The next week was a blur of exhausting, unglamorous, real-world work.
After cashing out the five thousand dollars from his viral video—a sum that felt both immense and pitifully small—Leo immediately hired a reputable agency to handle the bureaucratic nightmare of registering a new company. While they navigated the paperwork, he embarked on the soul-crushing quest of finding an office.
For four straight days, he crisscrossed the city, his life a montage of sterile meetings with real estate agents and tours of depressing, empty rooms. The perfect space was always just out of reach. He found beautiful, sunlit offices with polished floors and great views, their rental prices laughably beyond his means. He found cheap, affordable spaces in remote, crumbling buildings that smelled of mildew and defeat. More than once, he was shown a vacant, concrete shell that would require a full renovation at his own expense.
He'd look at the rapidly dwindling number in his bank account and feel a familiar, cold knot of anxiety tighten in his stomach. The initial capital for a new business was its lifeblood, and his was already draining away. Everything now hinged on the official release of Dark Forest. It had to be a success.
On the fifth day, his luck finally turned. He found a small office in a sprawling industrial park. It wasn't glamorous, but it was clean, had basic decorations, and the price was manageable. The agent explained that the previous tenants, an e-commerce startup, had gone bankrupt and left in a hurry. They had even abandoned some of their desks and chairs.
Leo saw an opportunity. The furniture was cheap and functional, and it saved him an expense he couldn't afford. He signed the lease, renting the space and its orphaned contents.
With a physical address secured, he made a quick stop at a local print shop and worked with a designer to create a simple, passable logo. It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. He knew he'd change it later when he had real money to spend.
And just like that, after a week of frantic running around, his company was born. He had spent about two minutes deciding on the name, landing on something he felt was practical and effective: Only Game.
It wasn't profound. It held no deep, far-sighted meaning. It was just easy to say, easy to remember, and had a confident ring to it. Leo was a pragmatist. He had no patience for pretentious, overwrought company names that required an explanation. A name a grade-schooler could remember was a good name.
He took the elevator up to the 5th floor of Building C and walked down the quiet hallway to unit 520. He unlocked the glass door and stepped inside.
His office. His company.
It was small, neat, and ready for business. He had spent a little extra on an LED sign, and the four glowing letters of "Only Game" were mounted on the wall behind the empty reception desk, a bright, eye-catching beacon in the otherwise spartan space.
Leo walked through the small open-plan area, running his hand over the back of one of the second-hand chairs. He pulled one out, sank into it, and for the first time in a week, allowed himself a moment of stillness. He pulled a cigarette from a pack in his pocket, lit it, and took a long, slow drag. The smoke curled in the quiet air, the only movement in the room.
"The company is real," he whispered, the words audible only to him. "Now, the real work begins. Finish the game."
He took out his phone, opened StreamVerse, and felt a familiar headache coming on as he looked at the mountain of 99+ notifications. He swiped over to his private messages, his thumb scrolling through the endless stream of praise and job offers. No new investors. Not a single one. It seemed that in this world, even a viral horror phenomenon wasn't enough to convince anyone with money to take a risk. It gave him a deeper, more sobering understanding of the hole he was trying to climb out of.
He shook his head. It made sense. If Dark Forest were a clone of Call of Duty or Need for Speed, he knew his inbox would be flooded with million-dollar offers by now.
He took another drag of his cigarette, exhaling a plume of smoke, and spun idly in the chair. He needed money. He desperately wanted to make the VR version of the game; the system had given him the blueprint, and he knew he could create an experience so much more intense and realistic than anything that currently existed on this world's lackluster VR market. It would be a revolution.
But revolutions weren't cheap. With investment off the table, and his own funds nearly depleted, only one path remained. It was a risky, common, and often controversial path in his old world.
He stopped spinning, leaned his head back, and stared at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling, his legs crossed.
Early Access.
Sell the game before it's finished. Use the players' money to fund the rest of the development. He'd seen it work a hundred times before. Games like Subnautica and Valheim had been built on the backs of their EA communities, growing from promising concepts into global hits. It had saved countless small, passionate studios.
This world had its own version of Steam, a global platform called the Cyber Platform. The process for getting a game listed was, thankfully, straightforward. As long as the content wasn't political or overtly hateful, even games with blood and ghosts could get a version number without a year-long bureaucratic delay.
The plan formed in his mind, sharp and clear. He would release an Early Access version of Dark Forest. The money from those sales would fund the completion of the PC version. Once that was done, he would deliver the ultimate surprise to the players: a fully integrated VR mode, released alongside the official 1.0 launch. Console ports would come later, once he could afford to hire people to handle the work.
He sat up straight, stubbing out his cigarette in a cheap ashtray he'd bought. There was just one problem. He pulled up his video's analytics on his phone. The numbers were still huge, but the trend line was unmistakable. It was pointing down.
He felt a familiar pang of anxiety. The internet's attention span was brutally short. The hype from his demo was already fading. If he just dropped an unfinished game on the Cyber Platform now, without a new wave of marketing, it would be dead on arrival.
He needed more fuel for the fire. He had to convince players that the game was not only real but actively and consistently being developed. He had to make them believe in the project enough to pay for an unfinished product.
He closed his eyes, thinking. What assets did he have left from the system? The promotional CG was too valuable; that had to be saved for the final release. The soundtrack was good, but it wouldn't move the needle on its own.
That left the concept designs and art resources. The raw, creative DNA of the game.
He sat there in the quiet of his new office, meditating on it. The minutes stretched on. Outside the window, the sun began to set, and he could hear the distant sounds of people leaving work, their voices echoing in the industrial park.
Then, he opened his eyes. The plan was complete.
"In a world where horror is a joke," he mused, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face, "the art of a true nightmare… the character models, the creature designs… they haven't seen anything like this. It'll be completely new."
It would be more than enough.
PLS SUPPORT ME AND THROW POWERSTONES .