Year 12075

"Good morning, Night City! Yesterday's dead-man's lottery across all districts only amounted to four deaths. I don't think anyone expected that number. I wonder how many people lost their shirts. You all should thank the NCPD officers. If it weren't for them eating donuts and waving their guns around to stop you from getting rich, there would have been no less than twenty deaths yesterday.

The Watson Maelstrom was causing trouble again yesterday in the Kabuki District. I don't know when these cyberware-addicted psychos will be able to sit still for even a second. The Heywood Valentinos seem to be having some trouble. They aren't even celebrating their traditional Day of the Dead. They're just running around the streets with their pants down. These days are never-ending. Anyway, Pacifica is still Pacifica. I think City Hall should give them an award to celebrate another peaceful day. In conclusion, I'm your buddy Stan, and let's start a new day of chasing dreams in Night City together."

The noisy voice woke Karl up.

"Damn it... My head hurts."

Karl felt himself leaning against a wall. He opened his eyes, but his vision was blurry, a mess of colors assaulting his eyes. Opening his eyes was even more painful than keeping them closed.

"The billboards are blinding."

After his brain slowly processed the information his eyes were receiving, Karl realized he was lying in a stinking pile of garbage on a high-rise apartment building. He was looking at the view in the apartment building's courtyard through a railing less than four feet high.

The billboards, wanting to fill every gap and crowding every space, only regretting that their light wasn't bright enough, flashed their colors, projecting a blurry and psychedelic light in front of Karl.

Feeling uncomfortable all over, Karl struggled to stand up from the stinking garbage pile, his body aching. He looked around.

The hallway of this apartment building was probably a hundred meters long. Groups of strangely dressed, futuristic-looking guys were standing in various places in the hallway, chatting. No one paid any attention to Karl in the garbage pile.

"What is going on?"

Feeling the fog in his head dissipate a little, Karl tried to remember his last conscious moments before he passed out.

Karl, surname Karl, name Er, as a man with the extremely rare surname Karl, Karl's life was ordinary, except for his decent looks and love of playing games. In his memory, he seemed to be watching a gameplay demonstration video of a game...

And then?

His memory broke off there. His last impression was of watching the video.

'What the hell?'

Recalling the gameplay demonstration video he had been repeatedly watching, called 'Cyberpunk 2077', Karl suddenly froze.

Because the last scene in his memory was exactly the same as the scene in front of him.

This super-skyscraper was the apartment where the protagonist V lived in the demonstration video!

Only then did Karl seriously look at the strangely dressed guys. He had only glanced at them before, thinking they were dressed strangely, but now, looking closely, the messy things on those people's bodies were cyberware!

What is cyberware? It's a kind of prosthetic, a future biological and medical technology that appears in science fiction works. Its essence is to replace the faulty or overly fragile human body with mechanical, bionic, or other similar things.

Are these things real?

Karl's eyes swept over an apartment resident passing by. When his gaze moved down to the area between the other person's legs, to be precise, the crotch area, he immediately believed that he had transmigrated.

As for why...

Because it was glowing!

Damn, that guy's thing was glowing, and it was changing colors. Was this some LGBT-style rainbow?!

As far as Karl knew, such a wild thing had not been seen in the country where he lived, at least not by him.

He'd inexplicably arrived in a place identical to the video, and was now witnessing this impactful scene. Oh, that wasn't just a figure of speech, because that glowing guy down there really was twitching. Karl meant his shoulders; the guy looked like he was having a seizure, glowing from below, his body trembling and swaying.

Standing in the garbage pile, Karl didn't block the path of the glowing man, so he walked past, shaking his body. After he left, Karl also left the garbage pile, wanting to find that last bit of hope that this wasn't real. When he stood by the railing and looked up at the courtyard above, a flying car just happened to pass by in the sky.

"Okay, accept reality."

Not caring that his hands were dirty, Karl patted his cheeks. He completely understood his transmigration.

In his original world, some concept cars called flying cars had been developed, but those things were not comparable to the vehicles that Karl saw speeding through the sky. The technological gap between the two was not something that could be filled in a few years. What else could he do?

At least he transmigrated to a Cyberpunk world that he was already familiar with, not some dark 40K universe. He didn't need to howl like a kicked puppy.

Karl stood by the railing for a while, but he didn't hear any system prompts. It seemed his transmigration was lonely, without any system to chat with.

Could it be a soul transmigration? Give me the original body's memories?

As he thought this, an apartment resident carelessly unzipped his pants and peed not far from Karl. Karl even saw his reflection in the strangely colored liquid.

Damn, it's a body transmigration.

But it doesn't seem to be entirely.

Staring at his reflection, which looked about eighteen or nineteen years old, Karl still remembered that he was twenty-four years old.

Providing younger service? Give it a good review.

Ignoring the person next to him who had finished peeing and was dizzy, almost falling headfirst into his own liquid, Karl strolled through the apartment building, wanting to know the current year.

As for the date, he already knew it when he vaguely heard Night City's announcer Stanley, because the announcer mentioned the Day of the Dead in his words. According to Karl's memory, that was a Mexican festival similar to the Ghost Festival, celebrated on November 1st or 2nd. Based on that, today should be November 2nd or 3rd.

As for why Karl knew, it was because he had seen an animated film called Coco, which was inspired by the Day of the Dead.

After walking a few steps, Karl got the information he wanted.

In the changing billboards in the corridor, one billboard marked the date.

It was an advertisement for the Dead Man's Lottery, and the date written on it was...

November 3, 2075.

It's actually 2075?

I have no idea what happened.

Just as Karl thought this, he suddenly realized that he might not be without a cheat.

The text and the previous broadcast were not the languages and characters he was familiar with, so why could he understand everything?