In this volume, we follow the first steps of Ethan Cole, a young developer trapped inside a virtual reality as breathtaking as it is merciless.
With the boundary between game and real life shattered, every battle becomes a fight for survival, and every level cleared, a fragile breath of life.
He must evolve fast, forge alliances, and learn to control the fire burning within his chest.
All in pursuit of a single goal:
TO GO BACK HOME
When the world becomes a prison, courage becomes the only key.
WELCOME TO YOUR NEW LIFE.WE HOPE YOU SURVIVE.
Legal Notice
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, companies, technologies, or events mentioned are used purely for narrative purposes.Any resemblance to real-life events or individuals is purely coincidental.
© 2025 Kousei ZionAll rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1
The New Era of Neuralink
"When the body fails, the mind can still walk.What we did was simply open the door."— Elon Musk, in his final public conference on Neuralink
The year was 2042.
The world was no longer the one Elon Musk had known in his youth. Skyscrapers now curved into organic shapes, drones sliced through the sky like metallic schools of fish, and massive holographic advertisements competed for space with suspended gardens and solar panels.
But the true revolution was not on the streets.
It was inside people's heads.
Neuralink, which decades earlier had begun as a risky experiment to restore movement to paralyzed patients, had become the axis of a new era. Newspapers called it "The Second Human Renaissance."
To Elon, it was simply the end of a cycle.
He observed it all from a glass-enclosed balcony at his home near Boca Chica, Texas, where the first Starship prototypes had once launched. Now, from that same spot, an entire complex of launchpads, silos, and landing strips stretched into the distance, adapted for spacecraft that came and went from orbit like commercial airliners of a bygone age.
Reflected in the glass stood an elderly man with gray hair and a face shaped by time.
The eyes, however, remained unchanged.
Alert. Curious. Restless.
On the massive screen before him, headlines cycled in silence:
"Blind patient regains sight with next-generation neural visual prosthesis."
"Quadriplegic patients achieve digital independence in persistent virtual worlds."
"Neural auditory interface allows deaf individuals to hear music for the first time."
"New Neuralink protocols stabilize severe cases of treatment-resistant depression."
Elon turned up the volume.
Sight, Restored
The first report showed a woman in her early thirties sitting before an open window. The wind gently stirred her dark hair. Beside her, a doctor smiled while holding a tablet.
"Please describe what you're seeing," he asked.
Her eyes were slightly red, not from illness, but from emotion. Small metallic implants lined her temples, connected by fine sensors that ran to the base of her skull, where the Neuralink module fused with the bone almost invisibly.
She took a deep breath.
"Light…" she whispered. "There's light everywhere."
A tear rolled down her face.
"The sky… it's blue. A blue I could only imagine. And the trees… I didn't know green had so many shades."
The camera zoomed in, capturing every tremor, every fractured smile.
"I spent twenty-seven years in darkness," she continued. "Now it feels like the entire world has been uploaded into my mind."
The reporter explained in voice-over that neural ocular globes were not real eyes, but sensors that captured light and depth, converting them into signals sent directly to the brain.
It wasn't the same as natural sight.
But for her, it was more than enough to be called a miracle.
Elon watched in silence, hands clasped behind his back. He remembered every meeting where he had been called insane. Every headline accusing him of recklessness for wanting to open the human skull and implant chips.
Now, the world called it a cure.
Motionless Bodies, Moving Lives
The next segment showed a hospital.
Or rather, something that had once been a hospital.
Rooms that once held hospital beds had become quiet, orderly spaces where rows of patients rested on full-support systems. Many had bodies weakened by disuse, muscles thin and unmoving.
But the cameras did not focus on paralyzed legs.
They focused on serene faces, eyes closed… and interfaces.
Each patient had a Neuralink module implanted at the base of the skull, connected to systems monitoring heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. Beside each bed, panels displayed something that years earlier would have belonged to science fiction: real-time neural activity translated into graphs and projections of a virtual world.
The image shifted.
On the other side, a vast digital hall appeared. Tables, offices, decorative plants. Avatars talked, walked, laughed. A man in a suit adjusted a pair of glasses he didn't need. A woman pushed a cart, organizing inventory in a virtual store.
The narrator explained:
"For those who can no longer walk, the body has ceased to be a prison.
Inside these therapeutic environments, they work, study, and socialize.
Their income comes from the real world. Life happens in both."
A young woman appeared in an interview, smiling calmly.
"In the physical world, if people look at me, they see someone who can't move anything below the neck. But here…" she spun her avatar, raising her arms "…here, I'm operations manager for a logistics company. I work. I pay my bills. I support my family. I exist. Truly."
