Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 467: 450: Carnival!

Lincoln was about to dissuade them when a hand suddenly pressed on the wound on his leg. Camille Victoria, concerned and confused, asked, “Lincoln, are you okay?”

“Ah, I’m fine!” Lincoln had to reply to Camille Victoria first, “Don’t worry, it’s just a game, these are all minor issues.”

Seeing Lincoln distracted, the remaining two bandits on the opposite side turned around and ran, leaving their teammate behind.

“Hey!” Lincoln reached out in an attempt to stop them, but they ignored him and didn’t even look back.

“Sigh!” Lincoln sighed helplessly and was about to reset his status.

His left eye was still throbbing with pain.

But suddenly, a series of footsteps and a lot of players shouting came up:

“Stop!”

“Don’t run!”

“Don’t wimp out! Come on, let’s fight one on one!”

Around the corner, “One Cake,” “Two Cake,” and the passing “Thirty Thousand,” “Yaomah,” and “Yitiao” had a happy reunion.

“Huh?” “One Cake” had not expected this at all and quickly stopped in his tracks.

“What are you waiting for? Run!” “Thirty Thousand” didn’t care what had happened and pulled “One Cake” to run together with him.

Unfortunately, another group of footsteps came from the other side, and seven or eight players quickly blocked their way.

—Players split into two groups, trapping them!

At this point, the five of them were stuck at the intersection of the T-junction, surrounded by players hunting the bandits on both sides and a bloodstained, glaring Lincoln behind them.

Players on both sides slowly closed in, reducing their space to move.

The echoing singing in the air slowly came to a halt.

“Flame” had ended, and with just a brief pause, the prelude of the final song in the War Trilogy, “Returning Home,” rang out again.

This song was not as intense as “Flame,” even calming down to a warm stillness.

The audience’s chorus finally stopped, and they began humming softly along with the music and Alex’s singing.

At the T-junction, with the change of music and the realization that the bandits had nowhere to run, everyone calmed down and sneered as they blocked their path.

“One Cake” looked at the desperate situation and suddenly gave up.

He turned to Lincoln, “Boss, can we surrender and lose only half?”

“What do you mean?” Lincoln didn’t understand.

“Everyone stops fighting, we admit defeat, and then we all go and enjoy the concert peacefully?”

Lincoln tilted his head and looked at him with question marks in his eyes, wondering where this guy got such thick skin.

Tapping the gun on the floor, Lincoln gestured to the corridors on both sides, “Why don’t you ask them? I can’t control their thoughts.”

As he spoke, Lincoln took a few steps back to avoid being used as a scapegoat by these people.

However, the bandits were quite decisive. Seeing that surrendering was not an option, they immediately decided to fight to the death and rushed back into the hallway.

They chose the most valuable target on the scene, of course—Lincoln!

The two of them turned around with their swords to defend, blocking the players’ pursuit, and the other three attacked Lincoln again.

Under Princess’s anxious gaze, Lincoln, despite his negative status, took the initiative to fight back!

The battle began again!

This time, both sides felt that time was running out and became even more aggressive and desperate, choosing to exchange lives for lives.

Lincoln’s leg was injured, and one of his eyes was blind—disadvantages were inevitable. Exchanging lives for lives also required looking for opportunities and not blindly seeking death.

However, the previous fights had greatly improved his skills in this regard, and he quickly seized another opportunity!

So—

The tip of his gun slashed through “Yaomah”‘s throat and stabbed through “Thirty Thousand”‘s stomach, making a double kill!

But finally, there was nowhere to hide from “One Cake”‘s sword.

He’d already planned to resurrect and come back invisible, but unexpectedly, a sword suddenly stretched out from the side and blocked “One Cake”‘s sword with a clang.

And then, with a flick, it slashed across the opponent’s wrist.

“One Cake” dropped the sword in his hand, and the negative status [Tendon Break] appeared in front of him.

It was only then that both sides noticed that Camille Victoria, who had been mostly inconspicuous, was now holding the bandit’s sword with one hand, standing next to Lincoln, and pointing the tip of the sword at “One Cake.”

Lincoln looked back and saw that the bandit who was supposed to die had his bloodline pulled back, and was now lying on the ground, helplessly watching Camille Victoria.

