Beginning

Hi, I'm Alex. I'm a 17-year-old teenager living in America. I have been confined to a wheelchair for 9 years due to a traffic accident I had when I was 8 years old. Life? As you know it. As good as it can be in the world of 2038. I live with my mom and dad. I'm an only child. I'm antisocial and I've spent almost 60% of my life playing MMORPGs. The remaining 40% is school. I study through distance learning and my grades are average. Although I don't really want to study, my family wants me to. Whatever happens to me in this state, I don't know. I have been depressed for a long time and I have already lost a few friends. The only thing I love is MMORPGs. And exactly 3 years ago, NOI - Nova Interactive Online - released the Full Dive Gear (FDG). FDG was a technological marvel that could be charged with solar energy and could work for a whole week without charging. Of course, we could only use FDG continuously for a maximum of 6 hours. After 6 hours, the account would automatically log out and FDG would shut down. Anyway, NOI had already announced FDG 5 years ago and everyone was eagerly waiting for it. But no one expected it to be this good.

Along with FDG, they also released the Full Dive World (FDW). People would put on the FDG, lie down on their beds, and say "Connect!" to dive into FDW. FDW was a world the size of a city where you could create your own avatar, hang out with friends, go to the cinema, see prehistoric creatures with your own eyes, and do dangerous extreme sports like skydiving without the fear of dying. In FDW, you could feel everything you experienced 100%. It was literally no different from reality. It was a groundbreaking technology. And it was free. You only had to pay for the FDG headset. Even though no games had been released yet, FDG had already taken the world by storm. There were thousands of conspiracy theories about FDG. Some said it would take over our brains, while others said it could even destroy humanity. Well, that was understandable. Over the years, we had read many stories like Ready Player One, Sword Art Online and much more. But in the end, this technology became real.

NOI made two great announcements 2 years after releasing FDG. The first one was the introduction of AWO (Adventure Worlds Online), which would be the first game for FDG. The second one was that people would be able to create their own games on FDG, just like in SAO. The games created by people would be accessible from FDW. But they didn't give any details. They didn't say when it would happen, how it would happen, or if it would be paid. Anyway, a year ago, NOI announced that they were looking for beta testers for AWO. I applied immediately. Maybe it was because of my years of experience and plenty of free time, but I was chosen as one of the 100 users selected for beta testing.

For a year, I played AWO with the other 100 testers. I have to say, it was incredible. Ultra-realistic graphics, amazing worlds, intelligent NPCs, incredible locations, and a wide variety of mobs. AWO was a 200-floor world. Each floor was a different world. The first floor was an NPC area, while the second floor was a marketplace (where players could set up shops). The hunting grounds were between the third and ninth floors. The first boss was on the tenth floor. There was a boss every ten floors, yes. So there were 20 main bosses in the game. And a miniboss every five floors. There were also hundreds of bosses that only appeared in quests. There were thousands of items you could find or craft.

Because I had been a beta tester for a long time, I would start the game way ahead of ordinary people. I knew most of the secret locations and important tactics. Well, we were doing this tester job voluntarily, but there would be an in-game reward, of course. Our names would have [BT] (Beta Tester) next to them, and exclusive outfits would be given only to beta testers. Today is the day AWO will be released. I'm currently waiting for it in FDW. All beta tester accounts were reset, and a countdown started in FDW. Under the counter, it showed the number of people waiting to log into AWO in real-time. It was exactly 2,734,916,348 people. (2.73\~ billion) I was among those waiting. The counter reached 0, and everyone slowly disappeared from FDW. I was left alone. Everything around me turned completely white, and in front of me, a blue text appeared.

...Adventure Worlds Online...

...20:00...

...Welcome, Zeth[BT]!...

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