Beginning in the Prototype World

On a pirated streaming site, Chen Changsheng opened the sci-fi section, which was flooded with foreign films. After much deliberation, he clicked on the Marvel column and started playing Spider-Man, the version starring Tobey Maguire.

Once the movie began, Chen Changsheng switched tabs to open Prototype, a blockbuster game he had played during his childhood.

Having played it several times before, Chen Changsheng picked it up quickly, and before long, his movements were exceptionally fluid.

In the game, Chen Changsheng glided from a high-rise building toward the next mission point, but he came to a halt as he swept past a certain objective.

This mission icon was different from the others; a cursor flashing in black and red hues appeared highly unusual.

Chen Changsheng couldn't recall if such a mission had existed when he played in the past, but even if he hadn't seen it before, he was determined to click and play it now—it might just be a game Easter egg.

With a click of the mouse, a standard game prompt popped up, containing only one question: Do you want to start Prototype from Hope Town? Yes/No.

Without a second thought, he tapped the keyboard and hit enter. In the next instant, Chen Changsheng felt a flash of white light from the screen, and then he lost consciousness.

When Chen Changsheng woke up, he found himself sitting in a hospital, having just received some kind of vaccine and currently under observation in a quarantine zone.

Outside the quarantine area, townspeople were continuously arriving at the hospital to get vaccinated before entering for observation.

Shaking his head, Chen Changsheng rubbed his aching forehead. What had he been doing just a moment ago?

He had left home to get the vaccine, and while waiting in the isolation room after the shot, he suddenly felt very sleepy and drifted off... but why was his head hurting so much?

Just as Chen Changsheng was trying to recall what had happened, a siren blared.

Chen Changsheng looked toward the sound and saw the green light of the isolation room turn on; his quarantine period was over.

The other residents in the room stood up one after another and headed out. Chen Changsheng had no choice but to set his thoughts aside for the moment and follow the crowd outside.

After stepping out, a sudden sense of familiarity washed over him. He oriented himself and began walking toward his home.

Chen Changsheng was an orphan; to be precise, his father had died for his country, leaving him orphaned.

Fortunately, his father had apparently performed great service, so he had been adopted by the military and brought to this small town.

In an ordinary town, an orphan like Chen Changsheng would inevitably be bullied.

But not here. All four or five hundred residents of the town were families of fallen soldiers.

Aside from orphans like Chen Changsheng and elderly people left without support after their children died in action, the town was populated by disabled veterans and their families.

After his father's death, Chen Changsheng received a large pension. As his guardian, the military deposited the interest into his account every month for daily expenses, while the principal would be paid out in a lump sum once he reached adulthood.

It seemed he would be coming of age next month. Soon, he would have a considerable amount of cash, and once he had the money, he could buy a car and leave this town to see the outside world.

As he walked along the narrow road of the town, Chen Changsheng's mind wandered, and before long, he arrived at his home.

Because there was a military base nearby, the town also served as a logistics transit point.

Since this town was the closest to the base, soldiers would always come here to spend money on their days off. The soldiers brought economic activity to the town, but they also brought noise.

Yet, for some reason, no soldiers had come to spend money today. Without the rowdy shouts of drunken soldiers, Chen Changsheng suddenly felt the town was exceptionally quiet.

Upon returning home, Chen Changsheng felt very familiar with the furnishings and should have turned on the TV to relax.

Instead, he stood quietly looking out the window, plagued by an inexplicable feeling—a sense of strangeness.

After standing still for a while, Chen Changsheng's stomach growled; he was hungry.

He opened the well-stocked refrigerator, put some semi-finished food into the oven, and brought some ready-to-eat items to the table. He began to devour the food impatiently.

He didn't know if he was just too tired today, but Chen Changsheng felt ravenous, a hunger so intense it felt as if he might lose his sanity.

Chen Changsheng quickly finished the food on the table, but the hunger hadn't subsided in the slightest.

He then took the food out of the oven and began to gorge himself. He no longer cared if it was cooked properly, because after eating, he felt even hungrier than before.

Only after finishing everything in the entire refrigerator did Chen Changsheng feel a slight sense of fullness, which eased the unbearable hunger he had just felt.

But this feeling of satiety was already fading. He could tell that it wouldn't be long before he felt hungry again.

Chen Changsheng finally realized something was wrong. After all, the refrigerator, though small, held several days' worth of food, and he had consumed it all in one sitting.

Before he could ponder it further, his stomach growled again. Chen Changsheng didn't dwell on it.

He put on his clothes, started up a nearly scrap-metal pickup truck in the yard, and drove toward the supply station.

The pickup was a decommissioned military vehicle that Chen Changsheng had salvaged. The town was so small and lacked traffic police, so half-grown kids like him drove their families' vehicles around all day.

As long as they were within the town limits, no one cared about underage driving—not even the military. As long as you didn't leave the town, you could do whatever you wanted.

