1 Heavens Reach, A New Beginning

Wu Tian, was 19 years old when he ran away to Toronto, Canada. He originally lived in a secluded mountain, in the Ancient Wu Martial Arts Clan. When he lived in the clan, he was said to be a prodigy of martial arts never before seen in the world. Even those old martial artists who practiced for years were defeated under Wu Tian's hand.

Even though many would love to be a martial arts prodigy and be admired by many others, Wu Tian never wanted this life. Wu Tian was always isolated by his elders, he was not even aware of smart technology until he was 15 years old traveling to another ancients clans place where he saw a person with a smartphone aggressively tapping on the screen and having annoyed and distraught faces.

This was Wang Lin's first contact with his love for video games, later he slowly started sneaking technology by using the money his clan had given him for herbs and other items to help him advance his martial arts. Unfortunately, good things don't last forever as his mom found Wu Tian's stash of electronics. The elders were furious and wanted to send Wu Tian into seclusion but decided not to due to his achievements in martial arts and in the clan.

Wu Tian hated this life of seclusion in the mountains with only Martial Arts and stupid elders so he decided to run away, he also wanted to abandon martial arts, but Wu Tian soon realized the thing he wanted to run away from was not Martial Arts but his clan. The elders and his family who wanted to use him for their own gain, he never hated martial arts just the people who forced him to do it, not for himself but for them.

Wu Tian found his smartphone that was taken from him, stole a secret car that the clan held inside a warehouse, and used his leftover money, which he converted from Yuan to Dollars, to got to Canada and buy an apartment, he moved to Toronto, Canada and still had $100,000 left in his account.

The apartment was small, its living room and bedroom were mixed it already had an empty space, a T.V., and a couch/bed convertible. There was one bathroom, one kitchen with an oven, microwave, toaster, and other appliances, and a closet which had a washing machine, dryer, and space for food on one side and cleaning products on the other. Wu Tian was happy with the cheap apartment with all the basic necessities and decided to go buy what he has escaped his clan for, Video Games.

Wu Tian went to the V4R store, a store near his house selling the best VR Pod products on the market. The V4R Company were the original creators of the VR Pods and all the newest games were built for the V4R Pod Platform. The VR Pods are machines that stimulate real actions into the game as if the person was really inside the game.

Wu Tian walked inside the store and to the cashier, he then asked: "May I order the V4R Pod Version 5 preinstalled with Heavens Reach?"

Heavens Reach was the newest and best MMORPG VR game made by TechTitan Co., It was released 1 day ago and was virtually unmanned as production was done by humans, but a newly developed AI they called TITAN, removed any bugs from the game and kept balancing in check 24/7. This feature alone changed the gaming industry forever and made it the best selling game.

The employee looked at Wu Tian and said "Sorry sir, we have ran out of the version 5 and new stock will take a month to come, but if you get the Version 6 we can give you the game preinstalled for free and it will have a bonus when you start, so the graphics and speed are better and you get a headstart in the game."

Wu Tian contemplated, the Version 5 was $65,000 and the Version 6 was a whopping $85,000, he would only have $25,000 left, if he got the Version 5 he would have to wait a month meaning he would fall way behind everyone but he would save $10,000 but if he bought the Version 6, he would have to spend an extra $10,000 but he would get better graphics and speed for the future and a little help since he was already a day late than everyone else.

Wu Tian decided to buy the Version 6, although he didn't regret buying it, his heart faltered when he checked his bank account go down to $25,000. But it wasn't a problem for now as rent was only $665 a month due to the small size of the apartment.

Wu Tian used another $200 for installation to get some employees to come over and fix up the Pod in the empty space he had in his living room. It was 3:00 PM by the time everything got running. Wu Tian was super excited so he grabbed the headset and jumped into the pod. The pod door closed a voice sounded in the pod "V4R Pod Version 6 starting up, first-time login initializing, please look at the red dot to verify identity.

A red light shined through the top of the pod and scanned Wu Tian's retina. It then said "Scan successful, user Wu Tian, please select a username, this name is permanent and cannot be changed. Wu Tian thought for a while before saying "Martial Asura" This was a name he previously picked in the other games he had so he decided to stick to it.

The system responded, "Username, Martial Asura, storing signature and retina scan, accepted loading Heavens Reach..."

Wu Tian felt like he was sucked into the game as the title screen showed him flying through the map and he felt joy, more joy than reaching completion level of a martial arts. He felt the joy of freedom.

The words on the screen said "Heavens Reach Arc 1: A New Beginning."