by Drennen
NIRIKO, age 23, grows up in Japan with her father and develops an early talent for mathematics. She studies algorithmic math in school, but realizes her career cannot continue without better access to certain equipment and software. She moves to America to study robotics and engineering. While in America, she meets KAT, her best friend, and finds great success in her research. She makes connections with prestigious professors, gaining enough trust and confidence in her abilities to have elevated access to facilities in the school. One day, she finds some equipment that her mentor, DR. ALLEN, left behind, and tries it out. All is fun and games as she and Kat try on the strange new device. However, the device is nothing more than an alpha model, and Niriko finds herself stuck in the virtual world with seemingly no escape. And, if it cannot get any worse, guess again. Niriko finds herself with a bugged game account, skipping many necessary steps, like her avatar creation, in the game's account creation process. Stuck in this new-tech online survival game with nothing but a dagger at her side, Niriko begins a journey through the NXT Life world. This causes Niriko to go through much strife as she stumbles through the game with no indicators or notifications. She almost dies multiple times as she tries to survive in the wilderness, surrounded by things trying to eat her. She feels overwhelmed and downright cheated as she realizes her life has been taken from her. Even so, she pushes forward out of spite. She seeks to make the most of her plight, and perhaps to get back at the ones responsible for it all. She is not very skilled in combat, so she has to meet people much more skilled than her along the way. With her skills in computers as her primary advantage, Niriko strives to break the rules of the game in any way she can, taking everything and giving nothing back. Automation and market manipulation become her greatest assets as she figures out the inner workings of the game's engine, learning more about its limitations and ridiculous bugs. With nothing but magical game items, Niriko finds ways to create her own programming language and begins breaking through the game's inner code and mechanisms. She breaks the game itself if she has to. The game developers will pay for taking her life from her, if it is the last thing she does. Throughout her adventures, in the real world, lawyers fight back and forth about how to deal with the person they have essentially murdered. Her consciousness in the game acts as her only remaining form of life, and the government finally rules that the NXT Life game company is required to keep the servers running for the rest of her "life." As she learns how to manipulate the game, Niriko is presented with a mysterious contract. This contract is from the developers in the real world. The agreement gives Niriko many ways to gain advantages. Once the contract is signed, NXT Life Online opens for business to the general public, with real players appearing to Niriko in place of the many NPCs she has been so accustomed to. Along with these players reappears her long lost friend, Kat, who Niriko is relieved to be reunited with. Niriko and Kat form a party, and begin adventures together within NXT Life Online.
