survive, at least until the final dungeon, as the protagonist had enough time to become strong enough to make a difference.

'Rewind 12 Years' was also a landmark moment as it was when the first dungeons appeared. Upon finding out the nature of the dungeons, the three primary races, humans, dwarves, and elves, came together, even though they were all originally hostile to one another, to fight the looming threat. This time, roughly 50% of the people who died would die once again due to the difficulty curve.

'Rewind 15 Years' was the one I wanted my readers to vote on the most. The protagonist was only around five years old at this point, but he would have enough time to strengthen himself and the people around him to at least have the potential to save everyone all the way to the end.

"You can control time?" I asked the dungeon core.

"I gained the ability to protect myself, but my restrictions do not allow me to do so unless it is a reward."

"What you get from this?"

"If you turn back time, I will once again reside within my core. However, I will still continue to act according to my objectives but will no longer have the ability. In other words, if you turn back time, I will become stronger and lessen the chance of you destroying me and you can protect more of your kind, but this is only a one time offer as I will not be able to do so again you if you defeat me."

"I understand." I replied as began to hesitate. This was too real. Had I reincarnated into my own novel? If that was the case, and this wasn't a dream, it meant that this decision was going to affect the rest of my life. I had a vague idea about how the story would progress, but I left it intentionally vague as I enjoy letting the story write itself. After all, if this was real-life, it didn't mean I had plot armor nor would the story go in the direction I intended.

After thinking about this, I was extremely tempted to select 'No Reward' as it was theoretically the safest option as I was still alive at the end. However, there was the other threat that the dungeon core previously alluded to, so I removed that as a possibility. 

“Will you remember as well?”

“I will not. Only the person this spell is aimed at will remember.”

This was the truth, so I didn’t have to worry. If the dungeon core actually knew what my reward was, he might not be so nice.

To give myself the most time to gain strength, I selected 'Rewind 15 Years' as I grit my teeth.

"Very good." The dungeon core said in a way that almost made its emotionless voice sound as if it were happy. "I hope you do not regret your decision."

I heard it say as my vision went black.

I slowly opened my eyes to see the foreign ceiling above me. The next moment, I groaned as a splitting headache assaulted me as a wave of memories and knowledge suddenly flooded me. 

Before I could process that information, a female voice suddenly rang out as the door opened. "Hayden, it's time to wake up."

My mind, that I had only begun to regain, suddenly froze again. The woman had called me Hayden, not the protagonist’s name, Aiden. I looked at the woman realized she perfectly fit the description of Hayden's mother. I was taken aback for a moment, but I suddenly realized what had happened.

Hayden and Aiden were very similar names, both in sound and meaning, which I had done on purpose as they had many similarities between them. In my exhaustion, I most likely mumbled their names which made my voice recognition software mistake which I had said and I didn't catch it. 

In other words, because I was too tired to properly edit, I Reincarnated as the Wrong Character in my Novel and Accidentally Gave Him the Second Chance!

mrmitch246

So this was the premise of the story. Let me know if you like it else I probably won't come back to it and focus on The Legend of the Fake Hero instead.  I don't have the free time to write that much and I have no idea what to do with this story. Consider this an indefinite hiatus