1 1. Return To The Past.

From 2019 to the current year, 2305 humanity has suffered under many pandemics.

X-273 is the most recent outbreak that had occurred at the start of the year due to an asteroid crash in the middle of the Himalayan Mountain Range in no man's land.

But its contents, which were somewhat harmful to the human body, have already mixed with the air in the atmosphere.

Although the outbreak caused slight unrest among the masses, in the beginning, it was already under control with the help of advanced technology.

Due to its fragmentation after entering the vicinity of Earth, some small chunks of the asteroid have hit the radius of almost all of Asia.

After the establishment of the Union Government in 2100, such events were taken at a Worldwide scale.

Almost all cases of X-273 are already dealt with, but it's been almost 5 months since the outbreak and some cases are at the death door.

A small number, approximately 1300, but due to insufficient treatment in the beginning phase, this is inevitable.

Sunny is one such individual.

~~~~

'Ahh, it feels like my time has come.'

Thought Sunny as he looked at the hospital room ceiling. The last months had been agonizing for him as he endured the suffering from X-273 in hopes of returning to his former average life.

'If I knew that I would eventually die I would have given up long ago.' *sigh*

He slowly felt his death looming closer. His body was feeling incredibly heavy like someone had placed him in a 20g Gravity room.

He slowly closed his eyes as death embraced him. His vision turned abyss dark, his thought process stopped like a completely comatose state.

Abruptly, he jerked up in shock as his body started to greedily absorb air while making wheezing sounds.

His brain was in a mess and he couldn't think properly. All he could do for 15 minutes was to breathe erratically while twitching all over.

After some while, he calmed down enough to think about the current situation.

He started looking around as he found the room he was in seemed very familiar. This is the room he was staying in after moving to UG-IDH-02 city.

UG stands for Union Government while IDH goes for India-Hindustan. After the establishment of UG, every country's name was changed to 3 letters which is taken from their previous name.

This city is the 2nd ranked city in IDH with good living conditions, an opportunity for a job, growth, etc., It is also known as the Money hub of IDH.

Sunny moved into an average residential zone. With the rent of 3000 UGC(Union Government Credit) and around 2000 UGC monthly expenses, his life in this period was pretty good.

He remembered doing the job for 7 years in a Social Media company as a programmer with a starting salary of 15k UGC per month. In his later years that increased to 40k UGC.

Being an orphan his expenses never exceeded 10k UGC in a month. His materialistic needs were minimal.

He saved around 1 million UGC, but all his savings were spent on his treatment. He stayed in this apartment for 7 years, because of good neighbors and the landlord.

Sunny was still confused about the situation. He clearly remembers dying in the hospital bed.

He started checking his body and noticed his body is somewhat unfamiliar at the same time familiar. He looked around the room carefully and noticed that his Laptop that he bought after 2 years into the job isn't there in his room.

He felt some doubts that he didn't quite believe.

He checked his HoloWatch which was also an older model and after checking the date that stated 25th Dec 2299 8:30 Pm, he was shell-shocked. He was back in time approx. 5 years.

Now he understood his slight unfamiliarity with his body which is also 5 years younger and not the sick or weak one he was used to.

He flops down in his bed as he feels more tired mentally now with all the events. It's unbelievable that he returned back in time after dying.

Sunny closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm down and sort out his bearings. It took him around another 10min. to somewhat accept his situation.

'Ok, I am back in time somehow so I can at least avoid getting infected this time around. Don't wanna go through that torment again. And have to find some ways to earn more money.

'If I had more money I would have at least received treatment in VIP VRpod exclusive for some rich people. Then I didn't have to feel that much torment. Sure, I don't need treatment this time around but it's better to be safe than sorry.'

But what can he do to achieve this goal, he is just a high school graduate from a government school. His school is fully reserved for orphans as per arrangements of UG.

Dormitory, food, everything is available in this type of school and any limited need is provided till one is at least 18 years old.

He started brainstorming about what he is good at and what opportunities he can achieve with his future knowledge.

*Ding~* As he was thinking, he heard a notification from his watch.

_The VRGaming Company CreativeEx Entertainment(CEE) announced that on 1st Jan 2300 at noon the company's latest creation Virtual World: Pocket Sanctuary(VWPS) will be released. Interested can subscribe to the game and order a VR gaming helmet or pod from the link below or the company forum._

At the bottom of the advertisement, there was a link.

After reading the advertisement there was only one thought in Sunny's head. 'This is it.'

VWPS was a virtual reality game released at the start of the new Century. There were enough VR games before this one was released.

But, CEE would release such games that they would at least dominate the market for 5 years. The company had a history of 100 years. And this company takes at least 10 years to develop and create a game before releasing it.

VWPS was this company's 6th product. And after release, it had been confirmed that VWPS had broken the 98% immersion limit and reached 99%. That was kept as a surprise for the players.

The company had taken another unique step to promote fairness and protect the secrecy of the game by handing all authority to an A.I.

All information about players, specific events launched, complaints, regulations, bug fixing, etc. was handled by it.

It was later revealed that developers also can't intervene in the game much. They can only input some one-time events such as anniversaries, festive events, etc. The game was 95% autonomous.

The CEE was so confident in this game that they collaborated with one of the top social media platforms to launch a VWPS Forum application just for the game.

Sunny has spent most of his free time browsing through this app for entertainment. There was enough opportunity to make it big in this game.

As Sunny was trying to recall good opportunities and events to take advantage of, he noticed that he could recall everything he had seen about the game.

Every important event, famous player names, the adventures that lead some players to receive overnight fame, etc.

To test if this was the case just for the game or not, he tried to recall other events of his last life. To his delight, yes, he can recall almost everything about his last life.

Aside from spending his free time on VWPS Forum, he had also spent a significant amount of effort on grinding his programming skills.

Thousands of free lectures set questions on the web, tens of code events, etc. He can recall almost everything he did, saw, or had heard in his last life.

Sunny was overjoyed and excited after knowing this.

After that, Sunny visited the company forum through the link below the advertisement.

First, he ordered a medium quality VRpod and subscribed for the game, so that on the eve of New Year the game will be automatically installed on his pod, as long as there's the QuantumNet Connection.

Yeah, the Internet got upgraded to QuantumNet just before the establishment of UG.

'Now, let's get some priorities straight.

'1. I will have to resign from the job since most of my time will be spent playing and checking the progress of other players.

'Who knows what sort of effect will have on the timeline with the cause of my actions. It's good that today's Christmas, I don't have to report for work today. *chuckles*

'2. I need to get myself in better shape. For that, I will need a quality nutrition package for the VRpod.

'Also, a suitable training schedule so that I can remain fit, after all my virtual Avatar will be an exact copy of my real body. The better my real body will be, the better my virtual Avatar would be. So finding a good gym is a must.

'3. After ordering the pod and by taking the amount needed for C-Quality Nutrient Solution (QNS), I will be spending most of my 2 years saving. I will only be able to sustain myself for 1 month. So I need to at least make a small fortune in the 1st week of the game.

'This much will do. Now, let's have dinner and after a good night's rest we can start a brand new future.'

After that Sunny went to freshen up in the washroom and then to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

During dinner, he relished being able to taste homemade food, after having to eat bland food in hospital for 5 months.

Thereafter he did the dishes and then went to sleep.

He quickly fell asleep as he was incredibly tired after experiencing death and the rebirth event.