Morning of the ninth day.
The air inside miHoYo Studio was thick with the smell of coffee.
Bronie sat cross-legged in her chair, hood still pulled up over her head, a wad of bubblegum that had long since lost its flavor tucked in one cheek.
On the main screen in front of her, real-time data from five thousand closed-beta players cascaded downward like a waterfall.
"Battle report: as of nine a.m., the five thousand cyber-grinders have collectively slaughtered sixty-three thousand nine hundred and twenty-one low-tier Zombies, eleven thousand four hundred and six mid-tier elites, and nine hundred and seventy-two regional mini-bosses."
"Longest continuous session logged by the server — thirty-seven hours and forty-six minutes."
The words had barely left her mouth when Nuwa, who was drinking Happy Water beside her, nearly choked.
"Thirty-seven hours?!" She pulled the can away from her lips and stared at the long string of digits for a good while. "Are these people's livers forged out of titanium alloy? Even cultivators don't grind like this!"
Bronie switched to another interface.
"Cumulative withdrawals have topped nineteen million. The single highest individual withdrawal is two hundred and seventy thousand. At this point these people don't even think they're playing a game anymore — they think they've clocked into a job that pays by the second."
"Su Yu doesn't do anything halfway, does he."
Nuwa pulled out a tissue and dabbed at her chin, clicking her tongue repeatedly.
"Dump cash to buy word of mouth, wrap it in the skin of an online game, hire five thousand guinea pigs who bring their own supplies to run the stress test for you. The tech gets proven out, the reputation gets sanctified, and every bit of traffic on the whole network gets sucked dry. This whole combo is straight-up Outclassed by None — the competition's probably lining up to kowtow after seeing this."
As she spoke she pointed at a few lines of data flashing red on the screen.
"Look at this — shared-experience trigger rates, multiplayer sync latency, misjudgment rates on extreme dodges. Isn't this just the players filling in our test reports with their own lives and livers?"
"Correction — not their lives, their wallets." Bronie let out a whistle. "Give them a limited-edition avatar frame and players will call you a slave driver. But slap real cash down on the table, and this crowd could keel over dead in front of their computers and still fire off a danmaku on the way out praising your game for having a conscience."
"Fair point." Nuwa pulled the potato chip bag closer and grabbed a fistful to stuff in her mouth. "Right now this whole crowd looks like bricklayers under some contractor, racing to beat a deadline they'll die for."
Kiana, sitting on the couch nearby, was hugging a bag of plain-flavored chips, crunching away nonstop.
"I have to say — that's actually not far off."
"So here's the question," someone rolled their chair over from across the studio and craned their neck at the main screen. "Right now it's pure cash-burning. What about after? Has Su Yu said anything about how he plans to actually monetize this thing down the line?"
The moment the question landed, everyone's gaze naturally curved in one direction and settled, all at once, on Kiana over on the couch.
The reason was straightforward.
Su Yu wasn't here.
The person in the studio who stuck closest to him, appeared with him most often, and was most likely to know the inside story, was this poster girl who got dragged in daily to test-swing blades, test-check models, test-run animations, and — incidentally — test-taste instant noodles.
Kiana had just brought a chip up to her mouth when over a dozen pairs of eyes locked onto her.
Her hand froze, the chip suspended in midair, and her expression stiffened for a beat.
"Why... why are you all looking at me?"
"Who else would we ask." Nuwa said it with total confidence, brushing crumbs off her hands. "You two are joined at the hip every single day, might as well share a desk to sleep at. You're telling me you don't know anything?"
That struck Kiana speechless for a second.
She set her face into a stern expression, trying to look like she had every right to be annoyed.
"How would I know what's going on in that guy's head? Who could ever guess what he's thinking? Maybe... maybe he has his own plan for it."
On the surface she put on a show of confidence, but something in her sank.
Silently, she let out a long breath.
That idiot wasn't doing any of this for the game's revenue, and he certainly wasn't doing it for the financial reports.
He was pulling the whole city's hatred onto himself through the most twisted method possible, all so that on the day the apocalypse arrived, he could trick these people into leaving the city.
