Slacking Off

"Countdown: 3, 2, 1!"

The clock hand pointed to six. The planetary assault and defense battle began immediately in the game.

In the space scene, several gigantic spacecraft came roaring in. More than four hundred game characters leaped from the ships, riding all kinds of mounts and radiating every kind of light as they descended upon Tianmu Star like celestial gods.

Beams of light rose from Tianmu Star as well. Under Han Yang's unified command, a total of fifty squads swiftly charged at the enemy.

The two sides erupted into battle at once.

Lü Yangsheng paced back and forth between rows of computers, somewhat nervous as he constantly monitored the battlefield. Han Yang remained expressionless, pretending to be innocent and clueless while tens of millions of thoughts spun through his mind at all times.

A thousand miles away, in the power-leveling room of Fuxing Base's core district, one hundred computer towers hummed while lights and shadows flickered across their monitors. Before the computers, one hundred robots moved their arms rapidly, dancing over mice and keyboards like butterflies.

"Move, move, move!"

"Hit their left flank! Take the statue! Hold the statue!"

"We can't hold them! Get over here and support us!"

In another city's server room, shouts rose and fell one after another. In the server room where Han Yang was located, however, there was complete silence.

There were no shouts or roars, only the rumble of computer towers and the crackling of rapid keystrokes and mouse clicks.

Han Yang's computing power turned into text, then into voice, and was transmitted precisely into the headsets of every operator.

Those gaming experts, who had once dominated the game, seemed to have become mindless robots at that moment.

They did not need to analyze the current battle situation or make any judgments of their own. All they needed to do was mechanically follow the instructions coming through their headsets. Everything else had nothing to do with them.

It looked like the statue beside them was about to be captured by the enemy?

Oh, none of my business.

Should we go support them?

No need. Just watch.

Sure enough, before long, another squad that had happened to move nearby charged over. Their arrival was like the last straw that broke the camel's back, just enough to overwhelm the enemy squad that had been defending the statue and precisely clear them out.

After clearing the enemies there, another nearby squad happened to fall into danger and was on the verge of collapse. The previous squad had just freed up and could head over to support them.

Everything seemed to have been arranged in advance, as though every enemy move and every development in the situation had already been anticipated by the commander, who then precisely selected the most efficient decision from countless possible paths.

At that moment, the gaming experts in the server room felt somewhat conflicted.

This kind of setup... how should they put it?

Even if it weren't us, anyone familiar with the basic controls could probably do it... We're not needed at all.

Even if we win like this, there's no sense of accomplishment or participation.

But...

It really is easy.

This doesn't count as slacking off, does it?

Amid the fierce battle, some of the gaming experts even found their minds wandering, thinking about all sorts of random nonsense.

General Manager Lu won't dock our pay, right? Probably not. General Manager Lu has plenty of money.

Whatever. We'll talk after we finish this.

The server room remained silent.

In the server room of the other city, the gaming experts were beginning to lose control of their emotions.

"Fuck, what's going on?!"

"Why haven't we broken through their defenses yet?"

"Why is the Tianmu Gang so strong today?"

"They're not stronger. It's still the same characters, and they're still nothing special one-on-one... Right, coordination! The key is their coordination! Their teamwork is too good!"

"Fuck, no wonder something felt off. Their coordination is incredible! What's going on?"

"Keep attacking! Hurry up! It's already ten, and we haven't even pushed halfway!"

Sun Xiaoying was genuinely getting anxious.

Capturing Tianmu Star was an extremely important part of his subsequent plans.

If he did not capture Tianmu Star, how could he find an excuse to play games with Morpheus? How could he get closer to him? And if he did not get closer to him, how could his family's business develop ties with the Earth Industrial Committee?

For today's battle, he had spent several million and hired every expert he could find!

He had even hired the owners of three major game studios, along with all one hundred and fifty experts under them!

If he lost, everything would go down the drain.

As time passed, the atmosphere in the server room grew increasingly tense. Yet the situation continued to develop inexorably in the direction he least wanted to see.

When the clock hand pointed to eleven, Sun Xiaoying knew the situation was completely beyond saving.

Defeat was inevitable.

But...

How could they lose? Why did they lose?!

"Li Ke! Huang Teng! Didn't you say you'd called in all the experts?! Didn't you say your game studio alliance had agreed never to support Lü Yangsheng?! Where did Lü Yangsheng find so many experts?!"

Part of Sun Xiaoying's confidence in victory came from the fact that the game studio alliance had already taken his side.

To hire a large number of experts, one could only turn to game studios. Once that route had been cut off, the only option was to seek out skilled individual players one by one.

But skilled individual players were all independent. They had different temperaments, different personalities, and inconvenient schedules. How could they compare to game studios, where the boss only needed to give an order and everyone could deploy immediately?

How could it possibly be easy to gather four hundred skilled individual players?

Li Ke and Huang Teng hurried over to the major patron, both sweating nervously.

"General Sun, our game studio alliance really did reach an agreement. There are only five large-scale Cosmic Warfare game studios. The rest are all small studios and amount to nothing.

All the experts from our five studios are here now. You saw it yourself, General Sun. How could we possibly be supporting Lü Yangsheng?"

"Then what the hell is this?! Where did Lü Yangsheng find so many experts? Don't tell me he recruited skilled individual players one by one!"

Li Ke and Huang Teng exchanged a glance. Gritting his teeth, Li Ke said, "There is another studio for this game. It has been expanding rapidly, but it never joined the game studio alliance."

"Oh?"

"That studio has always been waging price wars and disrupting industry rules. We invited them several times, hoping they would join the alliance so we could set unified prices, but they ignored us."

"That's right. That studio is very strong and has quite a few experts. In my opinion... Lü Yangsheng may have gotten that studio's support."

"What's it called?"

"Revival Game Studio. This is their shop's homepage."

Li Ke quickly pulled up the page and handed it to Sun Xiaoying.

Seeing the hundreds of thousands of completed transactions in the shop, Sun Xiaoying's expression turned even more sinister.

"Investigate them. If this studio really did it, crush them."

Li Ke and Huang Teng were delighted. "How do we crush them?"

"They have a lot of experts, so their costs must be high. Start a price war with them and see whether they can hold out! Don't worry, I'll cover whatever losses you two take."