It had all fallen apart for Devon Quinn after he used that godsent ticket. None of his generation of players had survived for as long as had nor completed the last two hundred games to one hundred percent--unlocking all of the hidden lore and finishing the relevant mysteries--save for him. It had been the bare minimum he had to do in order to even buy that {Return Ticket} from the game shop, but finding an old Colt revolver or a set of elemental runestones were not easy to get the required achievement points.

Especially this last game in where he was in the epilogue stage.

He had to fight against a mad Titan who kept an entire Victorian-era city trapped in an endless nightmare, but that required him to utilize nearly all of his supplies that he brought into the game. The Titan had read over nine thousand health points, however, that fight was slightly easier considering all of the achievements Devon had on his [Profile].

Now that he dealt the final blow on that monster and got the last few points he needed to buy the ticket, he immediately bought it.

With a soft shimmer of a golden aura around the mysterious strip of paper, the game's system immediately brought up a prompt.

》A Golden {Return Ticket}《

》Strange runic script adorns this ticket with an obvious effect of forcibly returning one (1) person in both body and soul to their homeworld of origin. While not much else is known about what other powers this ticket may possess, it has not yet been fully researched.《

》Usage: Rip this ticket to enact a return to your homeworld.《

》Limit: 1《

"Use this item," Devon muttered out loud--a familiar command by this point.

》Command Accepted. Beginning transmigration...《

It was a different feeling that Devon was used to when he used the ticket. The effect of the transmigration bridge between this game stage and his homeworld felt like his whole body was being slowly disintegrated--broken down atom by atom--while being compacted into a black hole.

To summarize, it was massively unpleasant.

As the bridge and following teleportation fired up, he remembered the thousands of years spent within this game. Devon even recalled--with some assistance from his high [Intelligence] and [Wisdom] stats--the very night he was forced into this hellscape.

Thousands of years ago... (From Devon's point of view)

October 30th, 2020 was a decent day in Devon's memory. He and his family were locked down in their home due to a pandemic while their trusted government officials were slowly becoming insane in listening to a mere clown the public--in Devon's opinion--mistakenly let into office.

His older brother John had just finished cooking their dinner along with his boyfriend Derek--both of whom were five-starred Michelin Chefs--and brought out a lovely spread of food. The food had entirely made of ingredients bought from their local Walmart and farmer's market all out of their own pockets, but Devon's parents were worried about how much the two guys were spending on them.

Devon's father--named Jason Quinn--was the CEO (or Chief Executive Officer) of a major research firm that did pretty much anything. Quinn Technologies (aka Quinn Tech) had been among one of the major companies that anyone could bring in to research anything from weapons of mass destruction to simple vaccines. Despite being the company Devon's great grandfather had founded with the cure for stage 1 cancer that didn't involve chemotherapy, they remained relatively cheap compared to other big companies. It was also no secret that the Quinn patriarch before Jason--Devon's grandfather--was a reincarnated transmigrator from a different world armed with some kind of technology system.

Naturally, only the Quinn family knew such a secret in the entire world.

As for Devon's mother--named Miranda Quinn nee Maxillan--she too was a CEO, but not for Quinn Tech. Her family--the Maxillian Clan--also owned several companies that were slightly less varied as Quinn Tech. Their companies were mainly weapons manufacturing and bio-chemistry research, but under Miranda's leadership, their profits increased after bringing in clean renewable energy. Not even the former board of directors that had been under her mother's regime could've expected her daughter was just as fierce.

They had no clue that Miranda--at least from Devon's memory--was actually a regressor that had to change her fate and met his father due to her regression. As to how he knew these secrets, it had been because both his father and mother told their children once they reached sixteen.

Anyways, that dinner went rather well as one could've expected. Devon, his parents, and his siblings along with their own respective partners ate the food while discussing happy memories mixed with business talk. All of them were rather happy--or at least to Devon back then they were--before that night changed Devon's life.

His long time best friend Jack had called him just after eleven o' clock at night to tell him that things weren't working out with them anymore. They had just been broken up by their former girlfriend an hour ago and they were on the verge of a mental breakdown, but decided to call Devon for help. For clarification, Jack's pronouns are indeed They/Them and they identify as a non-binary male.

Devon told them that they could come over that night and stay the night with him. As fortune had it, both of his parents knew about Jack's situation in real-time considering that they were still at the dinner table cleaning up. Without interrupting the currently ongoing call, both of them nodded their heads at Devon expressing their genuine approval of how their middle child was handling the situation.

Unbeknownst to Devon, John and Derek also overheard the discussion from the nearby kitchen. Both chefs knew to make some treats for Jack so that they could recover from the breakup in comfort because all of them knew how dangerous Jack's mental state was currently. In Miranda's first life, she ended up committing suicide* because of her own fragile mental health from verbal and emotional abuse.

After that call taking roughly forty minutes from beginning to end, Jack had gotten the first course of comfort food from John and Derek. They stuck on the call the entire time as they fled their home listening to Devon's comforting words.

Now, you might be thinking 'why would this change Devon's life?' after that. It is actually what happened just as the clock struck midnight that really got things rolling.

At exactly 12:00:00am on October 31st, Devon entered the game. All across the universe, some people were randomly selected to participate in a game that--at least to Devon Quinn--was absurdly similar to a genre of boy love stories he'd read a lot at home: Unlimited Flow.

》Codex Entry: Unlimited Flow (Genre)《

》Also known as UF, this genre of stories is a tertiary subgenre of romance that also commonly intermingles with Horror, GameLit, Quick Transmigration, and other elements. Usually, this genre element involves one or more people involving in a game-like scenario (ex: Talk show, Live streaming, Reality, Survival Games, etc) that can also act as "death games" in which some or most characters die aside from the main character.《

This game that Devon had entered--and survived for thousands of years in--was simply called "The Game" with mysterious administrators that governed over the entire game. It was very fortunate for Devon that for his very first game--which was called "Echoes"--there was a kind of tutorial. Just like in video games, there were stat boards, achievements, gear, etc.

Just like most who entered The Game, Devon did not fully complete the tutorial to completion. He had only reached a solid fifty-one (51) percent that qualified him to participate in The Game--though just barely. Anyone who had scored less than 51% in their final overall completion score were doomed to die within their first week of joining, but everyone who played through the tutorial were able to safely die.

Safe Deaths were very common in the gaming scene along with Unsafe Deaths. If you died in a safe death Echo, you'd be able to respawn with some minor penalty that got worse the more times you died. Unsafe death Echoes--the ones that made Devon really understand the cruelty of The Game--were essentially hardcore scenarios in where you only had one life with no do-overs.

Gods, the sheer amount of people Devon knew and befriended that died in those Echoes still haunted him even now as he returned home.

Besides the fact that Devon now knew aliens existed in the wider universe--as his home planet didn't reach the inter-planetary stage yet--there was much more he wanted to do with his family. Despite having his family involved in weapons manufacturing and research, Devon knew that his own state of recovery was going to begin alongside Jack.

'Oh how am I going to explain to Mom and Dad about...' Devon thought to himself as he was just now beginning to shimmer out of the game stage. His thought left unfinished as the space around him faded to black.

=={12:00:01am 10/31/20}==

Continued in Chapter 1: The Return.