Gamer X LM

Two flaring sun glared down upon the desert dunes of a barren planet. A gentle wind arose and shifted the sands, revealing a small, unknown scarab that was burrowing in the sand.

Disturbed from its slumber, the scarab twitched a couple of times, and was about to bury itself back into the cool sand. Suddenly, the sunlight seemed to be obscured as a growing shadow shaded the scarab from the sun.

The scarab froze for a moment as if it was surprised that there was a friendly fool that would help block the hot sun for it. It struggled to turned its head to look upwards towards this friendly newcomer, and its beady eyes locked onto a large metallic surface slamming down upon it-

Puff!

Panning upwards, one was able to see the metallic boots belonging to a man. Zooming out, one would be able to observe that the boot seemed to be welded together with the rest of a man's metallic suit that completely enclosed the man.

This suit that seemed to be an armor of some sort seemed to come from a very technologically advanced civilization. Still, it seemed that it was only a common product as the man wasn't the only one wearing the suit. Glancing behind the leading man, there was still a group of four all wearing a similar outfit, each holding an unknown gun.

After firmly setting his foot in the sand, the leading man dressed in a slick, metallic armor raised his hand and tapped a couple of times in the air.

"Huh? I got some EXP from killing indigenous lifeforms? Where? How come I didn't see it? Eh, whatever. Free EXP, I can't complain. I still can't believe that this level of difficult would actually give free EXP at the beginning of a dungeon ..."

Glancing at the holographic screen displayed in his vision by the built-in modules in his helmet, the man muttered to himself with a bit of confusion.

"Captain, what's wrong?" a female voice sounded as if she was besides the man.

The display showed that it was a communication from one of his female team members. Not long after the voice ended, a couple of options popped up in the man's display.

[Response 1: Nothing.]

[Response 2: Everything's fine.]

[Response 3: I dunno.]

"Uhh ... are these options even necessary? Well, I guess different options will reward different amount of favor points with the NPCs. Perhaps if I choose 'I dunno', it would actually lower this female NPC's favor. Who knows. Anything goes in this difficulty level," the man muttered to himself as he stared at the options.

After pondering for a while, he finally decide to go with the second option to win some favor.

"Everything's fine."

After pressing the mic button on the display, the man replied in an authoritative tone.

"Oh? Are you sure about that captain? Then, what do you say about that?" another man's voice sounded in the communication channel as one of his companion behind him pointed upwards towards the sky.

"Huh?" the leader uttered a sound of confusion before he glanced upwards into the sky before he froze in shock.

It was there he saw an enormous monstrosity high up in the air that was gradually obscuring the sun, and it seemed to be flying down towards their location. It got closer and closer rapidly, quickly growing into a size exceeding the size of a skyscraper. As the outline of the creature grew clearer, the leader was able to recognize the creature as an enormous scarab.

The leader's mouth gaped open in shock as he mumbled, "As expected of this difficulty, a boss right from the gecko."

Just as the looming shadow of the enormous scarab overlapped with the group, the female voice from earlier echoed in the communication channel once more, "As expected of Captain's crow mouth. Not manly at all."

After the voice sounded, a damage number popped up in the man's display.

[-99999 HP]

The man's face stiffened with disbelief as he watched his body tumble to the ground like a rag doll.

"Wait what-?! Where did that damage come from?! The boss fight hasn't even started yet!"

As the man's vision shattered into darkness, a message appeared in his vision.

[Game over. Died from emotional damage.]

It didn't take long for the man's vision to fade in and he had realized he had returned to the lounge. The man stiffly stood on his spot as he blankly stared forward at the empty, white cubic room.

Meanwhile in reality, a man threw his controller across the room as he socked the nearby couch pillows in anger. After a long train of curses and decorating his living room floor with filling fiber, the man finally calmed down enough to return to the game screen.

"As expected of Asian difficulty. Even a random line from a NPC could kill you."

After sighing over the difficulty of this game mode, the man took a final glance at his virtual game lounge before deciding it was time for a break from his dungeon grinding.

"I can't grind everything in one day. It's all about accumulation. After all, the protagonist of this game has the Gamer system from a certain webtoon. This system is all about grinding. After grinding enough low-level dungeons, one day, I will be strong enough to live through emotional damage on Asian difficulty."

After encouraging himself, the man smiled before he switched off the television and stared at his Steam Deck that he had just thrown across the room.

"Lucky me, the screen didn't break. This things is really too expensive to break compared to a controller," the man breathed a sigh of relief before he strolled towards his iPhone on his computer desk, "Guess I'll read some light novels to relax. I'm almost done catching up with 'The Legendary Mechanic', maybe I should complete it by today."

Pulling up the novel in his bookmark, one would be able to notice that the site belonged to one of the many sites that pirated the original. However, the man didn't care.

