Yang Ming, a dedicated player of the virtual reality space exploration game Abyss, witnessed the destruction of Earth from the comfort of his family home. A high-energy radiation wave, originating from the outer solar system, obliterated the planet just thirty minutes after the game’s climactic expansion, The Abyss Befalling, ended with the annihilation of the human homeworld by the Legion of the Ninth Calamity. The coincidence between the in-game disaster and the real-world catastrophe led to widespread conspiracy theories suggesting humanity had failed a cosmic trial. However, Yang Ming’s consciousness did not perish. Instead, he awoke in a medical facility, his body wracked with pain and his mind flooded with foreign memories that threatened to erase his original identity. He struggled to maintain his sense of self, clinging to his past life on Earth while absorbing the fragmented experiences of his new host.
Yang Ming realized he had revived as Hanton, a third officer aboard a Sherman Empire research vessel. The man examining him was Professor Geigerlof, known in the game as the secret boss Geiger from the Level 30 dungeon Echoes of the Forsaken. In the game, Geiger was a frail, half-mad old man who transformed into a monster, but here he was a middle-aged scientist with a mechanical eye. Yang Ming understood that he had traveled thirty years before the game’s official launch, placing him in the timeline of the dungeon’s backstory. Hanton was a Level-2 combat mecha pilot with a disciplined but unremarkable life, characterized by a medal for service, two mistresses, and three ambitious wishes: to become a bioengineered warrior, to return to a prosperous world, and to marry a noblewoman. Yang Ming dismissed the first and third wishes as dangerous or impractical, focusing instead on survival.
The immediate threat looming over Yang Ming was the Valkyrie, a bioengineered super-soldier aboard the ship who would eventually go rogue and trigger a catastrophic uprising. In the game’s narrative, this event occurred thirty years prior to the player’s arrival, leading to the death of most crew members. Yang Ming needed to determine the exact date to understand how much time he had before the disaster. After recovering in the medical bay and interacting with the ship’s doctor, Lena, he returned to his cabin. He checked the electronic calendar and discovered the date was New Calendar Year 724, January 22. This meant the uprising was not thirty years away, but only one year in the future. The proximity of the catastrophe transformed his situation from a slow burn into an urgent crisis.
Yang Ming recognized that the world he inhabited was not a simulation. The sensory details, the lack of a status panel, and the physical reality of his body confirmed that Abyss had become his new existence. He understood that Earth was gone and that he was trapped in a galaxy where humanity was at war with the Ninth Calamity. His knowledge of the game’s events gave him a strategic advantage, but it also placed him in extreme danger. As a low-ranking officer on a secret research vessel involved in illegal human experimentation, he had no power or influence. The Valkyrie’s rampage would kill him instantly if he remained on the ship. Yang Ming resolved to integrate into this world, using his understanding of the dungeon’s events to navigate the political and military landscape of the Sherman Empire. He needed to avoid the bioengineering enhancements that Hanton desired and instead find a way to survive the coming storm, potentially by escaping the ship before the Valkyrie’s berserk state began. His goal was to uncover the connection between the game and reality while ensuring his own survival in a hostile universe.
