1 Joining the New World

*Ring Ring*

*Ring Ring*

"Eh. What is it now?"

I rolled over onto the other side of my bed and smacked my phone, causing it to fall on the ground with a thud. Another bad morning for me it seemed.

Getting up, grumbling to myself, I fetched his phone and saw that it was my old partner in crime Jason.

"What do you want you melon," I snickered as I answered the phone. Jason laughed in a good-natured way and told me to look at the news.

"If you don't know what's going on, you a boomer mate," laughed Jason. I smirked and hung up on him before he could on me. Jason never failed to brighten up my day.

Looking at the news, I realised that the new MMORPG Heritage Factions Online had finally come out. It boasted complete reality in-game and claimed that it could improve real-life skills if you bought the all-new Deep Immersion Virtual Reality pods, DIVR for short.

I looked into it and decided the game could be a nice way to pass the time, so I ordered a DIVR pod. After calling Jason to tell him about his decision, I ended up with a fast track delivery of the pod.

Smiling ruefully too myself, I reminisced about the time when I had such connections. Of course, this was before my fall. I used to be an internationally famous assassin, world-renowned for my information-gathering abilities and parkour. I didn't kill many people, not because my skills weren't good enough - they were, but because I never got the stomach for it.

My fall was as disastrous as his rise was prodigious. I took an extremely difficult contract with a near-certain chance of failure. If it was any other person, it would have been fine, but I was often called the wonder kid of the underground and had a 100% success rate. At the most, that would have got a few giggles from his comrades, but I was still ousted from the secret society after his failure.

It's because my failure was that spectacular. It failed to the extreme. The entire world knew my name and face after this mess up, guaranteeing that I would never get a job again. Due to no murders being connected to me, I got out of prison in 6 months. It still ruined my career as an assassin, however.

This game now gave me a chance to come back into the spotlight, but in a good way. I mused, could I become a world-famous streamer? That would show those old-fogeys back at the headquarters who's boss.

Smiling to myself at my imminent revenge, that was completely thought out and couldn't possibly fail, I went back to sleep because that damned Jason called me at 2 a.m.!

**********

"Is this the house of Jake Dawson? There is a delivery for him"

A deliveryman called up after ringing the doorbell a few times. For the first time since my fall, I leapt to the door with enthusiasm and vigour. Smiling at the man with a large package next to him, I signed the papers and immediately put the huge package in my living room. The flabbergasted guard just looked at me carrying the huge package with apparent ease when he had to sweat and work with his other friend to carry it just to Jake's front door.

Unboxing slowly usually contains a carnal pleasure, one that just relaxes you and can make you feel satisfied. If anyone was looking at me at the moment, it was clear that I hadn't gotten the memo. Tearing the box and flinging it across the room, I didn't even savour the holy ritual of peeling the plastic of the glass. Blasphemy! But I was really excited.

Plugging in the DIVR pod to the socket, I jumped in, literally, and closed the lid on top of me. Still grinning from obvious delight, I was put into a semi-conscious state as the game was loaded into my head.