In the real world, in a group chat.
The Howling Pothos has been howling for a full half hour.
He posted a screenshot of his helmet's current status to the group chat, and the pop-up clearly displayed the message: "[Body maintenance in progress...]".
[ Howling Pothos ]: "Does anyone know what's going on?"
By 8 a. m., the game group had come Vitality again, and the number of people in the group chat had quickly increased from ten to fourteen. Some players had not been invited because they had not yet become familiar with each other.
[ Do Some Farm Work ]: "Dude, did you kill yourself? Wait, when I died before, the pop-up said [Your body has died, please wait to resurrect, current progress: 0%], what the hell is this maintenance thing?"
[ Howling Pothos ]: "You guys finally logged off! I've been waiting here for half an hour. Does anyone know how I am right now?"
[ Dawn Ah ]: "I checked with Duolin, and he said that you suddenly fell unconscious after learning the skill, and then he took you to the lord."
[ Howling Pothos ]: "That's good, that's good..."
[ Zhongde ]: "Wait, what do you mean you've learned a 'skill'? This game has skills?! You're cheating, you hacker!"
[ Do Some Farm Work ]: "Idiot, who in this group isn't a cheater?"
[ Zhongde ]: "... Oh right, I forgot it hasn't been officially released yet, I'm so sorry..."
[ Good Times Don't Last ]: "What skills? Can you tell me? Howling Pothos "
[ Shit Appraisal Master ]: "Same question."
[Pond Fish and Old Abyss]:"+1
[ Litang's Supremely Fierce Tiger ]: "+1
[ Howling Pothos ]: "Isn't anyone concerned about my unconsciousness?"
[ Shit Appraisal Master ]: "It's alright, brother. Everyone knows you're a top-tier player; a mere unconsciousness won't do you any good."
[ Howling Pothos ]: "I suspect you're insulting me, but I have no proof."
Soon, [ Howling Pothos ] recounted the entire process of learning skills from Duolin in the group. The players in the group were immediately amazed and said that 10 silver was definitely worth it for such a versatile skill.
But not everyone is excited about this.
[ Shit Appraisal Master ]: "You mean, learning this skill will allow me to turn my hands into all sorts of convenient and durable wooden tools? I just bought a batch of iron tools!"
[ The Good Times Don't Last ]: "I felt a bit suicidal, but then I thought someone else deserved to die."
[ Shit Appraisal Master ]: "I'm also starting to feel like I don't want to live anymore."
[ The Good Times Don't Last ]: "Let's delete each other, don't contact me again if something like this happens..."
[ Howling Pothos ]: "No, don't rush, well, how should I put it? With our current strength, even if we learned the Directed Alienation skill, we can't directly apply it to combat and construction... We have almost no Psionic Energy right now, so when shaping limbs, we can only perform small-scale Alienation. For example, I clearly wanted a knight's sword, but I Alienation up with a fruit knife... If you think you can use a fruit knife to slowly torture the BOSS piece by piece, then you can indeed say goodbye to ironware. If not, I think everyone will still need the ironware produced in Dragonborn Village for the time being, and you'll still have a profit to make."
[ Good Times Don't Last ]: " Shit Appraisal Master, please accept my friend request."
[ Shit Appraisal Master ]: "Okay, bro, I'll call you again next time I need investment."
Watching the two quickly turn against each other and then just as quickly make up, the players in the group felt that these two were truly birds of a feather.
The discussion in the group quickly came to an end, and [ Zhongde ], the group owner, posted a new group announcement, asking new players in the group to change their group nicknames to their in-game nicknames.
Previously, when there were fewer people in the group, people only mentioned this matter briefly. However, as the number of players gradually increased, [ Zhongde ] and his team discovered that many new players' social media nicknames and in-game nicknames were different.
Just like himself, his initial nickname was [ A Zhongde Dried Meat Wholesale ], but because it was too long, he only used the most essential two characters, Zhongde, in the game. The same goes for [ Dark Archmage ], who joined the group chat yesterday; her final nickname is actually [ Dark Archmage Shang Yang ]...
Watching several new players change their IDs in the background, the real-world player [ Zhongde ] closed the chat window in front of him and opened his drawing software after a long time.
As a seasoned gamer and a sophomore civil engineering student, Zhou Jue ( Zhongde's real name) has some ingenuity in architecture, especially in building NPC prisons in some sandbox games.
But the situation is different now. If we build a village prison like the one in " World of Disorder" or an NPC prison like the one in "Rhea," then forget about repeat customers, we'll probably lose all the reward for this first job.
After much thought, he switched to split-screen mode and began sketching simple drafts in his drawing software while searching for house models to reference. The dust was also wiped off the professional books around him. Zhou Jue started to think about which modern infrastructure methods and regulations could be brought to this somewhat absurd alien world.
Driven by this need, he discovered that even the previously obscure and difficult textbooks for his major seemed to have some appeal...
" Cui Yuan, the director wants to see you in his office."
"Good."
Cui Yuan stood up from his workstation, stretched slightly, and walked towards the private office.
His work has been uneventful lately; none of his colleagues have lost their jobs because of the cyber ghost that is " World of Disorder," supposedly because none of the technical staff they could contact could remove it from the new game charts.
In addition, as someone's video continued to go viral online, and several new players posted scattered screenshots of the game, more and more people became aware of the game's existence.
Knocking on the office door, Cui Yuan was surprised to find three other people inside besides the director. The three had serious expressions, but the director had a smile on his face. Cui Yuan felt that he had seen these people a few days ago.
"You two talk, I'll excuse myself for a moment."
The director stood up with a smile, patted Cui Yuan on the shoulder, and walked out of the office, leaving only the three serious-looking people and Cui Yuan inside.
"You... are looking for me?"
Cui Yuan sat down and asked tentatively.
The man in the lead nodded, opened the folder in front of him, and skillfully recited Cui Yuan's school registration, household registration, and even a brief version of his family information.
Oh my god, a box.
Surprisingly, Cui Yuan wasn't as flustered as he had expected. With so many strange things happening lately, he could roughly guess the three people's intentions.