The Earth After Rebirth

Unfortunately for them, the whispers and stares would never stop, they\'ll always be about something or another, the only way to get rid of them was money. Fame and Money. That\'s just how this society operated, it was quite saddening.

"Do you want to run here every day? Morning and Noon. To keep our bodies in shape?" Kiro suddenly asked Hiro.

Hiro looked sceptical, he didn\'t like exercising at all. He deemed it a waste of energy. If only he knew, the academy forced students to at least take one physical extracurricular. Apart from Phys Ed. They required a person to play at least one sport. Right now they looked like immature men, Kiro wanted them to have some fat and muscle.

"We don\'t exactly look that sharp. You do know that playing sport is required here?"

Hiro flinched at this. He thought of many different ways in which he could skip out on sports and everything. Though he did like some he wasn\'t much a fan of playing, he retired before coming to the academy. Realising he couldn\'t see a possible way out, he finally gave in.

"Fine, fine, fine. We will do it your way. I do want the whispers to stop. I don\'t have thick skin like you do."

It was settled around 3pm that day, 2 boys could be seen at the track field running like their lives depended on it. One looked lazy and unmotivated at first but soon picked up his pace to properly work out. It was a sight to see, as the sun set, they were both engulfed in a beautiful orange hue.

Little did they know, someone was watching them. Someone beautiful, pale with red hair. Their green eyes transfixed on one of the boys.

After the exercise, Kiro felt so good about himself and his body felt somehow light.

\'I think I\'ll lay off snacks for a while.\' He gave himself a mental note.

It was already dark when they walked off the field. It was around 6pm, supper was strictly eaten at 6:30pm, they quickly went to shower then went down to eat.

The cafeteria was noisy as usual, Hiro and Kiro sat at their table. It was their table now because nobody dared to seat where slum rats had seated. Even after a good exercise they were tempted to buy all sorts of unhealthy foods but since they\'ve committed to training their bodies, they bought a nutritious meal. Kiro gave themselves a mental pat on the back for this.

Just then in the middle of their meal, a girl sat at their table right after they did. She had red back length hair, green eyes and skin paler than Hiro\'s. She was the most beautiful girl Kiro had ever seen, he just knew that wherever this girl walked people turned and followed her with their eyes.

Kiro was visibly shocked, he never once thought anybody would match his friend\'s pale skin. She had headphones on, they both dismissed her ignorance on the noise cancelling headphones. She must have no idea where she is sitting, right?

As if she had felt the gaze of both boys, she looked up, and caught them staring with an amused look on another boy\'s face, while the other just looked shocked. She frowned but didn\'t say anything, she went back to reading whatever she was reading.

\'Girls are scary.\'

Her face flushed, but none of the two boys noticed this, as they immediately wolfed down their supper, they were extremely famished from the workout.

Her sitting there caused quite the commotion. Most of the cafeteria looked at the table that was plagued by vermin, whispers again, pointing and all sorts of things were said.

"Why\'s she sitting there."

"She\'s a Silva, has she no dignity."

"If she were my child, I\'d disown her so fast she wouldn\'t know what hit her."

"Good thing she\'s not your child then." said one girl, who had caramel-like skin.

Kiro couldn\'t help but look back because the voice that defended them came closer than he anticipated, he saw her, she was sitting right behind them.

\'I suppose not all rich kids are the same?\' Kiro questioned the life he had lived in his previous life. Nobody ever stood up for him then, was it because of the different course he took this time around?

The girl seated opposite them didn\'t seem to have heard the conversation. If she did hear them, she chose to ignore them. She gave Kiro that kind of vibe, the vibe that she did whatever she wanted. Societal standards be damned.

\'I don\'t hate it. For a rich snot nosed brat, it\'s not bad at all.\' Kiro thought to himself.

Rich people made a lot of time for trivial things, they\'re always worried about nonsense. Such as their appearance. They wouldn\'t survive a day in the slums, it\'s survival of the strongest there, not richest. At least this pale girl sitting opposite them had a spine, it seemed she did whatever she liked not caring what others think. Not bad at all.

Just like that, 3 days had passed. The table incident had not been forgotten because the girl sat there every time now, without even saying anything.

In these 3 days they hadn\'t missed a day of exercise, they could run 20 kilometres now, and lift 20kgs worth of weights. It wasn\'t bad at all. For evolved humans, this was neither good nor bad. But it had been 3 days, it was still impressive.

