Chapter 1: Gotoh Ichi

<Sunday, 30 December 2125.>

<08.00Am>

<Somewhere in the house>

-Knock knock knock- "Gotoh, Wake up son it's already Eight a clock." 'Ugh, what time is it? Is this already morning?' -Then another voice came up- "Son, come on wake up before your breakfast is cold son." -I heard the sound of my mother calling me to wake me up. So as a good son I am, I answer her by saying- "Oh come on mom, it's Sunday. Let me sleep a little longer. You know yesterday we just done counting company data of the year." -I replied her-

"I know son but if you not go down and eat your breakfast now, it will get cold, just wake up and go down while it's still warm son." 'Oh man. I can't just say no when she gave me those kind words.' "Yes mom, I'm awake, let me take a bath first before I go down to eat." -was my respond- "Just don't back falling to sleep again son" was her reply before there is no voice come from the outside of my room.

-Yawn- "Oh man, I'm still sleepy because of the work yesterday." 'Because this is the end of the year, all workers were forced to come in to audit company data of the past this year.' And I still wonder on how can be my mother who works at the same place as I do can wake up earlier and prepare breakfast for us. Really, mother is a walking wonder creature.

"Well there is no need to think about it, just be grateful you still have nice parents and take bath quickly before she starting to knock my door again." -When I stand up and looking around my room, I see that only my bed that mess up. the rest stuffs in my room is neat and organized. In the room I only have a few things. 1 medium size bed, 1 table, 1 chair, 1 TV, 1 AC, 1 bathroom some books on the table, and some electronic games-.

There's no window here because it's useless. All of house or residence in this era doesn't have windows anymore, for safety reasons. What the point of making something that if opened can make you got poisoned by pollution? So no thank you. Then I say "TV on" and my TV screen start turn on. Then I say "Increase the volume of TV to 10" and the TV start sounding voice. Well the volume of the sound is quite loud, but I do this to make my mother know that I'm awake. At first when I done this around 5 years ago when I still in Junior High School, she will go upstairs and knocked on my door to wake me up and tell me to go down as usual. To make sure that I take a bath or at least wake up so I told her the meaning of turn on the TV when I am awake. Then it became the habits. Well then I think I should start to take a bath now.

<7 Minutes later>

After I finish taking a bath, then I start to dress up and go downstairs to dining room for eating together with my Parents. My house interior has 2 floor and on the 2nd floor there is my room, a bathroom, warehouse and room for our two housekeepers. While on 1st floor, there is my parents room, they working room, a bathroom, a dining room, a family room, a kitchen, with furniture for people inside the house need. Such as room heaters, air filters, sound detectors, television and many other things. We got two housekeepers. Both of them stay in our house. They name is Tunaki and Maki. Both of them is women and trusted to take care of everything related to the house such as cleaning the house, preparing food, checking the function of machine or tools inside the house, looking after the house, ETC. usually Tunaki will help my mother to prepare the breakfast or food and checking the tools while Maki will clean up the house and washing our clothes.

While walking downstairs, I turn on my phone to check the notification of my phone. When I see there are nothing worth to be reply, just some coworker group chat (without supervisor and boss) chatting how tired they are and keep complaint about it. I just amused by their conversation, give me a good mood. And so when I arrived on the dining room, I can see the food and the drinks that available on the dining table. There is some cultured meat which if I guess as usual it is served then it will definitely taste like beef. Then there is rice, miso soup with some vegetables, tea and waters inside a cup. When I look at the foods, I remember what have been told in the school about them.

First, the Cultured meat. Cultured meat is meat produced by in vitro cell cultures of animal cells. Cultured meat is produced by using many of the same issue engineering techniques traditionally used in regenerative medicines. after co-authoring a seminal paper on cultured meat production and creating New Harvest, the world's first organization dedicated to supporting in vitro meat research. But lately after world war 3 where the death of many eatable animal is high and animal become more and more scarcity, this product meat becoming one of many solutions from the scarcity of the animals on the planet. In short this meat is a meat from regenerated animal body parts. This cultured meat now has many variations depend on the meat flavor, the taste, the qualities and of course the better qualities you bought the meat. The higher price you need to bought it. And beef cattle included as quite high qualities cultured meat.

