The Return

James was still in a daze, he was still mostly asleep but he could hear a stranger talking in a familiar monotone voice, after a couple of minutes of this he finally got the strength to open his eyes, and there he was, in the body of his 18-year-old self, sitting on the couch of his old apartment, listening to the monotone voice of the news host.

"It worked!!"

James yelled, he knew that a godly relic was powerful, but even he thought that there was a catch, but it worked.

He calmed himself down and sat down in front of the TV for a second, he needed to think about what to do next.

"We are interrupting this broadcast to make a grand announcement, the god's Domain organization opening is tomorrow as you all undoubtedly know, but there was just made an announcement that gave information regarding a tournament being held to celebrate its opening, the winner of this tournament will get the grand prize of 50.000 gods Domain points"

After this announcement James stood up and started copying all the info he had learned down in his smart bracelet, he was already beginning to forget some of it and he couldn't afford that.

After that he was planning on doing the next most important thing, making money, but he stopped in his tracks when he tried to move towards his computer, he felt extremely sluggish, he could've expected this, after all, he was a mental strength grandmaster in the past, and now he was just a normal dude, to combat this James started doing some basic exercises to train his martial arts, but before even half of the exercises where over James fell on the ground, sweaty, exhausted, and his mental power drained.

"guess this weak body can't even handle some intermediate stretching, and I don't have any nutrition fuel to keep me going."

It took him 10 full minutes to be able to move again after performing the exercises, when he finally could move James went to the computer to invest nearly all his inheritance, 150.000 credits, in 'online electronics' the manufacturing company that was contracted to make the game helmets and pods by the god's Domain organization, this will be revealed in a press conference in about a month, making the stock price go up like crazy, his stake in the company should be worth at least 50 million by the time the stock reaches its all-time high, that's quite a lot of money but not nearly enough for James, after all, he was planning on offering every one of the 20 geniuses a million a year, that was 40 million spend even before gods Domain launched, he needed equipment and gaming pods too, at that rate he would be broke before the game even began.

For the rest of the day James just looked through the info he had, mainly the current locations of all of his future teammates, the closest of them being an Assassin called Silent voice, in the real world she was a high school student at the school across town from him, she also came from a lower middle-class family, so bringing her in with money shouldn't be a problem.

But those things were only for after the tournament, if he won the tournament and got the 50.000 points, he could exchange for 5 life potions or 250 bottles of S-grade Nutrient fluids, one of these could sell for a million credits easily, of course, he would rather not sell them, they were really rare and he needed them badly, but he just really needed money.

The next day came quickly as James made his way towards the god's Domain association building in the center of his city, but just when he was about to cross the street he saw it, a big man with a beard crossing the street, he looked like any other avid gym goer, but James knew that man, how could he not, anyone from his previous life would be able to recognize him.

"Iron forge, he was from my universe?"

James was puzzled, that was Iron forge for fuck sake, ranked number 7 in the greater gods Domain 7 luminaries craftsmanship ranking, he was one of the best blacksmith and alchemists in the whole of the greater gods Domain, even super guilds treated him like a king, and now he was standing here, right before James, even if he might miss the tournament, he couldn't let this chance go, James started speed walking to catch up to the big man before finally tapping him on the shoulder.

"What do you want?"

The big man said in a grumpy tone.

James was in a daze at this moment, he didn't know what to say, he just went up to him because he knew he couldn't waste this opportunity, James started racking his brain the second he heard the big man talk on how to convince him, and only one method came up.

"Excuse me sure but you are a blacksmith right, and from what I hear a quite good one."

The second James said that the big man's face went from annoyed to excited in the space of 5 seconds, Iron forge was a blacksmithing fanatic, even before the game.

"Well, I don't know where you heard that, but yes I am a blacksmith."

The big man said, trying to hide the smile on his face.

"I'm the leader of a gaming organization planning to enter the new, gods Domain in 2 years, I would like you to join and become our chief blacksmith, your annual salary will be 1.000.000 credits, how about it?"

The big, exciting look on the man's face turned to a rather complicated one, of course, it would have, he was just offered a 7-figure job by a guy he didn't know, just to play a game.

"Listen, dude, I appreciate that you are a fan of my blacksmithing, but even if I would believe you, I would much rather blacksmith in real life than in some game"

James just sight, he knew this wasn't going to be easy, but rejecting a million-dollar offer just because of your love for blacksmithing, come on man.

"Just hear me out for a second, I had the pleasure of having a sneak peek in this game and it's amazing, I honestly thought my gaming cabin was broken and I was just in the real world, that's how realistic it is, and it's fantasy too, new ores with new properties, you could make weapons whit materials formed by magic themselves, that can go up against gods themselves, and while you're doing all of that, it feels completely real, now what guy who loves blacksmithing wouldn't want that."

After hearing that you could see hesitation starting to appear on Iron's face.

"agh, all right, I'll take a look at it, but if I don't like it, I'll leave"

A huge wave of release came over James while hearing this, after all, gods Domain wasn't a game you couldn't like, he had Iron ad good as in the bag.

"If you happen to have time right now, I will be competing in the tournament that is being held in about half an hour, you can come to watch and decide then."

"I heard about that on the news, seems to be a big deal, all right, I'll come to watch."

Half an hour after that Mike, more known as Iron forge was sitting in a gaming cabinet, James had rented him one so he could spectate the fight in-game, and not on some screen, Mike selected the player he wanted to spectate and on he went, but what he saw amazed him.

"No wonder that kid was so excited about this game, this is amazing, if I couldn't see my interface and the monsters, I would think this was real, if blacksmithing is also how he described it, I would be more than happy to take him up on his offer."

At that moment a woman appeared above the ancient floor where James was standing, accompanied by a system message.

