Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Lincoln indeed rented an entire hotel for his employees to stay in during their team-building days, but he himself did not stay there.

He and the princess stayed in another hotel, registering only under the identities of Yue Pengju and Jordan.

Even if these enthusiastic citizens of Chang’an were able to accurately locate the hotel where the employees were staying, they could not possibly intercept Lincoln.

Why would not being able to stop him be good news?

Because if they really did manage to do so, they would end up at the police station receiving criticism and education.

Especially if they intercepted Lincoln, they would also run into a rare target: Princess Camille Victoria, directly experiencing the joy of “buy one get one free.”

Which also means double the criticism and education.

…

So no matter how accurately the players guessed, they could never get definite information from Cloud Dream.

Despite the player circle being abuzz, Lincoln remained silent throughout.

Not only did Lincoln keep silent, but Cloud Dream’s employees also completely ignored the matter.

Only Cheryl was an exception.

She took the opportunity to release a short video, allowing Little Milkshake to “respond to questions of concern from the netizens”.

The specific response content was-

“Woof! Woof woof! Woof woof woof! Woof! Woof woof woof woof!”

There was a sea of question marks in the video’s comment section.

Fortunately, though Cloud Dream didn’t provide any information about their new game, they did update an old one-

“Hunter: Call of the Wilderness”

[Map Update]: A brand new map, Medvedev.

Experience the cold wind and snow of Siberia!

[Event Update]: The Hunting Contest has begun!

Starting tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock (based on Eastern Standard Time), the three-day hunting competition will be conducted worldwide, with points determining the outcome.

All participating players will be grouped into teams of six, launched onto the same hunting map, and rely on basic weapons for hunting. Each match lasts for 90 minutes.

The points earned from the spoils of hunting will be the player’s match points.

The more prey you catch, the more complete your spoils are, the more efficient your hunting process is, the higher your points will naturally be.

As long as you don’t lose in the six-person group competition, you can participate an unlimited number of times until you lose once.

At the same time as losing, your score, which is your current total spoils points, will be directly locked and submitted as your final score.

At the end of the three-day period, the top 100 players will become the winners of the Hunting Contest and can receive customized prizes.

The top 50 players will also directly receive this month’s Honorary Player title in “Hunter: Call of the Wilderness”.

——

Although it wasn’t news about an “action-adventure game”, it was new content at least.

Considering there are many loyal players for this game, the announcement of this news still elicited cheers and excitement from a large number of players.

Especially when there is the currently hardest-to-obtain “Honorary Player Title” in the prizes.

That’s even more worth participating for!

*

“I really want to play too.”

In the classroom, Shuihua looked at this announcement and couldn’t seem to be happy.

She has classes during the day and can only participate in the competition at night.

If she can avoid being eliminated, obviously the more matches she participates in the better, as this way she can hunt more prey and earn more points.

This essentially means: before the competition has even started, she has already lost half of her participation time.

But there’s nothing she can do, who made her only 17 years old this year, unable to play Terraria.

Furthermore, she lost the Card King competition, but despite it, she still earned a lot from that broadcast – raking in over 80,000 Yuan!

This was because there were several matches happening at the same time, splitting the audience’s attention.

After resting this week, the Tower Climbing Battle next week will only have 300 contestants.

At that time, there will probably only be 100 matches in the whole week.

Each one will have much higher exposure than now, and at that time, the reward per player may be several times that of last week’s Qualification Battle.

Thinking about this, Shuihua felt heartache!

It feels like losing a lot of money…

But she quickly got over it, comforting herself: after all, it’s all free money, so be content and happy.

Then her problem becomes another thing:

Playing Cards is unnecessary now, Battlefield is too intense and not particularly interesting, Terraria is out of the question, My World requires time for construction, which she doesn’t have due to school…

She suddenly doesn’t know what game to play…

In the end, she could only resort to playing Hunter: Call of the Wilderness, participating in this Hunting Contest.

By the way, she could accomplish her “Where the Magic Animals Are” achievement.

She is just one creature short of completing this achievement, but the last one never showed up, which annoyed Shuihua a lot.

Now seeing a new map, she planned to try her luck there at night.

“You’re going to participate in this Hunting Contest too, right?” Shuihua whispered to her deskmate Lance, “Will you need to take leave?”

“I probably will need to on the first day.” Lance nodded, “Whether I need to for the next two days depends on my luck and if I am eliminated.”

“Really? You shoot so well and you’re really serious when playing.”

“It’s not the same.” Lance shook his head, speaking with self-awareness, “I’m confident in a shoot-out, but this involves hunting skills, it’s not just about shooting. It’s much more complicated, so I might not last many rounds.”

“I see…” Shuihua thought for a moment, “Can’t you just kill off the other hunters? Then you could quickly advance to the next round.”

“Huh?” Lance was surprised, “Isn’t it not allowed to hurt your teammates in the game?”

“But you are competitors during the competition, not teammates…”

Shuihua spoke so ordinarily that Lance was easily swayed —

“Could it… really be possible?”

He suddenly yearned to give it a try!

While lost in his thoughts, the class teacher suddenly walked in, heading for the podium.

The two of them quickly shut up, hid their mobile phones, and assumed the posture of diligent students studying.

The class teacher clapped his hands, attracting everyone’s attention, then saying:

“Students, in order to alleviate your study and examination pressure, the school plans to organize an outdoor summer camp for all third-year high school students this week.”

“Considering safety, distance, cost, and so forth, this event will take place in the virtual world.”

“The school has already communicated with Cloud Dream and will organize class-by-class visits to the Cloud Dream Experience Store for the event this week.”

As the words fell, an excited cheer and applause filled the classroom.

For third-year high school students, the opportunity to play virtual games is rare.

Shuihua and Lance were exceptions among exceptions.

The third year of high school is when academic pressure is greatest. During this crucial period, normal parents wouldn’t agree to buy a game console for their child.

Like the classmates in Shuihua’s class, most of them only received an oral promise of “I will buy it for you as soon as the college entrance examinations are over.”

During vacation, they could only run to the experience store for a go at it.

But the stores are almost always full during the holidays, whether you can make a reservation is all down to luck.

So upon hearing that the school was actually organizing a trip to the virtual world, everyone was extremely excited.

They all responded enthusiastically and couldn’t stop discussing their ideas, wishing they could set off right now.

Only the calm Shuihua and Lance caught the key point: “Outdoor summer camp?”

“The wilderness outside of Paradise? What can we do there? Or are we going to see dinosaurs on Dinosaur Island?”

Shuihua was puzzled.

Lance cracked a joke: “It’s definitely not going to be everyone getting a hunting rifle and going hunting together. Although that would be quite stress-relieving.”

“Stop making fun. That’s impossible. I can’t imagine what it would be like if the school gave us guns…”

“Virtual World Anti-Terrorism Exercise?” Lance’s imagination ran wild.

“That would still be about how to run and hide, there wouldn’t be any counterattacking taught…” Shuihua was speechless.

…

After the students’ excitement had simmered down for a while, the class teacher clapped his hands again, quieting everyone down.

“Our class’s turn is on Wednesday, is that alright?”

“No problem!” Everyone echoed in unison.

“All right, let’s go back to class.” The class teacher swiftly left the classroom after his words, moving on to his next task.

This left a classroom of students who were excited without end.