บท 4: Rebirth

[ 14th June, 2111 , Earth]

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Max was sitting on the edge of his bed, feeling his racing heartbeat as he heard his old mobile phone buzz in his pockets.

[ Sophie calling ]

His heartbeat quickened for a second to see that name before returning to normal as his eyes turned cold.

' That's right , I'm still dating that bitch at this point in time '.

It was his ex-girlfriend, the girl who completely manipulated and destroyed Max's confidence in his past life and one of the biggest reasons for his downfall.

Max cut the call off without a care as a small flashback reminded him of the painful past.

He had started dating Sophie when he was just 17, while Sophie at the time was much older at 22.

Their relationship lasted over 9 months and the duo did spend a lot of time together as Sophie slowly manipulated Max into believing that his brother was actually holding him back and how he needed to ditch his family to grow truly strong unobstructed.

She promised him that the two of them would never separate no matter what and that she loved him truly with all her heart, however it was all but an ugly façade and a conceited lie.

While he was the Earth's chosen one, she used to fill his ears with sweet words and make him feel like a king, until the day he finally fell from grace as that was the day she coldly left him for a better prospect.

Max distinctly remembered coming back home dejected from losing the fight against the 'A' rated prospect Benedict Divinorum, only to find Sophie passionately kissing the guy in their own bed without a care for the watching Max.

Benedict acknowledged his presence as he said " Yo, looser, your bitch is mine now " , while although Sophie looked at him, her eyes were cold as if they were disgusted upon seeing him.

Sophie pulled Benedict in for an even more passionate kiss as she did not even spare Max a second glance, much less a reason for breakup.

Since that day Max had hated the both of them deeply, however while Max kept falling down hitting new lows in his life and career, Benedict kept rising higher and higher becoming a star of humanity's younger generation.

For Max to see his rise was painful, however looking back at it now he had an odd satisfaction to know that it had not yet happened in this timeline and this time around he would have the chance to ditch Sophie instead of things happening the other way around.

There were a lot of wrongs that Max had to correct in this life, and the two of them were not even his most serious offenders. In Fact the two of them were so insignificant compared to the grander goals Max had to achieve in this life that they could be ignored completely.

Once this thought came into Max's rational mind something in the other part of his dark mind snapped as Max gritted his teeth and said " NO! ".

" I have grander goals to achieve and I can't afford to be petty, but I will not spare those who have wronged me in the past.

This time I will return all the debts past and present fairly.

Kindness tenfold.

Betrayal a thousand fold!"

Max stood up and looked at himself in the mirror.

Max had almost forgotten that he once had this incredibly lean and muscular body that seemed like it was sculpted by a renaissance artist.

" Handsome " Max said as he looked at himself with a smile.

It was only now that he could truly understand the true worth of good looks, as when he lost his natural charisma and looks there was a serious loss in his self confidence as well.

Although looks were not everything, good looks definitely made one feel more confident.

Max looked at the green winged angel amulet on his neck as he clutched it tightly and closed his eyes, the three images shown by Hazriel imprinted in HD in his mind.

As his emotions from experiencing rebirth finally calmed down, Max got a moment's clarity as to what he needed to accomplish urgently and how he was to choose the immediate path ahead.

Sitting down with a paper and pen since he did not trust digital devices anymore, Max started to scribble down furiously all the important memories of his past life, lest it become hazy later on.

For two hours he wrote and wrote about all the important characters, all the important information and all the big events that were to happen and when they were going to happen and once he was done he formulated the first phase of his plan to rise to the top.

Since he had no idea as to where to find the weapon or the woman that Hazriel showed him, Max needed to first find a way to collect information on these things before actually pursuing them which meant for now he was on his own.

During his past life Max had not heard about the ' Grand University for Nourishment of Young Talents' until he turned 19 and was over the age limit for enrolment.

The university was a wonderful place to learn and grow in a protected environment and the biggest advantage of enrolling into that University was that upon graduation he could keep his assessment by the Universal Queen a secret.

He could learn from the best professors with the best resources and an extensive information library at his disposal, while at the end managing to avoid the public humiliation he faced in his past life when the queen graded him as an ' F ' rated manaless trash.

Unlike the tutorial game Omega where one could choose their own class from the start and there was no individuality rating, in the Universal game Sigma when an individual reached level 30 they were assessed by the universal queen and given a rating ranging from F to SSS.

The rating was extremely important as only certain job classes were available for those with a low rating to choose as career paths and only with a high rating could one have the unique class paths to choose and have an edge over the masses.

For Max who was rated ' F ', he only had five options that included foot soldier and street sweeper as it's most lucrative two choices. It was due to this that Max had to choose the foot soldier class and face the humiliation of the world and the start of his downfall.

Although Max could not alter his manaless state yet and hence not improve his assessment by the queen, instead of going through the ceremony in the open human association testing sites where his results would be shown to the world, at least in the University they would be kept private sparing him his dignity.

The enrolment criteria for the university was simple.

Individuals of any race could enrol into the university as long as they belonged to the light faction.

There was no admission test and anyone who could afford the fees could be enrolled.

The individual needed to be under the race's maturity age rating, which for humans was 18 years of age.

Max fulfilled all these criteria, however the problem was that the fees to enrol in the university was exorbitant at a whopping 1 million universal gold a semester.

To put that number into perspective, Max's one year's salary in his government job in his past life was 25,000 universal gold a year and at the initial stages of the first awakening maybe the entire human race combined would not possess the 1 million gold required for him to enrol.

With Max's birthday fast approaching in August he had about 45 days to gather the required money and enrol before the semester began.

For a normal human this would have been an impossible feat to achieve however thankfully Max was a regressor! Armed with the knowledge of the future he knew the perfect way to make the money he needed to pay his fees for the university, but he needed to act on it quickly as today was the last day of the tutorial.

Excited Max quickly found his old VR POD and logged into the tutorial game Omega for one last time.