Sitting nearby in the pink-and-white single-seat sofa, Elysia's brow furrowed slightly at that thought.
"What worries me more is something else — is this world boss raid going to end up causing some kind of trouble?"
"That item called the [Skyward Authority] — its perk includes closed-beta data inheritance privileges."
"If it actually ends up in the hands of one particular person or team and gets carried over into open beta, isn't that horribly unfair to everyone else who'll be playing at launch?"
Bronie fished a lollipop out of the tin box on the table, tore off the wrapper, and popped it in her mouth.
"If you want your top players to work themselves to the bone for free, you've got to dangle a solid-gold carrot in front of the donkey. Without a lure that breaks across game versions like that, how else are you supposed to squeeze every last drop of potential out of these five thousand people?"
Elysia still looked a bit troubled. "Tonight's the offline boss raid at the dome arena. Five thousand people packed together — what if someone actually starts throwing punches for real just to grab the item?"
The moment that question came up, Nuwa immediately looked at Bronie.
Bronie spread her hands.
"The boss thought of that ages ago. There's no player-versus-player damage detection in the game — all PVP damage is locked out completely."
"If anyone actually lays a hand on someone else's body during gameplay, the System will pull the footage, location, and device ID and hand it straight over to law enforcement."
"And if anyone's crazy enough to take their glasses off and throw down for real in the dome plaza, Arc City's riot police will teach them some manners within thirty seconds."
Nuwa gave a bitter laugh and rubbed her temples.
"No wonder. That attention-seeker Jiahao's been throwing tantrums on the forums every day, getting cursed out eighteen generations back, and he still hasn't been jumped in real life."
"You're overthinking it," Bronie rolled her eyes. "If people really wanted to hurt him, all they'd need is a dark alley on a moonless night and a burlap sack over his head. They haven't, purely because this whole crowd has scoured Arc City top to bottom and still can't find so much as a trace of Jiahao."
Nuwa froze for a moment.
The flame of gossip lit up in her eyes and she leaned forward without meaning to.
"Seriously though — where did this Jiahao guy even crawl out from?"
"Day one of launch, he stole mobs and taunted people. Backend data confirmed the other players had maliciously grouped up to hog a resource point — he was basically enforcing justice."
"Day four, he lured monsters onto people and got dozens killed. Underlying code confirmed it was a bug in the monster aggro mechanic — had nothing to do with him at all."
Nuwa laughed out of sheer exasperation.
"But somehow every blame lands on his head like it's on autopilot. Is this guy just naturally cursed to get struck by lightning?"
Bronie and Kiana, who was sitting in the corner sofa crunching away on chips, exchanged a look only the two of them understood.
They kept silent, in perfect sync.
That brief, fleeting exchange did not escape Elysia's eyes.
She glanced at Bronie, then at Kiana, stayed quiet for a few seconds, then suddenly asked:
"Come to think of it, why haven't I seen Su Yu around these past few days? Shouldn't he be here keeping an eye on things during a decisive stage like this?"
There was a beat of stillness in the air.
Bronie, without so much as a flicker on her face, pulled up a fake itinerary and rattled it off at speed: "Anti-Entropy Entertainment has some big cross-promotion project that needed sign-off urgently. He went with Uncle Yang to do an on-site survey — probably in meetings all night."
Elysia let out an "oh" and didn't press further, but something still felt off to her.
It wasn't that she'd never had a shred of suspicion.
In fact, while watching the livestream, she kept feeling like that infuriating "Jiahao" had some strange, familiar quality about him.
But his build and personality were so far off from Su Yu's that it seemed impossible.
Su Yu just made games.
Sure, he was good at black-tech gadgetry, could write scripts, could plan systems, and had gotten noticeably stronger physically lately — but surely he hadn't suddenly picked up the art of disguise on top of that?
And besides, why would a game producer even bother learning something like that?
Elysia didn't chase the thought any further.
Just then, a blaring red System broadcast popped up on the main screen.
[Final phase of the World Boss Raid has begun]
Every eye in the studio snapped toward it in an instant.
————————
South District of Arc City, the dome arena sports center.
A real-world landmark that miHoYo had rented out at enormous cost.
This was where Eden had once held a concert for ten thousand fans.
