Abyssal Arena: The Awakened

In 2058, on Blue Star. Virtual reality technology has matured. The Blue Star Federation government and twelve leading tech companies jointly release Abyss, a fully immersive virtual reality game. Through neural links, players can connect their consciousness completely and experience a second world that feels 99% real. Within six months of launch, registered players worldwide surpass one billion. Hidden deep within the game is a server hijacked by a hacker organization called the Reapers: “Purgatory Mode.” Exploiting loopholes in the Federation’s oversight, the group randomly selects 0.01% of players and throws their consciousness into a brutal survival arena. They use brainwave data recorded under extreme emotional stress to train “perfect consciousnesses” for illegal trade on the black market. In the real world, selected players are marked as having “voluntarily closed their accounts.”