"As long as it's free and didn't have annoying chapter locks like Webnovels, I'll be happy to use any site."

However, not long after the page loaded, the man was interrupted by a popup before he could reach much.

[The Novelverse awaits! Transmigrate now for free?]

"Huh? What a weird ad? Is this one of those popups that lead to certain p*rn sites no matter where you tap? Heh," the man muttered to himself mockingly before tapping the small 'x' in the corner of the popup.

As expected by the man, another webpage was opened in his browser. A hidden overlay on the ad forces the viewer to open the ad regardless before being able to actually close it. Being fairly used to this, the man was about to perform the familiar routine of closing out the webpage and returning to the other tab.

However, this time, something was different. The web page was still stuck loading, but the switch tab button seemed to be broken on his phone.

"Huh? Why can't I switch out?" the man muttered with a bit of frustration as he tried to exit the browser by pressing the home button but to no avail.

"Even the home button doesn't work? Did the phone hang up? There's no way Apple products are these cheap. Did I buy a fake product? It never had a problem before ..."

Observing the frozen phone screen, the man then noticed that the screen wasn't actually frozen. There was still a part that was still loading, the webpage.

[Initializing system ...]

That weird text was displayed at the center of the screen while a loading circle continued to spin on its own. The man frowned in confusion, but before he could think further, there was finally a change.

The loading circle suddenly distorted and began to expand as it continued to spin faster and faster as ripples formed on the phone screen.

"What the-" the man exclaimed in shock, but his voice was suddenly drowned out as an invisible bubble expanded out from the phone screen.

Like a domain enclosing the area, the entire room became silent. The man can be seen to be yelling in shock as he frantically looked around in fear, but no sound was heard at all. Some lighter items, such as the Steam Deck, in the room gradually began to float upwards as if gravity began to disappear.

This unknown phenomenon continued for a moment before the bubble seemed to shrink back towards the phone. The floating items were dragged along by an unknown force and was pulled towards the phone as if the phone was a black hole.

The lucky man that was holding the phone opened his eyes wide in shock as he saw the small items bolting towards him. Karma also decided to be a b*tch at this moment as the Steam Deck that he had thrown across the room earlier flew towards the man and accurately struck back at the man's head.

With a critical hit, the man felt a jolt of pain before his vision gradually faded away. His body tumbled back like a rag doll and was then pulled into the mysterious black hole on the phone with the rest of the items.

The domain disappeared, the phone plopped back down to the ground, and the room returned to silence. On the phone display, the text has now turned into game loading ...

After an unknown amount of time, the loading seemed to have finished. A clear line of text was displayed on the phone.

[Game Start]

At the same time, a young teenage man finally awoke from his slumber on a vehicle bumping down an unknown route.

"Ugg ..." with a moan of pain, the man grasped the back of his head as he sat up.

As his vision focused onto his surroundings, he noticed he was sitting in the back of some sort of jeep. There was a muscular man and a slim woman in some sort of uniform driving the jeep.

"Oh. The kid's finally awake. Thought he would be dead by the time we got back to the Division," the muscular man chuckled.

The young man blankly stared at his surroundings in disbelief. After a while, he turned his attention over to the muscular man as he stuttered, "W-Where am I?"

The muscular man stared back at the young man with a stern face as the slim woman also took a glance over. A frown appeared on the muscular man's face before he said, "Well, seems he's been hit too hard in the head that his memory's gone. Still, how can you forget about your country like that kid? Although you are just an informant, you still had made an oath to protect Stardragon before you took on this mission. And I thought we would finally get a new colleague after we go back, seems like this kid is going back to the start. Heh."

After stating this, the muscular man turned away and ignored the young man who had widened his eyes as realization dawned upon him. As his memories were sorted out, many thoughts began to rush through young man's mind.

"No way ... the Legendary Mechanic? And I seem to be one of the Six Nations, Stardragon, on Planet Aquamarine? What part of the timeline am I at now? Has Han Xiao-"

Before the young man can think further, a ding echoed in his mind as a familiar, game-like transparent screen popped up in his vision.

[Game started ...]

[Name] TBD

[Class] None

[Level] LV 1

[HP] 10/10

[MP] 10/10

[STR: 0][HP: 0][DEX: 0][INT: 0][WIS: 0][LUK: 0]

The young man dully gawked at the screen in front of him. It took a while before excitement bubbled up inside of him.

"My golden finger is the gamer's ability! With this, I will have the opportunity to climb up in this world and even step out into the universe beyond!"

Glancing at the looming city approaching in the distance and then turning his attention to the sky, the young man clenched his fists in excitement as if he could see the boundless space waiting for him to conquer.

"Wait for me! Legendary Mechanic or not, the gamer's legend has now begun!"