Back to the Past

"Hey, hey, have you preordered Arthur?"

"Of course. I preordered it half a year ago, okay?"

"The game claims to be fully AI-managed, with players driving the world's storyline. Everyone says it's the most open-ended game in history."

"After watching the simulated footage in the trailer, I already felt that VR was insanely realistic."

"Didn't they say game time during sleep could last more than four hours? Before this, the longest was only three hours."

"Once it goes live tonight, hurry up and party with me, big shots."

Zhao Xu stared blankly at the college classmates enthusiastically discussing the game before him.

Those youthful faces before him belonged to memories from ten years ago.

This scene felt strangely familiar.

His heart tightened, and countless memories scattered through his mind like drifting catkins.

Ten years ago, Arthur launched today.

No one realized that the curtain on a new era had silently risen that very day, ushering in a true age of upheaval.

On the first anniversary of Arthur's launch, a meteor shower capable of destroying the world appeared out of nowhere on Earth, reducing all life to ashes.

Yet humanity discovered that after the meteor shower, they had crossed over into the Arthurian World.

Those who had once played Arthur perfectly inherited everything they possessed in the game.

The high-ranking players from the game became the elite among Earthlings in Arthur, and the powers of the former Earth were reshuffled accordingly.

In his Previous Life, Zhao Xu had not cared about this game. He had only been dragged into it by his classmates nearly eight months after launch, merely to pad out his class's guild.

His login frequency in the game had been sporadic as well. By the time of the crossing, he had only just risen from Level 1 to Level 2.

By then, the main group of players who had entered at launch were nearly Level 5 on average, while the top players had even surpassed Level 10.

Zhao Xu, who had joined the game a step too late, was only Level 2.

Yet among Earth's six or seven billion people, he was still one of the lucky few who had played the game in advance, so he naturally entered the upper ranks of Earth's powers.

In Arthur, relying on his Class Level and his classmates' support, Zhao Xu quickly provided a decent life for his family.

But afterward, the luck of Zhao Xu's entire life happened to run out.

The small town he had been stationed in was attacked by a Black Dragon that suddenly arrived three years after the crossing.

More than a hundred people in the town were killed or injured, and his family all died in that crisis, including his newlywed wife.

From then on, Zhao Xu's life lost all color.

He had just been conscripted by the lord for an expedition at the time and thus escaped disaster, but he had also been shackled by revenge ever since.

For the next six years, he worked toward vengeance every waking moment.

At the very end of his memories, Zhao Xu joined an adventuring party sent to subjugate the Black Dragon.

But before they even entered the Black Dragon's lair, the party was ambushed.

The only final impression left in Zhao Xu's mind was the Black Dragon's breath rushing straight at him.

With the regrets of death, Zhao Xu was reborn in this classroom ten years earlier.

He had returned to this moment before the game launched.

Across the entire world, including the game's development company, no one but Zhao Xu knew—

Arthur was actually a real otherworld.

After the crossing, countless people beat their chests in regret over not having played this game sooner.

Even employees of the game's development company would still be complete nobodies a year later if they had not played the game in their spare time.

After taking a deep breath, Zhao Xu snapped awake and hurriedly pulled out his phone to log into TC's game store, intending to preorder the game in advance.

As a paid preorder game, Arthur was not cheap.

But no matter how popular the game became after launch, it never offered any additional paid items.

At that thought, Zhao Xu's gaze fell on the preorder packages in the store.

Arthur Standard Edition: 299 RMB.

Arthur Deluxe Edition: 599 RMB.

There was naturally no need to mention the Standard Edition. In truth, most players bought that version.

The Deluxe Edition merely gave players an additional outfit, essentially paying 300 for a cosmetic skin. The outfit could not increase combat strength in any way.

But Zhao Xu's eyes were not on that. Earth would be destroyed in a year, and even trillions in wealth would turn to ashes.

Spending an extra 300 RMB now in exchange for an outfit from another world was like pie falling from the sky. Only a fool would refuse.

Without another word, Zhao Xu opened the preorder page for the Deluxe Edition.

