"Here, eat this!" exclaimed Olivier in front of his screen as he played his favorite game, Dragon ball Xenoverse 2. He watched his OC character, destroy his opponent, Mira, in his final form with his one of hi favorite attack, Stardust Breaker. The technique charged a sphere of multicolored energy with his hand before launching it towards his opponent, after a second, he got evapored.
"Still so stylish... even though it's still unplayable. Why is it so slow? It's like they don't like Gogeta," grumbled Olivier as he closed the game with a dejected air. He glanced at the time on his computer and realized that it was already 1 PM. Looking out his window, he realized that he hadn't opened his shutters for days and time had flown by once again. His gaze then turned to his closet. "Damn, I hope it'll work out this time," he said, getting up to dress in his suit for his job interview.
During the ride, he reminisced about his life, which had become monotonous day after day. Sleep, play, eat, and then repeat. Eventually, the only reason that made him leave his house was for work or when he needed to buy food.
After studying programming for seven years and earning his master's degree with difficulty, he found it challenging to secure a job in the IT industry. Despite lacking the necessary programming skills, he believed he could assist older individuals in using a computer. However, his plans didn't materialize, and he was unable to secure any job that wasn't at a fast-food restaurant. For three years, he survived on a string of unsuccessful job interviews while working as a burger flipper. His only solace was playing his favorite game, "Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2."
Olivier loved the game because it was easily accessible, affordable, and included all the techniques and attacks from Dragon Ball. Most importantly, it was easily modifiable.
For example, he had modded his game to allow him to play as a female member of Frieza's race, even though the game prevented him from doing so.
He also added a mod that allowed him to access all the techniques in the game with a single click and modified Vegeto's soul to maximize all his character's stats. He found it amusing to watch a meter rise off the chart as it reached the maximum HP that the game could display.
If he wanted something that wasn't possible, he would use a mod, and if the mod didn't exist, he would create it himself. This allowed him to create his favorite original character, Glacia.
However, his modding frenzy had left him in solitude. He couldn't play with other players as he was afraid of getting into trouble and being banned from the game for cheating. Plus though he enjoyed mercilessly destroying AI, he did not want to ruin other players' experience.
As he sat on the bus, with music playing in his ears and lost in thought,, he noticed a passerby staring at him. "28 years old and nothing has changed... Why is it so hard to find a simple IT job?" he murmured to himself, feeling frustrated and defeated. "Yeah, yeah, I know..." he thought as he caught the passerby's judgmental look.
After traveling for an hour on public transportation, he arrived at the interview location. He tried to remain optimistic and hopeful as he entered the building, hoping that this job interview would be the one to finally break his streak of bad luck.
Unfortunately, the interview didn't go as planned, and he was rejected once again. He felt defeated and disappointed as he made his way back home, the holidays almost over, already feeling the weight of his next shift at the fast-food restaurant.
Once home, he didn't have the courage to cook for himself and instead reheated his leftover pasta from the previous day. As he ate, he checked his emails, including his spam folder, to see if any important messages had landed there by accident. He didn't check for days after all.
He was surprised to find an email with the subject line "Live your new life with Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3" from a sender called "chaos ".
Upon opening it, he was doubly surprised because while the title was strange, the rest was equally so. "Congratulations, you have been selected to participate in the closed beta of the sequel to your favorite game, "Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3". Here is your key to install the game on the Steam platform: QWCL7-CCYJA-HM024. Note that you will be able to import your character from Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2. Thank you again for your support and we wish you a good life with this new start! C"
Olivier read the email multiple times, but there was nothing more to it, not even a game image or any suspicious link, just à number '302/10000' in the right corner. The sender's name is suspicious, "chaos ," which he believed was a name that a 14-year-old would come up with to troll and give away invalid Steam codes to strangers.
He was initially skeptical but decided to play along and see what happened.
He opened Steam and added the code. To his surprise, the key was valid and was named New Start. The game was only 500 MB, so he quickly downloaded it without paying attention to its name and launched the game.
A simple message appeared on the screen: "Are you ready to live your new life? YES | NO." He clicked "YES."
