Arata's last memory was red.
Not crimson curtains or a glowing sunset, but the red blinking of an emergency server rack in a glass-walled Hyderabad office. He had been at his desk, putting in another fourteen-hour shift, code scrolling endlessly across the dual monitors.
Then came the sudden weight in his chest. His head tilted, consciousness slipping away as the red LEDs multiplied until they covered everything.
When he opened his eyes again—there was no office.
No hum of cooling fans.
No body.
Just blackness.
And then…
[Welcome, User: Riku Arata.]
A cold, neutral female voice echoed through the void.
[You have been enrolled into the Reincarnation System.]
"…What?" His voice sounded oddly detached, as if echoing inside his skull.
[You have died. Your karmic value is insufficient for ascension. You will therefore be recycled.]
"Recycled? Like garbage?"
[Correction: Like data.]
Lines of light flared into existence around him—blue code, glowing strings of text that extended infinitely in all directions. It felt less like an afterlife and more like being inside some unearthly developer console.
Riku swallowed. "Is this… a dream?"
[Negative. You will be assigned to World ID #12,784-Δ. Task: Survive. Achievement will grant System Modules. Failure results in termination and reset. Reminder: Memory integrity will remain intact.]
Riku blinked. Slowly, the words began to hit him. A game-like system. Reincarnation. Retaining memory after death.
"…So basically, I just respawn endlessly? With my mind intact?"
[Correct. Limitless retries until Clearance Achieved.]
Something in his weary, corporate-battered brain clicked. For the last five years, Riku had worked with backend software riddled with resets, logs, and patches. He'd lived inside loops of endless revisions.
Now he was inside one literally.
He gave a half-bitter, half-amused laugh. "Figures. Even in death, I can't escape debugging."
The voice continued, unrelenting.
[Initializing World Transfer. Assigning Template: Human (Level 1). Occupation: Villager. Module Carryover: None.]
"Wait," Riku said quickly.
All this sounded good—too good. But what about choice? Could he at least… influence something?
"…Can I ask one thing?"
The system hesitated. The silence was strangely heavy.
[Request: permitted.]
Riku's eyes narrowed in the shifting blue void. "If this is another loop, another code-cycle… Can I, eventually… break it?"
The static around him flickered. Just faintly, beneath the neutrality of the voice, there seemed to be… a pause.
[…That depends on how you play the game.]
The lights flared white—
—and Riku found himself gasping, lying on dirt.
A wide sky stretched overhead, bright and unfiltered. Fields of green brushed against a warm breeze. In the distance, a village stood, smoke rising lazily from chimneys.
He sat up, feeling weight return to his body. Hands—calloused, not like his keyboard-worn fingers. Clothes—roughspun linen. Around him, the world buzzed with life.
But in the corner of his vision floated a flickering interface, transparent and cold.
[Status: Riku (Lv. 1) | Occupation: None | HP: 10 | MP: 5]
[Main Objective: Survive for 1 Year.]
"…A testbed world," Riku murmured, a faint smile tugging at his lips despite the absurdity. "Fine then. Let's see what happens when a software engineer reincarnates into a system sandbox."
And thus, the first reset began.