WebNovels

Chapter 3 - Ready player one!

Terrabyte redirected his perception to the other end of that link, his old home, Earth.

A torrent of data instantly flooded him, and he quickly completed the comparison and processing of information. The results showed that during the "time" he had been wandering in the warp, decades had passed on Earth. Technology was more advanced than when he left, and the urban landscape had changed significantly, but the social structure remained largely the same.

None of this was Terrabyte's main focus. He only cared about one thing — the concept that once only existed in science fiction literature and movies, fully immersive virtual reality technology, had become a reality and was quite widespread.

"This saves a lot of trouble," a flicker of joy crossed Terrabyte's consciousness. He had originally been contemplating how to explain and promote a completely new interactive concept to Earth's "users" from scratch, but now it seemed the infrastructure had already been laid out for him.

With a thought, he began to retrieve the massive amount of visual data he had just scanned from Perditia. Like a director with infinite material and top-tier editing software, he casually selected the most shocking and despair-filled, magnificent scenes and edited them together.

Terrabyte had no intention of hiding his existence. He had intended from the start for this so-called Game to be known to everyone. He was, after all, a minor deity now, and even his casual editing, in terms of precise emotional manipulation and information transfer efficiency, far surpassed any top advertising company on Earth.

He directly uploaded this promotional video, titled "Warhammer 40k," to all public online platforms on Earth, not even bothering to come up with a Name.

Next, it was time to create the "game" itself.

Directly letting ordinary people on Earth log into the battlefield empty-handed was definitely not an option. They wouldn't be facing AI programmed by a computer, but battle-hardened ork veterans and cunning, deadly Xenos. Doing that wouldn't be playing a game; it would be pure cannon fodder for the enemy.

A "support system" had to be added.

First, a data panel that could display body status, ammo count, and mission objectives in detail was essential; this was the absolute basic.

Then, all detected enemies needed to be highlighted, especially in Perditia's dim and chaotic environment, to prevent players from being blind.

Add a clear and discernible kill confirmation sound effect, so players could immediately know if they had successfully eliminated a target in a chaotic battle.

Most importantly, an adaptive system to simplify operations. It would allow a player who had never touched a firearm to instantly grasp the basic aiming, shooting, and reloading procedures through a consciousness link the moment he held a lasgun; it would enable an ordinary person without even a driver's license to immediately understand how to start and drive a chimera armored vehicle after sitting in its cockpit.

Finally, to ensure players had enough game time and contributed enough "dynamic information" to his "server," it would be best to add thought acceleration. Not too fast, just a 1:3 ratio: one minute passing on Earth would equal three minutes in the game. This would greatly increase online time without causing mental problems for players due to too large a difference in thought speed.

Everything was meticulously designed, but at the last step — creating player bodies — Terrabyte encountered a small problem.

It wasn't too difficult, actually. When he scanned the remaining humans on Perditia Star, he found their gene pool was quite chaotic. The genetic similarity between various humans was very low, with the maximum difference even reaching 50%. This made him unsure which gene to use as a template for mass-producing the players' physical bodies.

After much thought, he simply gave up on choosing and decided to randomize it!

When a player logged in, the system would randomly select a template from the gene pool he had established. This was both fair and added to the fun of the "game."

After completion, Terrabyte checked the entire "game system" several times and felt that the preliminary framework was complete. Next, it was time to verify its feasibility through practice.

Robert, 24 years old this year, is a gaming VR streamer.

A series of urgent phone notifications woke Robert from his sleep. Annoyed, he grabbed his phone from the bedside table and, squinting, unlocked the screen.

The dazzling screen light made him instinctively want to throw the phone away, but then he saw a barrage of @s and private messages in the notification bar.

It was his fan group. Fans were desperately @ing him, and the content was surprisingly consistent:

"Bobby B you lazy streamer, stop sleeping! Go watch the 'Warhammer 40k' promotional video! It's explosive!"

"Crazy, crazy, old warhammer fans are ascending on the spot!"

"Bobby, make a video quickly! This is definitely the strongest contender of the year!"

Robert was momentarily bewildered.

Warhammer 40k? How old was this IP? Didn't GW, the British company that developed it, go bankrupt in the new century's virtual reality wave due to poor management? Now, even many newcomers in the gaming industry don't know what Warhammer is. Which crazy genius would make a promotional video for such an old-fashioned subject?