"Choose your character," appeared in front of his widened eyes. He saw his various characters that he had created in Xenoverse 2. "What? But that's impossible! How did they do that? This game isn't even official, it's just an troll game!" he worried. But the excitement of playing his favorite OC quickly drowned out his caution, and he selected "Glacia" by pressing the "OK" button.
He felt a strange sensation in his body, like something was taking over him. He watched in horror as his skin started to melt, and he was wracked with pain. The room around him began to shake, and he could see objects levitating. He screamed in agony, but it was no use. The last thing he saw was a bright light before he slipped into unconsciousness.
/
Olivier slowly woke up, scrutinizing his surroundings with confusion. He was in a bathroom, but he didn't recognize the decor. Rubble and debris littered the floor; everything was a mess. But what struck him the most was the enormous hole above, tearing the ceiling to pieces. A large wall mirror was cracked but miraculously survived what appeared to be an explosion.
As he tried to get up, Olivier noticed that his right hand was bright white. Glancing quickly at his arm, he saw that his entire skin was white and adorned with a purple gem on his right shoulder. He glanced to his left and realized that his other arm was also white, with another gem on the shoulder. Even his body was white, with rounder shapes on his chest. Touching these shapes, he realized he had breasts.
"Why do I have breasts?" he murmured, surprised by his own high-pitched voice. He turned to the mirror and observed the shape in front of him despite the cracks. It was the shape of Glacia, his original character inspired by Freezer in his final form. "What the...?" he stuttered, unable to understand what was happening.
After a moment of panic, he realized it might be a lucid dream. "Cool…I never had one before…wait does this mean I can fly?" he thought. He tried to fly but nothing happened. Looking at his feet, he noticed he only had three toes, like his character."He tried to move them, and they responded as he had imagined. He then remembered his tail and attempted to move it, and it also responded as he desired. "It's just like those isekai stories!" he exclaimed."
He attempted to shoot a laser from his hand, but nothing happened. Olivier grew annoyed as he remembered all of Glacia's incredible abilities. "I am Glacia," he thought to himself. "She can fly, shoot lasers, throw ki balls the size of a building, destroy mountains with a blast, and defeat Mira's final form in just two seconds. I CAN DO THE SAME!" he yelled, raising his hand towards the mountain he could see through the still intact window. A ball of light emerged from his hand, passed through the window, and shot towards the mountain at an incredible speed."
After a moment of silence that felt like hours, he saw a gigantic light in front of him. Surprisingly, he could look at it without any problem. Then all his thoughts stopped when he heard the explosion followed shortly after by a gigantic gust of wind that pushed him back. He tried to resist but felt nothing anymore, as if he had become an immobile wall while everything around him overturned.
It all lasted only a few seconds, and Olivier didn't have time to understand what had just happened. The only thing he felt at that moment was excitement as he looked through what was left of the window. The mountain had disappeared, replaced by a crater still partially hidden by the dust from the explosion.
But something he hadn't thought to hear during a dream happened. Panic screams and car alarms sounded all around him, and he could hear everything perfectly.
"This is not normal, it shouldn't be doing that," he murmured.
Over time, he remained motionless, watching the crater become more and more visible while listening to the screams, car alarms, and sounds of rescue, and surely of the police, mixing with the city siren normally used to warn of bombings in case of excitement slowly faded away, giving way to anxiety, and then very quickly to fear as he realized what he had just done.
"No no, this is not possible, it's all just a dream, NO, a nightmare. I'm in my bed and I'm going to wake up and everything will go back to normal," he repeated, trying to reassure himself.
He gave himself a violent punch to the face, but only felt the pain on his left cheek.
"No no, this is not normal, none of this is normal," he started to curl up on his knees, surrounded by rubble, and he began to cry for long minutes until he began to feel himself drifting away. Just before falling asleep, the only thought he had was that all of this was just a dream, and he would soon wake up. He let himself go, filled with hope.
Hello everyone, I hope this intro intrigued you to see more. This is my first fanfiction ever, and I'm not a native English speaker, so I hope I didn't mess up too much with this arc. I really enjoyed creating it, and the rest seems just as fun, so stay tuned everyone.