Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Shi Yangyu did not quite understand why it took half an hour to load the game for the first time.
Still, in this half an hour, he got a grasp on the rules of the game.
To put it simply, the designer of this game seemed to have extreme perfectionism. All the details in the game functioned 100% according to reality. For example, in the game, one needed to eat and drink, take baths, wash up, and even use the restroom.
Not only that, but players also had to sleep and rest, and needed to recover if they got injured.
He could still understand these restrictions, but the main thing was that players could not just go offline anytime and anywhere? This was a little strange.
According to the Game Rules, to go offline, a player had to return to their dedicated room to do so. If they did not, they would have to bear the consequences.
Moreover, if the character was seriously injured, their mobility would be greatly reduced, and they might even die due to wound infection. This was unlike ordinary games where one could still leap around actively as long as there was a trace of life left.
If the player’s character died, the player had two choices — either rebuild the character or choose to respawn. However, when respawning, they needed to wait for half an hour, and all their equipment and previous physical attributes they had trained would be lost. The respawn point would be at the beginning location.
To put it simply, this game was completely designed based on reality. Whether in terms of its physics engine or chemistry engine, it was the same as reality.
Finally, the right to final explanation of the game belonged to Blacklight Biotechnology.
After reading these rules, Shi Yangyu could not help feeling a little speechless. He did not know how fun the game could be if it was designed like this, but was this not the world’s first game with all five senses incorporated? Since the players had no other choices, this game would probably be sought after by a considerable number of people anyway.
However, fortunately, at the bottom of the game rules, there was an option to leave a comment. Seeing this, Shi Yangyu immediately left a message: “Although I haven’t entered the game yet, according to the Game Rules, I hope to make the following suggestions:
“1. Can you cancel the setting that players can’t just go offline anywhere? After all, the game is just a pastime. Although it claims to be 100% faithful to reality, there’s no need to be too rigid.
“2. Can the death penalty be reduced? The penalty of clearing out the player’s account after death is too harsh. I personally recommend that the physical attributes of the player be retained, otherwise, this setting will discourage a considerable number of casual players.
“3. The setting of pooping and peeing must be removed, it’s disgusting!
“4. I wonder if there’s a function to do ‘that’? I strongly request ‘that’ be added in! Please make it happen, boss!”
After writing this carefully, Shi Yangyu felt that his suggestions were fairly pertinent. He glanced at the progress bar and it had reached the end. Seeing this, he immediately clicked the send button and submitted his suggestion.
Then, Shi Yangyu’s vision went black again.
“Ugh…”
An indescribable sensation washed over him. Shi Yangyu only felt that he had regained his sense of the body, but his entire body was limp. His nerves felt weak and powerless, making it difficult for him to even open his eyes.
“Wake up, wake up!”
There was a female chirping voice in his ears. Shi Yangyu tried his best to open his eyes, but only saw a blur in front of him. He could only see the light on the top of his head and there was a figure sitting in front of his bed. After he had opened his eyes, the figure stood up excitedly and kept nagging him.
“Juyang Jushi, you’re finally awake!”
He only heard the female voice saying, “You fainted in front of my pub two days ago and had a very serious fever. I thought you wouldn’t survive, but to think that you’ve stubbornly made it through. How delightful! ”
Shi Yangyu opened his mouth, but he felt a burning dryness in his throat, and he could not even say a word.
“Goodness, look at me chattering on. Have some water first…”
The figure quickly walked off and when she came back again, she had already brought a bowl of water. She helped Shi Yangyu up and he gulped down the whole bowl of water.
“Phew…”
Shi Yangyu heaved a sigh of relief, but his body still felt extremely weak. This incomparably real sensation even caused him a little panic because it was too real. Whether it was his limp body or the bowl of water he drank, it was just like reality!
At this moment, he even wondered if he had transmigrated to another life.