The soaring dome ceiling, the lift stage, the ring of holographic projectors inside — an industrial monster built on burned money.
A venue that could barely hold fifty thousand people looked strangely empty with only five thousand players wearing AR glasses scattered inside.
The five thousand closed-beta players with AR devices were spread across different zones, their names and guild tags floating above their heads.
High overhead, the red light of a helicopter blinked steadily as its camera panned down from above, capturing the scene like some kind of doomsday ritual.
And higher still, in the night sky, the sky-blotting Judgment-class Honkai Beast [Benares] circled, casting its shadow below.
When it spread its wings, they nearly swallowed half the darkness of the night.
Every time it swept over the dome, the holographic wind pressure it kicked up made the neon signs around the plaza flicker with data glitches.
Ordinary citizens without gaming rights, without the devices, were kept two hundred meters back behind the cordon.
They watched the towering holographic dragon silhouette overhead and snapped photos on their phones like mad.
"The visual effects really went all out this time."
Nuwa watched the main screen and clicked her tongue.
Bronie's hands were already resting on the console.
"Qualification screening has begun."
The dome's ceiling opened wide, and the night wind rushed in.
The holographic battlefield surged forward — flat real-world pavement, reshaped through the AR devices into cracked lava terrain, burning wreckage struts, and scorched earth streaming with liquid energy.
The livestream chat exploded like a crowded market:
[Holy crap!! This oppressive presence — I'm about to wet myself through the screen!!]
[Is this thing's size for real? miHoYo, did you actually summon an alien lifeform onto Earth?]
[Blood's pumping, boys! This is what real romance looks like! Slay the dragon!!]
[Five thousand people fighting it? One breath of dragonfire and five thousand won't even be a snack for it!]
[Incoming, big damage! The budget's burning like crazy!]
Of course, the officials weren't foolish enough to just throw five thousand people at it all at once.
To keep the battle from turning into pure human-wave slaughter, the final mechanic had been publicly clarified at noon on the third day: qualification to challenge Benares's main body would be determined by points earned from breaking phantom duplicates and sub-cores scattered across the different zones.
Only teams whose accumulated kill count and contribution hit a certain threshold would earn a slot in the main-body battle.
That made everything much more reasonable.
First came a frenzy in the outer ring — every major fleet grinding phantoms, racing for cores, competing on damage output. Whichever team qualified first got to step first into the main battlefield at the center of the dome.
Soon enough, the first team to successfully break into Benares's main-body challenge zone emerged.
The plaza erupted instantly into an earth-shaking war cry, light and shadow effects and the whoosh of swinging weapons tangling together.
On the south side of the plaza, Rin had her hair pulled up into a crisp high ponytail.
Sakura Blossom carved out one perfect iaido arc after another in her hands.
With Carole and the others in flawless coordination, Tofu Puff Fan Support Club went all-out, their point bar climbing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"Beautiful! Third place!" Carole watched the gold light flare up on the point leaderboard and pumped her fist in excitement.
As challenge qualifications kept accumulating, the System generated twenty entry passages around Benares's main body.
Once the twentieth team was confirmed to have entered, the screening mechanism locked, and the remaining teams were automatically switched to outer-ring support mode.
Though most players never got to personally clash with the main-body dragon, they weren't too discouraged — because the fleets behind those twenty teams covered nearly the entire closed-beta population.
The final reward would be distributed to the parent fleets based on output and contribution, and split internally from there.
In other words, as long as your own people made it far enough, everyone else in the outer ring wasn't working for nothing.
So the mood shifted quickly, from "damn it, we didn't make it in" to "come on, guys, push hard — whoever wins, I'm buying the whole fleet drumsticks tonight."
And once all twenty teams had stepped onto the main battlefield, one particularly conspicuous presence squeezed into the nineteenth challenge slot, right on the final line.
Jiahao.
[System Notice: Player Jiahao (unaffiliated with any fleet) has claimed the nineteenth slot by force, reaching the threshold through cumulative solo damage! A tiger, as always, walks alone!]
Still that black hoodie, still that unsettling smiley-face mask, still refusing to team up or join any fleet, shouldering his weapon alone off to one side.
