Alex lives in a wondrous and strange time. Beings known as the undefeated travel the cosmos help others out of goodwill or for the promise of money. These being got the name as they could not be killed and if they were they were killed then they would just be reborn stronger than before. What Alex did not know was that he was an NPC or a Non-Playable Character in the world's first and most popular VR game known as 'Universe'.
Universe was created about twenty years ago in what could be considered the real world. However, in Universe thousands of years have passed since the arrival of the Undefeated aka the players of Universe. Now the appeal of the game was the fact that there were multiple versions of the game. One version was where magic existed on every planet and technology had been almost frowned upon by the galactic council. Another version was the opposite where magic did not even exist but technology reigned supreme. The most popular version was the one that held the two of them combined in a sort of harmony. This version is the one where Alex lived in where technology and magic existed across the universe with each having its own respective strengths and weaknesses.
Another player appeal was the AI system that seemed to be so life-like to the players. Some older people played the game to have a place to become younger in an instant or to just spend the last days of life in a video game. There also were some cases in the real world of some maniacs trying to fully connect their brains into the system so they could be one with everything. Such cases were not known to the public but no matter how well kept a secret is there will always be a leak.
Anyway, Alex was a history teacher who taught on planet RX-B79103 codenamed 'Eve'. Eve was a colonized planet that was founded in 2,983,500 AD. The Kull interstellar race made Eve into a resource planet first before it was drained and converted into a habitable planet for people almost a hundred years ago. Alex well let's just say that he had a crap life, to begin with.
His birth caused the death of his mother due to complications that should not have happened. The doctor who was tasked with helping in the birth was a bit hungover that day and failed to do things properly with the birth which resulted in the death of Alex's mother. The doctor who screwed up was related to someone higher up in the medical field and was able to fudge up the report saying that the cause of death was due to Alex. Of course when his father was told that Alex was the reason for the death of his father's beloved well... he made it a point to remind Alex that he was the cause of it almost daily. Being reminded that Alex was the result of his mother's death almost daily was not the most encouraging thing to say to a child.
Alex's dad turned to booze and alcohol to help with his mental problems and to numb the pain. The only golden light that Alex had was his dad's neighbors who became the family that he needed and more often than not he wished that they were his real family. They were a nice family, to say the least as they tried to help Alex whenever his father was out in the town or when he was in one of his drunken fits. Moving forward a few years the McAndersons (The family that helped Alex) tried to gain legal custody of Alex through the court.
Alex's dad saw what was happening and fought against their legal case against him by saying that Alex has been brainwashed by them to be against his father. After a few months, the McAndersons were close to winning the court case but Alex's life was not gonna change but only get worse. While driving to court for the final time the McAndersons were in a car accident and none of them survived.
The worst part was that an autopsy revealed that Mrs. McAnderson was 4 months pregnant with their first child. The man who was the cause of the accident was taken to jail with a sentence of a few years. Alex had to still live with his father but he was now being beaten by him physically instead of verbally. Alex was 7 when it began.
He soon adapted and avoided his father as best he could by going to school, leaving the house, and sleeping in the attic. Alex used his father's account to pay for school for himself. Alex tried to at first to learn how to become an Empowered but found that he did not have an aptitude for it.
Empowereds were people that could use abilities to fight, build, and do almost anything possible. All players we're naturally Empowered since it would not be the game it was without it. Usually, an NPC would become an Empowered through two ways of either being born with the talent or to awaken through a multitude of ways to become one during the later stages of life.
Alex was not born as an Empowered and only if Luck and the world decided to help him become one through someway but they never did.
Years passed and Alex was lucky enough to not get in any serious trouble before he graduated college and since he did not become an Empowered he, unfortunately, had to settle to become a Universe history teacher for seniors in high school. Alex took his job on the other side of Eve as far away from his father. Alex did not like his job but he resigned himself to his fate as a history teacher.
Now like most video games there was the lore of the Universe of how billions of years after the Big Bang tons of universal civilizations were born through the trial of time. Then came the Age of Discovery for each race or civilization, it was different for each of them as they found that other creatures and civilizations existed.
Alex dutifully remembered as much as he could of all the history that his civilization deemed necessary to teach the next generation about the universe.
Players of Universe if lucky enough would be able to be apart of history for major achievements both good and bad. Of course, though the government of Eve still would emphasize the players since it had been thousands of years since they appeared and not much is known about how they are reborn, get so strong so fast, or how they are almost unaffected by anything they see or do.
Alex however, was going to soon walk down the path of no return and change the fate of everything in the game.