Deadworld Isekai

Most people die in boring ways.

Matt always thought that he'd die with a bang. He'd fall off a cliff, save a beautiful woman from a mugging, and breathe his last breath watching her cry over him, or in a freak hang-gliding accident that his insurance would vigorously contest as a disguised suicide attempt.

Instead, it was just the normal, garden-variety cancer. He didn't smoke and never worked a day in a factory filled with toxic fumes. So, when he asked his doctor why cancer had chosen him, his doctor shrugged.

“There isn’t always a reason. Some people just draw the short straw.”

Maybe it was the fact that he disliked going to the doctor. It didn't seem like he had to. He was young and in shape. Why waste money on doctor visits when it could go toward bills at the end of the month?

By the time the doctors caught the cancer, there wasn’t much point in treatment. The official recommendation was for him to go home and enjoy the few months he had left.

Matt had a small life insurance policy, courtesy of his job. Turns out, some life insurance policies pay out early when a person's fate is sure enough. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to survive on, given the overall timeline of things. With the money, Matt took short weekend trips to places he had always wanted to go. That got old quickly. Eventually, he needed a hobby to pass the time, and he chose gardening.

He didn’t try to be a good gardener. He hoed the ever-loving hell out of his backyard until every inch was tilled and fertilized. After scattering a random assortment of seeds and putting up a “Caution: Uncontrolled cellular growth” sign, he limited himself to watering and watching, waiting for the plant that would win the battle royale.

When weeds popped up, he’d absolutely nuke them with herbicide. At first, he was cautious about the dosages, but then stopped after he realized you couldn’t get cancer twice, and it wouldn’t matter much even if he did.

By the time his body finally gave out, his backyard looked like a bizarre, artificial jungle built by a madman. And that’s pretty much what it was.

—

“Oh shit. Ooooh, shit.”

Matt was having a difficult time coping with the afterlife. He wasn’t particularly religious, so he didn’t have much in the way of specific expectations. What he hadn’t expected was to find himself sitting at a very fancy table in a well-adorned meeting room. What he had expected even less was to look over and find a talking, thinking delivery truck in the chair across the table from him.

“Oh, fuck. Fuckedty fuck.”

He wasn’t coping well. The truck was both full-sized and moving towards him, yet somehow stationary and perfectly sized for its average desk chair. If he had a normal, human brain, Matt suspected it would have burned out trying to work out the implications of the visual contradiction. That it didn’t was one of the benefits of the afterlife, he supposed.

“Oh, no. No, no, no.”

“Sir, if you would calm do….”

“Why is it… why? No. I don’t want this.”

“Sir, if you would just listen for a moment…”

“Ahhhhh! Ahhhh!”

It took a while to come to terms with things. When he finally got there, he had questions.

“So, this might be rude, but… why are you a truck?”

“I’m not a truck. I’m an automated system soul migration counselor and assistant, meant to ease your journey to your next plane of existence. I can take any form.”

“OK, fine, but… why a truck? Why not another human? An angel?”

“My appearance is calibrated to the average user expectation. Soul migrations from your planet are rare, and it was deemed time to recalibrate the model. My research indicated that this was, or rather, this is a common representation of a soul migration device in the type of fiction popular in your demographic.”

It was a while before Matt could talk without laughing. The truck-system had attempted to be nice, and Matt didn’t want to hurt its feelings. Instead of settling on an angel or the grim reaper, the system in front of Matt had decided that the best image was a persistent image of getting trucked.

Eventually, Matt was calm enough to get to the serious business of being dead. He might have imagined it, but the system assistant gave him just the faintest sense of being relieved.

“So you are saying you are going to send me to ‘the next plane’. That’s… heaven? Somewhere worse?”

“Not in that sense, no. Some souls don’t survive the process of dying. They're purely lost and are replaced. Other, rarer souls go to a simulated environment. Their memories are wiped, and they are put in a life relatively ideal for them.”

“And that’s me?” A simulated paradise shouldn’t have sounded terrible, but somehow it did. “No offense, but I’m not sure if I’m cut out for fake simulated heaven.”

“Don’t worry. That’s not where you are headed. Remember, I’m a truck.”

“You don’t mean… Oh, shit…”

A small trumpet noise played from across the room, near the wall. A few handfuls of confetti materialized from nowhere, and a small pop unfurled a poster reading, “Congratulations on your Isekai!”

“That is hilariously underwhelming, system.”

“I was reluctant to shock you again after seeing your reaction to my truck-avatar.”

“Fair.”

The system waved its wheel-arm and a small desktop pamphlet holder materialized. Matt grabbed a pamphlet, “Gaia! The Garden Planet! Come as yourself, and GROW!”

“I am limited to sending souls to realms with some level of conflict that they can solve. Within those confines, I try my best to assign my souls to worlds that match their interests, thematically. Frankly, a LOT of your interests are satisfied just by being transmigrated. More than you’d think. It’s a little offputting, honestly.”

Another gesture brought up a floating video screen showing Matt’s frantic, chaotic gardening of the past few months.

