Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

After some thought, he decided to leave his office and check on the progress of the programming department.

Having finished playing the prank, Lincoln called Lorin.

“Lincoln? What’s up?” Lorin asked with a smile.

“I don’t really understand commercial crime, so I wanted to consult with you. If someone stole Cloud Dream’s virtual reality technology, can I report it to the police and get them arrested now? Or do I have to wait until they make a profit to arrest them?”

“Virtual reality technology? Are you sure?” Lorin’s voice became serious instantly.

“Of course I’m sure. They completely copied Cloud Dream’s technology, even the trap instructions.

This is actually not entirely accurate. NetDragon did indeed copy the code verbatim, but it wasn’t the trap instructions that Mavis discovered—it’s that as long as the virtual world is constructed according to Lincoln’s technical standards, it’s bound to be discovered and can’t be hidden.

But saying that would raise more suspicion and Lincoln wouldn’t reveal this unless necessary.

“Trap instructions? You’ve already locked onto the suspect? Who did it?”

“NetDragon.” Lincoln said succinctly.

“NetDragon??” Lorin was very surprised, “How did they get it?”

“How should I know…” Lincoln replied helplessly, “So that’s why I’m asking if I can report it directly.”

“No need!” Lorin decisively replied, “This is not a simple commercial crime and doesn’t need to follow the ordinary process.”

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

Instead of answering directly, Lorin asked Lincoln, “Do you know what it means for a technology to be on the top-secret patent list?”

“What does it mean?” Lincoln had always wondered why a widely known technology needed to be kept secret.

“National security!” Lorin said firmly, “Technologies on the top-secret patent list were previously only available to confidential units with authorization, and the higher the secrecy level of the technology, the fewer units were eligible to apply for authorization. Even if your technology is an exception, extra security measures would be required for authorization.”

“Stealing such technology is not simply a commercial crime, but a crime of endangering national security!”

“Give me the evidence and clues, and I’ll contact the security department right now.”

“Also, if you’ve traced the clues to NetDragon, can you intercept the information to make sure they don’t leak anything further? It will take some time for our people to get there.”

“Well, I could, but that would be illegal…” Lincoln couldn’t say “I can’t” because Lorin wouldn’t believe it if he did.

“I’ll authorize it.”

“That’s fine. I’ll send you the evidence now, and you should hurry with the authorization.”

After hanging up, Lincoln had Mavis archive the tracked network address as evidence and sent it all to Lorin.

Lorin’s action was swift too, and an official authorization document with signatures and seals was sent over–with Lincoln’s current identity, this document wasn’t actually that important, but it’s better to be safe than sorry in this case.

After confirming there were no issues, Lincoln had Mavis keep it and then started… spacing out.

When Lincoln exited the virtual world of NetDragon, Mavis had already taken full control of NetDragon’s data network.

The network at their headquarters and R&D center, all archived data from the past, all currently generated data, and even the individual surveillance cameras in the offices, everything was under Mavis’ control and closely monitored.

By the time Lorin went to look for evidence with his team, there would be no way for NetDragon to delete anything, unless they blew up the server.

It wouldn’t matter even if they really blew it up, since Mavis had almost finished backing up–securing the evidence before acting was a good habit taught by Lincoln.

Now, the two of them were lying on the small sofa, watching the live stream from NetDragon.

That is until Mavis suddenly said, “Master~ Can we go to the scene in person?”

…

*

In the programming department of NetDragon, department supervisor Patrick was explaining to Richard their current progress—

Which was that they had made no progress.

They couldn’t understand why; the code was clearly a simple Cattle Swarm Code combined with movement logic, and it was all very clear with no ambiguous fields.

The only uncertainty they had was the minor randomness they added to the movement trajectory.

Considering how everything had been running smoothly up until they added a roof to the virtual house and the cattle went crazy, they suspected it might be the action of “adding a roof” that caused some compatibility issues between the software they wrote and the virtual world.

“But if that’s the case, shouldn’t the problem be with the house? Why did the cattle go crazy?” Richard couldn’t understand.

Actually, neither could Patrick.

But he had to find a way to explain, “The occurrence of bugs is often unpredictable. We need more time to analyze.”

Richard fell silent for a moment and then asked, “Is it possible that the system has been hacked?”

The phantom pain in his buttocks that appeared intermittently made Richard feel strongly targeted.

“It’s impossible!” Patrick exclaimed like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, “Absolutely impossible!”

“Why is it impossible?”

“There is no direct connection between the virtual world and the external network. We just built a small local area network internally.”

“For someone outside to invade, they must first break through our perimeter firewall, then accurately locate the internal network of the programming department, and finally enter the network of the virtual world. In this process, they would have to break through at least six security measures! No one can sneak in, change a bunch of things, and sneak out without making a sound!”