And for the vegetables that served in the table is Underground Hydroponics Vegetable or UHV for short. The soil in the outside world was corrupted because of many things. First, the acid rain. Then secondly air is polluted because the black unhealthy smoke resulting from many corporations. Third, forest and tree got cut down while population of human become more and more and so the forest is now become the residential land. Now after people know the problem of the land, hydroponics becoming one from several methods in order to cultivation the planting without using soil. Suitable for growing crops to meet the needs of daily life The vegetables and tea leafs that we have actually is our result from our self-cultivation.

And of course the water, water we will drink is also recycled water. Even if the sources of water in this world and most of the sea water is polluted with trash and cesspool. But water is easy to decomposition by filter it using water filterer tools so make the water clean and drinkable again. Back to the past where I still in school, school teach us how to filter the water from easy and traditional way to advanced way. One of few good things of this world is the advanced of this era technologies. One of the technologies advanced is the filtering tech from waste and pollution.

When I remembering back those lesson, I accidentally spacing out in front of dining table where my father is sit while look at me and addressing me for a while before he raised his voice a bit and made me snap out of it. "Gotoh! What are you staring for? Are you sick or something?" -when I realized I just spacing out in front of him, I snap out and answer him by saying- "oh no dad, I just remembering something when I just arrive here." -I finish my word while taking the chair to sit. My father staring at me for a while before saying- "oh, are you perhaps tired from company audit yesterday? If you worry about yesterday, don't worry about it. You will be used to it. Even I and your mother handle it just fine. The result is… satisfying according to me, nothing is wrong so don't space out like some kind of idiot and sit".

"Hey! That's rude, I'm perfectly normal you know." -answer me while waiting for mother to finish the preparing and eat with us.

Actually I didn't think about the audit yesterday, but when the topic was brought up, it made me think about it a little bit. For me it was a new experience in my career and also challenging. For your information, audit is the process of examining a company financial record to determine if they are accurate and in accordance. And if by any chance there are some inaccurate inside the data then, well the company won't think twice to fire those who are negligent. Human resource in this era wasn't so appreciated and company was more than happy to change someone with other people so the payment for the new employee will be low for the start. So work hard was expected.

"I'm sorry for the waiting. Come-come take the food and eat it". -my mother word come after done preparing. So I pick up the food, put the water into the glass and wait for my parents to ready. When they are ready, we pray together and then say- "Itadakimasu" -together. We eat in silence because if I or we speak while eating together, my mother will not like it-.

Oh yeah, by the way my name is Gotoh Ichi, the first and the only child of Ichi family. My father name is Goroh Ichi. he is a manager in great company in japan while my mother Sizuka Ichi (before ichi, her last name is Harasume) is my father secretary. Both of them married in 30 March 2104. More than a year later, or more precisely in 21 January 2106, I was born in hospital with no other relatives. So there is no grandma, grandpa or someone similar, only three of us. And for your information, born in the hospital is a luxury that only can be got by those people who capable to 'earn it' and many people can't earn that.

The cost from hospital is famous for they expensive medication. How can be the hospital is expensive and most people can't go to hospital? because in this era where the whole world is in the brink of extinction, where the world is in the worst condition because the pollution in the air make the whole world is always cloudy and the light of the sun can never pierce the dark polluted cloud. Where the people in this world must wearing the full face mask with special clothing to filter the air and safe from outside waste dust so they can breathe if they want to go to the outside, where the big and major company is the ruler of the world and money is everything. Where the people is susceptible to disease but the medicine become more and more rare. So the medicine and the facilities for baby to born safety, healthy and free from pollution is expensive.

And that is a just a little of problem from our world, there are more problem than just a pollution. Another example case for that is acid rain that attack the soil so the soil becomes infertile, the plants become poisoned, the soil was damaged, food become difficult to meet the needs of hundreds millions of people outside there. But human really is destined to be a creature that able to adapt and overcome various circumstances that they face. So the Plants developers in this era have grown underground plants and using various complicated technologies in order to grown the plant for many things. From to grown fruit plants into staple food plants such as wheat, corn, etc.

The reason of all this chaos and disorder of the whole world was cause by world war III. When the religion involved in the way of country rule, it is the beginning of everything. It is begun when Israel invaded Palestina in 2030. And then USA declaring war to Arabian and eastern country in other to gain some resources they want such as oil. They are desperate because other country was run out of the oil resource. so USA went a war. And to make it even worse, China and Russia was also joined the war against NATO. Asian was also waging war to each other. Indonesia claim that Brunei and Malaysia was belong to Indonesia so Indonesia attack them, and history repeat itself, USA give they support to Brunei while Russia and China support Indonesia. And soon almost all of the country in the world join in the war to each other. Because the war was out of control, those big country got stalemate in the wars for 10 years and they decide to playing nuclear. A weapon that destroy everything and leaving scars to the face of the world.

