Derek loved guns. Well, virtual ones, at least.
He had just spent six straight hours dominating a competitive lobby in Frontline Assault, the world's most popular virtual shooting game.
He had made it his personal mission to test every single weapon the game had to offer. He understood the exact bullet drop of the AWM sniper rifle across a thousand meters. He had mastered the rapid reload speed of the Desert Eagle.
But recently, virtual headshots just weren't satisfying him anymore. He needed something real.
He had developed a new dream. It was a very specific, slightly ridiculous dream: he wanted to go hunting for ducks.
And he refused to use a standard, boring shotgun like a regular hunter. Derek wanted to use a high-powered, military-grade sniper rifle to hunt ducks.
He just knew it would be the most epic, skill-intensive experience of his life.
To achieve this grand dream, Derek needed money. High-end rifles were not cheap. So, he did what any completely obsessed nineteen-year-old would do.
He marched down to his bank, withdrew every single penny of his life savings, and hurried home to execute phase two of his terrible master plan.
"Dad, I need you to sign this form to release the rest of my college fund," Derek lied smoothly, sliding a piece of paper across the dining table.
"I'm investing in a highly lucrative local startup. It's an aviary management and population control business."
His father, an accountant who rarely looked up from his financial newspaper, just nodded and scribbled his signature on the line.
"Good to see you taking some initiative with your future!"
His mother, however, was not nearly so easily fooled. She cornered him in the kitchen right after he secured the signature.
"Derek! What are you actually doing with all that money?" she scolded, crossing her arms and tapping her foot. "I saw the bank statement on your desk! You emptied your entire savings account! Tell me you aren't buying more useless computer parts or another one of those virtual reality headsets!"
"Mom, relax. It's a genuine investment," Derek insisted, backing away slowly toward the front door.
"An investment in the great outdoors! It's going to build my character!"
She sighed heavily, "If you waste that money on foolishness, do not come crying to me when you are broke and hungry."
The next day, Derek was at his mundane part-time job at the local hardware store. He was supposed to be stocking the shelves with boxes of screws, but instead, he was leaning on the counter, bragging loudly to his coworkers about his upcoming purchase.
"A sniper rifle? For ducks?!" his manager, Bob, asked. Bob's eyebrows were raised so high they nearly touched his receding hairline.
"Derek, that is honestly the stupidest thing I have ever heard. If you shoot a duck with a military sniper, there won't be anything left of the duck to eat. It will just be a cloud of feathers."
"You just don't understand the sheer precision of it, Bob," Derek explained proudly, waving a hand dismissively. "It's about the skill. The accuracy required to hit a tiny moving target from a mile away!"
Everyone in the shop continued to look at him with severe doubt. However, their doubt was cut entirely short. Not by Derek's convincing arguments, but by the sudden, violent shattering of the front glass door.
A group of five armed men rushed into the hardware store. They wore black ski masks and carried heavy firepower, yelling at everyone to get down on the ground.
Derek wasn't looking at their masks or panicking like the others. Instead, he was staring directly at their weapons.
His gamer brain instantly kicked into high gear, recognizing the firearms perfectly well.
That guy on the left has an AK-47, a true classic, probably an older model with a stamped receiver.
The leader standing in the middle is holding a heavily modified AR-15 equipped with a holographic sight. And the incredibly twitchy guy standing near the cash register has a standard issue Glock 19 9mm pistol.
Derek knew these weapons as if they were his own hands. He knew their firing rates, their standard magazine capacities, and their effective ranges. Unfortunately, knowing a gun's statistics in a video game did not magically make a person bulletproof in the real world.
The twitchy robber panicked when Bob accidentally dropped a box of iron nails. The sudden loud noise caused the robber to flinch, and he pulled the trigger of the Glock 19.
Derek, who had instinctively stepped forward a half-step to try and tell Bob to stay calm, caught the immediate crossfire.
He took three rounds directly to the chest.
He felt a sudden, intensely burning pain, followed instantly by a shocking, numbing coldness that spread through his limbs.
As he collapsed heavily onto the floor, his vision quickly faded to absolute black.
His final, fading thought was that the developers of Frontline Assault were completely right... the Glock 19 really did have excellent close-range stopping power.
Derek didn't open his eyes, mainly because he didn't seem to have eyes anymore. He found himself floating in an endless white void.
There was no pain in his chest, no hardware store, and definitely no ducks to hunt.
Suddenly, a figure materialized directly in front of him out of thin air.