With a hint of curiosity, Robert sat up from his bed and put on the augmented reality glasses from his bedside table.

"Play the latest 'Warhammer 40k' promotional video received."

His vision was instantly dominated by the content of the promotional video.

The opening was not a grand interstellar battlefield, but an extremely narrow, oppressive metal space, looking like the interior of some old bunker. Dim lights cast flickering shadows on the rusty bulkheads, and the air seemed to be filled with a mixed scent of machine oil, sweat, and recycled air.

The camera's focus was on a young soldier who was irritably rummaging through his empty backpack. He sighed in disappointment and looked up at an old soldier next to him who was wiping a lasgun.

"Boss, got any more booze? Gimme a swig," the young soldier asked weakly.

The grizzled old soldier didn't even lift his head, replying gruffly, "Save it, kid. Rations have been cut for three days, where would I get booze for you? Besides, drinking on an empty stomach isn't good, you'll shit yourself to death, kid!"

Hearing this, the young soldier's face showed a strange smile. He patted his shriveled stomach: "Who said I'm on an empty stomach?"

He lowered his voice, speaking in a tone that was both complaining and bragging: "That corpse starch they handed out three days ago, I still feel it clogging up my guts now. Without a drink, I just can't bloody digest it."

This hellish joke instantly eased the tense atmosphere around them. A brief, suppressed burst of laughter echoed in the bunker, interspersed with a few empathetic curses. One soldier laughed and gently kicked the young soldier's shin, and a strange, morbidly cheerful atmosphere, born of desperation, permeated the entire space.

Robert's lips were just about to curl into a smile. He could see how much effort the production team had put into the various models; whether it was the furrowed wrinkles on the soldiers' faces, the wear and tear on their equipment, or their incredibly natural interactions, everything was terrifyingly real.

At a glance, he couldn't even tell the difference from the real world. He subconsciously assumed this was a story-driven game that intended to showcase its plot with top-tier detail and dark humor.

The next second, a sudden change occurred.

No warning, no whistling. A blinding crimson beam, like a red-hot branding iron slicing through butter, silently traversed the entire screen.

That beam precisely cut through the young soldier who had been speaking, at his waist.

Time seemed to stretch at this moment. The smile on the soldier's face instantly froze, replaced by an incomprehensible bewilderment. His mouth still held the triumphant shape from finishing his sentence, but his eyes had already glazed over.

Immediately after, under the force of gravity, his upper body smoothly and slowly slid sideways from the waist. During this process, a sight that made Robert's stomach churn violently occurred — as the upper body shifted, a perfect, charred black cross-section, burned by high heat, was exposed to the air, and from the wound of the lower body, scalding, dark red blood gushed out like a bursting dam!

That wasn't the common red particle effect seen in games, but viscous, steaming liquid! Closely followed by tangled, still slightly wriggling, colorful intestines and shattered organ tissue.

All of this, with slow-motion clarity, splattered across the entire "camera" — or, to be precise, Robert's face.

A sensation of warmth and a nauseatingly strong smell of rust seemed to genuinely hit his face. He could even clearly see a small coiled piece of intestine and fragmented liver tissue splattered on the "virtual lens." Inside the bunker, the explosive laughter of comrades was instantly replaced by terrified screams and gasps of horror.

He froze, even subconsciously raising his hand to wipe his face, only realizing what had happened when his hand touched his face, blurting out, "Holy crap!"

The promotional video continued: orks' wild charges, the dark eldar's elegant yet deadly massacres, genestealers' stealth in the shadows... every scene carried a suffocating sense of realism and despair. It felt like... a documentary filmed by a war correspondent risking his life.

After the promotional video ended, Robert took off his glasses. He was stunned for a long time before he finally managed to recover from the intense shock.

The after-effects were too strong!

At the same time, as an experienced gaming UP streamer, he acutely noticed the extraordinary technological prowess displayed behind this promotional video. Currently, no company on the market had a virtual reality game that could achieve this level. Just this unique sense of realism alone was enough to attract a large number of players seeking a hardcore experience.

It could be said that this game, directly named "Warhammer 40k," had no competitors on the market and absolutely no possibility of failing spectacularly.

But a huge question also arose in his mind: How did such a bloody promotional video pass the review of various platform censorship agencies?

Of course, he didn't know that Terrabyte had directly forced it online, and now the information security departments of major countries were already sweating profusely looking at this promotional video.

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