The air in the underground chamber was cold and sterile, humming faintly with the low vibration of running machinery. LCD screens lined every wall, bathing the room in a soft, shifting glow. Each screen displayed a different live feed—grainy footage of black-uniformed soldiers storming through various city buildings. Their weapons were raised, movements sharp and aggressive. Drones hovered above them, scanning, locking targets, directing the invasion in real-time.
Amidst the flickering glow stood a lone figure.
A man—tall, youthful, composed. His hair shimmered in ever-shifting colors, glowing faintly like strands of fiber-optic light. Red. Gold. Cyan. Indigo. The hues pulsed with a rhythm not quite natural, like something alive—or something remembered from the distant edge of a dream.
He stood with hands folded behind his back, eyes fixed on the largest screen.
"They've come sooner than expected," he muttered to himself. His voice was calm. Not without emotion, but resigned.
He sighed deeply, his gaze distant now.
How did it come to this? he thought.
His mind drifted backward, peeling through memories like pages of an old, brittle book.
The world above was no longer the Earth he had been born into. It was a corpse—polluted skies where birds no longer flew, oceans where no fish swam, forests reduced to barren dust. People couldn't even breathe the air without oxygen masks, and the wildlife that once filled children's books had vanished entirely. The beauty of nature remained only in archived videos and dusty literature, things now viewed as fantasy.
Despair had settled into the bones of humanity.
Until virtual reality had offered an escape.
It began with immersive VRMMORPGs—games that mimicked sensation, offered adventure, fantasy, and the illusion of freedom. People flocked to them in droves, trading the dying real world for vivid digital realms. But even those, despite their marvels, lacked something. They could not simulate everything.
But then came the breakthrough: the Soul Dive interface. A new era dawned with the invention of the Soul Dive MMORPG—games that interfaced directly with the human soul. In these worlds, every sensation—taste, touch, pain, emotion—was real. Perfectly real.
And at the center of that revolution stood him.
A genius, the world called him. A madman, some whispered.
He had created the next evolutionary leap: the Soul World DIVE MMORPG—SWDMMORPG. A world powered not by mere code or computation, but by something more profound. He had named it Soul World Online, or simply SWO.
In this universe, he built not a hero, but a god—his avatar: the World Tree, YGGDRASIL. It stood alone in an infinite void, a colossal entity of otherworldly majesty. But unlike the mythic trees of old with bark of brown and leaves of green, YGGDRASIL was a cosmic anomaly. Its trunk and branches were obsidian black, etched with specks of shimmering white, resembling the night sky. Each bough seemed to contain entire galaxies—planes of existence folded into their very fibers.
These branches housed vast realms. Some were barren, crawling with grotesque beasts born of entropy. Others thrived with civilizations—elven forests, floating citadels, desert empires, and arcane academies. Each plane a testament to imagination made manifest.
Its leaves were jewels of light, glowing in every conceivable color, ever-shifting. Each leaf had a singular purpose: to create energy and matter. They created soul energy, matter, and mana—three pillars that sustained the soul world. Well that's how the game lore goes.
He didn't just code a game.
He created a functioning metaphysical ecosystem.
Each plane obeyed consistent laws of soul physics—laws he had painstakingly designed.
But the true miracle wasn't in the game.
It was in what came after.
As my character YGGDRASIL reached level 100 within the game, subtle changes began to ripple through my physical body. At first, I barely noticed them—just a faint glow in my hair that danced through various colors like bioluminescent strands. I dismissed it as a trick of the light or perhaps a psychosomatic response to prolonged immersion.
But after crossing level 110, the changes became undeniable.
My dependence on basic human needs—food, water, even air—began to diminish. I could go hours, then days, without sustenance. Breathing became optional in some strange way. My senses sharpened. My presence felt... different. Not just to me, but to others around me. Something fundamental in my biology was shifting.
Panic gripped me at first. I ran countless diagnostics, both on myself and on the game's framework. The results were both thrilling and terrifying.
The world I had created—this soul world—was more than just a digital simulation. It wasn't bound by traditional computational limits. The systems and rules I had programmed were so complete, so logically and metaphysically coherent, that they had begun to operate as a genuine plane of existence. A soul world, not just in name but in truth. It was as if I had unknowingly opened a gateway to a parallel reality—one with its own laws, its own energy, its own evolution.
And as I leveled up within that world, accumulating vast amounts of soul energy and aligning more and more with its internal rules, those changes began to bleed into my real body. I had become a conduit between two realities.
It dawned on me then: if the connection continued to deepen, the soul world might eventually begin to merge with the real world—slowly rewriting the laws of physics, biology, and matter itself.
I ran projections and simulations. For ordinary players, this transformation wouldn't begin until they reached at least level 1000. At that point, their connection to the soul world would become strong enough to initiate physical changes. Until then, they remained safely insulated from its deeper effects.
At first, I was elated. I had stumbled upon something beyond imagination—a tool, a pathway to perhaps save our decaying world. If enough players could cross the threshold, maybe the real world could be overwritten, renewed by the laws of a higher, purer realm.
But my excitement was short-lived.
I soon discovered a painful limitation: due to the fundamental differences between the two worlds, I couldn't simply become a godlike being as seen in manga or comic books. The soul world's laws were strict, balanced, and resistant to sudden, unnatural amplification. Even though I was its creator, the world no longer bent easily to my will.
I attempted to rewrite the system's rules to make the transformation smoother, to bridge the gap between realities. But the simulation became unstable. I ran tests and saw entire worlds collapse in seconds. The very foundation of Soul World Online was fragile—interconnected in ways even I hadn't anticipated. One wrong change, and everything would be lost.
I wasn't confident enough to repeat the miracle of its creation.
At first, I considered keeping the truth hidden. It was safer that way. But eventually, I realized I couldn't do this alone. If I ever wanted to change the real world—to heal it—I needed more people. More players. More souls resonating with the soul world.
So I made my decision. I doubled down and let the game grow. I allowed more players in, encouraged deeper immersion. The soul world expanded. The number of high-level players slowly increased.
At first, those who claimed to feel stronger or more alive were laughed at—dismissed as delusional fanatics. But as the number of reports grew, skepticism gave way to curiosity... and then to fear.
Governments took notice.
They began monitoring the game more closely. Quiet investigations turned into raids. And soon, they learned the truth—that people weren't just escaping into the game... they were changing because of it.