Chapter 1 is scheduled for
"Magic Calendar Year 3401, Rainy Month, 26th Day, Night"
"The sky burned the city, the earth shook, it seemed like the end of the world"
"The ring faded, the royal veins withered, the nine floating cities finally returned to the earth, and the glory of magic dimmed."
"——A Brief History of the Empire·Prologue: The Day of Destruction"
………
Xia Yuan opened his eyes suddenly.
There is a familiar mirror in front of me, but the person reflected in the mirror looks young and unfamiliar.
He had a handsome face with regular features, and his light black hair had grown a little longer. His pale skin flickered in the flickering candlelight, and his overall temperament seemed a little weird.
He raised his hand in disbelief and pressed it to his face with a slight tremor. Xia Yuan looked at the figure in the mirror who was making the same movement and took a deep breath.
“Boom boom boom—”
A huge thunderclap sounded outside the window, causing Xia Yuan, who was still a little dazed, to tremble all over.
He remembered that night, a thunderstorm caused a power short circuit, and he had to light a white candle to illuminate himself.
In his memory, three days later - to be exact, two days, twenty hours and sixteen minutes later, the first trailer of "Mystic Era", a game that was ahead of the entire era by who knows how many years, would be released.
It also began to offer semi-public internal testing qualifications to the entire society, announcing its arrival to the entire era.
In this era when mainstream online games are still in VR, an almost unbelievable 98.25% immersive game is a complete dimensionality reduction attack on the entire gaming industry.
The closed beta will be launched one week after the trailer is released, which is ten days later.
The major studios confirmed that their publicity was not exaggerated, but was actually true.
We decisively began to cancel all other gaming businesses one after another and switched fully to "Mysterious Era".
When the fifteen-day internal test ended, ordinary players who had been eager to play the game swarmed in. For a time, the price of game materials soared, and countless people became rich overnight by relying on this game.
Half a month after the official launch of "Mystery Era", the daily active users of all other games almost dropped to zero.
Countless game company bosses have pulled their hair out because of this, but the wig industry has ushered in a small boom as a result.
It is said that when "Mystery Era" was first released, the boss of a large game company was unwilling to give up and found the chief engineer of the company's R&D department.
It is hoped that within three months, we can crack the principles of the "Mystery Era" game helmet and game cabin and develop similar equipment.
The chief engineer told him on the spot in a tactful and polite manner: he was living in a dream.
If someone could crack the principle of that strange helmet within a year, he could take off his ball and kick the cracker in the head! After hitting a wall in the technical department, the boss, who still had a glimmer of hope, went to find the game engineer, but when he entered the personal office of the chief game engineer, he was shocked to find that this guy was lazy and played "Mystery Era" during work! Of course, the bosses of the game company would not sit idly by. They found some experts and professors and advocated that this game was too real and might cause serious identity recognition barriers to players.
And using this as a reason, they hope that the government can take action and completely ban this game.
But for some unknown reason, these "experts" soon stopped working one by one, and the release of "Mysterious Era" had no impact at all.
………
Xia Yuan let out a long breath, ended his frantic memories, patted his face lightly, and started thinking quickly.
Since I have been reborn to a time when the trailer for "Mysterious Era" has not yet been released, I must find a way to get a spot in the internal beta test of "Mysterious Era".
Although the data will be deleted after the internal beta test, only those who are qualified for the internal beta test will have the priority to purchase the first-generation game cabin, which is released in limited quantities worldwide.
The game officials only deployed 5,000 game cabins on the continent where Xia Yuan was located, and there were too many people and too little resources.
Except for 500 priority places for internal test players, the remaining 4,500 places are not accessible to ordinary individual players at all, and are even reserved long before they enter the market.
The biggest difference between the first-generation gaming helmets and gaming cabins is the limitation on online time.
Taking into account the player's physical needs to eat and go to the toilet, the helmet can only be online for a maximum of sixteen hours a day.
The game cabin with nutrient solution as a supplement can be online for 18 hours, which means that the game cabin players have one eighth more game time than the helmet players! For the high-level players who make this their profession, this is a world of difference. And everyone's helmet is bound to their identity, so changing equipment to circumvent restrictions is also not feasible.
In addition, there is also nutrient solution that comes with the first-generation game cabin, which is also a good thing, but it is only sold to players who own game cabins. The supply was stopped just one month after its release. The price increase in the future will be more outrageous than that of a house!
Before his rebirth, Xia Yuan was just an ordinary solo player and his family was not wealthy.
As a result, he naturally did not get a place in the internal test, did not buy the first generation of game cabins, and did not stock up on the first generation of nutrient solution. He perfectly dodged all opportunities to make a fortune.
He didn't even realize when he was fighting the Boss, that his dodging skills were so good!
Although his skills and awareness were considered high-end, due to the time limit on the game, he gradually fell behind the first-tier group using the game cabin.
This had a direct impact on his income, resulting in him still being short of money when the lower-priced and unlimited second-generation gaming cabins and nutrient solutions were released a month later.
It was not until the third month after the game was launched that he was able to collect the required amount of funds. However, by then, his level had already fallen behind the first-tier players.
