Chapter 3  : The First Players

He opened his eyes once more, and was greeted by the blazing sun that hung high up in the sky. Lu Wu subconsciously breathed in a mouthful of air from the world of the living, the encounter he had previously felt like a dream.

He looked down and saw that Bei Li was staring rather shyly at their hands which were interlocked together, and he smiled at this.

Lu Wu brought Bei Li back to his home in Indigo City. It was an apartment with three bedrooms, one living room, and one bathroom.

Although he lived alone, the place was spotless and there wasn’t even the slightest mess in his bedroom.

He led Bei Li into his bedroom and switched on his computer, then loaded the little gaming site designed by him.

“Little one, can you connect the server you’ve installed to my gaming site?”

Bei Li nodded her head and climbed onto Lu Wu’s chair, then started running her fingers on the keyboard. She pulled up the backend management system of his little gaming site, keyed in the coding of the artifact’s server, and while she was at it, she specially added an image.

The image was a circle formation with words written on the inside, making it look extremely mysterious.

Bei Li pressed the enter button and gave a single nod, “Done!”

“It’s that easy?” Lu Wu asked suspiciously.

“Yes, I have linked the server to this image, which shows the formation of spirit extradition. As long as the player downloads this little game of yours, which is actually just an empty nutshell, the content of the game will be sent to the virtual reality headset of the player. Then, the image of the spirit extradition formation will automatically appear in the mind of the player, and his or her spirit will be sucked into the server. From there, it’ll be sent straight to the underworld.”

Lu Wu was glad to have Bei Li on his side. With this secured plan, there was no way that the players would know that they were in the underworld, they would think that it was all part of the game.

In this generation where technology was advancing, and since the invention of the virtual reality headset, it has become a high demand for all of the game developer companies to constantly find ways to improve the details of the games.

As long as Lu Wu declared that the simulation of his game was near perfect, no one was going to dig up any problems at all.

“What name do you think I should give this game?” Lu Wu anticipated her reply.

Although he was the true creator of the game, he thought it was best to give the honor of naming it to Bei Li instead.

Bei Li was stunned by his request as she realized she was of much importance to Lu Wu.

“Then we shall name it after the artifact. Let’s call it Battle Online. This was actually one of the wildest dreams of the ruler of Beiqi.”

Lu Wu agreed to her suggestion with a strong nod. He lifted her down from the chair, pulled up the backend management system, uploaded an icon for the game and typed in the words ‘Battle Online’ into the empty text box under the title line.

In a split second, Lu Wu’s game had been successfully uploaded onto the internet platform.

In order to attract users, Lu Wu had posted that little game of his onto the main page of his website.

Then the two sat like ducks and waited.

An hour passed… two… and just like that three hours had gone by. Bei Li turned to look at Lu Wu and asked, “Why has no one tried to download it?”

Her question put Lu Wu in an awkward position, as he knew that the number of users that visited his website was poor.

Not to mention that a typical small-scale game would only take up tens or hundreds of gigabytes.

Some games that had more than half of all users took up space starting in the terabytes, however that little game of his only took up 800MB, and this first impression was not really appealing to users.

As he was deep in thought, Lu Wu once again pulled up the backend management system and added a few words to the introduction of the game.

“This game has been carefully developed by this website for a period of 10 years and has been tested multiple times, almost achieving a 100% positive feedback. This website clearly states that there is no charge for this game.”

Satisfied with his editing, Lu Wu and Bei Li once again went back to waiting.

One hour… two hours…

Just as the two were beginning to lose their patience, thinking that it was better to wrack their brains for yet another solution, the artifact suddenly blinked, followed by a message which popped up in Lu Wu’s mind.

[Ding! Player Wang Damang has registered into the battle server!]

As she read Lu Wu’s expression, Bei Li immediately grabbed hold of his hand and shut her eyes, searching for the appearance of the new player.

……

minutes ago.

Wang Damang exited the game with a bored face and started the update for the game Atlantis.

