Chapter 1: Beginning

[Welcome Players to Heaven’s Realm!]

A voice echoed in the space, entering Julius’s ears who snapped his eyes open and saw that he was in a world of white with people who are just as confused as him.

"Where the heck am I?" Julius muttered under his breath. There seems to be a lot of them in this weird location, more than a hundred, or maybe more than that.

Seconds later, the ground shook, causing him to lose his balance temporarily but he managed to steady his footing before he could embarrass himself on the blinding white floor.

All around him, gasps and curses broke out as hundreds of people stumbled, flailing for balance. Before anyone could demand answers, a deafening mechanical grind tore through the silence.

Right in front of the crowd, the seamless white ground cracked open.

A colossal rectangular wall began to rise from the depths. It moved with terrifying speed, displacing air that whipped against their clothes and hair, groaning with immense weight as it shot upward toward the infinite ceiling.

Fifty meters. Seventy meters.

Higher and higher it climbed until it finally locked into place with a bone-rattling thud that echoed into eternity, stopping the exact moment it reached a height of one hundred meters.

The crowd fell dead silent, craning their necks up at the sheer scale of the monolith.

Then, with a low electric hum, the obsidian surface flickered to life, like a screen.

Lines of sharp, blood-red light cascaded across the colossal display, sweeping away the darkness before snapping into bold, glowing text that hovered high above the five hundred souls below:

[HEAVEN’S APOCALYPTIC TRIALS: SURVIVOR SELECTION]

[Current Candidates: 500/500]

[Objective: Be the Sole Survivor]

[Reward: True Resurrection in the Original World]

A ripple of panicked murmurs broke out instantly.

"Is this some kind of sick prank?" someone yelled from the back.

"I was hit by a truck... I’m supposed to be dead!" a woman shrieked, clutching her head.

Wait, how did he get here in the first place? He recalled his memories and remembered that he was at his deathbed, with his mother clutching his hands as she looked at him, his little sister, and his friends crying beside him while the steady beep of the heart monitor stretched into one long, merciless flatline.

He was dead. Cancer had rotted him from the inside out until he couldn’t even draw breath.

Yet here he stood, breathing with lungs that felt brand new, on two legs that had withered away months ago.

Whatever this thing is, it felt so real and alive.

The obsidian screen let out another resonant pulse, shaking Julius out of his spiral. The blood-red text dissolved, replaced by a fresh barrage of information that seared itself onto the monolith.

[TRIAL PARAMETERS]

[1. All 500 Candidates will be deployed to Alternate Earth—a mirror world identical to your home planet.]

[2. A grace period of TWO YEARS will be granted upon arrival.]

[3. At the end of 730 days, the Calamities will commence in phases.]

[4. Only the final living Candidate will earn True Resurrection and return to their original life, and one wish.]

[5. Each candidate will be able to choose their own talents or powers to aid their survival.]

[6. A pool of exactly 500 unique talents is available. Selection is strictly first come, first served.]

A sharp, collective hum vibrated through the air, and five hundred rectangular holographic interfaces flickered into existence simultaneously, snapping open directly in front of each contestant.

Julius widened his eyes as the glowing display hovered inches from his face.

A sprawling catalog of five hundred innate talents filled the screen.

Pyrokinesis, Telekinesis, Cryokinesis, Electro-manipulation, Osteokinesis, Molecular Decay, Biomatter Absorption, Sonic Shriek, Retrocognition, Echolocation, Electromagnetic Sensing, Pheromone Control, Thermal Vision, and many more...

And as he was reading, some of the talents were already being grayed as players already chose theirs.

Obviously, they’d choose combat skills, but Julius, as a gamer himself, thought of something. The parameters said that it was a calamity, so perhaps, they might prepare for calamities.

"Shit, all of the overpowered powers getting picked off by the other players, I have to choose my own," Julius said.

Each grayed-out line was accompanied by a soft, mocking chime that only served to ratchet up the frantic panic echoing across the endless white void. People were slamming their trembling palms against the floating light panels, shouting in savage triumph whenever a combat talent locked into their soul.

"I got Electrokinesis! Haha, suck it!" someone roared nearby.

"Hydrokinesis! You are all dad bastards!" another screamed through wet tears of adrenaline.

