Darkness. Floating. Nothing.
No up. No down. No sensation except the awareness of his thoughts, suspended in a void so complete it defied comprehension.
What the fuck?
The mory crashed back with brutal clarity: headlights flooding his apartnt with blinding white, a deafening horn that vibrated a scream through his bones, and the shriek of tortured tal as the wall exploded inward in a shower of drywall and splintered wood. A truck. A fucking eighteen-wheeler. It had plowed through his living room while he was reading. Obliterated everything.
Look left.
The ssage from OneAboveAll. That cryptic warning he’d dismissed as nonsense, as just another random forum post. Two simple words he’d scrolled past without a second thought.
A laugh bubbled up from sowhere inside him, from whatever constituted "inside" in this formless state. A single, hollow "Ha" that existed without lungs or throat to produce it.
Then another. "Haha."
The laughter built, echoing in the void around him though there were no surfaces to reflect sound, growing more frantic with each repetition until it beca a wild, unhinged howl that would have torn his throat raw if he still possessed one.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
"A truck. A goddamn truck ran into my house!" His voice sounded strange, distorted, as if speaking underwater or through layers of thick cloth. "Who dies like that? What are the fucking odds? Just sitting there reading and then—BAM!—truck through the wall!"
The laughter cracked, fragnting into wet, broken sobs raw with grief.
"Three weeks." The words caught in whatever constituted his throat in this place. "Three fucking weeks until my birthday. Eighteen. I was going to be eighteen."
"UFC contract. My apartnt. All my training. Everything..."
Eighteen years of life. All those hours in the gym. Fourteen hours wasted reading that stupid novel instead of training. One second of inattention from a truck driver who probably walked away unhard. Ga over. No continues. No reset button. Just the void and the knowledge of everything lost.
Is this it? Just... floating forever?
Then he saw it. A pinprick of light in the distance. So faint he might have imagined it, but growing steadily brighter. Closer.
Or was he moving toward it?
The light expanded, a tunnel opening before him, drawing him forward with gentle but irresistible force.
The light at the end of the tunnel. How fucking cliché.
Fear gripped him. What waited on the other side? Heaven? Hell? Oblivion?
"I don’t want to go," he whispered, struggling against the pull. "I had plans. I had..."
The light engulfed him.
===
Pierre opened his eyes to blinding whiteness.
Hospital ceiling? Maybe he’d survived. Maybe the impact hadn’t been as bad as it felt. Maybe—
"Welco, Traveler."
The voice ca from everywhere and nowhere at once, echoing in the vast emptiness around him with perfect clarity, as if spoken directly into his consciousness.
Pierre blinked rapidly, and the disorienting whiteness gradually resolved into a vast, empty space that stretched infinitely in all directions. No walls, no ceiling, no floor that he could distinguish—just endless white nothingness that sohow supported his weight. Before him stood a desk—an ordinary governnt-issue office desk with a sleek computer monitor, a ticulously organized stack of papers, and a polished naplate that read "ADMINISTRATOR" in authoritative block letters.
Behind the desk sat a woman. Middle-aged, with nondescript brown hair wrangled into a bun. Rectangular glasses were perched on her nose, and she wore a drab, standard-issue blazer in muted gray.
"Please take a seat." She gestured with a manicured hand to a chair that materialized from the whiteness, a simple office chair that definitely hadn’t been there a second ago.
Pierre remained standing, his legs trembling slightly as adrenaline and confusion battled within him. "Who are you?"
"I’m the Administrator." She adjusted her glasses. "And this is Processing."
"Processing for what?"
"For your transition, of course." She typed sothing on her keyboard, the soft clicking sounds unnaturally crisp in the silence. "Pierre Lamont. Age: seventeen years, eleven months, eight days. Cause of death: vehicular collision, specifically a delivery truck carrying... hm, ironic..." she paused, a flicker of sothing almost like amusent crossing her otherwise impassive face, "manga and light novels."
Pierre’s legs suddenly gave out beneath him, and he found himself collapsing into the chair after all.
"I’m really dead," he whispered, the words hanging heavy in the endless white void.
"Quite." The Administrator continued typing. "Now, normally we’d proceed directly to reincarnation processing, but your file has been flagged."
"Flagged? What does that an?"
She turned the monitor toward him. On the screen was the WebNovel app, showing his heated argunt with PLGA_Author and the mysterious intervention from the user called OneAboveAll. The tistamps, the words, everything exactly as he rembered from his final monts.
"It seems your death wasn’t entirely... accidental." Her voice carried the slightest hint of concern—the first real emotion she’d displayed.
Pierre leaned forward, staring at the screen, his fingers gripping the edge of the desk. "That OneAboveAll person. They knew. They told to look left right before—" The mory flashed vivid and terrible through his mind—the truck, the screeching tires, the split second of horrified recognition before impact.
"Yes. Interference from outside entities." The Administrator sighed, removing her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose. "This complicates things."
"Complicates how? And who is OneAboveAll?"
"That’s classified information." She replaced her glasses. "What matters is that your transition has been interrupted. You can’t proceed to reincarnation as scheduled."
"So what happens to ?"
The Administrator tapped a pen against her desk. "We have a special program for cases like yours. A sort of... interdinsional refugee status."
"What does that an in normal human terms?"
"It ans, Mr. Lamont, that you’re being isekai’d."
Pierre blinked. "I’m being what now?"
"Isekai’d. Transported to another world. Given your recent reading history, the system has selected an appropriate destination."
Horror dawned on Pierre. "No. No fucking way."
The Administrator checked her screen. "Ah, I see you’ve made the connection. Yes, you’re being sent to the world of ’Pirate Lord’s Great Adventure.’"
"That’s a joke, right? This is hell, and this is my punishnt."
"This isn’t hell, Mr. Lamont. It’s bureaucracy, which I admit can feel similar." A thin smile crossed her face. "And it’s not punishnt. It’s protocol. When interference occurs, we place the affected soul in a reality they’re familiar with."
"I read it for fourteen hours! That hardly makes an expert!"
"More familiar than most." She stamped a form. "Besides, your... passionate critique suggests you’ve ford strong opinions about this world. Perhaps you’ll have the opportunity to create a better story. You’ll even receive a gift package to start you out."
Pierre stood, knocking the chair backward. "I refuse. Send sowhere else. Anywhere else."
"I’m afraid that’s not how this works." The Administrator’s voice remained calm. "The decision has been made. Processing is complete."
The floor beneath Pierre began to glow.
"Wait! I have questions! Who is OneAboveAll? Why did they target ?"
"Good luck at character selection, Mr. Lamont." As the light intensified, her final words echoed from all around him. "The Administration thanks you for your cooperation. Oh, and happy early birthday."
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