Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

But something strange happened: it seemed like all of their good luck had been completely used up, and the exploration that followed was full of difficulties.

Not to mention the fact that they couldn’t find a Nether Fortress for half a day, but even the rare minerals, gems, and useful enchantment books were nowhere to be found.

They had almost emptied three mines but still couldn’t find a single diamond, and they didn’t even dig up much gold for making golden apples.

When they finally emerged from the ground, the excitement that Shuihua had previously felt had long since disappeared, and she even began to doubt her life choices.

However, Lance beside her let out a long sigh of relief: “Great, I don’t have to worry about Shuihua getting into a car accident tomorrow…”

Seeing Shuihua still doubting herself, Lance comforted her in a timely manner: “It’s okay, anyway, we’ve found the teleportation gate, and the people on my side are already here, so you don’t need to help us anymore. Go play by yourself, I’ll help you with your homework.”

“Are you really going to help?” Shuihua shook her head, “I was joking, it’s my third year in high school now, I definitely have to do it myself. Besides, you have classes during the day and work at night, it’s not easy for you to finish your own work.”

“Then let’s wait until tomorrow noon, I’ll treat you to a meal at the school cafeteria, I want to eat braised eggplant!”

“Okay, I’ll treat you, eat whatever you want!” Lance agreed in a heartbeat.

With the school cafeteria’s prices, eating a meal worth 20 yuan is quite impressive.

Shuihua didn’t feel like looking for albinism animals, so she went offline to study instead.

When Lance and his teammates finally started the challenge, they could only wear low-level iron armor—thankfully the iron farming machine didn’t require a high level to use.

As for how many advantages their club could gain from opening the teleportation gate earlier, it’s hard to say.

—Not all clubs are prepared for long-term battles and have set up separate servers.

Many clubs directly use the players’ personal worlds, which have a certain accumulation of experience in the game, as their base, and start their challenges, not falling behind anyone else.

Why personal worlds?

It’s because the public worlds are in chaos…

Considering the staggering number of players in the public worlds, Lincoln generously placed a total of 648 End portals in the public world.

The problem is, the players don’t know about it.

Friendly players can meet halfway and have friendly exchanges, joining together to face the challenges or taking turns trying.

Those who are not so friendly, they’d simply strike first, attempting to monopolize a portal.

There are even players who have no intention of challenging the BOSS, only focusing on causing destruction around the portals—when some player teams enter the portal to fight the BOSS, they find that all the beds left behind have been smashed.

After an unexpected team wipe, they resurrect at the spawn point, looking around confusedly, and can only feel rage when they finally realize what happened.

The most ridiculous one is in [Public World No. 22], where players only realized the condition to clear it after it was discovered—the End Portal, had actually been found…

Somehow during one of the large-scale battles, a huge amount of TNT blocks blew up a huge, deep crater on the surface, exposing the deeply buried underground fortress.

Players caught up in the chaos had no time to take care of the exposed underground structure, continuing their mad frenzy of throwing explosives at each other until the underground fortress was almost completely destroyed.

Then, the indestructible portal became very conspicuous.

But in this map, there are very few players who explore, and after trying their hands on the portal and finding that it can’t be destroyed, they simply dismissed it.

Only now do they know: Oh, that’s what it’s for!

So, will they start fighting the BOSS now?

Not at all!

With countless traps and hidden players surrounding the portal, the area had become a complete death zone, as dangerous as the spawn point. Anyone who comes will die.

Those who are truly interested in challenging have no choice but to return to their personal worlds.

*

Cloud Dream’s announcement was like a huge rock thrown into a pond, stirring up massive ripples.

Chaos, disorder, and countless issues arose within a short period following the announcement.

Players even felt a bit overwhelmed.

It wasn’t until 2 hours later that the situation began to ease, and order was restored—

In the public worlds, those who could occupy a portal began to tackle the challenge.

Those who missed out and wanted to play returned to their personal worlds.

And the large anchors and teams from various clubs have basically figured out the game mechanics of the BOSS opening stage, fully stepping over the “Overture” phase and entering the formal battle against the BOSS.

At this stage, everyone’s progress has become clear: just compare the remaining blood of the Ender Dragon.

Teams in the lead naturally receive more attention, and their popularity begins to gather quickly,

Especially those teams that can steadily keep the Ender Dragon’s blood volume down to 75% have become star teams.

Currently live streaming, there are a total of thirteen of these teams in Daxia, three in Izumo, four in Baekje, one in Australia, and three in Europe.

And as these teams expose their strategies, more and more teams like them are emerging…

…

Outside the game, after patching up the loopholes, Lincoln hadn’t forgotten that Princess was still waiting for him at the restaurant, and temporarily bid farewell to Mavis to return to reality.

Princess, Yue Pengju, and Jordan all looked nervous as they gathered around him.

