Hearing the satisfying sound of coins being added to his account, Malou slid onto his knees in the mud, throwing his head back and roaring at the sky.
“I can finally go wild again!”
“Woohoo!
We’ve got revival money!
Brothers, our lives are saved!”
[Passing Pure Love God of War] pumped his fist excitedly.
At that moment, the five players suddenly realized the true essence of this game.
How the hell was this merely a monster-grinding MMORPG?
This was clearly a masterpiece stitched together from monster hunting, looting, extraction gameplay, and hardcore survival mechanics!
Every time they went out, if they failed to earn enough Ash Coins for a revival, they would go completely bankrupt.
But if they found valuable loot and returned with a huge haul of Ash Coins, they could live like kings!
Wasn’t that exactly the essence of an extraction game?
And that wasn’t all.
While building the cabin, they had also accidentally crafted a little “surprise.”
“Old Ji, check this out.
Do you think this works?”
Bigshot walked over honestly, holding an extremely crude weapon.
It was a homemade stone hammer.
A sharp, elongated blue brick had been firmly tied to a thick wooden stick with vines.
Ji Luo took a closer look.
Sure enough, a system attribute panel appeared above the weapon.
[Item: Crude Stone Hammer (Rough Homemade Weapon)]
[Lethality: Weak]
[Durability: 15/15 (Extremely Fragile)]
[Evaluation: A crystallization of primitive human wisdom.
It will still hurt like hell when smashed into someone’s head, but there is a high probability that it will fall apart after just a few blows.]
Ji Luo himself pulled a sharpened wooden spear from behind his back.
The attribute prompt [Sharpened Wooden Spear (Rough)] appeared above it as well.
“Holy crap!
You can really craft items by hand!”
Malou’s jaw nearly dropped.
“The design of this game is insane!
As long as it follows physics and real-world logic, the system actually recognizes whatever we put together ourselves!”
“So freaking cool!”
[Passing Pure Love God of War]’s eyes gleamed.
“Then once we find iron ore in the future, won’t we be able to make muskets and cannons ourselves?”
“Physical exorcism—now that’s a man’s romance!”
Just as everyone was getting excited enough to grab their freshly crafted “Stone Age weapons” and return to the village to get revenge on that giant bug…
Night fell completely.
The sky, which had been hazy gray just moments ago, now looked as though someone had poured an entire bucket of thick ink across it.
The crimson crescent moon disappeared completely behind the clouds.
The only remaining light in the entire world came from the faint blue glow of the church’s protective barrier.
From the depths of the Black Forest beyond the light, as well as the distant Abandoned Village, chilling and terrifying roars echoed one after another.
There were more than ten times as many as during the day!
A massive dark shadow even swept across the Black Forest beneath the cover of night, bringing with it a foul gust of wind that nearly knocked the five players off their feet.
The five who had been shouting about charging out and slaughtering everything just moments ago instantly fell silent, like ducks being squeezed by the neck.
The temperature around them dropped sharply.
Even with pain reduction enabled, they could still feel the bone-chilling cold.
“Um…”
[Ji Luo] swallowed hard.
He glanced at the wooden spear in his hand, then at the Ash Coins he had just earned.
“Brothers, according to the rules of survival games, monsters at night don’t just increase in number.
Their stats probably double too.”
“Old Ji is right.”
[Passing Pure Love God of War] tactfully retreated into the church’s protective barrier.
“We worked our asses off all afternoon moving bricks just to earn ten coins.
If we go outside now and some monster god one-shots us…”
“We’ll be broke again.”
Malou frantically shook his head.
“No way, no way!
Work for half a day just to go bankrupt in one second?
That’s a terrible deal!”
Now that they had finally accumulated a little savings, who would be stupid enough to venture into the pitch-black wilderness with limited visibility and throw their lives away?
“We’ve been moving bricks in this game all afternoon.
It’s probably getting dark in reality too, right?”
[Passing Pure Love God of War] suggested,
“Since we’re not going out to hunt monsters tonight anyway, why don’t we log off and grab something to eat first?”
The others immediately nodded in agreement.
