"Our only mission is to save our own asses."
Late at night, beneath a giant banner in the office, the last light was still on. Blinking his bloodshot eyes, Sean raised his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Finally done. The last supporting character..."
'Sheryl-0'
Staring at the 3D model in his software—a massive brute hefting a gold-plated chainsaw—Sean felt absolutely zero joy in finishing his work. Right now, he just wanted to burn some incense for the operations team's funerals.
Wasteland: Rise of the New World was the massive post-apocalyptic sci-fi ARPG their company was developing. Boasting a script of millions of words, wildly divergent timeline branches, and brilliant gameplay mechanics, it had exploded in sales and garnered overwhelming critical acclaim upon its early access release despite still being in beta.
However, the dogshit ops team they hired after raking in the cash demanded they nerf the meta builds and stuff the first major update full of expensive microtransactions. Predictably, this drew a massive wave of backlash.
If it weren't for the fans of Legends of the Three Kingdoms holding the line, their new game would have easily seized the throne for the most negative reviews.
To salvage their reputation, and to save their own asses, the company decided to scrap the microtransactions and accelerate the development of future content. As a company veteran—and absolute sucker—Sean naturally couldn't escape the fate of endless overtime.
"Once I'm done with this crunch, I'm adding that R-18 mod into the game to reward myself..."Cradling that beautiful vision, Sean leaned back in his chair and fell into a deep sleep.
...
"Ugh... what time is it..."
The sounds of rain and thunder filled his ears. Sean groggily woke up, smelling something strange and acrid.
'Is it thundering outside? Did the office cat piss in the ashtray again?'
'And why is my neck so heavy? That stupid cat definitely rested its leg on my head again...'
Sean unconsciously reached up to touch it, then froze.
He felt a soft, ice-cold hand. Someone had draped their arm over his neck.
Opening his eyes and glancing to the side, the first thing he saw was a pale, somewhat awkwardly contorted back and a set of enchanting curves. Wine-red hair was scattered in front of his face, the strands poking his nose and making it itch.
'Wasn't I at the office...? Did the cat turn into a catgirl to reward me?'
"Huh?"
Just as Sean was about to sit up, he spotted a ghost mask tattoo inked perfectly between her beautiful shoulder blades.
It looked familiar...
But fixating on her tattoo was clearly pointless. Sean carefully propped himself up—he wanted to see exactly who this girl in his arms was.
Yet as he lifted his torso, the strange scent in his nose grew overwhelmingly thick and nauseating.
Sean instinctively looked toward the source of the smell, and his pupils violently shrank.
Right in front of his waist lay a mangled, bloody lower half of a human body, its internal organs and blood spilling out to cover half the bed.
He recoiled on pure instinct, and the hand resting on his neck slid off lifelessly.
The woman was dead...
Heart pounding furiously, he scrambled backward. Only then did he realize he was lying on a large bed, and the woman sharing it with him had been cleaved cleanly in two. Inside the unfamiliar room, a pink ceiling light flickered dimly, scattering sparks.
"Rumble—"
An ear-piercing clap of thunder tore through the rain, and in the momentary flash of lightning, Sean saw the scene in front of him.
This seemed to be the upper floor of a high-rise building. A massive hole had been smashed through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The driving rain and night wind swept in, carrying a sharp, acidic scent that mixed with the stench of the corpse beside him, making him want to vomit.
Right beside the shattered window, a slender figure sat sideways on the floor.
The sheer overload of information nearly caused Sean's brain to crash, but he finally understood.
'Did I transmigrate?'
This bizarre realization actually filled him with indignation. 'Did I drop dead from overwork? My bonus for finishing this project! The massive flat I just paid in full back in my hometown...'
'I was going to work two more years and then retire back home...'
'And most importantly, if I transmigrated, where the hell is my system?'
No blue screen appeared before his eyes, and no voice of a mysterious old grandpa rang out in his mind. There was only the increasingly violent thunder and lightning outside.
The gruesome sight beside him made Sean reflexively scramble backward, and he accidentally tumbled right off the bed.