But just as he was about to complete the iris scan and pay, his entire body suddenly shook.

He remembered something.

Many years later, he had once happened to encounter a high-level big shot. From the envy in the other party's expression, he had heard a certain legend.

This game had Dual Elite accounts, meaning dual classes.

Dual classes allowed players to possess two parallel Class Level tracks whose levels did not stack.

If an ordinary player was a Level 3 Fighter and a level 7 Wizard, then that player was a Level 10 character.

But for a dual-class player, upon reaching Level 10, the first class track could be a Level 10 Wizard while the second could be a Level 10 Cleric.

At their core, they were still Level 10 characters. They simply possessed the class abilities of two Level 10 classes.

They still only had the HP, attack power, Feats, and saving throws of a Level 10 character.

But the resources from that additional class track were enough to make them stand out among players.

According to that big shot, the Dual Elite class was actually a system intended to be fully released later, as part of a version update meant to attract players again.

When the game launched, an extremely limited number of accounts were opened for testing the Dual Elite mode, which also made it easier to assess its balance and adjust it later.

As test accounts, their greatest advantage was that players could experience the game for free.

But the price was that the accounts would be reclaimed a year later.

This was also to prevent widespread player dissatisfaction. No matter how powerful an account that would be reclaimed was, it was still only temporary, not to mention it had an expiration date.

Many players participating in the test even saw Arthur becoming increasingly popular and simply gave up their reclaimable accounts, which they did not own, to buy the game again.

But no one knew that one year later, before the accounts could be reclaimed, everyone would cross over. Naturally, game characters that had become real could no longer be reclaimed.

The one-year term thus became permanent.

Those accounts also became the only privileged accounts in the Arthurian World.

According to that big shot, very few test accounts lasted until the later stages.

But as long as they survived into the real Arthurian World, every one of their owners became a powerhouse in their own right.

At that thought, Zhao Xu stood up directly and turned to leave the classroom. In a few minutes, once the bell rang, it would be harder for him to slip away.

"Hey, Brother Xu, Old Huang said last class that he'd be taking attendance this period. Are you trying to get yourself killed?" his roommate Zhang Qi hurriedly called out.

Without even taking his textbook, Zhao Xu simply waved his hand. "I have something to take care of first."

Before he finished speaking, he had already darted out. Just then, he passed the scattered students entering the classroom for class.

After turning out the door, Zhao Xu found a nearby flower bed to sit on. He immediately took out his phone and called TC's game customer service to ask about the Dual Elite test accounts.

After only a few exchanges on the phone, Zhao Xu's expression gradually turned grim.

Before he could even probe deeply, customer service rejected him with polite, formulaic language.

They said that the test accounts had all been distributed half a month ago.

All participants were invited players, and the test was not planned to be opened to the general player base anytime soon.

In short, he had no chance, so he should stop thinking about it.

Thinking about it, that made sense. At worst, a Dual Elite test account meant playing for free while still being stronger than ordinary players.

If they were openly available, everyone would get one to try first, without even being subject to the two-hour refund limit.

That response made Zhao Xu frown deeply.

He knew very well that he was not some elite player.

He had only entered the game seven or eight months after launch. Even if he had played infrequently, by then players had already developed mature leveling methods and he had people guiding him. Those factors canceled each other out, and he had only barely reached Level 2 after four months.

This was the most precious year of the virtual world.

After entering the real Arthurian World, everyone's leveling speed slowed dramatically.

Calling one year the equivalent of ten would not have been an exaggeration.

Zhao Xu had also only barely reached Level 5 by clinging to revenge, repeatedly escaping death by a hair's breadth, and draining his future lifespan. Otherwise, following the course of an ordinary life, he might only have been Level 3 or 4 even after ten years.

If he did not have the boost of a Dual Elite account, then even with his ten years of experience, he would only reach the first tier among players.

If he encountered the Black Dragon from his Previous Life again—the one that had killed him as easily as slaughtering a chicken—it would still only take a single breath attack.

He needed a high enough level to gain the ability to protect his family.

After calming down slightly, Zhao Xu immediately opened the X Fish platform.