Once again reassuring everyone that everything was fine, he threw the situation into the workgroup chat, reminding them to post an announcement explaining the situation to the players, before returning to the dinner table to continue eating and explaining the situation to Camille Victoria.

As they left the restaurant after dinner, Lincoln received a reminder from Mavis that the three players had already rested enough and had logged back in, with everything being normal and no harm done.

Lincoln finally put his mind at ease and waved goodbye to Camille Victoria.

There was no need to give her a ride; she had her own driver, and they weren’t even going in the same direction anyway.

*

Even though “My World” suddenly surged in popularity once again, causing an uproar in the gaming circle.

However, there were still people who did not pay attention to this event.

Jason only glanced at the announcement briefly before disregarding it, as a bigger problem was deeply troubling him—

“Where did NetDragon’s virtual reality technology come from?”

When Boss Richard announced it, he was too excited—after all, this was something he had been longing for, so much so that he only thought about how to use this technology, how to make the game, and how to impress the players, rivaling Cloud Dream head-on.

To directly confront Lincoln, the creator of virtual reality games!

Just thinking about it thrilled him!

Even if he discovered that the accompanying software system was severely lacking and that it would take some time to actually start developing the game, it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm.

He spent the entire afternoon passionately jotting down ideas, thinking about what kind of theme to choose for NetDragon’s first virtual reality game.

He had no time for anything else.

It wasn’t until he got home after work and completely calmed down that this question suddenly popped into Jason’s mind: How on earth did they get this technology?

Although he wasn’t an original employee of NetDragon, he had been there for four or five years, and he had a fair number of connections and sources of news within the company.

As for the programming team, there wasn’t much action during the past few months, and there was no hearsay about researching virtual reality technology.

As for the R&D team, he didn’t know much about their work since they worked in different locations, but it was common knowledge that the Department Supervisor and Deputy Supervisor resigned on the same day, and a third of the top-notch backbone staff left in an astonishingly short amount of time.

Jason might not know much about hardware technology R&D, but this situation didn’t seem like a breakthrough, did it?

If it wasn’t the work of the programming team or the R&D team—or at least, they weren’t the main contributors—where did this technology come from?

It couldn’t be that Boss Richard suddenly had an explosion of potential like Cloud Dream and developed the technology single-handedly within a week like Lincoln, could he?

“Hahaha, what am I thinking!”

As soon as this thought popped up, Jason couldn’t help but laugh out loud, feeling that this idea was too absurd.

The more he thought about it, the more entangled he became, and in the end, he couldn’t help but rummage through his things at home, finding the internal magazine issued by the company at the end of last year, looking up the phone number of Warner, the former Department Supervisor of R&D who had already resigned, and, after considering his words, dialed it.

“Hello? Who is this?” Warner answered the phone.

“Hello, sorry to bother you. This is Jason from Netdragon, the new Chief Designer of Virtual Reality Games. I was previously in charge of the production of the ‘Blaze 3’ DLC.”

“Jason?” Warner thought for a moment, not really remembering, but…

“The Chief Designer of Virtual Reality Games?” He was somewhat surprised.

“Yes.” Jason affirmed, “Sorry for the intrusion, but I’m a bit skeptical about this.”

Warner had already calmed his surprise and asked with a hint of amusement in his voice, “Skeptical? About what?”

Hearing the amusement in Warner’s words, Jason immediately realized that Warner must know something!

“This technology seems to have broken through a bit too easily? I thought it would take at least two or three years before the second virtual reality company would appear on the market, and I didn’t even think it would be NetDragon.”

“Hahaha, your guess is correct. If it were by normal means, it would take NetDragon at least 5 to 10 years, not just 2 or 3 years!”

“You mean…” Jason felt his heart sinking, “The virtual reality technology that NetDragon currently has was obtained through ‘unconventional’ means?”

“I didn’t say that.” Warner didn’t directly admit it but said, “I’m just making a rational judgment from a technical perspective.”

This statement was more like an indirect confession than a denial.

If it was another technical expert making such a judgment, the credibility might be questionable, but who is Warner?

—The former Department Supervisor of NetDragon R&D!

He must have a clearer understanding of the strength of NetDragon’s research team than anyone else! So how could his judgment on technology be so erroneous?

Especially when a third of the core members of the NetDragon R&D center have left without being replaced by new talent…

So this technology…

It’s of an illicit nature!

Since it’s of an illicit nature, it must have been acquired from Cloud Dream!

Thinking about Lincoln’s usual behavior, the risk of this matter has increased dramatically, and it’s become difficult to assess!

Considering Warner and those technical backbones’ departure, could it be that they really “feared hardship and escaped from the battle” as Boss Richard had said?

Or was it an “emergency escape” that they had to take?

And what about himself?

Would he really risk stepping onto this stolen ship?