Elon looked away for a moment, watching a Starship launch in the distance, carving a line of fire across the sky.
He had spent his life trying to take humanity off the planet.
Without realizing it, he had given it a way to escape its own body.
Silence That Learned to Sing Again
The screen changed once more.
This time, it showed a child.
A boy around ten years old, seated before a real piano. His fingers hesitated over the keys, but his smile filled the room. Nearby, his parents watched, overcome with emotion.
"Can you hear it clearly?" the mother asked.
He nodded without taking his eyes off the instrument.
Beneath his shaved hair, a small implant gleamed, aligned with the auditory nerve. There were no headphones, no speakers, no visible devices.
The reporter explained that neural receivers captured sound frequencies and converted them into impulses transmitted directly to the brain's auditory regions.
The music began.
The first notes filled the room.
The boy closed his eyes.
"Before, everything was… silent," he later said. "I only saw people moving their mouths. I didn't know what a 'good morning' sounded like. Now…" he smiled, "…now I know my mother's voice is the most beautiful thing in the world."
The broadcast cut to headlines:
"Auditory Neuralink replaces conventional hearing aids in severe cases."
"New neural therapy stabilizes emotional patterns in critical patients."
"Predictive neural networks reduce anxiety attacks in real time."
Clinical cases piled up. Studies multiplied. Governments adapted laws and healthcare systems.
Neuralink had ceased to be a controversial billionaire's chip.
It had become basic human infrastructure.
A Lifetime of Projects
The broadcast returned to the studio.
"Can we say this is Elon Musk's greatest legacy?" a journalist asked, as archival footage played.
The screen showed Falcon rockets landing vertically, electric cars racing along highways, spacecraft circling the Moon, the first colony on Mars rising as glowing domes in the red desert.
The image froze on a younger Elon, smiling beside an early prototype.
Then, the present.
Seated in a simple studio used only for rare recordings, Elon seemed smaller beneath the weight of the years. Wrinkles traced his face, but his voice still carried the same restrained enthusiasm.
"I never thought about legacy," he said. "I always thought about solving problems."
He paused.
"Neuralink was born for that. Not to make the world more entertaining, but to return what the body took from some people. Movement. Sight. Hearing. Emotional balance. A chance."
The interviewer pressed on.
"And now that the technology is used everywhere? From medicine to remote work, from therapy to space exploration… do you feel satisfied?"
Elon chuckled softly.
"Satisfied isn't quite the word. When you deal with something as fundamental as the human mind, you can never say 'done.'"
He leaned forward.
"What we did was open a door. What humanity does after crossing it… that's no longer just up to me."
The interview ended with images of the night sky.
A small light crossed the darkness toward Mars.
Officially retired, Elon maintained only a consultative role in a few projects. In the mornings, he followed broadcasts from the Martian colony. In the afternoons, reports from clinics using Neuralink to restore senses and balance.
Deep down, he knew the two were connected.
Sending bodies to another planet.
Connecting minds to other worlds.
They were variations of the same question: how far can humanity go?
When Healing Meets Desire
Over time, something inevitable happened.
What began as a medical tool drew the attention of other sectors. Education companies built immersive classrooms. Architects designed buildings inside neural simulations. Space agencies trained astronauts in extreme scenarios without real risk.
And slowly, a whisper grew:
"If we can create therapeutic worlds…
why not entire worlds for pleasure?"
Gamers, film studios, and developers began looking at Neuralink with a different gleam in their eyes.
It was no longer just about healing.
It was about feeling.
Feeling the wind atop a mountain that never existed.
The weight of a sword never forged.
The heat of magic.
The impact of a punch.
The thrill of music played for thousands of avatars.
The first experiences were modest. Simple games. Social spaces. Virtual theme parks.
But none of them were complete.
Immersion still had limits. Interfaces still filtered the experience.
Until one company decided to go further.
Led by a man with an ambitious gaze and a controlled smile, Victor Stahl created a project that didn't just want to use Neuralink.
It wanted to become the first fully human world beyond Earth.
The name had not yet been announced.
Elon watched from afar, reviewing reports and technical presentations. The medical phase was solid. Protocols had been tested exhaustively.
He knew that sooner or later, someone would push the technology into the definitive realm of entertainment.
He just didn't imagine how dangerously close it would bring healing and risk.
From the balcony, he watched another Starship rise into the sky.
At the same time, in dozens of studios around the world, artists, programmers, and designers connected to neural consoles were creating luminous forests, crystal cities, data dragons, and deserts of code.
A new world was being born.
And soon, it would have a name.
But that part of the story would begin elsewhere.
In a city filled with LED panels, holograms, and drones, before a massive crowd.
San Francisco.