I, Adrian White, was a regular 24 year old with no grand ambitions.
I worked a dead end job at a convenience store, clocking in and out like a soulless machine. My routine was painfully predictable: wake up, work, eat instant noodles, and disappear into my tiny rented apartment where I'd plug into the latest released games. That was my life pathetic, uneventful, and utterly ordinary.
Despite pouring hundreds of hours into those games, I never accomplished anything exceptional. No world records. No tournament wins. Just endless grinding until I got bored and moved on to the next shiny title.
In every way, I was what society would label as average a faceless NPC in the background of someone else's heroic tale.
That was until the accident happened.
It was a rainy evening when it happened. I was walking home, umbrella barely shielding me from the downpour, when a distracted truck driver ran the red light. There was no warning, and no time to react.
Just a blinding flash of headlights, I just felt a brutal impact with my body and then just silence.
I died instantly.
Or at least, I thought I did.
When I was able to open my eyes again, I wasn't in a hospital. There were no bright lights or beeping machines around me. I found myself lying on a hard bed in a modest room made of stone, bricks, and cement. The air around me was a bit different it was thicker, heavier, almost alive. I could smell something... unnatural, like ozone laced with flowers.
It was Mana that I didn't know it at the time, but the air was saturated with it.
I sat up, dizzy and confused. Outside the window, the sky was fractured, floating islands drifted among the clouds, glowing runes painted invisible highways across the air, and strange interface hovered silently at the edge of my vision.
This wasn't Earth. At least, not the Earth I knew.
As I stumbled to my feet, the real horror began.
A sharp pain exploded in my head, like my brain was being torn apart from the inside. Memories not my own flooded into my consciousness in fragments of another life. Another Adrian White.
He was twenty, an orphan raised in the government run Sanctuary Districts. Handsome, bright, and full of potential. He had dreams of getting a good job, maybe starting his own company one day. He studied hard, worked harder, and believed effort would bring success.
He even got a high paying job instantly after his graduation. He had just started the life of living comfortably.
But fate had other plans.
A year ago, Earth changed. Or it is more accurate to say, it evolved.
The most popular game of the decade, Divine Descend, nobody knew who made it but it was released worldwide and became a hit among people of different ages. It was a hyper-realistic VRMMORPG with over 500 million players worldwide. Then suddenly, one day without warning it became real. The game's systems, monsters, lore, and mechanics fused with the real world. Magic became science, dungeons replaced malls, and professions became identities.
Nobody knew how or why it happened. Scientists, priests, hackers, and madmen tried to uncover the reason but they all failed. All anyone knew was that the old Earth was gone and a new era of awakeners began.
Now, players no longer needed VR pods or VR glasses to enter the game, they could now do it a mere thought to enter the game. Everyone over the age of 16 was forced to select a profession for themselves from over the 1,000+ available classes. Their choice would shape their lives forever, determining their skills, abilities, and future potential.
The world became a stage of leveling up, combat trials, territory wars, and divine ascension.
If you reached Level 500, you could Synchronize with your in game avatar, becoming a super human like existence with power beyond imagination. Those who achieved this ruled cities, founded nations, and reshaped civilization. The new age belonged to the strong.
Due to these harsh conditions to manifest the player's stats in the real world the world didn't go into chaos instantly. The higher authorities got time to prepare and form a team of awakeners in time, still some fishes slipped and gained powers but couldn't use them out of hand.
Almost every country took action and was ready for this situation quickly taking control over the situation.
Adrian whose body I now inhabited was one of the many swept into this new world order. But he made a critical mistake.
He selected a taboo class: Harem Master.
No it wasn't a joke profession or something most people laughed at or avoided. But it was real. And terrifying.
Under pressure from friends, and with no gaming knowledge, the original Adrian picked it without understanding its consequences. On the surface, it sounded amazing. The Harem Master could form emotional bonds with powerful female NPCs and inherit their talents, bloodlines, skills and even magical resistances.
But there was a catch. Several, in fact.
To gain those benefits, the bond had to be mutual. The NPC needed to willingly join the Harem. That meant building trust, seduction, romance, and deep emotional resonance all while managing the complexities of multiple relationships.
Every Members stats could only be copied only once and worse, the bonds were unstable.
If an NPC's affection dropped too low, she could betray, abandon, or even attack the player and leave the Harem. Any power gained from her bloodline boosts, skill trees, or elemental affinities would vanish instantly with her exit from the harem and all or any resources used on the NPC wouldn't be recovered back. And the psychological backlash from a severed bond was enough to drive most players insane. It was same with profession of Beast Tamers.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the class required managing interpersonal conflict within the Harem. Rivalries, jealousy, heartbreak would occur and to keep it in check the player has to have good relationship with every Harem Member, it was like trying to tame a tornado with a napkin.
Needless to say, the original Adrian cracked under such pressure.
His so-called friends distanced themselves the moment things went south. He couldn't even convince a NPC by himself and was still a level 0 player. Other players ridiculed his situation. And with no mentor, no support system, and no way to restart, he gave up.
He ended his own life.
And that's where I come in.
Somehow, my soul replaced his. I don't know how or why, but I've been given a second chance. The game system didn't reset his original profession, but it did transfer the burdens of his past onto me.
His class.
His problems.
His broken dreams.
And yet, I'm not without tools.
I'm not emotionally invested in this world not yet. I'm used to games. I've spent years understanding mechanics, exploiting systems, min-maxing builds. And unlike the original Adrian, I know how to take advantage of the situation.
The Harem Master class isn't a joke.
It's dangerous. Volatile. High-risk, high-reward.
But in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing?
It might just be the most powerful class of all if I could just avoid any mishaps.
This is my story now.