There were many other similar chats and private messages, but Alex ignored them all.
For him, playing a game always went the same way.
He spent money like a whale, rushed to the top, made other players envy him, and then quit.
Because of this, his nickname WhaleGod became legendary.
Game companies both hated and loved him.
Every time Alex did this, their customer support got flooded with complaints.
But no company ever banned him. Instead, they kept inviting him to beta-test new games.
The income Alex provided alone was higher than that of a hundred normal whales combined.
On top of that, the free publicity from YouTubers who made channels about him was huge.
"Haha, what final boss? I did not even see the credit card statement."
Alex laughed to himself as he remembered some of the chat messages.
His good mood only lasted a moment. Then he remembered he needed to look for a job.
He started typing "how to earn money online", but the search results were full of ads.
"Get Rich or Die Scrolling: Learn to Earn $500 Daily with Our Fun Online Strategy!"
"Earn $1000 a day now from your home."
Seeing these ads, Alex frowned.
He knew they were probably scams, but he still wondered, "Why do they advertise such small amounts?"
"Who would even be baited by $1000 a day? Make it at least a million dollars a day."
If he had said this out loud in public, he would have been beaten up.
Most people spent around $1000 a month, but to him it felt too small.
As he kept scrolling, Alex realized why he had even searched using "money" as a keyword.
He just needed to do something so his mom would stop bothering him.
Ideally, it would be something that made him go outside and socialize a bit.
He then remembered he had many game-testing offers in his inbox. He opened them one by one, but most did not pay.
They only gave free in-game credits.
None of them required him to go outside.
Finding nothing useful in his inbox, he checked his spam folder.
"Looking for new VR implant beta testers!
Tired of needing a device to access the VR world?
With our new implant, you just need to close your eyes, and you can enter the VR world."
Alex raised an eyebrow when he saw this.
He opened the offer and started reading the details. He also searched the company name online, feeling doubtful.
He had heard of this implant before.
It was still in the experimental stage, and only a small amount of information had been released to the public.
When he checked the address and the company background, he found out everything was legitimate.
"The parent company specializes in researching Awakener abilities. So it should not be a scam.
The payment is small, but that does not matter as long as I go out and do some work," he thought.
He then started registering his personal information.
In the world where Alex lived, there were people with superpowers called Awakeners.
They had first appeared fifty years ago, after a huge earthquake shook the entire planet.
No one knew the real cause. Some rumors said it happened because of a government experiment.
A week after the global earthquake, a strange phenomenon started to appear.
People began feeling odd in certain areas. As days passed, the phenomenon grew worse.
Gravity sometimes became heavier or lighter. Fire suddenly appeared in midair.
Cold water felt hot. Normal water suddenly turned into ice cubes.
This frightened people and made them leave those areas.
After about a week, the space in those places became distorted and formed a portal.
A dungeon appeared beyond the portal.
The authorities quickly sealed the areas and sent in their own expeditions. Only a few people barely survived.
They then noticed a red aura forming around the portal.
At first only part of the aura was visible, but as time passed, it grew until it surrounded the portal completely.
When the red aura formed a full circle, a flood of monsters came out.
People called this a Dungeon Break.
Modern weapons could damage the monsters, but the results were not very effective.
The government even started to consider using bombs to destroy those areas.
That changed when the first Awakener appeared.
With the help of the Awakener, they managed to control the situation.
After that, the dungeons were treated as strategic resources.
Awakeners entered them to hunt monsters and obtain exotic materials.
Some dungeons even contained other civilizations. This allowed contact with them, but the details were not clear.
The public only knew that many new technologies came from these dungeons.
One of these technologies was hyperrealism virtual reality, the same kind of VR that Alex used a lot.
In the Pandora Research Facility, the place that had sent Alex the job offer, three scientists were busy experimenting.
They all looked tired and haggard.
One of them, a silver-haired woman, held a vial filled with red, murky blood.
"I do not get it. Why does this not give any reaction, no matter what we do?" she said.
The murky blood had been found by an Awakener inside a dungeon.
At first, many researchers had been interested in it.
After countless experiments that led nowhere, most of them gave up.
The blood seemed sentient.
When they added chemicals to it, there was no reaction at all.
However, when they tried to separate the liquid, the blood resisted.
It moved on its own like slime and kept itself together.
They had even made someone drink it, but the blood rejected that too.
It moved by itself and left the person's body.
"Prof. Faerith, you should just give up already," one assistant said.
She was the only professor still interested in the blood.
She did not know why, but she had become obsessed with it.
Faerith was sure she just needed to find the right person for it to react.
When she heard what her assistant said, she frowned and slumped into her chair.
"I just got another response for a new test subject. I guess I will take a break if this one fails again," she said.
"Prof, you have been saying that for seven months.
In total, we have already experimented on this blood for a year," the assistant replied.