Chapter 14: Chapter 14

This day was undoubtedly a difficult day for Li Tianxia. He was still at the studio even though it was already eleven o’clock at night, smoking while waiting for the online promotion event of the new games on Platform173.

Unlike Li Tianxia, many players on Platform173 were keeping an eye on the changes of the website at the same time.

Two big games would be officially released to the public today, which was a joyous event for the players. They were ready to enter into the games and experience it as soon as the games were released.

But apparently they were only anticipating the two games with good potential, which were Natural Evolution and The Rise of Protoss. They had no feelings toward Battle Online as it was just a random unknown game.

When the sound of the clock striking midnight echoed throughout the city, Li Tianxia and all the hopeful players clicked the button to refresh the webpage.

[First day of the Battle of New Games, today’s recommended games are as follows:]

Battle Online (10)

Natural Evolution (9.2)

The Rise of Protoss (9.1)

Big red words appeared on the homepage of the website, but everyone was surprised to see the ratings.

In their opinion, this event of the battle of new games is supposed to be the contest between Natural Evolution and The Rise of Protoss, what the hell is this Battle Online that received a perfect score?

Driven by curiosity, they clicked on the game as they wanted to see the brief introduction and evaluation of the game.

100% similar to reality? Is this real?

Everyone was baffled upon seeing the introduction, they quickly scrolled down the page to see the comments of the evaluators on this game.

Seeing these game evaluators were very famous influencers in the gaming community. Their highly complementary remarks had certainly incited the curiosity of the players.

As a result, many players clicked to download the game out of a strong desire to know more about it.

Meanwhile, Li Tianxia was browsing through the comments from the game evaluators right now with an uncertain expression on his face. How could he believe that a game with a total size of 800MB was able to achieve the dreadful 100% real virtual reality? This truly was a complete joke in his eyes.

Then, he chose to download the game. He put on his headset and began his experience in the game.

The CG scene that was implanted at the beginning of the game appeared before him in an instant. Numerous ferocious skulls of monsters could be seen among the swirling clouds in the gloomy sky.

All the players who entered the game were undoubtedly amazed by the realism of the scene.

As the story developed, 10,000 Yin soldiers appeared, their feet stomping in unison. When the players witnessed this, their enthusiasm was ignited.

An epic battle began at this moment.

When the CG ended with the world looking as though it had turned into a sea of fire, the game officially began and the panel to choose their character class appeared before them.

Li Tianxia was just like all the other players, being in a state of astonishment at this point in time.

In the opinion of Li Tianxia, the making of the trailer was more than 800MB! What kind of crazy company is this? How exactly did they manage to compress it to a size of 800MB? This is totally against common sense.

In order to take a closer look at it, Li Tianxia chose to be a Berserker and officially began the game.

After entering the game, he noticed that he was surrounded by a swarm of players who just got into the game as well. Right now, they were standing around and pointing fingers at the Mansion of the Dead that had been burned and fallen into ruin.

“The great King of Beiqi, let me carry on your unfulfilled wish and recreate the glory of your past!” shouted a youth who was standing beside Li Tianxia right now. He was staring at the Mansion of the Dead that had fallen into ruin, his face full of grief and indignation.

“Seven, cut it off, let’s go and find the boss quickly. This game is so freaking amazing, I’m afraid that we won’t be able to kill and steal later when the number of people increases,” the youth with the middle-school syndrome still wanted to express his speech but was pulled away by his teammate. They hurriedly ran out.

Li Tianxia looked around and fell into silence. Now only he understood the reason of Wu Guoyi saying those words back then. Although he was a professional, he still found this game unbelievable.

He would not dare to even think about achieving 100% realism in a game with the current capability of technology.

However, he had to believe it as such a game really existed before him now.

At this moment, Li Tianxia’s mentality had changed from feeling unfair to exploring and learning in the game.

Following the instructions of the quest, he followed behind the large number of players and started running toward the direction of the Ghost Mountains according to the map.

However, the popularity of the game was obviously way beyond his imagination. He could not even complete the initial quest of hunting and killing ten Wandering Souls as the place was filled with people roaming around looking for Wandering Souls.

More than a dozen people would surge forward whenever they found a Wandering Soul. Li Tianxia was dumbfounded at the sight of this as he was totally unable to kill or steal anything.

Unlike Wang Damang and his team, many new players were as good as dead when they were facing the Wandering Souls alone. Such a creature like a Wandering Soul was in fact stronger than using Yin energy to cohere into a player. If you did not have a robust physique and were simply fighting hand to hand, even a Berserker who was initially quite powerful, would not be a match for the Wandering Soul.

A ray of white light kept appearing from time to time, indicating that the players were killed by the Wandering Soul and exited the game.

In spite of that, there were still a large number of players entering the game.

Li Tianxia had to find another way to complete the beginner’s quest. He broke away from the crowd and walked to the side.

His thought was certainly correct as he found a Wandering Soul that was alone in no time. A feeling of excitement filled his heart, he raised his sword and charged toward the Wandering Soul.

Although Li Tianxia was not as strong as those professional players in terms of combat skills, he was fully able to dodge the attacks from the Wandering Soul as it was not agile enough.

