1 Chapter 1

My life was a disaster.

It was way back, during my primary school days, where instead of properly studying I went to bother other kids, bullying them for my own selfish reason.

But it's not my fault...

It's his fault. It's their fault.

It's because he has everything and I don't.

Money. Parents. Friends.

I have none of them.

I got jealous of their perfect life so I tried to ruin their life but in truth I only managed to ruin mine.

I just make things much worse for myself.

The bullying didn't last long because I was caught red-handed by the teacher. Following that, I was scolded heavily by my parents as I did something unnecessary.

Their suffering only amounted to me pushing them to the ground and me taking their pocket money. While my suffering lasted for years.

Did I learn my lesson? No, I didn't learn my lesson. I even started to ditch school just so I could go to the Internet Cafe to play games.

A year passed, I failed to advance to the third year and ended up staying back for another year in the second year.

Seeing them living their life smoothly without a problem made me more frustrated.

As well as the way they looked at me, when they heard that I stayed back a year. I was as though being viewed as trash.

Another year passed and guess what, since I didn't even try to attend the school, I stayed back for another year.

Now there's a total of two years gap between me and the people I hate. The gap will become bigger as time passes.

For some reason, out of nowhere, I have the urge to study properly. I don't remember why exactly.

Maybe, because I kept seeing them.

Smiling.

Happily.

While I was being.

alone.

pathetically.

Even though I just said I had the urge to study, that doesn't mean I stopped playing games. It has become an addiction for me but I at least stopped ditching school.

With average effort, I graduate highschool with a simple passing grade, with nothing good to boast or even mention to others.

After I graduated from primary school, I no longer cared about what others think about me.

That was because my father suddenly passed away without even notifying me. His death was caused by lung cancer.

That particular incident caused my jealousy to be replaced with worries.

Without my father providing money for me, I can't do anything at all. I can't even buy my own food.

To make it worse, not only he passed his soul to heaven, but he also passed all of his debt to his sons.

Yes, sons, I didn't mention that I have a brother did I? Should I call him big brother though? He's equivalent to a stranger which I barely talked with.

With how shameless I was, I pleaded with my big brother to pay all of the debt for me as he already has a job. I assume that he's capable of paying the debt.

Not surprisingly, he didn't help me, not after what I have done as his little brother.

He used to dote on me but now he didn't even hesitate to leave me in the road and die.

Without much expectation from him, he left the house after paying the portion of debt that he was supposed to pay.

He then cut all of his connections with me after settling the debt that he was responsible for.

When he did that I was so angry with him. I even had thoughts of killing him.

He could have paid off all of the debt, yet he didn't. He deliberately split the debt in half and paid only what he was responsible for.

Due to that, I was constantly bothered by the loan sharks. I hated him. I loathed him.

You may have realized it by now.

I was an asshole, I could only blame others for my uselessness.

Thankfully and luckily with my decent effort, I found a decent job, which was being a cashier of a convenience store.

Well, to be precise, not just a cashier but also a janitor and re-stocker all at once.

Fitting myself into society, only after I was at the bottom, I slowly realized how useless I am.

The realization came too late. Everyone has left and there's no turning back time.

I finally understand earning money, enough to survive in society was not easy at all.

The money my father and my big brother got to pay my school fees, they're all from their hard work.

Me as a freeloader, I didn't even fulfill my task properly.

Time passed quickly and I was already 34 years old. At this time, all of the debt was finally paid. I could finally lead a peaceful life without loanshark bothering me.

I decided to live my life as an average person with an average life but even living as an average person there's one thing that didn't change after all those years and that is playing games.

When I'm not working, I would spend my time at the usual internet cafe.

No matter what, I still couldn't stop playing games.

One night, I thought to myself.

'How are games made?'

I had been playing games for a long time and yet I didn't know where they came from.

For the first time in my life, I made a decision for myself without being influenced by others. It's my own decision.

'I want to know.'

Using some of my savings I bought a computer and cooped myself inside my apartment.

With the help of the internet, I could easily find people that share information on the internet.

Such as tutorials, e-books, guidelines, and articles. (For tutorials, mostly Indians.)

Most of my time was spent on tutorial video and e-books. I learned most of the basics stuff that I need to know in order to make games from there.

After three years of self-studying, with the knowledge I obtained, I started to develop my own games.

To be honest, during the three years, I also made some games, but I won't call them games since they can't be compared to the games you can find in the 2030s.

Anyway, making games takes more effort and time than you think, especially for a beginner developer such as me.

It takes a total of ten years for me to develop a single game alone. Though most of the time was spent on me fixing small bugs.

Throughout that time, I was constantly asking for feedback on a website where Indie-game developers gathered.

I gained over one million supporters and among the millions, there's quite a lot of them willing to donate.

I could even use that money to live comfortably without working as a cashier anymore.

Anyway, with the feedback from my supporters, I constantly grow as a developer, whether it was a suggestion or critique, they're all useful to me.

Finally, the game was officially released and it started to make money too.

Even without including the donation of my supporters, I made more than ten million rupiahs in a month.

It was ten times better than being a cashier.

