Grinding took single-minded focus. After forwarding the link, Zhou Jue left his gaming group unread and went straight back to grinding.
While he was absorbed in being a cyber laborer, the night owls in his gaming group began popping up one after another.
Do Some Farm Work: "@A Zhongde Dried Meat Wholesale What the hell?"
Below that came a reaction image saying, "Prosthetic eye analyzing frames. Verdict: fake."
Chief Shit Appraisal Master: "@A Zhongde Dried Meat Wholesale Did those exploding super coupons blow your brains out and make you serve up this half-baked shit?"
Do Some Farm Work: "Probably hasn't had any orders lately and got food poisoning from group-buy meals."
Brother Kong Is Benevolent and Righteous: "This game looks like way too much of a patchwork job. I reckon it won't work."
A Pot of Pothos: "Guys, I took a close look at the homepage. There isn't much there, but the style is pretty interesting. I think it's worth looking forward to."
Pothos was one of the few serious people in the group. He usually came across like a man in his thirties or forties, spoke fairly, and never made snide remarks at anyone.
Normally, most people would have agreed with Pothos, but this time was different. This was a gaming group, and everyone had their own take on games.
Your Dad Loves Cilantro: "@A Pot of Pothos Dude, you can't blindly back a game with mutated plants just because you're a pot of pothos. I still think it looks like a total scam."
Inspired Moves Are Called Jing: "Guys, I'm a total noob. What's this setting supposed to mean? I haven't played many games, so I'm kinda lost."
Do Some Farm Work: "@Inspired Moves Are Called Jing Try this: replace the mana tide with nuclear war, uncontrolled mana with nuclear radiation, and the World of Disorder with a postwar wasteland. That should make sense, right?"
Inspired Moves Are Called Jing: "Holy shit, miracle doctor! I've never played 'Metro,' but I've read 'This ○○ Is Way Too Real.' So this is a fantasy wasteland game?"
Do Some Farm Work: "Yeah, probably... no, no, I stand by what I said. Doesn't look real. Definitely fake advertising."
A Pot of Pothos: "Speaking of apocalyptic wastelands, that reminds me of a similar game I played back in school. Brain-computer interfaces weren't around yet, but when it blew up at launch, there were supposedly more people than zombies in the wasteland."
Your Dad Loves Cilantro: "Hahahaha, that's hilarious. Forgot the beginning, forgot the middle, but anyway, you don't care, you don't give a damn, you only care about yourself."
A Pot of Pothos: "So I've already filled out the preregistration questionnaire. Anyone joining me?"
Inspired Moves Are Called Jing: "I'm in. I haven't played many games, so it feels pretty fresh. Besides, even if it has a two-year development cycle, I'm not worried at all."
A Pot of Pothos: "Why?"
Inspired Moves Are Called Jing: "Because I just finished '○ollow Knight,' and I heard the sequel, '○ilksong,' is coming out any day now. As long as it's not later than that."
The gaming group fell deathly silent.
Inspired Moves Are Called Jing: "Why's everyone gone quiet?"
A Pot of Pothos: "It's fine. It's good for young people to have dreams. We've all been there."
After quite a few people tagged @A Zhongde Dried Meat Wholesale, Zhou Jue's online handle, without getting a response, some chose to preregister.
After all, the eerie-looking forest, the shattered castle floating in midair, and those animals that clearly weren't ordinary easily sparked people's interest.
Others chose to wait and see. After all, a trial wasn't always a chance to sample something new; it could also mean eating shit. They were human, and they didn't dare gamble.
And as Do Some Farm Work put it, "Running a game that doesn't exist must be pretty hard, huh?"
The last small handful had already branded World of Disorder a scam and declared that they wouldn't trust a game with nothing but a few concept posters to its name.
Late into the night, the group know-it-alls shifted from discussing World of Disorder itself to why the antlers in the posters were sprouting, then to how deer velvet could enhance weapons, before finally sliding into an indescribable abyss.
As dawn began to break, Zhou Jue finally took off his headset in the internet café beside the university and ended his session, his face weary.
The good news was that, thanks to his superb grinding skills, Zhou Jue had earned three days' worth of internet café fees in five hours. Not only had he avoided a loss, he'd even made a profit.
The bad news was that he was truly exhausted now and urgently needed a long catch-up sleep that would last until the afternoon.
It was 2037. Although nearly ten years had passed since the first brain-computer interface appeared, and new games kept touting immersion as their selling point, full immersion was actually impossible.
Full immersion essentially required temporarily severing the connection between the brain and body, keeping the brain stimulated while the body entered deep sleep.
But the risks involved were simply too great. Game companies weren't biotech companies, after all, and they didn't dare play with stakes that high yet.
So although immersive games kept hitting the market, none could actually sever the connection between body and brain completely. One classic example was that when players fell from a great height in a game, their real bodies would inevitably twitch. In severe cases, it could even disconnect them on the spot.
So Zhou Jue paid more attention to World of Disorder's art style and gameplay, along with having just a little anticipation for the [R18] tag.
Whether it was gore or something else, at least it could make his life a little more interesting.
In any case, he had automatically ignored the [Full immersion] tag.
Only then did Zhou Jue take out his phone, see the hundred-plus unread messages tagging him in the gaming group, and begin crossing keyboards with his online friends.
World of Disorder, castle hall.
Ed looked at the four corpses before him-no, bodies-and wiped nonexistent sweat from his forehead.
These humanoid bodies only looked human. In essence, they were somewhat like unactivated Frankensteins.
Some of their parts came from the beasts roaming outside, such as sheep and deer with sprouts growing from their heads, while others came from wooden objects Ed had produced himself.
The four bodies before him now possessed the properties of living things, but there were no souls within them.
If Ed wanted, he could now draw four souls from among the players who had agreed to the "Game User Terms" and "End User License Agreement" and inject them into these bodies.
That was right. Ed had hidden the second of the two prerequisites for Otherworld Soul Summoning under [Otherworldly Half] in those so-called game terms.
Only when he stood in a developer's shoes did he have to admit just how easy it was to exploit those terms, so convoluted that they couldn't even be read aloud smoothly.
All it took was slipping a little permission for soul transfer between two pieces of repetitive boilerplate, and it became a contract that the [Otherworldly Half] ability would recognize.
And as everyone knew, absolutely nobody read game terms unless reading them was mandatory.
"Are you going to summon them?"
Little Green asked with great interest. It was only a young sapling, and however great its potential, it rarely got to witness something like Otherworld Soul Summoning.
At his symbiote's question, Ed shook his head:
"No, the preparations still aren't sufficient. We'll have to wait."