Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

When leaving the same way she had come in, she didn’t forget to block the entrance, concealing any trace of her presence.

Aboveground, Yelang’s iron armor and iron sword undoubtedly posed a significant threat to the enemies.

After some maneuvering, blocking, and sword swinging, Yelang managed to take down an assailant.

Without having time to collect the dropped loot, he quickly charged towards another enemy.

But this time was different: four enemies came at him at once!

Yelang had no choice but to halt and occasionally move forward to harass, attempting to fight a guerilla-style battle.

But despite his best efforts, he could only delay two people at most. Along with the two fans of Yi, five people were held off, while the rest continued wreaking havoc. The farmland and village were shrinking in size by the second.

As soon as Yi emerged from underground, he also joined the battle without hesitation.

But his involvement didn’t change anything.

In the early stages of the game, everyone had only the most basic equipment, so two fists were no match for four hands.

Fighting outnumbered was bound to end in defeat!

Even if Xu Chun were here, it wouldn’t necessarily be any better – it’s not like he could break through their iron armor and their large shield!

What if he wore iron armor too?

That would be even better! Everyone would be covered in iron exoskeletons, with the same physical prowess. Even if the weight of the armor is greatly reduced, don’t even think about pulling off any agile moves.

They could just hack each other to pieces.

Soon after the attackers increased their numbers, leading to a siege, the fragile balance was quickly broken.

Yelang and the two fans were the first to die, returning to their original respawn point.

Yi followed suit, also being killed in a group attack.

Before Yi died, he was somewhat relieved, “Fortunately, I was prepared in advance. After resurrection, I can just take my stuff and run, with only minimal losses!”

Upon opening his eyes, he did indeed wake up in the underground shelter he had dug earlier.

Yi immediately sprang up, breaking the bed and putting it into his backpack, then quickly went to transfer the supplies from the chest.

“I need to be quick! If the guys above find out, it’ll be trouble if they follow me down here.” As Yi opened the chest, he explained to the audience.

But when he opened the chest, he was frozen in place.

“???” question marks visibly appeared on his face.

Confusion, rather than rage, was the first thing that surfaced.

Yi, with a bewildered face, looked around the unchanged underground space, only becoming more puzzled.

Out of the original thirteen types of supplies in the chest, only six remained, and besides the bread, their quantities had all significantly reduced.

There was no doubt the losses were heavy!

“What happened?”

“Why did my stuff disappear out of thin air?”

“Can someone explain to me why?”

Yi couldn’t help but ask three consecutive questions.

But the live broadcast room’s screen followed his perspective, so the audience couldn’t possibly explain what happened to him.

The audience was also feeling curious and baffled!

In an underground space only five blocks away from Yi’s temporary shelter, the culprit behind all this – [Dian Dian] – was watching Yi’s live stream and laughing uncontrollably.

Yi couldn’t figure it out at all, but the sound of the “terrorists” coming through his headset forced him to temporarily set aside his confusion.

With the few remaining supplies, he again crafted an iron pickaxe and began digging downwards.

At least they didn’t take any bread, so there’s no fear of starving. In that case, might as well start digging right here and now!

Life on the surface is too complicated with terrorists and supernatural incidents, causing headaches. It’s much more relaxing to be a miner underground.

At most, there will be a few zombies to deal with, but that’s a minor issue.

As for good old Yelang?

He’s probably very busy right now, so best not to disturb him.

Yi guessed right, as Yelang was indeed busy.

His reaction was identical to Camille Victoria’s, not caring about his personal game experience anymore, and immediately started to recruit people in his live broadcast room.

First, recruit a hundred people, and if that’s not enough, recruit more!

If anyone dares to cause trouble again, they’ll teach them a lesson!

One after another, live streamers were attacked in concentrated raids, their belongings stolen, buildings dismantled, farmlands dug up, and livestock killed…

It seemed like a terror attack specifically targeting the streamers.

But actually, it was a misinterpretation.

It’s just that the streamers were live streaming, so audiences were more likely to witness these events firsthand.

In reality, indiscriminate and insane attacks were happening simultaneously across different worlds in every corner of the Public World.

Not all the attackers were wearing iron armor, and not all had changed their names to Bandits.

Many people were openly causing destruction and chaos everywhere.

Countless ordinary players, watching their painstakingly built houses be completely destroyed for no reason, and even themselves being killed, were inevitably deeply saddened.

But while the streamers can gather people, they don’t have access to such resources.

Within an hour of the arrival of this turbulent era, a large number of lone wolf players and small player groups decided to retreat from the Public World and return to their Personal World.

And under the influence of this trend, even larger-scale players who hadn’t met any attacks started to waver.

Although their houses, equipment, and supplies were all intact, a large number of people still chose to give up these possessions and start over in their Personal World from scratch.

That’s because they were worried that they would be targeted later, after building even larger houses and gathering more valuable items.

Then the losses would be much more severe; it’s better to give up early and start anew.

This massive withdrawal of players even began affecting the servers—

Over thirty Public Worlds issued announcements to players at the same time:

[The current Public World has seen a decrease in online player numbers below one-tenth of the total population. If the peak online player count remains below 10,000 within 24 hours, this world will undergo a merger.]

The [World Merge]mechanism exists to prevent severe waste of server computing power.

However, even the announcement couldn’t prevent players from leaving the Public World and returning to their Personal Worlds.

At this critical moment, people started talking in a group chat that had been quiet for a long time:

“With ordinary players struggling to survive in ‘My World’, can the guilds rise again?”

This quiet group chat was called [Whirlpool Forum Player Alliance], which was established during the “Assassins’ Alliance” [Freedom Day] event campaign, when everyone joined together to form a large army group.

Later, as the event ended, the group chat quickly quieted down.

Perhaps a player was bullied in the Public World today and couldn’t stand to give up just like that, so they came here to try and gather more people to help.

No one in the group seemed to have noticed the message, and the chat remained quiet.

“Nobody here?” the disheartened player was about to close the group chat and return to their Personal World.

Yet, at that very moment, the group owner suddenly appeared

“Come forth! Armor up!!”