The other nineteen teams instinctively kept their distance from him, like they were maintaining a safety radius from a plague god.
The rowdy plaza fell dead silent for several seconds.
Then, whether it was the players on-site or the audience in the livestream, everyone lost it at once.
[Holy shit shit shit! Is this cheater even carbon-based life?! One guy soloed a full fleet's worth of points?!]
[Where's official support? Not gonna do anything?! This is clearly an unlock-all god-mode hack!]
[Doesn't this guy ever need to rest? Is his liver forged from some unbreakable alloy?]
[This is insane... lucky for us this loner never joined a fleet — if he'd gone with a big one, the first kill would've been locked in from the start.]
[Investigate him! Somebody get this man a drug test!]
Amid a tangled crowd of shock, envy, and dread, the final showdown against the dragon's main body finally erupted.
It was a battle brutal enough to be written into gaming history.
Benares's health bar was punishingly thick, and full-screen instant-kill mechanics kept coming one after another.
Players fell, respawned, and charged forward again in wave after wave.
Until, an hour later —
The dragon's health bar bottomed out.
It let out one last earth-shaking roar, its massive body plunging down from the sky.
In the path of its fall, Rin took a deep breath, her eyes locked onto the fleeting flash of red light exposed on the dragon's chest.
"Cherry Blossom: Scatter!"
A single line of pink blade-light sliced clean through the entire night sky.
Under that final strike, the last sliver of Benares's health bar was wiped out completely.
The great dragon threw back its head for one last howl before its body began to disintegrate, crumbling piece by piece like a collapsing mountain of light, turning fully into a stream of golden-red data.
In its place, a downpour of gold coins and first-kill rewards came pouring down from above like a storm.
The whole plaza went silent for one heartbeat.
Then the sound wave nearly blew the dome's ceiling off.
"First kill!!! We got it!!!"
"Holy shit holy shit holy shit!!"
"Carole's incredible!! Rin's a god!!"
The System broadcast took over the whole screen:
[Congratulations to team Tofu Puff Fan Support Club for claiming the server-wide first kill on boss Benares!]
[The first-kill bounty pool has been distributed to all members' accounts.]
The massive gold-coin bounty settled squarely into Carole's and the others' accounts.
The livestream chat went wild too.
[Absolutely lit! Three days of grinding well spent!]
[That finishing strike was well-deserved! Pink cutting through everything!]
[I've been saying "Fried Tofu Dynasty" this whole time — are you people deaf?!]
In the center of the main battlefield, Carole practically jumped in place, reaching over to slap Rin on the shoulder.
The fleet members had all shouted themselves hoarse, thumping each other's shoulders in celebration.
But that joy lasted less than half a minute.
Right in the center of Benares's fallen wreckage, a stream of golden data slowly coalesced, finally taking the shape of an item floating midair — an authority-shaped artifact.
It was the focus of the entire server's attention, the one SSR artifact the officials had promised, the absolute authority that could carry over across game versions and transfer one hundred percent into open beta — the [Skyward Authority].
Its item status read: unclaimed, unbound, available for pickup.
Carole strode forward without a second thought, reaching out to grab the authority. Her team had the first kill, had put out the highest damage — this drop was, by any reasonable standard, their spoils.
"Hold it right there!"
A cold shout cut off Carole's motion.
Around her, players from several other major fleets that had ranked close behind swarmed in like a tide, surrounding her group completely.
Comrades who'd fought side by side moments earlier now had nothing but naked greed and hostility in their eyes.
"You already took the first-kill bounty, fine, that's yours. But this item's drop isn't locked to bind-on-pickup — what makes it yours too?" A male player, apparently a guild leader, glared coldly at Carole.
Carole blinked, then her eyebrows shot straight up. "Have you lost your mind? Our fleet bled ourselves dry for three days to get the first kill — and we're not allowed to pick up the drop?"
"Bullshit! Everyone contributed to killing that dragon. Our guild wiped dozens of times — why should all the spoils go to you?"
"Yeah! Fine, the first-kill credit is yours — but you want to hog the item too?"
"Says who?"
People who'd been fighting side by side minutes ago turned on each other in an instant.
