Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I have a girlfriend. Let me reiterate that. I have a beautiful, one-of-a-kind, million dollar—no—make that a priceless, bombshell, down-to-earth girlfriend. She is irreplaceable.

And she games. Let me tell you—she would whip your ass in FIFA if she decided to play. But guess what game she decided to play instead?

Love and Deepspace.

And as the supportive boyfriend I am, I joined her. Goddamn was that a mistake.

Initially, I only listened to her tell me about the storyline. The BDSM update was a ‘lil sus, I had to admit, but that was fine. They weren’t real guys. When I saw the cutscene and some other scenes she showed me, I decided—it was time for me to give it a go.

“Lemme see this biting Rafayel,” I told her, but my phone, which was really low-spec since my old one had broken, could barely play the first cutscene of the main story quest. The audio stuttered and I said, relieved, “Well, looks like this game isn’t for me!”

“No, just play it out,” she pleaded. “It’ll be smooth after, trust me.”

So I trusted her.

Naming my MC Sh!t@r$e, I tried to make the worst looking MC you could possibly think of. She looked otherwordly with protruding eyes, a dislocated, thin jawline and an extremely skinny nose. I wished I could change her skin colour to green, but it wasn’t possible.

When my girlfriend looked at it, she sighed and said, “Here we go again…”

My antics were always the same in video games. Give me Baldur’s Gate, Mass Effect, even Too Hot to Handle 2 for fun… Character customization was my playground.

Sending my girlfriend my proud photobooth pictures, she said with a wink, “I think we should print and frame these.”

“I agree,” I said. “One with every love interest.”

It was cute— while we were cooking in the evening after work, we’d both leave each of the love interests to exercise every five minutes to increase the achievements. For me it was Zayne, Sylus, Rafayel, Xavier, then Caleb. She was a Sylus main through and through.

I preferred the boys in that order since the last two looked high whenever I studied with them on low quality settings. It wasn’t something I was unfamiliar with seeing, but I really didn’t wanna see that every night.

And then it happened. The day when I was transported.

I was merely minding my own business, standing in a long queue on a Sunday that could have extended to countries, or at least, it felt like that. The aircon wasn’t working, it was hot, everyone was miserable. An end of the month regular occurrence trying to buy groceries at a shopping mall—of course we would all be suffering.

And then someone cut in line in front of me.

I was never a patient person. I stood for justice.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

She shrugged and continued to stand there.

I’d been standing in the queue for more than 30 minutes. It was insane. To have another person take the place ahead of me like that made my blood boil.

And so I did the first thing that came to mind. I opened Love and Deepspace.

I switched the character on my home screen to Caleb and started an exercise session with him. Holding the phone near the woman’s ear, I made her listen to his grunts and moans while exercising, loud enough for only her to hear.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she complained.

She tried to swat the phone away from me, but I kept dangling it near her ear. “This space in front of me is apparently free for everyone,” I told her in a  nonchalant tone, “so I can do what I like.”

Reaching out, she tried desperately to grab the phone from me. We wrestled, pushing the people in the queue, who started wrestling with us too.

As someone pulled my short hair, I felt like I was going to die. Everyone was so angry today because of the heat.

In my peripheral vision, amidst Calebs grunts that somehow had gotten to the loudest volume, I saw something that shocked the hell out of me.

There was a truck in the store. And not just any truck. A white, headlights-blazing truck that was driving towards us.

I couldn’t comprehend how that was possible. A crowded mall with a truck that was driving through people’s bodies? Through counters and displays?

“How the fuck—”

No one was fazed. They were still casually standing in the queue, chatting , and the people around me were still fighting like their lives depended on it.

The truck was close. I could see all the details on its bumper and hood, every speck of dirt on its headlights, the way its windscreen wipers moved rapidly…

Hell, there was no way I was gonna stay to find out what happened when it crashed into me. My life was more important than my groceries, thanks very much.

“Get out of the way!” I shouted. I pushed past the crowd, jumping over several people who were still on the floor wrestling. My body launched as I tripped over someone’s leg, the ground cold and hard as I landed.

An old lady in the queue stared at me like I was mad.

“There’s a truck—” I wheezed.

More blank stares.

Was I hallucinating because of the heat? But it was right there! Maybe I was imagining it, but its headlights looked like eyes, as if it were shooting me an intimidating look.

Then it flickered, as if it was a holographic image.

And repositioned itself in my direction.

“The hell!”

It was after me.

God knows how fast I ran. I never ran that fast in my life. It was like my legs had become wheels. Was this my karma for playing Caleb’s exercising moans inappropriately ?