The game launched, as they preordered it, it was automatically added to their gaming gear and they immediately dived in. The first thing that appeared was the company logo the earth of old, the one that had all 7 continents, how daring. It was done beautifully though, along with the abbreviation "DG" which was the company name, Divine Gaming.

It was strange, but the company didn\'t exist before releasing this particular game. Yet the game took the world by storm.

There was only one rule here in Asgard, you cannot alter your appearance. The race you choose may alter the ears, the eyes or height but beyond that, your avatar looks like the you in real life, that\'s why you could only play humanoid characters, which many thought was a scam.

Many wanted to game anonymously, so that they could cause all kinds of havoc in-game. But now everybody would think twice about doing something. While facial recognition wasn\'t readily available to the public, with enough money anybody could access it.

The only thing you could customise were the clothes, or the style of the hair. Otherwise nothing changes. Before the system could say anything, He skipped everything about character customisation.

Then almost immediately, a change of scenery which became a blank white room. He waited for a while, but nothing happened. He realised he had all his goods out, which was embarrassing.

"Hello?" His voice echoed. \'Tasteless.\'

[Not so loud...]

A voice said, looking around, he couldn\'t see where it came from. In his past life he started watching the game after the academy, so he had no idea about this part. But it sounded to him like the system was sassy.

"Tsk."

[Noob, welcome to Asgard Online. Where only the gutsy reign supreme. If you want to leave behind your weak husk, choose a race.]

Kiro knew this was just part of the code, it was just doing what it was designed to do but somehow it got under his skin. This reminded him of the real world, didn\'t he get into this game to escape the real world?

[If you don\'t like it, log out. Anyway, here are the 4 races that reside in Asgard.]

\'Can it read my mind?\'

Elves (Archery and Priest Classes)

Humans (Knight, Warrior, Assassin and Mage Classes)

Dreki (Sagehood, Swordsmanship and Necromancy Classes)

Dwarves (Craftsmanship and Guardianship Classes)

Elves were fair skinned with their pointed ears. Humans were, well, humans. Dreki were descendants of dragons and something else that the game made very unclear, their ears were less pointy than the elves but they were nonetheless. Dwarves were short, ill-tempered and bearded whether young or old.

Elves were great at magic to the point of being able to contract spirits, even their archers incorporated magic into their archery. Humans were brutes that advocated for strength and hardwork above all. Dreki were well-rounded and balanced. Dwarves were great at crafting, even so, their sturdy bodies made them great for tanking.

There were also subclasses but they were all greyed out. You only received a subclass in-game, from a quest if you\'re lucky. It was rare for people to trigger a quest for a subclass, so it was a long shot.

Kiro had an abundance of knowledge of these classes and races. So he noticed right away that, Dreki never existed in his past life. This was an entirely new race. Now he was worried, didn\'t he go back in time? Was he in an alternative world? What else had changed?

Though he could recognise all the classes. It still worried him that something had deviated from the original plot. What if, everything wasn\'t the same about the game? He took a deep breath, and looked through the races. Originally he was going to pick human, but since sagehood was now under Dreki...

It was a dilemma, for him. He wanted so bad to choose human, but sagehood class was way too interesting so he chose his race. Dreki.

[At last. Thank you for picking Dreki, you\'re the first to choose it, I was worried. Now you can only pick from the 3 classes under the Dreki race.]

He ignored the system and selected sagehood. He didn\'t even look at necromancy, as much as he\'d never admit it but the class creeped him out. The swords were too crude for his liking. He liked being a sage because it meant using a staff and martial arts.

Ding!

[Noob, please choose your in-game name with haste.]

He pondered for a bit. \'Should I use Ki? Or just Waynworth?\' It took him 5 minutes to make a choice only to choose Kiro at the end.

[Hold, while we upload your avatar to the cloud, you\'ll be transported shortly to Beginners Village. Don\'t die too much.]

"F*ck off, holy sh*t. are you self-aware or something? you\'re annoying." Kiro blurted out.

The system just made a "Hmm" sound. Kiro continued his rant, calling the system with every name he\'d learned living in the slums. Names, if his mother heard, would immediately wash his mouth with soap.

The cloud storage was common amongst many games, so then even when you lose your hard drive, even your game characters are safe. Thats just how important VR gaming was in this society. Nobody loves losing their progress.

Before he knew it, he was enveloped by a blue light, the body glitched and disintegrated into particles and poof, he was gone.