Looking at the Wandering Soul turning more and more transparent and going to disappear soon, a sense of satisfaction rose inside him. He had completely forgotten his true purpose of entering the game.

Just when he wanted to strike heavily with the sword in his hand and reap the life of the Wandering Soul, a silhouette suddenly emerged on the other side and knocked him so brutally that he fell down on the floor. A bloody number of -5 appeared on his head.

Right when Li Tianxia was confused about what actually was going on, another two silhouettes appeared behind him. They took out a dagger at the same time and stabbed him mercilessly in the neck.

-8

-9

[You have been killed by player Ye Xue’er!]

The screen gradually darkened, the dying Wandering Soul was reaped by the sword of a Berserker who knocked him into the air.

The two female assassins turned around and made faces at his dead body.

My kill was stolen! And I’m dead!

Li Tianxia was dumbfounded at this moment.

After logging out of the game, Li Tianxia still remained in a state of disbelief.

I was a victim of a kill and steal, and not only that, I myself was killed in the process?

A gush of rage burst out from the bottom of his heart as he tried to log into the game once more.

[Player, you have died in the game and entered the three-hour respawning period!]

“Damn, the creator of this game must have been insane to make such a setting!” Li Tianxia was dumbfounded.

As he was recollecting his thoughts, he suddenly remembered the reason he played, and how he had gotten himself into the game.

Li Tianxi took a deep breath. He realized that the game itself was quite menacing. It had made an experienced game developer like himself be so caught up in the game without him even realizing it.

He pulled up the main page of Platform173 and pressed on Battle Online once more. This time, he found that several new blurbs of feedback from other players had appeared below the page of the game.

Li Tianxia fell silent as he read the many messages that flooded the page.

He sighed as he moved his mouse to the top right corner of the page, where the voting area was, then placed his vote under Battle Online.

This time he was thoroughly satisfied. Initially, he felt so confident in his game Natural Evolution that he and his team spent so many years creating. But after having a go at Battle Online, it was nothing compared to his own game.

He exited the page twice and returned to the main list, then pulled up the page for Natural Evolution. Li Tianxia realized that just like the previous one, this game was crammed with good reviews at the bottom of the page. However, this was not enough to cheer him up, because deep down he knew that if these loyal players of his ever tried out the game Battle Online, they would immediately pack up and leave without ever looking back.

There was no doubt he was feeling miserable for he had come across an outstanding opponent. Li Tianxia felt his shoulders sink, as if a large boulder of stress was pinning him down, making him feel helpless.

……

At this moment, Lu Wu and Bei Li’s eyes were dead set on the main page of Platform173, their hearts hammering against their chests as they watched the number of votes bounce higher and higher.

Meanwhile, the artifact was sending notifications about players registering into the game relentlessly. As the number of messages were overloading, Lu Wu immediately created a screening system so that only the number of online players were displayed.

Their game had been on Platform173 for less than two hours, but the number of players who logged into the game had reached 30,213, including 29,864 online players. According to the statistics from the artifact, the fraction of offline players were mostly logged out of the game after dying.

In other words, the players who stayed after their first go at the game had terrifyingly reached 100%.

This clearly had caused Lu Wu and Bei Li to weep tears of joy.

Lu Wu could not imagine the terrifying undead army that he was going to have from the hundreds and thousands of people playing his game. When the time comes, he would take back the whole of Beiqi without so much as lifting a finger.

However, his phone started ringing, breaking his train of thought. He picked it up and saw that the number belonged to Wu Guoyi.

“Brother Wu, what’s up?” Lu Wu asked curiously.

“My dear brother, you’ve got to help me this time!”

When he heard such a serious tone coming from him, Lu Wu instantly thought that something must have gone wrong with the game, and so he asked hastily, “What happened?”

“Sigh, I’ll only get worked up if I talk about it. At the beginning, there were only a few players around, and I could still freely go online and battle the Wandering Souls. However, there were a whole bunch of players in the game today, and when I was killing a Wandering Soul, someone killed me and stole it, tell me, how can I not be upset about that?”

Upon hearing this, Lu Wu could not help but crack up, and here he was worrying that it was some important matter, but it was only Wu Guoyi being a victim of player killing and stealing, and had even died in the process.

“Brother Wu, what are you trying to say?”

“Soul coins. I need soul coins. Brother, can you please give me some to upgrade my outfit? I’m going to seek vengeance! This isn’t hard for you, right!?”

Lu Wu was stunned by his request, he never planned on giving away free soul coins in the game, as the coins benefited him greatly as well. However he owed Wu Guoyi a huge favor for helping him, so he did not have the heart to turn him down, “Brother Wu, to be honest, the development of the game is now on the right track, so the only way soul coins can be harvested is from killing creatures. My hands are tied, and so are my team’s. Luckily, before the game was set on this track, I had personally left behind 100 soul coins. I’m giving these to you, but in the future there won’t be any more!”

When Wu Guoyi heard this, he agreed without hesitation, and his mood immediately lightened.

“But brother, are you saying that your team is no longer calling the shots after the game is already developing on the right track?”

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