Atlantis was currently the most popular game out there. The number of players was practically overflowing. It occupied 8% of the stock market. Its level of simulation has reached 55%. It was rich in content and had a very wide audience, where Wang Damang was one of the players.

After exiting the game, he went to grab some snacks from the fridge, then scrolled through his browser folder and randomly picked a website that featured small games. He decided to play around with them a bit before returning to his computer when the update had been completed.

Coincidentally, his pick landed on Lu Wu’s website.

Wang Damang scanned through the website and saw that there were countless posts of game icons. Then, his eyes landed on the most appealing one posted on the main page, and clicked it.

“Pff! Ha! Ha!”

While Wang Damang was reading the introduction, he suddenly choked on his food and coughed it out.

A game of 800MB has reached almost 100% positive feedback, and this was confirmed by the website itself, not to mention the free entry.

Wang Damang’s eyes widened, “The boss of this website must be so hungry for money that he’s gone mad. He ought to add the fact that you can level up to Level 999 with just one swing of a sword while he’s at it!”

He shook his head and was just about to exit the game when he suddenly stopped and recalled the recent news, urging people to report fraud in games.

There was something about a reward for issuing the report.

This made Wang Damang laugh out loud as he thought to examine the game thoroughly, then write a report regarding the matter and hand it in to the internet police.

With this, Wang Damang willingly pressed the button to download the game.

MB was nothing compared to the current speed of the internet, it was only a matter of seconds before the download was complete. He stuffed the rest of the food into his mouth and put on his virtual reality headset and his set of gaming clothes.

A list of game icons appeared on the screen, which had all been downloaded and played by him.

He reached out his hand and swiped, skimming through the icons until he reached the one for Battle Online. Wang Damang smiled internally, fully preparing himself for the visual impact.

As the game started, the body of Wang Damang in the real world collapsed to the ground.

However, from his view, an icon of a formation appeared right before him and a feeling of weightlessness greeted him. When he finally opened his eyes, he was taken aback by the scene before him.

Under the glow of the red moon, blood-colored rain poured down on him. A gust of wind surrounded him, making him feel as if he was in hell.

Everything before his eyes was so realistic that Wang Damang had to pinch himself to make sure that he was not dreaming. Although he felt a slight pain from that, Wang Damang was still almost convinced that the place was real.

“How can this be, how can an 800MB game create such a realistic virtual world? Unless this game only features this very scene? But such a scene would still take up more than 800MB of space!”

Wang Damang was stunned by the whole setting before him. He bent down and picked up a fallen leaf, examining its patterns. Unexpectedly, the graphics were so clear and detailed that it left him in a daze once more.

At that moment, the storyline that Bei Li had made up emerged before Wang Damang.

[When the greatest catastrophe of the past tens of thousands of years befell, His Excellency of the underworld, the King of Beiqi, came to resist the disasters and gave up his life to save billions of souls. Sadly, right after the ruler of Beiqi had passed, his subordinates turned their backs on the kingdom, splitting the land of Beiqi into separate territories. As the rightful heir to the throne of Beiqi, it is time for you to step into the light and go on a journey to reclaim glory for your ancestors!]

After the storyline faded away, another instruction came popping into his mind:

[Please choose your character class:]

Three templates of character classes surfaced before Wang Damang’s eyes.

A powerful warrior with an enormous sword, a mage with a staff, and an assassin with a dagger stood in front of him.

Wang Damang was stunned for a moment. Then, he reached out and chose the one with the assassin’s figure.

All of a sudden, a ray of light encircled the figure that had been chosen by Wang Damang, as if it was a flower that was gradually blooming. The figure came alive, like he was being resurrected from the dead, but then the dagger flew free from his grasp, hovering in circles around his body. The killing machine in him suddenly surfaced.

“I live for darkness, I serve for darkness… I carry the Grim Reaper’s scythe wherever I go… I bloom in death for eternity… I am a terminator!”

The voice coming from the figure was cold, leaving Wang Damang with his jaw dropped in shock, as if the person standing in front of him was real.

“This is really cool!”