I raced up stairs but the damn truck still somehow hovered over them, right on my tail. This had to be a dream, right? Some weird ass isekai dream about truck-kun, like the manga and manhwa I read. How could a truck fly like this?

I didn’t know I had it in me, but I was outrunning the truck.

Ha, I’m going to make it!  I thought gleefully as I saw the exit in front of me. Just take a sharp turn, there’s no way it could take—

And then it hit me.

It felt like my soul was leaving my body.

Wow, I felt free, my mind was at peace...

I was flying, weightless, stress-free, abnormally happy…

And oh, so...

Dead.

Chapter Text

While other isekai protagonists find themselves reborn as a male in a harem situation, or a female villainess of a medieval story, I found myself stuck in the opening video of Love and Deepspace. At first I couldn’t believe it, watching as Caleb turned towards me, leaning over and smiling, the sound of Sarah Brightman’s singing in the background.

“Some long for longevity, before fading to duuust~”

This had to be a joke, right? Maybe someone knocked me out in that grocery store while I was fighting with them, and I was in a coma in the hospital with my girlfriend holding my hand tightly. Yes… that had to be what it was.

Obviously I'd been playing too much Love and Deepspace lately, hence that opening song was playing with accurate lyrics…

“Some long for eternal sleep, and eulogy chanted by staaaars~”

I was simply a floating, bodiless entity, watching the loading screen happen. Everything was so close, it made me uncomfortable: Caleb transitioning into his military uniform, eating an apple and looking up at me with a serious expression, taking a bite of it.

As if on par with my slow af phone, the loading continued into Rafayel’s wink, and even further than that.

Okay… I was just dreaming, probably. Why else would I not even be a person in the first place, watching all of this from a weird kind of perspective? This game was taking over my subconsciousness, it seemed.

And then, all of a sudden, I was pulled into the main story. Into a random arena.

I didn’t know where I was. The maps didn’t look great on smooth graphics so I never really took much notice. The area around me was as badly pixelated as my phone, causing my eyes to hurt seeing it in a real-life situation. I seemed to be in an outdoor area surrounded by a circular steel building with green trees and, oh Lord…

Was that a Wanderer?

It was way bigger than I thought, intimidating enough to make even the toughest person on Earth pee their pants in fear, not that I did it. Maybe I would have if it was real but it wasn't, so my pants were fine.

I didn’t know what the Wanderer was called, never having paid attention to the names much. All I could tell was it was made of rock, with a blue core serving as the linkage between its lower and upper half, its hair sticking up like Medusa’s snakes. I’d give it credit for looking fashionable.

I knew how to fight this guy in the game—you had to run to the same stone pillar to repel his attacks, but the question was… could I really fight it? I couldn’t even fully concentrate on the Wanderer because I myself was in an uncomfortable situation.

I was dressed in the Farspace Fleet attire with a gun in each hand but everything else felt utterly wrong. My mouth felt very weird, my jaw uncomfortable as I closed it, fuck, I couldn’t even close it— to the point that the air circulating from the presence of the Wanderer kept blowing into my mouth. Something was wrong.

Screw fighting this Wanderer, I needed a dentist asap.

My eyes felt strained, I struggled to close my eyelids as well.

What is this nonsense??

I was also short, much shorter than I used to be. I had long, waist-length black hair and a fringe that never existed prior to this.

All of this meant one thing.

I was MC. And not just MC— the abomination of an MC I had created.

Ahaha this really has to be a bad dream, I thought, a sudden sickness rising in the pit of my stomach.

At least my body was the default one of MC’s, but this still wasn’t ‘default’ to me… Where was my fifth limb? Not having it was super weird.

Come on, wake up... I told myself, using my black gloved hand to pinch myself. It hurt.

Oh crap. I’m not dreaming.

This couldn’t be happening. What about my girlfriend? What about my family? What about my job?

“Get behind the rock spikes, the waves can’t touch us then.”

I was so busy in my own world, wondering what the hell my girlfriend would think if I had to go to the toilet and see MC’s body that I didn’t even notice he was there. Caleb was running to a rock spike on the battlefield in his Farspace Fleet uniform, hiding behind it. His face was pixelated and there were white blurred edges around his body. This low-res was damaging my already damaged eyes, along with the wind that was drying them out.

My gaze was so focused on him that I got hit by a massive rock, flying backward.

Fuck, that hurt!

“It’s ok, you still have me.”

No, I don’t! Where was him shielding me with his body when I needed it?