He slowly opened his hands and placed them in front of him, looking at them with a somewhat blurred vision, only to see that they were a pair of pale, slim hands, with thin fingers, slender joints, and fair skin. This was not a man’s palms at all…
What shocked him the most was that these hands were full of minuscule details. Whether it was their fingerprints or palm prints or the hairs on the back, so thin they were almost invisible, they were all very lifelike. He tried to clench his fists and his hands correspondingly produced the same tactile sensation…
“This, this, this….”
Shi Yangyu looked at all this in a blank daze. The astonishment in his heart was beyond words.
Was this a game? This was not reality? Could it be that he had transmigrated?
“Alright, you’re a little weak now. I’ll bring you a bowl of food.”
The woman next to the bed continued. “When you can get out of bed, you can be a dancer where I work. After all, you have amnesia. You have no support in Blacklight City, which you aren’t familiar with. If you leave, with your appearance, in less than two days, you’ll be seized by human traffickers and sold to the rich…”
With that, the woman turned and left.
Shi Yangyu listened to all this silently. His vision became clearer and gradually, he could see everything around him. At the same time, there was a “ding” notification sound in his mind and there appeared a translucent interface in front of him that only he could see. There was a prompt on it:
[Task notification: This task is a novice task. Player “Juyang Jushi” can choose to temporarily stay in “Madam Mi’s Pub” as a dancer and gradually become familiar with Blacklight City or choose to leave at any time and give up the novice task.]
[However, please note that any action will have a chain reaction. After choosing to leave “Madam Mi’s Pub”, “Madam Mi’s Pub” will no longer be a shelter for the player “Juyang Jushi”.]
Seeing these two prompts before him, Shi Yangyu could not help frowning and murmured, “This is the novice task of the legend? And my life experience is reduced to an unidentified memory loss? I’m currently being adopted by the proprietress of a pub?”
However, after saying this, Shi Yangyu got a fright because he realized that although his voice was a little hoarse, it still sounded a little melodious. It was a woman’s voice…
Thinking of this, Shi Yangyu immediately moved out of the bed. He braced his somewhat sore and feeble body and came to the mirror, and suddenly saw the figure of a beautiful blonde girl!
“My gosh…”
Shi Yangyu’s mouth suddenly twitched and a sense of absurdity seized him. Although he did take the initiative to build this female character, he never expected that the sense of immersion in this game was this godlike. Everything that this body conveyed was almost no different from reality!
No wonder the game stated that this game would be the player’s second life…
Shi Yangyu’s mouth kept twitching and the “her” in the mirror was doing the same. As the character was too gorgeous, even this kind of absent-minded expression was fascinating.
“Wait!”
A deranged idea suddenly flashed across his mind. Once it occurred to him, it could not be suppressed, growing like mushrooms after rain. His breathing became more and more rapid, and at the same time, he raised his hands tremblingly, and with a tentative gesture, slowly reached out to his chest…
“Ah~”
…
Five days later, the game Ancient Civilization did not become less of a hot topic just because there were only 100,000 closed beta players. On the contrary, the popularity of Ancient Civilization was through the roof and all of this was thanks to the 100,000 closed beta players who were madly bragging giving feedback on the Internet.
At the same time, many closed beta players also keenly sniffed out the possibility of business opportunities. They made the gameplay into videos and sent them to major video websites in the world, which also attracted an astounding wave of response from the world —
The ultimate degree of freedom, the game graphics that were as real as reality, the incredible immersion, and even the feedback from the NPC were like that from a real person…
Countless advantages piled together to form a strong wave, intensifying the storm of hype surrounding Ancient Civilization.
At this time, Chen Chen was sitting at the desk, listening to Little X’s report.
“At present, 100,000 closed beta players have entered the game.”
Little X reported, “The average online time of each player is 14 hours per day, accounting for 58% of the time each day.
“The probability of players entering the game in the closed beta is 100% for the first time, 95% for the second time, 93% for the third time, 92% for the fourth time, and as for the fifth time, which is today, the number of players entering the game is 91,300, which is 91.3%. The player retention rate exceeds 90%.”
“That’s not a bad figure.”