[Since you don't have a gods Domain account, you can pick an alias for the upcoming challenges ]

"One"

[username 'one' confirmed]

One didn't have a deeper meaning to James, but he was planning on naming his guild 'one' so might as well name himself it, the reason he was going to name his guild one was because every internal member was going to be a one-man army.

"hello there all participants"

The lady said, even though James was still standing alone.

"This tournament will not be following the classic 1 vs 1 style, rather, it will be a competition to see who gets further inside this tower, if contestants both reach the same floor, the winner will be decided by the time you cleared the floor, more rewards will also be given out depending on your performance, good luck"

After that the monsters who were previously standing idle started sprinting towards James, these monsters consisted of mostly humanoid lizard men at the Refinement Realm, to James, who was currently equipped with a [Tier 3] character, these beasts were nothing, in the following minutes James managed to mascara all 100 lizard men without losing a single point of health, only his concentration was draining rather quick, he was still only in a [Tier 3] body after all.

[You have cleared the first floor In 3:56, you are the first in this tournament to do so, rewarding an extra 100 points.]

[You are the first to do this in this world, rewarding an extra 5.000 points]

James was extremely surprised by the extra rewards, he could clear up to the 4th floor easily, just imagine what kind of rewards that would give.

And so he went, the 2 next floors were just the 1st floor but on the second floor he had to fight flowing water Realm experts, and on the third-floor void ranked experts, James had to admit, this was an excellent training hall, it is too bad that this normally isn't open to the public.

On the 4th floor things started to get dicey, his opponents were still void Realm experts, but this time they had a good understanding of the first Realm in the realms of truth, making their combination attacks even more dangerous.

But still, to a Domain Realm expert like James, who is also in the second step of the Realm of truth, these guys were nothing, maybe if there were still 100 of them like on the first floor they could overwhelm him, but just the 20 that were stationed on this floor couldn't stop him.

[You have cleared the fourth floor In 5:10, you are the first in this tournament to do so, rewarding an extra 10.000 points.]

[You are the first to do this in this world, rewarding an extra 50.000 points]

The surroundings changed again and James appeared on the 5th floor, here he would be facing 10 beyond Domain Realm experts who have also reached the beyond truth Realm, a task nobody in even the greater god's Domain could hope to accomplish.

James tried to hold his own but it was all for nothing, the first combination attack was enough to animate him.

[You have died, the total amount of points earned is 106.100, wait for everyone to conclude their challenge for the winner to be crowned]

James stepped out of his gaming cabin not worrying too much, the only people who could come close to him were some old monsters, but they rarely made an appearance, and they didn't need the resources.

At that moment Mike came rushing into the room.

"I gotta say, you were amazing, those other guys can't hold a candle up to you, I think some are still playing, but none of them are going to make it past the 4th floor."

James let out a little chuckle after hearing how excited Mike was.

"More importantly, what did you think about the game?"

"Is blacksmithing as realistic as fighting?"

"Yea it is, and it is only going to get better as the update roll out."

"All right then, I'm in, where do I sign"

"I haven't formed a contact yet, nor do I have an office with gaming equipment, so you're going to have to wait, but with the amount of money I just won, you can guarantee that it is going to be nice."

"Are those points worth that much?"

Mike asked in confusion.

"You better believe it, every 1000 points should be worth about 5 million credits."

Mike just felt too stunned to speak, even without the winning bonus, James had made half a billion today, by just playing a game.

Mike and James promptly left the establishment, but not before James traded 15.000 of his points to credits giving him a capital of 50 million, and 25 S-grade Nutrient fluids.

He exchange contact numbers with Mike and spend the rest of the day doing the boring work that comes with setting up a company, it was incredibly tedious, but at the end of the day he was officially the owner and CEO of 'one gaming'.

The next few days were spent doing his exercise and drinking some S-grade Nutrient fluids to recover, and also purchasing an office building for a whopping 30 million.

He had also equipped the building with 22 gaming pods, which were purchasable in advance from the god's Domain organization for a 1000-points a pop.

Now, 5 days after his reincarnation, James was finally ready to contract his first employee, Iron forge.

He sent a message with the address of the office building, telling him to come as soon as possible.

And only 15 minutes later.

"Quite a nice office space you got here"

"Good that you like it because you will be seeing it a lot from now on."

"That's what I was going to ask you that game only comes out in about 2 years right, why would I need to come to the office space now?"

"Well, there are 2 realms in the gaming world, the realms of Refinement, the higher you are in there the better your senses in game, and the Realms of truth, which indicates how proficient you are in moving your in-game body, as you can imagine, these realms are incredibly important in combat, but their usefulness in crafting can't be underestimated, so I will be training you in those, same as the other 20 people I will be invited, now if you are sure here is the contact."

James flopped down a piece of paper in front of him, the contract details were pretty simple, some secrecy, 10-year agreement, and some other basic things, Mike read it over and saw nothing wrong with it, so he signed it immediately.

"Welcome to one gaming Mike"

James said while shaking Mike's hand, with the biggest grin on his face.

"Now that you are officially part of the company, follow me, I will be showing you an exercise to help you reach the first Realm of Refinement, I will also be giving you 10 S-grade Nutrient fluids, take one each day"

Mike grew more excited by the minute, not only was he going to become a better blacksmith by doing this exercise, but he was also given S-grade Nutrient fluids, something that cost 1 million a bottle, and that was only when you could buy it, there was incredibly low supply.

The exercises didn't look complicated to Mike, but what James said after stunned him.

"When you can do these exercises in 1 minute, you will have reached the Refinement Realm, we will proceed then, work hard Mike, I believe in you."

1 minute? He showed them in 10 minutes, and that was already pretty hard for Mike to do, but before he could complain James had already left.

He had gone to the high school nearby, to get Silent voice.