Patrick was emotional.

Regardless of what happened, NetDragon had been prosperous before.

They had always taken the security of their servers very seriously and spent a lot on security measures.

“Lincoln…” The word had barely left Richard’s mouth when he stopped and rephrased his question: “Not even the world’s top hackers?”

“No.” Patrick was adamant. “Our servers are already top-tier commercial servers, with cutting-edge, mature security measures in place.”

“It’s virtually impossible to crush us with raw computing power; even if there were sufficient power, it would still take a long time to brute-force through firewalls, and most importantly— we would be aware of this process.”

“After coming back from you, I immediately inquired with the network security department. The firewalls are functioning normally with no signs of being breached; in fact, the frequency of external attacks today is even lower than usual!”

— As for being attacked, it’s not surprising; for large companies, this is a regular occurrence.

“I’ve also led a thorough inspection of our internal network and found no signs of intrusion.”

As a professional technical expert, Patrick had obviously thought ahead of his boss and acted swiftly and decisively.

This reassured Richard and he let out a sigh of relief: It must have been a technical glitch that caused the incident.

“Alright, then you guys keep working hard and figure out what happened as soon as possible. Your task is heavy, but I promise: if you complete it early, your annual bonuses will be satisfactory!”

“Understood!” Patrick agreed without hesitation.

He was mentally prepared and planned to follow in Jason’s footsteps by living in the office for a month or two.

Richard was about to say another motivational sentence when he suddenly heard a click next to him. The entire office darkened.

In the open office, dozens of computer screens and computer case indicator lights went out at the same time.

“Power outage?” Patrick had just pulled an electric switch earlier so this scene was familiar to him.

“What’s going on? We don’t need any delays at this crucial moment!” Richard, unsatisfied, pulled out his mobile phone, found the administrative phone number from the contact list, and pressed the call button.

But the moment he tried to make the call, the phone automatically hung up, unable to dial out.

Richard irritably tried to call three times before he realized that something was wrong: his phone had no signal now.

Not a weak signal, but completely and utterly gone.

“What’s going on?” Richard looked at Patrick quizzically. “Do you have a signal on your phone?”

Patrick pulled out his phone and checked. “No.”

He turned to his co-workers: “Do any of you have a signal on your phones?”

“No.” “No.” “Not me either.”

Patrick found this strange: “What’s going on? Has the nearby communication base station malfunctioned?”

Richard did not answer. He suddenly had a bad feeling and felt a faint phantom pain in his buttocks.

…

NetDragon’s headquarters was an eight-story building located in the High-tech Industrial Park.

Just before the power outage, a large number of inconspicuous box trucks quickly gathered around the building from all four directions.

At the moment of the power outage, high-power signal jammers were activated, and the two closest communication base stations simultaneously reduced their signal strengths.

Then, the back doors of the trucks opened, and SWAT teams, fully armed in special combat gear, rushed out and stormed the building.

Main entrances, back doors, side doors, security doors, and underground garages were all controlled in no time.

Bright red isolation tape was neatly set up around the entire building.

From now on, this twelve-story building, both physically and informationally, was completely sealed off!

Criminal suspects had no chance of escape!

“Don’t move! Put your hands up! Leave your position now!”

The three receptionists were dumbfounded when they saw the swarm of SWAT officers rushing in, their guns pointed directly at them.

Their limbs went limp, paralyzed with fear.

“Put your hands up! Step away from the phone!” The SWAT team, out of caution, wouldn’t miss any details—even though many landlines are on dedicated lines and can be used even during a power outage.

—They were unaware that the telecom operators had suspended all services to NetDragon.

But it didn’t matter. Three SWAT officers approached, picked up the receptionists, and placed them in a corner.

Meanwhile, two others started collecting and confiscating the visitor registration records from the front desk.

At the same time, a group of officers headed to the eighth-floor programming department to control Richard.

The rest took the stairs, sweeping upwards one floor at a time, controlling all personnel and waiting for screenings.

*

On the eighth floor of the programming department, Richard paced anxiously with his phone still out of signal even after restarting it.

He walked irritably towards the window, wanting to see how widespread the signal interruption was.

To his horror, he glanced down to see a crowd of SWAT officers silently surrounding the NetDragon headquarters building, making it completely impenetrable!

Although frightened, he was also confused:

Could they really be here for me?

Even if stealing virtual reality technology were discovered, that would only constitute a commercial crime; a few police officers would have sufficed, right?

All these SWAT officers, cutting off power and signals, setting up such an elaborate trap—surely this level of response would be reserved for catching terrorists, right?’

“What did I ever do to deserve this?!” Richard wailed inwardly.