After a little thought, Lincoln understood: this girl, like him, had also used developer privileges.

—She was originally a member of the Cloud Dream concert working group. However, most of the time, she was busy preparing for the show, and Lincoln had subconsciously ignored this fact.

Camille Victoria didn’t take advantage of her authority to make any big moves; she just healed a dying gangster on the ground, prolonging his life a bit.

Her only goal —— to borrow the sword from the gangster.

“You know how to do this too?” Lincoln asked in astonishment.

That precise block, the smooth transition between offense and defense; he would be the first not to believe it if she hadn’t practiced before!

“I learned it for a while.” Camille Victoria felt a little embarrassed, “But then, I was afraid of developing too noticeable muscles, which might not look good in a skirt, so I gave up.”

“Fine…” Lincoln had nothing to say.

Almost forgot, this girl was also a genius.

Camille Victoria’s interference deprived the gangsters of their last chance —— players had already poured into the passage.

The battle ended quickly.

The gangsters were wiped out.

Camille Victoria arrived backstage early, chatted with the reset and restored Lincoln for a while, and figured out what had happened.

Interestingly, after such an interruption, her nervousness was swept away.

When she later came on stage to sing with Alex, there was no stage fright at all.

After Alex stepped down, Camille Victoria performed perfectly on stage alone. The only tiny flaw was that she kept turning her eyes to the VIP seats on the second floor.

By the time her performance ended, the audience gave very positive feedback, and applause and cheers were enthusiastic.

Back in the VIP seats, Lincoln didn’t skimp on applause for her either.

But once Camille Victoria finished singing and left, Lincoln’s attention was no longer on stage, but on other mirrored streams.

Since the public map limited the players’ ability to fight, there were fewer troublemakers.

After Lincoln broke up the troublemakers in the main mirror, he immediately notified Cloud Dream’s staff, who stepped up the maintenance and investigation of the mirrored maps, successfully preventing sporadic chaotic players.

But in the game world where there can be connections, and players can fire weapons at will ——

It was a completely different scene!

Explosions, arson, gunfights… total chaos!

On the majority of connected maps, the figures of Alex and the band on stage were long gone.

It’s not that everyone rushed to shoot Alex. There were hardly any such people.

But with different intentions in many people’s minds, conflicts easily arose.

For example, some people wanted to hear Alex sing, while others wanted to sing themselves.

Others also took the stage, not wanting to replace Alex, but wanting to join him in a duet or do a close-up dance for him…

That’s how the conflict began.

How to resolve the conflict?

Through negotiation? Depending on the number of people? Or rock-paper-scissors?

None of them!

Whoever has the stronger fists, of course!

The concert security had no countermeasures against the thousands of heavily armed players; they couldn’t confiscate the players’ weapons from the start.

And so, the conflict started!

Once the guns were fired, small conflicts quickly escalated into large-scale battles, and the originally peaceful concert turned into a battlefield of bullets and rain in an instant.

The exposed performers on stage, with no cover, were naturally affected, and soon disappeared one after another.

However, the conflict didn’t disappear with them —— once the fight had started, they couldn’t just end it!

Furthermore, the large-scale chaos quickly triggered Night City’s random event system, and countless NPCs joined in the melee, further expanding the scale of the battle!

Most of the mirrors that fell into chaos had similar processes, and the people who started the trouble and caused the conflict were often wearing the gangsters’ masks!

In the most severe several mirrors, the Circular Concert Hall had almost turned into ruins.

Various big guns, only seen in Death Racing, directly rushed to the outer part of the Circular Concert Hall, causing massive destruction, and some even drove large excavators to demolish the site!

The splendid chandeliers inside, the neatly arranged rows of seats, the shiny exquisite brass handrails, all became a mess!

In one mirror, the guy who used to sing rock beside the giant corpse of a Transformer, was now singing his own song, hoarsely yelling in the center of the stage amidst the ruins.

For the players fighting aimlessly in the hall, he was pouring fuel on the fire with background music!

Every scene was like a sudden doomsday.

Chaos, violence, freedom, revelry, wildness, unrestraint!

If there was only one word to describe this scene, Lincoln could only think of four characters ——

Thriving!