The supply station was next to the town supermarket. Daily necessities for the residents were usually provided directly by the military, but anything beyond those rations had to be bought at the supermarket.

The supplies for this month hadn't arrived yet, so Chen Changsheng had to go to the supermarket to buy something to eat. Fortunately, the supply station wasn't far from town, and he arrived shortly.

Chen Changsheng rarely used the money provided by the military. Since he was still a minor, everything was provided by the military.

Because his daily life was very simple, he had saved up quite a bit of money and was considered somewhat well-off.

Inside the supermarket, Chen Changsheng headed straight for the food section, buying a large amount of meat, chocolate, and candy, and asked the staff to help load it into his truck.

Chen Changsheng drove straight home without starting to eat on the spot. It wasn't that he wasn't hungry.

Though he was starving, he still had his reason. If he were to gorge himself in front of others, the news would likely spread throughout the town and cause unnecessary trouble.

On the way home, Chen Changsheng finally couldn't hold back. His stomach let out a series of massive growls, as if he were about to starve to death at any moment.

He jerked the steering wheel, drove the truck into the woods by the side of the road, and traveled a distance until he reached a secluded spot. Feeling dizzy and lightheaded from hunger, he scrambled toward the food in the truck bed.

Perhaps it was due to extreme hunger, but Chen Changsheng only managed to scramble into the carriage before collapsing onto a pile of food, losing consciousness.

After Chen Changsheng fainted, strands of flesh-tendrils pierced through his clothes and lunged at the entire cart of food, ignoring the packaging to burrow directly inside and begin digestion.

Chen Changsheng's body began to melt away like an ice cube, eventually turning into a pool of liquid that merged with the food.

Within the mushy, gelatinous mass, numerous tentacles darted back and forth; the sensation was truly bizarre, and carried a terrifying, nauseating quality.

The next day, Chen Changsheng awoke to a splitting headache, gritting his teeth as he rubbed his temples inside the carriage.

Looking at the unfamiliar surroundings, he felt utterly bewildered—wasn't he just playing a game a moment ago?

Another wave of pain struck, and a sequence of memories flooded his mind. Yet, the style of these memories felt so much like the memory nodes from Prototype...

After the intense pain subsided, Chen Changsheng understood his situation: it seemed he had been assimilated by the Original Virus, the predecessor to the Blacklight Virus, having been infected after receiving a vaccine yesterday.

Unlike the other infected people in the town, Chen Changsheng had become the one-in-a-million chosen one, a vessel for the collective consciousness of the virus.

The newly awakened virus was still weak and unable to digest its host at first, but after Chen Changsheng absorbed a massive amount of energy last night, the virus finally had the opportunity to fully consume the original Chen Changsheng.

Logically, the original Chen Changsheng's consciousness should have been absorbed by the virus, leaving behind an empty shell waiting for the viral will to take over. But as luck would have it, Chen Changsheng had transmigrated into the game; having already absorbed one consciousness, the virus failed to notice this newly arrived soul.

Whether it was because Chen Changsheng originated from reality or not, by the time the Original Virus discovered that this body still contained a powerful consciousness, it was completely unable to do anything about his mind and memories.

The newly awakened virus clearly lacked high intelligence. After attempting a few attacks to no avail, it changed its strategy and simply merged with the transmigrated Chen Changsheng's will, becoming a part of it.

What a simple-minded virus—if you can't beat them, join them? In any case, Chen Changsheng's will and the viral will had now merged.

Following the fusion, Chen Changsheng could observe the Web of Conspiracy as if playing a game, while the viral will could no longer influence him, forced to passively obey his commands.

The result was that Chen Changsheng became the master of the viral will, capable of issuing orders to the Original Virus aggregate.

Chen Changsheng offered a two-second moment of silence for his former self, while simultaneously feeling deeply worried about his own future.

As for the transmigration, although he felt a bit uneasy, he had read enough novels and played enough games that accepting it wasn't too difficult. The immediate problem was that Chen Changsheng knew exactly what was about to befall this town.

According to the background lore found online, it wouldn't be long before the Original Virus broke out in Hope Town, turning the entire population into zombies, after which the military would lose control of the situation.

In the end, the town would be met with "justice from the sky"—a nuclear cleansing of Hope Town.

Fortunately, there was still time; the viral outbreak seemed to be a while away. During this period, he had to find a way to escape.

However, in the original memories, Chen Changsheng discovered that there didn't seem to be any way out of the town. The only road was tightly controlled by the military, with only their transport trucks coming and going each day.

The transport trucks were subjected to strict screening, and as for the soldiers stationed in the town, they were surely already abandoned. When Chen Changsheng played the game, those Marine Corps soldiers were like leeks—harvested batch after batch, existing purely as cannon fodder.

The only ones worth noting were the Black Watch soldiers, but in his memories, Chen Changsheng had never seen them in the town. Those men were the true elites, the backbone of the resistance against the Blacklight Virus.