Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

For the first time, everyone found out how easy it is to “alter terrain” and “move mountains and fill the sea”; it’s simply nothing compared to the sturdy houses in Metropolis and Night City, even the mountains here are like mud.

In the first ten minutes of the game, there were hardly any decent architectures.

Everyone was cutting trees, mining, and looking for food—There was a hunger value in survival mode.

A large number of players were somehow turned into hoarders, wanting to fill their backpacks with everything, without worrying about the weight.

This joyful atmosphere continued for 20 minutes.

There were no disputes or conflicts among the players.

When they met, they greeted each other; those who liked making friends gathered together and those who didn’t chose their separate ways to continue their respective games.

Anyway, the world was big enough and the supplies were abundant, so they could move in any direction they wanted.

Until the sunset and night approached.

To adapt to the virtual world’s game experience, the day and night alternation time was doubled.

Skeleton archers appeared.

It was fine for the players in teams. They had nothing to worry about. They swarmed up and chopped the skeleton with their swords.

But individual players were surely out of luck, especially those who encountered it for the first time.

Famous whiny anchor Nandong was happily cutting trees. When she heard a “swoosh” sound, she didn’t get to react before an arrow hit her.

As she turned around, she saw a skeleton staring straight at her in the gloomy night.

Although Cloud Dream had made the skeletons less frightening as possible—the skeletons had a pure white body without any impurities, and only their eyes burned with a little phosphorescence. Compared to those sanity-dropping monsters in Terraria, these were simply cute.

But a skeleton was still a skeleton, and timid players would still be scared when they saw it.

“Ah~” Nandong screamed and ran away.

But the skeleton archer shot another arrow, and she shuddered again. The force caused her body to sway severely.

Looking back, she saw the skeleton archer relentlessly chasing her.

“No! Mom! Save me!” Nandong was so frightened that she spoke incoherently as she ran and shouted.

She just wanted to build a house to play; why did she have to be chased by a skeleton?!

So Nandong screamed and ran, while the skeleton chased and shot arrows at her back.

This silly girl, either out of fear or something else, kept running in a straight line, never turning a corner, and her life hung by a thread.

At this critical moment, the heroine finally arrived on the scene!

“Ha!” Nishino Chizuru appeared suddenly with a stone sword in hand, slashing the skeleton’s head from underground.

Then, without stopping, she circled around the skeleton archer and continued to cut it with her sword.

In less than five seconds, she had taken care of the skeleton.

Nandong had run quite a distance away when she realized the attack had stopped. She turned to see a valiant girl, killing the skeleton with one strike of her sword.

And casually picking up the fallen bones from the ground and throwing them into her backpack.

Nandong finally breathed a sigh of relief, patting her chest anxiously. Just as she was about to go over and make friends with her, a familiar sound reached her ears—

“Swoosh!”

Chizuru was about to invite Nandong to her underground shelter when she saw Nandong scream “Ah!” as an arrow pierced her head. Nandong fell to the ground, stiff, and disappeared.

Following the direction of the arrow, another skeleton archer emerged.

“Ah!” Chizuru was a bit embarrassed, “Is this… mine?”

For solo players, during their first night, there was basically one archer for each one of them.

However, Chizuru had participated in the closed beta test, and as soon as night fell, she went underground, sealed the entrance of the hole, and didn’t come out until she heard Nandong’s scream. Naturally, the skeleton archer could not find her.

As a result, Nandong ended up taking the arrow for her…

Chizuru felt guilty, so she jumped back into her underground base, closed the surface, and sat down to operate the panel. She then jumped to the external link and entered Nandong’s live broadcast room.

In the room, she saw Nandong’s face full of grievances, while the audience appeared to be having a great laugh.

Actually, Chizuru wanted to laugh too.

But she held it back.

Contacting Nandong through the Live Streaming, she cordially invited: “Do you want to come to my place? It’s quite spacious, you can rest if you’re tired, and it’s very safe.”

Nandong wanted to thank Chizuru for saving her, so she happily agreed, joined the team, and came to Chizuru’s underground shelter.

Just in case, Chizuru went out and killed that skeleton archer, then brought Nandong back.

This underground shelter didn’t have anything particularly surprising; it was just a big square hole in the ground with torches on the walls and a crafting table, furnace, and chest in the corner.

And a bed that looked very soft.

The live streaming room immediately buzzed up:

“What’s the deal with that bed?!”

“So sinister!”

“Nandong! Beware of bad guys!”

“Speaking of which, does this room even count as big? Isn’t it just a grave?”

Nandong didn’t mind, but Chizuru wasn’t convinced. She pulled Nandong to a corner and knocked on a piece of floor and said, “Let me show you what’s big! Nandong, let me take you on a tour of my basement!”

Nandong stood on the edge, looked down at the bottomless vertical shaft, and unconsciously took a step back: “No, no need… This place is good enough.”

“How can that be! I’m telling you, there’s a lot of good stuff down there. I’ve already dug over a hundred meters deep. As long as we avoid the zombies…”

“Zombies?!!” Nandong unconsciously raised her voice and took another step back in resistance.

