BRIIINNG! BRIIINNG!
Draco's eyes shot open as he grabbed his head immediately, feeling like his brain had been dragged out of his skull and thrown on a frying pan to fry. He groaned in pain as memories and thoughts surged into his head from a time he hadn't experienced, from a life that had come to its end abruptly without even a chance to fight back.
When his mind settled about five minutes later, one could see that this young man of no greater than 20 years had extremely bloodshot eyes with a ferocious expression reminiscent of someone who had lost everything. It took him all his willpower not to roar and destroy everything around him, because inasmuch as the pain of losing his world was immense, he was also aware of the chance presented by his regression.
Calming himself down forcibly, he looked around and recognized this small bedroom that was under-furnished and quite unfitting for someone of his lineage from back then.
Throwing off the thin covers, Draco stood to his feet and immediately collapsed to the floor, not used to having a body so weak and powerless. He weakly moved his arms and placed them against the ground, pushing himself upward with some difficulty before forcing himself into a sitting position.
Breathing heavily as if he had run a marathon, he glanced at his body and saw that instead of the near six-foot frame sculpted by the best training from unlocking the gene locks and awakening his bloodline, all he had was his pre-Boundless body that was weak and seemed malnourished.
Pre-Boundless…
Indeed, Draco rummaged around his bedside and found his HoloBrace, which was the current-gen technology of 2065, using holographic projection to create a manipulable screen on one's wrist that could also accept some weaker brain signals for control.
Checking the time, he found that the date matched the memories of his current body, which was 14th March 2065—seven days before the Fully Immersive Virtual Reality MMO Boundless World would officially release after very minor marketing and advertising, taking the world by storm.
It did not take the world by storm because it was the only FIVR tech around. As early as 2030, with the rise of low-level generative AI, the Brain Mask had been developed, allowing machines placed at certain points of the brain to ignore the bones and flesh, focusing on the flow of electrical signals and biological data to convert into binary code for digital use.
This technology was first used to read the brain, with much failure in the beginning, but was perfected in less than half a decade. Now, AI developers had access to literal human brains and thoughts, and generative AI experienced a leap in efficiency and creativity, which positively fed back into society by enhancing all levels of technological work.
This also fed back into its source of progress, the Brain Mask and its accuracy, leading to the development of the second edition of the Brain Mask, which would now not only read the brain, but could write back into it. Now, the flow of electrical signals in the brain could be intercepted and replaced with generated signals from the Brain Mask, allowing one to enter an "illusion."
This occurred around 2040 and sparked a huge wave of societal fear and unease, because tech poking around people's heads and digging out their thoughts, memories, and dreams into digital form was one thing—but actually hijacking their brains, as people online put it, was another.
Those at the top were determined to push this no matter what, and those at the middle and bottom were determined to go against it no matter what.
In 2044, World War 3 broke out.
The outcome didn't change though, for FIVR was born.
Fully Immersive Virtual Reality.
These four words meant that once one was put into this "illusion," it would be no different from reality to them, with only a faint reminder from their memories that this was not the real world. Fully Immersive meant that all five senses could experience genuine raw feedback within this virtual reality space.
One could touch and feel tactile sensation, breathe and smell different scents, eat and taste flavor, see and perceive, and hear and enjoy sound.
With such a miraculous invention forcibly thrust upon the world and normalized, it should have been used to develop a super-futuristic game that would decide the fate of the world, right?
Wrong.
Early FIVR was split into two streams: military and civilian. Military was all about training troops in extreme situations without fear of actual death, while civilian was about providing entertainment to distract the populace and extract money from them.
And what do people pay for the most?
Naturally, pornography.
Early FIVR was all porn, set to allow people to enter virtual reality where their wildest dreams could be realized… for a fee.
No longer did one need to fear the existence of evil sex islands in reality, when the average fellow could build his own island of evil in virtual reality and experience whatever he wanted at his leisure.
Now, no longer did Larry need to glance enviously at Stacy, who was Jack's wife next door. Now he could slap on his FIVR apparatus and have a virtual model of a woman based on Stacy, with her exact personality parameters, ride him while lovingly calling him "husband"—and she'd actually enjoy it with him, unlike that limp-dick Jack fellow!
The scenarios were endless, but the fulfillment was real… up to a point.
Because technology as at 2050 had hit a severe bottleneck, just like in the 20th century. Due to the results of World War 3, FIVR was pushed but still had limitations, one of which was that it could not emulate 100% of reality.
