Shenzhou Nation, Penglai Island.
An apartment in the school district near the local high school.
Facing the rising sun, Yu Xiao, who had woken up naturally, stretched.
Roughly three and a half minutes after making that motion, he finally realized that today was still a day off, and there was no need to wake up so early.
“…How strange. Don’t tell me that after transmigrating for so long, I still haven’t adjusted my time zone?”
So Yu Xiao shook his head, and couldn’t help but wryly mock himself a bit.
And, just as his mumbling to himself had revealed, Yu Xiao was a transmigrator.
But his transmigration, thinking about it now, was a little baffling.
On a perfectly ordinary morning two years ago, after merely opening his eyes, Yu Xiao found that the scene before him had become quite unfamiliar.
Moreover, the difference from his original world could almost be said to be just a hair’s breadth.
As far as he knew, aside from the technology level appearing slightly like the environment at the turn of the century, everything else—including culture and language in all aspects—wasn’t much different from where he had originally lived.
If not for the fact that the “Shenzhou Nation” and “Penglai Island” he now resided in were place names that originally didn’t exist in his memory, he might really have thought that he had simply moved somewhere else to live.
Yu Xiao scratched his head.
He wanted to take advantage of the still-early hour to go back to sleep, but he seemed to already be wide awake.
And finding something else to do also seemed difficult.
After all, although he had transmigrated, he was still just a student.
…But this world’s academic environment was much more relaxed than what he remembered.
Even in high school, there was no need for self-study or cram school on weekends…
There wasn’t even homework.
——Then, it seemed there was only one answer.
“Let’s play some games…” He drawled out the last syllable lazily.
In any case, that was how Yu Xiao decided.
So, he got out of bed and pulled open the cabinet on the desk.
Then, Yu Xiao dug out a game disc called “Mecha War VS.”
…This disc, which looked plain and unremarkable, was actually something with quite a bit of history behind it.
——This was the only personal belonging he had brought along when he transmigrated, aside from the clothes on his body.
…To be honest, Yu Xiao had been quite resentful at first.
After all, the things that others gained after transmigrating were usually systems that appeared with a “ding” sound, or divine artifacts, or cheat abilities and the like.
How was it that when it was his turn to transmigrate, all that was left was a single disc?
And it was a no-name game whose name sounded like it was riding on the popularity of the “Super Robot Wars” and “Gundam VS Gundam” series, and that didn’t even have a publisher’s name printed on the cover.
In the past, this sort of thing was the type he wouldn’t even touch.
But later, he honestly ended up loving it despite himself.
Because as time passed, he discovered that this world was normal in every way, except that in the realm of game production, for some reason it seemed to still be stuck at the level of the early pixel era.
Having grown accustomed to the game graphics of the new era, Yu Xiao really wasn’t able to adapt to suddenly being brought back to the era of Mario or even “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”
So this HD game that had popped out from who-knows-where, but was indeed finely made, became his only pastime.
The game’s own superb quality was indeed an important point.
Another reason was that, before transmigrating, Yu Xiao had been a fan of mecha anime.
And this game, featuring many robots from anime, had undoubtedly truly catered to his tastes.
However, to say that “Mecha War VS” was absolutely perfect… that wouldn’t be entirely true either.
Its biggest problem was: the difficulty was too high!
Yu Xiao still remembered his very first game when he just started playing.
Considering himself an expert at action games, after becoming slightly familiar with the somewhat complicated controls, he directly chose the stage-clearing mode at the highest difficulty.
The first stage was a battle against the household-name Original Gundam and its pilot, Amuro Ray.
Full of confidence, he chose the sibling model G3 Gundam to sortie.
…Then, the result was that he got thoroughly beaten.
Even though the mobile suits were of the same caliber, the opponent’s skill was transcendent.
It was almost as if that legendary pilot from the anime had sortied in person.
First a chain of combined fire from the bazooka and beam rifle, then a shield throw to blur Yu Xiao’s attention.
Finally, taking advantage of the vulnerability the G3 had exposed from this series of moves, the Original Gundam charged straight in and, without hesitation, thrust the beam saber in its hand into the G3’s cockpit.
Thus, before even three minutes had passed, the large blood-red letters of “DEFEAT” were blasted before Yu Xiao’s eyes on the screen.
Then, unwilling to give up, he gradually lowered the difficulty and tried.
The opponent also changed from Amuro to Char, and then gradually to “nameless elite” and “squad leader piloting a Jegan”…
And then the time it took to lose changed from three minutes to five minutes to ten minutes.
After lowering it to the lowest difficulty, facing an “ordinary Zeon soldier” riding a Gelgoog, Yu Xiao finally managed to secure a narrow victory with the G3 Gundam.
…He racked his brains but couldn’t figure out just what kind of perverted programmer could have written such an AI.
It really was too unfair.
Generally speaking, at this point one should give up.
——But the more challenging the difficulty, the more it could stimulate players’ fighting spirit.
This was the same for Yu Xiao as well.
Having persevered until now, he had gone from a rookie who would be easily killed by that White Devil to a level where he could hold his own for a long time even in an ordinary Zaku II.
And since he had nothing to do today, Yu Xiao planned to keep practicing with the mediocre-performance Zaku.
However, after he inserted the disc into the console and started it up.
He discovered that things were a little bit different from what he had expected.
“…Hoh. A version update?”
Looking at the continuously scrolling progress bar before him and the “Please wait patiently” text displayed on it, Yu Xiao was a bit surprised.
After all, he had always thought this was a single-player pastime game he had accidentally brought along when he transmigrated.
Who would have thought that, even after he had left his original world far behind, it could still update itself on its own.
…Although this was indeed a very strange matter, Yu Xiao didn’t pursue the reason too much.
After all, he himself had transmigrated.
By comparison, could there really be anything more absurd than that?
However, when the progress bar hit 100% and the loading was complete and it entered the game.
Yu Xiao discovered, somewhat regretfully, that very little had actually changed.
He looked around, and the only thing different was that on the title screen, there was just one extra option.
It was a new mode called something like “Real Battlefield.”
…In any case, he was bored out of his mind, so he might as well go in and take a look.
Thinking this, Yu Xiao moved the cursor onto it and pressed the confirm button.
What he didn’t know was that this action had already opened, for him and the entire world he lived in, a brand-new door toward a different future.
Thank you for reading!