In the year 2043, brain-computer interface (BCI) gaming was booming. The perfectly immersive experience drove countless gamers wild, but as a new piece of hardware, the number of exclusive games was pitifully small—so sparse it would make a dog shake its head. The future, however, looked promising.
In this situation, some daring players weren't content with the status quo. Take Bai Shi, who was currently sitting in his gaming room, connecting his BCI to his computer with a data cable.
Bai Shi was attempting to port a game from another platform to the BCI. His target this time was Elden Ring, a game that had left a deep impression on him since his childhood.
"What? You're asking how I know how to port games? Am I some kind of software god? Of course not," he thought. He was just an ordinary, older shut-in who had watched countless porting tutorials online and decided to give it a try. He had successfully ported a few games before without any issues.
Normally, for a BCI to be released, safety features would be fully guaranteed. An automatic protection system would shut down the device in case of a malfunction. Simple porting wasn't a problem for the BCI; its powerful optimization could give various games a second life, though they couldn't achieve the perfect immersion of a native BCI game.
With all these factors in mind, Bai Shi finally felt at peace. With a "crackle~pop" sound of the BCI burning out, he passed away. Hopefully, this tragic case will serve as a lesson for great inventors.
...
In a dilapidated chapel, the prone body of Bai Shi slowly came to. He looked at the dirty carpet pressed against his face, his mind struggling to catch up.
"A strange carpet... Wait, I don't have carpet in my room!"
Bai Shi jolted awake, his not-so-bright brain kicking back into gear.
"I remember... I was trying to, to, oh right, to port Elden Ring to the BCI. Did it succeed?"
He climbed to his feet. What greeted his eyes was a scene of desolation: broken chairs, a dim room, and sparse, withered weeds growing between the bricks. This was it—the Chapel of Anticipation, where Elden Ring's journey begins.
"I succeeded on the first try? Am I a genius?"
Bai Shi excitedly felt the armor on his body. The cold touch, the damage from battle... it all felt incredibly real.
"Haha! Elden Ring, I've f***ing arrived!"
He walked and jumped around the small chapel, pulling out his longsword and slashing at the chairs. Watching them shatter into pieces before him, he reveled in the unparalleled "gaming experience."
The chapel was too dark. It wasn't until a moment later that Bai Shi found the corpse of the Finger Maiden next to a dark wall, along with the words she left in her final moments.
'Even though the Guidance has long been shattered, please become the Elden Lord.'
He sighed as he looked at the maiden's body, a woman he had never met before her death.
"Sigh, she was just an NPC whose name I didn't even know and with only a bit of lore... but seeing her corpse still makes me a little sad."
"And having this kind of responsibility placed on me is a lot of pressure. I'm already sweating, my dude."
Bai Shi turned to leave but suddenly wanted to see what she looked like. He crouched down in front of the maiden and reached out to pull back the hood covering half her face. But because the maiden's body was lying on its side, the pull caused the hat to fall off completely.
Startled, Bai Shi instinctively picked it up. At that moment, a line of text appeared before his eyes:
"Finger Maiden Hat"
Bai Shi was stunned.
This item wasn't supposed to be found here, but he had just obtained it from a dead NPC. He had only performed a simple, crude porting of the game and hadn't modified the content. So where did this hat come from?
The game seemed to be getting strange. Faced with this anomaly, Bai Shi suddenly felt a sense of dread.
He recalled all the realistic sensations he had just experienced. This was not the level of immersion a crudely ported game should have on a BCI. Adding the appearance of an item that shouldn't be there, a terrifying thought surfaced in his mind.
This might not be a game anymore.
He tried to open the menu and quit the game, but what used to be as simple as a thought was now impossible.
No matter how much he called out, there was no response.
A blurry memory suddenly emerged, the final moments before his death—a memory his body had suppressed for self-preservation.
He had forgotten until now.
Forgotten the pain of the current surging through his body, forgotten the fatal sound of the BCI malfunctioning and burning out.
Bai Shi suddenly remembered. He was already dead.
"To die like this... I just wanted to play a game..."
"I don't want to die..."
(End of this chapter)