Great job this week!
Thanks to you all, we've collected 350 Power Stones, and our Patreon community is growing with both new free and paid members. I'm so grateful for your support!
This Week's Chapters
As a result of your efforts, from Monday to Sunday this week:
4 chapters will be published daily on Webnovel.
Paid Patreon subscribers will get a total of 8 daily chapters.
A New Goal for a Permanent Increase!
Now, I have some exciting news about a permanent change: if we reach 20 paid subscribers a month on Patreon, the base number of daily chapters will increase!
The base on Webnovel will go from 2 to 3 daily chapters.
The base on Patreon will go from 5 to 6 daily chapters.
This means that any extra chapters we unlock with our weekly goals will be added to this new base, boosting the daily total even more! Your support on Patreon is the key to making this possible.
Thanks again for everything. Happy reading!
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Chapter 24: The Love of Players, Without a Doubt!
It had been a long time, and Ryan still hadn't recovered from the end of the Genocide arc. He still vaguely understood the game's plot. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that he was currently depressed. The Genocide ending left him incredibly uncomfortable. Yes, he regretted it. It was like when he played Mirror: at first he was excited, but then he lost interest and regretted reopening the game.
Now, after completing Undertale's "Massacre" ending, he felt the same. In any case, now that he had played the Genocide ending, he truly regretted it. He missed the Pacifist route, laughing with his friends, watching Undyne burn the kitchen, watching Papyrus tell jokes while eating Toriel's pie.
"Let's create a perfect save file and end this game."
Remembering everything, Ryan took a deep breath and reopened the game. He wanted to repeat the perfect pacifist ending. With his previous experience, Ryan was incredibly skilled this time. He knew many monsters by heart, so he simply chose the right dialogue. After finally defeating Asriel, Ryan watched the sunset with a faint smile. No matter what happened, everything was over.
But then, the game scene completely stunned him. In the dead of night, the protagonist was sleeping in his room when the door gently opened. Asriel's mother, Toriel, entered with a creamy cinnamon pie. She carefully placed it on the floor and closed the door. It seemed quite cozy, but then, seemingly asleep, the protagonist suddenly sat up in bed. It was Chara's face, a strange and sinister expression. Then, a horrifying, evil laugh echoed through the headphones.
Upon leaving the room, a black and white photo appeared: an image of the protagonist and his friends from the underworld. But now, everyone except the protagonist had a blood-red X over their heads. The game screen went black.
Sitting in front of the computer, Ryan's eyes widened. He had only looked for guides to unlock the Genocide ending, but now he finally understood why the author of the post had advised him against it, so he wouldn't regret it. He also finally understood the meaning of those confusing comments in the game's positive reviews he had read.
"When will it be your turn to rule this world?" Chara's words echoed in his ears again.
Ryan stared at the Undertale interface on the screen. He had perceived the deeper meaning of the game, or rather, the "malice"! As in most games, did you harm the monsters, delete the save file, and start a new one, and still love them as if nothing had happened? Haha, really? Stop dreaming! Like a mirror, once broken, even the best glue cracks. Since you've decided to massacre those monsters, how can you love them again? In the dead of night, the last bad game you deleted hauntingly returns, shattering your supposed peace and beauty. That last haunting laugh, the black and white photos.
Although Ryan said nothing, he perceived a deep irony. It was irony for him, sitting in front of his computer. It was as if someone was yelling into his ear through a loudspeaker:
"Stop pretending, hypocrite!"
'Is it impossible to change all this?'
Ryan looked at the closed game and pursed his lips. He connected to the Undertale player community. As he expected, in addition to threads about the game, characters, and plot, there were also many questions about the problem he was facing.
"Hey guys, does anyone know how to get back to the happy ending?"
"Same old story! I accidentally played the massacre ending and I regret it. I want to go back!"
"Even if I feel like I'm deceiving myself, I want to go back!"
"Deleting the game, creating a new account, and using that fake account to buy the game is useless!"
Seeing the flood of posts, Ryan felt a little better. After all, he wasn't the only one experiencing this. After reviewing the threads, Ryan finally found a definitive answer.
"A corrupted save file will overwrite both the cloud save and system files. Therefore, you need to do both. Reinstall the system and then create a fake account to buy Undertale. That way you'll have a completely new game. Just don't log in with your old account, or it will detect the corrupted save file!"
'That's right!'
...Ryan suddenly realized and quickly made a decision. Of course, he didn't plan to reinstall the system. After all, he had saved many study materials from his professor on the system, some of which were too slow to download online. And he had always used a single C drive for everything, never partitioning it.
So, forget about reinstalling the system. Now that he understood the principle, he could buy the game again on another computer.
At Nebula Games' office, Lisa's face was full of excitement.
"More than 20,000, and it's only been less than two weeks!"
The computer in front of Lisa showed the accumulated sales of Undertale in various game stores. After its explosive popularity, all major platforms had included it in their initial recommendation lists.
As for official platforms, since the recommendation system is based on big data and is relatively inefficient, any launch would probably be next week. Of the current 20,000 sales, 70% came from third-party platforms.
"But it seems quite a few players contributed to secondary sales!" Alex asked, observing the backend data, also somewhat surprised.
He observed that many purchase data showed that Undertale was the first game acquired by these accounts.
"That's right. Many players played the massacre ending out of curiosity and then bought a second copy to feel better," Lisa said. It was clear that she cared more about this game than Alex did.
"Isn't that like trying to hide one's own flaws?" Jane asked beside her.
"How can that be like trying to hide one's own flaws? It's clear that players are passionate about our game." Alex reflected for a moment and concluded: "First, let's publish the sales data to boost the game's popularity."
As he spoke, Alex logged into his official Twitter account. Thanks to the previous buzz and Undertale's excellent reviews, his official Twitter account had finally surpassed 60,000 followers.
It wasn't the same as the millions of followers of famous game developers, but at least it was a name. And most importantly, there was finally a more detailed introduction below the small lightning bolt: Game producer, representative work: Undertale.
Before, only the small lightning bolt appeared, followed by five words: game producer. After all, even though Mirror's sales are explosive, its genre is special!