When the aliens arrived, Mike had been beyond broke pro gamer. He hadn't had the money or motivation to move to a mega city where all the jobs were. He had to figure something else out. So he had done miscellaneous jobs until he had enough money to buy a VR helmed and subscription to the most popular Vr game at the time. At first, he had operated at a net loss and had to do whatever jobs he could find to supplement his gaming. Then when he finally had reached a high enough level, he started leveling low-level players. Pay had been nothing special, and his own charter's leveling speed lowered to a crawl. However, it had paid the bills.

He instantly understood the potential of the Secverse, a game that was used to resolve all internal disputes, how could it not be a gold mine? So he started researching how to get his hands on it earlier. However, he didn't find any, so he decided he might as well ask the AI, the worst thing it could do was refuse his request.

Once he got the AI's positive response with the ridiculous price tag, he only hesitated for a while. Surely ten credits aren't that much in the Empire, so where could he possibly earn them faster than their game? So he accepted the conditions.

The next morning he found himself inside a wholly white room, once he had placed the helmet on his head, facing an old man.

The old man gave him three questions to figure out how he would like to enter the Secverse.

Mike asked his first question. "What kind of weapons do they use in the Empire? Is it going to be more of a sword and shield fighting or giant laser death canons?"

He already knew how to hold a shield and swing a sword, so if the Empire was more focused on close combat, he wouldn't need basic training. However, if it was more like some great space opera, he would be in a trouble.

However, to his relief, the old man answered. "Most people use, as you put it swords and shields, as producing these death lasers you talked about would be ridiculously costly, if they were to do any damage to any high-ranking official."

After that, he immediately dismissed the town, as to why would he go there if he wouldn't be able to keep anything he earned and would not benefit from the training.

He asked his second question." How can I earn a lot of credits?"

The old man answered neutrally. "One needs to invest in themselves, before dreaming of any vast fortunes."

Mike felt almost cheated. What kind of non-answer was that?

Mike decided to be more specific for his last question, as he didn't wish to be cheated out of it.

Then he realized that the old fox had been leading him all this time, and he asked. "How can I invest in myself?"

He saw for the first time as the old man's expression moved away from the neutral gaze to a smile as if he had finally gotten what he had wanted. " Credits are only temporary. The only thing that will truly stay with you forever is your own strength. A small time of suffering now can mean hundreds of years of prosperity later."

The next moment he found himself beside a lake surrounded by sparse forest. Mike spends a while looking around, impressed by the fact that he couldn't tell any difference from reality.

Soon enough, he got moving and started checking the environment out. The trees looked like birches, and the water looked extremely clear. He went for a closer look. At the lake's bottom, he could see how the lake had a beautiful sandy bottom. However, something glowing at the bottom of the lake drew his attention, and he decided to go and check it out. He took out his clothes and dived down, only to see as an alligator formed around the shining rock, and tried to eat him.

His natural reaction to the attack was to hit back. However, his hand went through the alligator. But he didn't panic, he could punch through it, and it had a clear weak spot, he had a clear path to victory. Mike punched at it every time it tried attacking him, waiting for his chance to grab the shining rock.

A couple of exchanges later, the alligator once again backed away, even before they exchanged any plows, Mike saw his chance. He kicked forward from the bottom of the lake, his arm aiming straight for the rock. However, before his hand had gone more than a hand width into the alligator, it turned more solid. But Mike didn't care, he continued swimming upwards as he was running out of oxygen, pushing the alligator forwards, not letting go of it. Once his head broke the surface, the alligator tried to go back underwater. However, his hand was still inside it, dangerously close to its core, so it didn't dare to lower its viscosity.

Mike used his other hand to keep the alligator's mouth away from him, as it tried to bite him while he pushed both of them out of the water. Once he was on land, he could finally put some power behind his punches, so he pushed the alligator to the ground and started hammering at it. And a short while later, his hand finally reached deep enough, and he claimed the core for himself.

From then on, Mike tried looking for more of these creatures, but they seemed a lot rarer than spawning right next to one made it seem. But he kept on looking, however, for the rest of the day, he didn't find any. But he had noticed something, all the lakes had small rivers connected to them, all flowing downwards, so he knew his tomorrow's hiking direction.

The next day he started walking in the direction the rivers were running, and he kept at it for a full hour until he spotted something strange in the middle of a clearing, that was in the sparse forest that dotted the area between lakes. There he saw a meter-wide hole filled with water. As he had nothing better to do, he decided to check it out. It was strange, the water was clear, but he couldn't see its bottom, only darkness. Mike weighed his options and decided to go in, he needed to get some result out of his time in Secverse, so he had no time to be a coward.

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So he jumped in only to realize that he still had his clothes on. But once he was in the water, it was already too late to regret it. The shiny rock immediately shot out of his pocket and tried to dive deeper into the hole. However, Mike's reflexes were on point, his arm shot towards it immediately, and as his arm was closing around the rock, it formed a small fish around it and dived deeper at a much faster pace. To Mike's relief, the pool was only around three meters deep, but the rock that surrounded it was completely pitch black.

However, the pool was only a meter wide, so he didn't dare to dive down head-first in such a constricted space. So he went down feet first, using the walls to push himself down. Once his feet touched the bottom, he started kicking the little fish around.