The result of those strike? The end of the war with no one is winning after that strike. From eight billion peoples, seven hundred and twenty million will die from the explosions itself and another two and a half billion in the next ten years, from hunger, diseases, chaos, and local conflict. In a nuclear war, seven hundred twenty million will die on the first day and USA, Russia, China, India, Israel, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, France, Pakistan, North Korea and other countries become the priority target.

Only forty-eight countries will become priority targets for the nuclear strikes, but still absolutely all other countries will suffer. In sixty-eight countries, the overthrowing of its government will occur in the first year. Another twenty years. No government could retain their full control of their own country. One hundred and fifteen new countries will be formed. Of these, eighty-four will collapse in the next years. Another seventy-four wars will take place, from global to the local scale, in the next ten years. As a result, the population will only regain its original number of population before the nuclear attacks of two and a half billion people in forty-five years after the wars.

I did not see the nuclear war. I didn't see how the bombs fell, rockets fly, explosions devouring the cities. I did not live in the chaos of the postwar years. Years after the Third World War. I did not see the great famine, the nuclear winter, the long night and the ashes that covered the sky. I was born later. After they re-established society. After the -Humanity Last War- Agreements were signed. After the full support complex was first developed. I was born later. I read about this once upon a time. When I still in primary education. The minimum necessary to understand the world. But understanding the world requires knowledge of history. I remembered the lines in the book describing the end of the old world. The full list of countries. Estimated count of victims. Years of the Great Famine.

(AN: Some of this line was referenced from Fanfic entitled 'Grand Foreigner')

And so after that short story of history, I was born. More precisely in Japan, 21 January 2106. In the hospital, away from those nocuous, dangerous pollution who hanging in the outside air. Really, this world already beyond saving. And because of this situation, I lost my belief in religion. War was happened also because the different faith in religion so why I must belief to them? So what I can relied on and believe now was just my family, some influential acquaintance, electronic money and of course… Game. The only way for me to escape from the reality and enjoying this short and full of sh*t life.

(AN: This is just a story so don't take it too seriously about the OC don't believe in Religion. The situation and the era was different.)

When I still just a kid, I realize how harsh and cruel the world I live in. Name the problem that you can tell. Overpopulated people, pollution beyond measure, some area with radioactive, company are the doll master, government was a string and people just a doll. The gap between the rich and the poor like an ant longing for the sky but with blue and shine sun, not with this dark cloudy sky. So far and almost impossible to close the gap. The level of health of the people in the world is getting worse and worse every year. High criminal rate from almost every country in the world and poverty. I pity them, those people who not so lucky like me who born in the safety place. But what can be one person do? one person can't do anything about it.

In school I learn a history that said in the past many people make an objection about nuclear war and the system that company become more and more rich but country do nothing about it. And you know what happen to them? Many of them missing, some dead because heart attack (that I believe it was a manipulated result), being bribe and etc. As if those company give message and all people read it. Nobody make an objection about them (unless few family victims that soon missing and being found in the radioactive zone) and now there is too late. What can you do? What can make people move? All of people in this era need money and the world pay the price because of it.

Then when I was eighteen (2124) and I graduated from school. In past twelve years I learn many things from general knowledge like sociology, economy, technology, science, history, geography, to the specific knowledge like advance technologies update, regenerative technology, ETC. Most people on the whole world can't go to the school. 60% people can't even afford to have primary school education. Then the rest 40% at least can afford it. But then from those 40% fresh graduated, only 25% can afford to junior high school. Then from 25% fresh graduated, only 15% can afford to Senior High School. From then, only less than 5% of people can have college education. And that's is the fact of this era. Because of my educational background, many company and some state ministry agency offering me to work with them. But I politely refuse because I have decided to work under my parent place. So my job will be less burdened and less stress (or so I hope). The reality is that I also work hard so can obtain some money. All that money I gain is my saving for my future. Now all I can do now is work, work and work for my own survival. After all I still want enjoy my life in the future.

