David and Yuna parted ways with Alex at the orphanage lost all in his thoughts as he walked home in the sunset.
"Do you think he'll be alright?"Yuna asked David
"If there is anything I know about Alex in the last 15 years I've known him it's that, no matter what happens he has always come back from the depths of despair. From his dad's disappearance to his mother's death and even his failure to awaken his ability on time, it never seemed to bring him down." David said as he watched the lone shadow in the fading light.
Alex took the train once again all the way to the very border of Teardrop city. His home was in a simple community of small families a typical suburban dwelling. His was a bungalow of 3 bedrooms located at the very top of the hill with his backyard having a beautiful view of the city.
The property had belonged to his father. It was where he had spent the first 5-6 years of his life and those memories were the most precious of his life before his father's disappearance, when all attempts to trace his father down proved abortive. His mum had taken him to live together with Mrs Johnson at the Orphanage while she worked nearby for several years until her illness began and she could only help around the orphanage to earn her keep until she was bedridden.
Sadly they had sold all of his father's assets to pay his mother's medical bills in the later years leading him to be unable to afford college. After he became an adult he moved back in with the aid of David and Yuna. David teased that now he had his own home he could now start a family. Smiling as he unlocked the front door he shook his head with a glint of determination flashing in his eyes
'He is alive I know it and if he doesn't find me first I'll find him and bring him home by all means necessary' he swore to himself.
The house was as bare as possible given his financial state. The furnishings were covered in plain white sheets, and only the kitchen, a single room and the backyard benches were normally in use.
Alex robotically microwaved his self-made dinner and took it out to the back where he ate. Thinking about the whole day and its events when he saw a cat crawl along the fence staring out into the open, he threw a piece of meat at the cat and as though that was its most familiar act, it directly gobbled it up and meowed into the darkness as it left the fence just as the last rays of sunset dipped over the horizon.
Alex opened the forums as he began to peruse the info there. One of the perks of humanity's 700 years as a united species was that the concept of world hunger had been all but eradicated. The benefits were now completely automatic that as soon as you were born you were entitled to the basics regardless of your value, together with the development of unbelievable superhuman abilities and technologies food had become the least of humanities worries but as always in humans, once a need has been met there always comes a new need and the world had a new need today - strength.
The world's scarcest resource in this interstellar era age is the mysterious Force, a mysterious energy formed by the reactions between unique cosmic energy, a type of dark matter and the genetic aura of living things under unique conditions. The whole business of how force is generated is so complicated that researchers have still not been able to uncover the mysteries behind them. However, due to their research on how to generate force several innovations have been made in communication in that as long as there was sufficient coverage of electromagnetic dark matter strands, boosted with various nodes, messages could be sent and received from across the galaxy in an instant. Innovations in every sector imaginable had been made as humanity had unveiled dark matter in its entirety and a part of that technology was used to create the foundation of the CGM and allow individuals to refine the force themselves through it albeit in small amounts.
Force seems to be all around but can't be obtained via ordinary means needing to create interdimensional portals a very risky procedure only to speed up a single individual's rate of cultivation. A common person with the most basic CGM would be able to draw in about 1 pin-head mass of force after 30 hours of practicing the most basic breathing techniques. However, that metric varies between individuals based on their talent and available resources.
While some powerful individuals can suck in an entire city's wide volume of force in a single breath just to unleash a planet-destroying punch, these experts had discovered that an alternate dimension carried an unlimited amount of force and training there could allow a common person to gather coin sized amounts of force with only one hour of training within it. However, it was nigh impossible to access the dimension as only A.I.-powered Androids were able to directly enter it.
However, due to a fatal mutation of these androids when in contact with the alternate dimension the A.I.'s main core was corrupted and the A.I. androids went into a 100-year war with mankind. What exactly happened was not made known to the public but since then all A.I. development has been contraband.
Soon after the war, it was discovered that the force available for cultivation in this realm, originally seeped in from the alternate dimension, making places devastated by the war the places with the highest concentrations of force leading daring adventurers to flock to those regions in search of treasure. However, these places had been so vigorously scavenged that all resources there had been wiped clean leaving only poor settlements behind.
Teardrop City was one of the major battlefields during the war. However, due to its distance to the nearest interdimensional sinkhole left by the A.I. army 400 years later, there was no trace of the battle and the force available here had become scanty, even the living things mutated by the force and toxicity brought by the war, had either been hunted into extinction or had been relocated for the benefit of the local people that resettled after the war.
Now only sectors that have interdimensional sinkholes created during the war have abundant force to cultivate. This caused a lot of discontent as these sinkholes could only be made by collapsing a red giant star with a special frequency of dark matter. Due to its harmful effect on the galaxy's stability, those wealthy enough relocated to sectors with more sinkholes and tiers of citizens formed as a solution to the inequality in cultivation resources. The HDA had worked hard for the last 400 years to boost the cultivation of the common man lest inequality breed discontent and lead to societal collapse.
Academies, training dojo and even para-governmental associations were created to ease the effects of this difference to minimal success but after years of research and adaptations, a series of Beta tests and collaborations between various fields of knowledge, they came up with the alternate reality game Realms Online. A game to unite mankind and usher in the full era of superhumans where even the poor mailman can hone his ability and grow beyond the ordinary.
Alex scrolled through the forums and was endlessly fascinated by the posts some on the history of Realms Online some on the politics behind the game even some conspiracy theories of how the game can suck your soul away and turn you into cultivation tonics for some diabolical higher-ups to consume. However, the posts were overall positive.
' Wow, the alliance have really pulled out all the stops to release this 7th centenary masterpiece huh?' Wild Cockroach posted.
' Ha, I believe this is the greatest fruit of human unity in history ' Red Toenail commented.
'Not an easy feat in the least' Wild Cockroach replied.
These were just some of the posts of excitement due to the game server launch being only hours away.
Alex scrolled through these virtual reality posts Realms Online was top trending on all platforms on both Yggdrasil servers. News channels had even dedicated interviews to the launch as streamers watched the countdown live along with their viewers
Alex could not be bothered by all the noise. His mind was still wondering why his transmitter had vanished and why his CGM had been updated. The whole thing was so mysterious. Calming down as he walked to his usual cultivation spot in the backyard- a small wooden stump placed under the stars he called up the server countdown display on his home screen
[Realms Online: 08:35:26]
The server seemed to be timed properly with everything running smoothly
Sighing Alex closed the display and began practising his breathing technique his mind wandering to the conversation he had with Mrs Johnson her cryptic words flowing through his mind.
With his t-shirt off and seated on the tree stump, he continued practicing drawing in force, however to his dismay it seemed to just run through his body once before vanishing without a trace leaving him the same
Hours flew by with only the handsome young man seated on the stump. Alex unlike most others made using the breathing technique seem effortless as he went on and on for hours at a stretch not even breaking a sweat. Suddenly,
[Realms Online: Server Launch: 00:01:30]
[00:00:58]
[00:00:30]
[00:00:10]
[9....8...6....3....2...1]
[Server Online]
[Log In?]
[Yes] [No]
"Yes, log in," Alex said
A blinding bright light filled his vision engulfing his consciousness and drawing him closer and closer to his true potential. As a pair of ghostly eyes watched earnestly from the shadows.