The last thing Robert Taylor felt was the white-hot pressure of a thermobaric blast. Then, the void.
"CRITICAL FAILURE... REBOOTING... NEURAL LINK RE-ESTABLISHED."
Robert's eyes snapped open. He wasn't in a field hospital. He was face-down in frozen mud, the smell of pine and ozone thick enough to gag on. He tried to push himself up, and his arms responded with a terrifying, mechanical hiss. The Nanosuit 2.0 was tight against his skin, its cryofibrils twitching as they recalibrated to his pulse.
"LOCATION: UNKNOWN. AMBIENT CHAOS DETECTED. ENERGY INTAKE: MAXIMUM."
The HUD flickered across his retinas. In the corner of his vision, a strange, gold-tinted interface pulsed—the Crysis System.
HOST: ROBERT TAYLORSTATUS: REINCARNATED (UNKNOWN WORLD)ASSETS: NANO-SYSTEMS POLYMATH DATASET UNLOCKED.INVENTORY: PREDATOR BOW, 20x CARBON ARROWS.
"Where the hell am I?" Robert croaked. His voice sounded like grinding metal through the external comms. He looked at his hands—black, hexagonal plating slick with frost. He wasn't in the desert anymore. He was in a forest of trees so large they looked like they belonged in the Carboniferous period.
Beside him lay a collapsed Predator Bow. He grabbed it, the weapon snapping into its combat configuration with a heavy thrum.
"THREAT DETECTED," the suit warned.
Robert pivoted, his Tactical Visor highlighting three heat signatures moving through the brush. They were low to the ground, moving with a predatory twitch. He didn't recognize the skeletal structure—too many joints, too much muscle density for a wolf. To Robert, they were just targets.
SYSTEM TASK: SURVIVE INITIAL ENCOUNTERREWARD: 500 CREDITS / SKILL: ADVANCED BALLISTICS.
He didn't hesitate. He dropped into a crouch, the suit's Cloak Mode engaging with a silent ripple of light. He was invisible. He drew a carbon arrow, the Maximum Strength setting on his arms making the 200lb draw feel like a toy.
Thwip.
The first creature—a Nekker, though Robert had no name for the hairless, grey monstrosity—didn't even scream. The arrow punched through its chest and buried itself six inches into the oak tree behind it.
The other two hissed, looking for a ghost. Robert moved. He didn't use another arrow. He accelerated, a blur of silver-grey, and delivered a Nanosuit-powered punch to the second creature's skull. The impact sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a melon.
The third fled. Robert stood in the silence, his energy bar glowing a strange, pulsing blue. The "Chaos" of this world was feeding the suit directly, vibrating through his Faraday mesh like a live wire.
He walked to the first carcass.
"BIOMASS DETECTED. ACTIVATE NOM MODULE?"
He tapped his wrist. Small, shimmering tendrils reached out, breaking the creature down into raw molecular energy. As the monster dissolved, the Crysis System pinged.
TASK COMPLETE. REWARD: 500 CREDITS.KNOWLEDGE ACCESSED: THERMODYNAMICS & METALLURGY.
Robert looked at the primitive, blood-stained claws of the creature. No modern armor, no firearms, no radio chatter. Just him, a bow, and a system that promised him the power to rebuild an empire.
"This isn't home," he muttered, checking his arrow count. "But it'll do."
The silence of the northern woods was heavy, broken only by the faint, rhythmic hum of the Nanosuit 2.0. Robert stood over the cooling remains of the three creatures he'd just downed. His HUD was still pulsing with data, but his mind was elsewhere—somewhere hot, loud, and final.
He remembered the smell of the sand in the Helmand Province. He remembered the weight of his standard-issue rifle feeling like a ton of lead as he slumped against that barrier. He could still feel the warmth of his own blood soaking through his fatigues.
I'm dying, he had thought then. It wasn't the heroic exit he'd imagined. His mind hadn't flashed to family or God; it had flashed to his apartment. To the desk with the dual-monitor setup. To the Crysis trilogy launcher sitting on his desktop. He'd spent years perfecting his runs, obsessed with the lore of Prophet and the sheer science of the CryNet hardware.
God, I'm never going to finish that Prophet-mode run, was his final, bitter regret. Game over, Taylor. No respawns.
The memory snapped like a dry twig. Robert was back in the present, staring at his hands. They weren't flesh and bone; they were encased in semi-organic carbon nanotubes.
He raised his right hand and slammed it into his visor in a massive, ringing facepalm. The sound of metal-on-metal echoed through the trees.
"I got Isekai'd," he groaned, the suit's external speakers giving his voice a hollow, synthesized rasp. "Are you serious? A system? A new world? I'm a walking trope."
He stood there for a long minute, the absurdity of it threatening to make him laugh. He had lost his world, his unit, and every single digital copy of the games he loved. But as he clenched his fist, he felt it. This wasn't a haptic controller. He didn't feel a plastic mouse under his palm. He felt the suit's Cryofibrils tightening in perfect sync with his muscles. He felt the "Chaos" of this world—a wild, buzzing energy—pouring into his suit like high-octane fuel, making his energy bar glow a violent, overcharged blue.
He wasn't a fan playing a character anymore. He was the hardware.
"Well," Robert said, his voice hardening as the soldier in him took back control. "No more 'Quit to Desktop.' If I'm stuck in this dark-age hellhole, I might as well be the one holding the tech."
He looked at the Predator Bow in his hand. The Crysis System pinged in his vision, offering rewards for his survival. He didn't know this world, didn't know its monsters, and didn't know its name. But he knew the suit.
"System," Robert thought, his gaze turning north toward the unclaimed mountains. "Show me the tech tree. It's time to start building."