Miraculous

Present time...

A black-haired man could be seen reading a book in his room.

It was already 10 years since the event that made him enjoy his freedom.

His name is Gilbert Augustus, 24 years old, 2nd son of the Augustus main family, one of the Ten Great Noble Clans of the Dragon Empire.

And he has a secret that only he knows.

He used to be someone named Gilbert Cross.

He is a reincarnated individual.

His current world is somewhat different from his previous world.

In this world, modern technology has surpassed his past world.

Much that he had even thought at first that he was on his past world's future, but he was wrong.

Unlike his past world, the current world has a different map and a completely different history.

There are three ruling Superpowers in the current world known as the 3 Great Empires: the Dragon, Serpent, and Phoenix Empires which had the world divided into 3 parts equally.

A result of a Great World War that happened about a century ago from the current world's history.

The Augustus Clan was a military clan that made many contributions from the Great World War.

Coming from a great military clan, after being defeated from the duel 10 years ago by a teenage girl, Gilbert had lost the favor of the current family head which was his father.

He had even undergone a month of suffering as punishment.

Still, because of it, he has been freed from the responsibilities and could do whatever he wants, so it was worth it.

10/10 would get beat up by the girl again.

Gilbert Cross

His past life

Who was he?

He was nothing special.

In his previous life, he was someone who spent his entire life without as much a purpose besides trying to be happy and satisfying his curiosities.

Games, Books, etc. He would just spend most of his time outside work trying to enjoy life far away from the presence of other people.

Overall, he was just an introverted curious man who only wants to be at peace satisfying his curiosities and thirst for temporary happiness.

After dying in an unfortunate accident, he was then reincarnated in this world.

At first, he was a little excited.

He thought that he was like a protagonist since he had just reincarnated, he thought of a possibility that the world would revolve around him and wanted to know what the world has to offer him.

But it didn't take him long to learn that he wasn't a chosen one.

In this world, there was a thing that didn't exist in his past that immediately grabbed his attention.

Internal martial arts.

Cultivating such a thing, your body would be enhanced and achieved great levels beyond that of a normal person.

During the Great War, people on the higher levels in effect could even resist guns and in turn, made a lot of contributions.

However, right now since modern technology had advanced far, such people would even be vulnerable to the common mass-produced firearms of the modern military.

Still, internal martial arts managed to remain significant.

Right now, it was acting as a sort of special trait that enhances someone's status.

Generally speaking, the higher the status of the person, the higher their cultivation is.

Gilbert learned the family's martial arts, and unknown to anyone, had reached a high level of cultivation beyond someone his age.

But for him to reach a glimpse of the apex, he would have needed to spend the majority of his entire life practicing the family's martial art tirelessly.

It was nothing unexpected.

It was for sure the norm that to master something, such amount of hard work and talent is needed.

And for him who wasn't a genius, he knew that he would have needed to sacrifice a great amount of blood and sweat in the future.

He was nothing special, the world doesn't revolve around him, he was not a protagonist.

He had attributed his fast growth at first to his adult mentality, and if a gifted individual would have the same discipline and put the same amount of hard work, they would surpass him easily, leaving him behind in the dust.

The royal families of the three empires are a good example. It was a bloodline of geniuses.

Compared to them, his progress was nothing.

And as Gilbert grew learning about the family and the current world, he had then realized that there are many dangers if he wanted to reach such height.

Weighing the pros and cons, he realized that it wasn't worth it.

Just displaying a level of talent had already made some problems appear.

For Gilbert, death wasn't something he is afraid of since he had already reincarnated once and had already experienced it.

If he dies, chances are, he could get reincarnated again.

Nothing he could do about such thought process, experiencing such a thing called death and reincarnation twisted his mind so much that he couldn't even take death seriously as much as before.

Even if he saw a stranger die right in front of him.

They could've been reincarnated as kings or queens on their next life.

Even if in the end it was only chances, but it did already happen once with his own life as the witness, so there was always a good chance it could happen once again to him or even to anyone.

Right now, what Gilbert was afraid of was not about death but about dying without satisfying his curiosity about this new world and the happiness he still couldn't experience.

His greatest curiosity was the question about his reincarnation.

Who/What reincarnated him and for what purpose?

However, he had zero clues on how to find the answer so he could only ignore it for the time being.

Since his family was rich, Gilbert had done his best and managed to become a successful leech.

Someone who only learned an acceptable level of martial arts and had then decided to spend his time lazing all day after suffering the trauma of being defeated by his fiance on a duel.

That would be what anyone would say if they were to describe who Gilbert Augustus is.

He was sort of a black sheep in the family but at least he wasn't going around outside and making problems for the family like the black sheep of other great families.

The other noble families' black sheep are so problematic, to the point that it had lessened the shame his current status is showing, enabling him to enjoy his life freely with the support of riches.