Formations shifted, weapons rose again, and the voice channel filled with layer upon layer of cursing.
"A pack of ungrateful dogs! You were all cowering in the back a second ago, and now you're out here trying to snatch the meat?"
"No lock means it's public property! Anyone who disagrees, let's settle it with a brawl!"
Some people shielded Carole, some tried to circle around and grab the item, some hung back yelling "don't push, don't push."
The whole scene turned into an absolute mess.
Rin stood there gripping her weapon, her heart sinking hard.
This chaos had come on far too fast.
Barely had she caught her breath from the afterglow of the first kill before she was shoved straight into another situation spiraling completely out of control.
In the livestream, the chat exploded even harder.
The livestream chat hit a second wave of hype:
[Lol! Front-row popcorn, watching plastic bromance shatter in real time.]
[This is too real, everyone! Money moves the heart — for five million and a top-tier permanent gear set, of course they'll bash each other's brains out.]
[Fight, fight! Let there be blood!]
[Man, that's a shameless look. They got the first kill, why can't they take the drop?]
At the very top of the dome, on the rooftop deck.
Sparxie sat outside the railing, hugging her knees, wearing a short bathrobe.
She swung her slender legs, chin propped on both hands, looking down at the chaos below.
A sickly flush crept up her cheeks.
"Ahh, how delightful... no matter what world you're in, intelligent creatures tearing each other apart over profit never gets old to watch, does it."
She licked her lips, a dangerous glint flickering in her eyes.
"So then... the stage is set, the fireworks are already buried. How are you going to wrap this up, Su Yu?"
Below, the conflict kept escalating.
Even though the game mechanics had no player-versus-player damage detection, crowding, shouting, and shoving were more than enough on their own to cause a real accident.
Not to mention this was a real physical space — if someone actually got knocked down or trampled, the consequences would be far worse than losing a few gold coins.
Just as the whole scene teetered on the edge of total collapse —
A piercing screech of microphone feedback erupted at once from the hundreds of high-power speakers ringing the dome.
It drowned out every last shout and curse.
"Good evening, all you circus clowns out there giving it your all tonight."
Every head snapped up at once.
In midair above the dome, the holographic projection was wildly reassembling itself.
A massive half-body figure dozens of meters tall gradually solidified into shape.
The black hoodie, the smiley-face mask, and that overwhelming, insufferable presence.
Jiahao.
Every eye swept downward.
The golden [Skyward Authority], which had been floating in the center of the battlefield wreckage, surrounded and fought over by several great fleets — was gone.
It was now, at that moment, being held in the hand of that towering holographic Jiahao.
"Motherf—! You cheater! Put that down!"
"If you've got the guts, drop the invisibility hack and come out here and fight me one-on-one!"
The crowd below burst into hysterical screaming, countless people howling and searching the crowd for Jiahao's actual body, only to find nothing but their own furious peers around them — not a trace of the black-clad man anywhere.
Only that god-like holographic projection above, gazing down at them from on high.
"Save your energy. Stop sniffing around like a bunch of dogs."
"Ultimate control of this entire dome now belongs to me. Including this piece of trash code you've all been worshiping like your daddy."
The projected Jiahao spun the [Skyward Authority] — that server-wide envy magnet — between his fingers like it was some one-dollar disposable lighter.
"Watching you all tear each other apart, forget your own mothers, all over a piece of garbage like this — it's really a magnificent nature documentary."
"Taking this thing into open beta would make for a truly satisfying case of Outclassed by None against a bunch of broke losers like you, wouldn't it?"
"Want it?" Jiahao leaned in slightly, the eyes above his mask curving into a malicious arc.
The entire venue fell dead silent for a beat.
No one spoke, but the hunger in every pair of eyes was on the verge of overflowing.
"Too bad."
He gave a low chuckle.
"Garbage like this isn't even worth my time."
The giant holographic Jiahao actually pulled up the System interface.
Under the wide-eyed stares of countless people, in front of tens of millions of livestream viewers, Jiahao casually summoned the System panel.
He dragged the [Skyward Authority] into a selection box marked with a red skull icon.
That was... [Disassemble].