No matter how hard developers tried, the apparatus could not interfere with the brain's electrical signals enough to truly make a person forget that this was virtual reality and not real. The premier problem was overlapping signals, because even if you put on the FIVR gear and lay on your bed to enjoy a session with Sydney Sweeney, you could still also feel your fan by your bedside blowing air on your skin in reality.
That was called the Immersion Ratio, and technology up to this point could only achieve 40% immersion. That meant you felt whatever came from the virtual world at 40% of real intensity, while 60% was still influenced by your real-world environment.
At this point, FIVR shifted from almost 99% porn and 1% other entertainment, to 40% gaming and 60% other forms, including porn. Gaming offered the most diverse experiences in virtual reality, especially with FIVR tech added onto it.
And this was the case until now—where in seven days, a game with an actual 100% Immersion Ratio, with no side effects or backlash, would release. In fact, this game would revolutionize the world for three major reasons, the first being Time Dilation.
Time dilation was the difference in the flow of time between two continually occurring events, where the ratio between real life was 1—the standard flow—and that within Boundless World was 4, meaning time flowed at four times the relative speed.
So one hour in reality was four hours in Boundless World. Usually, this would be useless, as beings transferring from one flow of time to another would still be subjected to the new flow rather than the old.
So if you moved to a world with four times the speed, by the time a person on Earth reached 25 years old, you would be comparatively 100 years old in your realm.
But since it was virtual, the real body remained in the real world under the normal flow of time while the mind entered a fully immersive world with four times the flow of time.
Right away, this meant that if you had a lifespan of 70 years and the first 20 were spent in reality, with the last 50 spent in Boundless World, you would have lived—in your perception—220 years rather than merely 70.
An indirect extension of lifespan!
All while experiencing something unique in the huge immersive game world!
And that was the second revolutionary element—the expansive game world.
Boundless World thrust you into a unique and unexplored universe with extremely advanced technology, with space travel being very easy, as even small civilian-class ships could afford perpetually powered engines that powered small warp drives allowing one to enter hyperspace for faster-than-light travel.
So this was a universe deep in the exploration age, with every dog and cat buying a ship to go explore, encountering new species, planets, galaxies, and even special beings that could grant extraordinary powers.
The third reason for the revolution was the effect Boundless World's game world had on reality. To the utter shock and horror of the world, all the technology in Boundless World was discovered to be real and applicable in our universe, not based on pseudo-science.
So whatever one learned in Boundless World could be brought out into reality and applied.
Managed to pass the 3rd-grade preschooler certification for mastering Nuclear Fusion after presenting your mini nuclear-fusion project for scoring? Great—source the materials and replicate the method, and you would have the exact same mini nuclear reactor in reality, something that was a mere toy for children in that advanced society but could change the entire structure of modern civilization.
At the time Draco died, only 15 years had passed in the game and four years in reality, yet humanity had achieved FTL, built a Dyson sphere, built an orbital space station, and was on the verge of constructing destroyer-class motherships.
The future of the world would be shaped by this FIVR game, and no one could claim absolute dominance over that future, because powers would shift. Countries would become irrelevant as personal power and might took the stage, leading to the birth of a united federation of all humans where power was centralized in the strongest, but also limited by impartial AI.
That was going to start in seven days.
However, all of this beautiful, blood-pumping pie in the sky was just that. In no less than four years in reality, foreign invaders with power beyond imagination would arrive and exterminate their species because of something they claimed their predecessors did.
This notion infuriated Draco, who was already in a troubled situation with his family and heritage. If those damned non-human freaks wanted to exterminate them, then he would not hold back!
In these four years, he would amass as much power as possible, utilizing his knowledge and advantage from the future in the game to take the perfect route to the highest levels of power, all to smash the faces of those arrogant bastards and save the human race!
After that… he would see about ascending to the throne of godhood over their universe, if what that bastard Sigurd said was true.
Draco's eyes flashed with determination, and that determination acted as fuel surging throughout his body, allowing him to finally adapt to his current state and stand up shakily. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, knowing that in these seven days, he would have to solve all the preliminary problems that had stood in his way during his past life and pave the way for his future actions.
As such, a hint of ruthlessness flashed in his eyes, knowing that the first problem he needed to deal with was his family, because until he dealt with that blockade, he would not be able to handle what came next.
With that in mind, Draco walked to the door of his room and pushed it open, heading into the outside world of 2065!