“Besides the media you consume, this stood out to me as significant. You were dying and you chose to garden. Every plane has plenty to do, and plenty of options on how to live your life. But you like plants, and all the historic information on Gaia indicates it’s all about plants. It seems like a good match.”

“What if I wanted something different? Something more intense?”

“There are a few other options. The one that matches most closely with what you are speaking of is the demon death battleground, Ra’Zor. Also known as the realm of one thousand bleedings.”

“Actually, on second thought, Gaia seems fine…. Do people really ever choose that second one?”

“Adolescents, mainly. And to the realm’s credit, I have heard they have very good soups.”

“So when do I go?”

“Soon.”

“How soon? Do I have time to tour the administrative portions of heave…”

It was then that Matt noticed that he was plummeting, fast, toward a red-black planet.

Fast in this case was very fast. The planet went from marble to beach ball to giant, all-encompassing behemoth in the blink of an eye. He didn’t know much about soul migrations, but he was really hoping that he would slow down before contact. Not just for his own sake, either, but also because he suspected his impact might have an unpleasant dinosaur-extinction-level effect on the local fauna.

Just then, he slowed to a stop, and a small blue screen materialized out of nowhere in front of him. Exactly what he was hoping for.

*ding!*

Welcome to Gaia, traveling soul. In a moment, you will be transported down to your new home: a lush, beautiful paradise of glorious plants and astounding animal life. But we are not without our troubles. The system will grant you power, and your guardian will meet you upon arrival to give you guidance. The fate of a planet hangs on your actions. Good luck!

Matt had just enough time to confirm that system screens were dismissed by swiping before shooting off again toward the planet. He felt his body become more and more material over the next few seconds, just in time for him to slam, hard, into the surface of the planet.

Despite the visual evidence, Matt was shielded from any harm instead of spreading out like bloody jelly on the surface of the new world. Coughing in a cloud of red dust, Matt slowly stood up. Besides the immediate impact zone, the hit didn’t seem strong enough to damage the local environment much; If Matt wanted to cause a mass extinction event, he’d have to find another way.

The system had at least clothed him at some point during his descent. He was spared from nakedness by both simple sandals and a roughly spun garment. It reminded Matt of a longer, permanently closed tank top. He waited for the dust to clear, eager to catch his first glimpse of the planet.

As the dust finally dissipated, Matt winced. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the harsh brightness of the two suns hanging in the sky.

Looking down, Matt caught his first glimpse of the red and black dirt expanse that was his new planet. The terrifying, open, deadness of it arced off into an empty, barren infinity. The plants were impressive in the sense that they had managed to not exist at all. So far, Gaia was a garden in the same way that doughnuts were cardio.

“Fuck. He sent me to the demon death planet. System, did you send me to the demon death planet?”

No answer.

“System screen on! System screen…go!” Matt tried several combinations before screaming, “System! Help!” Somehow, that worked. With a combination of hand flailing and consistent repetition of the word 'system', Matt learned how to summon various screens. Leaving aside his status for now, he brought up the map screen. It was a square mini-map, covered in gray, with only a single splotch of red. Beneath the map was the button “Location Details”, which he mentally tapped.

Planet: Gaia (Dead)

Continent: Sarthia (Unpopulated, Lost)

Province: Sarthia Capitol District (Defeated)

City: Ruins of Sarthia Kingship (Defeated)

Matt looked around for the supposed ruins and found nothing but flat, burned dirt. He called up the window for system queries. Supposedly, the system could handle basic questions about local history and environments.

“Where are the ruins?”

“Ruins” is a generalized system term referring to the area where a city or named structure once stood. It does not necessarily require that remnants of the city be visible.

“So what happened here? What destroyed all traces of the city?”

The system screen faded a moment, then blinked on and off momentarily.

System Error. Information not available.

“Ohhhkay. So, this seems like a problem, system.”

Agreed. System analysis of information unavailability is now active.

“How long will that take, approximately?”

Current estimate: Five Earth years.

That wouldn’t do, obviously. Matt didn’t know a whole lot about survival, but it didn’t look like there was anything nearby he could even try to survive on. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t tell what plants and water could be consumed if there was nothing around to consume. He was on a very limited clock, and the system wasn’t being particularly helpful.

“So, about that guardian you mentioned…”

Matt was immediately inundated with a series of dings

Searching for guardian…

Search error detected. Guardian not found.

“Shit.”

Searching for alternative options…

Quest Generated!

Finding your direction

Where’s your guardian? What’s going on with the garden planet? It’s hard to say, but we are going to find out. An unknown anomaly has been sensed, and temporary access to the system compass has been granted. Follow along and learn more about your situation!

Objective: Identify the nature of the scanned anomaly.

Difficulty: A

Rewards: ???, permanent access to system compass

Matt was silent for a second after seeing the new screens.

“System, I’m beginning to suspect that you messed something up and screwed me over.”

Matt had once had an incompetent manager who tried to spin off difficulties that their bad management created as “fun little team challenges.” He wasn’t absolutely sure that this was the same thing, but the system was giving off strong Janice Covers Her Ass vibes, and he didn’t feel great about it.

The system refused to confirm or deny Matt’s guess.

Quest Generated!

Another quest screen popped up, confirming some of Matt’s worst fears.