Jiahao didn't hesitate for even half a second before tapping the icon with a light touch.
"You think garbage like this is worth me carrying it into open beta? What do you take me for — a scrap collector like the rest of you?"
[Ding~ Congratulations, player, for triggering a hidden mechanic: Treats Money Like Dirt.]
[The Skyward Authority has been permanently disassembled, converting to a value of five million yuan in cash, now being distributed evenly to the real-money accounts of every closed-beta player present in the form of a "Scattering Heavenly Maiden" bonus — please check your accounts~]
The moment the System's notification chime faded —
A dense downpour of gold coins fell from above, glittering into a golden storm under the lights and projections.
Along with the real vibration of transfer alerts buzzing on their phones, every single person in the venue received exactly, precisely one thousand yuan deposited to their real accounts.
The entire venue went completely silent.
In the livestream chat, there was a blank stretch of several seconds before question marks flooded the screen like a tsunami.
[?????????]
[Holy hell! He disassembled it?! He actually disassembled the permanent gear artifact?!!]
[Five million... just split evenly in front of several million people just like that?!]
[This absolute lunatic! Did he escape from an asylum?!]
[I'm losing my mind... this whole play is on another level.]
[Definitely a misclick! Total flex fail! Classic accidental win!]
[Bullshit, that's not a flex anymore up there, that's straight-up performance art. Cyber living Buddha or anti-human tyrant?]
And the projected Jiahao clearly couldn't care less how anyone chose to interpret it.
He looked down at the people below, his laughter growing even more unrestrained.
"Heard the sound of coins dropping into your pockets? That's your performance fee, from me, for putting on such a hard-working show, you monkeys."
Jiahao spread his arms wide and roared with laughter at the sky.
"Take your thousand yuan and go eat something decent. Then carve today's humiliation into your bones."
"As long as I'm around, all you worthless nobodies will spend the rest of your lives kneeling on the ground, picking up whatever coins slip through my fingers!"
The silence shattered at that moment.
"Jiahao!! I'll curse every one of your ancestors!! I'll kill you!!"
"Those were my guild's three days and nights of blood, sweat, and tears! Who gave you the right to destroy it?!!"
The voice channel collapsed completely at that moment.
Countless curses in every dialect wove together into a wave of rage wanting to tear him limb from limb, and the entire dome arena had become, in an instant, a one-sided screaming match.
Facing the outraged fury of five thousand players below, all of them ready to devour him alive, the smile on Jiahao's projected face vanished completely.
"Don't think that just because you're hiding behind a screen without a closed-beta slot, you get to sit back and watch this like it's none of your business."
Amid the sky full of falling gold coins and the humiliated roars of five thousand closed-beta players below, Jiahao's massive holographic bust slowly turned its head.
He didn't even bother sparing the players below another glance, instead turning to face the drone camera broadcasting the whole scene live across the network.
That gaze seemed to pierce straight through the screen, landing directly on the faces of every viewer in the livestream chat.
Jiahao raised one enormous virtual finger, pointing straight at the camera.
"I'm talking to you. All you keyboard-warrior armchair generals in the livestream chat, and all you self-important scrubs waiting for open beta so you can finally show off."
"You were all playing the reasonable middle-ground know-it-all in the chat just now, having a great time mashing your keyboards, weren't you? Were you imagining that if it were you standing here in this dome instead, you'd have pulled off some god-tier play and snatched that string of code right out of my hands?"
"Cut the delusions. Stop daydreaming."
"You bunch of losers who couldn't even draw a closed-beta slot — you're not even worth as much as these five thousand closed-beta players I've been toying with like monkeys. You're just a bunch of cowards hiding in your safe little corners, trying to find some sense of self-worth by tapping plastic keys."
For a moment, the livestream chat froze completely, caught off guard by this sudden, indiscriminate broadside.
The very same audience that had just been happily munching popcorn and mocking the closed-beta players never imagined this scorched-earth attack would leap straight through the wire and land squarely on the tops of their own heads.
Jiahao's voice suddenly rose in pitch.
"I hear a few million people have already pre-registered for open beta. Good."