So, he simply let himself go and stopped focusing on leveling up to improve his strength. Instead, he traveled back and forth between the famous libraries on the mainland.
I began to study documents recording "background stories" from various places, trying to find clues related to treasures, hidden tasks, hidden professions, etc.
This type of players are collectively referred to as plot-based players, and there are quite a few of them.
Xia Yuan had good logical analysis ability, insight and luck. In the end, he really discovered several hidden tasks and ruins through the careful collection and arrangement of information, and got a lot of good things, and his strength returned to the first echelon.
This earned him considerable fame among story-based players, earning him the nickname "Lucky Silver Hand".
During this process, he accidentally unlocked a hidden title: [Junior Relic Scholar], which allows him to receive a 5% price correction when trading unidentified relic items.
From then on, the door to a new world opened to him. The extremely realistic background story of "Mysterious Era" fascinated him, and he even took the exploration of ancient mysteries as his main task.
Crack—Boom—
Another huge thunder rang through the sky, bringing his thoughts back to reality.
"There are still ten days until the internal test begins. That's plenty of time..."
Putting aside his thoughts for a moment, looking at the younger version of himself in the mirror, an irrepressible smile crept onto Xia Yuan's cheeks.
He was filled with great pride and could not help but raise his chin slightly, put his left hand behind his back, and recited a poem on the spot.
"His heroic spirit shines like the sun and the moon, and his knowledge is hidden in his belly. The man on the street is as beautiful as jade, and the young master is unparalleled in the world——"
"Snap—boom—"
As if in response to his words, a huge thunderclap resounded through the sky again.
Amid the thunder, the quietly burning candle flame suddenly flickered, and the shadows in the room began to wriggle slightly, as if they had gained life.
Xia Yuan did not notice the slight change in the candle flame, but when he stared at his reflected eyes in the mirror, he couldn't help but feel an impulse in his heart. He raised his right hand slightly and his lips slowly moved.
Come to think of it, I haven't done this for a long time.
The rain outside the window was getting heavier. The big raindrops were hitting the glass with a crackling sound. The dazzling lightning kept dividing the dark night sky, and the huge thunder was endless.
In the dim room, a strange and inexplicable scene appeared——
Under the flickering candlelight, a young man kept making strange movements in front of the mirror as if he was possessed.
He was chanting strange syllables in a certain rhythm, as if he was performing some ancient and evil ritual!
"Rock-paper-scissors!"
"Rock-paper-scissors!"
………
After a while, as his right hand felt slightly sore in protest, Xia Yuan finally decided to stop this meaningless action.
I didn't lose a single game, I am worthy of it! Nodding in front of the mirror as if nothing had happened to express my praise, Xia Yuan turned around and prepared to leave the bathroom...
…………
?
At this moment, his movements suddenly stopped.
Wait… in the second to last round, when I played paper… it seemed like he, did he… played scissors?
Carefully recalling a certain detail from before, Xia Yuan blinked and his smile gradually froze.
How can I lose when playing rock-paper-scissors with the mirror? It was still midsummer in August, but Xia Yuan felt the air was a little chilly.
I slowly turned my head, looked at myself in the mirror, and tentatively raised my right hand. The reflection still moved in sync.
Did I remember it wrong?
He breathed a sigh of relief.
"That's right, how could a reflection move on its own?"
On the coffee table in the living room, on the dark screen of the electronic watch, blood-red color formed a line of cold numbers: [23:59:59] Although he comforted himself in his heart that everything was fine, Xia Yuan still decided to leave here quickly.
But when he picked up the candle and turned to go out, the candle flame flickered inexplicably and then went out silently! The room was instantly plunged into darkness -
Xia Yuan shuddered and cold sweat broke out on his back.
“Boom boom boom—”
Just at this moment, a huge blue-white lightning streaked across the night sky, accompanied by deafening thunder. The dazzling lightning suddenly illuminated the room.
At this moment, he noticed a detail with his hair standing on end: the corner of the mouth of the figure in the mirror quietly raised a strange arc!
As if sensing his gaze, the reflection in the mirror suddenly turned its head! The eyes that had turned into pure black and white at some point turned and stared straight at his face! Xia Yuan was horrified, and his brain wanted to escape like crazy, but his legs were as if they were filled with lead and did not move at all.
The next second, the light brought by the lightning disappeared in an instant as soon as it appeared, and the mirror and its reflection returned to darkness.
Only the pair of black and white eyes in the reflection were still eerily clear.
Xia Yuan looked at the mirror with a cold body. As their eyes met, a twisted and cold stream of information suddenly came from the dark mirror, along the connected gazes of the two, and was injected into his brain.
It was an extremely nerve-wracking feeling, as if hundreds and thousands of tiny black ants were crawling in the grooves of the cerebral cortex.
The content of the message was just one short sentence: "At the end of the seven cycles of light and darkness, you will arrive, Unival——"
Passively accepting the injection of a large amount of spiritual information, Xia Yuan began to tremble violently as if he had been electrocuted, and held his head in pain with both hands.
The next moment, the ceiling light suddenly lit up, and the soft off-white light sprinkled down, dispelling the darkness in the room again.
A new character of Unival has been created. If you don't have fanart of the character, please submit it here.
(End of this chapter)
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