Hyperion Evergrowing - Chapter 114: Ashes

“Who is the football GOAT?”A question that has been asked countless times in the last decade.Is it Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi?To be fair, the question actually depended on what one wanted from a player as they were two different people and they played differently from the other.This was also the case with every other legendary player to grace the game.As a diehard fan of the game, Jason Bolu also had someone he thought to be the goat, but unlike most people, he harbored the desire to not only become as great as them, but even greater than any legend that ever graced the game.He wanted to become the Greatest Of All Legends… the GOAL.Unfortunately, fate has never cared about people’s hopes and dreams, and just like every other unfortunate human, she hit him hard across the face with a broken reality and sent him flying in another direction from his goal, yet he didn’t give up and continually persevered but, in the end, he didn’t ever make it.He wasn’t even halfway near his goal.He thought it was over… but it wasn’t.He got another chance at his dreams, and this time he was going to do more than his best to achieve his dream.

Welcome to Hell’s Game.[Entering instance: Bloody Restaurant][The position you applied for: Delivery Person][Your customers include: a fat otaku emitting a corpse stench, a maid who bursts at the slightest disagreement...][Your colleagues include: A boss who's too pretty to be human, A cow or a horse in the literal sense, a man-eating tree that swears in French...]Facing these incredible characters, Liu Zheng, who wanted to be a decent person, had no choice but to give up on humanity.

Humanity achieved dominion over the galaxy long ago.Once that was accomplished, they turned their ingenuity inwards. With their prowess over biological engineering, they transformed themselves into deific beings now called the Gene Tyrants. For centuries, the Gene Tyrants terrorized the galaxy, designing and abusing their genetically engineered servants and serfs as their whims took them.No tyranny can last forever, though, and the Gene Tyrants were eventually overthrown. The rebels discovered a strange light of the mind called Aether, which gave them the strange and fantastical powers they needed to eradicate their creators. Once that was done, however, that by no means meant peace.In the thousand years since, the face of the galaxy has changed. The most powerful human civilization is called the Supremacy, the homeland of 'might makes right'. In the Supremacy, a crime committed by the strong is no crime at all. With their military strength and mastery of Aether, the Supremacy has spread across the galaxy -- with the other powers able to do little but stall their advance. This struggle has developed into a cold war, and that cold war has frozen over for years now.Dragan Hadrien, a low-level administrator in the Supremacy, cares nothing for any of this. Dragan's primary concern is getting himself a promotion and taking it easy for the rest of his days. When a mysterious prisoner is brought aboard his ship, he thinks he has found the means to do just that.How naive of him.

Following the death of his popular online persona, seventeen-year-old Suzuki Mato decides it's time to retire from professional VR gaming. However, his plans are abruptly cut short when he's kidnapped from his high school and forced to be a guinea pig for Genaco Gaming, the world's largest esports and entertainment company. Armed with nothing but his wit and a new online persona, he's thrown headfirst into the virtual reality of “Live No Evil,” a VRMMORPG littered with overpowered bosses, secretive NPCs, and backstabbing gods. His mission? Find a way to conquer this new world and get back at the company that took over his life, all while avoiding 'Parallel' -- a condition that would make it impossible to separate his real and virtual personalities. Because in a world obsessed with VR gaming, Parallel means death, and Suzuki just doesn't have time for that...