Chapter 101: The Spirit of Punchlord [VIP]
"Eh? Me?" Lin Chen stopped humming and pointed at his nose blankly.
The next second, Chuuya had already neatly unwrapped the gift box. Next to several brand new game consoles, there were indeed several boxes of game cartridges.
The cover of one of the game cartridges features colorful, gradient geometric shapes as the core, abstractly combined to form artistic text that resembles the game title. Star elements dotted in the corners add a dreamy feel, and the background blends a grid texture with color gradients. Through bright colors and creative typography, it creates a retro and unique visual atmosphere.
The Spirit of Punk Lord
Blurry pixel fonts, with the cold and hard texture of an old-fashioned terminal, hover in the center of a psychedelic visual vortex.
Lin Chen's gaze lingered on those words for a brief moment.
Punchlord.
The planet in the real universe that is famous for its data space, rebellious hacker spirit and cyber culture.
The birthplace of Ether Editing is home to many hardcore players who regard life as a big game and planets as levels.
Obviously, this must be a clue to something new!
Huh, players now have sufficient gaming experience.
These things related to the real world are basically things that need to be recovered in the mission [Simulated Universe·Earth] - although she has only encountered two strange objects and one event so far.
Even one of the rare items is the [Chaos Ganoderma] that came out of the novice gift pack.
But this does not stop her from being full of confidence.
"Let's play this first, Chuuya. Everyone wants to play "Punk Lord Spirit" more, right?" Lin Chen picked out the game cartridge of "Punk Lord Spirit" and stuffed it into his arms without any question.
"They are all the hottest games lately!!"
"Really? That's the latest hit, 'Punk Lord Spirit'?!"
"Chuuya! Please! Insert the card and see!"
The moment the name was announced, the children, who had been unable to contain their excitement, burst into enthusiastic cheers.
Especially when the name of the game cartridge "Punk Lord Game Spirit" came out of the players' mouths, it ignited their enthusiasm.
Shirase and Yuzuki practically lay prone on the table, their eyes fixed on what Chuuya was doing. The table legs groaned again under the invisible pressure of the crowd.
A vein on Chuuya's forehead twitched, and a faint red light instantly wrapped around the table legs and the computer on the table, pinning them firmly in place: "Stay where you are! Stand still! Otherwise, don't even think about playing!"
The oppressive voice temporarily suppressed the children's excitement and restlessness.
Chuuya looked around:
Players looked on with a carefree curiosity, "Where are the instructions?" Children were eagerly adoring the game. Ranpo was calmly enjoying the candy, and Dazai was leisurely watching the show. Akiko, who had just walked over and was still confused about the situation, whispered to the calm Oda next to her.
Soon, her eyes lit up, and she turned the scalpel and looked expectantly at the cassette in his hand.
tired.
I feel tired.
Nakahara Chuuya took a deep breath, no longer hesitated, and tightly grasped the plastic card that carried the children's eager eyes, and accurately found the card slot on the side of the brand new game console.
His movements were steady, with a kind of concentration that was isolated from the hustle and bustle.
Click.
There was a slight mechanical click, and the cassette was swallowed whole into the slot.
The entire dormitory area downstairs suddenly became quiet, leaving only the golden light of the setting sun flowing on everyone, and the breathing light of the cursor on the game console that lit up, symbolizing successful loading.
Sizzle—whoosh whoosh—
The expected long reading bar did not appear.
Almost at the moment the cassette was completely swallowed, an indescribable sound - like the explosion of an old oscilloscope signal mixed with the noise of a high-speed data stream - burst out briefly.
Then, the limited-sized LCD screen of the home console suddenly lit up!
The gorgeousness of the scene and the strong impact made Shirase and Yuzuo, who were squeezed in the front, subconsciously exclaim "Wow!" and tilted their necks back at the same time.
That's not the picture quality any current game console should have.
A pure, bright light, like a boiling paint bucket, occupies the entire center of the screen, and the lines rapidly reorganize, condense, and collapse as if they have life.
Almost in the blink of an eye, a three-dimensional city outline constructed by countless jumping pixel blocks suddenly hit everyone's retina!