I got up gingerly, taking aim at the Wanderer. Okay, this should be easy…

I never fired a gun in my life. I pulled both triggers of the guns in my hands, expecting them to fire but no shots came. As Caleb lagged around the battlefield, I kept pulling the triggers in desperation as the Wanderer was about to hit me.

“The safety catch is on,” Caleb said over the sound of his gunfire. “Come on, pipsqueak, don’t tell me you forgot how to shoot a gun?”

Pipsqueak? I almost choked hearing that. It was fine hearing it in game, but being called that in person sent an unpleasant shiver through me. Thank God Sylus wasn’t here calling me kitten—now that would have really sent me running off the battlefield, if there even was an exit.

I didn’t know where the safety catch was. I played lots of video games, but the guns there were already ready to be fired. “Look, erm… I don’t know where the safety catch is.”

Caleb said in a joking tone, “Are you teasin' me right now? We can play games later.”

“No, I’m being serious!”

He still thought I wasn’t and laughed, continuing to shoot at the Wanderer and attract its attention.

I ran behind one of the rock spikes, inspecting one of the guns properly. I started pulling all kinds of parts on it, hoping one of them was the safety catch, just as a giant blue, crackling ball flew past me.

Oh hell no…

I ran immediately to the next rock spike, pulling a lever on the side of the gun. “Let’s see if this works,” I muttered to myself before shooting in front of me at the Wanderer.

Caleb moved so fast, that the place that was clear where I’d shot suddenly wasn’t. The bullet that finally left my gun hit him right in the bum.

 “Hey, where do you think you’re shootin'?”

He didn’t seem to be hurt, luckily, but…

“Sorry, bro, I really—”

“Bro? Since when did you call me that?”

Suddenly, the Wanderer aimed another rock spike at us.

“Now we should stick together,” Caleb said.

I couldn’t see the blue lines as to where the Wanderer was aiming it like I did in the game. I just ran behind the nearest rock spike, expecting Caleb to follow and join me there. Instead, he shielded himself behind a different rock spike.

“Hey, I thought you said we should stick together? What are you doing over there?”

By him doing that, the rock spikes wouldn’t get repelled properly— I didn’t even know if it was a low-res problem or if Caleb was just being dumb despite saying we should have went to the same one.

The rock spike didn’t get repelled, not breaking the Wanderer’s protocore shield.

“Ah man…”

I started firing at the Wanderer once again, hitting Caleb several times and the Wanderer… very little. My aim was atrocious. The Wanderer was not even moving yet I couldn’t hit it???

I took cover behind one of the rock spikes, trying to aim better but, with the lag, I didn’t even notice one of the blue crackling balls hurtling toward me, and it hit me on my right hand which held my gun.

“Shit!”

I almost sent the gun flying with the amount of pain that shot through my arm—the pain was no joke.

My familiar companion’s voice rung out from next to the Wanderer. “Does it hurt—It’s okay, you still have me.”

Not again!

“How is having you going to remove the pain in my hand?” I demanded with a raised eyebrow, my hand stinging.

Ignoring my comment, he said suddenly, “Let’s resonate. We’ll be able to break its shields.”

“Er... how do we do that again?” I asked in the deep voice of the MC that I chose. I couldn’t feel anything naturally in my body to suddenly expel that power. I knew absolutely zilch.

Unable to break its shields, and continuously getting hit by the blue balls it threw, I realised I could only do one thing: leave it all to Caleb.

“You got this, dude!” I cried, running round and round the arena as Caleb gave me a surprised look. Or was he even surprised? I couldn’t tell since his face was still so pixelated, hard to see with the distance between us.

All I could actually tell was that I really didn’t wanna get hit by anything again. I never felt pain like that in my life—and I was sane enough not to want to again. If I could outrun those gravitational ball field things and rock spikes, I was good to go. Of course, there was the lag that stopped me from running as fast as I wanted to—sometimes I didn’t even know where my feet were going, but my terrible running was saving my life. I could see the fields I randomly evaded appear behind me, and rock spikes pass, narrowly missing me.

I tried to shoot as I ran but my aim was even worse— I ended up shooting and destroying a rock spike. I didn’t even know that could happen in the game.

“We needed that to repel its spikes,” Caleb said in a slightly disappointed tone. “But it’s okay. We can still defeat it.”

Caleb was basically solo’ing the fight at this point with me running around the protofield like his cheerleader. But Caleb alone was not enough to win the fight.

Just as I thought we were gonna win, everything froze with a banner in front of me: “DEFEAT. Go to the training room to practice.”