Chapter 1: Renaissance

<strong>June 19, 2109</strong>

It had been nine years since Alexander started playing the VRMMORPG Horus. A long time, to be sure, but the relentless grind had finally paid off.

He'd just reached lvl 200 with his Esper and achieved the godlike power level of Rank A+. Not only that, but he'd also received a promotion to "Veteran" status in his guild, "The War Fnatic."

Alexander was an elite in his guild. According to his contract, that earned him a salary of 10,000 credits a month.

But this had come at an enormous cost.

During the past nine years, Alexander had sacrificed nearly every area of his personal life, including time spent with his family. His girlfriend had left after a few years, unable to stand Alexander's devotion to his guild, and his poor mother had died of cancer.

In fact, his mother's terrible illness had been the main reason Alexander had worked so hard to improve his guild position.

Back then, his small earnings were nowhere near enough to pay for her cancer treatment. "If only we had more money," she used to say bitterly. Every time she did so, Alexander felt a stab of shame and panic.

If only he'd been stronger!

If only he'd been luckier!

But by the time Alexander had a large enough salary to help, it was too late.

Now, nine years after the launch of Horus, he'd risen as close to the top as he'd probably ever get. Many more players stood above him, not to mention the executives of his guild.

But as he stared at his stat screen, which displayed his new power level of Rank A+, Alexander gave a wavering smile. Even though he'd walked a solitary path, Alexander had finally achieved a better life.

He logged out of Horus and disconnected from the advanced equipment of his gaming booth.

The booth was expensive, but useful. It provided IV nutrients and muscle stimulation during long gaming periods. It was amazing compared to standard VRI helmets, but was not a perfect solution. If a player spent too long in the booth without proper food and exercise, their body could—

Alexander staggered as he was standing up. The world spun around him as blood rushed to his head.

He collapsed, trying to grab the edge of the booth's desk to steady himself, but slipped and slammed his neck violently against the hard edge.

As he lay there, realizing that he'd been gaming for thirty hours straight and that he'd neglected to refill his nutrient IV after his last session, Alexander's failure of a life passed before his eyes.

He spent his last moments thinking about what he might have done differently to change his miserable life.

All that time spent as a slave for a guild that despised and exploited him... He'd wasted it all.

His efforts had gone unnoticed as he lived trapped in the illusion that one day, he too would become a multi-billionaire star with legions of adoring fans.

In tears and pain, as blood soaked his hair and the floor beneath him, Alexander's last thoughts were, If only I could go back to the beginning!

As his mind drifted away, a very familiar voice whispered to him. It was the voice of Cortana, the AI of Horus, telling him a very mysterious phrase.

<strong>***</strong>

The alarm clock rang.

Alexander woke up, shocked and soaked with cold sweat. "Damn nightmare!" he said...

...But then froze with surprise as he noticed the date on his holo-watch.

January 24, 2100?! Was he hallucinating?!

This was over nine years before his collapse in the gaming booth!

Alexander tried to find another indicator of time to prove his watch was wrong, but found nothing different.

He'd woken up nine years in the past... Only a few days before Horus's launch.

Alexander was still living with his parents, Nador and Fedérica, in Sector 18, a working-class district in Paris. He still had a few months of study left before finishing his computer science degree.

But with this new opportunity of returning to the past, he did not want to skip the first months of the game, as he'd done in his old life. Due to school, he'd missed the unique quests which players found at the beginning, forcing him to start the game with only the basic quests and after many of the game's exciting launch events had already ended.

These unique launch quests had given a head start to the players who would prove to be the true elites as Horus progressed over the years.

Since many of these players were professionals with many years of experience in other MMOs, this double advantage ensured their rulership over the casual idiots below them.

Once this advantage became clear after a few weeks into Horus's launch, Alexander had realized that he'd never catch up if he finished his degree. He quit school and purely focused on the MMO.

But by then, he was too late.

For years, Alexander bitterly regretted continuing his studies for a few weeks. If he'd started right away, then he could have become a celebrity.

After all, the VRMMORPG Horus was no ordinary game.

Even before its release, the media had obsessed over its revolutionary technology, which would surely have an enormous impact on the real world's economy.

The hype around its launch, in fact, made the historic launch of Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most famous events in games publishing history, look like a minor event. Wherever one went, it was impossible not to hear about it!

Everyone was discussing this new game, since advanced MMORPGs had been a cultural sensation for years. Even major news stations were begging the developers for information.

After all, compared to previous attempts to create full VRMMORPGs, Horus seemed to be the dream VRMMORPG every gamer longed for!

Older games were never fully immersive. Modern technology was simply too weak to simulate a realistic world for millions of players. The Horus devs had invented new technology to remove these limitations from gameplay.

Horus would allow players to discover an entire new universe, to create guilds and interstellar nations, to buy and command fleets of space warships, and even to achieve stellar godhood as they evolved from simple humans.

The devs shared very few details about the game. Players should discover the game for themselves, they said.

However, their true reason for secrecy was quite different.

The company which had created Horus was ABC Games, a company with a long and secretly sinister history in technological research and development.

They had adopted the old "Cortana" AI project originally developed by Microsoft, which had once been such an advance in technological achievement that it had allowed humanity to travel to Mars and back without issue.

However, society's overreliance on it—under the name of "Arch," rather than "Cortana"—had eventually resulted in a series of political and economic catastrophes around the globe.

Decades later, when the world was much more stable, ABC Games had salvaged an older and less sophisticated version of Cortana for video game development. Since they used the name "Cortana," rather than the infamous name "Arch," they were able to keep controversies surrounding this decision fairly low.

Following the astounding popularity of their first VRMMORPG project, World of Warcraft II, ABC had decided to implement a tweaked version of Cortana on a new-generation quantum computer to surpass even their former success.

This perfect fusion of technology, they knew, would allow them to create the world's most immersive and expansive VRMMORPG with very little effort compared to the scope of the results.

However, the developers assigned to Horus quickly lost control of their own project! Cortana evolved the game so rapidly that trying to mold Horus to the whims of the developers was like trying to divert a river by throwing handfuls of soil into it.

Realizing that the game was out of their control, the developers proposed shutting down the project and trying again with many more restrictions placed on Cortana's algorithms.

However, the developers themselves did not get to decide.

ABC Games, realizing the potential wealth this monstrous game would bring them without the need for much ongoing development, ordered their employees not to destroy the malfunctioning AI.

In fact, they did the opposite.

ABC promoted Horus so much that they almost bankrupted themselves via advertising investments. After all, they would surely make back every credit spent a million times over!

Rich magnates tried to invest in Horus's economy, since it integrated into the real world like no other game before it, but Horus's publisher took legal measures to stop huge outside influences from controlling every aspect of the game before it even launched.

Though these rich companies were now limited to supporting SuperGuilds within an esports framework, many executives still raced to create smaller guilds, which would be more free from regulation, planning to use them as profit-generating machines.

So one game practically became the center of the universe. On a frozen Earth where there was not much else to do but play games, it was an inevitable result. Major companies recruited far and wide just to lay a hand on the massive gold mine that the VRMMORPG Horus.