1 Prologue: The End and the Beginning

One would say that it was an expected outcome the day humanity finally managed to destroy the world as it was known. Some would even call it Karma, given the events that led to it.

Greed had slowly but surely corrupted most of the human population until, finally, one top-secret experiment managed to break into an alternate dimension where the hit RPG named 'Greed's Decree' had taken on a life of its own, and the gameworld easily bled over and enveloped reality.

The game itself was initially created as a social experiment to try and determine the effects of greed on a much more manageable scale, but the promise of riches that came with it soon caused the experiment to extend worldwide as the world's population rushed to try and be the one's to find the next best item or to best the newest, strongest monster.

Sadly enough, as in everything, the rich became richer, and the poor stuck around with the vain hope that the next item they received would earn them millions as they slowly lost it all.

The day the scientists broke through the wall was the day that the levels of society changed completely.

Those that played Greed's Decree didn't have the benefit of simply stepping into their in-game avatars at max-level, and they had to raise their levels once more along with the rest of humanity. Everyone started on an equal footing, or that was what they believed.

Many years later, they would find out the truth: The system of the game had simply made use of human nature as it slowly dug its claws into reality.

Dungeons and monsters appeared, and the poor made full use of each stream they'd ever watched in envy to make sure that they got to the gear first while the rich scrambled to try and protect their assets against any individuals that they'd once slighted.

It wasn't hard to imagine what some people would do the day they finally received the power to fight back…and many did, but it didn't take long for someone stronger to try and yank everything back into a resemblance of order as players were forced to register the job they received.

It worked for a time, but the system of Greed's Decree was careful as it slowly enticed players with more and more riches, and as each monster fell, stronger monsters would appear.

Most believed that the system only wanted to make humanity stronger, but it was only setting it up to be its own destruction.

The last to fall was a young man named Hibiki Kaneko, whose useless job of Psychic turned out to have the most underrated abilities in Greed's Decree, "I'm going to die anyway, so let's play a game…"

It was time for humanity to receive a second chance.