The moment Leo sent the final build of Blackjack to his publisher, the gears of a massive corporate machine began to turn. In the executive offices of Unlimited Online Entertainment, President Liang and his team tried the game. Half a day later, an urgent, company-wide notice was issued to the marketing department.
All promotional assets for Dark Forest are to be immediately replaced with Blackjack. All channels. No exceptions.
Overnight, the internet was painted with a new, terrifying face. The familiar, gloomy woods of Dark Forest vanished from ad banners and video pre-rolls, replaced by a single, chilling image of a masked figure on a television screen. The accompanying headline, crafted for maximum impact, was plastered across every major website:
[The Future of Horror is Here. "Blackjack," the Revolutionary New VR Game from the Creator of "Dark Forest," is OUT NOW. Download and Play for FREE.]
The gaming community, still deeply immersed in the horrors of the forest, was caught completely off guard. They remembered the one-month promise, of course, but had dismissed it as the arrogant boast of a newly successful developer.
They never expected him to actually deliver.
And it was free?
A collective, primal instinct kicked in. No gamer, from the most casual to the most hardcore, can refuse a high-quality freebie. It's a sacred tradition. Streamers, content creators, and everyday players stampeded to the IGame platform, the publisher's storefront, their skepticism warring with their insatiable desire for a new, free experience. They found Blackjack sitting at the top of the homepage carousel, its stark, menacing icon impossible to miss.
The download was a mere six gigabytes—a refreshingly small file in an era of 100GB behemoths. But even as the progress bars filled, a deep-seated cynicism remained. The marketing promised a "high-quality" and "revolutionary" experience, but their memories of the last big-budget VR train wreck were still fresh.
Zaneiac's own gigabit connection had the game downloaded and installed in under a minute. He cracked his knuckles, fired up his stream, and leaned into his microphone.
"Alright, chat, here we go again," he said, his voice a mix of amusement and weariness. "The last time a Leo Sterling game landed on my hard drive, I confidently predicted it would be garbage. We all know how that ended—with me getting my face slapped so hard my ancestors felt it."
He gestured to the game's icon on his desktop. "So now we have Blackjack. And before I even click this thing, I'm going to make another prediction. We all remember VR Interstellar, right? The three-year, hundred-million-dollar dumpster fire from that big foreign studio? I'm setting the bar low. If Blackjack is only half as bad as VR Interstellar, I will declare it a success. What do you guys think?"
The chat was a waterfall of skepticism.
> LMAO half as bad is still trash, Zane.
> It took them 3 years to make that mess. Leo made this in a month. The math ain't mathing.
> The screenshots on the store page look way too good. There's no way that's in-engine VR quality. > I'm so worried he's gonna ruin his reputation with this. He should have just focused on Dark Forest 2!
> Blackjack is a card game, right? Maybe it's just a simple poker sim. That's doable in a month.
Zane nodded as he read the comments. A simple card game was the most likely scenario. It was the only way the timeline made any sense.
"Installation complete," he announced. "Alright, everyone. Time to dive in."
He picked up his VR headset, the familiar weight settling over his eyes, and gripped the controllers. The real world vanished, replaced by the soft gray of the device's home screen. "Okay, guys, I'm going in. My expectations are on the floor. I just hope it doesn't give me motion sickness."
He wasn't excited. He was just curious. Morbidly so. He wanted to see how a man who had created a masterpiece like Dark Forest could fail. Because in the broken, desolate landscape of VR gaming, failure was the only possible outcome.
Come on, kid, he thought, a hint of pity in his heart. Show me what you've got.
He launched the game. A blurry, indistinct shape materialized in the darkness before him. It slowly sharpened, resolving into the game's title, BLACKJACK, each letter dripping with blood. Below it, the three simplest possible menu options: Start. Settings. End.
Zane let out a heavy, disappointed sigh. "Well, that's not a good sign."
His chat roared with laughter. They mercilessly mocked the bare-bones menu, calling it the laziest they'd ever seen. Zane navigated to the settings, maxed everything out—his rig could handle it—and returned to the main screen.
"Alright, whatever," he said, his voice flat. "It's free. Let's just see what happens."
He pointed his controller at 'Start' and clicked.
The moment he did, a blindingly bright spotlight slammed down from above with a loud, industrial THUNK-CLANG, instantly vaporizing the menu. The sudden noise made him jolt back in his chair.
"Whoa, shit! What the hell was that!?" he yelled, his head whipping around inside the headset. But there was nothing to see. Only darkness. And… a table. He was sitting at a table.
He looked up. There was nothing but an infinite, black void and the single, harsh spotlight shining down on him. The table before him was old and square, its green paint faded and peeling. Large, dark patches of rust bloomed across its surface, and scratched into the center were two words: BLACK JACK.
THUNK-CLANG.
Two more spotlights ignited to his left and right, flooding the scene with light. And Zane's breath caught in his throat.
He wasn't in a black void anymore. He was in a room. A filthy, derelict basement with dirty, peeling walls and piles of obsolete, dust-covered televisions stacked in the corners. And sitting opposite him, slumped forward, was a person in a thick coat and a grimy, sackcloth hood.
Zane leaned forward, his mouth slightly agape. This… this can't be real-time, he thought. This has to be a pre-rendered video. The realism was staggering. He could see the fine, fuzzy texture of the plush on the hooded figure's coat, the individual threads of linen on his hood. The light glinted off the glass of the old TV screens with a fidelity that was indistinguishable from reality.
"Brothers, are you seeing this?" he whispered to his audience. "This isn't a game. It's a movie. It has to be."
His chat was in an uproar, equally divided between awe and disbelief. But Zane, inside the world, could see the subtle tells. There were still faint traces of polygons, of digital seams, but they were so well-hidden, so expertly rendered, that you would never notice unless you were looking for them.
He tore his gaze away from the scenery and focused on the person opposite him. He was motionless, but the gentle rise and fall of his chest showed he was still alive. His right hand was strapped to the table, his fingers splayed and held in place by a strange, bladed contraption.
Zane looked down. His own left hand was trapped in an identical device. The chat recognized it before he did.
> THAT'S A FINGER GUILLOTINE > HOLY SHIT ZANE
He understood. This wasn't just blackjack. This was torture.
At that moment, the wall of televisions behind the hooded man flickered to life, bathing the room in a cold, static-filled glow. The sudden noise and light shocked the man opposite him awake. He began to struggle violently, pulling against the device that held his hand, his muffled cries filled with panic.
Zane stared, his heart beginning to pound. And then, on every screen, a single image appeared. A man in a cold, terrifyingly blank mask.
Through the black and white static, the masked figure slowly turned its head until it was looking directly at Zane. A deep, hoarse, electronically distorted voice filled the room, coming from all directions at once.
"Hello, gentlemen. I want to play a game."