The monitor shattered against the wall, glass shards raining down like pixelated confetti. Kai Sakamoto's face burned with humiliation as his teammates' laughter echoed through his headset.
"Benchwarmer meltdown!" someone shouted. "Check the stream!"
Nineteen years old and already a professional failure. Kai had been recruited to Team Nexus as a backup player—a human insurance policy who never saw actual competition. Six months of watching from the sidelines while his so-called teammates dominated the Eternal Conquest championship.
"I quit!" Kai yanked the headset off, the cord whipping dangerously as he stood. His gaming chair toppled backward. "This whole thing is rigged anyway!"
His foot caught on the power strip. His hand reached for the desk. The world tilted as gravity betrayed him, his temple connecting with the corner of the metal desk frame.
Pain. Then darkness.
When Kai blinked awake, a crystal blue sky stretched endlessly above him. Not the popcorn ceiling of his apartment. Not the sterile white of a hospital room. Just infinite azure.
"Well, that's embarrassing," came a bored voice. "Rage-quit accident. Don't get many of those."
Kai sat up, his head surprisingly pain-free. A woman in a crisp business suit stood before him, holographic screens hovering around her like digital butterflies. Her name tag read "AZRAEL - REAPER CLASS 4."
"Am I...dead?" Kai asked.
"Correct! Give the boy a prize." Azrael swiped through one of her screens. "Kai Sakamoto, 19, e-sports benchwarmer. No notable achievements. No legendary skills. No tragic love story." She frowned. "You're rather boring."
"Hey!"
"But!" Azrael's eyes lit up with unnatural blue light. "The system flagged you for something special. You've been assigned to Arkanis—our RPG-style afterlife sector."
A translucent menu appeared before Kai's eyes:
[WELCOME TO ARKANIS - UNIQUE ABILITY: REVERSE CHECKPOINT]
"Wait, what?" Kai squinted at the floating text. "Reverse checkpoint?"
Azrael smiled thinly. "Every time you die, you go back in time 24 hours. But the world continues its normal progression. A debugging feature we never removed."
The sky above them cracked like breaking glass. Beyond it, Kai glimpsed swirling code—the architecture of reality itself.
"System's getting impatient," Azrael said, checking her watch. "Any questions before transfer?"
"Yeah—why me?"
Azrael leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Between us? The system thinks you can find a bug in the death code itself. Something's corrupting our afterlife architecture." She straightened, professional again. "But that's above my pay grade."
The sky fractured further, shards of reality peeling away.
"Good luck, benchwarmer." Azrael gave him a mock salute. "Try not to die too much. Or do. Your gimmick makes you quite the speedrunner."
The world dissolved, and Kai fell screaming into a vortex of light and code.
His last thought before consciousness faded: Finally—a game where being the benchwarmer might actually be the advantage.