Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Nie Fan could not calm his thoughts at once when he returned to his room, feeling an unbearable parching at the pit of his stomach.
Xue Yu, a good friend of his had collected many videos from a certain island nation, and under his influence, Nie Fan had more or less sampled it. Be that as it may, the impact on his sight was nothing comparable to today, when he saw the body of a beautiful young girl in reality. Lin Xinyan’s fantastic figure was no different from God’s finest work, and the very sight of it was now irremovable despite being just a few glimpses—even the faint sweetness from her body swirled around his nose, and the smooth touch of her skin still lingered on his palm.
When he returns, his friends back at Ningdong would definitely envy him if he got himself a girlfriend like that. Still, Nie Fan could not help wanting to slap himself when he remembered what Lin Quan told him earlier that day.
‘Nie Fan, Nie Fan. You need to wake up—could you even reach her? Uncle Lin’s family fortune must at least be hundreds of millions, and Lin Xinyan is his only daughter. What are you in comparison? No more than a nameless impoverished brat shouldering heavy debts.’
It was pretty much like a toad wanting to devour a swan.
Collecting his delusional thoughts, Nie Fan decided to continue studying the notebook his father had left him. His mother had repeatedly reminded him to take care of it when she gave it to him, and there must be some important information his father wanted to give him in the notebook.
That was especially true for the numbers that stood out like a sore thumb!
What did those seventeen numbers of no sequence mean?
Suddenly, Nie Fan felt a moment of inspiration in his head. Could they be referring to page numbers of the notebook itself?
He quickly flipped to page 28 at the very thought, and he could only do so by counting each page since there were no page numbers. Still, he found nothing when he reached it—there was nothing other than a chunk of text and data!
Nevertheless, Nie Fan remembered that his father was often obsessed with details, and he could well have left some clues. Hence, gritting his teeth, he looked through the clumps of data as well, but still couldn’t find anything unusual aside from a letter ‘h’ at the corner of the page which had nothing to do with the other data.
He realized sharply then that the letter could have a further meaning. The second number on the last page was 22, and he promptly flipped to that page, searching through it and finding the letter ‘t’, which was also unrelated to the rest of the data on the page.
He was on to something! It might be a clue his father had left!
Finding the two letters had actually taken him two whole hours—it was extremely difficult to find two letters in chunks of data after all! However, Nie Fan continued searching despite feeling exhausted, driven by his curiosity.
Eventually, he found one letter after another, obtaining eight of them through the course of the night. It was already morning then: Lin Xinyan had left for school while he hastily made himself breakfast and finished it, before continuing his search.
Time flew, and it was the evening when he finally found all seventeen letters. As he connected them together, he found that it was actually a website.
That discovery certainly left Nie Fan thrilled, and he promptly took out his VR headgear which could be used as a computer, and keyed in the seventeen characters of the website.
[System: Logging in to website…]
[System: This website is private and encrypted. Please enter your ID.]
ID? Mine or dad’s? Nie Fan was taken aback when he saw the system notification. He couldn’t remember his father’s ID number which consisted of 26 letters and numbers—in fact, most people would have a hard time remembering that.
Still, he decided he did not care and keyed in his own ID number.
[System: password accepted, iris verification accepted, nervous system connection successful…]
Nie Fan did not expect that he would find such a website that his father designed specially for himself, laden with so many heavy encryption sequences. But even as he thought about that, a recorded voice started playing from the website.
It was his father’s voice.
Unable to help himself, his eyes welled with tears at the voice he hadn’t hear for a long time.
“Son, I must have been long gone by the time you found this place. I hope that your mother and you could live in peace after I die, but I also know that it would be hoping too much because they would never spare you both. You must assume that you and your mother’s daily conversations are being monitored, and that is why you must never mention this website to anyone else. Hurry off and find Uncle Lin if you have found this place—he will protect you.”
“Be that as it may, I am still unable to tell you the whole truth, but you may use what is on this website to help Uncle Lin destroy Demon God Studios if Blade of Tyranny has begun service. When that day comes, your mother would tell you the whole truth.”
Demon God Studios? That was the studio that his father had co-founded out of nothing before, and was eventually forced out due to some unknown reasons… but to think that his will was to destroy what he once built!
“Father, I promise you that I would help you fulfill your wish.” There was cool killing intent in Nie Fan’s eyes.
That being said, it was a serious matter considering that his father’s claims that Nie Fan and his mother’s daily conversations were being monitored.
It was only after some time that his palpitations calmed and he began to browse through the website’s content. The website itself was designed with meticulous detail and was as rich in content as the official portals of major VR games, hosting thousands of essays about Blade of Tyranny, with some titled, “Rising as divine druid’, ‘Ultimate medals for flame knights’, ‘Strategy for legendary quest: Battle of the Magic Capital’, ‘120 exploitable landscape bugs’, ‘hidden trap sequences’, ‘quick emblem clearing for wild tribes’…
In other words, his father had recorded all his experiences and all the system bugs he encountered in the closed testing phase for Blade of Tyranny. Having been a part of its content development, he had discreetly put in hidden sequences, backdoors, and even evaded the checks of the mainframe, recording everything with text and images.