Chen Chen nodded, somewhat satisfied.
“The main reason many players did not enter the game again, in addition to factors such as having to work, is that the game is too close to reality and the death penalty is too high.”
Little X said, “At present, we’ve received more than 330,000 suggestions for improvement from the closed beta players. The most mentioned suggestion is regarding the death penalty for players. Everyone thinks that the death penalty is too serious and doesn’t conform to the rules of a game.
“And their second most mentioned suggestion is the problem of going offline. Many players think that they’ll occasionally have an emergency and they can’t possibly return to their hideout to go offline every time.”
“Indeed, if it were me, I wouldn’t like these inhuman rules either.”
Chen Chen said thoughtfully, “For real players, it’s a game after all and it’s a game full of fighting and killing elements. If this is the case, it’s difficult to avoid death. No one wants to start from scratch again each time they die.”
“So, what should we do?”
Little X asked curiously.
“We can record the physical fitness of each player after they’ve trained.”
Chen Chen thought for a while and suggested, “When the player dies and we print a new body, we’ll directly print them out at their peak physical fitness. In this case, even if they die, their hard-won physical fitness would not be lost.”
“That’s a good idea!”
Little X’s eyes lit up instantly and she reminded. “In this way, we can also open the bank of Blacklight City to the players. All player characters can deposit their money and valuables in the bank, so the death penalty can be further reduced.”
“At the same time, the problem of logging off can be solved.”
Chen Chen continued. “After all, their bodies in the end dimension have God chips, so when they go offline, we can take the initiative to control their bodies to locate the nearest hiding point so that the game’s character won’t die just because there’s no one controlling them after the player has logged off.”
“Uh-huh!”
Little X nodded and then reported again, “The third suggestion mentioned by them is that the physical functions of their bodies in the game are too realistic. Many players are doing the novice tasks that we’ve arranged. These players haven’t come into contact with any combat. However, there’s still a small number of players who aren’t satisfied with this. They felt that all this was a game, so they did whatever they wanted in Blacklight City.
“After several fights with gangsters, many of these players have died, but there are still some players who haven’t died but have lost their arms and legs. These people find that their injuries are too difficult to heal, so they asked us to change the body’s physical system to allow injuries to heal quickly.”
“This is indeed a serious problem.”
Chen Chen could not help thinking about it. If this problem was not solved, the gameplay would be greatly reduced.
“It’s not just that.”
Little X suddenly complained, “These players also pose a serious insidious threat to the safety of the city. It’s just an increase of 100,000 people now, but the burden on Blacklight City is already significant. When those players arrive, they also account for a lot of the crime rate. The crime rate in Blacklight City has soared in the past few days and there’s panic in the city.
“At the same time, the thousands of android NPCs and hiding places used for novice missions are almost running out. At most, we can only take in 100,000 players at the same time. Any more would be impossible to bear. When the game is opened up to the world in the future, I’m afraid the entire Blacklight City is going to be completely messed up…”
“After all, humanity is the ‘fourth natural disaster’. Of course, I understand.”
Chen Chen thought for a while and said after some deliberation, “I’ve planned to launch 5,000 low-orbit communication satellites in the end dimension in the near future, covering the entire world without any blind spots, so that the game characters can run around the world. At that point, they can go wherever they want, it’s all up to them. This way, the pressure on Blacklight City will be alleviated indirectly.”
“But if so, the medical treatment system also needs to keep up with them…”
Chen Chen added. “We can transport several fully-automated medical platforms to the end dimension and set up several rapid treatment centers within the Joint Resistance Army. Injured players can quickly heal the character’s injuries by spending money. This will solve the player’s injury problem.
“At the same time, for the next step, I’ll cooperate with the other four Joint Resistance Army forces in the end dimension and open a 3D printing factory on their side, which will also draw away some of the players. Still, all this will come later… ”
At this point, Chen Chen could not help but smile and joke, “Perhaps soon, we might be able to take back the end dimension with an army of billions of players…”