A huge title with an electric texture hit the center of the screen——
The Spirit of Punk Lord
Below the text, a silhouette of a very old man or woman is slowly turning around from the steel forest background of the cyber city.
The man, wearing an ordinary, tattered black windbreaker, stood with his back to the screen, a blurry outline. His hair, shrouded in neon, was blown backwards by the imaginary, whistling "data wind" within the screen. In front of the silhouette, four incredibly clear pixel options hovered:
[New Game]
[Load save]
[set up]
[Voice of Punklord (404)] <—— The pixel color of this "404" option is extremely unstable and is flickering strangely.
"This...he's going in already?" Yuxing rubbed her eyes and murmured in disbelief.
It's so fast! It's like opening a photo album on your phone, not inserting a game cartridge! And this startup screen...
"The Voice of Punchlord..." Shirase pointed at the options, curious. "What is this? Backflip?"
The first thing player Lin Chen noticed was the shimmering, gradient textures on the silhouette figure's windbreaker, as well as the cube floating in the figure's raised hand.
——Ether cassette.
It is a chip used by Punklord hackers to edit reality, recording their way of perceiving and rewriting the world.
It's a record of a hacker's life, proof of his existence. With it, you can even find out what kind of soda a hacker drinks.
This clear definition flashed through the player's mind. The Ether cartridge, coupled with Punk Lord's name and the abnormal loading speed, naturally gave rise to the thought, "Aha, this is indeed a strange item, I told you so!"
Yosano Akiko had just finished a low conversation with Oda Sakunosuke when her eyes happened to be locked on the silhouette on the screen with its back to the crowd.
She stroked her chin, the scalpel twirling lightly between her fingers, reflecting a sharp, cold light. Her tone was filled with professional curiosity: "This character model... the skeletal proportions are quite standard. Is it a cyborg? Or... a hacker?"
"It's a hacker." The player replied casually, "And it's not just any hacker, it's Supreme Palm."
Oda Sakuri nodded and said, "The windbreaker is very practical and suitable for quick action."
He agrees with a pragmatic aesthetic.
“Wow! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
The children, who finally reacted, burst into deafening cheers, and the small farm space was instantly ignited by excitement.
"Open it, open it!"
"Chuuya, hurry up and click on the new game!"
"I want to play, I want to play!"
The pressure was once again on Nakahara Chuuya. He looked at the dazzling punk city and the overly clear options on the screen, then at the [Voice of Punk Lord (404)] that kept tempting people to click, and frowned: "Damn, this reading speed... Is this machine burned? How can it be so fast?"
——In his meager experience of using game consoles, the loading bar when the computer is turned on is a matter of course. This instant loading is no different from a physical plug-in!
A hint of red light appeared at his fingertips again. He didn't mean to use more force, but instinctively avoided exerting force directly with his limbs. He wanted to use his supernatural powers to confirm whether the machine was overloaded and heated.
"This is the best game!" Ranpo licked his lollipop and made an incoherent declaration, as if he had foreseen the excitement of this "abnormality".
His green eyes, which seemed to be able to see through everything, scanned the screen with interest, pausing especially on [The Voice of Punch Lord (404)], and the curve of his mouth became more and more prominent.
Dazai Osamu had taken a step closer without him noticing, his iris-colored eyes reflecting the dancing colors on the screen. There was no longer the lazy teasing from before, but a bit more real interest in them.
He looked at the strangely flickering "404" option and uttered a soft "Ah!", his voice rising at the end. "404 Not Found? Even the game menu has a 'lost' attribute? What a... philosophical quirk."
He chuckled softly, as if he had found a particularly interesting toy.
Nakahara Chuuya took a deep breath.
Facing countless scorching rays of "quickly press, quick press" and the eager eyes of the players who said "I'll do it myself if you don't move the controller", Chuuya finally stretched out his slender fingers, and with a bit of tragic self-sacrifice (worried that the console would be overclocked and exploded), he pressed the direction keys on the controller hard, and the cursor was accurately locked on [New Game]!
A click that decides your fate!
The world seemed to hold its breath again.
The expected exciting opening CG or lengthy copyright notice was completely absent. The magnificent silhouette of the punk city in the center of the screen didn't even have time to fully display its neon wings.