"I got Telekinesis!"

Then his thumb hitched.

He scrolled past the flashy offensive tiers and struck an odd, isolated sub-category nestled near the bottom of the list.

The text was rendered in a pale, dignified platinum instead of the aggressive blood-red and violent purple of the combat powers.

[Infinite Wealth]

[Description: Grants the user an inexhaustible, self-replenishing balance across all liquid currencies, digital systems, and financial assets within the deployed world. Undetectable by regulatory bodies. Bypasses inflation controls.]

Julius froze. He blinked once. Twice.

Infinite Wealth?

He tilted his head, his brow furrowing into deep ridges.

"Now this is weird..." Julius muttered under his breath, staring at the glittering text. "Why the hell is there a non-combat ability in a death game?"

He glanced around. The other candidates were still shoving, hollering, and lunging for anything with the words related to combat.

They were thinking like gladiators thrown into an arena with wild beasts. When people hear "Apocalypse" and "Sole Survivor," their instincts immediately jump to swinging a flaming broadsword, blasting lightning from their fingertips, or growing armored scales.

Kill or be killed.

That was the trap.

Julius’s gaze snapped back to the colossal obsidian monolith looming one hundred meters overhead. Specifically, to lines two and three of the parameters seared into the stone:

[2. A grace period of TWO YEARS will be granted upon arrival.]

[3. At the end of 730 days, the Calamities will commence in phases.]

Two years.

Seven hundred and thirty days in a mirror world identical to modern Earth.

A cold, razor-sharp clarity cut through the lingering terror of his past death. When he had been rotting away in that hospital bed, watching his mother’s hollow eyes and the stack of unpaid medical bills multiplying on the nightstand, he learned the cruelest truth of the mortal world: it wasn’t monsters or magic that dictated human survival.

It was a resource.

What good is combat skills when the world is identical to the real world? Like in two years, they’ll have to survive on their own, like an average joe. Sure, they can use their abilities to make money but, what if you have unlimited money from the start? That means he could prepare for the calamities.

And an idea flickered in his mind. If the calamities are the challenges, then he’ll have to survive them, in a most protected and self-sufficient doomsday bunker.

He has decided. Without a second of hesitation, his finger drove hard into the icon.

A bright, blinding light burst from the screen, wrapping around his wrist like a liquid gold band before sinking seamlessly into his skin.

[Selection Confirmed.]

[Candidate Julius Vance has acquired: Infinite Wealth.]

[All 500 Candidates have finalized their talents.]

A collective hush fell over the room as the system announced the choices on the central monolith.

[Now, you will be transported to an alternate world. Remember, in two years, calamities will befall on that world. Survive at all costs. The hunt begins on Day 731.]

Before the crowd could digest the words, the blinding white void vanished, replaced with a bustling metropolis similar to New York City.

He looked at his hands and in his right was a phone, and to his left, is a black card.

He opened the phone first and saw three displays.

[World Chat: This allows players to contact one another, or make private messages.]

[Leaderboards: Shows who are leading the leaderboards, his name was in number 456.]

[Countdown: 730 days.]

And aside from those displays is the normal display of a typical smartphone. He explored it and saw a bank icon.

Julius tapped the sleek, minimalist banking icon.

The screen flashed a crisp white before settling into a deep obsidian interface. A simple security prompt flared up, scanned his iris through the front camera in a fraction of a second, and bypassed every standard password protocol with a soft electronic chime.

The account summary loaded.

[Global Liquidity Account: Active]

[Account Holder: Julius Vance

Account Type: Sovereign Black Tier

Available Balance: $ ∞]

Julius stared at the screen.

It wasn’t a glitch, and it wasn’t an absurdly long string of nines designed to cap out a 64-bit integer. It was a literal mathematical infinity symbol.

Below it sat a small information tab in fine print:

[Direct access to global liquid capital. All withdrawals, electronic transfers, and asset acquisitions are dynamically legitimized through thousands of offshore holding entities, blind trusts, and untraceable shell corporations. Completely exempt from market inflation shocks and global banking oversight.]

He looked at the card he was holding in his right hand, and a grin flashed across his face.

The game has started, it’s time to prepare for the calamities.