Chapter 2: The Veteran Reduced to Rags - 1

BOOM!

As soon as I opened my eyes, the warmth of a heat source behind me and a deafening explosion shattered the surroundings.

I couldn't gather my wits amidst the sudden chaos.

Before I could even try to clear my muddled mind, someone grabbed my hand and pulled me.

"Sir, Captain, quickly."

I felt the soft, cold skin of the person holding my hand. A low voice pierced through the noise, tickling my ears.

A woman in a white lab coat.

Her navy blue hair, which reached her shoulders, swayed with her hurried movements.

The black wool cap she had pulled down tightly over her head was now flung off.

"Oh, the cap…"

Even with explosions roaring behind us, she had the leisure to look back at the flying cap.

Her prominent glasses, which covered half of her face, reflecting the light, left a strong impression.

‘Huh?’

That appearance… I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere.

"Captain, let's hurry to the escape pod."

Despite the urgent situation, she didn’t raise her voice.

Her trembling voice revealed her character; the hand she held was shaking.

As I focused on her hand, my gaze fell on my own hand and the uniform I was wearing.

‘What’s going on here!’

The clothes I was wearing were not the casual attire I had on while sitting in front of a computer.

The material was so glossy it could rival luxury items, and it was a blue uniform that a captain, as she had called me, would wear.

The woman in the white lab coat, who was running down a white and blue corridor, tapped the wall panel while holding my hand tightly.

With a hiss, a small door opened, revealing a large escape pod.

"Captain, let's move quickly."

"Uh, uh…"

I couldn’t even form a proper response, just nodding.

My mind had long stopped trying to understand the situation, but my survival instinct immediately guided my body to the escape pod.

I sat down and fastened the safety belt. The woman tapped the panel, and the escape pod accelerated.

The pressure pushed me into the seat, and with a thud, the escape pod was launched into space.

At the same time, a massive shockwave from behind shook the pod.

With that shock, the vibrations and explosions that had been overwhelming the surroundings vanished.

The surroundings finally became quiet.

The escape pod’s alert tone jolted my still dazed mind.

But I had no time to think about what was happening.

Beep

The woman operated the panel, turning on the screen.

‘Oh my…’

The screen showed a black universe filled with stars, the kind you’d only see in a place with clean air.

I was clearly just clicking a mouse in a room, so why was I suddenly here…?

What’s going on… Ugh!

A sudden, piercing pain shot through my head.

"Captain, are you okay? Debris? Blood? No, no, Captain…!"

The woman, trembling, grabbed my left arm.

Ah.

As the sharp, short pain passed, a flood of new memories rushed in.

Not the memories of a regular gamer from 21st-century Earth, but those of a space dweller from the late 34th century.

A life full of twists and turns, lived by someone of the same age as me, washed over me like a wave.

“Good heavens…”

Only then did I realize.

I had become a character in the game I was playing.

***

How likely is it for someone from a completely different world, living a completely different life, to have the same face and personality as someone from another world?

The only difference was the body. Perhaps due to the constant strength training from space life or the in-game content, my body was quite muscular.

As I clenched and unclenched my hands and tensed different parts of my body, sorting through the two sets of memories, the woman beside me asked,

"Captain, are you okay?"

"…I’m fine."

Her name is Eina. She is a researcher and secretary on the ship.

With her distinctive navy blue hair, she wore large glasses that reflected the light, covering half of her face.

Under her white lab coat, she wore a black suit.

Her appearance, a mix of researcher and secretary, was peculiar.

‘A crew member…’

It felt strange, as if a 2D pixel game had come to life.

In the game, characters had no noses, just a single dot for eyes, and a few red dots that flickered when they spoke.

The game, GalaxyBound, had a very different feel when brought to life.

The gap was so large that even with the memories and the realization that this was real, I still felt disoriented.

"Eina, are there any survivors? No, what was the cause of the explosion?"

"I’m currently connected to Angela. If the electronic brain storage is intact…"

This is a future space setting. The ships are managed by high-performance AI.

The memories of this body… no, now my body, indicate that AI handled most of the tasks.

Beep

A squished polygon appeared on the screen showing the universe.

Ah, this is the AI voice of my spaceship.

It was fresh, even though I already knew it from the transferred memories. In the game, the AI only communicated through text.

"Ah, I’m fine. How about you? You look squished."

It seems the explosion caused some damage, changing the appearance from what I had set in the game.