"Today I'm stomping these five thousand top closed-beta players into the dirt like trash, just so I can make one thing crystal clear to the several million people watching this screen —"
"I don't consider any of you insects worth so much as a glance!"
"You think open beta launch day is your stage to rise up and become a god? Dead wrong! That's the one-sided slaughterhouse I'm preparing just for you! Whatever pathetic skill and confidence you've got, in front of me, isn't even worth a bad joke!"
Just as countless furious viewers began pounding their keyboards to fight back, Jiahao's tone abruptly shifted.
"I honestly thought, out of these five thousand vanguard players, I might find a few with some real guts. Turns out it's nothing but useless trash sorted straight into the recycling bin. Since there's not a single ounce of fun left in this rotten little pond..."
Under the furious gaze of countless viewers in the livestream chat, Jiahao opened the very bottom of his personal settings menu.
There sat a conspicuous red button — [Deactivate Account].
"This garbage of a game. So boring."
Jiahao's voice carried through every corner of the dome via the loudspeakers.
"Your quality is so pathetically low it makes me sick. Fighting a bunch of monkeys who can only scramble for scraps over server-first honors doesn't meet my aesthetic standards. So —"
Then, in front of five thousand closed-beta players, countless livestream viewers, and every single camera in the dome —
His fingertip pressed down on that red button.
[System-wide broadcast: Leaderboard #1 player "Jiahao" has deactivated his account. Closed-beta qualification automatically forfeited. Leaderboard rankings will shift accordingly.]
The instant the System notification popped up, the entire world seemed to hit mute.
The shadow looming over every player on the server, the ceiling of raw power, the man who treated a god-tier artifact like garbage and ground everyone else beneath his heel, that lone wolf, that cheating monster...
...just deleted his own account, just like that?
That account was tied to a top-tier penthouse worth ten million yuan in the city center! Was he really just walking away from all that?
On the giant screen, Jiahao spread his arms wide, as if welcoming a curtain call staged specifically for himself.
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not deactivating this account because I'm afraid of you ants coming after me."
Jiahao's holographic image, gradually turning translucent, left one last piece of arrogance in the air before it faded away.
"It's because even if I handed the throne of first place to you all as charity, not one worthwhile opponent could ever crawl out of this pile of low-quality trash — not one worth drawing my blade for."
"Be grateful. With me gone from this pool, you insects can finally bite each other to bloody pieces with a clean conscience, fighting over some hollow title of 'strongest maggot king.'"
The echo of his mockery lingered in the air.
"I'll wait for open beta day. I'll make a new account and descend once again."
"I'll sit on my throne, waiting for you several million self-important losers to form your grand army and challenge me. Saves me the trouble of stepping on one of you at a time and wasting my own time."
"Enjoy your pathetic little chicken-scratch pecking matches among yourselves. Because on the day I return —"
"You'll all still be kneeling before me."
"Hahahahahahaha——!!"
With one final piercing burst of laughter, Jiahao's massive image finally dissolved into ash, scattering into the night sky.
The sky returned to normal, leaving only the last remnants of the golden coin-rain still drifting down, and five thousand players standing in several long seconds of dead silence.
The next instant —
"I'll curse your whole family, Jiahao!!!"
"If you've got the guts, don't delete your account and run! Give us your coordinates when open beta launches!! Turn on PVP if you dare — I'll kill you back down to level zero!"
"If I don't beat your entire family flat in the starter village, I'll spend the rest of my life walking on my hands!!"
"That guy is definitely an anti-social psychopath!! Where did miHoYo dig up this maniac?!"
That night, whether it was the closed-beta players inside the dome itself or the countless viewers across the network who'd just been publicly scolded to their faces, all of them fell into a state of hysteria.
Every major gaming forum, tribal board, and social platform's servers crashed under the load, instantly.
The two words "Jiahao" completely broke past the boundaries of the closed beta.
He pulled the resentment of every player anticipating the game, every armchair viewer, even every random passerby, and locked it down entirely onto himself, one single person.
Through one multimillion-dollar spectacle, he had sacrificed himself into becoming the ultimate public enemy of all of Arc City — and, soon, of every player in open beta.
Public Enemy Number One.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 20 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
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