Other than that, it was fun to make games! I enjoyed it a lot!

Time went by, I continued to grow as a developer and a huge opportunity came to me.

A huge game company called Nero-X, from Singapore, invited me over to join their company as a game developer.

Without hesitation, I agreed, mainly because I felt I could grow even more as a developer.

Being able to join a huge company meant that I could also improve myself.

From there, my quality of life got better and better. Since I climbed up from a mere cashier to one of the game developers of a huge company.

My monthly salary when I was a cashier, it was just a mere 100 USD but as a game developer, my monthly salary was 12000 USD.

Being able to make that much money, for me, it's unimaginable. The me, who failed at life before.

Though from this point in my life, I barely cared about money anymore and It was ironic, previously I needed them so badly but I didn't have them. Now, that I have them, I realized it was just something that I needed to survive.

At this time where I didn't care about money anymore, I truly realized that I have passion for making games.

With me being too ambitious, I set a goal to accomplish in my life. I swore to myself that I would make VR-MMORPG, a revolutionary virtual reality game that could change how people view the world.

What I'm trying to create was not an ordinary virtual reality game, what I wanted to create was the VR-MMORPG that people dreamt of, allowing someone to dwell in another world and experience a second-life in another world.

With how fast technology was advancing, I believed we could do it.

Having that crazy imagination and idea in my head, I suggested to the CEO of Nero-X, hoping that he would consider my idea and make it as a huge project for humanity.

As what I expected, I only ended up getting laughed at by the CEO.

To prove him wrong, I left the company and started my own company to pursue my goal.

For the first time, the money in my bank account finally had some use.

Over the years, our research finally showed some results but the company went bankrupt before the final product was created.

I thought I changed but I was still dumb and naive.

All I know is how to make games. I had no experience in owning a company so why did I even try to make my own company.

The project then was taken over by someone else and I can't do anything about it, I can only agree.

Many years have passed and I'm over seventy years old already.

For the last few decades, I've also been occasionally studying and improving my knowledge base, keeping them updated.

Though it wasn't put into use, I still wanted to learn them.

Sitting in the living room, I turned on my large television to watch NewTube.

There I caught a glimpse of clickbaity video.

[Immersive VR-MMORPG was released!!]

"Today we have something huge to announce, huge news from Mirasoft Corporation! And guess what?! It is related to Virtual Reality!"

"That's correct! The dreams of teenagers and adults finally came true. They have successfully created a real VR-MMORPG!"

Hearing the word 'VR-MMORPG' made me excited. The word itself triggered something in my brain.

Why wasn't I told by Mirasoft that the product was completed?

"If you want to order it, click on the link on the description and use the code "BIGPP" for 10% off. Now back to the product review!"

I was very excited! Extremely excited!

I quickly order the item by clicking on the link listed in the NewTube description.

[Confirm]

Not long later.

Ring*

A drone has delivered the package to my door.

I quickly brought the package into my house, unpackaged it, and plugged in the device.

Following the instruction, I started the device by saying 'Start'.

Bam*

I throw the helmet to the floor out of frustration. It's because of the words said by the helmet.

[User age is above than recommended]

[Only users of 18-30 years old can use the helmet]

[Please contact Mirasoft for further information]

As I expected, there's still something wrong with the game.

I instantly contacted someone I knew at Mirasoft. I want to hear explanation from them.

When the call was connected the man on the other side spoke before I bursted out in anger.

"No need to say anything. I know what you want to say."

"I'm sorry."

"I cannot make an exception for you to play. It's not that I don't want to but I can't. It's for your sake. F-Reality Type-23 hasn't been perfected yet."

"For normal, healthy youngsters, it 'probably' won't cause any harmful damage but if underage kids or the elderly try to use F-Reality, it might cause unexpected problems."

"The worst case, you could go insane."

"What?! Then why could you release such an unfinished product?"

"It's the CEO's decision, we couldn't stop it. You already know the new CEO, he only cares about money. Which is why we put the age requirement on the game. I'm sorry but we can't risk you going insane because of our product. It will cause an uproar to the public, you understand right?"

'Sh*t!'

I knew it. Even though I was no longer involved in the project, I still visited them as I include in the contract that I have the right to know their progress.

The last time I checked their product, it was far from perfect.

"How much time do you need roughly to perfect F-Reality?"

I already knew the answer but I can't help asking them the question anyway.

"Probably twenty years more."

Hearing it from him, made it worse for me. I'm almost at my end, maybe in the next five years, I could've died already.

Due to how I spent my youth life, playing games every day, not exercising or having a healthy diet.

Now that I have reached old age, many diseases were developed.

If not the fact that the medical field has improved a lot along with the technology field, I would've died already.

Gah*

A pain suddenly gushed through my chest. I suddenly couldn't breathe no matter how hard I tried.

I was too agitated and excited that I forgot to take my medicine. I left it downstairs in the living room.

I was trying my best crawling my way there but my house was too big and there was no one around to help me.

Slowly, my sight went dark, I was lying on the floor hopelessly grasping my chest tightly because of the overwhelming pain.

I died of a heart attack

At least that's what I thought...

'Where am I?'