Hope as a concept, as a belief, is difficult to cultivate in a dystopian society.

  It required an individual to be hysterically na?ve and madly optimistic. Gareth used to be one of those “curious” kids.

  He grew up as the oldest of five siblings, and it was his job to shove hope and optimism down their little throats. Food was in short supply, and hope was better than nothing.

  Ancient stories of Iron Man, Invincible, Harry Potter, and a lovable yellow bear kept smiles on their faces…even as they slowly starved to death.

  Hope was difficult to keep in one's heart when your mother was a drug addict, your father an alcoholic, and most forms of government wouldn't care to help because you couldn't bribe them.

  Joburg, a shell of its former glory days, held the morally corrupt, ethically bankrupt, and those desperate enough to kill for a better life… Or for a few creddies.

  Veronica, the youngest of his siblings, held a special place in Gareth's heart because she, at times, even bought into his nonsensical optimism. The rest grew jaded, hard, and callous.

  The day his hope shattered was when his father shot him in the back.

  It was winter, a hard one. South Africa was arid, especially since Gen T had messed up the environment. That harsh winter in particular left millions dead from starvation and dehydration. Gareth’s family wasn't spared, and his father, in his drunken genius, came to the sage conclusion that Gareth was the biggest, and therefore, ate the most. He needed to go. Yet, he also knew that Gareth would never willingly abandon his siblings.

  So, he took him to the alley a few blocks away from their claustrophobic little apartment, told him to look at the pretty garbage, and shot him in the upper back with a rental pistol. If not for Gareth's basic subdermal underarmour, he would have died immediately.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Gareth woke up in agony, angry, and with a small fortune of tubes and drips hanging from his arms.

  “Lucky to be alive.” The ripperdoc had said. Gareth didn't care.

  There was no way his dad could afford to rent a gun, and he'd seen his two younger brothers suspiciously hoard some creddies from their various hustles. The day before he was shot, that money was gone. Gareth had been secretly adding to their stash, hoping they would use it to buy a better future for themselves. Except they'd given it to their father, who used it to rent a smart pistol, who then used it to commit filicide.

  A grim act in an already grim world. Hope was shattered.

  He didn’t even blink when Mistress Connolly told him he had to work for her until his medical debt was paid off. His family had betrayed him; there was no hope in the world for goodness, so he might as well embrace the hustle.

  He became a burglar, hacker, and blackmailer. Sent to ruin the lives of anyone who dared to offend Mistress Connolly, be they old or young. He did not do so with malice. Instead, he felt nothing but black remorse, drowning in a world of debt, hunger, and grief.

  He managed to earn enough and work hard enough to nearly buy his freedom. Yet, the closer he came to paying it off, the more his anxiety grew, because he knew Mistress Connolly would never let him off the hook that easily.

  A month before he would have been free, a task from the mistress had him inside a dark info broker's shed, an info chip slotting into his neck, about to sign off on said chip. Unfortunately, Gareth didn't read the T’s & C’s of what he was signing, and before he could hand over the uselessly empty chip, he was falling through a hole in reality.

  He fell through a whirling tunnel of rainbow light that bathed his body in agonising spectrums of blinding radiation.

  He fell into a world where hunger was the least of people's concerns.

  He fell into a world where might makes right, and the mighty were beasts of myth and legend. He fell into a world where those who had the tenacity and the raw, unadulterated spine to make their dreams a reality saw unrivalled growth.

  天无绝人之路” (Tiān wú jué rén zhī lù). Heaven always leaves a path. There is always hope, and a dao, for those who walk the road of cultivation.

  He fell…into the realm of Utgard.