Swish!
There was a sudden, piercing noise, as if the signal had been abruptly cut off!
Then, the entire gorgeous startup screen suddenly twisted and deformed, like a hot asphalt lake with a stone thrown into it.
Colors were stretched, pixels collapsed, and the silhouette of the "protagonist" with his back to the screen was torn into broken, trembling mosaic strips in an instant, and then violently pulled back to the center of the screen by an invisible force!
All the options: [New Game], [Load Save], [Settings], and the strange [Voice of Punchlord (404)] - disappeared without a trace.
Instead, there is a silhouette of a person forcibly pinned to the center of the picture, leaving only a chaotic, blurred, and constantly twitching and shaking.
Around the portrait, the edges of the screen were rapidly swallowed by the thick, boiling darkness.
In the blink of an eye, only the small "fault area" in the center of the entire screen remained, like the only unstable light in the abyss.
Inside this trembling "fault zone," the backdrop was no longer the city silhouette, but a raging data storm. Countless ones and zeros, incomplete code fragments, geometric shatters, and meaningless, distorted symbols, like the shards of a broken neon sign, spun wildly, collided, and annihilated in the storm's center!
The entire "fault area" was vibrating at a high frequency, and each vibration was accompanied by a crackling noise of electric current, as if it would be unable to bear the weight in the next second and completely shattered into electronic dust.
"hiss--!"
The sound of people gasping in shock was uniform, and the cheers that had just risen in the children's faces froze and turned into a look of astonishment.
The player also raised his eyebrows.
This reaction... I'm increasingly looking forward to what kind of surprise I can bring her!
Nakahara Chuuya quickly examined the game console.
Failed to boot? Broken cassette? Overheated and frozen console?
The players were thinking in the same frequency as him for a while, observing what was happening.
However, she ruthlessly quashed those wild speculations as soon as they surfaced—No! This was an incident related to a strange object? How could it be such a simple development? There had to be something more intriguing going on!
The players were so convinced that they continued to circle around the game console with great interest.
"It's definitely not that simple."
Nakahara Chuuya's reaction was faster than anyone else.
"Damn it!" He cursed, and almost at the same time reached out to pull out the damn cassette - was the internal circuit board of this broken machine burnt out and about to explode?! The red light of gravity instantly gathered at his fingertips.
However, just as Chuuya's fingers were about to touch the cassette tape—
Buzz...Zizi...
The "fault area" on the screen was quiet for a very brief moment, and the terrifying tremor suddenly stopped!
The surging data storm suddenly stopped for a frame inside the "fault area".
All the NPCs' movements were frozen, and only the player tilted his head, curiously waiting for the next plot.
In the absolute silence of this frame, a selection box suddenly, steadily, and with an undeniable coldness, condensed and emerged out of thin air in the center of the "fault zone" storm:
[Enter 404]
This option box is completely different from the previous pixel style. It is a deep black with smooth and sharp edges without any unnecessary decorations.
The font is pure, glaring scarlet without any reflections.
[Enter 404] These four words are as clear as the charges engraved on the verdict.
The next second, the scalp-numbing, high-frequency crackling sound, like countless tiny metal pieces scraping against glass, took over the area again and began to shake wildly again.
But that scarlet option box seemed to be welded in the center of the eye of the storm, motionless and extremely stable, exuding a suffocating evil against the backdrop of chaos!
"Me...?!" Shirase's mouth dropped open, his voice distorted. He pointed at the eerily stable crimson option, feeling his CPU begin to hum.
"404...the one that was flashing just now?" Yuxing's voice trembled. She took half a step back and instinctively felt that this thing was very "weird".
Oda Sakunosuke stated the facts nearby, "There was a clear pause before the image was touched. Also... the fan hadn't been turning on just now, and it's still silent now."
His focus was always pragmatic and to the point—if there were no signs of hardware overload, it wasn't a physical problem. It was a problem with the program itself.
"What are you afraid of?" the player quickly picked up the game console. With a quick bend, he dodged the opponent's attempt to grab it, but at the same time, he confirmed directly, "Just play with it!"