“It’s okay, when we hear the zombies’ sounds, we just need to move back a bit and block the path.” Queenie grabbed Nandong.

“Can…can we not go down?” Nandong asked cautiously.

“Of course, we don’t have to.” Queenie responded generously, “But gold mines and diamond mines are all underground, we will have to dig eventually.”

Obviously, Queenie hadn’t given up: “Look, if we go now, at least I can accompany you!”

Queenie unabashedly showed her true intentions: going down the mine with a timid beautiful girl was like going to watch a horror movie together, achieving the same effect.

Such an opportunity was hard to come by!

Seeing Nandong still hesitating, Queenie showed her backpack: “Look, I have 58 torches here, we can put more torches, so it won’t be dark at all!”

Under Queenie’s persistent invitation, Nandong finally agreed and followed her down the narrow ladder.

The completely vertical passage made her walk cautiously for fear of falling accidentally.

Finally, they reached the end of the ladder and found a very spacious mine, but the torchlight was limited, and the space in the distance was still pitch black.

Nandong plucked up her courage, took out her wooden pickaxe, and prepared to dig some materials with Queenie.

But before they could take any action, a chilling growl came from below.

“Ah~~~” Nandong immediately trembled in fear, dropped her wooden pickaxe, turned around, and hugged Queenie tightly. She buried her head in Queenie’s embrace, closed her eyes, and didn’t dare to look at anything.

“Hehe…” Queenie couldn’t help but laugh, but soon realized that Nandong was still live streaming. She quickly stopped her lewd laugh and patted Nandong’s shoulder gently, “It’s okay, don’t be afraid, the zombie is several meters below us, and I’ve already blocked the path; it can’t come over.”

Although when Queenie was digging earlier, she accidentally dug through the mine and almost had her face screamed at by the zombie. She was so scared that her heart nearly jumped out of her throat.

But now, looking at the zombie again, it seemed to have its cute side!

Nandong was badly frightened, her legs trembling, and if it hadn’t been for holding onto Queenie, she would have probably sat down on the ground.

Queenie thought that if she could go down and kill the zombie at this moment, Nandong would probably worship her instantly.

But the problem was…she was also afraid…

In the end, amidst a pile of comments in the live broadcast room like, “I get it! Let’s invite the goddess to the mine!” Queenie half-supported and half-carried Nandong away from the zombie.

After recovering, Nandong finally began trying to mine under Queenie’s guidance and quickly felt the fun of opening a blind box—

“There’s coal here!”

“Copper mine! I got copper!”

“Yay! I have an iron pickaxe now! Efficiency has greatly improved!”

“Ah ah ah! Gold! It’s gold!”

Watching Nandong’s continuous surprises, Queenie’s tinge of guilt vanished, and they both happily started mining.

Until…they encountered a zombie again.

Visibly, Nandong’s body stiffened, but at least this time she turned around and ran, without dropping her iron pickaxe.

Queenie quickly ran over and, with a series of quick moves, sealed the hole with dirt blocks once again.

Afterward, the two quickly left the area.

“Shall we go back?” Nandong took a break and suggested.

She felt that she needed some sunlight…

Queenie agreed: “Yeah, let’s go. We’ve dug up so much stuff, it’s time to store it in the chest.”

So, the two girls returned the way they came, climbing up the completely vertical shaft.

With an experienced demeanor, Queenie confidently invited Nandong to play together, “Nandong, let’s build a house together? I’ve saved a lot of materials; we can build a luxury villa! We can also plant a field outside the villa. I’ve saved quite a few wheat seeds.”

“Hmm, okay.” Playing with Queenie, Nandong was also very happy.

Although Queenie was a bit mischievous, she was not malicious. She was more like a friend joking, which made Nandong feel very close.

“Not only will we raise cows but also chickens. This way, we won’t lack food, and we can eat both meat and vegetables…”

Queenie was daydreaming about the beautiful life while climbing up, until half of her body emerged from the hole and entered the secret base again—

Suddenly, she froze in place.

“What’s wrong?” Nandong looked at Queenie with confusion, as half of her body was sticking out of the hole, while the other half remained stationary on the ladder.

Queenie didn’t respond.

“Queenie?” Nandong called again.

Unexpectedly, Queenie suddenly shouted in anger—

“Who did this!!!”

Queenie climbed out of the hole in a rage.

Nandong followed, puzzled, only to find that her secret base had turned into an ordinary dirt pit.

There was no bed, no crafting table, no furnace, and the chest for storing supplies was gone too.

Even the torches on the walls were gone!

In other words, Queenie’s belongings were all gone.

But that wasn’t the most outrageous part, the most outrageous thing was—

The ceiling was gone too!!

“Was this…robbed?” Nandong was a bit confused.

What kind of thief would steal even the mud ceiling???

Queenie and Nandong didn’t know that while they were happily mining in the underground cave, chaos was rapidly spreading on the surface.

In just less than an hour, their world had quickly ended its beautiful pastoral era, and entered—

The Era of Conflict!