He kept at it until the fish disappeared. However, he still didn't stop, as he wasn't completely sure whether it had truly stopped moving or was just bluffing him. He only stopped once he saw how the rock's shine was starting to fade. Then after he had gone up to get some oxygen, he dived back down and lifted the rock up using his feet.

And just as he was about to leave the pool, he felt a feard tingling sensation all around his skin, like hundreds of tiny needles were poking at him. He wanted to get out, but his extremities didn't wish to respond to his commands, as his skin and muscles were convulsing. Mike tries each second to make his legs push him to the surface, to no avail.

A minute later, just as he was sure he was going to drown, he managed to force his legs to push him to the surface. Once his head broke the surface, he managed to place his stiff arm onto the side of the pool, giving him just enough support not to go back under. It was another minute until his arms had gotten enough of their strength back for him to push himself out of the pool.

He lay on the ground for a while until he had somewhat relaxed, and then he took a break from the Secverse. But the moment he logged back in, he immediately realized that there was something different about his body, so just out of curiosity, he said status.

___________________

Name: Mike Alan

Awakened body 0

___________________

And sure enough, he had made some progress. He didn't waste any time pondering what caused it as he happily jumped back into the pool, hoping that whatever had caused it would continue doing it.

The prickling feeling was back the moment he was in the pool, but it was much more subdued than before. While he floated around in the small pool, he reasoned that the only thing that could have caused this was the fact that while he beat the shining rock, its glow had started to fade, so could its energy have infused into this pool?

So just out of curiosity, he started pummeling the rock against the walls of the pool, and sure enough, the feeling intensified, so he kept at it until the rock turned into dust in his hands. After the tingling stopped, his body felt much better, it was like his skin was much more elastic, as if one spot of his body got hit, the energy would equally spread through his whole body, like ripples on the bond. Naturally, once he tested this by punching his own arm, it was nothing so dramatic. However, the impact was clearly diffused over a much larger area than just the spot he had punched. But his awakened body didn't see any more rank upgrades.

Mike spent the following days checking the lakes he saw for the shining rocks. And he had managed to get two more of them, and he had rushed back to the little pool to take full advantage of the shiny rocks.

After he had destroyed the first shiny rock inside of the pool, he realized that his body did indeed feel better, but the effect was nothing compared to the first time. So he reasoned it much be because his skin had already gotten all that it could out of the energy, so he had gotten an idea that he didn't relish. There was quite an easy method to get the water in contact with the parts of his body that were under his skin, and that was just what he did.

Firstly he drank the water, and it did work for a while. However, just like with the skin, the effect ran out. The only option he had left was the one he had avoided for as long as he could. He took a sharp rock and started making cuts on his arms and legs, avoiding his major blood vessels. And as painful and disturbing as it was while the pool's water turned redder and redder, it did work. Once he got out of the water, he had reached awakened body one. So for the next rock, he had to make even deeper wounds, and he managed to push himself to awaken body two.

At this point, he had already spent five days. His speed had greatly reduced as each of his sessions in the pool lasted a lot longer than the last, as he needed to make more and more cuts for it to have any effect. His body and mind could only handle so many cuts at once, so he had gotten into the habit of taking quite long breaks, as he could feel how his constant self-harm was having a toll on him.

During these long breaks, he had come up with a way to solve his money issues. He had anomalously contacted a news agency and started a bitting war for information about the Secverse, Empire net AI acting as a guarantor that the information was legit. He promised to tell them a detailed explanation about the environment and what kind of enemies there were. They jumped at the chance, and he managed to get 0,2 credits out of it.

As he hadn't found any more shiny rock near the pool, he spent the next day running along the rivers downwards, enjoying his improved body's feel.

During that day, he reached the point where all the rivers connected, a perfectly circular massive lake than had an island in the middle of it.

His next day was a true disappointment. Sure there were water creatures in the big lake, but the lake was so deep that he had little hope of reaching them, and whenever they attacked, they used to hit and run tactics, only hitting him a bit and quickly diving back down to safety below the surface.

Once there were only thirteen hours left to the point that the Secverse opened up, he decided that he might as well try to reach the island in the center, as he had so little time left, and he had to sleep at some point.

So he jumped in, and as he didn't bother the water creatures by diving down to their kingdom, they seemed to leave him alone. Until he reached the middle point to the island and had no way of escaping, they jumped on him like a pack of vultures. It didn't take long before he saw "you died"

and respawn is available in twelve hours messages.

The next day once he could get back into the Secverse, he spent an hour collecting everything and anything he thought might be worth something and teleported to the Main city 1.

He was eager to get back to investing in himself, so he only quickly checked out the training town to get an idea of all the possibilities there were for him. And then visited the traders, turning everything he had into a tier zero shield and hammer.

As he looked at the different zones, he decided that the mountainous zone would fit his fighting style the best. As presumable the enemies, there were somehow connected to stone. He liked to block attacks with his shield and immediately punish them with devastating blows with his war hammer, a big stony targets fit the bill immaculately.

He was not going back to the lake zone any time soon, as nimble enemies were the ones he hated the most. And on top of that, they were underwater.

He set course for the mountainous zone, deciding that there must be something similar in its center as in the lake zone. So his plan was to find one of the zones residential on his way to the center, so he would know what he had to face once he arrived there.