"Thud—" Following the dull impact, the person by the window turned their head.
Right at that moment, a streak of lightning ripped across the sky.
Pure white hair cascading down to her waist swayed gently in the wind and rain, the wet strands clinging to her icy face.
She wore a short black jacket and a choker around her neck. Beneath her black skirt, one leg rested carelessly on the broken glass, while the other dangled freely in the empty air outside the window.
She was tossing a metal sphere up and down. The sphere featured an intricate, openwork pattern, glowing faintly with blue light from within. Her ruby-like, crystal-clear eyes calmly assessed Sean—stunningly beautiful, yet utterly demonic.
The man being scrutinized was trying desperately to stay calm. His hands scrambled blindly across the floor until they seized something cold.
Sean glanced down and realized he had grabbed a dagger hidden among a pile of clothes.
With a weapon in hand, he found a sliver of courage.
Realizing he was completely naked, he hastily threw on what looked like his own clothes, carefully gripping the dagger and hiding it behind his back.
'Did she do this? But she doesn't seem to have any hostility toward me...'
Just as Sean finished dressing, the woman turned her head away. She tilted her chin slightly, as if watching the rain outside.
Suddenly, a shrill whistling sound, like a jet thruster, tore through the air.
The woman reached her hand out the window. The blue light from the metal sphere in her palm rapidly stretched out to both sides.
The light flashed once, and the whistling from above vanished.
In its place came the sound of something heavy plummeting through the wind.
A human figure tumbled limply from above, piercing through the night sky.
"Whoosh—"
The rain poured heavily, drowning out the sound of the skull smashing into the ground.
And this seemed to be a signal. Suddenly, over a dozen bright streaks of fire shot forward from the distance. Tiny tongues of flame flickered, and the dense roar of gunfire finally overpowered the sound of the downpour.
The woman didn't move an inch, yet the air around her twisted bizarrely.
Bullets, rain, shattered glass, and Sean himself—all floated up, freezing mid-air.
A few bullets hovered right in front of Sean's eyes before dropping harmlessly back to the floor along with him.
The instant he hit the ground, the thunderous roar of a chainsaw erupted.
A wall shuddered and gave way as a massive, three-meter-tall brute wielding a gold-plated chainsaw smashed his way in.
He roared, swinging the chainsaw as he lunged at the woman, but she merely turned her head slightly for a glance.
The blue light flashed again, and a thin line of blood appeared across the brute's arm.
His severed arm and the chainsaw slammed into the floor.
However, the brute's eyes bulged with rage. Using his remaining hand, he savagely ripped off his own gold-plated metal jaw.
His flesh suddenly began to writhe, and his already massive frame swelled even further.
At the same time, the bisected woman on the bed actually sat up. Her spilled organs rapidly flowed back into her body, 'reassembling' her into a stitched-together woman.
Her fingernails abruptly lengthened. With a shrill cackle, the woman and the giant brute lunged at the white-haired girl from both sides.
In the midst of this chaotic scene, Sean noticed that the white-haired woman was looking clearly at him.
She tilted her head.
Almost entirely on instinct, Sean tilted his own head as well.
A blinding blue light erupted.
From left to right, space itself seemed to grind to a halt.
Sean shuddered, feeling something graze right past his scalp.
The roars and cackles stopped abruptly. The blood hung suspended for a fraction of a second before violently bursting outward!
The giant and the woman dropped, cleaved into four irregular chunks.
And along with them fell the wall right next to Sean.
Half of the entire building, perfectly matching the angle of the woman's tilted head, "slid" diagonally downward and collapsed with a deafening rumble.
The rain grew heavier.
The giant, who had been cleaved straight from his shoulder to his pelvis, struggled to shift his body and turn his head. Rain mixed with blood, and for the first time, in the flash of lightning, Sean saw his face clearly.
The brute stared at him with urgency in his rapidly fading eyes, his trembling hand pointing toward the door—or rather, the half of it that remained.
"Sheryl..." Sean's lips twitched.