Creed woke up with a headache as he normally would. He had spent three straight nights inside the gaming capsule so his head felt like it was about to explode.

"Man, this is worse than a hangover. I should stop hacking the capsule's gaming timer". Creed scratched his head as he headed to the refrigerator and got himself a soda.

"I wonder if the new update is up yet, we spent all month preparing..."

Creed walked over to his gaming capsule and checked the news on the holographic screen. Creed switched to a 24-hour news station that only reported on news surrounding one online game; Intergalactic: Online.

"When [Intergalactic: Online] was first released in 2311, it instantly topped the charts and quickly became the fastest-growing MMORPG of all time. Not only was it the first fully immersive Virtual-MMO using the then brand new gaming capsule technology, but it also revolutionized what gaming meant with the introduction of the first game ever completely created and managed by the S1MTech's revolutionary AI world generation system. Gone are the days where games are just for children, now even the largest corporations and want to have a presence within [Intergalactic: Online] vying for resources and land which can translate into real-world credits!. With an estimated 99% of the world's population is connected, we can truly say that [Intergalactic: Online] has become an endless second world waiting to be explored and conquered!.

Creed watched with glowing eyes. he had head seen this ad a million times before, however it still excited him every time he looked at it. [Intergalactic: Online] released more than 10 years ago in the year 2300. Wars and famine had ravaged the world for 100 years prior, leaving large parts of the planet uninhabitable and causing the downfall of all major world governments. The people who were left rebuilt what they could however the world's population had already dropped to below 3 Billion and was quickly dropping. To save the last remnants of humanity, the survivors pooled their remaining resources to create a new supercontinent floating on the Ocean, away from the heavily radiated and polluted land.

Thus another 100 years passed. Creed was born in the year 2290, 10 years before the release of [Intergalactic: Online]. He felt lucky to be born in Habitation-Block C. it wasn't as good as Habitation-Block A where the super-wealthy lived but at least it wasn't as bad as Habitation-Block - F. Creed had been living along in Hab-block-C as they affectionately called it. He was an orphan so he was raised in a state orphanage until he was 16 when he was considered an adult.

To survive, Creed became a full-time gamer. The traditional work had long since been taken over by automated machines, so the world government had encouraged all its citizens to log into the capsules to keep them occupied and not thinking about how terrible their living conditions were.

Creed looked at his government-funded capsule then around his small apartment and sighed. Rather than calling it an apartment, it would probably be more accurate to call it a prison cell. All he had was a small room which was mostly taken up by the capsule, and a bathroom.

Creed leaned back into his capsule and logged back into [Intergalactic: Online]. 

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

[Login Successful: Welcome back to Intergalactic: Online!]

Creed's character woke up from a small bed. To log out, one needed to put their characters to sleep. A character would remain in this world at the exact location it was left. Creed got a private message as soon as he logged in

"Creed you're back already?"

"Hey, Chaeyoung. I couldn't sleep so I just logged back in" Creed said as he walked out of his virtual room. His character looked just like him in real life. His face was quite handsome with his short light brown hair.

"Cool, let's meet up then, the update is about to go live. Where are you?"

"Alliance Federation's space station, Sector 7"

"Sector 7?, you've got some guts. I hear a lot of zergs are hunting in Sector 7 lately."

"Yea, that's why the pay is so good here right now. I can handle a couple of zergs", Creed said while moving towards the docking station.

"Ha, if you say so. Meed me at the place in Sector 3 when you're done. We'll go over our strategy once again in person"

"Cool"

Creed walked into the docking stating with hard tens of thousands of people going about their business. The main premise of [Intergalactic: Online] was allowing the players to experience the universe on a galactic scale. Not only was the world full of regular players, but it also had countless realistic randomly generated NPCs with full lives and backstories. 

They were so realistic that certain groups tried to lobby the world government to give the NPCs the same rights as humans in the real world. For Creed, [Intergalactic: Online] is just as real as the real world if not more so. While in the real world he was nobody, here he was free to explore the galaxy as well as create a name for himself while having adventures with his friends.

Creed took the tram to docking bay 873 and paid 100 credits to retrieve his ship. A dual passenger small Corvette-Class ship. mostly used for scouting and patrols. Creed got clearance then taxied out of the station. He immediately left the station's space and engaged his hyperdrive, shooting through the starts.

Creed marveled at the beauty of this world. Not only were there thousands of galaxies but there were thousands of planes within those galaxies. Endless discoveries were waiting to be unearthed, however, there was only one flaw. Each person only has one life in this world. Each death would permanently delete your character which would then force you to recreate your character, essentially making you lose years, if not decades worth of progress. This is why many would treat this as a second life since wealth here would translate to wealth in the real world, so having a billion credit ship in the game was just as good as having a billion credit assets in the real world.