It was a genius idea! Nie Fan himself was awestruck by the content of the essays: it was a battle of wits and courage that pits the human mind against AI, a bold ultimate move that made a fool of manmade intelligence. Before the public testing phase, each VR game tend to be processed over dozens of times with AI before it was being marketed, and yet the programs his father designed had easily evaded such scanning—to be precise, he had kept certain bugs that was considered permissible in the main content to himself while reporting other bugs that could be found. Moreover, aside from the data related to Blade of Tyranny, he had also recorded his understanding and experiences as a professional gamer, on how one could become a skillful player and the like.
Be that as it may, Nie Fan could not finish reading through all the content at the website. After all, his father did compile it with untold blood and sweat. Nie Fan also noticed that his father left a quote at the corner of the website:
[Blade of Tyranny is a revolution in VR gaming that would change the world. And you, my son, shall be the leader of that revolution.]
Nie Fan’s heart would surge whenever he read that quote. He must absorb all the content here because it would be very troublesome if he read it after joining the game, and he certainly must not let down his father’s hopes! What he left here seemed to have opened a brand-new world in Nie Fan’s mind too, allowing him to slowly understand what it meant to be a professional gamer.
Hence, in the time before the servers for Blood of Tyranny became open to public, Nie Fan spent all his time at that website aside from meals. Like a sponge, he absorbed everything in it as hard as he could.
Furthermore, the VR headgear had the capacity to keep the cerebral cortex in deep sleep and would not affect normal sleeping at night. It was basically equal to doubling one’s lifespan, and was the reason why VR games became a global trend—with his headgear on, Nie Fan had completely forgotten the time.
Still, although he had done all he could to learn everything on the website, he did not have much time and therefore had to leave the content beyond Level 30 for some other time.
On the third day, Lin Xinyan had bought herself a headgear. She also wanted to play Blade of Tyranny, and she told Nie Fan that her crew in her class each had their own headgears, and were prepared to formed their own guild after joining the game.
Be that as it may, Nie Fan appeared distracted when he was speaking to her. With Blade of Tyranny starting service soon, he was both nervous apprehensive.
“I’m off to my room, Nie Fan. Remember to message me after you enter the game.”
“Run along then. I have to start leveling up when the game starts—it would be too embarrassing if your cousin had to chase me out of the studio for being underleveled.” Nie Fan replied and glanced at the time, rushing back to his room and putting on his headgear when he found that there were ten minutes left.
Even as time ticked away, Nie Fan felt himself becoming even more nervous. Be that as it may, he had decided on taking the Druid class—it was the class his father used most frequently in closed testing, and the class which he wrote the most content about.
But as he delved in his thoughts, a blinding white light shone before his eyes as if he had crossed into a dimensional portal. As that light slowly dimmed, a palm-sized fairy danced in front of him as he found himself in an altar, surrounded by various dazzling wildflowers and butterflies.
It was as if he had arrived in a divine domain.
The fairy was a beautiful young girl with delicate skin and exquisite features—even the hairs on her brows were distinctly visible.
‘It feels so real. So, this is Blade of Tyranny!’
This was much more realistic than any VR game Nie Fan had played before, and he could not help but be in awe. No wonder his father told him that it would be a revolution for VR games: such stunning VR technology!
“Greetings! I’m Nola, your tutorial fairy. I shall be guiding you in Blade of Tyranny—please select the city and continent of your destination.”
Citizens on earth could only choose between the continents of Osland and Okado.
“Osland continent, Carlos City, Kelfield Town, Tajit Village,” Nie Fan replied without hesitation. Heading to the Kelfield Town in Carlos City of the Osland continent was a condition that his studio had set, although he was free to choose which village he would spawn.
“You will now spawn in the Tajit Village, Kelfield Town, Carlos City. After an inspection, your basic attributes are as follows: Agility 9, Strength 9, Spirit 10. Your body composition especially strong and does not require additional compensation. Please select your class and talent.”
Gamers who had exceedingly low physical attributes could obtain additional compensating attributes, but Nie Fan did not need that at all—the inspection had determined that his Agility, Strength, and Spirit were quite good, and did not need any help.
“Druid!” Nie Fan appeared quick and decisive since he knew what he wanted.
“You have two talents to pick: One major, one minor.”
The Druid class had many talents: Elemental, Plant-type, Summoning, and Morphing to name a few. They could also pick two talents, with the major talent having a 10% effect buff for skills of that aspect and minor talent having a 5% buff.
“Major: Plant-type, minor: Morphing.” Nie Fan said then. Most Druid players would pick Elemental or Summoning as their major talents, and there were basically none who would pick Plant-type as their major since it was rather underwhelming. On the other hand, it was normal to pick Morphing as a minor talent, although that was also something Nie Fan had thought of early on.
“Please name your character.”
“Dark Night.” Nie Fan simply chose his ID.