The Overlimit Mech Logs In Tonight

When Yan Che woke up, he discovered that the world had turned the page on the past.

In his previous life, he had been the sharpest blade of the Blue Star Federation, his name engraved on the cover of the Federation's military history. When he opened his eyes again, he found that he had been dead for centuries and was now an invisible nobody being bullied at a youth training camp.

This body had left him little: a few cold stares, some exclusion, and a starting spot casually stolen away from him.

Centuries had passed. The war was over, and mechs had left the battlefield for the gaming world.

Startrail, a full-dive simulation game modeled on battlefields of the old era, had taken the interstellar world by storm. Enter, scavenge supplies, fight, extract: the “looter-shooter-extraction” formula had become the most popular style of play in the new age. Tactical mind games and all-out combat went hand in hand, and the game was wildly popular.

But something wasn't right.

He opened the Alliance rankings and scrolled to the very bottom. There, in plain sight, was the Blue Star division, dead last.

During that talent-filled era of great change, Blue Star had been the brightest star of all. Now it had languished at the bottom for years, going seven consecutive seasons without a single championship.

After the training manager once again stressed that “the bigger picture comes first” and that he should “stay in line and wait for orders,” Yan Che took out his termination agreement and signed his name.

The manager's eyes widened. “Are you crazy? You think any team will want you if you leave?”

Yan Che capped his pen and looked up. “Oh.”

If nobody wanted him, he'd build a team of his own.

No one knew where that player ID had come from. But when he tore through the lower leagues and smashed open the doors to the top-tier alliance, everyone knew a legend had begun.

“Who is this rookie?”

“With reflexes like that... is he even human?”

“I've got goosebumps...”

“He actually took that fight! He'd kill people in real life, too!”

“I'm not that timid.”

His unbelievable back-and-forth maneuvers, a fighting style still tinged with the bloodiness of the old era, and tactics that turned the impossible into textbook plays time and again.

The first to break down were the players in casual matches.

“Uh-oh, guys, he's queuing again!”

“Run! (Screaming in despair)”

“Pro players from the upper leagues feed on high-level casuals like me...”

“Pros feed on those guys too.”

“Just kidding. Pros are food, too.”

Everyone knew Gu Xingye was a superfan of the legendary mech pilot from history.

When the rookie's fighting style drew comparisons to that legendary mech god, and rumors spread like wildfire that he could become the next god of war, Gu Xingye scoffed.

Him?

Later, Yan Che appeared in front of him, offered him an olive branch, and invited him to join his team.

Gu Xingye: “You're that confident I'll join?”

Yan Che sat on the shoulder of his mech, looking down at him.

Under the young man's pale eyes, so full of quiet command, Gu Xingye's Adam's apple bobbed involuntarily.

He finally understood why so many people liked the way Yan Che looked at them like they were trash.

1. My take on full-dive gaming, a power-progression wish-fulfillment story. The worldbuilding is entirely fictional and unrelated to reality.

2. A mech-based looter-shooter-extraction game. You don't need to have played one to enjoy this.

3. Arrogant, naturally commanding bottom x sunny, doglike, devoted top.

Upcoming story: The Tyrant's Greenhouse

Blurb:

The teacher stood at the lectern and said that the world was material, independent of anyone's will.

By the window, Su Shixiu quietly put a question mark in his notebook.

When he was seven, his alcoholic foster father smashed a liquor bottle into his head. At that very moment, two detectives chasing a fugitive burst through the door, subdued his foster father, and sent him to prison for life.

When he was twelve, an older bully dragged him into an abandoned restroom. A city inspection team happened to take a wrong turn and open the door, and the entire school was notified that all the bullies had been expelled.

At thirteen, a huge sum of class funds went missing, and every piece of fabricated evidence pointed to him. Just as he was about to become the thief despised by the whole school, the old security camera that had been broken for three years miraculously came back on and recorded the person who framed him committing the whole crime.

At seventeen, he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. The astronomical cost of treatment left him desperate, but the next day, the province's only grant for patients with rare diseases was awarded to him...

Su Shixiu had always thought of himself as a lucky person. Life brought him the occasional hardship, but he always came through unscathed.

He worked hard to grow into a kind, sincere young man, hoping to repay a world that had treated him so gently.

In the future timeline, the world was destroyed twice.

The first destruction came with the arrival of an invincible disaster civilization from the abyss. The second came at the hands of the ultimate Awakened One, who stood above even that calamity: [Tyrant] Su Shixiu...

No one could defeat him, and nothing could kill him. The only hope was to return to the beginning.

When the surviving powerhouses of the Alliance joined forces to tear open time and return to twenty years earlier, they were confronted with a cruel paradox:

If they killed Su Shixiu, humanity would be wiped out by the calamity twenty years later. If they let him grow, he would retrace the old path that had ended in betrayal, torment, and finally a despairing fall into darkness.

So the powerhouses who had returned first signed an agreement. They concealed their identities, became ordinary people in the city, and swore to clear every fatal obstacle from his path before he fell into the abyss.

...Until this morning. Lu She, an S-rank Esper who had fought Su Shixiu to the bitter end in his previous life, had finally arrived, reborn.

A sea of blood-feud still burned in Lu She's eyes. He drew his blade, his killing intent surging, and charged straight for the unawakened seventeen-year-old Su Shixiu.

He would eliminate the threat for good before the demon's wings had grown strong!

Before he could draw his blade, the woman selling food at the street corner, the disabled man repairing bicycles by the roadside, and even the high school principal passing by suddenly sprang into action. Several top powerhouses, renowned in the future, joined forces to pin the murderous war god to the ground, cover his mouth, and drag him into an underground command center.

The command center was bustling. A huge screen overhead broadcast Su Shixiu's daily life around the clock.

“Report! Someone on the bus stepped on Su Shixiu's shoe just now, then got off without apologizing!”

“That's bad. Those were the shoes Shixiu just bought. He looks a little unhappy!”

“Have Agent Three drop his wallet on purpose, then let Su Shixiu find it and thank him face-to-face for half an hour. We need to boost his positive emotions! Hurry!”

“Report: Su Shixiu went to an internet cafe this afternoon to check the college entrance exam cutoff scores. He seems worried about tuition...”

“Where's the logistics team? I told you two days ago to set up a student aid fund! Why are you so slow? Trying to get us all killed?”

“Have the owner of the bookstore where he works part-time raise his hourly wage to 150 yuan. Let him experience the joy and dignity of work!”

“...Keep it subtle. Don't make it seem fake. The kid's very smart.”

“Which action team is bringing him soup tonight? Buy fresh ribs. Be kind, smile, and don't wear that funeral-home face!”

“Are you people insane?!”

Lu She struggled against his bonds. Everyone gave him a pitying look, but no one paid him any attention.

Three days later, Lu She, forced to join the organization, stood expressionlessly across from Su Shixiu with his suitcase in hand.

Sunlight filtered through the stairwell's patchy shadows. The fair, slender young man stroked a stray cat curled by his feet. Hearing footsteps, he raised his face, his eyes clear and bright.

“Are you the new neighbor?”

Lu She: “...”

Why was he kind of cute?

Theme: Win people over with virtue and build a harmonious world together.