There was no earth-shattering explosion, only a sudden burst of blinding white light that engulfed everything!
"Huh?"
The player uttered a short syllable. The white light faded, and she blinked.
It's not the warm dormitory area on the farm, nor are there noisy companions in front of the game console.
Before me lay a damp, cold, narrow alleyway blocked by piles of discarded metal trash cans. Above me was a gray-black steel sky that stretched as far as the eye could see, with faint rays of light filtering through the cracks, either from artificial suns or giant neon advertisements. The air was thick with the combined smell of motor oil, rust, and some kind of decaying, low-quality synthetic food.
"It's nesting dolls!" the player answered loudly.
What would it be like to play a holographic game within a holographic game? The developers of Multidimensional Life must have thought this was a really fun design, right?
She looked at herself and found that she was maintaining the imaginary cub body outside. She clenched her fists, jumped up a few times, and even tried to sprint.
Well, there's no lag, and my body is very obedient, without being forced to use a stamina bar...
The player was extremely satisfied with the body that remained intact within the game world. His eyes immediately fixed on a nearby two-story building, barely constructed from abandoned shipping containers and rusty pipes.
"Goal! High ground!" she shouted, and like a nimble mountain cat, she grasped, stepped, and climbed. With a few smooth movements, she reached the edge of the roof. The rusty metal beneath her feet groaned under the weight, but she stood firm.
The player stood on tiptoe at this rickety yet vantage point, hands on hips, gleefully surveying this unfamiliar landscape of massive steel structures, exposed pipes, and dimly flickering neon lights. They declared their first words upon entering the game world: "Yay! Players are invincible after all!"
The wind from high above blew in with a metallic coolness, and the view suddenly became clear.
The maze-like alleys below were like the passages of a giant ant nest, and extending outward was a huge behemoth made of layer upon layer of steel, glass and holographic light and shadow - the main body of the city of Punklod.
Countless skyscrapers made of mirrors, light and data particles rise from the ground, piercing what is not the sky, but a huge holographic projection that is constantly flowing. Cyber whales leisurely cruise among the billboard matrix, and the next second they turn into pixel waterfalls pouring down.
The building's surface is not a cold steel plate, but a flowing river of light. Huge, flickering neon signs cover every inch of available space:
[Super sensory connection! Experience the real five-layer dream! ]
【Free access to Metadomain! Data surfing paradise!】
[Aether Blade! The latest equipment! Plug and play!]
[Black Market Gladiator: Real Sensory Thrill! Tonight's Winner Wins 1 Billion Credits!]
The aerial tracks are like glowing blood vessels, with streamlined rail cars or bizarre-shaped flying vehicles sliding silently by from time to time, leaving colorful light tails.
Farther away, the outline of a huge building with a flamboyant and bizarre shape can be vaguely seen, like a space fortress, with a waterfall of neon data flowing on its surface.
In addition to the basic metallic smell, the air is filled with an indescribable "activity" - invisible data transmission, electromagnetic pulses and the hustle and bustle of countless lives gathered here, forming a buzzing background energy field.
In the gaps or on the ground floors of high-rise buildings, dense and wild neon signs compete with each other for attention. Among them are words such as "Game Hall", "Virtual Experience Warehouse", "Data Duel Arena" in various styles, flashing brightly.
The streets below were filled with people, dressed in a wide variety of styles, from technical bodysuits to retro punk outfits draped with chains and metal. Many moved with a relaxed, playful air.
The player was slightly shocked by the scene before him.
This is Punch Lord? This is Punch Lord!
"Welcome to [Punklode], your main quest is: Become a legendary hacker."
The electronic sound that suddenly sounded was of a style completely different from the player's own system.
"Everyone in this game has only one life. After a player dies, they will be teleported to a transfer station. As long as one player successfully completes the game, all players will be resurrected and return to reality."
"If all players die, the game will be considered a failure, and all players will die completely."
"Current number of players: 20,000."
"Current player deaths: 0"
"Have fun playing the game."
The player listened thoughtfully.
Will I die? Really? I don't believe it.
Lin Chen saved the game and jumped from a high place into a free fall.
Let me see if your code is better than mine!
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