1 Chapter 1: Rebirth; Countdown to the End of the World!

"Ding! Host's consciousness detected..."

"Building character panel..."

"Building character attributes..."

"Building monster's race, attributes..."

"Building character class..."

"Creating mission menu..."

"Character creation complete!"

"Ding! Congratulations host, you have successfully entered the game!"

Bruce, still stunned, heard the voice ring out in his head.

Then he woke up.

It was as if he had just awoken from a dream.

Bruce, in a daze, looked around with a blank face. He was surrounded by wilderness.

At first, all he could make out were, what seemed like, neverending dark ruins. Then on closer inspection; countless bones scattered across the desolate land.

All of a sudden, he felt something wrong with his body.

As Bruce lowered his head, he noticed that where there had once been skin and flesh, there was now just bone.

'Have I become a skeleton?' he thought.

With everything he'd just witnessed, Bruce was bewildered as to what was happening.

Just as he was trying to make sense of the situation, the voice he had heard before, spoke again.

"Ding! The player has successfully entered the game world."

"Please choose your next action quickly."

The voice sounded female, yet was empty, emotionless, and cold.

Upon hearing the voice a second time, all Bruce could feel was shock. 'A system notification sound?' he thought to himself, and as the confusion wore aware, he realized, 'Wait, could it be that I've teleported into the Second World?'

The voice that he heard in his head sounded familiar. Yet, it was possible that every player who entered the Second World felt this way.

It was a game after all.

From the moment players entered the game, the hollow, mechanical voice (the sound of the Second World system notification) would accompany them for the rest of their lives!

Just as he was pondering the significance of the voice, a translucent attribute panel appeared in front of him:

[ name ] : Bruce

[ race ] : Undead-skeleton

[ level ] : Level 1(0/100)

[ status ] : Health 8, Mana 15

[ attributes ] : Strength 0.7, Agility 1.2, Engery 0.8, Spirit 1.5

[ talent ] : Devour (unique)

[ skills ] : None

Apart from the player and monster templates, the attribute panel that appeared floating in front of Bruce, was almost the same as the attributes he possessed before he entered the game.

Just like he'd accepted the fact that voice would be there for a while, he'd finally come to terms with being teleported into the game world. Bruce had assumed he'd been plucked from his day-to-day life in the real world, when a thought popped into his head, 'Maybe I didn't teleport... maybe I had died and was reincarnated instead!'

His gaze moved back to the attribute panel, and as he scanned through the various ratings, he spotted something at the bottom of the panel:

[ public test countdown ] : 90 days, 14 hours, 24 minutes.

It suddenly dawned on him. When he was teleported into the game, it had taken him 10 years into the past, where the Second World had not yet been opened. He had also been turned from a gamer in the real world to a skeleton in the game world!

After working out what happened, Bruce came to a few conclusions:

1. He changed from a player into a monster, so naturally, he lost the player's ability to resurrect endlessly. The Second World was real, so once he died, he would really die.

2. With his monster template, he automatically spawned in a hostile camp with the other monster players, where each one seemed ready for a fight. Some even had the player name; 'The Fourth Disaster'! 

3. There were still three months left of the open beta countdown. This meant that, before players officially arrived and the game opened, he still had those three months to grow and level up.

4. Currently, the Second World hadn't officially opened, therefore the Gods had not awakened and reality had not been destroyed yet!

That's right! Before Bruce's rebirth into the game, the real world had already been destroyed.

Over the next 10 years of the game being open, the players would change, not only the game, but would erode away at reality too.

When the game's eroding effect on reality reached a certain extent, the sleeping Gods woke up.

The worlds would fuse, and unearthly gods descended.

Even with ten years of growth, the players were still not able to advance enough to be a match for the Gods.

So when the Gods appeared in the real world, not even the combined efforts of many legendary players could stop a single God!

The world was torn apart and turned into ruins.

The people in the real world who believed in the Gods, were taken to their domain. Those who were more powerful and refused to accept the Gods, fled to other realms.

However, the majority of people were turned to ashes the moment the real world was destroyed. They were all then transported into the Second World and turned into the undead that wandered aimlessly around this broken land. 

As for Bruce, even though he was already a level-76 legendary sword saint, when that moment came, the only thing he could do was to escape into the game world!

While taking revenge against the Gods, he managed to significantly build up his attributes (which he was smugly proud of), yet he continued to face the constant backlash from the Gods.

The countdown was less for the opening of the game, and more a countdown to the end of the world!

Even now, if he managed to increase the strength of his player to what it was in his previous life, and then increased it by 10 or 100 times, it would still not be enough to defeat the Gods.

The destruction of the real world could not be avoided, and the countdown had begun!