“So I need to make sure I earn 190,000 credits in about 2 days, well this isn’t going to hard at all.” Mark sighed and finally understands the daunting task he needs to complete.

Mark calls up his friend Jim again, “Hey Jim do you have anything to do right now?” He hears all sort of music coming through the phone while Jim answers him while shouting “I’m at the bar currently why do you need anything from me?” “Well, since we’re going to play Hope we should get the capsules shouldn’t we?” Mark tells him. “Oh but didn’t we talk about that I would buy it for all of us first and then when the game opens its gold to money shop you all would pay me back slowly over a period of 10 years.”

Jim sounds annoyed like Mark was the one who forgot about this promise. “You are okay with that?” Mark replies with doubt. Yeah no worries just make sure you are at the dorm tomorrow at 9 am so the movers can make sure the capsule is registered to you otherwise you need to get the registration from the WG game shop and that will take a while.” “sure, no problem bro and thanks a lot.” “yeah, yeah now shouldn’t you start and have some fun maybe get me a sister in law or something” “Dude we aren’t even family so how can I get you a sister in law?” “How can you say that, aren’t we brothers from another mother.” Jim angrily replies. “Please, we’re more like brothers from another world or something. Well anyway I’m going to play some games I’ll see” “bye Mark see you tomorrow.”

“So now that that is fixed I should write down all special things I still know about the game” Mark tells himself while walking in the store to get some milk. He then returns home while his parents were still at work. Mark enters his room and starts writing everything he still knows about Hope.

Mark knows he has goals to make such as giving his sister the meridian practice and growing his village so he rules at least a continent which is a feat that never happened in his last life since every continent was split between multiple parties. Those were: The 4 overlords of the north, the 3 phoenixes of the South, the alliance of the West and the council in Central.

While those were the biggest group weirdly enough the East Continent never had any true rulers and was always called The lawless East, since you could do anything over and no-one could stop you if you were strong enough.

Hope in the first year made use of the time discrepancy method which made sure that the period in which people could play the game (9PM till 9 am) was lengthened from 12 hours to 24.

Mark decided he would start in the east since it would be easier to become a king where there were none before. Next would be to make sure that his  brothers and him took strong cultivation practices and would practice every day outside of the game so they wouldn’t lose time in game while the rest of the players would.

Now that he knew what he wanted to do he would make sure his body would be the best so he went out again and searched for a blacksmith. A smithy was hard to find but there was one quite close to his home. “welcome to Ares smithy what would you like to buy?” an AI system immediately talked to him when he entered the door. “I would like a sword to be made, however I would like to see the process.” “Another one of these kids who say they need to watch me craft.” A bulky old guy grumbles while walking to the front of the store. “Who are you kid and why do you want to see me craft?” “Hello sir I heard about a master blacksmith who could craft any ancient weapon and I would like to learn that so I can make my own weapons in that new game Hope.” replied Mark. He knew about this smithy from his past life since Devon the master smith was famous for creating the only legendary weapons inside hope except from the few ones which were found in instances.

“Oh kid you are going to play Hope. Hmm alright I can show you a bit but if you perform less than I want you to then I will not teach you anything.” Mark smiled since he had planned for this to happen since the only thing Devon liked was flattery. “sure Sir I wouldn’t have it any other way. What would you like me to do first.” Devon Stared at Mark and thought for a while “hmm let’s get started with getting impurities out of this slab of iron try to make this as strong as you possible can within 4 hours.

Mark looked at the clock and it displayed 14:30 so he had until 18:30 and had to hurry up since normally people took around a couple of days to completely refine iron in the past. Now however it was somewhat easier since people were genetically improved so that each person was as strong as world champions from the 21 century.

Mark picked up the hammer and started hammering the slab of iron and heating it up again and again until the time was up. “alright kiddo what did you make from that piece of garbage.” Devon walked into the forge again. “nice going kiddo at least you didn’t pick the easy way out, well now that you know how to get rid of impurities let me show you how we forge weapons and tools out of this. What would you like this weapon to be?” Devon asked. Mark immediately replied “a tachi please around 75 cm please.” “Ah alright that’s an easy one to make.” Afterwards Mark returned home with his sword hidden so his parents wouldn’t worry about it.

Later that night Mark thought about the whole situation, it was like God had given him a second chance and he would make sure to get the most out of it, not only for him but most of all for his family and his sister since they would always do the same for him. “This time it’s my turn to protect you guys” Mark thought before he finally drifted away in his sleep.