And for Dating, what is that? Food? People in this era doesn't think things like that. What can we do now is focus for our live so we can live in rich and luxury, while dating is just a form when two couple or more who can pay for their date partner. Eat in place who guaranteed less or free from pollution at all. And I told you guys that was expensive. Of course this only apply to me. While the other always find dating is about… pleasure and delight. One of few ways to forget this world for a while.

How about Friend? Well, friend in this era is hard to found, true friend I mean. The longer you take education, the longer you know rich people in the school are very arrogant. They think they can do whatever they want just because they are born from wealthy families. Actually, yes they can. Bullying, blackmailing, cruel, greedy, and many other thing, they think because the rich one is in higher position and they think they are king and queen in their world so can do whatever they want? I mean come on. I only have few friend, not because I'm an introvert but because I already being taught to careful when picking a friend and well, my life until now keep better and better even without those arrogant so who need them?

1 year later (2125) I was working in the place where my father and mother company work to. And then I tell you guys the money I got from the last year till now was normal payment. And that was good enough to live for a while. In this era, all financial transaction including payment already use the electronic money system. But the currency is no longer like the 21st century like Dollar or Pound sterling but using system Point. Why did you ask? Well, the paper money can't be produced anymore because of the rarely of the trees. This system was used by all country and using one currency, International Point/ ITP.

(AN: 1 international points = 1 dollar. To make it easy.)

Now after we are finish from eat our breakfast, our dish is washed by our house maid and go straight to the family room to watch TV or playing my smartphone. After a while looking at the news on TV which discusses the news state the condition of the world, then there is news talking about the release of a new game called Yggdrasil. A new game based on the latest technology called Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (DMMO-RPGs). Then there is some promotion from developer of the game and debriefing session. In short he explaining that DMMO-RPG is an advanced version of role-playing video games and massively multiplayer online games. These games are played by connecting a proprietary console to the subject's brain. As well as utilizing an ultranical Nano computer network known as the neural Nano-interface, a piece of technology created from the fusion of cyber-and Nano-technology. In other world they are the type of game that allowed one to enter a virtual world and experience it as though it were real life.

But the downside is this technology still could not properly handle the changes on a virtual character face in response to the subject's emotion and speech. They also not providing sensory data for smell and taste. So after I done watching news, I start to searching this game called Yggdrasil. After I found the official website, I click it and read the specification of this games.

[Summary of the new DMMO-RPGs type 'Yggdrasil']

'What do you desire? Money and Wealth? Honor and Pride? Authority and Power? Revenge? Or something that transcends them all? Whatever you desire is here. Experience it yourself the world of game that has never been exist before now. Do you want to live in the world of magic and sword? Where the world is so realistic that you will be get addicted by it? Or perhaps playing something different? Yggdrasil is the answer for all of your desire! What are you waiting for? Explore the vast of the nine world according to Nordic mythology!'

'Hmm interesting, the game I playing before was Gun Gale Online. With almost the same technology. Base on using modern weapon such as guns and battle royal style. now I interest and want to try this Yggdrasil. Perhaps I can enjoy it while I not doing any job. Well I think I not going to bought it, after all why should I playing game? I mean I am a grow up man now who already work and I need time to search a girl or buy a new house for myself. Life is tough and I can't spend my time to playing another game.'- I say to myself-

"But this game was based on new technology and different from GGO. From the trailer of the game. It looks so fun. Flying, casting magic, and the world inside there seems real. And don't forget those monster I can fight inside it. And the price of the game and the device was also quite cheap. In total both of them cost around 7500 ITP. And the price is only that much because it's still in early release so there must be a discount. My payment in the company each month is 2400 ITP and that's already being cut from taxes and insurance. And I already work for a year so my saving was around at least 24.000 ITP. And the game will release two day from now. 1 January 2126. The day I in schedule to work."

'But in the other hand, this money is also for my future, my saving for my life. If I spend it, then mother can give me an hour of how to survive in the future and scold me so much to spend money only for games. But in the other way, this new games are equipped with new device and an advance type from MMO-RPG. But still this is a hard choice to choose. Buy it or not?

"Ok it is decided that I will not bought this games. Even though I want it. Sorry Yggdrasil not today" -sigh-

In Tuesday, 1 January 2126, a customer name Gotoh Ichi bought Yggdrasil. And that day is the beginning of Gotoh adventure life.