Besides listing used items they no longer wanted, many people had begun selling all sorts of services and even brand-new products on X Fish in recent years. They could even post requests to buy certain goods.

Zhao Xu directly posted a request to purchase a one-year Dual Elite test account for Arthur.

When it came to the price field, he ignored all that "negotiable" nonsense and directly entered the game's price: 599.

That meant the other party could trade a one-year test account for a permanent Deluxe Edition personal account. The only difference was that they would no longer experience the Dual Elite feature.

There were more types of test accounts than just Dual Elite accounts at the moment. Some were no different from ordinary accounts.

So he specifically stated that he wanted a one-year Dual Elite test account, which was also the longest-lasting test account.

Sure enough, as soon as Zhao Xu posted it, seeing that he had a sufficiently high credit score, people immediately began messaging him privately.

"Want a six-month test account for a powerful race?"

Zhao Xu naturally knew about powerful races. In fact, this was also one of the later features everyone knew would be released.

The defining trait of powerful races was that they provided more abilities, sometimes comparable to four or five Class Levels, allowing new players to make up the gap with veteran players.

One of Arthur's major selling points was its global single-server system.

But an account reclaimed after six months was meaningless.

An account's duration was calculated from the launch date, not from the time it was activated.

Otherwise, he could have acquired one and let a friend use it.

After Zhao Xu refused, several more private messages came in.

Some even offered twenty-four-hour test accounts for ten yuan. Zhao Xu could not even be bothered to reply and simply moved on to the next message.

"Bro, want a six-month Dual Elite test account? I'll let you have it for 299."

When Zhao Xu casually opened one message, he was delighted to see the words Dual Elite, only for his heart to sink when he saw six months.

So Dual Elite accounts also came in six-month versions.

"This price is a great deal. If you aren't a veteran player, you can't even get an invitation account like this. My six-month one is already pretty long; a lot of them only last three months."

Although Zhao Xu did not want it, when he saw the reply, he patiently began drawing information out of the other party.

The other party was selling it for 299 because accounts like Dual Elite only became powerful in the later stages.

The shorter the duration, the lower the level naturally was, making it impossible to truly display the strength of a Dual Elite class.

If it could last three or four years and cover an entire game's full life cycle, major guilds would be willing to invest tens or even hundreds of thousands in an account like this.

After some back-and-forth, the other party sensed that Zhao Xu did not really want to buy and began replying only sporadically.

Just like that, until evening, with only half an hour left before the game launched at eight, Zhao Xu still had not received any offers for a one-year Dual Elite test account.

Based on the information he had, there were probably far fewer Dual Elite test accounts than he had imagined.

Suddenly, Zhao Xu's phone vibrated. An X Fish user had sent him a private message.

"I have a one-year account with the Dual Elite system, and it also includes a Potential Points test."

Potential Points?

Zhao Xu froze. He had never heard of that ability, but it did not matter. As long as it had Dual Elite, that was enough.

But judging from the other party's wording, they were clearly hinting that they wanted more money.

In truth, no matter how much it cost, he would buy it. Even if it were hundreds of thousands, he would persuade his parents to lend him the money.

This was not buying a game account. This was buying his life.

"How much?" Zhao Xu did not immediately name his own price.

"1,000." The other party directly doubled Zhao Xu's requested price.

"That's way too much." Zhao Xu immediately typed back.

Although endless joy was already surging in his heart, he still tried to bargain.

Agreeing too readily would only make the other party suspect they had sold it too cheaply, creating unnecessary trouble.

Next, Zhao Xu pretended to haggle a little, but he did not dare push too hard and make the other party stop responding.

After some bargaining, they finally settled on 800. The process left him more mentally and physically exhausted than doing several advanced mathematics exam papers.

After the other party agreed, Zhao Xu asked them to list the item on X Fish under his title, then instantly placed the order and paid.

There was not a single mishap throughout the entire process.

Looking at the game activation code the other party sent him, Zhao Xu could not help feeling excited, even though his mental age was already over thirty.

That string of unremarkable numbers in the activation code was the future of his life.