It was a tall, heavily muscled man wearing a crisp, perfectly ironed green military uniform. He had a tight buzz cut, a stern, chiseled jawline, and a pair of dark aviator sunglasses covering his eyes.
The military man snapped a perfect salute.
[Welcome!] the man barked.
[I am the Modern Weapons System! You have died in your previous reality, recruit. However, your exceptional, encyclopedic knowledge of ballistic weaponry has qualified you for a second deployment!]
Derek stared at the man in complete disbelief. "Wait, a system? And you're... a guy? You aren't a blue holographic screen?"
"I am the physical manifestation of your tactical interface," the military man replied stiffly, his expression unchanging.
"You are currently being transferred to a highly hostile combat zone. Your primary objective: survive, dominate the enemy, and establish complete fire superiority. Do you accept the mission parameters?"
"Wait a minute, what combat zone? Where exactly am I going?" Derek asked, a sudden wave of panic finally setting in.
"Deployment commencing in three, two, one..." the military man counted down loudly.
"Wait! Stop! What about the ducks?!" Derek yelled desperately.
The endless white void suddenly shattered, swallowing him whole.
Derek woke up gasping for air as if he had been drowning. He sat up, his hands immediately clutching his chest where the three bullets had hit him.
There was no blood. There were no wounds. Even stranger, he wasn't wearing his blue hardware store polo shirt anymore.
He was dressed in a coarse linen tunic and a pair of scratchy brown wool trousers.
He looked around wildly. He was sitting on a lumpy straw bed in a small stone room.
This was most definitely not his bedroom, and it was certainly not his world.
As his brain desperately struggled to catch up with his surroundings, a flood of memories that did not belong to him suddenly rushed forcefully into his mind.
The System was efficiently feeding him everything he needed to know directly into his brain, favoring telling him the hard facts rather than letting him figure them out slowly.
He learned that he was currently located in the magical realm of Eloria. It was a massive, untamed fantasy world ruled entirely by the fundamental laws of magic and physical strength.
Here, talented people cultivated internal mana to cast incredibly powerful elemental spells, and dedicated warriors trained their bodies to swing heavy swords capable of cutting straight through solid boulders.
The technology of this world was practically medieval. People rode horses for travel, fought their wars with steel, and lit their wooden homes with wax candles.
But the absolute biggest problem in this new world wasn't the distinct lack of indoor plumbing or the internet. It was the monsters. Eloria was heavily plagued by vicious magical beasts.
The fragile human kingdoms were constantly under brutal siege, relying entirely on their powerful mages and heavily armored knights to keep the high city walls safe from destruction.
Derek also learned about his new identity. His new body belonged to a sickly, frail fifteen-year-old noble boy named Arthur.
Arthur had recently been exiled to this remote, dangerous frontier village by his own family simply because he possessed absolutely zero magical talent.
He was the ultimate laughingstock of his prestigious noble house, considered entirely useless garbage in a harsh world where magical power was everything.
Poor Arthur had apparently died of a sudden, severe fever in his sleep just moments before Derek's soul arrived to take over the empty vessel.
Derek sat quietly on the straw bed and absorbed all of this incredible information.
The situation was grim. He had no magical abilities. He had absolutely no sword training. He was trapped in a weak, sickly body and surrounded by deadly magical monsters in a medieval death trap.
'System? Are you there?' Derek thought tentatively, testing the mental connection.
[Present!] the gruff, commanding voice echoed loudly in his mind.
[Awaiting your orders, Commander! Arsenal is locked and loaded, pending your command.]
Derek couldn't help but let out a wide smile.
Just as Derek was getting extremely excited about planning out his future arsenal and world domination, the door to the stone room suddenly creaked open.
An elderly man walked in slowly, carrying a wooden bucket filled with water and a clean rag.
He wore simple, worn-out peasant clothes.
The memories in Derek's head identified him as Old Thomas, the fiercely loyal family caretaker who had stubbornly followed young Arthur into this dangerous exile.
Old Thomas looked toward the straw bed, fully expecting to see the pale, dead body of his young master waiting to be cleaned for burial.
Instead, he saw his allegedly deceased young master sitting completely upright, grinning like a madman, and staring excitedly at his own hands.
The bucket slipped right out of his trembling hands, hitting the floor.
"M-Master Arthur?" Old Thomas stammered out, "But... but the village apothecary explicitly said you stopped breathing over an hour ago! Your skin was cold as ice!"
"A ghost! The young master has returned as a vengeful ghost!" Thomas yelled at the top of his lungs.
"Help! Somebody run and get the village priest! The dead have risen!"