Another volley of railgun rounds sped across the void. Countless of the Faithful’s frigates and cruisers were outright vaporized, and others snapped in half.

  The great battle for Jupiter had raged for about ten minutes, and the great fleet of the Faith Militant had been utterly dismantled.

  They had scraped together any kind of ship for centuries, in the hope of “liberating” the solar system from the AIs they saw as so evil. Truly, the death rattle of a side of humanity best left in the past.

  Their grand assault on the solar system had admittedly been well planned and even well executed, but a simple gathering of police forces—the Solar Defense Fleet and the Rapid Reaction Fleet—had been enough to shred their largest ships with missiles and destroy their smaller ships with mere flak.

  Kyle Jessek, Scion of the Grand House Jessek, happened to be in the system on his frigate, the Daphne.

  He had gloriously joined the mustering of ships outside of Earth's orbit and moved out with the fleet to engage the religious savages.

  The battle had been going smoothly-the Faith Militant had quickly been surrounded and picked apart by the League's wave assault tactics. They had gotten desperate.

  Kyle smugly sat back in his command chair as the Lance cannon mounted centrally on the ship fired again.

  The bright blue beam arced away and punched directly through one of the Faith’s scrap cruisers. Secondary explosions raked it, and a cruise missile impacting its bridge sealed its fate.

  Serves them right for standing in the way of humanity's ascendancy, thought Kyle. He truly believed in the League’s ideology-ultrarational and anticlerical leadership, and rule of AI.

  As the lines of League battleships moved inward on the core of transports carrying fanatical ground assault infantry, the Faith ships suddenly surged forward. It seemed they were desperate to deal whatever damage they could to their sworn enemy before their dismantling.

  Kyle’s ship-the Daphne-had been undergoing repairs when the sudden Faith Militant attack occurred. As such, most, if not all, of his countermeasures were disabled. Only the interceptor missiles still worked; the nanobot dispenser, flak turrets, and APS energy field were all down. A single missile snaked through the overlapping fields of fire from nearby ships, desperately trying to save his life.

  Their flak cannons and lasers shot down most of the incoming missiles, but a single chemical explosive reached his ship. Kyle didn’t even notice it until it was too late-most of his forward-facing sensors had been knocked out by a solar flare weeks earlier, which was why he had been in repair in the first place.

  In that moment, his life flashed before his eyes. Strange, he thought. I was sure this was just a trope, not a real phenomenon.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  From his childhood with his loving parents, to his teen years at the various Academies, and even to his years hunting down the remnants of the Faith Militant as a Scion and battlegroup leader.

  Moments like House Jessek hiring him, meeting his first girlfriend, that one time he crashed an antique motorcycle, flashed before his eyes as one of his few functioning sensors tracked the missile.

  At the last minute, an interceptor from the nearby OLS Baphomet impacted the missile-but it was too late, and too close to his ship.

  He, the OLS Daphne, and a few nearby drone fighters ceased to exist in the following detonation of vaporizing kinetic and thermal energy.

  Whoa, this one will do perfectly. Yes, come here… the soul is still intact, wonderful… such an overwhelming arrogance and confidence, perfect for my experiment…

  ———————

  Kyle floated in a great darkness for quite a while. There was nothing around him-it felt like sleeping. The moment his consciousness received any stimulation, it felt like but a moment had passed. A voice spoke to him.

  You are being reincarnated. How genre savvy are you?

  Kyle would have been utterly flabbergasted at such a question asked in an unironic manner. But instead of confusion, he only felt cold consideration. His mind felt utterly disconnected from his emotions-they seemed to have been paused, almost, there but out of reach.

  Sort of like that one time when he was little and his dog took the remote and he would have to watch something boring-wow, my memory seems perfect as well.

  “I know my way around the genre. Am I being isekai’d? Missile-kun, why did you do this to me?”

  Heh. That’s a new one. Anyway, that clears things up-you’re going to a fantasy world. No system, and I doubt you’ll meet any of the cultivator clans, although some individual ones might cross your path. It’s more like Azeroth than Middle-earth. You’ve been warned.

  “Will I ever return? My parents would be at least a little sad at my passing. I have no other connections.”

  Yes. You can either make your way back through space or just conquer the planet and ask me to go back. "How will i contact you?" If you've conquered the planet, at that point it will be trivial.

  Kyle paused for a minute and considered the situation. He feared being kept in this directionless void forever. Anyways, the entity hadn’t killed him, that missile had. Why not take the second chance? He had never been one to turn down a handout, and resurrection sounded wonderful.

  Curious, he tried to exert some movement on his void-like surroundings, but it felt like moving through wet concrete-while tied to a post with a rubber band. Truly, an exercise for the soul.

  “So. Those fanatical fools did me in, huh?”

  I have no time for casual conversation. You seem ready. Uh, prepare thyself! …Why did I say that… so cringe…

  The voice faded away. Kyle blinked-a strange sensation without any eyes to blink with-and when his eyes opened, he was in a small ruin of a house, looking through the cameras of his power armor.