Playing an NPC in a Cosmic Horror Game

There is a fire in my chest: hatred, resentment, and rage. It makes me pick up my knife and keeps me alive. I won’t stop moving forward until the day my enemies are reduced to ashes! Those scumbags... they killed my dog! . Qin Meng was good-looking, studying at a prestigious university, and won an Olympic silver medal in sprinting. Apart from losing his parents and younger siblings in a car accident, he was a bona fide winner in life, at least in other people’s eyes. That was, until he bought a headset for the game Star Ocean Odyssey. Star Ocean Odyssey is a game that appeared in the 2030s and claims to be a full-dive online game. All you have to do is pay for the materials in the headset to get access. You enter another chaotic, dark universe filled with cyborgs, mechas, heretics, and monsters, where players can choose different professions and experience different lives. No one can trace the game’s website to its source, nor can it be blocked. Even though well-meaning people warn everyone not to play this game of unknown origins, people keep placing orders. Like all curious young people, Qin Meng secretly buys a headset and randomly gets the hidden profession labeled “highest risk” by the game: Demon God’s Envoy. On the day he’s about to make it out of the starter village, a classmate whose profession is Romance Actor steals everything from him. The thief now has a talented sprinter’s lithe, beautiful body, an Olympic silver medal, a place at a prestigious university, a wealthy family with no parents to keep him in check, a cousin who dotes on his younger brother, and the love of the male idol Jia Zhen. They go on a dating show, fall in love, get engaged, get married... The thief gets everything he’s ever dreamed of, and he couldn’t be happier! Meanwhile, Qin Meng loses his life. He watches as the thief uses an injury as an excuse to retire, robbing him of his chance to beat his archrival and win gold at the next Olympics. He sees a frivolous playboy he once despised dating “him.” He watches an uneducated thief give up on graduate school, and sees his ill-intentioned uncle, aunt, and cousin whittle away his family fortune. Those scumbags even killed his dog! Consumed by overwhelming resentment, Qin Meng loses consciousness, then opens his eyes in another world. He’s become an entertainment-model android boy in the lower district of a colonial planet in Star Ocean Odyssey. His adoptive mother is also an entertainment model and won’t live more than a few years. Poverty and violence haunt the entire family. Think that’s the end of it? No! His adoptive mother is going to sell him to a bunch of lunatics, too. It’s a hell-mode playthrough from start to finish. The System pops up at this point: Hi there, I’m the system that helped you transmigrate. Just complete the mission, and you can *%￥#@*… Qin Meng almost strangles the System inside his own head. The System, nearly strangled to death, tells him that when the game updates to version 3.0, the highest faith of the Galactic Empire, the Star Emperor, will launch the War of the Stars and lead its warriors in a declaration of war against the gods. The one with the most glorious record will earn the right to stand before the Star Emperor and make a wish as one favored by the gods. The System: “Then you can go home.” Qin Meng wants to survive, avenge his dog with his own hands, and stand before the Star Emperor to wish for a return to his homeland. . After the game launches Game forums [Guys, did you see the new character in the trailer?!] [I did, I did! He’s just as stunning as Commander Ananta!] [And he starts fighting Ananta the moment he appears. Their combat abilities are evenly matched too, hahaha.] [Samo, the new head of the Eastern Star Domain’s Internal Affairs Department. Profession: Demon God’s Envoy.] [A Demon God’s Envoy! Someone managed to play that profession for seven years and still be sane enough to talk and interact with people! Devs, this character is breaking the game’s rules! Weren’t we told that after three years in this profession, a character either loses all their sanity and gets deleted or gets hunted down by the Galactic Empire until they’re deleted?!] [At the end of the trailer, Ananta gives Minister Samo a rose at a banquet, kisses his hand, and calls him an “old friend”!] … [You call that the vibe of friends? Yeah, right!] . An inhuman being who seems human, going from aloof and reserved to “oh my god, he’s so in love” top x a beautiful, tragic, unlucky bottom who seems inhuman but is actually human. Neither lead is perfect [important]. Lovecraftian elements + a spacefaring setting. . A few notes 1. The “They killed my dog” line comes from the movie John Wick. It’s fine if you don’t get the reference, it won’t affect your understanding of the plot. 2. The outline, characters, and worldbuilding were prepared six months in advance. This is a story I especially want to write, and I’ve written tens of thousands of words of outline. Everything has already been planned, including the plot, romance, and ending, and nothing will change. 3. This story includes space travel, mechas, and Lovecraftian elements, among many other things. There are loads of original worldbuilding details, and the setting is so fantastical it might as well be another dimension. 4. The story takes place in an extremely fantastical world. Please don’t apply its events to real life or judge the author’s values based on the novel. 5. Important: The protagonist will not reclaim the body that was stolen from him because it’s been defiled, and he can’t bear it. But he will take back his life. If you can’t accept this, please leave right away. . To borrow the words Henry David Thoreau wrote at the beginning of Walden: “The following pages are perhaps particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. For it is not important that the clothes should be like me, but that they should fit me.” Every story has its own readers. If you don’t like this story’s premise or the protagonist’s personality, please leave right away. If it’s not your thing, don’t force yourself to keep reading. Reading should make you happy, and your happiness is precious. One novel isn’t worth making yourself miserable over. If this story does strike a chord with you and you’d like to keep reading, please come on in. I update daily, so just check back at seven in the morning. Theme: Love brings endless courage, and courage is the spear that pierces the darkness