He was enjoying such an easy life.

A perk of being a rich 2nd son.

In this world, games also exist, and unlike his disappointing past life, the virtual technology had already improved greatly, it was one of the few things that this world had achieved with great success.

For example, there are many virtual games with the same or greater playability as the old world's massive open-world RPGs, with high-end graphics unmatched even if compared to his previous world's most costly pc games.

The virtual technology is so popular, so much that it was even used to train soldiers, and even used in academies for learning.

And through such technology, anyone could learn many things faster than learning in real life.

With a maximum of 3 times, the time in the virtual world would flow faster than in real-time helping many industries.

However, unlike other things, cultivating internal martial arts couldn't be done on virtual, for he needed a real body for it to work. Making Gilbert somewhat disappointed.

Still, Gilbert had just spent most of his time enjoying himself on such virtual creations in the past 10 years.

Virtual games, virtual movies, virtual concerts from virtual idols, and even r18 virtual entertainments.

For a curious person, learning is something he took seriously.

And Gilbert's seriousness didn't disappoint, he had learned many things.

There are virtual teachers that could teach him a variety of skills.

And whatever made Gilbert curious, he would learn it.

Because of reincarnation, knowledge became even more valuable to Gilbert.

For a curious person like him, it was already valuable before, but right now it was even more so.

For if he dies again, he won't be able to bring all his money and things belonging to him, but he would still have the knowledge he had learned in his memory.

So he had been learning and learning.

He learned so much, but with a few exceptions, he would always back away when it comes to time to mastering such skills to the maximum.

He only had so much time in comparison to what he wanted.

He was like an anime or movie addict who was suddenly transported forward centuries in time and realized there is so much to watch, but not enough time.

Still, mastery is far from easy, and he could at most achieved something at the level of an average pro.

And that was only on the skills he was most interested in.

Some skills he would only be an expert and sometimes even on average level.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

Including his past life skills, he could certainly be called that way.

Of course, if he really wanted to even learn the same expertise he had in all trades literally, a lifetime won't be enough.

So, he could only choose what caught his interest, and learn on a level he was satisfied with.

Because of the built-in life support system in a virtual cabin, Gilbert could even spend a total of 21 days in the virtual world which was equivalent to 7 days in the real world without being interrupted.

Most of the time he would be in the virtual world, however, today is somewhat different, he was not on the virtual world learning a skill, but on his bedroom in the real world.

Right now, Gilbert is currently holding a book that took most of his recent interest.

It was a book delivered by his cousin.

It caught his interest since his cousin was acting unlike usual.

Most of the time, his cousin would only call him or visit him from time to time, in a bid to make him come outside his house and become less lazy.

And suddenly out of nowhere, such cousin gave him a manual about a virtual game, saying that she had already pre-ordered a specialized game cabin for him, expecting him to play it.

'I will also play the game', saying such words, she gave the manual of the game to him personally, yesterday afternoon after sending a message via his virtual ID.

What a weird combination.

For Gilbert, games and her was a combination so unfit, it would beat the combo of ice cream and soy sauce.

Sending a game manual...

It was not even an E-book but a hard copy... What a hardcore.

Still, the unusualness of the event made him curious about the game manual, so he had read it fully. And he had just finished reading it just a few moments ago.

And what he had read surprised him so much, it made him doubt if her cousin is playing tricks on him, making him expect something great, only to have his expectations crushed by reality tomorrow.

No one could blame him for thinking so, what the manual told him was just so out of this world, it sounded like a scam.

An RPG game simulating another world.

Unique NPCs that 100% simulate real people.

100% realism that simulates the senses without a margin of error.

7:1 game to real-time conversion.

An age-restricted game.

"Open World VRMMORPG Utopia..."

Even for the current world's technology, such a level of simulation would be abnormal.

How could they do it?

He had tried several virtual games in this world, and even then the jump in technology is too high.

It was like leaping generations.

How could such technology suddenly come out of nowhere without any waves?

"..."

Well, now that he thought of it, he had heard of some rumors of an upcoming revolutionary VRMMO game in the past days, it was just that he was currently busy learning in regards to virtual idols, so it must have slipped his mind.

"Still, how did she know that I didn't order such a game?"

Then Gilbert thought of a possibility...

Of his cousin having a way to track his online transactions.

Didn't that mean that she knew all of his questionable purchases?

"..."

Well, nothing he can do about it.

He was already a black sheep, so adding another bad trait won't change his status much.

It was already as low as it could be.

Gilbert skimmed the game manual as he once again thought about the game.

'Utopia...'

If what's written is true, then he could only describe it as a 'Miracle'.

And thinking about such word, there was only one experience he had that could be said to be considered as such.

His reincarnation.

"A miracle huh... Interesting..."

...