Prologue

What is worse than being poor? It is working for someone else, burning the life candle only to find out that your hardwork was pocketed by someone rich, strong and powerful, someone so petty that they wasted your whole life and turned it into lifelong misery on a moment's anger and even forgotten about you some time later. Worse still is not just living poor but dying poor too.

Atherva had reached that point. Living was worthless but dying was hopeless too. He had developed mentality of a survivor and had done some many things that even he felt repulsed. All for what? Survival. And money 💰 of course.

If he had been poor and downtrodden always, maybe it would not have taken him such a long time to get the survivor mentality or to get rid of self loathing. He had ridden the waves, climbed the castles overcoming loads of difficulty. He could have been a MC in a hacked up novel, weak to strong MC, reaching for peak by step-by-step growth.

Yet....just when he was in his peak, just as he glimpsed the path beyond the peak.... another novel cliche. Terrible betrayal.

He fell into abyss. It's not that Atharva didn't try to get up, get moving, try to go forward. Life just kicked him and continued to kick him even when he could not stand up.

His everyday was beginning of same old routine. He gambled on his life just to survive. If he was philosophical, he could have even penned few sagas worth philosophies regarding letting go, giving up everything, feeling of detachment. Too bad, his curriculum in college never included that subject.

So when Atharva died, he still died poor and even his death did not change much in the world.

His end amounted to a single sentence in someone's log. ' Xxxx died at xx:xx pm. No compensation due to clause signed.'

Life moved on. Memories faded. Legends forgotten. Poor survived. Rich enjoyed the life. Few carps tried to change their fate by jumping the dragon gate yet failed majority of the times.

If all this ended at this point, there would be no need for this story.

In seemingly bizzare turn of fate, space time turned, multiverse rumbled. Atharva got a second chance.