[Ji Luo] took the opportunity to add another suggestion.
“By the way, don’t just idle around after logging off.
Search online for wilderness survival videos and brush up on your skills.”
“We’ll use our real-world information advantage to launch a dimensionality-reduction strike against these otherworldly monsters!”
“Old Ji makes total sense!”
Bigshot nodded earnestly.
“When I log off, I’ll look up how to sharpen stone tools.
Tomorrow, I’m cracking that giant bug’s head open no matter what!”
Everyone immediately agreed and opened their logout panels one after another.
Just as they were about to turn into ash and log off, Malou suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Wait!
Old Ji, Jiahao, you two haven’t joined the chat group yet!”
“Hurry up and send me your WeChat numbers so I can add you!
We’ll meet up in the group after dinner and discuss tomorrow’s tactics!”
Ji Luo and Jiahao quickly gave him their numbers.
Then, accompanied by flashes of white light, all five players vanished simultaneously from the ruined church.
…
Blue Star.
Lu Ziye abruptly sat up in bed and tore off the second-hand VR helmet, which was slightly damp with sweat.
Outside the window, the sky had already turned completely dark.
The aroma of stir-fried rice noodles from the roadside stalls drifted up from below the dormitory.
“Phew!”
Lu Ziye let out a long breath.
His muscles ached faintly all over.
Although the game reduced pain, the intense mental concentration and realistic physical feedback still gave his brain the illusion that he had actually spent the entire afternoon doing manual labor.
Yet despite the fatigue, his mind was as excited as if he’d been injected with adrenaline.
After casually ordering takeout on his phone, Lu Ziye didn’t even bother showering.
He turned on his computer and skillfully logged into the game forum.
Sure enough, the post he had made the previous night hadn’t sunk.
Instead, the forum bros had piled several thousand replies onto it, all mocking them as shills who had escaped from a mental asylum.
Lu Ziye sneered.
Placing both hands on the keyboard, he instantly transformed into a keyboard warrior and began passionately flaming back.
“Keep barking, back-seat gamers!”
“This afternoon, not only did I get one-shot by an elite mob, the five of us even chopped down trees with our bare hands and built a wooden cabin!”
“This game’s physics engine is literally god-tier!”
“Vines binding wood, stone smashing tree bark—the force feedback is almost indistinguishable from reality!
Keep drooling, you scrubs.
You don’t understand the true value of this 1KB game at all!”
The moment the post was updated, the popcorn-eating spectators swarmed in like sharks smelling blood.
Netizen A: “OP, wake up!
Punching trees and building houses with your bare hands?
You think you’re playing Minecraft?
At least draft your lies before bragging!”
Netizen B: “This is so pathetic.
Is anyone going to do something about this cyber-psychosis?
Did some new cult brainwash them?”
Netizen C: “LMAO, five grown men playing in the mud and building houses in a game.
I wouldn’t play this trash even if it were free.
And you call this an epoch-making masterpiece?”
Just as Lu Ziye was fighting a lonely battle and getting overwhelmed by the flame war, familiar reinforcements finally arrived.
[Kindergarten Boss]: “Brothers, OP really isn’t exaggerating.
I spent the whole afternoon smashing trees with a crappy blue brick.
The haptic feedback was insane.
Now that I’ve logged off, my hand is literally shaking when I hold a glass of water.
This immersion completely blows every VR game on the market away!”
[Malou Also Has Dignity]: “You guys don’t know shit!
A bunch of NPCs yapping away just because you can’t play the game!”
Their tone was genuine and heated, with none of the stiff, artificial feel of paid professional shills.
For a moment, their comments actually sparked a modest wave of discussion across the forum.
Some forum users finally began to sense that something was wrong.
Could it be…
that these lunatics were actually telling the truth?
Had a mysterious closed-beta game really appeared on the market—one that was only 1KB in size yet completely surpassed every existing game in graphics and interactivity?
Just as the forum erupted into fierce arguments, countless lurking netizens clicked the 1KB download link, eager to try it for themselves.
Only to be coldly rejected by the game.
Meanwhile, inside the five-man squad’s WeChat group, new members had also arrived.