The data from the main body was transferred here.

“Thank goodness. Phew. My head still hurts.”

I’m not sure if it’s from the sudden accident or from absorbing a massive amount of memories.

“Thanks for your work. If you have the time, can you analyze the cause of the explosion? The escape pod’s electronics aren’t great, so be careful of overloads.”

Fatigue washed over me.

“Yeah, I need to… rest.”

I could feel Eina’s worried gaze from the side. Her hand, still gripping my arm, fidgeted on my clothes.

“Eina, you should rest too. You’ve been through a lot.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

“Then I’ll go to sleep first.”

I waved my hand to show I was okay and got up from the seat.

Sleep. I need to sleep.

With the AI in control, the escape pod should land safely on a planet unless a giant spaceship appears and attacks.

The escape pod was quite spacious, with a sleeping capsule and a small storage room for supplies to last a long time after the escape.

I closed my eyes in the sleeping capsule, hoping that the fatigue and confusion would subside when I woke up.

***

“Hmm…”

How long did I sleep?

When I opened my eyes, pitch-black darkness greeted me.

I wondered if I was still in the room where I fell asleep, or if I had just dozed off while playing the game.

But that was just a vain hope.

The texture of the sleeping capsule mattress was completely different from my bed.

‘My head hurts so much.’

Was this the pain Sun Wukong felt when his head was squeezed by the golden hoop? A dull pain lingered in my head.

Even though the sleeping capsule is designed to maximize rest.

Is it because this is an escape pod, or because of the massive accident?

Probably the latter.

‘I must be going crazy.’

To be suddenly sucked into a game is unbelievable.

The only fortunate thing is that the memories of the life I lived here are preserved.

The two sets of memories are already blending, making it hard to distinguish whether I lived a life in the 21st century or if I’m now dreaming as a space dweller.

The mixed memories, the shock of being dropped into a strange place, and the shock of losing everything in a sudden accident made me feel like I was going mad.

But I was not just a regular modern person; I was also a space dweller who had experienced all sorts of things in space.

My steel-like mental fortitude quickly calmed the chaos in my mind.

Something happened, but I’m still me.

Don’t overthink it.

Pressing down on my racing heart and biting my lip, I took several deep breaths, and my body gradually calmed down.

“Pull yourself together, pull yourself together.”

I spoke the words out loud and rubbed my face with my hands several times.

The smell of burnt from the explosion lingered on my hands.

“Damn it…”

Yeah, let’s swear. Swearing is the best when you’re confused.

For a while, I filled the capsule with every swear word I could think of.

In this world, I was someone who didn’t swear, so I felt guilty for using them.

But it did help to release stress. After muttering the swears, I felt a bit better.

‘This is definitely the world of the game.’

Although it’s not a 2D side-scrolling game, the appearance of the crew member Eina and my uniform were so familiar.

The crew member character who always loitered around the cockpit, annoying me when I used the facilities, and the blue uniform I spent a fortune on to get both the look and performance, were etched in my mind.

And more vividly, the space epic I experienced over several years.

Even if someone extracted my brain and stimulated it to distort reality, they couldn’t create such vivid memories of the space age.

Ah, by the way.

“My spaceship…”

My hand instinctively went to my head, clutching my hair.

The ship I had been expanding and upgrading for years…!

The memory of controlling the character on the monitor and the memory of welding the delivered modular ship parts while wearing an exoskeleton overlapped, amplifying the sense of loss.

What I did with keyboard inputs in the game, I had to do with my own feet and hands here.

The spaceship, which wasn’t that big in the game, was a massive cruiser several kilometers long in this world.

It had production facilities, engines, living quarters, storage areas, hangars, and more, all crammed together.

I even built bathrooms, showers, kitchens, and halls in the crew quarters for decoration.

In the game, it was possible to build these compactly.

But in reality, more space would be needed to maintain all these areas, making the ship inevitably larger.

In this world, there were many more sections that I hadn’t built in the game.

But…

It exploded.

All the materials, ammunition, resources, and money on the ship!

‘Aaaaah, so wasteful!!!’

I opened my eyes wide and twisted my body in the sleeping capsule, my knees banging against the reinforced glass lid.

The impact made the sleeping capsule awkwardly turn on the ‘sleep mode off’ and turn on a pale light.

‘Aaaaahhhh!’

How much was all that worth!!!